4th of July Road Trip Recap

This 4th of July was the first I'd spent away from Lake Coeur d'Alene since 2003, when I was a camp counselor at a summer camp in New York. We, or I, chose not to go out to North Idaho for two reasons: my parents rented our lake place, meaning we'd have find a place to sleep at my grandparents over-crowded cabin; and my cousin is getting married in Uniontown this weekend, and I would have wanted to stay through the week, and DJ doesn't have the same kind of vacation time as I do.

We struggled with what to do with an open 4th of July weekend, one where we both, as local government workers, got Friday off too. We thought about going out to western Washington to see DJ's family. Thought about going to the Oregon coast. And then I started to get really antsy about a project I'm working on for the Montana Historical Society and convinced DJ that research in Montana would need to be done, and soon.

The project, which will culminate in a presentation over lunch at the Montana History Conference in October, is called "The Mullan Road: Stimulus to Settlement". Built in 1859-1860, the War Department funded the Mullan Wagon Road from Fort Walla Walla, Washington, to Fort Benton, Montana; the end of navigation on the Missouri River, to create a link between the two outposts as well as a way to dispatch troops between locations in the Pacific Northwest before the train arrived. Ironically, exactly one detachment of troops ever used it, but a number of early Montana settlers traversed it. My goal is to travel the length of the Mullan Road, where I can find it, and try to understand where along it settlement occurred and why. I'll also photograph a lot of it, and try to compare historic photos with photos I'll take this summer.

You see, the Mullan Road is kind of in my 'hood. Walla Walla, through the Palouse, then south of Cheney to the southern end of Lake Coeur d'Alene (this was rerouted north of C d'A in 1860), over basically I-90 to Garrison, Montana, then northeast to Mullan Pass, skirting around Helena and Great Falls and into Fort Benton. We travel the I-90 portion up to 10 times a year. Also, ever since I took a class from the great Karl Raitz at Kentucky, I’ve been fascinated by transportation geography.

We left Bozeman on Thursday night and drove east to Big Timber, then north through Harlowton and Judith Gap to camp at Ackley Lake, about 20 miles south west of Lewistown. Richard Harlow founded Harlowtown in 1900 as a stop on the “Jawbone” Railroad, which he sold nine years later to the Milwaukee Road. DJ and I both have a crush on the Milwaukee Road, but that’s another post!

The Milwaukee Road put itself into debt in the 19teens to go electric instead of steam or diesel, and as a company never totally recoverd financially. When they went bankrupt in the 1970's and shut down so many Montana communities depended on the Milwaukee to move frieght and employ people that the governor's office came close to declaring a state of emergency.

Note the caved in roof on the poured-in place concrete building?

We drove north of Harlo through Judith Gap and its wind turbines

Wind farms, on land that is still being farmed. A combine fits under one of the blades with over 30 feet to spare.

and then west at “Eddie's Corner” to Ackley Lake State Park. Campers, RV’s and trailers packed the campground when we arrived at about 8:30pm, so we just pulled into a field in the state park to camp in. It’s a pretty low key type of place. Unfortunately, the water was pretty high and the wind was blowing, so not only did we not have a tent camping spot, but we couldn’t start a fire for s’mores! I haven’t camped in a tent since like 1997, and I love s’mores, and was really looking forward to both of those things. Oh well, truck camping and BBQ’d hamburgers (without condiments- DJ forgot to pack them) and then to bed for some reading.

We woke up on Friday, and got out of the campground at about 8:30am. By 9am we were in Lewistown, drinking coffee and walking around.

Coffee. The big cup is mine.

The first incident of the day occurred when I spilled my coffee down my shirt. I really have no coordination or fine motor skills. Awesome. Nothing looks more professional than coffee on your boobs as you try to have a serious conversation with someone about a historic resource! So we had to drive out to the fairgrounds where I quickly changed into a sundress.

Lewistown is pretty awesome. Many of the older buildings have this incredible stonework done by Croatian immigrants to the area during the Homesteading Era of 1900-1919.

Check out the texture on the buildings!

They’ve also done a nice job of adaptive re-use, including turning the Fergus County High School Building into apartments, with the parking garage in the gym!!!

The Fergus County High School, now apartments with parking in the gym! I wonder how many former students who swore that they'd never step foot in the building again now reside there?

The last thing we checked out in Lewistown before leaving was the airport, which still uses its Deperssion Era hangar! Cool!

We left Lewistown about 11am and headed north and west towards Fort Benton. Stay tuned for the rest of the story! (I miss Paul Harvey).

Farming update

I will post soon about out weekend road trip. Suffice to say, it was awesome. I’m lucky to have found someone in my life who will gladly get off the beaten path and onto dirt roads with me. We saw some great stuff!

