I did it

30 posts in 30 days

I may not be able to get a fancy button from NaBloPoMo to put on my blog but I did it.

Advent

I was going to just write about how this is November 30 and the last day of NaBloPoMo and unless I counted wrong I did it and posted every day of the month.

Instead my daughter posted a Blog on Advent here that rather blew me away and has me rethinking what I am going to do for Christmas this year. It started many years ago when my brother gave to the Heifer Project in our names instead of giving us gifts that we didn't really need. I have since given donations to The Nature Conservancy in his honor for projects I thought he would appreciate. Or to my favorite local Conservancy here in Leelanau County Michigan.

So although no one else is likely to read this Blog post. I will echo Tandaina's sentiments and those she quoted

"Christmas has become obscene" and I vow to spend more Lenten time rethinking the useless little dodads I am inclined to give family members just because it is expected of me. Just maybe I will take my brother's and daughter's examples and words to heart this Christmas. It is time I set an example especially for our God Sons.

Almost to the end of November

One more post after this one, to make it to the end of NoBloPoMo or whatever I have been striving to achieve with a blog post every day of the month. It has been a challenge sometimes. I work late tonight so this one is going to be a quickie.

It is a cold blowy day here and DDHH is out in the woods again trying to bring home the Venison. He has had a very disappointing hunt. His spot which in past years has presented large numbers of deer walking by every day has offered almost none. He has seen two deer, neither offering a good shot or possible shot.

So instead of a long post finishing the travel log I searched my photo library and offer up a couple of pictures for today. Here is a Junco by my feeder and a bit of summer promise on this cold blustery day.

AKKKKKK

forgot to post - watched a movie instead
Jump out of bed
run upstairs
boot up the computer
akk no glasses cant see what I am doing

POST

whew made it

Travel Log Continued - not quite finished.

I don't know about you but I am getting tired of writing this thing. I should finish it though.

When I last left this project we were in the southern Bighorhn Mountains of northern Wyoming. The Bighorns run north and south at about the middle of Wyoming and just slightly up into Montana. There are two highways that cross them from east to west. In the south US 16 leaves Buffalo Wyoming and runs over the peaks and down the other side to Ten Sleeps and then into the Bighorn Basin. This was where we first attempted towing in the mountains. I have previous posts about camping at Middle Fork Campground in the Bighorn National Forest and the pictures are here.

There will be more about the northern route through the Bighorns, US 14 and US 14A when we return to the Bighorns at the northern, steeper end of the range.

On leaving the southern part of the mountains we traveled down to Ten sleep and then paralleled the mountains north to Grey Bull where where we headed west through the Bighorn Basin here on US 14 headed for Cody. At Grey Bull there is a large collection of old WWII aircraft mostly bombers and tankers that were until recently used for fire fighting. Again we were down at low enough altitude for it to be hot. Husband wanted to get to some mountains in Montana but most of them were a long way to the west and north, far from where we were to pick Duncan up in about 10 days. It was suggested to us by a couple we met, who were also camping in an Airstream at Middle Fork, that the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum in Cody Wyoming was worth a couple of days time. Then we could go straight up US 212 into the Beartooth mountains and into Montana. This US 212 is the same highway we took across the Indian reservation in South Dakota.

We found a full hookup campground within walking distance of the museum and settled in for a couple of days. We spent a day and a half in the museum, did several loads of laundry, went shopping at the local Wal-Mart, and took time to drive back east to Lovell to visit Duncan just a week before we were to pick him up. In Lovell we found the Queen Bee candy company. They make the most divine honey praline candy and organic chocolate bon-bons. All organic and made from the Bighorn basin honey. Much of the basin is irrigated to raise Alfalfa hay and as a result lots of wonderful alfalfa honey. The bee hives are the oddest arrangement I have ever seen. We kept seeing them as we drove through the Basin and were completely puzzled by them until we finally stopped and took a closer look at them. Sure enough my eventual suspicions were verified by seeing honey bees flying in and out of the open boxes.

