roly-poly animals

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Weekend with the Jones Family

We went into the mountains to look for turquoise...no luck. Just a bunch of tiny pieces. There were small caves made by people who were digging for turquoise.

We also went to the sand dunes. They were huge and we had to walk about a mile to get to them so we didn't go to the very top, but close enough. We brought skate boards to try to slide down but it didn't work that great. (Travis and Daxon, Caleb)

(Travis, Caleb)

All of the (Kortas) grand kids.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

New Apartment

Some pictures of our new place.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

UPDATE

I just thought i would write a shmear about the goings-on in our lives right now. Caleb took a job with the National Park Service, so we moved to Baker, CA a couple weeks ago and he now works on the Mojave National Preserve. The trip down was torture, but its over and we are settling in nicely. The park is great, and very large. Its 1.6 million acres and has many things to see. The weather here is the same almost every day...in the 100s with no clouds in the sky. (except for an occasional random sand/wind storm) In the summer it should get up the 130 or so. I am looking forward to that! Baker (little did we know) has a population of about 300. It is actually more of a pit stop between Las Vegas and L.A. There isn't even a GROCERY STORE! We went to the nearest town with stores and it is more than an hour away and has a small walmart and a couple no-name grocery stores. I think we will end up going to Vegas for our shopping from now on. Its about an hour and a half away. (two hours in our van!) We went to church for the first time (hour away) and it is a branch with about 25 people. 15 of which are too old to sit through 3 hours of meeting, so they only have sacrement and relief society/preisthood! I have never heard of that before. It's nice since we have to drive so far but still weird. Fortunately, by some odd coincidence, the is ONE other young couple in the ward with a boy daxon's age that just happen to live in Baker too! We're saved! anyway, thats all i can think of right now.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Mojave

Our first few days in Baker...While we were cleaning out the neighbor's pool we found a lizard drowning in it. That is how daxon was able to catch it.

Daxon sharing his toys with king Graham.

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE!
We have only gone to the visitor's center and two of the sites at mojave. There are a LOT left, but here are the pictures we have gotten so far. The park is 1.6 million acres. (the 3rd largest national park in North America)

AWARD WINNING PICS AT MOJAVE...so far.

Grand Prize winner

2nd Place

3rd Place

Jr. Prize

They had random mounds of rocks lying around.

These weird flowers grow out of the ground without leaves or anything, just a stem and flower.

Lizard kendra almost stepped on.

There were lots of these orange flowers growing everywhere.

Hole-in-the-wall camp ground is one of the places we went. There are a few reasons why it might be called hole-in-the-wall, but ultimately it has to do with one of these holes.

There are two parts on the trail that you have to use climbing rings to get up and down the steep rocks.

We went by a couple different "forests" - one was the Joshua tree forest, one of the densest in the world. (Joshua trees must not grow very close together.)

The other was one that was burnt by a wild fire a while ago. I don't know what kind of tree they are. They looked like stumpy/thick white pines. (A few clumps of trees are still alive)