It's been a while.  I have some catching up to do.  I like October.  There's lots of stuff going on, which makes me very busy.  But I have a few minutes now, so let's go back in time, shall we?

I'll start with the first weekend in October.  Matt was off seeing some stuff like this.

image from here

That's a B-29, in case you didn't know.  Don't worry, I didn't either. 

So I decided to go see some flying things of my own, at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

I decided to go very early in the morning, so that it would still be dark out and I'd be able to see the balloon glow.  I took the bus over to the park, and rode with a group of sorority girls, who said things like "Wow, it's early in the morning and we still look great!"  On the way over, I saw the remainder of the dawn patrol flying away.  I've decided that next year I'm going to try to get there even earlier so I can see them take off.  Because it's cool.

When I got there, it was already crowded, and I made my way through the mass of people to the field where the balloon glow was going on.  The lit up balloons are pretty but it would be cooler if they were flying. 


As the morning wore on and the sky brightened, the rest of the balloons began to go up for mass ascension.


Then they started to take off...


...and fly away.


There were a lot of cool special shape balloons this year, including the much anticipated Darth Vader Balloon.


The famous Creamland Dairy Cow


Some cool chickens



A penguin


A wagon


And, some of my favorites, the bees.  There were three this year!


Later, I stumbled upon the chainsaw carving competition, and came across this, which I thought was pretty awesome.


Altogether, another successful balloon fiesta.

Hello!  I'm back!  It's been two weeks since the wilderness and I still haven't posted the second part yet.  Not too much exciting has happened since then, I think.  Oh wait, no, I went to Santa Fe...and Corrales.  But that was two weekends ago.  Last weekend was kinda lame.  Caleb Crump wasn't even on!  Ahh, that show cracks me up.  I hope it comes back on soon.  This week I went out in the field with my boss.  Woo-hoo.  We listened to Rush Limbaugh and country music.  It was a blast.

Anyway.  I got distracted.  I was going to write about Apache Cabin, which is where we stayed on our trip to the wilderness.  Last time I said we weren't sure what it was going to be like.  Well, unlike with the water, we were actually pleasantly surprised by the cabin.  Here's what it looked like from the outside.

Not too shabby, eh?  The inside wasn't too bad either.  Minus a few minor details....


There was also rat poop on the floor, which was the main factor in my decision to pitch my tent the night we got there.  I almost didn't, because it was raining and getting dark and I was feeling lazy.  But I thought that everyone else was so I forced myself to do it.  My boss did also but my three other co-workers decided to sleep in the cabin.  The first couple nights they talked about putting up their tents but they never did.  Near the end of our time there, they were all saying how great it was to sleep in there without the rocks and sloping ground (oh yeah, did I mention the cabin was built on a small bench located within a very steep slope?  really weird place to put a cabin) so I felt like I missed out a little, but I still think I did the right thing.

To give you a little bit of an idea of the slope we were on, here's the view from the door.



Maybe hard to tell from your perspective, but it's steep....  Okay, now more cabin!

This is the stove.  We never used it.  I'm pretty sure it didn't work and would have probably started a fire.


Here's where we kept all our stuff.


We used this table for eating dinner and playing cards.


At night, we used a lantern that my boss brought.  It was really helpful, but it was hung from the ceiling and I was the only one who could walk under it easily.  Micah kept hitting his head on it.  Ha ha.

Here's another thing that was hanging from the ceiling.


Ummm... what else?  Oh yeah, the fire safety poster!


It's kind of hard to read, but it says stuff like "Don't cut off your foot;" "Don't accidentally hit someone with an axe;" and "Don't leave a fire before it's put out."

In the evenings, from outside the cabin, this was my favorite view to look at.