When we got home, I was delighted to go check on the plants. I watered them deeply before we left, and even moved the sweet peas and cilantro and onions onto the front porch. The temperature settled into the mid 80’s over the weekend and I didn’t want the cilantro to go to seed or the sweet peas to burn out just as they are starting to bloom. Overall, things are coming along wonderfully!

We are going to have tons of strawberries soon. I bought “everbearing” strawberry plants, which means they will continue to produce a steady crop of berries through the summer. Yay! We’ve been enjoying the strawberries from Costco since early May but I think we might have bought our last pack. I love strawberry shortcake!

The Orange peppers are producing a lot of flowers but I still haven’t seen signs of setting fruit yet. I’m a little perturbed with the black discoloration at the intersection of the limbs but haven’t done anything about it yet. Thoughts anyone? Regarding the lack of fruit, maybe it’s not getting pollinated by bees or the wind?

The Red pepper plant is a lot taller than the orange. I’m pretty sure there is a flower setting fruit on this one. The flower looks very swollen, and well, knocked up! Which is great, I love red bell peppers!

I purchased a tomato plant only because DJ likes tomatoes. I really don’t. Something about the texture combined with the lack of taste in store-bought tomatoes. Yet I swear, DJ buys a tomato every week at the grocery store. And throws away a half a tomato every week. So I’m chagrined to admit that the tomato plant is producing tons of tomatoes!

The snap peas are really producing too! I actually have a Tupperware of half carrots (store-bought) and snap peas from the garden in my lunch today! We should really snap a bunch of them off and make stir fry but we’ve been trying to get through all the leftovers we have in the house right now.

The front porch has mostly been graced with the flowers this summer. I can’t remember the name of this blue ground cover flower off the top of my head, but I LOVE it! It is so bright and vibrant. I’ll definitely plant it again next year. The pansies mixed in are also doing well, with the help of deadheading them every few days. The impatiens just aren’t thriving like I thought they would on a north facing porch though.

Before we left for the road trip, I moved the cilantro and onions to the front porch. This is what I love about having everything in pots: mobility. Cilantro will “go to head” if it gets too hot, so I moved it around. And yes, I am currently picking off the second pot of cilantro, while having the third pot planted for the fall. I love cilantro. I’ve taken to adding it to salads too; yummy!
I started the sweet pea plants in pots on a south facing windowsill on March 1 (along with the snap peas, and “Money Plant”) as a nod to Bozeman’s Sweet Pea Festival of the Arts. I’ve never really been around them before, but oh my gosh, as they begin to flower they are LOVELY!!! I’ll definitely plant these again! Right now I’m only getting purple flowers, but hopefully we’ll get blue, red and white too.

So that’s the rundown on my current farm. After talking to my mom last night, I think I get my green thumb from my grandmothers. They are actual farm wives, who used half acres of their 1,000 plus acres to grow and can a ton of vegetables through the 1970’s. My grandma Joyce had a huge garden when I was a kid, and my cousins and I loved sneaking out there for strawberries as a between meal snack.

I’m already thinking about what I want to plant next year. If we, for some reason, are in a house by November or so, I definitely want to plant irises- I might steal some of the bulbs from the lake place. I love their color and height. I tried to do bulbs in the posts over the winter, but they just didn’t make it. I think the warm February we had, followed by a cold March killed them. If we have a yard, I’d also like to plant red potatoes and maybe corn next summer. Along with a pumpkin and maybe even a zucchini plant. I’m a little afraid of the zucchini plant; my mom grew them when I was a kid and we ate so much damn zucchini that its taken me like 10 years to like the green things again!

I’d really, really, like to try to plant a salsa garden next summer. Tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, garlic, tomatillos and I’m not sure what else. I’d like to try to make salsa at the end of the summer and can it to have on hand. Crazy? Probably. Channeling my inner ‘50’s farm wife? Definitely. Especially when I admit that I’m thinking about buying a grow-light next spring so that I can start all of my plants inside early. Or that I’d like to host a seed-exchange party next spring.

Even if we are still in the condo next summer, I think I’ll continue collecting five gallon buckets and try growing a salsa garden. So if you’ve got a bucket you’re willing to give away, I’ll take it!

Ode to the Roadtrip

This weekend DJ and I are road tripping around the state. I’m nerding out and working on a project for the Montana historical Society on the Mullan Road, which necessitates a trip to Fort Benton. So Thursday night we are high tailing it to Lewistown, where we will camp for the night. Friday morning we will check out L-town and then drive up to Fort Benton to go through their museums and do super-cool archives research. Really, please try to reign in your jealousy. (Despite the fact that I am, in fact, REALLY excited about this!). Saturday we will drive back down towards Helena and maybe camp out in Phillipsburg. What do you think our chances of getting a camping spot on a Saturday night that is the 4th of July are?

