Hiking to the Snowline on Windy Ridge

Melissa and Dan hiked the basalt covered hill. I also liked that nice flat piece of basalt behind them...It would look really nice in my yard.

I think Bear Grylls said it was ok to drink from natural water sources...didn't he??

Jeanne used her stick to "pole vault" over Blue Creek. Isn't that how Bear did it??

It was windy on Windy Ridge (duh) and mom was using us as a wind break.

Here is the girl picture.


Here is the boy picture

This is a picture of Em and her dogs from the first good look out over the ox-bow. (This is the river formation that gives our little community its' name.)

Dan is overlooking our favorite fishing spot. You can just make out the rock we like to jump from.

Melissa, Emily and Me

I found a piece of column basalt that made a natural bird bath in the top depression. I would love to have this in my yard, but Dan wouldn't carry it home for me :(

Melissa and Dan

This part of the trail was full of goat head stickers. So we had to stop frequently and pick the stickers out of the dogs feet.

This tree was quite pretty. It is a hack berry and looked quite dead, but isn't. It is surprising the shelter it gives underneath. Apparantly it has protected the grasses and plants under it from the frost. Looks like a little eden of spring.

This is the view from the back seat of the truck on the way home......

Except for Sassy, who jumped through the window so she could sit on Emily's lap. What a brat!

Easter Weekend Festivities

Time to color eggs.

Melissa and Dan getting set up for some serious egg coloring.

I had gotten out of my muddy pants and got comfortable. You can't be restricted when you are in the midst of creative genius.

Mom, Lisa, Seth and Cutter(one of the neighbor kids)

The kids make this a legitimate event. It just wouldn't be right for all of us adults to color eggs all afternoon if we weren't "doing it for the kids".

Although we only have one member of the family that is "age eligible" to hunt eggs, we usually end up with about 4 dozen colored eggs. Somethings you just don't out grow!!

This egg says "Dan Rocks". But of course it does.......
Here is the finished product of our efforts. We had some dye that made camouflaged eggs. Have you ever dyed eggs using black dye...some were very.......well, we'll just call them interesting!

Here is a action shot as Seth drops his egg gingerly into the green dye. And if you all didn't know......a Mr Clean Magic Eraser cleans dye from countertops like....Magic!!

We actually had quite a busy day on Saturday. We got in a hike to the snow line on Windy Ridge, then we rushed home to dye eggs then Lisa and Seth had to rush to Halfway for play practice. The Missoula Childrens Theater comes to the school and puts on a play using all the students. This year it was Pied Piper and Seth was a Rat. But we got it all done!

The picture shows Mom, Emily and Lisa.

"Cloudy With A Chance of Crappie:"

As I was looking off the deck this morning (we finally have a sunshiny day although the temp was 30 degrees) I saw something weird shiny in the yard by my flower beds.




So I went down to investigate. It was a crappie! Apparently a bird (could be a bald eagle since they are all moving back in. We have about 4 in the area swooping around) had caught his breakfast and as he was heading for his favorite tree to land in, his slippery tid bit got away....unfortunately for the fish he landed not in the river but in my yard. I am just glad that bald eagles don't catch larger things or else I would have to adopt the attitude of Chicken Little....or at least the latest Movie, but always my favorite book....Cloudy With A Change of Crappie???!!

Spring Break Hike

A group of our friends came down last weekend, when the weather was still pretty nice and we did a hike to McGraw Creek and had a picnic. It was Emily's spring break and we had a great time hunting for rocks, and roasting marshmallows.

A Time To Plant....

It's time to get the seeds started here on the river. Terry is out in his 'New' garden shed with his plant starts.

The shed is a 'recycle' from Emilys house in Boise. Terry 'pimped' it out by adding a window to turn it into a hot house. It is glorious in there this time of year. The temp averages about 90 during the day time sunny hours, but still gets down to low 30's over night. This summer it will probably spontaneously combust with all the sunlight that will go through that huge window to heat that little bitty space!! I will keep you all posted.

.calling all geologists.....huhhh???

As we were hiking on the very top of the ridge, there was a grassy flat area that had all these sink holes in it.

There is a whole are that looked as if a giant had made footprints in the soft earth...
The thing is, the grass is not dug out from the hole, and it is undisturbed except that it is sunken. Could it be a form of pingo? It's just a really weird area to have something this is frost heave related........very puzzling indeed.

March Hike on the Mountain

After Church today, we decided to take a hike on top of Windy Ridge to see how far the trail is open and also to look for elk shed (the elk lose their antlers and they are fun to go find). We loaded the dogs and headed for the top of the hill. This shot is a self portrait to show the beautiful snow capped hills all around us. We had fairly good trails but the north facing areas still had almost knee deep snow in spots.
Hazel is my hiking companion. She is a Wild Dog!!
Terry and Ally are on top of a rocky knoll to spot stuff with their binoculars. We decided to walk the ridge instead of the north facing snow covered trail.
I used my camera timer to get the whole hiking party in the picture