On Fourth of July weekend, (I know that was a long time ago) Lance and I went to the lake to dive with some friends. Unfortunately and for some reason we didn't really take any pictures at the lake. Our friend did so I will have to get them from him, but on the way home, Lance and I stopped at the USS Batfish. It is a submarine in Oklahoma. How did it get here you ask? Well all the plaques and stuff inside say that it was a "gift" from the United States to the people of Oklahoma. The story that Lance and I had heard through the grapevine was that in the 70's she was decommissioned because she did have nuclear weapons. She was going to be scrapped. Instead of  letting their ship be torn apart the crew commandeered her and brought her up the Navigation Channel where she ran aground at the Port of Muskogee. I think that is when the US decided to 'gift' her to the people of Oklahoma rather than try to pull her all the way back to the gulf just to scrap her out. Anyway its a cool story. I didn't even know there was access to the ocean from Oklahoma. Shows how much I pay attention in school huh. 

I was amazed by the size of everything. I thought everything was going to be small. But this is one of the guns they shot off it.

This is the deck. They are redoing it to make it safer I guess. I never realized that submarines had wooden decks. They were selling 5 inch pieces of the original deck in the gift shop. I thought that would be kind of cool for someone who had served on the Batfish to have.

Every inch of every wall was covered in controls. It was crazy. It would take forever to figure out what everything was for. I am not kidding I mean every inch of every wall. No spare space at all!

You know in all those undersea movies where they are running and jumping through the hatches full speed. That would take some skill. The hatches between rooms were tiny! Like if I put a leg on each side and sat half in one room half in another, my head could touch the top of the hatch.

There were alot of small spaces. There was an open area down the middle or along the side of each room, but there were some places that were really tight fits kind of off the the side. And you know they had to go back into those spots cause remember how I said every inch of every wall had controls. Yep even in the tiny spaces behind huge pieces of equipment there were controls.

Here is the bunk house (room) There were 39 folding beds stacked three high. Lance is on the middle bunk and you can see that if he laid on his side, he was touching the top bunk. Hope your not claustrophobic. Plus, if you think that is tight, you should see the potty and the shower.

Here is the HUGE torpedo! I had no clue that torpedos were that huge! 

I have a picture of me standing beside the Batfish but it was so huge that we had to take three photos and then I photoshopped them together. I look like a little ant in the picture because is it so big. But because of the photoshopping I can't find a format to save it in that it will allow me to post on this blog. I will keep trying though. Anyway, that is the USS Batfish. It was a fun learning expieriance. I kind of want to go back to it with someone that actually knows something about submarines so that they could explain some about each room. It was cool. If you happen to be driving by with some free time. Check is out.

No new posts....

Sorry there have been no new posts. That is because I have had to work the last 4 weeks in a row... it drains my soul out of me. When we first started getting slow at work I thought it sucked but now that I have had to work the last 4 weeks in a row... I feel like my life is over. Pity me.

For Memorial Day we went to a local lake. It was about 20 miles from home. We camped for 6 days. One great thing about 6 days of camping is 6 days of beautiful sunsets.

Day 1

Day 2

 You can kind of see our fishing pole leaning against that post. We set out cat fish poles at night with bells on the end to alert us when we got a bite. We kept hearing little jingles but when we went to reel it in we could tell it hadn't bitten the hook. Then when we would finally reel it in all the way, the bait was gone. Our camp neighbors came over one night and gave us a tip; if we wrap our bait in panty hose they can't steal the bait. Well guess what, we did and that dang fish bit a hole in the panty hose and still took the bait! We never caught him. 

Maybe we will someday.

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Lance even took a picture of the sunrise for me one morning. Apparently he tried to wake me up to fish for 'the early morning bite' with him and I told him I would rather sleep in. I don't remember that conversation but I don't doubt it took place.

 

This is Chris and Misty and their baby Claire who camped with us over the weekend. This was Claire's first camp out and her first time to swim. She loved it. Anytime we took her out on either of our boats she would fall asleep.

Here is the fisherman in his element. We caught about 3 or 4 fish everyday but we let

 them all go.

We tubed and kneeboarded. It was super fun. This is Debbie, Lance's mom, on the knee board.

I have driven the boat before, but this was the first time I pulled someone behind me. I was actually pretty proud of myself because that is something I thought I would never do. Lance is pretty good at knee boarding.

He even tried standing on it. It didn't work out so well.

I am pretty good too, but we didn't really get a picture.

Lance pulled me so fast trying to flip me that is about all the picture they could get.

We decided to have a big bonfire on the last night, but we had burned most of the wood that we brought with us. We had a brilliant solution. Go to the other side of the lake where no one ever goes and get some! You should have seen our neighbors faces when we pulled up with a boat full of dead wood. 

We made smores that night and just FYI, it was burning my flesh off to try and stand that close to the inferno for the picture. 

All in all we had a great time, got some great tans, and a great workout tubing and kneeboarding.

Texas

A couple of weeks ago (I know I'm late on posting) it was our 1st anniversary and we happened to have to have the week off of work. We decided to get on the bike and ride and see where we ended up. Well this was the same week as the rainy snake hunt so I said I wanted to go somewhere warm. We ended up in Corpis Christie. It was really fun. We went to the beach and got attacked by sea gulls. We were eating sandwiches and I saw a bird looking at us. Lance tore a piece off his sandwich and I said, "Don't give that to him, he'll tell his friends." Not knowing how true that would be. 

