Adios, JP

Saw this sad news on the Web last night while surfing for local news from back home in Washington state. JP Patches, a local clown that had a long-running TV show that my brother and I grew up on, passed away.

I remember watching JP daily and seeing him at a parade or two.

This is what the Seattle P-I had to say (picture also courtesy of the P-I):

Chris Wedes, who as Julius Pierpont Patches became one of Seattle's most recognizable figures and a beloved icon to generations, died Sunday morning. He was 84 and had battled blood cancer since 2007.
At its peak, "The J.P. Patches Show" on KIRO/7 had more than 100,000 daily viewers daily and was broadcast in the morning and afternoon. It debuted Feb. 10, 1958, and when it went off the air in 1981 it was the longest running locally-produced kids show in the United States.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Beloved-clown-J-P-Patches-dies-at-84-3726596.php#ixzz21PlXsdFY

Drill, baby, drill. . .

Or maybe not.While we were in Argentina, I thought I might have picked up an ear infection to go with the cold that we both got. Then a molar started hurting. It still hurts and is extremely sensitive to cold.Our dentist did some drilling, replaced a filling, and thought I might need a root canal.

We made an appointment for the lone dentist in this area that does root canals and got an appointment on July 24.

However, our dentist says the tooth is just fne. It could be a result of the ear infection. Either way, it's driving me nuts and I'll be headed to a doctor soon to get some antibiotics for the infection, in hopes I can stave off a root canal, as I'm a notorious weenie when it comes to dentists.

Depending on how the outcome goes, we may turn over the blog to the art department.

Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Sunday morning, while we were enjoying breakfast with the guests, there was a huge crack and then a big rumble. There wasn't any rain or wind, just a lot of noise. A balsa tree had fallen over. It was probably about 100 feet high and it just gave up the ghost and came crashing down.

No one was hurt, nothing was damaged (except for some smaller trees nearby) though it was a load to cut up and clean.

The picture is just something pulled from the Web, though it did take a long time to clean up. It was probably about 4 feet in diameter and while it was balsa wood, those chunks were still heavy. Just to make things even more interesting, the tree was wrapped in vines that had big thorns on them, so it made the cleanup even more fun.

Things grow very quickly down here and as a result, the roots don't get too far into the ground. This big bugger just fell out from the roots.

Just as an aside: Those cool, light balsa planes that I put together as a kid are nowhere near as light as the logs we pulled out of the tree after it came down.

Roaring falls. . .

Here you can see the Devil's Throat again. The power is just immense. When the wind shifts, you'll get soaked hanging out by the falls, and you can get pretty close.

To get out to these falls, the folks on the Argentine side have built a footbridge that spans the river and it took us about 20 minutes, each way, to walk it.

There were thousands of butterflies flitting about, and they would land on folks and there were so many at times, it looked like it was raining butterflies.

The land on the other side is Brazil. There were daytrips to Brazil, but a visa for a U.S. citizen is $130 or something like that, so we opted to wait to pony up that until we get to Brazil, hopefully, for a longer period.

You can get up close and personal

To parts of the falls. This is a metal walkway that you can head out to, and you just get soaked by the spray coming down on you.

We didn't have the zoom lens with us, but that's Mark in the picture on the left and Lucy, right, in the other picture.

You could pretty much feel the vibration and power of the falls from there and we both got soaked when we went out there, even though we only stayed out there for a few minutes.

On the boat. . .

 And this was before we actually got really wet. We did have a couple of disposable ponchos that we threw on and we still got soaked, but were probably the least wet of the 15 or so folks in the boat.

After motoring up and down the river for a bit, the driver and guide told us to put the cameras away in the dry bags they gave us and get ready to get wet.

That's when we went right up to, and the front of the boat was under, the roaring falls. It was really wild to get that close, and to feel the wind that was whipped up by the water plummeting from above.

Lucy screamed so loud that she scared some of the other folks on the boat, I think. This was a great time and we would recommend anyone that is fortunate enough to go there to hop on a boat.

You can see the falls. . .

From trails above and below and you can also hop on a boat and get up close and personal with the spray and cascading water.

Iguazu Falls

This was the highlight of our trip to Argentina: Iguazu Falls. It's in the northern part of the country, and the falls and river are part of the border with Argentina and Brazil.

The falls themselves stretch something like 2 kilometers across and they are very impressive.

The picture below is a long walk from the picture at the right. The picture on the right is called the Devil's Throat because of the churning water.
You can see some of the mist that soaks people with the volume of water just pouring down.

Since the falls are farther north, even though it was winter in Argentina (it was a wee bit chilly in Buenos Aires at times) it was nice and warm at the falls and we had a blast hiking around on the trails.

Back in the swing of things. . .

Somewhat. We've been back for about a week and we had a great time in Argentina. The food is amazing and it's a great place to visit.

We came back to a full house of guests and some really weird things happened, which we won't get into in a family blog, but some guests are just really, really out there.

We'll be putting up some pictures of the trip in the coming days.