Fall

How's that for a creative title?

This is my favorite time of year.  The leaves are gorgeous, the air is crisp and there's lots to do!  Emily and I took the horses camping last weekend up to Idaho City.  What a blast!  We cleaned out the horse trailer Questionable Decision and threw the air mattress in there and it worked out perfectly.  It rained like a sominabeach on Friday night and we stayed nice and dry.  Got up early Saturday morning, packed a lunch (sandwiches and heated up some homemade broccoli cheese soup and put it in a thermos, and filled another thermos with hot chocolate), dressed ourselves and the horses up in bright orange (hunting season) and headed out.  I didn't take many photos, and the ones I did take were with my phone, so it doesn't do anything any justice.  I gave my nice DSLR camera to my son this year, as he is way more into the technical end of photography than I am and he uses the camera the way it was intended to be used.  (And recently just transferred into a photography position at his job, and he's stoked!)  The deal is ... he is going to be buying me a nice point and shoot for my saddle bags.  So until then ... it's my lousy phone photos.

 

 

It was gorgeous every direction you turned.  

The colors were amazing.  Again, there was no chance my phone was going to capture what we saw.

 

We got back to camp, got cleaned up and went into town for dinner and some drinks.  The bars there are kinda fun.  The next morning, we were slow getting up, but we packed up, saddled up and took the horses for a nice leisurely stroll through town and up to the old cemetery.  That was very interesting.  We rode back through town, and it's funny how many people were taking photos of us.  Horses!  Walking right thru town!  No way!  I even said to one woman, "Isn't it great how the town pays us to walk around with the horses to add to the ambiance of Idaho City?"  And she said, "Yes! I think it's great!"  Too funny.  Sunday is definitely tourist day up there.  

 Anyway, the Cowboy Campground is awesome.  I wish there were more campground with corrals in them.  In fact, what I'd like to find now are some local places that have nice, warm cabins with corrals.  Yeah yeah ... lots of luck.  I know.

My sister called me.  She is coming up for Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Bill.  Justin is going to come join us, and we're going to figure out a way to do some family portraits.  Since there's not many of us left, I'm pretty excited to have photos like that -- especially done by Justin. 

So yeah ... my sister's coming.  You know what that means?  I'll be cleaning this house from now until two minutes before she gets here!  Aaaaaccckkk!  I have SO much to do!  The outside is a mess, and the inside is worse.  I still have tons and tons of branches that need to be cut up and tossed out so I can get the driveway area cleaned up.  Oh, I also bought a pipe hitching rail from a guy on Craigslist.  It's actually part of the frame from an old swing set, but it will work perfectly for what I need it for, so I would like to get that in the ground, too.   Need to get some lettering for the QD and get that done as well.  Every time I take it somewhere, it looks so naked!

I'd better get busy! Have a great weekend!

Sanders Border Collies

Here is a link to a blog about Randy Sanders, Sanders Border Collies, the result of a month worth of complaints about his place, and photos taken at that time.

SANDERS' FILTH

It is sad that he was able to operate for so long under these conditions.  I am glad the authorities have finally taken a little notice.  I hope they are able to either get this place up to snuff, or shut him down altogether.  The photos of the dogs just breaks my heart.  It is worse than I imagined all these years. 

Busy Weekend ...

Saturday morning, I got up and went out back and started chopping away.  I initially started that project to trim the dead branches that are hanging into Kahlua's stall (the old pig pen), but that part is still not done.  Lots of other stuff got done, though.

Started chopping away with the recip saw and made a huge mess.

I wanted to get a jump on the wind ... it blows in and knocks down all the dead branches.  So I sort of did it for it.

Besides, I needed the firewood for next weekend.

Lots to chop up.

See the dying, diseased peach tree?

I sawed away at this for a long time ... and couldn't believe I couldn't get it to fall.  Finally threw a rope around it (ok, it was a longline leash) and yanked it down.

Done!  If you can tell, it forms a "V".  I cut the other end of the "V" down last year, and it grew back like gangbusters ... so if any part of this tree comes back next year, I might keep it around.  If not, I'll chop the rest of this up when I get a chainsaw ... or a guy with one. 

A bit of the "after" photo ... but not quite done yet.  Will finish it during the week.

Got a great deal on a full set of shipping boots!  She will ride in comfort this weekend.  These are so fuzzy and padded, I almost wanted to wear them myself!

