Monday, May 28th, 2018

Memorial Day 2018

It's been a busy few days for the Salton Family.  Last Tuesday, the 22nd, we drove down to Des Moines to pick up my new 2018 Toyota Camry Hybrid from the Toyota dealership!  So far I really like the car.  It rides very smoothly, and it can get up to 50 miles per gallon.  The color of the car is "Brownstone". 

My new car!

Then this weekend we took the new car on its first road trip as we traveled to Mason City to visit grandma Becky.  "Band fest" was going on, so we took the kids to watch the parade on Saturday morning, and then they were able to ride a few carnival rides.  We also treated them to ice cream at Birdsall's, a really good local ice cream parlor where Elizabeth used to work back when she was in high school.  I enjoyed two scoops of their black raspberry marble ice cream :)  The boys each had a scoop of cotton candy ice cream.  Between candy at the parade, actual cotton candy at the carnival, and ice cream, they each had plenty of sweets on Saturday!

Nolan and Elizabeth pose at the parade in Mason City.

Today Elizabeth took Nolan to the water park here in Ames for the first time this year.  I stayed hme with Maxwell, as he had gotten a little too much sun while up in Mason City.  For supper we took the whole family out to eat at The Cafe.  As always, the food there was very good.  We've also been gradually preparing ourselves for our upcoming trip to Hawaii later this summer... it's going to be so much fun I can hardly wait!

Sunday, May 6th, 2018

This weekend I went up to Yellow River near Harpers Ferry, IA for our annual trout fishing trip.  I was joined by the Seagos (Jon, Jeremy, Matthew, and their dad Clyde), Tyler and Jordan Wright, and their buddy Keith.  The entire group had been up there for a day or two before I arrived... I came up after work on Friday because I'm trying to save days off from work for our big trip to Hawaii :)

Friday night we had good weather as there were clear skies and no breeze at all.  It was perfect conditions for a nice campfire, and it was nice to look up at all the stars in the sky on a clear night.  Tyler and Keith had both shot a turkey before I arrived.

Saturday we also had good weather for most of the day.   I went trout fishing with Matthew on the trail back behind the Little Paint campground.  There are lots of little fishing holes back there, but where we went was left at the first fork and all the was back along the rock wall.  That morning we each caught 3 nice rainbow trout using pieces of nightcrawlers as bait.  Jon went back farther down the trail and managed to catch his limit of 5 fish before noon. 

After our morning fishing, we came back to camp and relaxed, cooked some lunch, and tried to stay in the shade.  It was a good 80 degrees out, so we didn't feel like fishing again until the late afternoon.  After it did start to cool down a bit, I walked back to the same fishing hole that I was at this morning, but had no luck there.  I then went farther down the trail and managed to catch 1 nice rainbow trout at another fishing hole.  Jeremy and Jordan met up with me by then, and we all tried our luck farther up stream.  I caught another trout, but it was tiny, so I tossed it back.  Jeremy almost caught a really big brown trout, but it got away from him at the water's edge.

That evening we had a turkey feast.  Keith cut up his turkey breast into small pieces, wrapped each one in bacon, and cooked them over the camp fire.  It was amazingly good!  Then Matthew managed to make a really good turkey noodle soup.  He had boiled the turkey legs in a covered cast iron pot for 3 hours, then he strained the broth that was leftover and used that for soup stock.  He added a bunch of chopped veggies, noodles, and seasonings, and the end result was very good.  Later Saturday night we did have thunderstorms that rolled through, and they put a premature end to our campfire. 

My plan for this morning was to leave by 10:30 or so just to have plenty of time to be home and catch up on a few things before work on Monday.  Before I left the camp, I did manage to go fishing just a little.  I walked over to the fishing hole right close to the camp site, and within about 3 casts I was able to land another rainbow trout worth keeping.  So for the weekend I caught 6 rainbow trout (5 of which were keepers). 

Here are some other years that I blogged about our trout fishing: 2017, 2014, 2013, and 2012. 

Here I am with our stringer of 6 trout on Saturday morning.

Mathew with our stringer of 6 trout on Saturday.

The fishing hole close to camp.  I would catch a fish within another cast or two of taking this picture.