May Post

As I was working this afternoon, I realized I had not updated my blog in a week! Why did I randomly remember this trivial detail? Hard to say, but I know something I can say... I have found my new favorite tool - the pickaxe. Yes, the pickaxe is my new best friend when it comes to work - you know what I am talking about, it's the tool that all the old time miners used. Here's a picture for some more help. This thing is great - one thing I have had to adjust to is the amount of rocks in the soil here. In Nebraska you might find a rock on occasion, but here in Western Montana it is a rare day when you don't see a rock in the ground. Most shovels don't dig well in hard packed soil, but after a few minutes of breaking apart the soil with the pickaxe I can scoop out a 2'X4'X2' hole in about 10 minutes. Today I helped bust out some stumps that were in the way of an irrigation line - we brought in a tractor to dig them out, but I had to break the roots first. I grabbed the pickaxe and started swinging away and in a few minutes we had a few stumps removed.

Last Friday Laura had a soccer game. I went and took some pictures of her. She plays defense and does well to get in the way of the ball - which is really all you have to do when you are on defense. They didn't win their game, but I thought they did a pretty good job for the circumstances. The other team was very organized and should have won by more than they did.

On Sunday we went for a walk at Maclay Flats, which is a trail along the Bitterroot River outside of Missoula. We went with our neighbor and did some geocaching along the way. Brooklyn the dog came along as well and retrieved sticks we threw for her. She likes to jump into the river and get the sticks as they float down the river. She picked up a very large stick and decided it was the stick she wanted us to throw for her and no matter how far we threw the stick she brought it back. She is quite an energetic dog. She is only a year old, so she still has a lot of puppy characteristics.

As far as our geocaching goes, we have been finding a few each week. We are up to 618 finds now and we have a few more caches we are looking forward to finding... I forgot to mention that on Saturday Laura went running with some friends so I went along to find some geocaches. We went to the Rattlesnake Canyon area and there I was taking pictures when I was stopped by a guy riding his bike. He asked me about my camera and told me that he used to take pictures of mining ghost towns in Montana. He showed me his book and I told him I was looking forward to finding some of the ghost towns and taking some pictures of them myself. Hopefully I will find some time this summer to go find a few of the towns that are nearby. Here's the blog I posted back on February 21 about some of the ghost towns I have visited. I would like to return to Rhyolite, the ghost town in Nevada, sometime when it is not too hot and I could do some more exploring...

I will try to keep the blog updated more often. The first two weeks of work have been quite tiring, but I am finding that I am adjusting to the change and starting to get myself into a routine as well. Until again

-=Nolan=-