Chambers' Family Reunion 2011

So I continue to slowly slog through all the stuff that I need to blog about. This time, our story centers on the weekend of July 15th when my dad's side of the family had our reunion. We have reunions every two years and it is usually just my dad's immediate family, so his sister, brother, and parents. Since he and his siblings were all born on July 20th, but different years!, the reunions is usually close to that day.

This year the reunion was set near Glenwood Springs, CO at the Sunshine Ridge Guest House, which was a pretty amazing place. Here is the view from the porch, where many a nights were spent just chatting.

Since I am currently on an internship in Austin, TX, I wasn't able to spend the entire reunion there. The reunion actually started on Thursday, but I wasn't able to fly in until Friday night at about 11 PM. I was met by my parents and Conor, we then had about an hour long drive to get to the house, so we didn't get there until about midnight which, since I was an hour ahead was actually more like 1 AM for me.

Needless to say, everyone else was asleep. My Aunt Wanda was kind of awake, so I briefly said hi to here, but I was pretty tired from a day of working and then travel, so I passed out pretty quickly. As was customary I was sharing a room with Conor. For some reason he took the small bed, which meant that I got the bigger, King Sized bed. (I suspect this may have been partly his mom's doing.... but he claims it was because he likes sleeping by the window.)

Saturday, July 16


I actually woke up at like 8:30 the next morning and headed out. The morning was pretty slow, but I eventually saw everyone except Phil and Laurie, who were off hiking. I spent some quality time on the porch with Conor, who clearly seems happy to be talking to me.

One of the traditions of the Chambers Family Reunion is that we do a puzzle. This started back in... 1999 I think when the family embarked on the most epic puzzle ever, of Napoleon leading the battle at Waterloo. This puzzle is actually now glued and hanging in my Grandparents house somewhere.

This year the puzzle was provided by my cousin Erin. There was a slight twist on the puzzle in that it wasn't actually the picture on the box. It was related, but it was actually a picture of what someone on the box was seeing. Here, Erin and my uncle Jeff fit the last few pieces of the puzzle in.

Since the morning was kind of slow, Erin, Conor, and I decided that we would go into town and watch the last Harry Potter movie which had come out the day before. Erin brought Conor and I Quidditch goggles to get us in the mood. Here you see Conor modeling the goggles on his "Quidditch" broom.

Luckily, the movie was in Glenwood Springs, which was only like 10 minutes away from the guest house, so we got to the movie way far in advance... well... maybe like 40 minutes. So we decided to walk around Glenwood Springs for a little bit. It is very much a tourist town, but the scenery is great and the bridge over the river was nice. It was so crazy to see it so full of water, especially since Texas is.... in a really bad drought.

At the bridge we turned around and headed back to the movie theater. Stopping only to fix our goggles so that the blinding wind speeds from our dash run fast walk! wouldn't blind us before the movie. I realize it looks like my eye is closed in the picture below.... I swear that it isn't. :P

The movie was really good, I mean it obviously requires some knowledge of the first 7 movies and preferably the books. But they did a good job wrapping up the series.

****SPOILER*****
SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MOVIE AND YOU WILL BE MAD IF I "RUIN" IT

I think that Conor's review of the movie sums it up best. Voldemort does Forever, finally! That is pretty succinct right there. There was a lot of discussion about what his favorite part of the movie was... sadly I seem to have forgotten that.

Amongst my friends there has been much grief over the epilogue in which the kids are shown as 18 or so years older and they have kids.... the epilogue is exactly the same in the movie. I do have to say Draco looks amazing as an older gentleman wizard... I can't really describe it, but they made him balding and a little chubby... lol... it is a very good look.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, I thought it was very well done, and other than the plot problem that I have with the book, which was also in the movie, I thought it was great.
**********END SPOILER ***********

So when we got back from the movie it was my mom and dad's night to make dinner. I said that I would help, so we made fajitas, which I am passably ok at making. My dad grilled up some steak and pork on the grill, while I cut and cooked the veggies. We then mixed them together. It was a pretty good meal... which I am sure that this image of the fajita fixings does not really convey, but rest assured, it was edible! For dessert we had homemade banana splits since Conor had never had one in his life! So clearly we had to fix that.

