SNOW!

Happy Halloween eve to all the little goblins and ghouls who are excited to do some trick or treating! I have the candy waiting at my house, be sure to stop by for the sweet tarts!!! That is, as long as Laura doesn't eat them all first!!!

The snow has made it to Missoula. It wasn't much of a snow compared to what other places around Western Montana received, but it is snow none-the-less and it makes the roads slick. The temperatures are expected to reach into the upper 30's this afternoon and the snow should melt away and be out of our way by Halloween night.

Yesterday was Laura's birthday and I think she had a good day. She had her presents ready to open before I was even out of bed! I got her some boot liners to wear when we are hunting. They are waterproof and should help her feet stay a little warmer when we are just sitting around and not walking. Staying warm is one of the hardest things to do when you are duck hunting because you don't move around and you are usually wet also. When temperatures are below freezing it can really be a challenge! Hopefully they will do the trick for her! Although the boot liners were clearly the best present ever, I decided she might want something else so I got her all the Harry Potter movies. We watched the first one last night.

We bagged leaves yesterday morning and then cleaned up and went to dinner. The restaurant Laura wanted to go to was closed so we ended up going downtown and eating at an Irish pub. It was pretty good and we both were content when we walked out. We went and did some geocaching after that. The snow storm was approaching and we decided to get some geocaches before the storm arrived. We went after 2 caches and we found both of them - even after the batteries in the GPS died. That was a little tricky, but we still managed to find it. We have a lot of work to do if we are going to make it too 1000...

We came home and I made a cake to eat with our ice cream. It is a chocolate cake with fudge and milk chocolate frosting... Yeah, I ran out of fudge frosting so I brought out the milk chocolate to finish the cake.

I also cooked up some of the duck that I harvested on Thursday. This was one of the first way to cook wild duck that I have found to be tasty. Usually I just make jerky, but we have began experimenting with some new recipes and ideas. I have heard this method from several different people so I decided to give it a go. We had some small breast meat from a Teal and a Wigeon that I wrapped in bacon. The meat is rather small - about 2 bites - and the bacon grease and fat is absorbed into the duck meat. Ducks don't have much fat and that makes the meat a little more bland, but still edible when cooked right. In my case, I used a bunch of ketchup and that did the trick for me!

I didn't go hunting this weekend, although I probably should have. I am thinking I might head out this afternoon and see what happens.

Until again

-=Nolan=-

**Bonus Video**

Here's some video of a snow storm moving into Missoula in 2005. I have been wanting to share it for a long time so here it is.