a new walking stick

Here in Alaska they have a type of tree called diamond willow that makes amazing walking sticks. Wherever a branch grows from the trunk (or branch we're not shure which) it makes a diamond shaped indent of red coloring.

A little under a week ago mom and dad bought for me a piece of diamond willow to make a walking stick from. The guy they bought it from had removed all the bark except the bark in the diamonds. To make a staff you have to slice away the bark in the diamonds without peeling off the redness of the wood inside and have to remove all the wormy wood. Then you have to sand and sand and sand some more till its super smooth when you run your hands against it. Once your at that point you can oil it and give it a protective coating.

I've worked on my staff for around ten hours so far and have just begun to sand it today so I can't tell you what you use to coat the stick yet.

A Few Random Things

I know that I haven't blogged on this area in a while so I'm going to put a little more than one subject in my blog.

Recently Anna and I have looked for a playground at all the places we've stopped at, and here we got a double reward. This RV Park [Hi Country RV Park] has a small playground of its own. This evening we are going to a playground somewhere here in Whitehorse. Most of the parks we've stopped at either have a playground in them or nearby.

Another thing that we've started looking for is sticks that we can play with as weapons, like swords and throwing knives. We do make sure that there aren't any people nearby when we are playing with the "weapons." I even invented a new weapon that is for longer sticks. It has a dagger on one end and an extra long sword in the other end.

I just recently rediscovered one of my more favorite games for the computer and got it reinstalled on the computer in the back room. Now I can play "Age of Empires" again!

a general blog.

we have Internet for the first time in a couple of days and I'm having a little trouble keeping up with my game accounts and with my e-mail. let me see, i have game accounts on Club Penguin, Miniclip, Dagonfable, AQWorlds, Neopets, Runescape, Lego.com, and Bellasara. Most of these don't add anything new for a couple of days at a time so i can concentrate on around 3-4 at a time which is nice.

the sun is setting while I'm typing this, and its around nine o' clock in the evening Pacific time.

since we've been driving for numbers of hours at a time almost every day, I melted down two days ago when we'd been driving for close to six hours and ended up deciding to keep driving to a spot that was nearly a hundred miles down the road, which would take at least another 3 and a half hours of driving before we stopped. Man am I SICK of riding in the car!

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Jamaican WHAT?

This is Jakob's mom...I'm adding the photos he wants for this post so they are ready for him once he gets around to writing this. Check back to see when he finishes this assignment!

all the boring things.

This is to be a blog dedicated to the boring stuff of life.

While driving in Montana yesterday we saw cattle. Next, we saw... more cattle. And then when we looked on the other side of the road we saw even more cattle.

When we are driving I like to read, and read, and read some more, and it gets kinda boring.

Since we have no libraries we are having to re-read our books, and i would say I've reread almost every book we have at least one time.

Mom says that this RV park is for the birds. We've seen several robins, as well as some woodpeckers and other things.

The New RV Home Repair Show (RVhrs)

Today on RVhrs (the new RV home repair show) we are going to work on your back carrying rack. This show is not for people what do not have RVs or any carrying rack on the RV.

To do this first you need a hammer so get out the tool box and grab it.
After that, Go find some one that has good aim and a fair amount of muscles that is willing to help.

Now go to the back of your RV and find the carrying rack, then look along it for any bent spots in the aluminum covering of the bumper bit. Now if you have found any give the hammer to the guy with the muscles and have him pound the bent bit on the rack back into shape with the hammer.

After all the bent parts have been hammered back into shape please look at the plastic end caps to see if they are coming loose. If they are hit them back into place with the side of your hammers head.

and that all there is to it.
this has been The New RV Home Repair Show (RVhrs)



P.S. and yes me and dad have actually done this.

Indians game

OK, a few days ago me and dad went to the last Indians game of the practice season. it was between them and the Chicago cubs. the Indians lost 7-8, which was kinda too bad. But, we got seats in the first row behind the Indians dugout.
And, I've got bragging rights that I've seen the Indians play before my friend Sam who is a devoted Indians fan.

friends

Sat the last place we stopped after I helped set up our RV, I went over to a nearby public patio with some picnic tables to read my book. After a minute or two, a couple of kids went past to ask is another could come out. then they came back to the patio thing to sit and chat while they waited for their friend. Shortly after that they started asking me few questions such as Do you like Pokemon? Do you have any Pokemon cards? and that sort of thing. after that we kinda started to talk a bit more and they started playing their Ds games. When I asked one of them if I could help him figure out the puzzle he was doing, he said yes. after a couple of minutes I managed to figure it out. When I did all of them went crazy and asked me how I had done it. It turned out that they'd been trying to beat it for weeks! And that was the start of the week that we played togeter in.

arches,rock formations, and a nationial park

Something I've wondered recently is how many rock formations there are in the world that are called balanced rock. I mean how unimaginative is that for a name?

Anyway, today we went to Arches National Park at the edges of Moab, Utah.
Once there we saw balanced rock (what a surprise!), fiery furnaces, the "garden of Eden", the great wall, double arches, and the windows (both north window and south window). The arches were interesting, to say the least. When we were below the nourth window, mom took a couple of trick photos... in the first one it looks like I'm holding up the arch, right? Ihe second one is my real relitiveness. I bouldered a bit when we were under the south window.

