Whirlwind

Whoa! It has been quite a whirlwind of craziness around here!

A morning sunrise.

 

Last time I left you with preparations for the company we were to have. Well, the company came…and went…all in a whirlwind. It was quite a full house. All the beds were taken plus an overflow into the camper and a tent in the front yard. All of the teenagers (six of them) stayed up late each night playing games in the kitchen. One night they invited my friend and I to join them in playing…spoons. At first we declined, because we knew how competitive each of us could be and with such competitiveness we knew that spoons was a dangerous game for us to play, but…we conceded and decided to show these amateurs how the game is played. 😛 It didn’t get as dangerous as it could have, but they definitely learned quickly that spoons can be a very fun but dangerous game. 🙂

That Tuesday, Lauren and I both had off work and we went up to Whitefish, MT for the day. We mostly went for the Farmer’s Market in the evening. It was a very nice Farmer’s markets with lot of arts/crafts vendors as well as lots of food vendors and even a live band held in a small park type area. When we returned home, we took the four-wheelers up to the fire tower to watch the sun set. It was a gorgeous day and a gorgeous sunset.

It’s amazing what zoom can do! 😛

The Western Montana Fair & Pro Rodeo held in Missoula was taking place during the time our company was here, so we bought rodeo tickets and went to the rodeo. That was definitely lots and lots of fun. For me, the only better would’ve been to be a horse IN the rodeo. {rodeo dreams} I’ve only been to a couple rodeo’s so far in my life and this definitely was the best one…so much better than the one at the PA Farm Show.

Line-up of the flags, with the American Flag front and center.

Team Roping

Bronc riding

Calf Roping

Barrel Racing (best event ever…in my opinion)

The time quickly flew by and next we knew the company was leaving and heading up to Whitefish for more activities they had planned. Later in the week, before they all flew back home, my friend’s mom and I went up and met them to go into Glacier National Park for the day. We traveled Going-to-the-Sun Road, which is the main road through the park only open during the summer, from West Glacier to Rising Sun on the east side of the park. Logan’s Pass at the top is the middle point of the road and if you don’t hit it at a certain time you won’t be able to get into the parking lot. We didn’t make it on time before lunch so we continued down to Rising Sun to each lunch and chill by St. Mary’s lake for a little bit before heading back to West Glacier.

Made a stop at Sunrift Gorge on the way to the lake.

Another angle of Sunrift Gorge, under the bridge. Great place to be on hot, summer day. A very nice cool breeze blows through the Gorge.

Overlooking St. Mary’s lake. That small island is Wild Goose Island.

Chilling at Rising Sun picnic area by St. Mary’s Lake.

After lunch, we managed to get into Logan Pass parking lot and almost all of us started out on the trail to Hidden Lake overlook. It wasn’t long before only three of us were left to continue on, the two boys and myself. It’s been several years since I was to Glacier and hiked the trail to Hidden Lake overlook at Logan’s Pass, so I had forgotten how steep the boardwalk trail could get in certain places…and how long it really was. We stopped a few times to catch our breath declaring “wow, i’d forgotten how steep this was” or “I feel like a flat-lander!” or “obviously so not used to this elevation!”, but regardless we were determined to reach our destination (at least I was). We made it, took pictures, and headed back. We, or rather I, took lots of pictures on the way back down. At one point, there was a pack of snow not far off the trail so we ventured to it to experience “playing with snow in the middle of August!”.

Making footprints in the snow! In AUSGUST! With only hiking boots, shorts, and t-shirt!

When we got back to the visitor center where everyone else was waiting, it was time to leave. I hadn’t realized how long it actually took us to hike up to the overlook and back…I didn’t have a watch on me. As we hiked, I realized that I wish I could do more hiking and exploring Glacier. One day I would like to continue on the Hidden Lake trail all the way past the overlook down to the lake. I’d also like to hike the Highline Trail that starts not far from Logan’s Pass and continues on along the mountainside. And there is a plethora of other good hiking/backpacking trails in Glacier…someday I want to explore as many as I can. I took so many photos this day that I reached a point where my camera told me how many photos I had left available to use before the card would be full!!

