A day of fishing

This morning I was a bit depressed and feeling kind of trapped, so I decided to go fishing. Once the girls found out what I was planning, they wanted to go too.

We headed for a park near a dam that I had been fishing at a few days ago. Emily had never caught her own fish before, so I wanted to pick a spot where she was pretty much sure to catch at least some bluegill. Within about 5 minutes both girls had caught a fish and were excited. Becky and I did our best to re-bait hooks and release fish that were too small to keep as the girls pulled one after another out of the river. I think between the two of them they hooked at least 15 fish (some of them more than once).

We stayed for a couple of hours and basically let the girls fish. Toward the end they were baiting their own hooks and Emily was getting to the point where she was just about ready to start releasing her own fish. The girls played on the nearby playground for 20 minutes or so while I tried my hand at catching something a bit more substantial near the base of the dam. I tried 4-5 of my most successful lures (at least ones that had worked in many rivers in Oregon year round). The mosquitoes finally drove me to pack it up and head out, so I ended up not catching anything at all, but the girls had fun and it was almost as relaxing to watch them fish as it was to fish myself, so I was re-energized by the outing.

AJ worked on the dome while we were off fishing and managed to get some window frames constructed. I think the plan is to finish up the rebar tomorrow so that we can get started applying the cement. The dome is beginning to look a bit more substantial now that you can see the door and window frames in place. This dome is the "practice" dome where AJ's testing out several different ideas to see how they turn out before moving on to a dome that will be a bit more permanent on the farm.

After our little fishing trip we went into town and picked up 3 racks of ribs for the evening. We ended up sitting outside well into the evening eating ribs, drinking beer and burning tiki poles. Only the mosquitoes drove us into the trailer well after dark.

This area is beautiful this time of year. It's been getting hotter during the days and yet still gets cool and crisp in the evenings. It's a nice change from the heat and humidity of Southern Texas.

We're not sure how long we're going to stay here. Probably through the Summer... Chances are we'll move on before it starts getting cold again in the fall. We're not sure where we're headed after this, but so far it seems that we'll be heading back West at some point.