Happy Halloween Blog!

Happy Halloween everyone! In keeping the Halloween spirit everything is in Halloween colors.

It looks to be a cold evening in Missoula for the trick-or-treaters! BRR! The high today is no above freezing, and we are seeing lows in the single digits. Oh mercy, things are getting cold around here in a hurry! I don't enjoy the cold temperatures when we can't make it above freezing. For one, it's harder to do anything outside, and two, the ponds freeze over and the ducks and geese move on.

Speaking of ducks and geese, yesterday I went out for a scouting trip to see what the recent snow had brought from Canada. I saw a lot of ducks and geese, and I even came upon a swan. Not let me clarify my swan permit. I am only allowed to take a swan in certain counties in Montana - only a few counties actually. Anyway, this was not one of the counties and I don't think I would have wanted to take this swan anyway. It was acting a bit strange and didn't have any fear of me. The Trumpeter Swan is the largest swan and boy, this thing was enormous! Oh, and here's some information my brother will enjoy. The swan had a neck collar and matching leg band, and it also had a metal waterfowl band on the other foot. It was loaded with information!
All the snow in the Missoula valley was gone by noon when I left for my little trip. When I started scouting about 50 miles from Missoula I put my feet into about five inches of fresh snow! The great thing was, no one was around to make any noise and I was away from all the hustle and bustle of the city.

Mountain photography becomes rather easy after a snowfall. You really can't take a bad picture of mountains when there aren't any modern buildings in the way and you have a nice lake in front of you.

I took a minute to do some research on the Trumpeter Swan and I found it was released near the area I found it - either in 2005 or in 2006. They are trying to establish a local population in the area and they were banded with these numbers. After reading some newspaper articles in looks like a swan was found dead at the same lake last November. What a strange coincidence.
I don't have a lot planned for Halloween. I need to do some maintenance on the vehicles and then clean some dishes! I have been boiling water in the morning to try and keep some humidity in the apartment. Some of the plants are not enjoying the dry air and I personally find that my skin dries out incredibly easy here. Perhaps I will make a trip to the store some time and look into getting a humidifier. Dry air increases static electricity and static electricity is bad news when working on computers - in fact, if you touch the motherboard and get a static electric shock you can actually ruin the motherboard and then the computer won't work...and in that case I can't even fix it!

Here's some Halloween pictures from years past.

Ah, good times of Halloween!

I have enjoyed having some time away from work. I am able to listen to Talk of the Town on KGFW in Kearney, Nebraska. Although, the election is the top story everywhere right now so there is no way to escape it. It's nice to stay up-to-date on things happening in Kearney. I am looking forward to seeing all the things in Kearney that have changed when we go back in December. We leave in 46 days! It seems like a long time, but it will be here in no time! Then it will suddenly be 2007!!! In the mean time, remember to take is slow and stop and enjoy the time going by. Everything will get here in due time. Until again

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

-=Nolan=-

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.

A Good Day In The Field

Wednesday night I received an e-mail from another hunter in Missoula who was going hunting on Thursday morning and asked if I wanted to go along. I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to do some duck hunting so we met up for a nice hunt. We had not met before, other than on the internet. Turns out he also has a swan tag and we made talk of trying to fill our tags together. What a hunt that would be!

We ended up hunting until around noon and then doing some scouting around the area. We did rather well for just showing up and trying out the pond. Lots of ducks and geese were stopping by.

I have come to the conclusion, had I not been introduced to Montana via Missoula, that I might actually find myself wanting to stay here for awhile. Truth be told, I really like being far from the city and enjoying the outdoors. The mountains make for a nice background - when they are not RIGHT in my face all day. In Missoula the mountains are too close, but when I have been going to hunt, the mountains are several miles away and gives me a little room to breath. Nebraska is my first choice by far, but there are places of Montana where I can find myself far enough away from the crowds and lights.

We haven't made any plans for the weekend yet. I am hoping to go hunting at least one day, perhaps we will make an evening hunt if we feel like sleeping in.