Hidden Lake

Looking down at Logan Pass Visitor Center, the Garden Wall, and Going-to-the-Sun road.

Heaven’s Peak

Work has been pretty steady during the week and is usually busy on the weekends. We just had a two-day Seniors golf tournament that kept us hopping. It was a long, but good two days. The day before it started, one of our fun regular golf club members, gave us some advice on how to make great tips during the two-day tournament. He was participating in the event, so each day he wanted to make sure we were taking his advice. On the second day, while I was out driving the beverage cart around the course, waiting for his group to T-off before driving on, he commented on how nice I looked in my “Irish Green” that I was wearing (a green shirt with a green clover necklace) and so after thanking him and a few second pause I said “and you’re looking pretty darn good yourself with that blue shirt with your blue eyes.” The whole group including himself just howled in laughter and said he now had to buy something from me…he bought a soda (or pop as they call it out here) for his friend. When it was time to move on, the other guys continued to joke about his blue shirt and blue eyes and I said “well, i’m only taking his advice on giving compliments this weekend” and he complimented me on doing a nice job of it and high fived on the way past. I found out later from one of the other girls running the other beverage cart on the back nine holes, that his group continued to tease him on his blue shirt and blue eyes the rest of the day. Before he left, he complimented all of us girls on doing such a wonderful job during this tournament.

All of the other girls, save one that just started, have now returned to school and either stopped working with us or will only be working weekends. I am basically the only one left to run the snack shop area. We have a new girl that just started with us, but she also works in other departments at the resort. My friend returns to classes this week, so she now only works weekends in order to focus on school. Work is usually not too bad during the week and able to handle alone. The boys on the Pro Shop side can jump on register if things get too crazy. Activity at the golf course will most likely slow down within a few weeks anyway due to changing seasons.

Nights, evenings, and mornings are starting to get cooler. They were cool to begin with, but now the coolness seems to be settling in just a little earlier in the evening and lingering a little later in the morning. It usually warms up to about 80’s by the afternoon. Some days it warms up sooner than others and it also depends if it was clear the night before. During the past week or so, some mornings are not very clear…mostly due to smoke haze drifting in from forest fires in Southwestern Montana, Idaho, and even California. On such mornings, it doesn’t clear off much, if at all, especially if it’s breezy or windy during the day. One evening was so cool with such a bright moon that after my friend and I danced around outside for a bit in the bright moonlight, we rushed inside to find warm sweatpants and sweatshirt and curl up under warm blankets. Lately, most evenings, we can also hear coyotes/wolves howling way back in the woods behind the house, and of course once they start howling, all the neighborhood dogs start barking and carrying on. Sometimes the coyotes sound really close and sometimes really far.

Within the past few weeks, I’ve helped our neighbor, Dan, take care of the horses at his place while he was away. Most of the horses are currently out on pasture, but Harvey, the stud, Topaz, and a few young colts Dan’s daughter is training, are still at the house and need fed. The last time I was in charge of feeding them, his dogs, Boomer and Tigs were also at home and wanted all the attention you could give. Boomer loves playing catch and so everytime we went to feed we played catch with Boomer for a few minutes after feeding the horses. Tigs just wanted all the loving attention you could give her.

Oh did I mention that on the last day our company was here, my friend and I saw a BLACK BEAR! on our way out the driveway to work…everyone else was sleeping. It was in our horse pasture, crawled through the fence to the neighbor’s pasture, walked around a bit, and then ran off towards the woods behind the house. It wasn’t a very big black bear and we figured it was one that had recently got kicked out of his mama’s den. It was the first official bear sighting of the adventure! Bummer it wasn’t a grizzly, but the adventure isn’t over yet, still plenty of time to sight one of those! 🙂

FIRST BEAR SIGHTING!

