Latest developments from the land of the West… 06/2001
A lot has happened since my last update to the website. A new home, new dog, and new 4 wheeler are several of the changes. We purchased our home roughly one year ago now. Brand new rancher on 5 acres of land. No landscaping had been done so we work at that a good deal of the time. There seems no end to the work you could do. I have installed a single run of sprinklers that cover a good bit of the front lawn and plan on installing more as time and money permit. Also built a firepit in the back yard. We enjoy going out and lighting a small fire once every couple of weeks.
Stephanie has been busy planting flowers in the yard. She has 2 big flower beds that eat up much of her time. She also mows quite often as we seeded more lawn than we should have. In addition to the flower gardens, she has a vegetable garden that is doing pretty well. Brooke helped her to plant it. I recently built a large bird condominium which will be another project trying to get it in the air. I’m still unsure what it’s going to take to get it up on a pole! :-) Steph spends what little free time she finds to read. She seems to really enjoy it. She has been trying to get out more on horses as well. One of the women I work with has a couple of horses and has let her ride a couple times. I prefer the 4 wheeler myself!
Brooke has become a pretty good driver on the 4 wheeler and I expect that she’ll be desperately bugging her grandparents up north to ride theirs. She has a friend that lives next to us that has a 4 wheeler and they like to go out and ride. She’s still nuts about animals and wants to spend all her time helping baby birds or lost gophers. :-) Gus helps her out in finding all of these wonders of nature! He digs ands snorts and digs and snorts and looks like a little pig with a totally black head when he’s finished. The soil is very black around here and when he digs it just covers him. Brooke is officially in grade 5 now! Time seems to be flying and she is growing right along with it. She wears a size 8 women's shoe. It’s scary as she and her Mom are starting to swap shoes as they need them! She even drove the old ’77 pickup for the first time this summer and NO she didn’t need blocks or a phone book or anything else… She did it all by herself and did quite well.
I’ve been hiking off and on. Have a few pics to show for it. One long hike was in to a place called South Chilco. It’s about 5 miles back in the woods. Gus and I hiked it on Memorial Day this year. Got some killer pics of Gus on that trip. One in particular came out very well, here’s the link... When Jerrod came out in the middle of June to pick Brooke up for her summer visit back East, we hiked to North Chilco and took a couple of pics. While there, we built a rock fortress of sorts about 4 ½ feet high and 6 feet in diameter at the top of a rock slide on the side of the mountain. This pic shows Steph, Gus, Brooke and Jerrod peeking over the edge… We ride the 4 wheeler often and use it heavily around the yard. It is a great workhorse of a machine. We’ve got out several times with the neighbors riding and often take off from the house to ride for an hour or so. When Jerrod came out we spent one evening running around some of the roads and trails near home. I borrowed the neighbors machine (thanks Dennis) and Jerrod rode ours. Also think that the Jimmy is new since I last wrote. There's pics of it on my home page under pics of Jimmy. 1989 GMC Jimmy with small lift kit.
Planning a trip to the St Joe River on Monday of next week. Fishing is supposed to be very good. I’m going to meet a buddy who’s staying down there camping and we’re gonna try and hit the upper section of the river. I’ve fished it several times and done OK. I took an 18” Rainbow this spring fishing in the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River and caught my first “fry” of Crappie in Twin Lakes, not far from home. Good Eats!
If you’ve made it this far, let me know what you thought of the pictures… I might try to do updates more frequently if I thought anyone was paying attention. At least I say I would… Anyhow… Typing fingers (all 2 of them) are sick of typing, so over and out!
“TR”