Laura's birthday is on Sunday so I am sure we will be celebrating and doing whatever she wants to do. I did find a present for her and now I need to start thinking of Christmas presents so I can beat the holiday crowds! Now that I think about it, I need to get her present wrapped so she doesn't see it when she gets home...she can be rather snoopy when it comes to her presents. Have a great weekend. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Geocaching Run

With the weather threatening to bring snow and rain we decided to take advantage of Tuesday's nice sunny afternoon. We decided to find a few geocaches in the Rattlesnake recreation area while we were running. Maybe I should say, we tried to run anyway. We parked the car at 3,700 feet elevation and began our run. We started walking when we arrived at the major incline that become the mountain. It's about a 3 mile climb up so we only ran for 1.25 miles before we started walking. We always seem to find the hardest trail up to a cache, and we certainly did yesterday. For nearly half a mile there were no switchbacks and we went straight up the mountain. Our legs were burning by the time we arrived at the top which was 4.5 miles away from the car and at 5,200 feet. The great thing about climbing to the top though....it's all down hill to the bottom! We ended up making a loop when we took the popular trail back down.

We found three geocaches and we ended up running, walking, and hiking a total of 9 miles. Here's a birds eye view of the route we took. We ran a counter-clockwise route, starting from the bottom and running to the top of the Grant Creek area. Winter is clearly on it's way here in Missoula. The fog is starting to set in and taking several hours to burn off, sometimes it hangs on until mid-afternoon. It is cloudy today, and expected to be cloudy for the next two weeks with occasional showers. Saturday might be sunny, but the odds are not in the suns favor. It's easy to see why so many people can become so depressed during winter months in places like this. Especially people who can't find work and need money! Missoula is certainly one of those places. Laura and I are excited to go to Wyoming and Nebraska over Christmas so we can see the sun occasionally and do some running where there are not mountains. I am looking forward to not having a mountain blocking the sunrise and sunset - heck, I will just be happy to have the mountains out of my sight period.

Well, that's my complaining blog for the month. Laura's birthday is coming up and I need to be getting her a present before the weekend. She gave me a short list of some things she would like and it's either a movie, book, or music... Ok, I can handle that. Until again

-=Nolan=-

What A Weekend

What a weekend it was. Friday night was the gallon challenge. Saturday the Husker football game and pumpkin carving. Sunday we went hunting! All with pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

I suppose most people are wondering how the milk drinking went...? It's hard to really describe the event. However, let me say that it was a little easier in some aspects and in other aspects it was MUCH harder. Laura and I went to meet everyone around 7:00. Part of the rules are that I had to drink the milk on an empty stomach. That wasn't so difficult - I can go a long time without eatting, one meal a day in some cases. I brought along a large cup which I thought to be able to hold about 1/4 gallon. I filled my cup and we started at 7:42.
By 8:10 I thought I was in pretty good shape. I had two cups down and thought I was about halfway done. I filled up my cup and snapped a picutre. "Hmmm, that's odd, it looks like more than half a gallon there" I thought to myself... I downed the third cup and with 20 minutes to go returned for my final fill-up, or so I thought... Turns out, the cup was almost 1/4 of a gallon - it was actually 1/5 of a gallon, the problem was I had paced myself for about 15 minutes a glass. I was actually downing a cup about every 12 minutes so I was still ok when I finished my 4th cup, I had about 11 minutes to go. The REAL problem was my stomach was informing me that it was rather full and milk wasn't exactly a good idea at the time. Jesse was able to get just a little over half a gallon before he went for the bathroom. His strategy was to drink it down as fast as possible, wait about 20 minutes and do it again, whereas I took it slow and steady. Either way, we both lost. Although, I never had to stare at the toilet wondering what was gonna happen - I did have to go outside for awhile and cool down from the warm house. I think that was part of my trouble as well. The house was mighty warm and I wasn't enjoying the milk in the heat. At 8:42 I still had my 1/5 cup full of milk and I had to accept defeat. I put my cup in the refridgerator and about 9:30 I finished it off without any trouble. I even had a few cookies to go along with it. You can see with 5 minutes to go I was really starting to feel it. Perhaps another time I will be able to return to the challenge with new variables to make a winning attempt. We also had some more events in which we put mentos in 2 liter bottles of pop and made fountains. I guess the graduate Chemistry students just can't get enough chemistry so they have to have a party which involves chemical reactions to have a good time? Either way, it was a lot of fun to see what a few Mentos in a 2 liter of pop could do. It made quite a mess actually, but I guess it was in the name of science so that's ok right? Ha ha.

