Day Off Hike

Josh and I hiked Secret Falls on our day off Tuesday. We had never hiked it in the fall, so it was fun to see how it is changing.

Love the Dogwoods.

 Three months ago, this was where Josh asked me to go out with him.

Dogwood in Fall

Applesauce

Heather and I made applesauce with the apples from camp and a some help. First, we washed all the apples.

Then, it was time to tackle peeling, coreing, and slicing all of them. This machine is supposed to do all three, but unfortunately, it doesn't work very well.

So, we did things the old fashioned way.

Jaime impressed everyone with her apple splitting abilities.

After about an hour with five of us working, we had all the apples ready to go.

We had to use two big pots to cook them all.

Finally, we put the applesauce in jars and processed them.

We ended up with 21 pints.

Apple Picking

It feels like fall in the mountains! Josh and I picked apples this week so I could take them to Visalia with me to make applesauce with Heather.

We may have used a few of them to make apple dumplings too, yum!

Rose Hip Syrup

Josh and I got back in the canning mode with rose hip syrup. We picked a bunch of rose hips from the rosebush by the porch then chopped them up a bit. This was harder than I expected because the rose hips are firm and roll all over the place. We added water and brought it to a boil, then simmered for 20 minutes, strained the juice through cheesecloth into a pot, added more water and repeated the process twice.

Once we had the liquid from our rose hips, we brought it to a boil and added sugar to taste. It was interesting because after we added sugar, the weight of the liquid increased enough to make the rose hips that slipped through our straining float.

 We reduced the liquid by simmering it for a few hours. The syrup is in the big pot on the left, the other two pots are our jars boiling.

Then we canned and processed the syrup. We ended up with 11 half pint jars and 4 pint jars.

 The next morning, we made dutch pancakes to try out our new syrup. It has a unique flavor, but is pretty tasty once you get used to it. Plus, it is loaded with vitamin C!

Accommo Modeling

Someone donated a new backpack vac to camp. I was chosen to model it for our thank you card. Then we decided to get everyone in, except Ben who is taking the picture. This was one of the rare days when our whole team was working on the same day, good times.

Hazardous Duty

The blackberry bushes attacked me when I was throwing trash into the dumpster.

Josh's Birthday

For Josh's actual birthday on Tuesday, we ate all day. First, he opened the mug I made for him and had a cup of tea. For breakfast, we made stuffed french toast. It was so good. We cut a pocket in thick slices of french bread, stuffed it with cream cheese, and proceeded as usual.

 Then we enjoyed the french toast with our homemade peach and blackberry syrups.

Lunch was pesto pasta with toasted garlic french bread.

After lunch, we had tea.

 And for dinner, we made shrimp scampi over a bed of wild rice with brussels sprouts and bran muffins. Yum.

We took dessert to the Starbuck's house and enjoyed molten chocolate lava cakes with them.

Yes, we ate well and enjoyed every minute of the day.

Yosemite Birthday Traipse

 Josh and I both had Monday and Tuesday off this week, which worked out great because Tuesday was Josh's birthday. We started the celebrating on Monday with a trip to Yosemite.

 As we got higher in the park, there was snow on the ground.

 We drove through the park, stopping just before the Tioga Pass entrance. There is a trailhead there for Gaylor Lakes, which we took. The trail starts at 9,950 ft and quickly climbs up the mountain for about a half a mile. Gaylor Lake is in a bowl shaped valley and the view when you reach the crest is pretty impressive.

This is not Gaylor Lake, this lake was on the other side of the road. I don't know it's name, but it's pretty too.

We decided to climb to the top of Gaylor Peak, which is 12,764ft. It started to snow while we were heading up and the wind blew the snow in our faces, which stung.

 We made it to the top and immediately turned around to come down because it was exposed up there and windy.

Here's a picture of Gaylor Lake, mostly hidden by the snow and trees.

We headed back down to the valley floor where it was rainy, but not snowing. We took a hike around the western side of the valley floor, barefoot of course so we didn't have to put our wet shoes back on.

We made it back to the car just as it was getting dark and really starting to rain. It was an excellent day.