If you look at a map of Wyoming and Montana, Yellowstone National Park jumps out at you. Hard up against the east side of Yellowstone are the Beartooth Mountains. US 212 runs through Red Lodge over the Beartooth Pass and then down the other side and into the east entrance of Yellowstone Park. U.S. 212 (pictures here) has been written about as the most beautiful highway in America. It was beautiful and a good bit scary to drive in parts. That was the farthest west we ventured this year, to the Beartooth West summit at 10,547 feet. Then we turned around and went back to our campground at Greenough Lake (pictures here). We stayed from August 1 - 5. This is the only place we met bears. One came into camp a couple of times. One night he visited us and stood up on both sides of "White One" to take a look in. Thankfully he only walked past the trailer. There are strictly enforced guidelines for campers in place to prevent the invitation of bears and the possibility of their habituation to people. "A FED BEAR IS A DEAD BEAR" were signs all over the campgrounds. We were told that two had been shot earlier in the summer because they had become habituated to invading campgrounds and breaking into cabins. Like the Bighorn Mountains these mountains also had Alpine Meadow tops that we walked upon but here there were more mountains visible with rocky peaks, more like what you think of when you think of western mountains. From the summit we could look west into the Yellowstone. And like Middle Fork Campground in the Bighorns we had a very nice river running through the campground behind the campsite.

From the campground at Greenough Lake we drove 8 miles up the valley on a "road" that paralleled US 212 part way, but along beside the busy river. It was little better than a two track though amazingly heavily used. Much of it was more rocks than dirt. It ended at a large improved parking lot which was at the foot of a walking trail up the mountain to a pair of small fishing lakes. We then spent three hours climbing up that trail but never reached the lakes. Even so we had wonderful vistas looking back down the valley and climbed to where the trail crossed the river on a lovely foot bridge. Here again the hand labor involved in hauling and building is to be commended. There are pictures of this trail also in the Beartooth album.

Our next stop was the last National Forest Campground of this month long trip. The northern Bighorns, Medicine Circle, picking up Duncan, and the return home will be the last installment of this travel log. I have yet to create the album for the Cody Museum and the Northern Bighorns.

POST

GOD BE PRAISED!

Travel log continues.

This is where I left you the last time. We had just taken a walk up the valley to explore the road that ran through camp, and continued to a wooded ridge top where we could look down on a cattle trough. We also had the revelation that the Elk we were seeking were not having digestion problems. All the large "elk" pies were indeed cow pies and we were on open range - DOH we were no longer in Michigan we still needed to think "out west".

On another day we took "White One" exploring and found the road that lead back to that same water trough. Now instead of exploring in a valley we were on the ridge above. The views were those mountain top views that will never become mundane to me.















Another day we went exploring for a dispersed camping site and drove across my favorite stretch of road. All along the fence line were flocks of Mountain Blue Birds, my first sighting of these little pieces of azure sky in their feathered forms. There were Mule or Black Tailed deer everywhere. Not the flighty nervous types like our eastern White Tails. These deer stood beside the road and watched us go by. We spotted a Pronghorn or two and a large flock of Crows.















I specially love the tops of the mountains we visited. Though I might call myself a tree hugger in a different sense of the usual term I loved the mountain scenery above tree line. you can see for miles either to other mountains or just across these alpine meadows that undulated against the sky. It is hard to describe in words the feeling of these places. I love the Northern Hardwood forests of Michigan and the Big Lakes and the dunes that shoulder up against them. Michigan is not flat, it also undulates very much like the prairies and the alpine meadows but their undulations are hidden by the dense forest growth. The mountains, especially these alpine meadows have a sense of "distance"? - I do not know the word or words that describe a sensation I have never felt anywhere else. Somehow maybe altitude, even when you are not looking down but across, creates that sense of awe and space that seems to go on forever.

There are more pictures on my Picasa Album.

Family

I was having a terrible time thinking of something to write for today - two days after Thanksgiving - so I was just poking around in my old photos and came across some pictures of family gatherings. These are of our immediate family and of DDHH's family. My only remaining family is a brother in Missouri. When I married into this family it was huge by my standards. Husband's Father's family consisted of 9 brothers and sisters and all their children and grandchildren. We were of a "mature" age when we married and most of the cousins of our generation already had children.