Saturday, Laura and I slept in to watch the Husker football game. All I can say is it's a good thing it was on television here! I was excited to actually be able to watch some Husker football and the fact that they gave Texas a good kick in the pants added to the enjoyment! During the game we brought the pumpkins into the house and carved them while we sat in front of the tv. Laura tends to make her pumpkins have a scary appeal, while I enjoy a good laugh with my pumpkin. From that clue I think you can figure out which pumpkin I carved. Here's a quick recap of the pumpkins from previous years:

2005

2004

Sunday we planned on going hunting but we overslept the alarm clock. We still went hunting but we left about 2 hours late and didn't get too may opportunities for the day. It was a great day to be out and enjoying the great outdoors though. We took the boat out and paddled around on the lake for awhile. The low clouds and snow covered mountains really made for a nice setting. Add to that the fact that we were 70 miles from Missoula and things really get better in a hurry! The absence of noise is a really welcome occurance. Even though I have become numb to the constant sounds of cars, jets, and barking dogs I always like to remember that there are places where those things are few and far between. Here's one of the great views we had during the morning.One of the 'techniques' that Rylan and I have pegged for hunting stems from a hunting trip in which we traveled to North Platte, Nebraska and met up with our cousin Darrin. We traveled to Sutherland to go hunting and while we were there we ran into some people that Darrin knew. To make a long story short, while we were all standing around talking we watched some ducks land nearby and they asked us if we wanted "to put the sneak on 'em" Meaning we would sneak up on the ducks and when we scared them we would attempt a shot. Well, this turned into an inside joke eventually and now I am using it to give an intro to this next picture I took of Laura. She's putting 'the sneak on' some Ruddy ducks - the funny part is she isn't even sneaking up on them, she is just walking at them to try and get a shot! I guess I need to inform her that you have to be sneaky when you 'put the sneak on.'We ended our hunting trip with no shots fired and returned back to Missoula by finding 6 more geocaches.

Today was my last day of landscaping work. The cold temperatures have slowed the work down and everyone is starting to winterize their homes. We were hoping to get a few more jobs to last us past Halloween but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm not sure what I will be doing for the winter. We will be traveling to Wyoming and Nebraska in 6 weeks and we are planning on being gone for nearly 4 weeks. I can't imagine any employer would be thrilled with that news so perhaps some odd jobs will show up now and then for me to make a few extra bucks. Who knows though, only time will tell. I just keep going day to day and taking what I can get. Until again

-=Nolan=-

**Bonus pumpkin picture in the dark**

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

Rain, rain and a little more rain for good measure. I don't think this is record rainfall amounts like we saw back in June (3 inches in 48 hours) but the rain has been frequent here in Missoula. We didn't work on Tuesday and had a late start on Wednesday, both due to rain. Yesterday we worked through the rain in the late morning and afternoon. When the temperature is hovering around 45 it becomes difficult to keep warm after getting wet. Luckily I had an extra shirt in the truck so I was able to change a lunch and warm up again. As long as I am working I can stay relatively warm with a short sleeve shirt, but once we stop for a break it doesn't take long before I am looking for my jacket. This morning we are getting a late start again - granted that it stops raining. It's great to see the rain, but we could have used it this summer during all the fires.

Laura and I have a social event tonight. Ha ha! If that's what you want to call it I guess. A month or two ago, when we were camping in the yurt, I made a bet with the girls that I could complete the gallon challenge. What's the gallon challenge you ask? Well, it's s simple concept. Drink one gallon of milk in one hour or less. The catch is, you have to do it on an empty stomach and you can't lose it afterwards. A few people will be getting together to see the attempt made, namely the Chemistry group. At least one of them will be joining me in the attempt. I'll let you know how it goes.

Saturday, depending on how I'm feeling, we might do some duck hunting close to Missoula and then try to catch the Husker game, but it will be on the air around 10:00 a.m. and that might be about when I am ready to roll out of bed. Sunday, Laura and I are planning to hunt most of the day and just be out of Missoula for awhile. We might even try to do some geocaching on the way home, due to the rain it's been difficult to find our three caches we wanted by the weekend.

I finally finished scanning one of the photo albums my parents brought to me in July. I have been trying to scan pictures whenever I get a few free minutes or hours. The new computer has helped the scanning process a ton! It processes the pictures much quicker and I don't have to wait for the computer to recieve the information from the scanner. I can scan about two pictures a minute when I am doing everything correctly. Here's a few pictures.

I figured out why I like driving the tractor and moving dirt around so much...

Andy and I painting flowers at his house.