Last week, my friend and I went to a special program called (Montana’s) Shakespeare in the Parks. A group of about seven actors act out a Shakespeare play. They spend all summer, traveling montana, putting on two different plays. They only spent one day in our area and put on one of the two plays for this summer. This year they played out Henry V and did a very wonderful job.

We also saw a heard of cow and calf ELK! on our way home from work one evening. I did not get any good pictures. 😦

Recently, we had two very good steady soaking rain thunderstorms. During the first one we were out of power for at least 2+hours. It was out when we got home from work and did not come back on till about the time we were all heading to bed. Luckily, we have a gas stove so we could still cook dinner. 🙂 The power blinked a few times during the second storm, but was not out for any significant amount of time. We definitely needed the rain…hopefully it reached other areas in Montana that really needed it too. We are still on stage 1 fire restrictions, but no forest fires near us that we need to worry about.

Sun shining through the rain.

Well I think that catches up pretty well on all the major events that have happened since my last post. I’ll try not to let the next one be such a long time inbetween, but not going to make any promises as it sure has been a whirlwind around here. 🙂

Time flies when having fun!

Time sure does fly when you are having fun! 

Time flies as fast as a river flows.

Needless to say time is flying so that must mean I am having fun! 🙂 I most definitely am having fun. Honestly, how can you be in Montana and not have fun? It’s fun simply just being here. Even on those days where the only exciting thing is going to work, it’s fun on the drive to and from work. It’s fun to see how the view of the mountains change from morning to afternoon to evening. It’s fun to see if we can catch sight of any wildlife. It’s fun to see how many slow tourists we can pass. Also, it’s fun getting to know the customers at work, especially the regulars. A few have already picked up on my nickname, Griz.

Last week, my friend, Lauren and I, went riding with our friend Nikki who works with the young horses. We trailored Joey and “new girl” and Gigi (Nikki’s horse) to the local community arena not far down the road. I was on Joey and he was “overprotective” of “his girl” so most of the time I rode separately from the others so that there was no problems with any of the horses. We mostly just walked, but we did trot a little bit. Towards the end of riding, Nikki rode Joey and I rode “new girl” (Gidget) for a little bit…she did not really want to go anywhere that Joey wasn’t. However, the best part…was simply just having FUN! 😀

Riding Joey

Last Tuesday, we had a couple courses get brand inspected. We trailered them to the local arena where we met the brand inspector. Basically all that’s done, is the brand inspector draws all the horses markings and then he does a whole bunch of paperwork before handing you a certificate that has all the horses information on it. We had the lifetime inspection done which costs slightly more, but this way we won’t need to have it done every year. The brand inspector informed us that all states west of the Missouri have brand inspections for all livestock. (His formal shirt he was wearing had “livestock inspector” embroidered into it.) Brand inspections are done every year, or in our case only once for lifetime inspection, so that if anything should happen to the animal (stolen) this is a positive verification who the animal belongs to. However, if the animal should change ownership, the new owner needs to have a brand inspection done under his name. Brand inspection does not carry over from one owner to another. When we returned horses to their respective pastures, I got to drive our friend’s diesel ford truck and the loaded horse trailer. Luckily the truck was automatic so I didn’t have to worry about standard shifting…I would’ve definitely been more hesitant to drive. (I’m still working on “perfecting” my standard driving skills without pulling anything behind the truck).

Last Wednesday, a few of us went up to the “big town” of Big Fork for the day. My friend’s mother and grandmother (who has been visiting us for a few weeks, but is leaving us very shortly) had their hair done and then we went to a few shops. We went to an Agate Shop which was really neat and then stopped at an Antique shop which also had some interesting stuff. Then we went to downtown Big Fork and made our last stop at Eva Gates to send home (to PA) some HUCKLEBERRY preserves or jam. Huckleberry is a Montana specialty. It’s similar to blueberry, but is definitely NOT blueberry. 😛 And it’s OH SO YUMMY!!!!

