River Day 03/14/2011

Mother Nature caused us to postpone last week's River Day celebration by way of flooding on the river. After almost a year to the day, the river again left its banks and flooded the camp where we normally get together for National River Day. As you can tell from the photos, there was some damage left behind, as well as a lot of debris, but the aftermath wasn't nearly as devastating as last years flood. The newly restored building still stands!

We got into a couple of "projects" this week, so there are a few pictures and videos this week. Those that made it down were Ted, Tim, Jay and I.

Tim brought down a simple balsa wood glider and a few rocket engines. I'm sure this was one of his finest "what if we..." moments. After a few alterations to the plane, we attached a rocket engine to it and then used Jay's launch pad to try to get the plane airborne. It really was a great theory (on paper, but not in practice). The plane survived the first launch, but not so much the second. After the glider disintegrated on the 2nd attempt, we used Tim's last engine taped to a bamboo stick like a huge bottle-rocket. Now that was a flight!

The next project was burning Tim's discarded Christmas tree from 2010 (notice how all these ideas this week were Tim's?). Well, maybe more of an adventure than a project. I'm pretty sure after this that I'll never have a live tree in my house again. I don't know if the picture or videos do this carnage justice or not, but the flames off this tree had to hit 30 feet in about 30 seconds.

If we didn't have the best fire on the river, we definitely had the highest.

Temps were nice this week, low 40's, with a little rain for most of the evening. I tried fishing for a while with no luck, but I don't think it will be long now.

Sorry for taking so long to get this posted.