Kayaking Shelby Lake

Yesterday was a gorgeous fall day in the mid 70's with the sun shining bright and a nice breeze blowing all day.  Christina and I decided to try out a new kayaking spot in Shelbyville, Ky called Shelby Lake.  It's a small 20 acre fishing lake in a Clear Creek Park with a tiny campground, volleyball nets, hiking trails and lots of wooded areas with picnic tables to hike or boat to and pull out to relax and have a bite to eat.

Once you get to the end of the lake you can continue on for quite a while on Clear Creek, which feeds Shelby Lake. We went as far as the highway overpass and then turned around and we paddled for about two hours.  We will go back earlier in the day where we can paddle further and pull out at one of the picnic areas and have lunch.

Here are a few photos of our expeditions. The rest can be seen on my Kayaking Lake Shelby Flickr album - more will be added with upcoming visits.

Casey County Apple Festival

Saturday I traveled with my Mom and Aunt Cindy to Liberty, Kentucky to pick up my Mama Rosie and go to the Casey County Apple Festival.  I had never been to this one before, I do love festivals, and it did not disappoint!  It was small, but had a lot of different vendors, tons of food, and the main attraction - the biggest apple pie I have ever seen in my entire life!  

Pie Ingredient Amount, excluding the pie crust:

• 50 Bushels Granny Smith Apples
• 175 lb Sugar
• 50 lb Corn Starch
• 30 lb Butter
• 2 lb Salt
• 3 lb Cinnamon

I couldn't get through the crowd for a photo before it was served out to the crowd, but this gives a good picture of the shear size of it. I didn't eat any because I'm on a strict diet and sugar is no part of it, but it smelled delicious!

We walked around, purchased some vendor goodies, and ate lunch.

Main Festival Strip

Mom

Me & Mama Rosie

My New Shirt - Couldn't pass it up!

Once we got back to the house we set Mama Rosie up with her early Christmas gift - a keyboard so she can play like she used to on her organ.  We also broke out the selfie stick for a group shot.  ;)  (I need to get a mirror attached to the stick so I can use the good rear camera instead of the blurry, front facing camera with no flash).

Mama Rosie trying out her new keyboard

Group Shot!
Aunt Cindy, Mama Rosie, Mom, Me

Pantry Door Updates

I continued the rubbed oil bronze updates with our mirrored pantry doors that are off to the side of our living area of the main floor. We removed the doors and the top trim piece so we could take them outside to paint. I then taped newspaper over the mirrors. Since these doors get used multiple times on a daily basis we primed and sealed them as well.  

Before painting the doors, I cleaned them up really well and lightly sanded the edges.  I put a coat of Rust-Oleum White Clean Metal Primer first.  After about 10 minutes it was completely dry.  Next I did one good coat of Rust-Oleum Rubbed Oil Bronze Metallic to match our light fixtures, vent covers, outlet covers and switch plate covers. I let that coat dry for about an hour and then sealed with Rust-Oleum Matte Clear Enamel.  I let the sealer dry for an hour, even though it was ready well before that.  It's a small change, but makes a big difference for an eye sore in the room.

Before

After

I had initially also frosted the mirrors with this design using Rust-Oleum Frosted Glass, but since I frosted while the mirrors were laying flat it turned out blotchy and I ended up scraping it all off.  ( Disclaimer: This was user error - this product works really well when done correctly and I'm very pleased with the frosting of our bathroom window. ) I may give it another shot now that the doors are hanging back up. I really want to tone down the mirrored look, but for now the edging helps enough to make me content. If I end up redoing the frost I'll update with a link.

Kayaking Floyds Fork at The Parklands

This past weekend we tried some moving water kayaking at The Parklands of Floyds Fork.  We put in at Creekside and paddled to the Fisherville takeout. The water, running at 94 CFS, was up just enough for us to do a four mile run without having to walk the kayaks over low areas along the way. We did get stuck a few times but were able to scoot ourselves over the shallow areas enough to keep going.  There were many areas of fast moving water followed by areas of flat water we had to paddle until we got to the next moving water area.  We even timed it where we floated under the train bridge just as a train was passing overhead.

We loved trying something other than the flat water lakes that we have been to since we purchased the kayaks. The Sea Eagle SE330s did great, even with the shallow rocked areas we came upon, and is a great boat for this type of water. I almost flipped once due to going down a small rapid sideways, but managed to save myself at the last minute.  Christina, in her hard shell Perception Swifty kayak, wasn't so lucky and dumped out just around the corner from our takeout spot.  Her boat filled up with water so we had to get her dumped out before continuing on. It was a tricky area with fast moving water and a tree in the way, so I'm surprised she is the only one that went overboard!  She managed to save everything except for her sunglasses, which are now somewhere at the bottom of the creek.  Win some, lose some!