Now there are only the two youngest siblings of my Father-In-Law still living. One lives near enough to see her several times a year at family gatherings, the other is 1/2 the country away and not in good health so we have not seen him in a number of years. I guess that means we should be going to him instead of expecting him to come to us.

I remember being so thankful for this large family when I married into it. They were a large welcoming clan for someone who had grown up with very little family. Growing up I had one living grandparent and no Aunts and Uncles. My father had three first cousins that we called Aunt and Uncle out of respect for their age. But they lived far away and we were lucky to see them once a year at best. There were some children - what does that make them to me, maybe second cousins once removed or something like that? They were much older than my brother and I and had children our ages. I have since lost track off all of them and their offspring.

Now looking at recent family pictures we who were the younger generation are now the older generation. A full generation has nearly passed in the twinkling of an eye. What good memories I have of that generation, the Greatest Generation they were, some veterans of WWII, with stories to tell. The Oldest sister was an Army Nurse who served behind the lines landing at Dunkirk shortly after D Day. The middle brother nearest in age to my Father-In-Law was a reconnaissance pilot flying in both theaters and then stayed in the Air Force after the war. He flew everything from P-38s to all the bombers including the B-17 and B-29, and ended his career holding altitude records in the U-2. One brother served in the Navy. The youngest sister was a school teacher who idolized her oldest sister. One sister married a dentist. The oldest brother was a fine finish carpenter. My Father-In-Law could fix anything by just sitting with a cup of coffee and thinking about it for a while. He was a gifted Tool Maker who refused to be without work. During one strike he took Mom all the way to the other side of the continent. The first day in California he walked out the door with his tool box and came back in the evening after a full day of work at a job he stayed with until the strike was over and they could go home.

I did not know all of the brothers and sisters. Some had died before I met DDHH and some we did not often see. As with all families, large and small there is some unhappiness. But I am thankful for that large family I married into and for those cousins that we still see at different family gatherings. Our immediate family is extended also because DDHH is one of four siblings, three of whom live close to home in the same county. And we are doubly blessed because three of our collective five children live here too.


Here is DDHH holding his Sister's granddaughter.















Here is DDHH's father's youngest Sister who with her brother are the last two of the "older" generation.

And I have a picture of the three girls that are part of our "collective" children, which I mentioned above, but I will not post it unless they say it is ok - so I may add it later.

So two days after Thanksgiving I am still thinking of the blessings of a large extended family.

Black Friday?

Not me. You will not find me shopping the day after Thanksgiving unless it is on line from the comfort of my Internet connection.

After the snow and cold rain of yesterday it was a beautiful sunny day. I played with my camera in the showy yard and the dog played in the snow. I made a leisurely job of baking a batch of butter-egg-rolls, picked up the clutter on the kitchen counters, rehung some pictures and crosses on the kitchen and Living room walls, edited some pictures on my computer, and baked a pumpkin custard.

I should be continuing my travel log. but I will instead upload, tonight, another set of pictures to my Picasa web album.

So for today here are a few of the pictures I took today in the cold, snowy, sun.

Thanksgiving Day

We woke to SNOW on everything this morning. It was a shock at first even though it had beed predicted but it sure is pretty.



Duncan loved the snow. He ran in circles and then nipped at the snow with his front teeth.


This is fun I am at daughter's house, both daughters are cooking while I am playing with daughter #1's Mac and DDHH is playing on her PC. Quite a treat that we can both be on line at the same time and it is hight speed.

Thanksgiving Eve

Not getting much done today but fussing around with my Picasa web albums. It is cold and raining and I am not even looking forward to going riding.

I think Duncan is enjoying his day inside the house instead of stuck in the run. He is following me around. It is very hard to take pictures of him because as soon as you put a camera up he wants to know what it is and has to investigate.

There he finally decided to stay put for a short lie down. So here is Duncan at six month and about 10 days on a rainy November day.


Here is Duncan about a month ago on a sunny October day in his run. Actually it was Lady's run built originally for her and then her 1/2 sister Magic joined her two years later. Now we have Duncan - and we call him Mr Magic because he looks a lot like her. But we are finding Goldens or maybe just dogs are a lot alike. We see Magic and Lady behavior appearing more and more. DeJavous.


so here is today's post.