Harvesting the garden. Someday I'll have a good garden without rocks... Someday.

That does it for this morning. Have a wonderful weekend. Until again

-=Nolan=-

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=-

Happy Columbus Day

I won't get into the historical and argumentative aspects of Colubus day. There's plenty of evidence to show the Vikings actually discovered North America a few hundred years before Columbus, but just take it as it is and say Happy Columbus Day!
Laura and I have a good weekend in the great outdoors. Saturday we headed out for some hunting at 5:15 so we had an early morning and short night. We found a bunch of ducks and thought we might be on track for a good day of hunting, but we eneded up empty handed and home around noon. We grabbed some food and decided a nap was an excellent idea. We rested up for the Husker game and an evening inside.

Sunday we slept in - well, if you consider 8:00 sleeping in I guess, we do now, and then went and found a geocache before hitting up the stores for some groceries. We usually just buy all of our groceries at Wal-Mart and call it good - they are usually the cheapest. Well, yesterday we had a breakthrough discovery. We hit up Wal-Mart for some deals and then went to Costco for more things on our list. After that we drove down the road to Rosauers (pronounced rose-ours) and found a heck of a deal on meat. We ended up going back later in the afternoon to pick up more - we stocked up and saved about $50 compared to what we would usually spend. We even stopped by the Sweetheart bakery and bought bread for $.85 compared to the $1.50 we had been spending at Wal-Mart for the same brand! What have we been thinking the past year!!!!

After we got home we packed up the truck with some decoys and went south to the Lee Metcalf Refuge to do some hunting. Well, I don't know if you consider it hunting, but we put decoys out and watched ducks fly around anyway. Here's a panoramic picture from our blind. I took 9 pictures and put them together real quick. I am starting to find better ways to make panoramics so I might as well post what I do.
This was taken with about 150 degree field of view. West is about in the middle of the picture, maybe just right of center, and south is almost at the left edge. Those are the Bitterroot Mountains and the Bitterroot river is in the trees running through the middle of the frame. You can see it was cloudy and it did rain on us for about an hour of the three that we were there. We saw quite a few ducks, but only had one or two real opportunities to take a shot - we passed on them because they were tough shots and we would rather get a good clean shot than just start firing and see what happens. All and all, I just like being outside and watching the wildlife and enjoying being out of town and away from all the people. One in ten Montanans live in Missoula - the state has half as many people as Nebraska but they are more concentrated in the larger cities so it's hard to get a rural experience with so many people packed into a valley.

My boss called this morning and informed me that we havn't been working the past few weeks because no one has accepted any estimates lately, or just havn't gotten back to him with paperwork so we are waiting for someone to make a move. I have done a lot of things around the house in the past few weeks, mostly getting the house and yard for the winter to set in. If you notice in the hunting pictures there is snow on the mountains already and I don't think it will be melting away anytime soon.

Oh yeah, I was gonna post some pictures from our Saturday hunt. Well, actually just one picture. We had a nice view of the harvest moon setting while we were watching ducks fly around! There's even a few ducks on the water...Heck, here's a bonus picture... Laura is modeling her stylish camouflage chest waders with matching belt - yeah she has to wear a belt to keep them on!The temperatures are starting to drop and fall has definatly arrived here in Montana. We are happy to have the relief from the hot weather, but I don't think we will be having much in the way of medium temperatures - it's going straight to the 30's and 40's. As of 1:00 p.m. this afternoon we have almost arrived at 40 degrees, but still trying. Why can't we just have a few more days with temperatures in the 70's? Until again

-=Nolan=-

A Change Is Coming

The Stones concert evidently went well. The town didn't burn down and things were pretty slow the past few days. I guess when you are a rockstar in your 60's you don't inspire much rebellion.?.? We decided not to partake in the madness so Laura and I walked up to the top of the neighborhood hill and looked down at the event - wasn't much to see actually. The weather was threatening rain and it was a little more humid than usual so the air felt a little thicker and warmer - I miss humidity.

Hunting season opened last Saturday and I havn't even made a move towards the shotgun yet. Laura and I will be hunting Saturday with a guy I met from Florida. He is here in Missoula for his company and we are looking forward to getting out and doing some wing shooting. I might take a trip this afternoon and see if I can't find me a duck or two.

