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=-

Summer Is Here!

Summer has made it's way back into the limelight and that is good news for the warm weather folks like me who love 90+ degree days. Don't get me wrong, I like those cold winter days too but there has to be a balance of cold and hot to get the full effect of the seasons.

For our first day of summer we did what we always do....we went geocaching. We found #1293 and we are excited to get to 1300 in the next week or so. During our trip yesterday we ventured East of town, right near the Garnet ghost town that we visited last year in June. This time we stopped to check out the view from the scenic overlook and find the geocache that was located there. What a great view from up there! Looking northwest, the picture shows the Blackfoot Valley and in the far distance, almost out of view, the Mission Mountains. To get an understanding of how far away that is, the Mission Mountains are north of Missoula somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 miles. When I took this picture we were 30 miles east of town, and the mountains are around 45 miles away. However, that's a bad picture to view them, so here's the close up.

Ok, so the 4 megapixel camera really doesn't do justice to the view but take my word for it, and we can all pretend like it's something amazing.

And last night, Laura's mom made it into town. Yes, a weekend with my mother-in-law! We are BOTH actually very excited to have her in town - it's her first visit to see us since we moved to Missoula almost two years ago. I joke that she could have picked a better time to come visit because this Sunday is our two year wedding anniversary - believe it or not.

In all seriousness though, this is about the best time to come since we will be in Nebraska the next two weekends and then we get into fire season by mid-July so things get rather smoky and disgusting by mid-summer.

With that in mind, I have a busy weekend ahead of me and a busier week getting ready for another trip back to Nebraska. Although this trip will be a few days longer and we should get a little more rest, no trip is quite long enough it seems. Have a great weekend, I know mine will be eventful. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Adventures In The Back Country

I've got a lot of random things to say and I don't even know where to start so I am just going to post this picture to get things rolling.
The sign reads "NO TRESSPASSING, NO SNOPPY NEIGHBORS." Now, usually I don't target people to make fun of, but this one is asking for it. While Laura and I were out geocaching this past weekend, we traveled well off the highway into some more remote locations and happened to pass this sign. Although I get the point, I still can't help but laugh at the 'redneck qualities' of this. Just to point out the obvious, the sign has two misspellings: Trespassing & Snoopy.

The fact that the sign is misspelled is enough to keep me off the property though. Anyone who doesn't care to take the time to look up the spelling for a big sign at the end of the driveway probably doesn't care to take the time to find out my intentions while they are loading up the shotgun. "SHH! Quite, do you hear a banjo?"

The peonies in our backyard bloomed last week and they looked great. I pulled them out of a job site last summer and brought them home - the owners were throwing them away so I rescued them. I have been collecting a few pots from work this summer and I plan to dig them up this fall and transplant them to move with us next year. I actually have several plants in the planters in the front yard as well that I rescued and hope to bring along. Hopefully we will have enough room.

Monday afternoon Laura and I took a hike. We were after two goals for the afternoon, those being getting a geocache and hiking to the top of Stuart Peak. We left around 2:00 p.m. and made the five mile hike to the geocache is just about an hour and forty-five minutes. The geocache was located in a rock field on the side of the mountain and it was tricky terrain to search in, but close investigation can reveal all sorts of things. The first thing I noticed was a chipmunk watching us from up above on a rock. He was really watching us, and didn't move a muscle. Then a few seconds later another movement in the rocks came. This time it was much larger and surprised me a little. It was a bushy-tailed woodrat. The woodrat was quite curious as to what we were doing and continued to get closer to us. I shooed it away (I'm not a big fan of rats or mice) and snapped a few pictures while it observed us.I indicated to Laura that where there are mice there are snakes and that it would be wise to watch where we were walking while crossing the rocks. *Note - I just used the letter W to begin six words in a row in the previous sentence. Back to the story: So just as I tell Laura to watch her step, I see something slithering towards me! The little snake was coming down the rocks and I was in mid-step when I saw the snake. In my effort to not step on the snake I lost my balance a little and I gave out a shout "WHOA BUDDY! GET AWAY FROM ME!" Too bad Laura didn't have a video camera to capture the hilarity that ensued from the work of a little racer snake and a few rodents. Her laughter indicated that I was really putting on a show.

