Sorry for the lack of full blog posts about our roadtrip. We mostly just tried to get through it and didn’t really stop to smell the roses. We’re in Texas now and Georgie is finally starting to settle in a little bit after all the disruption. Here’s a picture from a Mexican restaurant tonight.
Here’s a video of Georgie laughing at me as I drive by on a scooter and act like I can’t control it. It’s good preparation for if I ever decide to be a Shriner.
Lately it’s been incredibly hot here and we’ve been trying to find some things to do indoors with Georgie. Yesterday Nikki took her to a gym playtime, the kind she hasn’t been to since winter. They day before that it was the indoor pool at one of the county high schools. And the day before that Nikki and Georgie went to the natural history museum. Here are some pictures from that outing, mostly taken in the gift shop.
We’re trying to get back into the swing of things here with this blog.
First of all, we have two big announcements, which hopefully aren’t news to anyone.
The first is that we are expecting a second child, gender currently unknown, on or about December 15th.
As if that wasn’t enough, we are also moving to Portland at the end of the month. We’ve pretty much wanted to move there as soon as we got to DC so this a a major thing for us. And I didn’t even have to change jobs to do it. I’ll be working remotely on a permanent basis from there. I’m not sure how long that will keep up but I hope for a few years at least, and I wouldn’t mind doing it that way till retirement.
My hours will improve with the 3 hour time change, though at this point I don’t really mind. As Georgie’s become a toddler it’s become more and more clear that as long as I can manage to get fairly healthy sleep, I have a great schedule for raising kids. This was really hit home by the gymnastics class Georgie and I just took. Most full-time working parents aren’t so lucky to get time in the middle of the day with their kids. Here’s my favorite picture from gymnastics:
On the way out West, we’ll likely make stops in San Antonio and Montana. So we probably won’t get to Portland until Sept. 1.
I’m really looking forward to catching my first steelhead, not to mention some native Western trout (cutthroats, redsides, etc.), and maybe even a salmon. I’ve still been catching fish here but it is not exactly the same. Also I seem to either catch large fish like this catfish:
Or little palm-sized guys like this:
So it will be nice to get into some “normal” fish for a change. I’ll fish a little in Texas and hopefully a lot in Montana.
Anyway, we hope to breathe some new life into the blog in the coming weeks and months. We came back from Portland in February in kind of a funk. Between wanting to move there so bad and being newly pregnant, we just didn’t have a lot of blog energy. Hopefully that will change now.
Here are some videos from the 4th, first with Georgie pretending the hose is a sparkler, then playing with real sparklers.
Our neighborhood pool is open!
More news soon (hopefully).
Part of the reason I haven’t been blogging is that with our newish WordPress blog, it’s harder to insert pictures, and it takes a lot longer. I don’t like the gallery view as much, but it’s better than nothing….so……
On Friday evening, we had a BBQ picnic at a park. I love the picture of her playing, just doing her own thing, with the other kids in the sand; she’s such a big kid. On Saturday morning, we went to Clemyjontri, a huge park that also has a carousel. She LOVED it, as the pictures show. That night, we went out to eat at (thanks, online coupons!) and Georgie got a chance to use her new umbrella again.
I *still* have to upload more pictures from our Portland trip from 3 months ago… and I have to upload some more pictures from my parents’ trip out here. I’m hoping to do both those posts Monday/Tuesday.
This weekend I decided I wanted to try to catch some actual trout so we headed up north to Catoctin Mountain Park, near the town of Thurmont, MD. S0mewhere up in these same mountains is Camp David and if I was president, I’d come often. It’s really nice — it’s like a junior national park with most the advantages of a real national park and none of the drawbacks. And it seemed like there was very little traffic.
One thing the park does have is resident trout. The elevation is high and Big Hunting Creek, which runs though the park, is mostly shaded. So the water stays cool enough for browns, brookies, and rainbows to spawn here and live year round.
Not that I fished there exactly yet. Yesterday we arrived and scoped out some spots but it was getting on nap time so we headed back to the car. During Georgie’s nap I went to a completely different stream — Antietam Creek, just downriver from the site of the bloodiest day in American history. Sounds depressing but it was a very nice place to fish. Although the water was turbid and I didn’t catch anything.
After the nap, we headed back to the park, but got sidetracked looking for some falls and found ourselves at a lake on the adjacent state park. The lake is actually just an impoundment of the same river, apparently just for the sake of recreation (i.e. not for irrigation or drinking water).
It turned out to be a very nice place to spend the afternoon/evening. It had a lot of stuff for Georgie to do, especially in the little beach area. In fact it had a playground but we never made it over there because Georgie was smitten with the sand and the tadpoles.
The most exciting part of the evening though is that I finally caught a fish in the presence of Georgie. I’ve been skunked every time I’ve taken her and I thought she’d get a real kick out of seeing one live. And she did. I caught a largemouth bass right by this beach area, right before I noticed the no fishing sign. It’s a little funny to drive all the way up here for trout and the catch a fish that is plentiful two miles from my house, but I’m satisfied. I’ll never take any fish I catch for granted, plus Georgie finally got to see it. Also we realized that Nikki had never seen me catch a fish so that’s a nice bonus (though she didn’t get really excited and try to grab it like Georgie did.)
A pic from my phone this morning. This is Winnie the Pooh, collecting honey and putting it on a bench.
Location: Potomac between Chain Bridge and Little Falls
Fly fishermen: Just me
Target species: At first shad, then smallmouth bass
Number of fish caught: 3 (2 smallies and 1 herring)
Number of other bites: Many
Flies used: Clouser, white wooly bugger
Flies that worked: White wooly bugger (my new favorite fly)
Fate of my catch: Freedom (for the smallmouth)
I finally got a DC fishing license! One of the big reasons I’ve been fishing at Four Mile Run so much is that I only had a Virginia license. The shad run inspired me to finally break down and add a DC license, though. I’ve now been 3 times to Fletcher’s Boat House and tonight I tried out Chain Bridge for the first time. What a great place! I parked on the Maryland side a little up from the bridge, then headed back to the bridge and down a walkway to the C&O Canal tow path. Then it’s back up the tow path quite a ways until there’s a path to the river. I walked out onto rocks a little and found a nice seat on a pool. I was just close enough that I could stay seated and cast anywhere in the pool or out into the seam with the faster water.
I started with a clouser minnow but it was going pretty deep on my sinking leader and I quickly realized that no fish were interested. So I switched to a white wooly bugger and immediately started getting hits. I caught two smallmouths in rapid succession and then brought a third fish up. I could tell right away that it wasn’t a bass but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what I caught. It was a beautiful, opalescent fish though. Unfortunately my hook had got set in a mortal place for the fish, so I asked the guys near me (who were fishing for dinner) if they wanted it. They came over and told me that I had caught a herring and gratefully took it off my hands.
After that I decided to pack up and head back and I probably should have left about 10 minutes earlier. First I fell into a shallow, still channel of water (up to my knees) and then a lot of the walk back was a little on the dark side. A canal tow path is a weird place to be in the dark.
But I made it back to the car safely and will be headed back to the spot soon. Unfortunately it’s not a quick and easy after-work stop off but I will find the time soon.
One technical note: This was the first catch-and-release fishing I’ve done and I’m very glad I clamped down the barbs on my flies beforehand. It was incredibly easy to release fish with barbless hooks.