Back to School
Today is Labor Day and luckily that's almost over. Which means everyone can drag their RVs and campers and 4 wheelers and boats back home for the winter and do the things that Americans do in the winter like drink pop and watch TV. It also means that Zia went back to school last week. She's a first grader this year. So far she is enjoying her class, and we get information in bits and pieces like usual. Lincoln is sad that he can't go to school yet. He's pretty sure it's time.
Some things are getting done around the house. The roofing stuff is mostly done save for a skylight, some gutters and chimney-area roofing but I don't know how we'll get the roofers back out. We fixed some of the cracking on the front deck as best we could and repainted the whole thing - something we were waiting to do until the new roof got put on since the old one leaked all over the porch. This week I'm going to start reinsulating the attic and the carpeting in the auxiliary dining room/craft room is getting ripped up and replaced with wood flooring, which will be messy and annoying for at least a week.
The shelf in the closet is really stuck a foot above the ground too. Here's another picture of that. I'm sure the flooring guy will have a great sense of humor about that like everyone else around here.
We drove to Gillette one day to visit some new babies. We saw Candice's new baby at the park, and then we were godparents at Elam's baptism. Lincoln was awful at the baptism, but good at the lunch afterwards. It's funny how kids always make you look like bad parents no matter what you do.
In Gillette I visited a strange park full of abandoned mine equipment.
Lincoln spent some quality time at the park. He can really work the digger now. Sometimes he even manages to not pinch his fingers nearly off.
We drove to Red Lodge and spent the weekend with my parents there. Even though it got really cold we managed to get a hike in inbetween storms. We walked up to Mystic Lake, sat and had a sandwich and turned around and walked down because it was too cold to do anything else.
The hike goes through a forest and then up switchbacks up this rocky area.
Mountain butthole.
When we got to the lake it was nice.
For about 10 minutes. And then a storm came in and started making weird wind patterns on the lake.
Near the bottom of the trail the river flows through a rock channel that makes all sorts of neat waterfalls and sluices.
The lake has a hydro-electric plant from the 1920s. How would you like to ride the tram down those tracks?
And lastly, some pictures of the sky. That rainstorm really swept across the land.
Falls, Roof
We've done some repeated activities the last few weeks. There was a fishing derby at the small fishing pond in Ranchester one morning and we returned there for another morning trip. The fish are tiny bluegills. Literally so small that we brought one home and it's living in our fishtank, terrorizing the goldfish.
We've been hiking in the mountains several times too. It's too hot to do anything down here in the valley, but in the mountains it's tolerable at least. We've been back to Sibley Lake a few times and visited Porcupine Falls. The hike to the falls is short but extremely steep and at a fairly high altitude. Lincoln had to be carried. I was told that there are fish in the lake below the falls but I didn't catch any.
The little rainbow trout that come out of Sibley Lake (Zia took these pictures).
"Fishing" with the kids. Lincoln falls and hurts himself a lot.
At Porcupine Falls. There's an old miner's camp downstream from the falls. Not much left though: just an old stove, some rusty cans, a rusty barrel.
Zia found a perfectly round pile of dirty foam spinning in a little pool.
The hike back up. I didn't think we were going to make it.
A Lincoln-sized tree.
Will Fisher came to visit.
First he and Zia checked out the shopping in Ranchester.
Will helped with a day of watching the kids and then we went on some walks the second day. We walked to Bucking Mule Falls, on the wrong trail (maybe it was the back road?) it turned out, but we luckily got to the falls anyway. Bucking Mule Falls are far away, across a very deep canyon, but still nice. The pictures don't really do it justice. The overlook is some rocks jutting out with vertical drops of over a thousand feet on every side.
After walking to Bucking Mule, we walked down to Porcupine Falls as well.
The process of having our house reroofed is finally almost done. It took two weeks of 5 guys up there banging around starting at 6:30 AM. There were mishaps (like the dump trailer getting parked on the flower bed and the dump trailer breaking up a bunch of flagstones under the trellis), but overall it looks good. One of the old skylights was replaced and a replacement for the other one is coming soon. There were some very busy days with roofers and electricians showing up.
And here are a few more drawings. It almost looks like I'm getting something done. Don't be fooled though. Oh, and the drawing a couple of weeks ago wasn't of the grasshoppers around here! Heh.
End of July
Last weekend was Dayton Days. Dayton, a town of 700, tries to have a 4 day festival every summer and has for over 30 years. I think it's more or less successful. There's a parade that's easier to go to than the parade in Sheridan. Lincoln was worried about how loud all the police cars and firetrucks were.
Here's an example of a typical "float."
Jesus was there too.
Zia rode on the Community Center float. If you know where to look you might be able to see her in this picture. She's ducking to avoid the water.
There have been a lot of thunderstorms lately. They don't happen during the day. They only blow through exactly as I'm falling asleep. Last night as I was falling asleep the power went out, the generator came on and I had to get up and close everything up and go out and turn the generator off.
It's also been hot. Sometimes the kids get to go swimming in the afternoon. Lincoln does different kinds of jumps into the pool. He does "volcano" jumps, "rocket" jumps and "airplane" jumps. They all look the same.
Here are a couple of misc. Lincoln pictures from the week. Maybe some blackmail in there, I don't know.
This weekend we drove up to a lodge on the mountain to celebrate Amber's grandma's 90th birthday. It was also a family reunion for that side of the family. The kids played all day in the lake and took canoe rides. I didn't take any pictures all day until about 4 PM, when Lincoln showed me what he'd been doing all day. He was making "Krabby Patties" from the brown rocks he was finding in the water.
Uncle Ian always falls asleep. In this picture Lincoln isn't asleep. He's pretending to be Ian.
Here's what back to school shopping looks like around here:
Here's Boomer! Did you know that he has a new website? Please visit Catstackers.com to check it out! So far you all have been disappointing me by not submitting any pictures.
I've been doing some drawings. I think I'll just do drawings for awhile. I can do them faster, about one a week, so I can clear out all the ideas that I've had in my notebook for 5 years. The first one is a redrawing of the painting I posted last week. The second one is of a mystery subject. See if you can figure out what it is.