Saturday, as Lauren and I were at work a new forest fire started in the valley on the other side of the mountain range from work and we could see the smoke. As the afternoon wore on with the wind carrying the smoke, by the time we were leaving work it had grown really hazy, smelled like smoke, and ash was flying all around the town. The air cleared up as we headed further out of town and hardly a haze at home. The air was pretty clear the next day, a little smokey haze, but not as bad as it was the day before.

Smoke from the fire on the other side of the mountain range.

Twin fawns and their mama we saw around the house Monday evening.

The week was busy then until my next day off, the next Tuesday, which was the most recent past Tuesday. I didn’t do anything exciting because I felt I needed a “bum day” after having such a busy week. Then Wednesday was actually fairly busy, we went into Seeley and stopped at several of the stores to see if there was anything exciting to buy. Grizzly claw is a neat little store with some good jewelry and beads to make your own. I picked up a few beads to try my hand at making a few jewelry pieces of my own. They also had several shelves of books, some clothing, and some household furniture. Attached to Grizzly claw, but it’s own little section is the coffee bar called Jitterbug Java…it sells some really good coffee, hot and iced!! I wasn’t into iced coffee very much until this year and this summer I’ve tried it more and it’s mmm, mmm, delicious! Then, we walked across the street to Blue River Station, which is another place you could get some coffee and it also has a little store attached to is that is mostly kitchenware, spices, salad dressings, jams, and basically anything you would potentially see or find in a kitchen. Then we went to the Quilt Store…it’s as it says it is. It is full of all kinds of quilt items. LOTS and LOTS of material in all colors, shades, and designs. In fact they actually have a website that you can check out for yourself! http://www.deercountryquilts.com/ Afterwards, we went to lunch at Moose River, a local place to eat that serves very good food! We headed home after lunch and had a quiet afternoon.

Moose River located within the Crazy Pine Mall

In the evening, I went over to Nikki’s and watched her work with some more young horses. Then towards the end after Nikki had worked with Roxy a little bit, I was able to ride Roxy for a little bit. We trotted some too and so I was able to work on improving my riding skills a little bit while remembering that I was on a young horse that is still learning too. I was the third time that Roxy has ever been ridden. She was a nice ride and some day she will be a very nice little horse for someone. She’s still pretty small, but she’s still not quite done growing either. We did measure to how tall she was and she is still considered pony height. Perhaps when she’s done growing she’ll reach horse height.

Riding Roxy

Things were pretty quiet the next few days. The weather was actually cloudy, cool, and rainy so work was hardly busy. We got off work sooner than we usually do since it wasn’t busy. We weren’t quite sure what to do with ourselves since we are not used to having nearly the entire afternoon and evening free to ourselves. However, we are very thankful for the rain. Everything is getting pretty dry and brown so any cool weather with rain is greatly welcomed. It not only helps to potentially prevent new fires from starting, but also helps to subdue most of the ones that have already been started…if not all the way, at least to tame it down so that firefighters can tackle it better. The fire danger level has reached the point that as of the first of August we are now under Stage one fire restrictions until told otherwise. Stage one fire restrictions include no smoking outdoors unless standing on a non-flammable surface at least 3 feet in diameter and no campfires except in designated campsites, so that means no backyard campfires for our own cookouts/s’more making over a campfire.  😦  There has been no open burning (burnable trash, etc) for the last month. These restrictions will continue to be in effect till most likely at least September, if not later. It all depends on the weather and how the fire season pans out.

Low clouds clinging to the mountains on a cool, rainy day.

Friday, my friend’s grandmother who was visiting us for a few weeks, flew home to PA. We all miss her a lot already. She was an excitement for all of us each day. We got out of work early too and made a few stops at the stores in town. We stopped at Grizzly Claw to get a few more beads to go with ones I had gotten earlier.

