Well, its official- we love Medina Lake. Today was our third trip in 4 days. This was the last for me for a while though, because I go back to work for the next five days. Maybe I'll survive.

We had a lot of fun. I didn't catch anything, but I really wasn't trying too hard. I met a real cool girl out there that actually is friends with a girl I went to high school with, so I chatted with her for quite a while. Carl caught a couple of fish though.

Today I reached a milestone in my fishing career- I learned how to set up my pole all by myself!! I'm really excited about this because I always have to have Carl do it for me. But today, I learned how to tie on anything I want and start fishing away. Carl also taught me a couple of important knots to know for practical purposes, like the bowline and the half-hitch. I must say, I feel like a new woman. Here I am with my first ever done on my own fishing pole.

I know these are a little old, but I still want to put them up for ya. This picture was taken in the car on the way to Timberline Lodge. Its on Mount Hood, and its where "The Shining" was filmed. We arrived at our snowboarding destination a little too early, so we decided to head up to the lodge and have some hot chocolate while we waited for Ski Bowl to open.

And here we are having our hot chocolate by the fire.

While walking through the parking lot on our way to the lodge, we witnessed a man fall next to his car. We went over to make sure he was alright, and discovered that he had knocked his shoulder out of socket. We tried to help him pull it back into place but were unsuccessful, so we escorted him to the First Aid area. Here's Carl's imitation of what he looked like trying to walk through the snow with a messed up shoulder.

And this is a picture of us after the wedding we attended when we got home.

And here we are with Anna, one of Carl's best friends and the one who's wedding we attended.

Yesterday Stace and i went to a new spot called Medina Lake. Its only about thirty minutes from the house, so i'm sure we'll be going back more often. Of course River loved it, as she does any place with water.

We fished all afternoon, mainly for catfish, and had little luck. I caught one small largemouth bass when we first got there, and we had a few bites. Fishing was a little slow.

We stopped at a place on the way out called Jim's for some advice on the area, and he talked about catfish as big as eighty pounds caught on live perch. We set out one of our heavier poles with a perch as bait just for that chance at a big catfish. To our surprise, this largemouth bass ate a live perch about as big as River's head (just kidding, maybe a little smaller), and we landed it.

We had a lot of fun experiencing this new place, and we will be back. On the way home we stopped at a little hole in the wall called Adolph's and had some food. One order of nachos, a burger and fries, a chicken fried steak and baked potato, and 16 dollars later we were on the road back to the house. I hope you enjoy the photos. They seem a little dark on my screen, so let me know if thats how they come on the blog. i hope not! c-ya.