The larger creatures like bears, moose, wolves, and mountain lions are out in the wilderness with us while we are hiking I expect to see them and stay alert. In the case that we should happen to meet up with a bear I carry the bear spray - it's a pepper spray that I would spray at the bear to give us a few minutes to, put lightly, 'get the heck outta dodge.' The trick with bear spray is the instructions read "This product has a range of UP TO 30 feet." That's right, up to 30 feet but 20-25 feet is probably the best range. I don't know about you, but 25 feet is close enough thanks! So in the event we should encounter a bear we are 'prepared' but those rats and snakes scare my silly so Lord knows what will happen if we are face to face with a bear or moose!

Well, we found the cache and we made it up high enough on the mountain for us to be happy with the result. The lakes at the top of the mountains looked cold, and the cool temperatures and wind didn't make the water very tempting - notice the snow on the side of the mountain?! Yeah, that was on Monday folks. Our hike took around 6 hours and we were rolling right along to finish the 18 miles before it was too dark or the rain caught us. We have three more mountains planned for the summer, and this was the smallest of the four we wanted to hike, so one down, three to go!

It's gonna be around 90 today and I am looking forward to some warm temps. I'm going to clean up the garage a little this afternoon and get things organized. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Flag Day

It's Flag Day and I have the day off today. Not because it's flag day, but because we finished up a job yesterday and needed to line-up some work for the next week. I went to Wal-Mart this morning in search of a flag to hang up, but go figure, they were all sold out. So I picked up some soil and planted a few more plants this morning, along with unpacking from the trip and cleaning up the house.

I would have blogged the trip to Nebraska sooner, but I am currently fighting a battle with an ailing hard drive which has been giving me a fit. The hard drive is going bad and I have been backing up all my info, pictures, and songs before it totally dies. I think I have everything taken care of and soon I will just remove it from the computer so I don't have to deal with the problems it has been causing.

As far as the trip goes, we were on the road too much but we had a good time. We left Missoula on Thursday morning at 4:15 a.m. and we were on the interstate around 4:30 and on our way. As usual, we had to travel some new highways to highlight our map and we were in 5 new counties as well. We went through Jackson, Wyoming and enjoyed falling snow on the mountain pass. In fact, there was snow for most of the drive through Wyoming. We arrived in Cheyenne around 7:00 p.m. on Thursday evening and enjoyed a few hours of relaxing before some much needed rest.

Friday morning we spent some time geocaching around Cheyenne before we went to Warren Air Force Base with Laura's dad. Warren AFB is the base in Cheyenne - if you are ever in the area and see all the military planes flying around then you know what I am talking about. We went to see the antelope fawns captured on the base, they are transported to Mexico to attempt to reestablish the population there. After we grabbed some lunch we hit the road for Nebraska.

We made a detour on our way to Kearney and stayed the night in Mullen at my grandparents house, where my parents were staying as well because it was alumni weekend for dad. Grandma and Grandpa took Laura and I out for some hamburgers and we spent the evening chatting until mom and dad arrived back at the house. We made it to bed around midnight and we were up around 7:00 for breakfast before hitting the road for Kearney around 8:00. We stopped in Broken Bow, Nebraska to see the fire damage that occured last month. The fire took out an entire block of the downtown district! It was really amazing to see the damage that a fire can do to brick buildings, but at the same time it was sad to see historic buildings removed from the town in such a violent way.

We made it to Kearney around noon and got ready for the wedding at 1:30. The wedding and reception were quick and by 4:30 we were on our way back to the house to find some more comfortable clothes for the evening.

The evening was the most time we had to relax the entire trip. We went to the heritage day celebration in Kearney and listened to the live music and watched the fireworks at dark. I was glad we went and watched them, the fireworks are always a great show! We even bumped into a few friends and family at the event and it was good to catch up with everyone. We sat around talking until midnight once again before making it to bed, and we woke up around 7:00 and decided we needed to go for a run.

