I did a lot of hiking this weekend, and I stumbled upon the remains of a mountain lion. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, since I couldn’t see the front of the skull–I originally thought it was a calf. Once I saw the teeth, I immediately realized what it was. I’ve never seen a mountain lion in the wild, so I’m not sure how big they get, but this one appeared to be a little small. I emailed somebody at the Division of Wildlife Resources, asking if I could recover the skull and keep it, but I haven’t heard back from them yet.
I hiked to the top of Billie’s Mountain (the left side of the road-cut in the background of this picture), and I also hiked as far up the Thistle mudslide as I could without trespassing. However, the fence that kept me from going any further, with “No Trespassing” signs all along it, ended at the side of a steep hill, at which point you can simply hike up the hill and go around the fence without actually climbing over it. I’m pretty sure that it’s all public property on the other side of the fence, and I don’t know why I wussed out and turned back, but next time I’m up there I’m simply going to go around the fence and hike to the top of the slide. It should make for some interesting pictures, looking down the slide rather than up from the bottom.
Traci and I made some PVC geocache containers this weekend that are pretty cool. I cut some 6-inch long sections of 2″ PVC pipe, then we glued caps on one end, and we’re using rubber test caps for the removable end. We painted the PVC first with Krylon Fusion, then immediately hit it with the camouflage paint. I just used small branches from some juniper trees as sort of a stencil to get the pattern I wanted. We made six containers already, and after we place them (probably close to town), I want to make some rather large PVC containers (such as 6″ diameter), but those’ll be quite a bit more expensive.