Laura has an exam this afternoon that will last until the evening so I will be on my own the entire day. I might as well get on down the road a ways and spend some time outside. The temperature today is supposed to be around 70-75. That reminds me of hunting in Nebraska a few years back. **Que the flashback music** It was my brother Rylan, my cousin Darrin, and myself out hunting in early October 2001 in Nebraska. We were out doing some duck hunting and the temperature was already around 70 at 10:00 a.m. - by the time we were starting to pick up decoys Darrin was in shorts and walking around in the water without any waders on, just in some boots which were far from keeping water out. I was sweating like mad in my waders and Rylan was in his shorts on the shore putting decoys in the bag. I think we even shot some ducks in shorts and t-shirts that morning as well. Heck, I even found the picture from that day.What a goofy looking crew we were... But we shot some ducks and we had a fun time getting together to go hunting. Too bad I wasn't closer to Nebraska so we could get together and hunt more often, I need some reliable hunting partners to keep my going back for more. Plus we always had a funny story or comment from each other to share with the family after returning from the trip. One of the classic pranks we would pull was on the drive home. Usually Rylan would set in the back seat while Darrin or I drove home. Well, about 10 minutes into the drive Rylan would fall asleep and Darrin or I would catch him so we would point and laugh a minute and then we would slam on the breaks and scream - he would usually jump up wide-eyed and then tell us we were idiots. It never failed though, someone would fall asleep and we would get them good, and yes, I wasn't excluded either.

I might be changing the blog up a little over the next few days/weeks. Blogger (the website that I blog on) is switching over to Google and will be forcing everyone to eventually switch as well. Right now they are just testing the software, but I might try it out. You might not notice any difference or you might be a little lost - I don't know what will happen, but I guess we'll see. Have a great weekend! Until again

-=Nolan=-

The Strolling Bones

The Rolling Stones will be in Missoula tonight for the big concert! No, Laura and I are not going. Maybe if the year were 1975 and The Rolling Stones were still main stream rock music I would consider paying the $100 ticket price. As it is, we might go sit outside and listen to the music and then we can leave at our leisure. I can't justify paying that much money for a concert.

Heck, we went to Spokane and back for under $200 and we got an entire weekend worth of fun out of that. Yeah, the concert would be cool; they have been setting up the stage for the past week, 24 hours a day. It is 6 stories high, and it took 80 semi's to get it here. Maybe there is a reason it costs so much to go to the show huh?

Not much news to report right now. Laura finally got her much desired cell phone so she can find me at any time of the day and I can no longer hide out when she has been talking my ear off! Ha ha, just joking. She is excited to have the phone so we can find each other when we need to meet somewhere or pick something up.

That's all for today. Gotta get a few things done around the house so I feel like I have accomplished something for the day. Hopefully work will be picking up again and I will be making some dollars again. Until again

-=Nolan=-

582 Miles Later

We have made it back in one piece, and to top it off, we found 64 caches for the weekend! After playing some ultimate frisbee on Friday evening we left for Spokane about 9:00 p.m.. We arrived in Spokane around 11:00 p.m. after passing into the Pacific Time Zone and we were sleeping within a few minutes after checking into the motel. Saturday we geocached from nearly sunrise to sunset and found 31 geocaches. Sunday we found a few more caches in Spokane before hitting the road and returning back to Missoula via Highway 2 & 200. We found 33 caches yesterday - our previous record for caches in one day was 22. We found 20 last Christmas with Andy and Amber while we were back in Nebraska over break. That brings us up to 834 caches found and 166 caches to find before Jan. 1, 2007. Doing a little math quickly, I see that that averages out to 1.8 caches per day, or 13 per week. That is still going to be tough to do without another big trip to a new place, but we are gonna keep trying - we are a little ahead of pace right now.
We added two more counties to our map this weekend as well. Those being Pend Oreille county in Washington and Bonner county in Idaho - shown in light blue. I would post some pictures of the trip, but there really wasn't much along the lines of photography on the trip - imagine that, I couldn't find anything to take pictures! Oh yeah, the GPS now has 40,000+ miles on it as well - that's most of the travelling we have done over the last 20 months - all by wheel & foot. Another 10,000 miles and we've been around the Earth twice!

My computer is giving me some trouble with the additional hard drives I added, so I will be working on that for the day and trying to get it back in top order. I also need to pull out my hunting gear - waterfowl season opened over the weekend and I am ready to get out there and enjoy the outdoors again. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Here's what the new counties map looks like: