Made in the Shade!

We finally made it up to the cabin for the first time this season. We only stayed for the day since we didn't know if we would be able to gain access. Had time to clean up the place a little bit, start a nice fire, have a little lunch and take a short ride on the 4wheeler. The air was fresh and sweet -- it was nice and relaxing. There was a loud & clattering afternoon thunderstorm as well.

Tending the fire

Still a few snow drifts close to the cabin but all other snow has melted off.

We're going back up next weekend for the 4th and our 2nd anniversary and to finish the work inside. We can't wait. We love it there!

Random Thailand Pictures #4

Decorative details at Wat Arun - Temple of Dawn

Every face had different features -- lots of attention to detail in the building of this temple.

The bamboo chopstick maker machine. The machinist was missing 2 fingers and his glove was wrapped up in duct tape. Heh. Wonder why.

Lunch one day. Quarter chicken, rice & glass noodles were in the unopened banana leaf container thingy. The food was awesome.

Random Thailand Pictures #3

Benjarong (traditional Thai Five-colored famous porcelain) Pottery Factory

Vendor on the Floating Market in Kanchanaburi province
(this was our favorite lady! we loved her hat and her smile)

A sign at the border entering into Burma (Myanmar) from Thailand.
I have no clue what it says. We saw Thai lady stand by it and made her husband take a picture of her, so we figured we better do it too.

Random Thailand Pictures #2

Wat (temple) along the Sakaekrang River in Uthai Thani Province

Boat with a HUGE engine in Bangkok on the Chao Phraya River

Floating houses along the Sakaekrang River in the Uthai Thani Province

Random Thailand Pictures #1

Our friend Sarcastra over at Too Lazy to be Evil uses a little website called random.org to pick random winners of her blog contests. I decided to utilize this website to start posting random pictures J took in Thailand because there are so many that I can't decide on my own.

Here are the three (out of 800) you will see with this post. Enjoy.

One of the food vendor ladies at the ancient ruins in Sukhothai

People of the Yao Pong Pang Kam Hill Tribe village - Mient or Yao (Black turban, red collar)

Taxi boat ride on the Chao Phraya River that runs thru Bangkok.

Denied Access - 2010!

Okay so JAKL tried to get up to the cabin on Saturday, June 12 for the second time this season. We were not only denied access, but we also got stuck in a drift due to being high centered which totally sucked! We were on a very lonely forest road and saw absolutely no living soul all day long. These are places were you don't wait for any one to come save you anyway, you just hunker down and get yerself out of the sticky situation you got yourself into. We actually had a good time. It was quite an adventure and it only took us aprox 2 hrs to get out after trying unsuccessfully to use our POS wench system. Ha ha. I guess we had to practice some how, huh?

We had two shovels, thank goodness. One flimsy snow shovel and a collapsible trench shovel that J had in his backpack. The trench digging shovel would not stay uncollapsed as we were digging out and gave us some war wounds. J got 2 chunks of flesh torn out around his knuckle areas while I sacrificed a meaty bit from that tender part between the thumb and forefinger!! Bled like a sieve & hurt like an SOB, but today looks nothing more than a glorified scrape.

Here are some picts of the day. The photos don't do justice though. The situation is worse looking in person. We made it to within 1.8 miles of the cabin after we dug out of the sticky situation, but it was too late in the day to hike into the cabin and stay. One thing that was on our side is that the weather was really nice and it wasn't raining/snowing up on the mountain during that time frame. It started raining as we made our way back down to I-80 though. Whew!

Definitely high centered -- damn it!

That stuff was packed way up in there!

Close up

This was the road 1.8 miles from our cabin. This was AFTER we dug our way out further down the mountain so we didn't want to chance going through. I know this only looks like a little snow on the road, but these were big wet drifts going up a steep mountain road. Oy.

The take-home message for this adventure is to come more prepared with proper tools that aren't POS's or start earlier in the day so that we can hike in and stay the night!!

Don't Delete JAKL off Blogroll Post!

This is dedicated to the women of Craft Night! :) You three inspired me to post for the first time in the year 2010. I swore since I had not posted in the past 6 months that I would wait until 2011 to post at all. However, with the very real threat of being eliminated from one blogroll, I decided a post or two was worth not getting ixnayed from a very prestigious site! ;) Love ya, gals!

This is posted under the category of WTF as in WTF was I doing for the past 6 months?!?