Recovering For The Road

Today is probably our slowest day of the week and we still have a long list of things to do. Laura's mom left Monday morning and has made it to Watertown, SD. In the mean time, we have started getting ready for another trip to Nebraska. Before I get too far, I wanted to post some pictures of a hike we went on with Laura's mom. This is Blodgett Creek which is about 40 miles south of Missoula in the Bitterroot Mountains. This particular area had a fire in 2000 or 2003, I'm not sure, and it is still recovering. While we were hiking, a dead tree - a result of the fire - fell over the trail and we had to hop over it on our way back to the car.

The hike was about nine miles and took us the better part of Sunday to do - somewhere around seven hours. Usually, Laura and I would knock off nine miles in under 3.5 hours, so the hike wasn't anything too exerting for us, but the slowed pace allowed me to take a lot of pictures. We found two geocaches on the hike, one cache had only had ten people find it in three years so we were excited to find a cache that was well off the normal cacher's route. In fact, many cachers feel that a hike of more than a mile or two for a cache is a little excessive but then there are people like Laura and I who like to get off the beaten path and do some exploring!

Work has been slow for me, so I have been overseeing operations on the home front. That has mostly consisted of keeping the lawns watered on the warm days and watering the gardens, along with getting my brother's laptop computer setup and running efficiently. His laptop came with the new Microsoft Vista and that has been interesting to learn. I am still undecided on it though. I have grown quite favorable of Windows XP in the past five years so the new system is a little confusing, yet exciting to learn. I think he will be quite happy with the laptop though, it's a nice computer for the money and does what it is supposed to, so no complaints here.

I am starting to round up things to take back to Nebraska. We are slowly moving out of the apartment, mostly just getting stuff out of here that we don't use right now or just have no room for right now. I would like to start looking for a trailer to tow behind my truck so we can move our chest freezer and other large items without renting a truck. Plus, then I could use the trailer for hunting and hauling all my gear around instead of throwing it in the back of the truck and having it spill out onto the highway at 65 mph! Yes, that has happened and my brother witnessed it. A large bag of decoys caught some wind and flew into the air about ten feet before crashing onto the highway and rolling into the ditch. Lucky for us we were on a highway that doesn't see much use, so there was no one around and we were able to grab everything and continue on - at a slower pace. Thinking of the truck, I looked it over this morning and it will be ready to go once I change the oil. I considered just driving to Nebraska and then changing the oil, but it's just as easy to change it here and not have to deal with it there.

The plan is to leave from Missoula on Friday afternoon and camp outside Yellowstone that night. Then Saturday we are hoping to get an early start and go into Yellowstone and spend a few hours in Hayden Valley and watch for wolves or a bear. We are meeting some of Laura's friends in Cody, WY for lunch and then we are headed for Nebraska. We will either be in Kearney on Saturday night or stay somewhere and roll into town on Sunday morning. We'll spend the week in Kearney, hit up a wedding and then it's back to old Missoula - possibly by way of South Dakota and North Dakota, but who knows. We have to find a new road to travel you know!

Until again
-=Nolan=-