We climb to the Wind Caves for a second time this year.

My brother in law, Eric, saw our pictures from our last post and wanted to hike up to the wind cave.  We invited his family to go but his wife stayed to can food with my wife.  Here are the pictures.  Once again we said a prayer for safety and once again we had several incidences but came out safe.  The incidences were falling and scraping along with blisters.  Kylee bumped her head so hard into a rock ceiling that a piece of the rock fell and hit my foot.  She saw stars and had to sit for awhile.  Then last but not least, I did a stupid thing and accidentally discharged my gun.  Fortunately, having had good training since a kid, I had pointed the gun in the right direction and nobody was hurt except our nerves and eardrums.  I'm not sure why it went off but I took it out of my holster and was going to put it in my backpack for awhile as I felt we were above all the bears and relatively out of danger.  I popped out the magazine and went to remove the round from the chamber and while I was trying to rack the slide it caught in my backpack and I let it go.  Then somehow in trying to redo it, it was still caught and I must have hit the trigger and BOOM!.  I felt the sting on my arm of the blast and looked around for blood but fortunately not even a scratch was on me.  The bad thing was we were in an overhang and it was extra loud.  But it taught us all a lesson of what not to do.  Here are the pictures:

In back: Kylee, Eric, Katlyn, Macey.  In Front: Quinn, Alex, me

Behind the waterfall

Kylee hit her head on that overhang in the upper left of the photo
 

Alex waiting for Quinn

Sub-Alpine Fir pinecones
 

Mountain Ash

A couple of nice Photographs I took recently of the Grand Tetons and other things.

Teresa has finished canning for the season and is proudly displaying her work.



Full moon coming up over Housetop Mountain.  Taken a couple days ago



The Grand Tetons on the Idaho side, just after sunset.  Taken last month
 

I took this in October same place as the last photo

 

Took this in October.  My house is somewhere in the first group of houses to the right.

Hal leaves the valley and heads for Ghana to serve a 2 year mission

 

 

 

Wednesday Sept. 4, 2013.  We stopped at our favorite viewing spot of the valley to take one last picture of Hal before he leaves it for two years.  We have a lot of mixed emotions but are glad he made the right choice.  This will be a great learning experience for Hal and for his brothers and sisters as well.   We hope he will bring lots of souls to Christ and will build and strengthen his testimony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We spent the night at the Raddison Hotel in Salt Lake City Utah.  Hal and Teresa did a session in the temple while I took the kids around Temple Square and different places in the city.

 

 

 

 

We got to the airport around 8:15 am on Thursday morning the 5th of September, 2013.  We were able to take some photographs before we sent him off.  He looked pretty nervous until we found 2 more missionaries going to the same mission.  We are grateful he decided to go and we found out that he made it safely.

Labor Day weekend and blessings

Hal is leaving on his mission in a couple days.  We have traditionally as a family given each child a father's blessing at the beginning of the school year.  I typically start with the youngest child and ask them what they would like a blessing for.  Each child seems to desire and feel that the blessing does them good.  Quinn was worried about getting mad.  Katy was worried about being a good student.  Macey was worried about school.  Hal, of course, says he's worried about nothing.  There was a good spirit there as each in turn had their blessing and I felt the spirit strongest with Hal as he was leaving on his mission.  I also gave Teresa a blessing as well.  I took the opportunity to ask Hal for a blessing as he now has the Priesthood.  I have been feeling the need for a blessing lately and had no idea to ask but it dawned on me that Hal could do it.  He did a good job and said that if I was faithful the business would thrive and I would be happier than I have in the past.  I am glad I took the opportunity because I remember one time Bishop Buxton regretted not taking the opportunity to have his sons give him a blessing when he had gotten injured. 

Otherwise Labor Day weekend went well even though we did not do our traditional camping trip in Island Park.  We mostly cleaned and caught things up.  Today it rained so much that we would have had to bring home so many wet things that it would not have been fun.

One good thing I did this weekend was build my first load for my new rifle the .300 RCM.  I have had it a few months now and still have not shot it as there is no ammunition available.  It can be bought online but is expensive with shipping so the only good option is to handload it.  I started with a Nosler 150 gr. Ballistic tip and 59.0 grains of IMR 4350 and loaded five rounds.  Unfortunately I got to my shooting spot in Piney Creek Pass a little too late and the sun was down so my chronograph would not read right and I did not get any velocity readings.  The cases, however, showed no signs of pressure so I'm sure its ok.  Accuracy was not relevant as I was shooting over a failing chronograph but I will post a picture anyway.  The smaller holes are .22 and the bigger holes are the 30 caliber.  I shot at a distance of around 35 yards with open sights.  Certainly nothing to brag about.

 I also added a picture of the sun going down with all the smoke in the air.  Its been a smoky last few weeks due to all the fires around.