The Chronicles of John Trammell

Amanda Clark, a close cousin of mine, is leaving from San Diego Airport tomorrow for Afghanistan to were she will be a civilian contract worker for the military.  She will be gone for a full year.  She has been down here in the Inland Empire the past week hanging out with the family.  Been able to chill with her between my work and school schedule.  We did some awesome things from exploring Forest Falls, going to a dog beach in San Diego, and having a camp out in the yard at the farm.  I have the honor of being the person who takes her to the airport. We left for Oceanside this afternoon, and drove up to San Clemente to were my parents came to eat dinner at Sonny's Pizza and Pasta.  Now we are chilling tonight, then heading to downtown San Diego before she leaves. Amanda, I wish you a safe trip over to your new temperately home in the mid east, and pray for your safe return to the states in a year.  I know that you will stay strong, and wont allow any...

     For those who might not know, my cousin, Amanda, is leaving in less than a week to Afghanistan for 11 months.  She has been down here for just over a week and we have been chilling in between my school and work schedule. Yesterday afternoon while Amanda was driving back home from Camp Pendleton, she called me with an idea to have a campfire at the farm and roast hot dogs and have smores.  Then with that idea, she randomly came up with the idea of us having a Camp out at the farm, since she wont be able to go camping for the next year.  With that idea, I grabbled some clothes, my computer class homework, and my tent and headed on up to the farm.  When I arrived we first had dinner.  Amanda and I were hungry and was impatient, so we started the BBQ up and just cooked the hot dogs and sausages in that instead of the open fire.  As dinner was getting done, we were attempting to light the fire with no success.  Near the end of d...

For the past few years, I have been looking to bring something new into the 4-H program at state.  Last year, i switched from teaching web design and GIS technology to teaching photography at all major 4-H conferences at the state level.  While I was at the Technology Team Orientation at Lake Tahoe, I came up with a wonderful idea to have a photography contest to the 2010 State Field Day.  With the team supporting my idea, I had only three weeks to put the details together before information needed to go out into the public. After working on the major details and rules and online registration forms, the information spread out through the state.  At that time, I wasn't too sure that we would get that many entries, so I made it possible to have 4-H youth enter up to 5 photographs into the contest.  A few months went by, and registration entries were slowly coming in.  While the deadline came closer, I had tons of questions about having the photographs...

One month ago, my parents decided to plan out a trip Death Valley National Park to see all the wildflowers that would be in bloom due to the amount of rain we have gotten.  I decided to take the opportunity to tag along, and make the trip a photography focused trip.  We (my mom, dad, sister, and I) went to Death Valley National Park from March 16-19, 2010, during our spring break vacation.  The trip did not turn out how I expected it, for it turned into a "see as much as you can" trip instead of a trip more focused on photography.  After I calmed down from this disappointment on the second day, I really got to enjoy being in the national park.  Got to see many wonderful things from a hidden canyon watershed, to very well preserved historical buildings/artifacts, to seeing a endangered species.  In all, the trip went well, other than getting annoyed that the parents didn't do much research on the park, which made them less prepared during...

A few days ago, Scotty showed me a photo of one of the most beautiful waterfalls that I have ever seen, called  Havasu Falls.  Out of all the waterfalls I have ever seen in my life, none has compared to the beauty of this waterfall.  The Havasu River flows through the red stoned canyon south of Grand Canyon National Park.  Just the color of the water makes this trip worth going to.  Instead of me just sitting here talking about it, look below at two photos of this wonderful waterfall.  Click on the photos to enlarge them.  The photo on the right was taken by David Wagner and the photo on the right is from sunrisefantasy.com  You might be wondering how you can get to this waterfall.  It isn't just a simple drive to a location and to walk.  The waterfall is located on the Havasupai Native American Reservation in Arizona.  Two miles from the Supai Villiage, which is the most remote community in the continental U...

For those who don't know, I work for the 4-H Military Partnership/Operation: Military Kids Program at the California 4-H State Office at UC Davis near Sacramento. In December of 2009, my boss gave me a change to be in charge of two events for our Speak out for Military Kids (SOMK) project.  For all of our past SOMK events, I have always been the facilitator, while a co-worker of mine planed out the logistics, registration, contacting youth, and providing transportation if needed.  This time around, I was in charge of everything from facilitating to logistics to registration and so on.  With the help of my co-workers, I worked the past three months to plan, market, and run two SOMK events.  Speak out for Military Kids is a project that gets military youth and youth from the community to come together to work on projects to help educate the general public about the hardships military youth and families go through, or work on projects that will help benefit the milit...

    This past weekend, I traveled to the Nevada State 4-H Camp, in South Lake Tahoe, for this year's California 4-H Technology Leadership (CTLT) Team Orientation/ CA 4-H State Ambassador (SAs) Joint Meeting Event.  This would be the first time that I have been to the Lake Tahoe area, and this is a trip that I shall never forget.  Traveling to a CTLT event starts as any other event.  I flew up to Sacramento from Ontario, and someone would pick me up.  The original plan was for me to be picked up, taken to the State 4-H Office in UC Davis, and I would get a University Sedan, in which I would drive Rowan and Neal up to Lake Tahoe.  In the time I was flying up to Sacramento, things changed to where I ended up being picked up by one of the vans, and headed right up to Lake Tahoe.  I was upset to begin with, because I was looking excited to drive the mountain roads, listening to my music, and having one of my good friends in the car, and learn abou...