I don't know how she does it

My daughter, Tandaina was saying that she had so much to do and so little time. She writes a lot, seems to be able to read a good deal, meditate and pray, and works full time. Plus had time for church things, goes riding and takes pictures sometimes. I don't know how she does it.

I write a little, and read almost nothing, and only work part time. I do church stuff, go riding and take a few pictures. And yet she gets so much more done than I. Can it be that she has high speed internet and I have a very slow modem on dial up???

Or maybe she wasted less time just poking around on the internet and playing solitaire.


Oh well I have to give up trying to keep up with a daughter on fire and 32 years younger than I - opps I told how old I was when she was born. So does that me older than dirt? heheeh

Today was a not unpleasant, mostly gray, day with some sun and really pleasant temperatures for a ramble outside around the yard with camera in hand. Even though it is almost Thanksgiving there is still a lot of color in the yard. And just a touch of sun will accent the softer hues.

Thinking of one another

I don't often drink the coffee at church coffee hour because usually there is only powdered creamer - NOT the same thing as even liquid soy creamer. Yesterday there was a carton of 1/2 and 1/2 sitting by the coffee pot. Hooray! I enjoyed that cup of coffee with cream because the coffee is good coffee. When I went in search of the gal that had provided the treats for coffee hour in order to thank her for the cream she said "oh yes - I remembered Uluwene likes the real thing". It is the small things we do for one another that make our church family very special.

Course for this lady thinking of others comes naturally. She and her husband have adopted 6 kids from the same family, and it has not been a picnic. These kids were very much special needs kids, smart but damaged by their abusive natural parents. Oh yes and then a couple of years ago they took on another little boy from another abusive situation. All of these children from families that truly were neighbors - they lived on the same street. The children used to come to this family and spent more and more time with them, including regularly attending church, until they first became foster children and then were adopted.

Thank the Lord for loving hearts.

Worship

Last Sunday there was live music for worship. It was very energizing. Then for the last hymn they used one of my favorite songs from a contemporary praise album. I lost it. There I was, the dull old traditionalist who wants hymns from the old traditional hymnal incorporated into our worship services, rocking back and forth and GASP, dare I admit, actually raising one arm and - oh groan, blush - waving it around. What a spectical I made of myself right there in the front row.

And to top it off at bell choir practice the next day it was publicly commented on by one of the worship committee members. How embarrassing - she had noticed my loss of control.

Later in the week I confessed my embarrassment to my daughter who would never raise even one hand a little bit in worship, and breathes Traditional Anglican Worship. Her unexpected response was to ask "why embarrassed?" "Let yourself be moved by worship as the soul leads. No reason to be embarrassed."

Then this morning I was determined to control myself - no shows from this "frozen chosen" Anglican in the front row. So I stood stock still, not even my usual gentle rocking to the rhythm. Ohh the treachery of my own eyes. I could not control the tears. I wept through the hymns.

My soul WILL sing and refuses to be held in abeyance.

Praise God.

FONTS

This is an experiment to see what the difference is = Georgia
Lucida Grande
Courier
Times
Trebuchet
Verdana
Webdings
Which do I like best
hmmm what is Font?

I sort of like Trebuchet, if for no other reason because of the name - not sure it is spelled the same way but it at least reminds me of a Medieval siege engine that threw things over fortifications - wall of forts or castles.

Ha after research I am correct Trebuchet is a siege engine invented by the Chinese.
On second thought not such a good thing to be enamored with, though the physics of the thing was pretty amazing.

Ok well lets see what Verdana looks like and do a web search for this name. Just for the heck of it. Bah just a type face invented by an employee of Microsoft.

Those were not so different what does Lucida Grande look like - more delicate - Well what do you know this one is a font created for MAC OX - If I want to use this one I will have to watch out for the - - - what do you call this window I am typing in? It wants to switch back to Georgia today.

So the question becomes which is easier to read this Georgia looks a lot like the Lucida Grande - /shrug. Oh well I can switch depending on my mood.

and here is more drivel for NoBloPoMo today.

The real thing, I think.

