Camping Trip To Thousand Islands

Two weeks ago, the three kids of our family (Jer, me, and Ruth) went on a camping trip to the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence. (Well, one of the islands anyways.) We had a very relaxing enjoyable time, filled with snorkelling in our wetsuits (we sure put those to good use), some fishing, and enjoying ourselves. I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but here are some pictures. I did take an underwater camera, but we haven't filled it up yet, so I don't have any pictures of those unfortunately.

It's a beautiful park, good fishing, great snorkelling, fairly quiet. (There are a lot of boats that go by during the day however.)

Yes, we did do other things besides fish.


Jer and I caught this one trolling. I forget the size... something like 3.5 lbs? (For the record, I caught this one, even though Jeremy's holding it. :) )



Go west, young man... where did that quote come from, anyways?


This fungus was HUGE, probably about 1.5 feet across.


Ruth took this beautiful sunset picture.

Retreat

... just a note to say that Steve has pictures of the Seminary Retreat up on his blog: http://steveamy.wordpress.com/

Seminary Life

Steve and I have been doing pretty well by ourselves so far. Steve makes these amazing power drinks made of beets and carrots and all sorts of other fruit... they taste amazing. We've been eating pretty well too... here's a picture of our last supper.

But just today both of us needed haircuts, so we went to a place in a mall. I don't think either of our barbers had ever cut many heads of hair like ours, and they both took quite a long time cutting. Steve's turned out pretty well, but I think my barber was a little lost... half of my head on the top was buzzed, while the front was clipped, allowing for a nice big cluft of hair (like Tintin). :)

Here's two pictures of the 20 dollar haircut:

And here's a picture after the fix up job in the bathroom.

Steve and I had a good laugh about this one! :)

This is what happens to guys who study Greek (continued)...

Seeing Steve & Amy's blog reminded me of a funny picture I saw in my Greek workbook.

If you can't read the caption, it says: "Here is a famous Greek scholar who spent too much time studying and not enough time playing." (Basics of Biblical Greek Workbook, 2nd Ed., William D. Mounce). :)

A Trip to the Zoo

On July 1st (a while ago, I know), we (the Ontario Clifford & Henriette Van Dyken clan) made a trip to the zoo ( http://www.zooz.ca/ ) on the way to Fort Erie. It was a beautiful day for it, and we had a good time. We saw monkeys swinging, lions roaring, storks squawking angrily (we got too close to the nest), hippopotami sneezing, friendly macaws, and we even got some fishing in there. The park was very nice for a day trip... not too big, not too small. Here are some of the pictures I took (I don't know where Mom's are, sorry).

And some more fishing...

Dad, Curt, and I went to Mountsberg on Saturday morning. The fishing was excellent, probably because it was just after a long cold week (both of the fish I cleaned had empty stomachs). We caught about 8 pike, some small perch and sunfish, and two crappie. Curt's pike was his biggest ever, (I think), 26.5 inches, 3lbs 7oz. My second crappie (picture below) was 11.5oz. Some good fishing!

Fishing again...

I went out for about an hour on Friday just before a storm. The fishing was incredible! I spent most of my time fighting with the fish. I had a nice one on at first, but it got so tangled up in the lilypads that it finally got off. Then I caught this one, an 8 lb catfish. I was in my rubber dinghy, and went on a nice ride for both of them.

(Sorry, the pictures aren't that great.)

For bait, I tried something new... cheese & raisins! I plan on trying to make some kind of a mesh around the cheese in the future to keep it on. Usually, it would fall off on the first strike.