A few earrings I made with the beads I bought from Grizzly Claw

Saturday, Lauren and I finally had a day off together and made plans to go down to the “big town,” Missoula.

You know you’re in Missoula, MT when you see the “M” on the side of the mountain.

We checked out a few of the Farmer’s Markets that were open Saturday mornings. The first one was a large one with mostly all kinds of fresh produce, food vendors and even a few musicians were singing or playing trying to earn some money from the crowds. The second one we went to was mostly an Arts & Crafts type market. Several of the stands were quite interesting with all kinds of stuff. We found a few things we liked a bought. The Farmer’s Markets are open every Saturday morning and close early afternoon. We were both quite hungry after walking around all morning, so we went to lunch at a place (I forget the name of the place) that serves very good fried chicken (and I mean it was VERY GOOD!) It was better thank KFC chicken or even  (for those local to my hometown) Harvest Moon chicken (and I really enjoy Harvest Moon chicken, so that’s saying something).

After lunch we began our journey of running our other errands. We went to Murdoch’s to pick up something for someone back home and looked around a little bit and found a few things for ourselves. Murdoch’s is the place to go if you’re looking for anything western. To give you an idea, it’s kind of like Tractor Supply back home in PA, only better. 😀 If you’re looking for cowboy boots, clothing, or hats, Murdoch’s is the place to go. In fact, I actually found a hat that I liked and fit and the best part…it was on SALE! so of course I couldn’t pass it up. 🙂

Next, we went take care of the most important part of the trip to town….groceries. First, we went to Cosco’s which if you are familiar with Sam’s Club back east, it’s very similar in that it sells it’s products in bulk. When we arrived we knew it was going to be crazy before we even stepped foot inside. 1) It was a Saturday…when a lot of people go “shopping” and 2) it was about that time of day when people are starting to get off work and decide to stop at the store on their way home. We started off with one cart (similar to normal grocery carts, but larger), but quickly realized we were going to need a second cart. We not only were doing our “monthly” grocery shopping, but also preparing for a small crowd of company coming to visit for several days. By the time we were done we had two very FULL carts…it was hard to turn corners. When we got to the car, after putting what we could in the cooler of the foods that needed to be cold, I took over packing the car. Lauren commented “You are an excellent packer. I never would’ve been able to put all that there like you have.” I guess I have picked up a few traits/skills from my father. 🙂 Lauren packed the backseat and when we crawled into the car I looked in the backseat and commented “no offense, but that is horrible packing.” We both just laughed.

Our next stop…the “regular” grocery store which for us, in Missoula, is Rosaurs. We only had one cart (a regular grocery cart) this time since we had gotten most of what we needed at Cosco’s. Mostly what we needed at Rosaurs was fresh produce like fruit and some vegetables, lunch meats and cheeses, along with a few other items. We did a divide and conquer system, where I went one way to get what I could from one area of the store and she went the other way to get other items. After we finished here, we both had tired feet and were glad to finally be on the journey home, but before leaving town we had to stop at City Brew (similar to Starbucks Coffee) and get some coffee for the road. After a long day of being on our feet it was nice to have a long ride home. When we got home we unpacked the car, put away all the cold stuff, and decided to leave the rest to put away in the morning. We both were very tired and needed to get off our feet for the night.

“Turn R/L when you get to the brown cow.” This cow sits at a gas station at the intersection of RT 200 and RT 83.

Just a few more vistas to see on the ride home.

So today was spent putting away the rest of the groceries along with cleaning and organizing for the company that is arriving tomorrow. The next week is going to be busy with entertaining our company, work, and our own pre-planned events. It should be interesting for sure.

 

Before ending, just sending a shout out to my youngest brother who is busy back home in PA with the Clinton County Fair this week. Good luck in all your shows, buddy!! Do your best, smile, and you’ll always be a winner in my book! 😀