Lost & Not Found

Usually when I don't update the blog during the week it's a good indication that there isn't much happening. That pretty much sums up the last week. Monday, Laura and I were out walking the river near Missoula. The sun was setting behind the mountains and we were looking for some ducks to fly within shotgun range. While we were making our way back to the car we saw something crossing the river about 150 yards downstream. At first I thought it was a deer, we had been seeing deer all over the area - but then when it walked out of the river it was clearly no deer! It was a moose! That was one of the first big game animals we have seen around Missoula - other than Laura and her friends seeing a black bear when they were running in the wildlife area. We tried to get a better look at it, but the moose quickly was into the weeds and disappeared. The story could almost be a crazy alien encounter - we had to look into the setting sun so we didn't get a good look at it, the one time I don't take my camera along with me when I am hunting, and we couldn't find the moose after it crossed the river.

Tuesday we harvested the garden. You can see from the picture that we are not going to make it through the winter without resupplying at the local grocery store. We have one cucumber, about two dozen potatoes, three pumpkins (2 more in the garden we are waiting on *hopefully*) and who knows how many carrots.

We started work again on Wednesday and I worked through Friday. Nice to make some money and be able to save a little money.

Saturday we went to Hamilton, Montana for a geocaching get together. We geocached on the way down and found ten caches for the day. As of this morning we are at 847 caches and we want to be to 850 by Friday.

I posted our stat bar above - that shows how many caches we have found, and how many we have hidden for other cachers to find.

Sunday, Laura went into the school to do some work. I went to the sporting goods stores around town shopping for bargains. The reason: I lost my new hunting coat. I bought a new coat last Friday, and after Laura and I walked the river on Monday we havn't seen it. We cleaned the entire apartment to find it, even went through the garage a few times, once with the neighbor. It was nowhere to be seen. So I knew of a sale going on over the weekend and I got a $150 coat for $70. Still an expensive coat, but I payed that much for my other coat and wore in three times before it vanished. So I am gonna keep a closer watch on my new coat - hopefully I get more use out of this one. It's not like me to misplace something expensive. Actually, Saturday night I spent about 4 hours looking for it and finally gave up around 12:30. I woke up at 2:00 and got to thinking about where the coat could be an finally went back to sleep around 4:00. At 5:00 I woke up and decided I wasn't going to go hunting, so I called up my hunting buddy to let him know I was going crazy and wouldn't be hunting this weekend. I went back to sleep and woke up around 6:30 and decided that I wasn't going to sleep anymore... Anyway, I did find a new coat - I left the tags on it just incase my other coat turns up this week - and I found another coat for $15 that was on sale so I bought it too. I don't think I will wear it too often because it is a XXL and I wear a L at best - but you never know, you can never have enough warm coats!

This morning we are waiting on the rain to stop. We are delaying work until 10:00 to see what the weather will do, but rain and snow is in the forecast until Thursday so we will have to work between the rains and snow. Plus the high temperature today is around 50 - that's cold when you factor in the rain and wind! Until again

-=Nolan=-