Typhoon Songda

This weekend our long-awaited trip to Tokashiki Island was thwarted by Typhoon Songda. After three years of waiting, we finally experienced some real winds from a typhoon. Even though the center of the typhoon ended up passing by 50 miles to the west, the winds at Kadena peaked on Saturday night at 85 miles per hour sustained with gusts up to 110 miles per hour...

Our Backyard Before

Our Backyard After

Many Trees Around Base Now Look a Little Naked

Typhoon vs Banyan Tree

Typhoon Wins.

Typhoon vs Cement House

Cement House Wins.

Climbing Rediscovered

After a three year break, we rediscovered the joy of climbing earlier this month when someone introduced us to an incredibly beautiful and fun climbing area. To access this area you park at a "trailhead" in the mountains West of Nago and hike for about 30 minutes through an amazing jungle stream bed. We shipped our climbing gear when we moved here, but realized upon arrival that rocks without dense vegetative cover are an extremely rare commodity here on Okinawa. Yesterday, we took some friends with us for an exciting day of climbing...

Denver The Climbing Monkey

To say that Denver was excited to climb again would be a serious understatement. He had a great time climbing and we were impressed with his sweet climbing skills.

Juniper's Big Day

It was no surprise to us that Wonderbaby loved hanging out at the bottom of the cliff playing with rocks, mud and granola bar wrappers. Unfortunately, this strenuous effort took its toll and required a hike nap on the way back to the car.

Father-Son Camping and Peace Beaching

The Native Americans have Vision Quests, the Australian Aborigines have Walkabouts, and the Mormons have Father-Son Campouts. This weekend Denver left for the annual Father-Son Campout as a boy and he returned from this rite of passage as a man...

Five Wheeler

The campout this year was at Torii Station, which is about six miles from our house. Denver thought it would be fun to take bikes so we connected the tag-along bike to my bike and the trailer to the tag-along. Surprisingly, the most dangerous part of the trip was not vehicles running into us, but rather vehicles running into other objects as they stared at us while driving by.

Setting up Camp

Real Men Use Flint and Steel

As part of Denver's induction into manhood, he mastered the art of flint and steel fire making. He did great, but there were some unintentional and dangerous side effects. After starting the first fire with flint and steel, he grew so much manly chest hair that it overflowed from his shirt collar and the flint and steel sparks kept igniting his chest hair as he was starting more fires.

Jiffy Pop - A Camping Must

Some Manly Exploring on the Way Home

The next activity this weekend was a trip with friends to our favorite beach on the island - Peace Beach...

Big and Buoyant Bamboo

Denver and his pals had oodles of fun with a giant bamboo pole that Denver found on the beach.

Peace Beach Miracle

This picture may not look that significant, but it documents a monumental occasion - Denver and McCall playing together without fighting.