In addition to my dad's family, my moms sister who lives in Denver came out to visit. They were staying in Glenwood Springs and came out and had dinner with us. Then my cousin Kyle spent the night with us. Before they left we had a game of "baseball", really there were only 5 of us... so the offense scored a lot of runs... but it was fun. Sadly I damaged a few of the whiffle balls. Yes... I am that powerful!

(Or maybe we had the wrong bat.... but I am going with powerful)


Sunday, July 17

So Sunday was another pretty slow day. The main activity of the day was the Women's World Cup Final... unfortunately... the U.S. lost. It was a pretty good/frustrating game... and I wasn't very happy in the result, so I went and sat on the deck for a while and read. My grandpa came out and sat with me and we talked a little and each read our books... at least until it started raining on us, which was a signal to head inside.

Phil and Laurie were in charge of the dinner for the night and it was pretty amazing. It was a slow grilled pork with pasta... it was really really good. I was just glad that I had made dinner the night before and was not after them.

After dinner we had a peach-raspberry crunch or cobbler that Phil made and sat on the deck and just talked, mostly about my dad and his siblings childhoods and stories from them growing up. I think that this was probably my favorite moment of the reunion. It was just really nice sitting with my family and hearing all the stories. I am fairly sure that I have heard them before, but it was still really nice :).

Perhaps the most exciting thing from Sunday was the humongous storm that happened around 12:30 AM. It actually woke me up, which is rare, since I sleep pretty deeply. But there was thunder and lightning really close and a huge amount of rain. It was a pretty epic storm really and.... words just absolutely do not do it justice.

Monday, July 18th

So this was the day that I was to fly out, but my plane didn't leave until about 6:30 PM, so there was time in the day to do stuff. There were two hikes that were happening. The first one left at like... 7 or 8 AM and was hiking up a ridge where some firefighters died fighting a fire. (Typing that is seems like an obvious statement... however... it is best to clarify... ). The other hike was with my parents and my mom's sister and her two kids and left at a much more reasonable time. It also promised a more scenic final destination... Hanging Lake!

Based on my descriptions I bet it is easy to guess where I went... I went on the Hanging Lake Hike.

The scenery is this area of Colorado is really quite breathtaking. I mean there are huge cliffs and the river was raging due to the storm from last night.

Since Kyle is in the boy scouts he took the lead. It was pretty rugged going in the beginning. As you can clearly see we were basically making our own trail through the terrain before we got to the trail head. We are lucky we had a guide such as Kyle!

Once we got to the trail, it was basically a straight shot up the cliff. It was a pretty steep climb, which meant a lot of stops on the way up. Here is one stop

Here we are underway again.

We eventually made it up the 1.25 mile hike and to hanging lake, which was really pretty. The lake itself was really clear and the waterfall was just gorgeous.

There was a log that led out to the middle of the lake, Kyle stripped his shoes off and hiked out to the middle. Here he is about to begin the hike out to the middle. Thos shows both the clarity of the water in the lake as well as another great shot of the falls.

A little ways up from the lake was the Spouting Rock... I was unclear about what this was going to be, but I decided to check it out to see exactly what it was, and I am super glad that I did. Here is a brief video showing it. It is called Spouting Rock, since the water seems to come right out of the rock, which can be seen in the video.

Here is a static picture that also shows it, as well as some people in the background that provides some scale as to how impressive this thing actually was.

Here is a picture of my dad and me behind the water fall. I am not sure exactly why he has a cowboy hat, seeing as he is from Oregon, but he loves that hat now (he had it for a week, but I swear he wore it whenever he could at the reunion)

Here is my dad and my Aunt Margo (mom's sister) behind the waterfall.

After checking out the spoutring rock we headed back to the lake where my mom and cousins were waiting. We then headed down the trail, which was... much quicker than the trek up it. We were soon at the bottom, and my mom had to say good bye to my cousins as they were headed home. Ok.. so technically we all said good bye... but my mom pretended to cry and I got it a picture of it... :P

We headed back to the house and we ended up watching some of the videos from old reunions, which was much funner than I was expecting it to be. It was really interesting/scary to see how much we have changed since we started doing these in 1997. It was so engrossing that I almost left late to catch my flight. We also had to scramble to take the group picture... and I guess it came out a bit blurry...

