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When  we went to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta while I was in Canada on my vacation, and in the town site, I saw this door:

Well, let me tell you, I've been living up to this advice my whole life. I mean, I...wait, why are you looking at me like that? What? Oh, right I suppose you have a dirty mind and immediately jumped to that. Jeez. It was nothing like that. Come on.

Anyway, my search for beaver finally paid off while walking in the town that my wife's parents live in. I went over a bridge, looked down, and there it was.

That's right. I couldn't tell at first, because of the way it was sitting, but that was a beaver. I'd followed it until I found it!

He started moving, and eventually...

You could see his tail. That's a beaver. I've never seen one before in my life, so I thought it was pretty cool.

Just thought I ought to share.

Waterton Waterfalls

While in Canada, I went to Waterton Lakes National Park for a day with my two daughters. We went hiking to a couple of waterfalls there. It was a couple of beautiful trails. Let me share some pictures with you.

Sadly, there was a big fire several years ago, so many of the trees are burned out husks.

However, that opened up the ground to more sunshine, so there was a lot more greenery on the ground.

Each trail had a smaller waterfall along the way too. Here's a nice one.

I did a selfie in front of it, but you can barely tell it's me because of the shadow.

The first waterfall was Bertha Falls, a pretty nice one.

Then we went on an even longer hike to one called Lineham Falls.

There were actually green trees there, as well as another smaller falls along the way.

The actual waterfall we were in search of was much more impressive.

I love hiking and being in the outdoors, but we overdid it a little on this day. My feet hurt forever afterward. It wasn't until I was back at home for a full day before I felt like I was back to normal.

At Home Decor

I was talking to Rish after I got back from vacation, and he told me about his latest trip to At Home, a store that calls itself the Home Decor & Holiday Superstore. He said he'd seen some Halloween stuff that I might be interested in. They had little headstones that were more or less action figure size. Some, he said, were six-inch scale and some more like a twelve-inch scale. He suggested I check it out.

I've never been to At Home, and, despite my endless number of posts on the subject of holiday decorations, I don't really go to home decor stores, but I figured I'd humor him. I swung by, and immediately found what he was talking about. Here were the smaller headstones.

Can I just start by saying that I hate the silly pun names that they put on these things? I would be so much happier if it was just a plain grave with no name on it. An old enough grave would be that way, after all. 

On top of that, the grave has a skeleton on it. Can you imagine if someone was buried under a headstone like this in reality? I guess I'd like to meet the person who chose to memorialize their life with a headstone like that. Rob Zombie maybe? Tim Burton? Bela Lugosi? Boris Karloff? 

I wish it was the kind of thing you'd get on a real headstone instead, but I guess then it wouldn't be so obviously a Halloween decoration, and it might be harder to sell. To tell the truth, I almost decided against them right at first. Did I want a legit headstone or a kooky decoration one? I guess it can just be a miniature version of the goofy gravestones that people put in their yards, but I'll just have it on my shelf.

I walked around the corner and found the bigger ones.

This one Rish had sent me a picture of beforehand. I didn't like that it said "rest in pieces" but it looked alright. It had skulls and bones and crap all over it too, but I'd already resigned myself to having joke graves instead of realistic graves. So, I just checked them for size. They weren't too outlandishly bigger, so I got one of those too.

I also found some skeletons that Rish told me about.

These were a good size, but they were super stiff and unnaturally positioned. Maybe if I got them hot, I could bend the plastic into a little less strange of a position. $0.99 is so cheap, that it couldn't hurt to grab one of them too.

Here's what the two graves look like in relation to each other.

And here is the skeleton too.

Yeah, he definitely needs to be repositioned. Otherwise, it's not bad though.

Here's one of those skeletons that I got the other day next to the smaller grave. I think it is in the six-inch scale, because it looks right with the six-inch figure.

The other grave is probably a little big.

I know they make graves pretty extravagant sometimes, but usually those are mausoleums or something. A headstone usually isn't shoulder height. However, it looks just fine if you push it to the back of the scene.

I think it'll look good. I'll get started putting up my Halloween stuff soon, to make sure that I get it done in time and it spends a decent amount of time on the shelf before I have to put it all away again and replace it with Christmas.

Be Careful Out There, Dear

Make sure you look both ways when crossing the street, dear.

