Deadman's Basin Reservoir

We took the weekend off and headed two hours north of our place to Deadman's Basin Reservoir for some fishing and camping with Jon's sister and family. Approaching Deadman's is like any typical drive in the country until you turn down a dirt road and crest a hill to find a giant lake nestled in between farm houses.


We thought we had the place to ourselves but on Saturday morning, we acquired neighbors on both sides. On our right, the jet skiers who insisted on riding directly on top of our fishing lines - thanks! On our left, the drunks with a boat. They were piss drunk at 9:00 am when they pulled up. I was expecting high entertainment, and hoping for no fatalities. There were neither.

When we returned, nobody asked if we had fun. They only asked, "Was it windy?" This particular reservoir is notorious for wicked storms that whip out of nowhere, capsizing boats and not too infrequently, drowning people.

The answer? I'll let you judge for yourselves.



On Saturday night, a storm did roll through. We hastily gathered everything in camp, stashed the chairs, weighted down our camper awning with massive logs, and took shelter.


We fished for salmon and trout, but caught a fair share of suckers and carp, which are junk fish.



We learned that Gus is fanatical about going after your fish as you reel it in. That dog has a serious chasing issue: squirrels, mice, rabbits, horses, sheep, cows, and now fish. Thankfully, he leaves the neighbors' cats alone.

Every time someone got a bite, he raced over and plowed into the water to attack the flailing fish. This is fine unless you like teeth marks in your dinner and digging fish hooks out of your dog's paw - which did not deter him, I might add. I only had one bite the whole weekend and I lost the fish because Gus tore the line as I was reeling it in.

For most of the weekend, Gus stood a few feet offshore waiting for a catch.


The Falcons brought their canoe and did a good bit of trolling in it. Taya, my niece who has the entire family wrapped around her five year old fingers, caught more fish than any of us! Not wanting to miss out on anything, she would yell, "ARE YOU GOING ON A BOAT RIDE?!?!" anytime we came within 20 feet of the canoe.

Spring Break Retrospective: Wood you?

If there is one thing I have learned about farms and ranches, it is that there is an unending supply of firewood and only a limited time of the year when you can burn it. For us, this fact is compounded because the people who rented the ranch for the past 20 years that we had to evict through a year-long battle in the Carbon County Court system didn't, um, clean up after themselves. Or their cows. Cows are rough on everything--they lean against and scratch themselves on trees, fences, and buildings. The result of slobs + cows = wood scraps scattered everywhere. It sometimes feels like all we do is move wood from pile to pile.

There are piles of lumber scraps.

There are piles of lumber.

There are piles of brush and branches.

Mixed piles of fencing, tree stump, branches, and an unidentifiable metal and concrete object.

And then there are the gigantic tree stumps that are too big to move.

That's when I call for reinforcements.

Here come the reinforcements.

I feel safer already.

Winter Playground

I found this picture of the homestead in Montana and thought I'd share it with everyone.

Kate and I have been doing a bit of construction around the Boise homestead since we returned from our Florida getaway. Our landing in Boise was uneventful even with 3 inches of snow on the runway! In the parking lot we were shocked to find 5 inches of snow covering Kate's Dodge Dakota. It snowed most days we we're away and has since snowed most of the days we've been back. Today was different though with 57 degrees most of our valley snow is gone. In the past week or so we've managed to do some snow construction in the front yard, snowshoe in the valley and at Bogus Basin. There has even been time for skiing and snowboarding! A bit of our handy work is pictured below.






We spent a few hours preparing for a snow battle that never happened. It's always good to be prepared isn't it?

Quiet Struggle

This past week has been a tough one for me, more on that later. It followed an eight-day vacation and visit with my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew which was fun, followed by fun, rounded out by fun. This was their first visit to Boise and Jon and I reveled in the opportunity to share our city.