So on the way to the airport it was very stormy, like lightning and thunder all around us, so I was a little worried that my plane was going to be delayed. This wouldn't normally be a big deal, but I was scheduled to give my presentation on Tuesday, which was the next day, so my schedule was a little tight.

However.... it should be fine right? I had a few hours delay in Denver before my flight to Austin, so I had some leeway. Oh... How wrong I was!

So I was sitting in the terminal and my Dad, who dropped me off and was waiting in the cafe called and told me that a limo driver there said that if the plane can't land they just send it back to Denver... so that was my flight that might not land! The weather was a little rainy... but I thought they might be able to land...

Then the storm got worse and it was near white out conditions outside and it was hailing super hard and the wind was blowing straight at the terminal.. How the Aspen Airport is a little small but what happened next was sooo amazing that I don't think I will ever see anything like it again.

Water soon began to seep under the doors of the terminal. Here it is a few seconds after that started.

The flood continued to spread and soon it was taking over more and more of the terminal.

It even got all the way to the security checkpoint where they were using the little containers that we put stuff in to shovel water... it didn't work. We were soon evacuated and the entire airport was closed down.... I was stuck.

I called United immediately, but there was nothing to be done, I was stuck in Aspen for the night. I was really disappointed since I wanted to give my talk and I felt like I was letting my boss down. Luckily it worked out and I was able to give it Wednesday, and it went quite well... so my grand flooding adventure didn't hurt that much!

I took off the next morning and headed back home . I make it back to Austin at around 4 and headed homa nd rested up/pracriced sins I want to make syre that I do something correct.

Anyway, that is the famly reunion in a not so small nutshell!

Spelunking! and Kayaking!

So it has been forever since this actually happened, but I blame... me being busy... so that is totally a valid excuse. This actually happened way back on the 9th of July. Man that doesn't seem like it should be so long ago.... but it is.

Saturday, July 9th
Anyway, Daniel, Jacob, and I went to Inner Space Caverns, which is this cave system that is about 30 minutes north of Austin. There are two tour types and we wanted to do the adventure tour which was a little but longer and goes into a super secret room..... ok, not really. Sadly, we got there too late and all the tickets for that tour were sold out.

So we did the simpler tour. Which was a little shorter but as it was the only one available, so we got our tickets and had a while to wait, so we walked around. The first thing we did was look at the store where I found a cool hat to where for our journey!

It was a little small for me, but I figured that small protection was better than nothing. We then wondered outside and found the place where you got mine for precious gems. If you bought this special bag you could dump it in one of these things and run water through it. The "precious" gems would then be revealed to you. We had Jacob pose as if he was doing it.... pretty realistic right?


Pretty soon our tour was about to start. So we headed to the little tram that would take us into the cave. We were pretty jam packed into in, and then we were off! Hitting speeds of 3 MPH!


At the bottom of our descent we all trucked out into the rarely explored cavern. Our first discovery was a primitive sidewalk built into the save floor. It made exploring much easier..... ok, so we weren't exactly roughing it. We were walking on a paved surface and there were lights built through out the cave system.... but there were still some cool sights!

First our guide, John, who was really awesome and if you ever go there you should definitely try to get him as your guide!, explained the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. Then we saw the soda straw stalactites. They are all hallow, and hanging from the ceiling... the hallow part leads to them being called soda straw... in case it wasn't obvious. :P


Next John told us that we couldn't kill the rocks or we could kill them. This didn't make much sense. I am pretty sure that he said more, but I was in the back of the group taking pictures and so I missed it. But we walked by a rock that we could touch and we all... touched it. Yay! I was going to take a picture of myself touching it. But my camera malfunctioned and I ended up getting a picture of my foot, but it sure is a good looking foot! (I will spare you guys the picture however :) )

We then ran into a few bats that were sleeping and managed to sleep through every single person taking a picture of them. Jacob thought that they might be dead and just put there so we could take pictures.... and I will admit that they certain didn't move and looked kind of like they might be dead. But I asked John and he assured me they were real.