I took Laura on one of my favorite routes I used to run in high school - a 7 mile route to the swimming pond at Cottonmill Park, just outside of town. After the run, my sister cut our hair and we spent the afternoon running around town and seeing all the construction and work being done on the university campus. Before heading to Cheyenne on Sunday evening, we ate supper with my family. Mom always makes more food than I can eat - well actually she makes so many different types of good food that I can't find enough room for all of it - so our ride to Cheyenne was also our time to recover from stuffing ourselves. We made it to Cheyenne around 10:30 p.m. and went straight to bed. We were up Monday morning around 7:00 and we were on the road at 8:30 and headed for Missoula. It took us about 13 hours to make it back on Monday and we were both ready to be out of the truck and have some time to sit without being in the truck. We covered 2,511 miles in our 5 day adventure, and we were happy to be home for a few weeks before we do it all over again at the beginning of July!Here's the travel map once again. As usual, the yellow counties are the ones we have been to and the green ones are the newest counties we added - 3 in Idaho, and 1 each in Wyoming and Nebraska.

That about does it for me today. I've been lucky to get this much said without the hard drive making any problems so I should quit while I am ahead. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Nevermind, Pack The Truck Again...

Well, I know I said we would be packing the car up and heading to Nebraska, but it looks like plans are changing. After having the car into the shop on Monday, it has been determined the car is in bad shape. Considering the car had more things WRONG with it than it had right, we decided the truck was the best mode of transportation for the trek.

This evening I dug deep into the garage and found the side rails for the truck. It's been awhile since they have seen the open road - in fact, I built them for the move to Missoula in August 2005 and after we arrived I modified them to what they are today. They haven't been used since then. I'm not exactly sure we will need them for the trip, but we are going to pack up a few things to take back to Nebraska - namely the things we have not been using. For instance, our glass deck table and chairs that we bought last fall on clearance. We haven't even opened the box yet, even though we are really excited to to have them. The feeling is that with so many animals running around, and so many renters in and out of the house every few months, we might end up breaking it, OR someone might feel the urge to take them with them, so might as well get it somewhere that it will be taken care of.

My favorite flowers are blooming again in our front planter. I really have no clue what they are, but I love taking pictures of them. The pink and yellow really contrasts and makes for an interesting look with the green background.

Work has been going good. Today we received a few rain showers and that gave us a thorough soaking - twice! We are just working on a small project right now, it looks like we will be done with it by Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday we are hitting the road early for Cheyenne. We are going to travel to Butte and take I-15 South to Highway 33 in Idaho - which will take us into Jackson, Wyoming. It's been a long time since I was in Jackson, so we are going to add a new road to our travels. From Jackson we will head south to Rock Springs and knock off another Wyoming highway. We will only have a few more roads to travel in Wyoming before we have traveled on all the highways in the state!

Finally, I took some video from our back deck with my sister's new camera. I compressed the video so it wouldn't be as big to download, so the quality is rather bad, but I don't know that it matters much in this case... This is some footage I took from Sunday night when wind speeds reached 60+ mph here in Missoula. I was kinda hoping the tree in the backyard would fall over, but no such luck - just a bunch of flying leaves. Locals thought it was a rather good storm, whereas Laura and I got a good laugh at the big news story being a tree crashing onto a new car and ruining it. I usually don't consider a storm too impressive until wind speeds reach upwards of 75 mph - that's technically a category one hurricane. Anyway, a little wind and rain is all that came from the storm - no tornado, hail, or anything fun like that. *sigh* I can't wait to be back on the Great Plains and watch those storms roll across the prairie. Now that's power!

I'll be back in a week with all the highlights of our trip. Until again

-=Nolan=-

Unpack The Truck & Pack The Car!

A nice surprise came in the form of a phone call yesterday evening. I was informed that we wouldn't be working today! Why am I so excited to hear this? Well, for starters the car is going to the mechanic at 10:00 this morning and we are leaving for Nebraska early on Thursday morning, so we have a long list of things to do in these three short days. The car has really become a hassle the past few months - since we made it back from San Francisco - and it is in need of some help that I can't give it.

Friday, we left for Troy, Montana a little after 6:30 in the evening. It's about a three hour drive to Troy from Missoula and we arrived just a little after 10:00 due to stops for geocaching along the way. The truck drives like a dream now! The new alignment and tires are almost too nice for me, I'm not used to such luxury.

Saturday we spent the day hiking around the Kootenai Falls area. There is a cool swinging bridge and the falls were awesome to see as well. The river was really flowing from the spring melt - it actually felt more like summer with the 90 degree heat! So the rushing water really made the swinging bridge a scene out of Indiana Jones! Ok, so maybe there were no crocodiles or crazed savages chasing us to the other side of the river, but the bridge did sway.