Although having two extra adults and two toddlers in the house with our current count of three dogs led to a certain degree of chaos, it was welcome, especially now that they have gone. I won't try to pull the wool over your eyes by saying that there weren't mornings I awoke to a crying, okay occasionally screaming, child. There were battles over watching television and chocolate milk versus juice. There were disciplinary events highlighted by warnings such as, "Do not sit on your sister!"

My nephew, who is three and a half, discovered the joys of peeing outside while on a recent camping trip back home. He has not, however, learned the subtleties of when it is appropriate to pee outside. On several occasions, we lost track of him in the backyard, only to find him in various corners with his pants around his ankles.

It was fun to see the world through kid-eyes again. We turned over rocks everywhere to look for earwigs and roly poly bugs, visited three different playgrounds, and he learned how to fish with his new Spider-Man fishing rod. Every moment of silence was broken by, "Can I go outside and go fishing?" and "Where is my fishing rod?" After several days of practice while we camped on the Middle Fork of the Payette, he was casting like a champ. Thing is, he kept catching the same red plastic fish!

We caught lots of trout on our camping trip. My brother and Jon renewed their vows with fishing and we could barely peel them away from that river. I myself caught three fish and my brother commented that fishing is like gambling: "just one more cast." The fish were cooked and enjoyed especially by the kids who gobbled them down without hesitation.

After they left, the house was q-u-i-e-t and Jon and I had several "what do we do now" moments. But we settled back in and geared up for the school and work week.

On Tuesday, September 2nd, the search warrants in Nancy's case were unsealed.

I've kept a pretty tight check in the last few weeks on how much I delve into the media and my emotions; some might say too tight, but I felt like I needed a break. But on Tuesday, I poured over all of the available documentation; old and new scenarios danced in my head. On Thursday, I received a completely unexpected call from the detective on the case. The rest of the week was a grief-ridden spiral.

Things are a little better now, but I heard someone say on a radio show last night that grief is not a process. The word process implies a beginning and an end and belies the life-altering proportions of death. I have yet to know how my life will be irrevocably changed by this event, and that unknowing scares me.

Coming soon...

I can't believe the last time I blogged was July 30th, and that I left ya'll hanging about the sheep. There are many more stories to tell about our summer that I'm sure we won't get to all of them.

I arrived back in Boise with Cash and Gus (the two sheep-marauding dogs) a week before Jon and Tucker and it is has been somewhat of a difficult transition for me and Gus. Per usual, Jon adapts readily but I am slower to ease into the old routine. I have been home for a week and a half and my suitcase is still sitting open and full on the floor of the guest bedroom. I find myself barely able to be inside the house. I find myself wanting for physical work on a scale that just isn't available here in the city; although, the backup of six weeks of yard work gave me a good run for my money. Gus quickly bored of the confines of our yard. He found a hole in the fence and decided to explore on his own. Fortunately, he didn't go too far and when I found him he was so excited that I had decided to join him for his adventure!

I am sure we will try to do some posts about a few more things from the ranch, but for the most part, life will move on. School starts at BSU on August 25th for both me and Jon. Just like last semester, my night class falls on one of the few nights that Jon doesn't have class. Arggh! But, a friend of mine will be in the class with me which will make it much more enjoyable. Jon starts his clinical nursing rotations so the semester should be very interesting and busy for him.

Summer is not yet over and I hope it has treated you all well. We will make the most of what remains.

Happenings

We’ve been mighty busy over the last several weeks working on the ranch out here in Montana. We’ve hauled nine loads of refuse to either the dump or the recycling company; the loads have ranged from 2200 pounds up to 4000 pounds. We’re down to a fewer number of small piles that still need to be hauled into the Billings. I wasn’t sure we’d ever find the end of the trash piles and I’m sure that when the tall grass is gone we’ll find more garbage hiding, waiting for us to load and haul.

The little house we are planning to renovate is finally cleaned out! Sadly, we came to the realization that we would not be able to do very much construction work on it this year. We emptied and sorted all of the stuff that had been stored inside: furniture, paperwork, bottles, jars, and other household accessories. We then removed all of the drywall, the floors, the doors, and the trim. We had a structural engineer who specializes in historic homes come out and evaluate it and to our delight, he said it was in unusually good structural condition, particularly given it's age of probably 100 years or more. It doesn't look like much, I know, but it will!




