A Day in the Tobacco Roots

If you will all swear yourselves to secrecy, I will tell you where we went yesterday.  No telling until I get an oath because I'm not telling anyone else but family.

We four wheeled to about a half mile to a high mountain lake.  It's elevation was close to 9000 feet.    

Before arriving at the lake, we investigated a high mountain meadow with elk hoof prints and flowers.  The importance of this meadow is that it was there I discovered that I own a macro lens for my camera.  For seven years I've owned a lens that said super wide angle on one part and macro on another.  I could easily tell the lens was a wide angle.  The macro part made zero sense to me.  Who ever heard of a wide agle macro lens?  Yesterday, knowing it couldn't possibly work,  I put my camera about two inches from a flower yesterday and found that the macro part was for real.  This is superb!!!

Anyway, back to the outing.  The high lake had flowers, fish, and rock slides.  I mentioned to Wilbur that the map showed other lakes above the first lake we hiked into.  Being slightly deranged, I suggested to Wilbur that we take the short way to the higher lake:  around the lake, across the rock slide, up a hill that was a pile of rocks with a stream running down it that is almost a waterfall.  The hill was only a breath away from needing rock climbing equipment.  

In the middle of the rock slide, I decided I made a big mistake.  But having talked Wilbur into it, he insisted we continue.  Two hours later, we arrived at the higher lakes.  They were smaller, but even more fabulous!   

Dreading the trip down, we walk a little to the right and found an old road that was not very rocky. Using this road, it took only fifteen minutes to descend to the lower lake.  Next time, I'm investigating more before picking a route, particularly in country filled with mines.

I am posting a few picture here.  There are more on my hiking blog.

On Perfection

There is a lady in my social circle who irritates me because I think she abuses any authority she thinks she has.  Recently, she called up several sisters and told them that, contrary to the General Handbook of Instructions, a phone call or letter was no longer acceptable and would not be counted as visiting teaching. Hence forth, only personal visits would be counted.  This individual is not the RS President but has some involvement with Visiting Teaching.   Later, I got a phone call from a person in the Presidency informing me that phone calls, emails, and letters would be counted as Visiting Teaching.  I guess the word got out about the unauthorized policy change, so the RS President had to repair things.

Since I've been hot, tired, and cranky, I was stewing about the gall of this authority-abusing person.    "Who  in tarnation does she think she is?"  I fumed.  Then, I thought about how often I've been mortified in retrospect with my own actions.  I shake my head and wonder, "Was I crazy?  Why did I do something so ridiculous?"  I'm sure my goofy behavior has afforded an abundance of entertainment for others.

I started to laugh as I thought about the humorous aspects of the current situation and other situations involving this person.  I contemplated a perfect world with perfect people.  Holy Smoke! How dull!  There goes half my entertainment!  I guess I'm not ready for perfect people or a perfect world yet.

Fourth of July Visitors

The whole thing is very illogical, but maybe I don't have all the facts.  We have had several years of very dry winters and miserable fire seasons.  Fourth of July fireworks have never been banned, even when I thought they should be.  Maybe because of a late June fire a few miles to the north, or maybe because officials are wising up, we could not have fireworks this year.  Permitted professional fire works shows could take place, though.

Our fourth of July visitors attended a Parade in Great Falls and showed up here in the afternoon with flags and fans.  We drove our truck to a tall hill and put lawn chairs in the back while we watched a fabulous fireworks display in a town five miles away.  It was terrific!

Then Boris prepared to go to some training.  When I go to training, I sit in the conference room of a hotel try to stay awake for six hours.  Boris' training is a little different than that. 

On Saturday, Eglantine, Peanut, Casper, and I shopped at the farmers market.  After Casper's nap, we played on a sandbar in the creek with buckets and shovels until a flash of lighting and a crack of thunder directly overhead scared the living daylights out of us. We ran for it!

Sunday we attended church and had our tradition chili for lunch.  During lunch, Peanut imparted following information about his sister:

Peanut:  Our baby will want a costume.

Eglantine:   What kind of costume do you think she will want?

Peanut:  She will want a batman costume!

Hope everyone had a great 4th!

Fishing Excuses

We floated the Blackfoot yesterday and I made the mistake of attempting to fish.  I am the kind of angler you see once in a century.  I lost two lures, one right after another.  Then, I ran out a 150 feet  fishing line off Wilbur’s reel and into the river.   I wrapped line all the way around the raft twice and around the oar and oar lock when the raft went into a spin and I couldn’t reel in.  Let’s face it, I should only fish under Wilbur’s strict supervision.  And he’ll only supervise if I bribe him with cookies. Dave caught a fish near the end of the trip, so we know there are fish in the river.  

Below are only a few of the reasons we came up with for not-so-great fishing.

1)  The moon is not in the right phase.


2)  All the fish are on the other side of the river.


3)  The water is too clear.

4)  The water is too muddy

5)  It's too early in the day.

6)  It's too late in the day

7)  I brought the wrong pole.

8)  I brought the wrong bait.

9)  The fish are napping.

10)  Jehovah's Witnesses are tracting the river, and the fishing are hiding out.