Saw this deer in Canada when we were there, and the picture makes me laugh.

More Skellies

While I was in Canada, I got an email from The Four Horsemen, the toy company that makes Mythic Legions figures. I have a few of them that I put up in a display every Halloween. I got a new one to add to that display that I talked about back in April. I suspected that I wouldn't be buying any more, though, because I had all of the ones that were good. Aside from those, they just had ones with red bones or fluorescent yellow bones and the like. I didn't want that at all.

But when I got that email, they informed me of the new figure in the collection that they were making available in their newest in-stock sale. This was the Skeleton Legion Builder II. I expected it to be so similar to the others that it wouldn't matter, but then I saw it. It was different from anything they'd ever done. It was just a naked skeleton. No armor. No nothing. I loved it. I had to have it. I ordered two.

They came quickly. The day we got home from vacation, they arrived on my doorstep.

Check those things out. They're so cool! Several companies have made similar skeletons, but they've always been a little too pricey for me. Not so with these ones. I quickly pulled them out and posed them with accessories they came with.

As bare skeletons, they are exactly the same, but that doesn't seem weird, since everybody would look pretty darn similar if scaled all the way back to their skeleton. They came with a shield, spear, and sword for each of them, so I just swapped out the accessories to make them seem a little varied.

Also, they came with six sets of alternative hands, including a pointing finger for each hand. So, I made the sword-bearer pointing with his other hand rather than holding the same shield the other one had. I have enough Mythic Legions figures, that I think I could easily find other stuff for them to hold if I wanted them to look even more different.

I'm not so sure that they'll fit on the other display that I put up with the graveyard and the trees and the vampire and demon too.

But, they'll look good on their own as well, I bet. So if they won't fit, then I can put it in another spot. Halloween is going to be epic this year. I haven't put it up in years, so there's tons of things that I've acquired but have yet to display. I can't wait to see it all up there. I think I'll start putting them up now so that I can have it all up in time for the season. Maybe if I start now, I'll get it all done by September. Switching it all out is a little daunting, sometimes, and I often get lazy and don't bother, but I ain't gonna do that this year. No sirree!

Back In Town

Hey, everyone. If you're one of the six people who regularly read my blog, then you might be wondering why for the last few weeks, I've been pumping out post after post of books from my shelf. Why didn't I have anything new to say? Well, those were posts that I wrote way ahead of time to hit while I was out of town. I have a sickness in that I feel the need to post on the blog every day, even if I'm not around.

We just got back yesterday from a two week vacation to Yellowstone and Canada. We drove all the way up there, a grueling two day affair that required an 18-hour day to get from Houston to Denver as well as a shorter, but still lengthy, day to get from Denver to Yellowstone.

We had fun there, though. We saw a lot of things and did a ton. I took a bunch of pictures that I'll share with you too. First off, we went to the visitor center.

That's always a good idea, so that you know what the most interesting things to see are and how to find them. Yellowstone is really neat. I guess it's a supervolcano, so the whole friggin' place is on top of a giant caldera. That makes an awful lot of the place superheated, and water and steam comes bubbling and spurting up all over the place.

We went to several pools like this one.

They're not the kind of pools you want to go swimming in, though. Most of them are much hotter even than a jacuzzi. They're closer to a pot of boiling water. So, unless you want to look like stew meat, you gotta steer clear and stay on the walkway. Here's another one we saw.

Nice, huh?

Sometimes, the pools are big enough, they figure they can't just call them pools, so you get one like this:

Yikes. Don't get in the lake if it's steaming, folks. It's not worth it.

There are some other things that Yellowstone is known for. We saw the Fountain Paint Pots.

And at Mammoth Hot Springs, we saw a few things, like this:

We didn't only look at volcanic stuff. We even went hiking in some spots...the spots where the ground isn't superheated, anyway.

Of course, Yellowstone is most famous for geysers, and we saw a few of those.

Steady Geyser was neat. So was Clepsydra Geyser.

Or this one, which was really going!

Of course, we made sure to see the most famous one of all.

We were even there the day that Biscuit Basin exploded...we weren't actually on Biscuit Basin at the time, though, so I don't have any pictures to share with you of that. Hopefully, you enjoyed this pictorial review of my vacation. I hope the majesty of the landscape really entertained and awed you like it did me.