Once we retrieved the N and W minutes, plugging them in to our Garmin 60CS was easy enough. Unfortunately, the day was very overcast and the Garmin had trouble keeping a good lock on the satellites. We were able to get within 100′ of the location and I used “dead reckoning” based on the mapped coordinates and lay of the land to find it. We spent about 15 minutes before finding the well hidden cache!

Here is a photo of the original contents of the cache:

And here is what we took (the GeoCaching US Postage Stamp) and left (the red ladybug):

I had a missed strike on the 3rd cast, so I knew my secret weapon fly was going to work (I’ll write a post about it sometime soon). Then, just a few minutes later I hooked a nice Brown. He used the current to his advantage as I played him in. My wife tried to shoot some photos but I forgot to tell her that my camera was set up for soccer photography with the auto-focus moved to the “*” button – so the photos are not really in focus. But, at least she got to witness me catching a nice Brown, so no fish stories for me!

She and my daughter left to get a drink for 15 minutes and I had another hook up and brought a nice 17″ Brown to hand. When they returned, my hour was up and it was time to head to the soccer game.

The Boston Harbor sunset cruises head out to the Boston Lighthouse – which is located on Little Brewster Island out on the harbor. Our boat was delayed and we got a really late start. By the time we got to the Lighthouse, the sunset was almost over. The view was spectacular and the lighting on the Lighthouse was amazing. I know the iPhone camera sucks in low light, but it was all I had. I took a couple of shots trying to time getting the beacon light in view. Here is one of the photos:

Boston Light – original iPhone Photo

Nothing to write home about, but look at the lighting on the left side of the Lighthouse and the Keeper’s home! I couldn’t just let this photo go to waste so I loaded it in to iPhoto to see what magic I could do.

First, I did a crop just to see what I had to work with:

Boston Light – simple crop

Still nothing to write home about. Normally I would use Photoshop to work some magic but I was curious about what can be done with the simple tools in iPhoto. So I applied 3 effects and also tweaked sharpening and noise reduction to create the following 4 “art photos”.

Boston Light – Black and White

Boston Light – Antique

Boston Light – Edge Blur

Boston Light – Noise Reduction and Sharpen 100%

You can click on the above to see the full size final result. I think I like the last one, oversharpened and over noise reduced, the best. How about you? Anyone have any other interesting, simple techniques to recover iPhone photos?

After launching, we were immediately confronted with lily pads. They were so thick that you could barely see the water. That coupled with a strong head wind made paddling a real chore. Our intent was to paddle to Lower Massapoag Pond – which is much larger and clear of lily pads.

Shortly after starting, we were blocked by a beaver dam and had to carry the canoe over it. At about the 1 mile mark, another beaver dam blocked our progress and there was no clear way over or around. We backed out a few 100 yards and beached the canoe to take a look. A wide trail paralleled the shore, leading up to a 10′ man-made dam that separates Lower and Upper Massapoag Ponds.

The pool below the dam was teaming with small bass and blue gills so we decided to break out my bamboo fly rod and see what we could catch. Using a small (#14 hook) lime green Wooly Bugger (shh, one of my secret flies), we took turns casting and catching fish. It was a lot of fun because the water was crystal clear and we could see the action of the fly and the approaching fish. That gave us a chance to explore fish behavior a bit. Between the 2 of us we caught and released around 25-30 blue gills and a couple of small bass. On a light bamboo rod, a big blue gill puts up quite a fight.

After an hour we returned to the canoe and paddled back to the launch. It was a little easier with the wind to our backs. We could clearly see our “trail” through the lily pads from where we came in. It made navigating back a lot easier.

On Tuesday, the rain was really coming down so we decided to drive to Freeport to do some back-to-school shopping and to visit the LL Bean store(s).

On Wednesday, we decided to do some rock and mineral collecting. We took a short drive to Mount Apatite and hiked up to the abandoned quarry. The dirt road leading from the National Guard Armory has several large and intimidating signs saying to KEEP OUT. However, it is perfectly legal to hike, bike and collect minerals here. Shortly after the last No Trespassing sign is a sign that says to stay on the trails, be careful of falling rocks, and no swimming in the quarries.

The hike is about 1/2 mile uphill on the main “road”. Not too strenuous. There are several quarry pits and tailings areas. We went past the pits and summited Mount Apatite in another 1/2 mile. Not much to see through the dense forest. We broke out the hand shovels, hammers and chisels (and safety glasses and gloves of course) and started exploring. We collected a number of garnets – nothing fantastic but fun nevertheless. We also found some nicely formed but small black Tourmaline crystals. There was lots of mica around too.