Busted tail on the trailer today.  Needed to figure out how to hand that door organizer.  My wall on the door is a single wall, so I can't just stick a screw through it, so I had to screw through the double thick support bar up top there.  This was nothing short of a pain in the ass.  Anytime a screw is involved, you can count on me to screw that up.  There's about six holes instead of just 4.

More screwing.  But I bought one of these 25 gal. water things ... I cannot believe how well they fit and how they fill up that dead little space right there!  I love this thing already and I haven't even put water in it yet!  This will come in real handy this weekend.  The water at the campground comes out at a trickle.  It's nice that they have it there, but it takes forever to get even just a couple of buckets of water out of it.

Got the trailer cleaned out, organized and ready to go.

And here is the handsome ram lamb ... who is not so little anymore.  And those horns suck.  But he's a very sweet guy (for now) and I love his build.

Here's where I'm keeping Kahlua.  This is my old pig pen. 

I closed off access to the structure itself because the floor is not able to support her weight, and
besides, I don't think it's tall enough anyway.  I might have someone build an extension on it, though, to give her some cover.

And here is my favorite tree around here.  It belongs to my next door neighbor.  At one point they were talking about chopping it down.  I really hope they don't.  It's an amazing tree.

So I am now down 23 lbs. total!  I'm pretty excited about it since I am completely just changing the way I eat, and not considering this a temporary "diet."  What's really scary is I've been going on the websites of the various fast food "restaurants" and checking out the nutrition labels for each of their sandwiches and things.  Holy smokes!  No wonder why most of America is obese or more.  There are so many people out there who are feeding that crap to their children on a continual basis to where those children do not choose to eat anything healthy, i.e. vegetables, when offered an option.  It's very sad.  I'm not much of a fast food eater, and can take it or leave it, so it wasn't a big deal for me to give that up.  What was a much bigger deal for me to give up was the homemade bread.  That was nothing short of an addiction for me (in hindsight).  But ... alas, I haven't had a soda or made a loaf of bread since the end of August, and I think I've only had a Subway sandwich twice because of the craving for bread.   I think I'm past it.  I think.

I am trying to be of the mindset that there is no turning back now, and looking forward to being a normal size one day.  I'd love to be able to walk into any old clothing store and find something that fits ... and looks halfway decent.

And I don't want to look like any of the enormous people I've been seeing lately.  THAT much I do know.

Nothing, really.

I haven't been blogging, and really don't have anything to blog about.  My son has my camera, so the only photos I'm taking are with my lousy phone, or Jaenne's little point and shoot when I remember to take it with me.  I really need to buy a nice little point and shoot. 

Believe it or not, I've been working dogs a bit.  Put Cruz on stock a few times, and he's proven to be quite a bit of dog ... on sheep.  Cows?  Different story.  Apparently, those things are very scary!  I'm going to continue working him on sheep and getting a hold of him ... cause for now, he's not concerned about anyone else in there with him.  We need to change that.  I don't want to be stitching sheep.

Work is kicking my butt.  Especially now since it's getting dark much earlier.  I come home from work, and get as much stuff done as possible while it's light out.  I love fall ... really ... it's my favorite season ... I just hate losing daylight.  Oh, and the weather is gorgeous!  Perfect riding weather, but I'm stuck at work. 

Last weekend, Colleen was down.  We hiked out at Rabbit Creek.  What a nice area!

Then Karen and I took the horses to Wilson Creek.  It was packed.  The staging area was full of horse trailers, and the lower one was full of ATV trailers.  And there was no shortage of hunters in the area.  I was wearing red, but no one had anything bright orange, so we were pretty conscious about where we were going.  Also ran across a very cute, little, although very mad, rattlesnake.  He was old enough to rattle, so wasn't as dangerous as the "strike-first-ask-questions-later" babies, but his rattle was pretty small.  Didn't think to get a picture of it, probably just because my camera phone sucks.

Here's Karen.

She was a ton of fun to ride with!  Can't wait to go again.

 Oh, we are!  We're going to go ride way back into Rabbit Creek this weekend.  There are several trails back there that are not designated for motorized vehicles, so hopefully we can get away from the ATV's a bit.

And here's Kahlua after our last ride .... after I rinsed her off.  She was a sweaty dirty mess.

We're getting ready for our camping trip to Idaho City next weekend.  Can't wait to explore the mountains behind there!  Hopefully the weather stays clear. 

J