I didn't feel safe taking my camera on this trip since I don't have a waterproof case for it, but I did get some great photos with my Samsung Note 3 phone, which I do have a waterproof case for.  You can view the photos on my Flickr account. I will be adding to this album once the water is high enough to go again, which at this point may not be until next spring, it just depends on how much rain we get through the rest of the season.

Jason in the Shallows

Watching the Train Above

Pulling Over After Christina Went Overboard

Zooming Down the Creek

Kayaking Guist Creek Lake

Yesterday we decided to try out a new kayaking location with the McDowell's in Shelbyville, Ky called Guist Creek Lake.  It is a 317 acre lake primarily used for fishing, but it also has a water skiing area to the left of the marina and a great kayaking area to the right of the marina, all in a no wake zone.  There is also a campground and Jon boat rentals.

We got a later start than we wanted to because a storm rolled through that morning, but we were launched and on the water by 11:30 and paddled around for a few hours.  We stuck to the right of the marina in the less busy, fishing area and explored a few coves.  It was pretty windy and we had to paddle back against the wind so we didn't go too far on our first trip out.

It was a very nice lake to paddle around or fish in and I'm sure we will go back again.  The water was fairly clear given all the rain we have had for the last several weeks and was a nice 85 degrees. We saw the usual Great Blue Herons, water turtles, a woodpecker and a few fish during our outing. We got some fun in the sun and got to visit a new place - a very good Sunday!

Riceless Stuffed Pepper Casserole

Ingredients:

• 1 Pound of Ground Beef
• 2 - 4 Green Bell Peppers, chopped
• 24 oz Spaghetti Sauce
• 1 Tbs Worcestershire Sauce
• 1 tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 tsp Onion Powder
• 1 tsp Italian Seasoning
• Salt & Pepper to Taste
• 1.5 cups of Mozzarella Cheese

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F
2. Cook beef in skillet until almost browned; drain beef.
3. Place beef back in pan and add chopped peppers, onion powder, Worcestershire sauce, salt and garlic.  Cook over medium heat until beef is completely cooked and peppers begin to turn tender.
4. In 2 1/2 quart casserole dish, stir in sauce, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and 3/4 cup of cheese.
5. Add in beef and stir until combined.
6. Place the rest of the cheese on top.
7. Bake for 25 minutes or until cheese begins to brown.  Let sit 5 - 10 minute before serving.

Note: If you prefer your peppers stuffed, use this same recipe, just hold out some of the sauce mixed with Italian seasoning to put on top of the peppers after they are stuffed, then top with cheese and bake.

Couch to 5K

This week I decided it was time to try a new fitness routine since I can't seem to stay motivated with anything else (aside from kayaking, but that's more leisure paddling than a workout).  I've always wanted to run, but the times I've tried I've not done well because I didn't pace myself and ended up with aching knees.  (I have a bad knee that generally gives me fits).

So as the weight I've lost over the last 8 months is creeping back, it's time to do something about it and get on a routine.  I started back on strict low-carb eating on Monday and started the Couch to 5K running program for beginners.  I purchased the $1.99 mobile app for my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with some of my Google+ credits I had hanging around.  I chose this one because it allows me to play my Pandora stream ( or any music I want ) and the app will break through the music to instruct you on when to walk and when to run.

Since the program starts off with just 30 minutes three days a week and I'm extremely new to even attempting to run, I decided to begin in my driveway.  I have a very long, mostly flat gravel driveway that I could easily run up and down to start out.  ( This part of the driveway also runs along the dog yard fence-line, so I had a couple of running buddies without having to put them on a leash to trip me up - they seemed to enjoy it, too! )

The first week of the program is a five minute walking warm up, then alternating jogging for 60 seconds and walking for 90 seconds for 20 minutes, followed by another cool down of walking for five minutes. I technically started the program on Monday, but I only made it to the second iteration of jogging before I had to quit because my lower back was killing me.  I wasn't sure if it was where I was running, my shoes, or my general very much out of shape body rebelling against me.  So today I tried again with a different pair of shoes and voila - I made it through with zero back pain and zero stops. Yay me!  It's been raining non-stop here for almost a week, but I went out when it was just drizzling and it was actually quite nice!  I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and look forward to my second full day on Friday.  Hopefully I can keep this up - I'd love to do a 5K race one day and be able to run it instead of walk it.  I'll try to post updates here on occasion to track my progress.

Since I didn't get a full day in on Day 1 I decided to use that week as a trial warm-up week before my "official" C25K start.  So I officially started on July 13, 2015.


I had to quit during week three.  My knees just aren't handling it very well.  I will try again once I drop some weight.  :/

Day 1 - Driveway Run

Day 2 - Driveway Run (Logged wrong as Day 3)