Labor Day Weekend coming up

Got a few things planned for this weekend. Saturday Lea and I are supposed to be going up to Flagstaff with Jesse and Jade for a hike and then to eat at a place they like up there called Horseman’s Lodge. Jade sent an email earlier saying that she might have to work tomorrow, so that may not happen after all. Sunday I’ll be playing Descent with Max, Taylor, and John (another guy I met from one of the board game meet ups). Max’s friend Jason might come down as well from Prescott. Going to see the movie Superbad tonight, which looks like it should be very funny.

Tide of Iron and on call this week

Played Tide of Iron for the first time last night with Taylor, who I met from the Arizona Board Gamers online group. The game was a lot of fun and had a great, easy feel to it. It was no where near as difficult as I thought it might be. We played through the scenario in about 3.5 hours, which was not bad at all for a first time playing the game. Taylor had a 6 month old puppy named Aussie as well, who was very friendly. I also found out yesterday morning that I am secondary on call this week. Not too bad, except I’m kind of stuck for being able to go anywhere. Tonight we’ll be playing a game of Arkham Horror, which will be my 3rd time playing it.

World of Warcraft the Board Game

Ah Sunday and a day of World of Warcraft the board game. Pat, Kim, Max, Mike, and myself all gathered at my house at 1pm to play this game. I was planning on a 3-4 hour session and we did not get done until 9pm. The game designer did a nice job in making the game work like its computer equivalent, yet that also creates one of its problems. The combat mechanics take a long time to compute for each battle that you enter into. Initially with few items and powers, its not so bad. Once your characters gets about halfway into the game, however, it can take quite a bit of time to figure out how many dice to roll, re-roll, and otherwise modify. Everyone had a fun time playing, but agreed that it was quite a long game. I did paint all the hero miniatures for it, though, and they looked pretty cool to play with. Lea went out of town today and will be cause tomorrow. She actually ended up on the same flight to San Jose, CA as Peter and Greg.

Missed Trip to Watershed Trail

Lea and I drove up to Prescott, AZ area this morning to do a hike on the Watershed Trail #299. We parked in the area for the trail and had some trouble finding where it started and once we were on it, the trail seemed to be extremely overgrown and was barely even there. We went back to the start after a short period of time and decided to go on a trail across the road labeled as #396. This was a mostly level trail that was actually still under construction. We passed some older people that seemed to be part of a hiking club and they told us about it being brand new. We hiked along for about 2 miles until we reached the end of where the trail had been built. There was a nice little hill there with a view of a lake below. The entire trail was in forested area and was very beautiful. Once we returned to the start, we saw the actual trail sign for #299 hidden away to the left of the parking area. We will have to go back up again soon for that trail, as its only about a 1.5 hour drive from Lea’s house to the trail head.

Arkham Horror

This past Sunday I met up with the guys from the Mesa Boardgame meetup group for my first game of Arkham Horror. We had Taylor, Jeremiah, Marcy, and Jerry in attendance. We played at the Game Depot in Tempe, AZ, which I thought was a really fun location to have a game at. About 6 large 4’x8’ tables are available, although the lighting could have been a bit better. The game took a number of hours and we had to fiddle through the rules a bit. The game provided a fun theme and environment. Everyone is cooperatively trying to defeat the monsters that come out at the end of each round of play. I got killed on my first turn and that really prevented me from being much of a factor for the rest of the game, as I lost all my items. After the game I picked up some small dice, a game called Dungeoneer, and I managed to find a copy of Arkham Horror and buy it as well. I played the game again last night with Pat, Max, and Dave after work and felt that the second game was much better than the first. With only 4 people, only 1 monster came out for each gate and we had a lot more time to try and acquire items and do things within the game. Pat liked the game a lot, although we had to quit at about 8:30pm as he was on call and got pulled away. I also tried a game of Dungeoneer the day before with Max. It is a fun little game that is not too complicated. This Sunday I’ll probably try to round up some people for a game or 2 at my house of something.

Hiking after dark in the White Tanks

Saturday I decided to do a hike over at the White Tank Mountains Park, AZ. I got to the park and started the trail at about 4:30 pm. I had planned out a 6 mile sort of loop hike, which would have gotten me back by about 7:30, with sunset officially at 7:20. It was around 108 or so when I started hiking, so I soaked myself in some water before starting. The initial climbing went between no much of a problem to me feeling like the heat might be affecting me somewhat badly. Once I go done with the steeper parts of the climb, things got better though. The trail I was on had been rerouted and was still under construction in parts. I lost my which trail was still the active one at one point. I did run into a couple of deer and also a few huge lizards from a distance. I managed to get a picture of one of them, a big 12-18” long sucker with a red body and back arms, feet, and head. They seemed to make a scraping noise or something as I went by as well. I still had not reached the 3.4 mile point of the trail when I noticed the sun seemed to be heading down. I pulled the map out and realized two things. First, I had forgotten to calculate and extra 1.8 miles of the trail and second, It was now 6:30 pm, 2 hours after I started and about 1 hour until sunset. I turned around and hurried back to the trailhead. I got there 1.5 hours later at 8pm. It was fairly dark by then, but I could still see the trail well enough. I enjoyed the hike, however, so it was a fun trip.

Trip to Seattle

Last Thursday Lea and I flew into Seattle for her birthday. We stayed at the Red Lion hotel that is around 5th Ave and Pike in downtown. Thursday night I took her out to dinner for her birthday at Elliot’s Oyster House. We both had some excellent seafood there. The downtown area over to the shore was very touristy, with a large number of homeless/seedy looking people milling around. On Friday we took a ferry over to Bainbridge Island, which was a nice change of pace from being in the city. The city shuts down very early, most stores close by 6pm and normal people are off the the streets by about 7-8pm. On Saturday we walked over to the Seattle Center. That area of town was fairly nice to walk through and they had a very nice water fountain in the center. We spent some time in the Science Fiction Museum there and then walked for a bit over to the large REI in downtown before heading back to the hotel. I got to see more of Seattle this time than my last trip.