As an interim solution to our current “camp living” situation, we had the idea of converting an old lambing barn into a bath house. It’s only 12’x16’ but it will have all the amenities of a small home: toilet, vanity, shower, washing machine, bed, and refrigerator. The major stuff such as roofing, electrical, and plumbing are complete and the toilet, sink, shower, and floor are in as well. It’s amazing how special it feels to have a toilet that flushes. The shower is nice as well, not only for me, but also for everyone that spends any time around me!




We even made time to throw in a flagstone patio out front, made from slate collected around the property.

One of the summer's big projects was to upgrade all of the electrical services on the ranch. Everything was brought to current code requirements and the service was expanded to several new areas. Our houses and outbuildings are no longer unsafe.

The main shop also got a shiny new roof! I liked the aesthetics of the cedar shingles that we had to cover up, however the rain and sunshine that could be seen or felt from the inside were not so desirable.


In our efforts to practice sustainable grazing, we decided to lease our pasture to some neighbors that need a place for 28 pairs (cows with their calves) of Charolais cattle . This decision meant I had to do a bit of fencing, so I spend about four hours today working on the fence that forms the boundary around our 80 acres of paradise.

Earlier in the summer, the plan was to mow the four or so acres around our outbuildings, orchard, and corrals, but the grass grew so fast we didn’t have time to pick up the junk and tree limbs. As I drove home one night, I noticed our neighbor tossing hay to his sheep because he had run out of grass for them to eat in his pasture. Perhaps I didn't need to mow it, but could lease it to our neighbor for his sheep--sheep make great lawnmowers! The neighbors came down to check it out and agreed that there was a lot of good grazing to be had. So now I’ve also got to fix that section of fence. It seems like no matter how much we get done, there’s always more to do out here in Big Sky Country. Sorry for posting so few pictures, more to come! I've got to get out and move some water!

Mountain Pornography

Posting some more pictures of the Sawtooths because they were so breathtaking. These shots were taken while riding down Fourth of July Road outside of Stanley, Idaho.

Shepherd Camp with Hobbled Horses

Fire Damage from 2007

More Fire Damage from 2007

Stole this solo-bike-in-photograph staging from Jill Homer.

Spring Break Trip Report #1

Spring break seemed to be over just as it started. School work dominated a couple of my spring break days because three of my professors scheduled exams during or immediately following spring break. I had one take home exam due promptly at the start of class Monday after spring break, one exam Monday at noon, and a lab exam on Tuesday at 8:00 am. Oh joy! Thankfully, the exams are in the past now and my GPA didn't suffer as much as some of my classmates.

I completed a few projects around the house during the first few days of the break so we were able to head for the hills on Wednesday. Remember, the time of year is late March and this is spring break for Boise State students.

Spring in Eastern Idaho

We drove north on US Route 20, a very scenic highway through the Targhee National Forest in Idaho, and then into West Yellowstone, Montana. The weather, as you can see from the picture above, didn't resemble spring by any stretch. It sure looked and felt like winter! The road was ice and snow covered from Rexburg, ID all the way up to Island Park, ID. The plows were out and working hard but they were severely out-gunned by ol' Mother Nature. The bad roads didn't slow us down though; we made it to West Yellowstone by 3:30pm to find what was to be our sleepy little mountain get-away for the evening. Unfortunately, someone opened too much ether. The town wasn't just sleepy, it was comatose! It was a ghost-town because the annual snowmobiling events had ended the week prior. Our options for dinner were Arby's or McDonald's!

We decided to move on, checked out of our hotel, and hit the road heading north again on US-191 aiming for Bozeman, MT. The drive through Yellowstone Park treated us to some pretty stunning scenery.






That was the first part of our trip, we'll finish the trip report soon. Stay tuned!