After a few hours we decided to visit Perham’s Rock Shop in West Paris. They have quite a nice museum of specimens from the local area as well as jewelry and minerals for sale. The also own 3 quarries in neighboring Greenwood that they allow collectors to visit for free – and they even hand out directions and information sheets. We decided to visit the Waisanen Quarry for a few hours. We found lots more black Tourmaline, smokey quartz and some yet to be identified minerals.

The next day, the boys wanted to go back to the Harvard Quarry, another one of Perham’s locations and an important historical quarry. The pegmatite at Harvard was amazing, huge crystals of quartz, black Tourmaline, garnets and other minerals intertwined. I’ll post photos of some of our finds later but we had a lot of fun and found a few keepers.

Friday was a relaxing morning and then the drive home. We stopped in Kittery to do some more back to school shopping.

Monday, August 13 to Friday, August 24, 2007

See the photo album here.

We left for Phoenix with Opa early Monday from Manchester, NH via Chicago Midway. The trip was uneventful – except that Chris Daughtry was on our flight in to Phoenix! Elizabeth got autographs for herself and Nick and John. We picked up our van to start the drive north to Page, AZ to start our vacation with 4 days of houseboating on Lake Powell. The temperature got up to 117 degrees at one point! The drive was a good introduction to the Southwest.

Cactus lined both sides of the highway…
and buttes…

and mesas framed the horizon…

In Page, I drove to the Wahweap Marina to complete the paperwork for our houseboat rental and then took care of the grocery shopping. The kids swam in the hotel pool.

The next morning, Eileen and I checked in and got our houseboat training. A jack rabbit met us at the marina parking lot. The sun was just coming up when we arrived.

Here was our houseboat – a 46 footer. It had a great upper deck with a water slide dropping 5 feet to the water!

Nick was armed with my Canon D60 and took a about a 1000 photos during the trip! (I am not kidding) He took this great photo of a duck swimming around the marina.

Once we loaded all of our gear and food, we were ready to cruise.
The scenery was spectacular. The water levels were pretty low this year but still very navigable. There were amazing buttes and rock formations around every bend.
I did most of the driving while everyone relaxed, took pictures, ate, drank and took in the sights.

Navigating lake Powell is not too difficult because there are green and red bouys with mile markers. Green are odd numbered, red even. These bouys also mark the safe passage – keep the red bouys on the right and green on the left when heading away from the dam,
John and Elizabeth were my 2 primary co-pilots. Both were quite good drivers!
For breaks and lunch, we would just beach the boat, anchor it, and check out the sights.

The colors of the sky, rock and water were amazing.
Here is Elizabeth going down the slide.

We brought an inflatable raft for fishing and exploring.
This is my favorite landscape photo from the trip. Nick took this one!
We had a major storm come through on our first night on the boat. I set up the camera on a tripod with a timed exposure to catch this flash of lightning.
Nick driving while I check the map for a good lunch location.
John really likes to get in to his fishing!
Bill relaxing and reading while we cruised to Rainbow Bridge.The entrance to Rainbow Bridge is a very narrow canyon! The kids did not think I could navigate a 46 foot boat through it and kept begging me to turn back!

We finally navigated the canyon without getting stuck and tied the boat off at the National Park dock. The hike up to the arch was about a mile.

Rainbow Bridge is the largest natural arch in the world. The photo does not do it justice.
Elizabeth drove us out of the canyon! She did a great job.

Nick, John, Mia and I did a 3 day, 20 mile backpack trip in the White Mountains.

On day 1 we started at the Rocky Brook trailhead  and hiked in 5 miles to set up our base camp just as it started to pour down rain. Nick cut his finger preparing kindling for a campfire. We ended up eating stew prepared on our JetBoil – I cooked in the rain while the kids and Mia stayed warm (and dry) in the tent. On the next day we did a 10 mile round trip to summit Mt Washington. It was bitter cold and windy at the summit but clear. Then a storm came sweeping in just as we started our descent. Just before reaching timberline, we got hailed on, then sleet then snow and rain.

It was a long day but we made it back to camp safe and after a hot dinner, went right to sleep. The next day we packed up and hiked the 5 miles back to the car. It was a great trip!

See the photos.

On Memorial Day we climbed Mt Monadnock with our friends, the Brinings.

See the photos.

See the photos.