Brian Ulmer’s Web Site

Hiking Little Devils Stairs

Today I went hiking with Molly at Little Devils Stairs in Shenandoah National Park. The weather in VA has been perfect this whole last week and today was more of the same. 70′s and mostly sunny. The hike started out with a 2 mile ascent of Little Devils Stairs which is a rocky mini canyon of sorts. There’s a nice little stream, a couple small waterfalls, and you gain about 1500′ in elevation. Unfortunately, there aren’t many scenic views so it’s not the best hike for taking pictures. The remainder of the hike is downhill along a fire road. The hike was proceeded by the required stop at Foster’s Grill in Warrenton to erase any health benefits of the effort with chicken wings, burgers, and fries.

Headline news: Cat rescue

Forget the economy, this cat barely made it out of the toilet alive!

O.J. Simpson arrives for day 1 of robbery trial sporting fashionable man-bag

Sarah Palin’s eBay Feedback Profile Discovered

I was browsing eBay this evening looking for moose chops and ran across Sarah Palin’s profile. Based on her feedback page, I have serious reservations about her qualifications. The only thing more crucial than executive experience is the basic ability to keep eBay buyers happy and it seems her record is spotty at best.

Brilliant SNL Palin/Clinton opening skit

Tina Fey made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend to portray Sarah Palin along side ”Hillary Clinton” in their opening skit.  It’s hysterical and just spot on. Check it out:

Upper Yough Rafting Pictures

Here are a couple of the pictures from our Upper Yough rafting trip this weekend. The trip that we did earlier in the summer was a class III/IV trip and relatively tame. The guides told us that stretch of the river drops about 25 feet per mile on average. The trip we did this time was a class V trip and included at least 6-7 class V sections. The average drop is over 100 feet per mile and one mile-long section included 5 class V rapids, including a 6 foot and an 8 foot waterfall and dropped over 200 feet in a mile. The waterfalls were not sheer drops as you might image but more like 45 degree angle drops in the river. Thankfully, this was a guided trip so we had a guide in every raft who knew the river. It was very technical and narrow at many points and we would have certainly flipped the raft multiple times without the help. I managed to stay in the raft the whole time. My raft-mates Pam and Patrick were not so lucky, but were quickly pulled back in after the occasional swim. This trip took place on Saturday as the hurricane was moving up the coast. DC was getting several inches of rain and 50 MPH winds but we were far enough inland in PA that we only got a couple brief showers. After rafting, we headed to a nearby campground for the night. Today we visited Fallingwater, the “Natural Water Slide”, and Cucumber Falls before heading home. In the end, a fantastic weekend. I’ll have some more pictures from rafting, camping, and the rest of the weekend posted in my photo page tomorrow. Click the pictures above for a larger version.

Upper Yough Rafting

We just finished rafting the Upper Yough, which was awesome. There was also a sweet tank. I’ll have actual rafting pictures and such in the next couple days. Now it’s time for some camping and hoping it doesn’t rain tonight.

Seattle trip pictures are posted

Here you go – click here!

Heading back to DC

I’m sitting on my soon to depart flight back to DC after a brief driving tour of a couple Seattle parks and Jared’s new school. It looks like the seat next to me is going to remain empty. He got all his major furniture set up and lots of boxes unpacked. Last night we walked around the city and visited the REI flagship store which is 3x bigger than the Arlington store and two stories. They have a mountain bike test trial around the outside of the building. It’s been a fun tour of the country but I’m looking forward to getting home. It’s a one day work week tomorrow and then off to rafting and camping this weekend. Hoping the rain keeps to a minimum!

Seattle

We’ve finally arrived in Seattle. Jared finished up the trip much like he started it, sleeping. We’re now getting the keys to his apartment.