The real NoBloPoMo post for today, I think

Poor DDHH no Venison for the larder again today. His hunting spot became so crowded on this Friday afternoon that he has given up on the weekend. Tomorrow he goes to fix Tandaina's clothes dryer. The daughters have been coming to our house to do laundry for a couple of months now so that will be a welcome help.

I did get the pictures of the Bighorn basin posted in my Picasa Web album the other day, but it has been so long now since August that I am loosing track of just exactly where the pictures were taken. We traveled across and up and down the Bighorn basin several times. First from the southern Bighorn mountains north through Greybull then west and north across the valley to Cody Wyoming at the foot of the Beartooth mountains. We spent three days in Cody, visiting the Buffalo Bill Cody museum, making a trip back east without the "Silver Dog House" across the basin to visit Duncan the week before we picked him up, and doing laundry. Then we went north and west into Montana and the Beartooth Mountains where we stayed several days. Those pictures are yet to be uploaded. Then we returned from the north and down the east side of the basin to US 14 and up into the northern Bighorn mountains. There we would visit the Medicine Wheel and try the steep long slopes down US 14A without the trailer behind us. Back into Lovell to buy more of the wonderful honey candy from Queen Bee Candy Co. Then back up 14A to our camp. The next day, from there back down to Lovell to collect Duncan and back up to camp again. If it sounds convoluted it was but we were constantly unsure of our ability to haul the trailer up and down the steep slopes so part of the loops were a result of avoiding 14 A with the trailer. As a result I have lost track of where and when a lot of the pictures were taken.

Oh well. I have a general idea, I know Beartooth from Bighorn and basin from mountain top. To anyone else reading these posts it probably doesn't matter.

The travel log will continue - when I get to it.


For the future here is a peek of the top of the world in Montana.

Test post

I logged on here at 7:37 PM we will see how long it takes to post this with my slow connection.

arrgg I hate it when you are trying to correct spelling and the picture you just spent 10 minutes uploading disappears.




Ok the picture is back at 7:51 pm. I am not kidding that is how long it has taken me to write these few words and upload this picture twice.

pant pant

With my dear deer hunting husband - hmmm my DDHH - new nickname - in the woods this morning I had to run the dog around the house - was good exercise - kept my heart rate up for about 1/2 an hour and got us both some exercise. We just ran rings around the house well ran and walked. but it worked.

This is probably all for today since I have to work from noon to 8:00 pm, and now I need to go grocery shopping - - - - - - - and this dial up connection is so slow it just makes me - ummm frustrated to the Nth degree what ever that means.

opening day

My dear deer hunter is going hunting tomorrow morning. The first time he has been able to go on opening day in over 28 years. All other firearms openings he had to work. Funny thing, if you love the outdoors, and wildlife, and hunting, and want to work for a state game department, you don't get to hunt very much. This year is different. While I write this he is abed early. The alarm is set for 3:15 am. I will go back to bed.

Lake Huron

The best part of the "retreat" of which we attended only part of on Saturday was the location. It was at a church, I think maybe Methodist, retreat center. There was a large two story dorm building with a two story sitting room on the main floor. There was a gas fireplace and large windows that looked out over Lake Huron.

There was a dining hall which had also had a wall of glass looking out over the lake, and we met in the chapel which faced east, and had a large window over the Altar also looking out over the lake.


We were not able to attend the Friday night session of the retreat because we could not leave our puppy overnight and pets were not welcome. So we arrived for breakfast Saturday morning and participated - more watched and listened- to the Saturday events. Probably because we had missed the Friday night session I don't think we got a lot out of it.

The title was Spiritual Freedom Weekend. But I found it rather depressing. They were talking about spiritual Strongholds - mindsets and habits that we develop that control, dictate and influence our attitudes and behavior, oppress and discourage us, filter and color how we view or react to situations, circumstances, or people. We were handed a list of types of Strongholds with lists of habitual behaviors we were to check off. As one of the other retreat members said "mine is black" because so many were checked. Fr Jack kept saying don't become discouraged - - -but it was just a way of checking off all your bad habits - - - heck the list was depressing.

Oh well the lake was pretty and we enjoyed a couple of walks along the beach. And the food was good.