THEY ATTACKED US!!! 

They felt a lot closer than they look in this picture. I was kind of holding my sandwich out to the side to get the birds to stay long enough for they pic. One of them swooped down and took a bite right out of my hand. I screamed and pulled my sandwich in toward my chest and another on came about 5 inches from my face and snatched the whole thing out of my hand and I really screamed and got up and ran away. Lance made fun of me.

This is looking straight up. No zoom.

Here's my hunky hubby contemplating the meaning of life on the jetty.

Do I look like the little mermaid or what.

I was a genius and decided to check the tidal pools for signs of life. We saw a blue crab...

.... and a real live jelly fish. cool.

It was awesome to watch the pelicans eating fish. I wish I had a quicker camera so I could get them diving.

10 foot tall popsicle anyone?

The world largest sand castle. It was about 2 stories high.

Here is an air craft carrier that we went by. This pic was taken off the back of the bike and I was pretty scared while taking it because we were on a huge tall bridge and I had to almost stand on the pegs going 65 mph. I am very comfortable on the bike, I even fall asleep quite often, but for  some reason I just felt like hanging on tight across that big bridge.

Here is  a propeller that was displayed by the boat. There are two propellers that push that air craft carrier and they are actually about 4 feet taller than that on. Lance was very impressed. Unfortunatley for him it was closed for the night so we couldn't take the tour.

When we got home the big hoopla about swine flu had begun and it seemed we had just left ground zero. Good thing neither of us have gotten sick yet. 

Snake hunt

Well lance, some friends, and I went to Waynoka, Ok this weekend for the annual Snake Hunt. This was my first year to go. It was pretty fun even though it rained the whole time. Basically it is held at Little Sahara state park, which is a bunch of sand dunes, and there are a ton of 4 wheelers and sand buggies and crazy people trying to catch rattle snakes!!

 I guess once they catch them they put them in the...

This is about 10% of all the snakes in the Den of Death. There were TONS of snakes and the craziest thing was the sound because they were all rattling!!

A lot of them were all tensed up and ready to strike all the time. The crazy snake handlers would wave their feet over the top of them and they would strike their feet and ankles! I made some gasping sounds a couple of times because of it.

This guy was like a snake whisperer or something 

because he would just pick them up and put his hands up my their mouths and everything. The other handlers used more cation in what they were doing. 

Pretty scary huh...

I was pretty brave!

Some people weren't so brave...

We actually didn't go out to the dunes cause we didn't think our Harley's would do very good with on the sand. But don't worry, there was a motorcycle rodeo that we went to and participated in. We didn't get any pictures of the events but here is the huge crane and flag they had that was freaking awesome.

There was one thing that happened that was even scary than the snake den pit of death. Like I said it rained all weekend and we were laying in our tent one night and the tornado sirens went off!  What do you even do! We were grabbing stuff and trying to throw our shoes on but luckily, we didn't get swept off to Oz.

You can kind of see the mud path behind me in this picture...

...by the end of the weekend, wit all the rain and all the 4 wheelers with paddle tire going through there, that mud path was about 6 inch deep slop! We sat in our camp chairs for a while and watched people getting stuck. Lance got a standing ovation when he managed to pull both our bikes through without getting stuck.

Mean looking seat.

For my birthday Lance got me a new seat for m

y motorcycle. Its pretty great. Its a solo seat so I can't take a passenger unless they want to sit on the fender. I don't blame anyone if they don't notice or care that big of a difference in the before and after picture because about a year ago I would have been the same way. The benefits of the seat are that it looks really cool and sleek, the drawback is that its harder. Oh well, I still like it.

Here is before...

 Here is the new seat..

Adoro cabalgar bicicletas.

Thanks to the Lance being diagnosed with diabetes and us having a lot of time off we have gotten back into riding bicycles. I don't mean hop on a bike and ride to your friends house or to the store, I am talking riding trails with lots of roots and drop off and wash outs. Its hard, but also lots of fun.

This is our bike rack. It says it carries four bikes, but it was kind of a tight fit.

Look at my husband. Doesn't he look so athletic and focused.

Look at my brother-in-law. Doesn't he look like a monkey!

I was pretty focused too. 

(don't worry, I know that camel pack strap make my boobs look good.)

But being focused it didn't really help. I still wrecked. I chickened out half way down the hill and grabbed the break. I didn't go end over end luckily, but my handle bars turned and wrapped up around my legs. I was trying to catch myself but realized it was never going to happen so I just let myself fall and face planted onto the bridge. Isn't Jon being so helpful by mocking me! 

Lance and Chris in their element. Lance wrecked too but their are no pictures of it because we thought it was really serious and we all just dropped our bikes to run over and help instead of grabbing the camera. He was coming down a big sandstone outcropping and when he dropped off one of the rocks and his tire slipped to the side. He kind of went over the handle bars and to the side at the same time and landed on his head and shoulder. Luckily he was wearing a helmet but his shoulder got pretty bruised up, one of his knees got scraped, and he got a goose eggs on his shin. He wrecked so hard that the end of his handle bars cut a perfect circle out of the sandstone. He's tough though. That happened yesterday and we went again today.