The type of bat is the Easter Popistrelle.

The next sight that we saw was this weird kind of stalactite that looked sort of like bacon or something. It was hanging down in strips from the ceiling. I had never seen anything like it.


Next we headed into the area called the cathedral, which was this big open area that kind of echoed a little bit. This room was the first one that was discovered. Back in... some year, they were trying to build I-35, which was supposed to go straight over where the caverns were. However, the drill bits kept breaking. Eventually, the sent the smallest person on the team down the hole. He didn't really have much light, and you can kind of see in the picture below that the hole was. Basically.... not very big.

When he got down there. He looked around and he didn't have much light and he saw this big huge rock formation. He thought it was a bear. So he went scrambling back up the hole to the surface, terrified that the bear was gonna eat him. I cannot imagine how much crap he got when they found out that was actually a piece of rock. Well.... a giant rock anyway. It really looked quite cool when it wasn't pitch black.


Here is my first attempt to blind Daniel and Jacob by taking a picture of them in the cave. Luckily for them they were looking away and so the flash harmlessly bounced off the walls.


The next cool thing we saw was another hole in the ceiling. This one had a ladder and John explained to us that this was where the explorers had come down and also where they had built a method to circulate the air so that they would always have fresh air. I forget exactly what it was though....


The last stop on the tour was this little lake deep in the depths of the caverns. I believe that it is called Moon Lake.... since it is kind of shaped like a crescent. At least when there is lots of water. Sadly.... this was not one of those times. There was still a little bit of water, but not really as much as there normally is... according to John. Anyway, the cavern area around it and the lake was still a pretty sight, and supposedly some weddings have taken place in this area.



And with that we headed back through the cavern. The whole tour was about an hour and 40 minutes or so, which was a little longer than it was supposed to be, but it was pretty cool. I only touched on a few of the things... mostly what I remembered, but if you want to see all of my pictures for this trip, you can view them here!


Sunday, July 1oth
One the intern activities that had been set up was kayaking at Zilker park, but we missed it due to out spelunking expedition. One of the reasons we went spelunking on Saturday was because Jesse wanted to go kayaking and would be able to do it on Sunday. So we decided to wait and all go together.

I don't actually have any pictures from the kayaking itself, since I didn't want to risk my phone or my camera. I really wish I had taken one of them... probably my camera.

Anyway, Jacob, Kyle, and I got there much early, so we had to wait til Jesse, Daniel, and Todd showed up. It was kind of boring, so Jacob found these tiny train tracks and followed them.

Eventually, a little train came by. I am not sure what this train is for... since I don't think there is really a lot in Zilker park to see, but it was kind of funny to watch. For some reason Jacob really loved it.


While we were waiting a storm blew in and we could hear thunder and see lightning, which was kind of an ominous start. We were belted by huge drops of rain and eventually sought shelter in a little picnic area. (Only after Kyle informed us that hiding under a tree in a thunderstorm would be a bad idea :P)

Eventually the rain stopped and everyone showed up, so we headed to the kayak rental place and checked out some kayaks. Here is Jacob checking the water to make sure it is safe.



We had 3 two person kayaks. Jacob and Kyle, Jesse and Daniel, and Todd and me. We Kayaked for about an hour and our journey went out the little creek and all the way down the river/lake thing (supposedly a lake.... but man it didn't seem like one) until we reached the bat bridge. I am not sure how far we kayaked... but I will say.... 1.5 miles round trip maybe? I don't know.

One cool thing that we saw was this family of ducks, basically a mom and a lot of little ducklings swimming behind her. We also saw a nutria just chilling in the shallows comping on a reed and a lot of turtles diving away from our paddles.

I thought when we got to the bat bridge that we might be able to see them, but the bridge is designed... or maybe it just is this way and the bats moved in... but there are basically a lot of deep thin lines cut into the concrete. So the bats are all up in those lines and you can't even see them when you paddle underneath. Luckily, the bats weren't active so we did not get guanoed on... which would have been a little gross!

At the bridge we turned around and headed back. The trip back was much much harder as I was already tired and cramped up from my seat in the kayak. But we eventually made it, without any problems.

All in all it was another successful weekend in Austin!

Celebrating Independence with .... a waterpark!

For the Fourth of July we got Monday AND Tuesday off of work, which meant that we had a lot of time to do stuff. Our main plan was to go to Schlitterbahn on Tuesday. We figured that while most people would have Monday the 4th off, they probably wouldn't have Tuesday off and we would have free reign over the park. It was a pretty genius plan! But that is a tale for later down in this post.

Saturday, July 2nd
Friday was pretty slow. Jacob and Kyle were a little bit hermity and didn't want to do anything. Kyle appeared to want to do something, and even said as much, but then when I tried to find something that he actually wanted to do.... I couldn't. I was sort of at a loss of what to do. But I wanted to do something. So I decided that I was going to take a trip to Fry's and then head to The Monument Cafe, which was about 30 minutes away. This place had been recommended to me by a guy who works in my group.

Side Note: If you want food recommendations ask as many people as you can. So far I have asked about five different people (I suppose 6 if you include Andy's recommendation of as much Chuy's as possible). All of their responses have been different and thus my list of places I want to eat has grown quite a bit.

Anyway, Owen, the guy who recommended this place, is from Alabama and so I believe he has a pretty good grasp on exactly what good Southern Comfort food is. He said that this was the only place in the Austin area that he would even consider going back to for chicken fried chicken and chicken fried steak. Basically, that sounded like a place that I had to go to. So I invited Daniel, another intern in my group, and we headed off. He was kind of surprised that my roommates didn't want to come... so I thought that might be a little bit awkward, but luckily it was fine.

It helped that the food was... absolutely amazing. I am not sure if this is what food is like in the southern part of the US, but if it is I certainly understand why they have such bad obesity rates.

I got a chicken fried chicken plate, and got my choice of about a zillion sides(16) and chose Fried Okra, Mashed Potatoes, and Potato Salad. I will admit that the potato salad was probably not the best choice but.... I lost track of the sides and that was the only one that I remembered.


I was really really full but..... on the menu was Fried Strawberry Pie and there was absolutely no way that I could pass that up. I mean look at it!So yeah, if any of you are ever in the Austin area, I strongly recommend The Monument Cafe.

Sunday, July 3rd
As it seems like our new tradition is, we decided to go for a hike. Last weeks hike was pretty successful and so we figured that we should do it again. Ok... actually, it was something that was free and something that my roommates kind of wanted to do, so we did it. I sort of made them choose the place since I was frustrated that they never made any choices. So they picked McKinney Falls State Park, which is renowned all over the.... state? for it's falls.

This time Daniel and one of his roommates, Robby, came along, so it was a full ride. It was about a 30 minute drive to the park and then $5 per person to get it... which was a lot more than I was expecting.

The park ranger warned us that the river was a little low due to the drought but that we could swim in the river if we wanted to. None of us brought swimming gear though.... but we headed out for the Falls trail.

We almost immediately came across a really nice looking swimming pool and I really wished that I had brought my trunks.


And of course, feeding into the pool was the lower falls, shown in all the powerful uh.... glory in the picture below. We had to be really careful crossing it as we could have been swept away!

After that slight disappointment and me running the "Boy that sure is a powerful waterfall" line into the ground, we found the trail head and started off. The trail was basically a loop, and it started off with the ruins of the Grist mill... which... had something to do with grist? I am not positive, and I am too lazy to look it .... oh fine! It is a place that turns grain into flour.


Just down from that we found a little path to a little secluded part of the river. Jacob did he best effort to run on water and made it to the other side of the river.



We found our way back to the trail and headed out. There was definitely a lot less exploring on this trail than on Bull Creek, but mainly because he sort of had the whole dry creek bed to walk on. We did explore a little bit and even found a wild blueberry bush. The berries were ok, certainly not sweet at all, but edible, and a week later I am still not sick.


Jacob has a distinct hatred of using maps and GPS as you can see from his grimace of hate as he looks at my phone which Kyle is using to verify exactly where we are on the trail.

This trail had a lot of different plants and regions of vegetation on it. One example was the cactus, which only occurred on the first part of the trail and as you can see had some buds... or ... something. There was also some regions that seemed like forest and some that were more marshy. It was an interesting hike.


While this trail was not nearly as excited we made pretty good time and were some back to the trail head where the ruins of the homestead home were there. The place had been gutted by a fire and was really fairly small, but it seemed pretty nice for an old home.


After our hike, we thought that the upper falls might be more powerful and waterfall like... we were... mistaken.


We did a bit of exploring and everyone else climbed out into the rocks in the middle of the river. which was pretty easy to get back from.


Daniel however.... decided to be just a little bit more adventurous and leaped down onto a rock in the middle of a swimming hole by the upper falls. He then became stuck and we spent the next 14 minutes or so analyzing how to get him up before finally just pulling him up. It was kind of a ridiculous scene and inspired the attention of a couple of girls, who I believe filmed the whole thing.


After the rescue we headed home for the day. This hike wasn't quite as fun, but it was still a pretty good adventure.


Monday, July 4th
Sadly in Texas fireworks are completely banned, which meant that most of the events for the fourth were cancelled. There were supposedly a few fireworks shows, but they were kind of far away and I didn't want to drive all that way and have it be super packed. I was a little sad that I didn't get to watch fireworks, but I suppose it wasn't that bad.

Kyle, Jacob, and I went to the intern BBQ that was held at the pool at our Apartment complex. It was actually a really good crowd and was mostly just a bunch of interns hanging out, grilling burgers and swimming. It was pretty low key, but was fun as well.

Other than the BBQ the most exciting thing that we did was to go shopping .... not quite exciting enough to talk about.

Tuesday, July 5th
So as I mentioned, our main plan was to go to Schlitterbahn, which is a water park that is about an hour south of Austin. We figured that Tuesday would be a good day to go and that the park wouldn't be very crowded. In some respects we were right... however.... it was still packed. So I am not sure that it really made much of a difference. I wasn't brave enough to take my phone or camera on any of the rides, but luckily I was able to create some mock ups that showed what we did.

We started at the old park, which was nicely shaded and had some slides and tube rides. They weren't as exciting or cool as the new rides that have been built recently, but the park itself was much nicer and they used the river very effectively. Even emptying a few rides out into it. We spent the first part of the day there.

Probably one of the coolest rides was the speed slide, where we got going up to maybe 30 MPH going down it. It was so fast that I just had to close my eyes on the way down, Kyle managed to scrape up his elbows trying to slow himself down, but here he his showing how best to hold your elbows to avoid that sort of thing.


The second part of the day, which was the majority, (2-8 PM) was spent in the new park, where all of the really cool tube rides were. This was were the crowd made it hard. I think that we spent probably about....3.5 hours just waiting in line, which was a lot, and kind of dampened the day. The first big ride that we tried was the Wolfpack... which I strongly advise not to take unless the line is really really low. It is sort of slow and windy and just not very fun. We stood in line for like.... 2 hours for it. I was very very disappointed in it.

However, the other rides were amazing! The master blaster was great and is sort of like a roller coaster only in water. We were carried up and around and down all the while being splashed and soaked. You had to be careful to not let your butt drag too low or it would sort of bounced as your swept around.

As you can see from the below pictures. We had a really awesome time!

Particularly Daniel.... doesn't he just look so enthused!

The other awesome ride was The Dragons Revenge. I actually think this was the one wait that I enjoyed in the new park... well partly enjoyed. The split the wait up, where you first waited at the bottom of the hill to get a tube and then walked up the hill with the tube expecting to get to use it... only to be very disappointed and have to wait in another line. But at least the top line was interesting and there was lots of water. The ride was also pretty awesome. A lot like Master Blaster, with some uphill and very roller coaster like. There was supposed to be a spinning tunnel and a dragon projected onto a wall of water. Sadly, that was broken.

After that the only thing that remained was for Jacob to try the surfing, which he did pretty ably


Rating the rides I would say:
Master Blaster
Dragons Revenge
Dark Night
Hillside Tube Ride
Speed Slide
Rapid River Tube ride
random slide that I don't remember the name of
Tram between the parks
Drive from Austin to the park
DEAD LAST: Wolfpack!

And that was the weekend, it was long and fun, and also sort of hurt my work week, which was short and I had trouble focusing on it!