We here at Mountain Adventure Tours like to stay active in our local community, and we like to give our time to worthy causes.  This is why for the past many years, we have put on a Kickball tournament in conjunction with Sun Valley Adaptive Sports, to raise money for their program.

Each year has a different theme.  This years theme:

“Around the World”

Each team picked a country, and dressed up as citizens of that country.  While this is certainly fodder for grandiose stereotyping, we did our best to keep it tasteful.

Mountain Adventure Tours picked Japan.  This was very welcome news to me, as one of my friends here donated a full leather samurai outfit straight from the actual set of Xena: Warrior Princess.  I don’t want to brag or anything, but I was TOTALLY the best dressed at the tournament.  Many thanks to Michele for the costume.  Though we won’t get into why she had it in the first place…

Each team had to have both men and women, as well as at least two kids.  Being a kids camp, we had a plethora of tiny humans play on our team on and off throughout the day.  While some may suspect this would cost us on the scoreboard, let me just say that the rest of our team made sure to play hard when it came down to it, to ensure we stayed competitive.

We came in 2nd place, losing only to a team whose two “kids” were 12 and 14, and one of them is ranked 5th in the nation for downhill skiiing.  Not exactly on par with our 5 year olds who still didn’t know where first or second base was.  (Both on the field and up the shirt)

We played hard, stayed true to our Japanese stereotypes, doing flying kicks and making ninja noises at every opportune moment.

Afterwards, we went swimming in a river, had some champagne (of the MGD variety) and hung out until the sun went down.  It was the definition of a great day.

Thanks again to Michele, not only for the samurai costume and wooden Katana blade, but also for taking 90% of these photos for us.

Enjoy!

Remember Timberstock?

If you did it right, hopefully not.

Here are some photos to jog your memory.

Thanks to Amanda and the whole Catrini clan….

Until next year!

-JoeySee

I’m in Idaho!

I’ll be honest, I never thought I’d ever have a reason to come to Idaho.  But my oh my is it beautiful here.

I’m working as a counselor at Mountain Adventure Tours, a kids camp started up by my friend Mat.

Here’s a photo if Mat, looking über-Manly.

Mat has 12 acres of property in the heart of the Big Lost Valley – mountains, rivers, and a plethora of sky surround the land.  It is known as Base Camp.  Base Camp is made up of two parts:  The Upper Property (Base Camp) and the Lower Property (Graceland).

The properties are outfitted with 4 Mongolian style Yurts, a broken down trailer that we are trying to get rid of, a tiny office, and an old whore house or cat house from the early 1900s.  We’re not sure which.

Mat, his dog Squirrel, myself, and our friend Spencer (who is the perfect cross between Matthew McConaughey and a cowboy) spent 3 days at Base Camp last week prepping it for the arrival of campers next month.

It was truly “Man Camp” as the 3 days consisted of stereotypical “Man’s Work”.  We laid concrete for the wood fire hot tub, mowed [what little] lawn there was while sucking down half a mountain of dust, chopped firewood, fixed and rigged up a large deck to serve as an outdoor dining platform, and we cleared out log jams in the river to return the river’s path to it’s natural flow.

My favourite activity was clearing the log jam, because it meant we had to spend hours at a time in the bitter cold (yet surprisingly refreshing) water of the Big Lost River, painstakingly removing pieces of this natural dam that even a family of Beavers would envy.  I must admit, it looked an impossible task at the start.  The dam was 25 feet across, 15 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, to the bottom of the river.  We spent an entire evening in the water.  At the end of the day, we were soaking wet, chilled to the bone and eaten alive by mosquitoes, but we had defeated the log monster, and the Big Lost was flowing like new.

Until it got to the next dam.

That one we may actually have to use dynamite to clear.

Here are some more photos from Base Camp.  I’m sure there will be many more as the summer unfolds…

Starry skies to cap off the nite

With the Milky Way Galaxy burning up bright

-JoeySee

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My first weekend in Idaho was spent road tripping with some new friends to somebody’s cabin in the back woods who I didn’t know.

I’m well aware that this sounds like the makings of a horror movie.

The short of it:

Full on, actual log cabin, with 70′s style pistachio green shag carpeting in the midst of the Sawtooth Mountains.

Two days of a hillbilly themed family party, complete with a mini-high school reunion of kids from Twin Falls.

Friday Nite:  A stop in Stanley, ID at the Kasino Club to watch Jeremiah James Gang play some footstompin’ country/bluegrass.

Saturday Day and Nite: Live band at the cabin, face painting, laying beach-side and swimming in freezing waters at Redfish Lake with a dreamlike view of evergreens and the peaks of some lonely Sawtooths, Mexican food, a keg of beer, PBR in the cooler, a raging bonfire, s’mores, 6 lbs of bacon and a pancake breakfast in the morning.

Not a bad first weekend, if I do say so myself.

Now that I’ve managed to return to my homestead without any missing limbs and with the breath of life still in me, I feel compelled to post photos from the weekend excursion.

Thanks to my amigos Ian and Katie for inviting me out.  And to Melissa for letting us take her car.

And now, a brief look at some photos…

A few more from Charlie and Betsy’s wedding…

Words wouldn’t describe the beauty, joy, revelry and dance moves that characterized the wedding of Charlie and Betsy.

So photos will have to do.

I wasn’t the official photographer.  That job fell to The Parsons.

They were absolutely fantastic and we’re all eagerly awaiting the photos from them.

I wanted to add to the shenanigans at this wedding, because I love Charlie and Betsy very much.

And you can never have enough shenanigans.

I brought with me down to Charlottesville, VA, my Alien Bees SB800 strobe, an Octabox and some extension cords.  At the rehearsal dinner, I set them all up outside near a spectacular hedge and we had a whole lotta fun.

The proof is in the photos…

Thanks to Aaron for capturing the ones of me and the girls!

-JoeySee

We had some free time, so Jason and I brought Beth out to shoot some photos.  Dig it.

I love that I have so many beautiful friends.

Chloe is one of them.

She makes taking pictures easy.

I hope we get to shoot together again sometime soon.

-JoeySee

A few weeks ago, I finally was able to meet up with and photograph my musician friends, Jenny & Tyler.

We went to a park just outside of Wilmington around dusk, had an awesome time, and got some beautiful photos.

Here are the results!

Don’t forget to check out Jenny & Tyler’s music here  -  www.jennyandtylermusic.com

Dig it…

-JoeySee

Upon going thru my photos from my 2 month long excursion to Argentina, I realized I had taken a lot of pictures with the camera pointed squarely at my feet.

This is a photo retrospective…

-JoeySee

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