Oh yeah, we saw the delicate arch as well...

boulder hurts...

so, you know that I've been bouldering indoors at the rec center right?

(if not please go to http://jakobwonders.blogspot.com/2009/02/bouldering.html before you read this.)

a couple of days ago I tried to do some outdoor bouldering on a boulder....
well i tried a couple of times to get a foothold on the curved base and managed it on like the 5Th try. i was standing on the side and trying to get a higher foot hold when my hands slipped off.
i fell and landed on my tailbone on the rockey ground....OUCH!!!

a little while afterward i was climbing again. but this time i was scaling sideward along a wall with lots of ledges for footholds and handholds....

Bouldering

So yesterday for the first time I went bouldering. Bouldering is like rock climbing, except that there aren't any ropes for support, so instead you have padding some 10 inches thick on the floor if you fall.

In bouldering you are only allowed to climb to 10-15 foot on a rock climbing wall (the bouldering wall is only 10-15 foot tall...). they also say that when you've climbed up you climb down as far as possible before you drop.

When I got there instead of bouldering immediately I did a little rock climbing. I now know how to tie myself onto the rope as well as a few command/questions for climbing with a top-rope.

In bouldering on a bouldering wall you have more of a challenge because it has a huge bulge in the wall.

main rv water line freeze

(Comment: I know that I already did a blog like this, but this was in a different spot meaning that we needed to use different methods to fix it)

a few days ago we all woke up to find that somewhere in the belly of the trailer one of our pipes froze meaning that we had no hot water, and the kitchen didn't have cold water either.

During the day dad went and got a bunch of 2 ft. by 4 ft. stiff Styrofoam insulation boards and something called snow and ice duct tape (apparently it can withstand up to -40 degrees Fahrenheit...), oh yeah and some slightly bendy pole stick things..

After dad got those things we experimented with ways to stick the boards together. In the end we settled on taping them together. Then taping foot long pieces of the bendy sticks across the crack as straights.

than we took the "walls" out side and slid them under the trailer to form a barrier. before we closed up the barrier we hooked up an extension cord and a heater so we could heat the underside and hopefully thaw the pipes. Then finally we closed up the panels...

It wasn't until the next morning that we were able to get hot water...

School Assignment -- Colorado Indian Shelters

Here in this picture you see a Cheyenne tipi with a brush windbreak right behind it. (I built this as a school assignment.)

The reason that the tipi is specifically Cheyenne is because it is tall, as well as white. Only the Cheyenne Indians had white tipis, and the only other tribe with tall tipis is the Arapaho tribe.

Different lifestyle and terrains had effects on what homes looked like.

In woods or on mountains many shelters were brush shelters (which looked like a tipi without the skin) which were immobile or in temporary shelters like wickiups which were a dome like shelter made of weeds, brush, plants, and grass, etc.

Most plains homes were tipis, although looks varied by tribe.

Now the tribe's lifestyle affected how the tipis looked in more ways than one. There were tall or short, white or a shade of brown, but many tribes used their tipis to tell their legends.

One of the tribes that went through a big change in both homes and lifestyle was the Ute (pronounced you-t) because they were originally forest Indians that lived in wickiups and hunted forest animals, but for some reason the Ute moved to the plains and became buffalo hunters. This action meant that they had to change their type of shelter into tipis.

Party/rv maping

Tonight I'm going to be going to a party hosted by the teen Sunday school teacher at her house. We're planning to play guitar hero and to have pizza and pop...so I'm really exited about that.

Now mapping the RV is a bit trickier than you'd think when one of the rooms is off limits because dad is still sleeping so I'm proud of myself...


(there will be the completed map up here soon, we haven't scanned it in yet so i cant post it)

what to blog....

NinjaSince moms making me do a blog today even though I don't really have any ideas having used the last one on my previous blog sooo...I will do a blog on what its like to not have any idea what to blog about when you need to do a blog........ Ninja
Ninja
Psst! Can you find the ninjas??? (the ninjas are hidden in this blog somewhere) Ninja
Ninja
oops that was a bit of fun...
Ninja Ninja
actually I may blog about hiding ninjas in blogs...hmm I'll have to think about that.
than again I may just blog about blogging, oh wait that would be boring... Ninja
maybe I'll just ramble about ideas and hide ninjas....Ninja
Ninja
Warning!!NinjaThere are ninjas are everywhere in this blog!! how many can you find??? Ninja Ninja
Ninja
so while I'm having fun doing this moms at the Laundromat doing our laundry.
really bad ninja Ninja
now i know that this entire blog seems a bit of topic i assure you that its not. ninja
one reason is that this is a fione example of what some people would do when they dont have any ideas. Ninja Ninja
another is the fact that i have atayed on topic of what to blog for almost the entire blog.

RV beginnings

I'm finding that getting used to RV life is harder for me. One reason is that there is a lot less space to live together in. Another thing is the fact that there is a lot less to do. On top of that is the fact that I'm getting slammed by sadness and grief from leaving.

RVing does have some advantages though, such as: lots of sightseeing, and seeing family that I don't get to see very often. I guess that when you factor it all in its ok.

Sorting STUFF

we went through the entire house sorting stuff into four baisic groups;

-give away
-store in bins
-trash
-take to trailer (our rv)

as we went we would throw trash away and put the things to store
in bins which were then labeled