The falls were well worth seeing as well. We stood right next to them and enjoyed the cool breeze and occasional splash of water. There was a perfect ledge to hand out at and enjoy the full fury of the falls. The first picture of the falls doesn't show the entire river, just the immediate area we were at, I took a few steps back to get the full view of the falls from the side. Definitely not something I want to try maneuvering in my canoe!Of course Brooklyn was excited to see us as well. She was able to do lots of hiking and playing the river while we were there. Actually, her backyard is the river, so she really didn't spend any more time in the river than usual, but she really enjoyed the hiking. After the falls, we went on a 5 mile hike up to a mountain lake that doesn't see many people and she had a good time fetching sticks from lake. I thought this picture made her look especially funny!


Yesterday, we left Troy around 1:30 and made it home just before 6:00. We took the long way home, going to Kalispell and driving the highway on the east side of Flathead Lake. We filled up in Troy before leaving, and discovered that the truck was getting about 22 miles per gallon! That was a nice surprise even though it usually gets 18-20. The new tires might have something to do with that, but considering the car was getting as low as 22 mpg at times, I would rather drive the truck than the car. Hopefully something can be done about the car, and it won't cost us a small fortune to have fixed. A newer car is starting to sound more and more appealing...

After I take the car to the mechanic I'm walking over to the school to get the truck and do some shopping. Laura took the truck this morning and she will catch the bus home this afternoon. It looks like another hot day and I have a long list of things to do. When I'm not working I can get everything taken care of and stay on top of all the problems of the world, but as soon as I start working I can't find a spare minute anywhere! Even blogging becomes a trick to find time, and I am running short on time how it is! Until again

-=Nolan=-

A Quick Blog Before Work

It's been well over a week since I have blogged, and it looks like it will be a few days before I get a moment to sit down, so I am making a quick blog before work this morning. Since last Friday we have been on the move and we don't have any plans of stopping any time soon!

Let's back up a week and I'll tell you about my trip to Bozeman, Montana for Bozofest - the Ultimate Frisbee tournament I went to. I played on the Missoula B-team, which was comprised of mostly the second rate players around town. The 'A team' is known as the Flycoons and they were the runner-up in the tourney. My team, the Shuttlecocks (like the badminten birdie) wasn't so good. We played 5 games and we lost all of them. We nearly won our 4th game - we only lost by one point! Temperatures were in the 80's the entire weekend and I got a good tan as well. The party on Saturday night was a blast as well. After being fed spaghetti, all the teams gathered round the bonfire and intermingled. There were teams from Portland, Seattle/Fort Collins, Salt Lake City, Edmonton (Canada) and 2 teams from Missoula and Bozeman - it was quite a party. There was a band and at midnight the pinata's came out - to break the pinata's we threw frisbees at them as hard as possible and we finally had them open by 1:00 a.m.! We camped out on Saturday night and finished up the tournament on Sunday afternoon and returned to Missoula.

My hat this week comes from the Bozofest tournament. I sported a bandana look with my white t-shirt and skirt. Yes, I said skirt. The whole perpose of being shuttlecock's was to look like the badminton birdie - so the red hat and white suit with skirt was the team uniform.

On Wednesday night my city league Ultimate Frisbee team won the championship. We had quite a game too. We were up 5-1 and suddenly we found ourselves tied at 6-6. After taking a 9-6 lead again we managed to let them tie it up at 9. The game was played to 11 so we had our work cut out for us, but some major efforts helped us win 11-9.

Here's a good picture Laura got of me making a play. I was supposed to be catching the disc in the air, but that wasn't the case. I crashed back into Earth without the disc in my hand, and ate some dirt as well!

This weekend we are headed to Troy, Montana. It's a little town in the Northwest corner of the state, almost to Canada, where we are going to see our old neighbor's. Brooklyn (the dog) will be excited to see us, and we will be excited to get out of town for awhile and see our friends and some new country. We're gonna spend the weekend there and be back on Sunday to prepare for our trip to Nebraska the next weekend!!!! Finally!

I better get myself out the door. I've got to have the truck into the tire dealership at 8:00 to finish the alignment on the truck - it was so bad last night that they are having it brought back this morning to finish it - that would explain the abnormal wear on my old tires!

Have a good weekend! We are looking at temperatures in the 90's here, so we will be trying to stay cool. Until again

-=Nolan=-