Although DJ might think otherwise, I’m a pretty good road tripper. When my family lived in Eastern Washington we’d take a road trip a year to go somewhere like Victoria, BC, Yellowstone, or Portland. Once we moved to Montana, the relatives still in E WA meant repeated trips over I-90 to my grandparents lake place on Coeur d’Alene, to Colton, or to the general Spokane area. And once my parents bought their lake place in Harrison, on Lake Cd’A, well, I bet at one point I was crossing Lookout Pass no less than eight times a year.

Since DJ and I started dating, we’ve had a number of road trips. The first big one was the drive to southern Utah to go hiking. That was 25 hours of car time just to get there and back, and doesn’t include driving around in the parks and between destinations.

Last summer I dragged DJ out to Harrison at least three times before the 4th of July. In August we drove out to his home town of Castle Rock, WA, and then to Long Beach where his mom has a great condo on the Pacific Ocean. While there we ran up I-5 to go visit his grandmother too.

We drove the eight hours to Colton for Thanksgiving. Then over Christmas we drove between snowstorms to Colton, then to Castle Rock, then back through Spokane to Bozeman. The roads were as bad as I’ve ever seen them and the prospect of driving on snowy roads for the next four months prompted DJ and I to bite the bullet on a trip to Hawaii in February.

Our Hawaii trip was to the Big Island, which required about 10 hours of travel time to get to. Of course, we rented a car (Chrysler Seabring. If you want to know why Chrysler is going under, rent one of those Pieces of SHIT!), and drove. A lot. To the point that I had a minor freak out on day five. We’d been in Hawaii five days and I’d yet to lay on the beach for more than one hour. We’d seen a lot, but I had no tan. I was annoyed with travelling really really really far and then not really getting to enjoy a place. DJ handled it with as much grace as an American man, who LOVES to drive, could. I think I got two hours of beach time the next day….

I think what I’m getting at here is that sometimes the driving IS the trip, like this weekend, when we will both see and go places we’ve never been. But other times, like when driving the five and a half hours to the lake, the driving is something you have to slog through in order to get to a place.

Anyone else roadtripping this weekend?

Baking a Cake

I love to bake. Unfortunately, I also love to eat sweets. Thus, it is best when I can bake something that someone else will eat!

One of our houseguests from last weekend, Jen, has a birthday that is almost exactly six months from Christmas. Since I’m barely a month, I think it is awesome to spread the gift giving out. Dusty totally knocked it out of the park when he randomly brought home cake mix last Wednesday night before Jen and Ryne arrived. I decided to make Jen a birthday cake! I had strawberries too, so I thought I’d top the cake with them…

First, I noticed on the box (yes, it was a Pillsbury mix, I’m not that Betty Crocker) that you could substitute yogurt for oil. Fun! Except we didn’t have any strawberry yogurt left. No worries; the blueberry yogurt substituted nicely.

Next, I poured the batter into two 9 inch round pans and baked. Once they were baked and cooled, I took my Aunt Brenda’s advice and popped them both into the freezer so they’d be easy to remove from the pans.

After they were frozen, I turned the pans upside down and beat on the bottom of them to pop them out. Nice and round cakes!

Next I cut strawberries into thin slices and spread the cream cheese frosting onto one side of one of the cakes. Then I put one layer of strawberries onto it, frosted the bottom of the other cake and put them together. It looks like a strawberry cake Oreo, doesn’t it?

Last, I frosted the whole thing, and used the rest of the strawberries as accents. I’m excited to say it was really, really delicious! Some chocolate ice cream on the side might have been nice too…

'Sconie's Visit

Man, what an awesome weekend. My good friend Jen, and her husband Ryne, flew up from Denver to visit us in Bozeman. I’ve been talking up Bozeman to Jen for so long; I hope it lived up to the hype!

After some thunderstorm-related delay/ on time flight drama, they arrived to Bozeman at about 11:30pm on Thursday night. It was the busiest I’ve ever seen it at the Bozeman airport and of course I saw a number of people I knew.

Friday we got up, grabbed breakfast at Bagelworks and ate at Soroptomist Park before walking Main Street. Jen had a garlic bagel that she enjoyed burping up for the rest of the day.

First, we stopped at Vino Pour Tutti, where Jen and Ryne put the skills learned from their recent trip to Napa Valley to use and bought a wine for us to try that night. After that, we stopped in at Gift Corral where Jen kept her family tradition alive by purchasing a Christmas ornament from a place she visited. I also talked the manager into letting us go up on the back deck for a birds eye view of the demolition work of the explosion site.

R-Bar go boom!

After that, we stopped into a lot of stores on Main Street. They bought a couple of National Park Service reproduction posters for their house, which were an awesome find! We also stopped into the Powder Horn, where Jen and I tried on some hats and pretended to ride horses.

I have no idea why this photo will not load to be a landscape instead of portriat orientation, but it is a great photo!

I spared Dusty the horrors of being seen at Plonk, and took Ryne and Jen there for lunch. It was lovely to eat good food and drink sangria at noon!

After continuing the Main Street tour I drove Jen and Ryne around Bozeman to see the sights before going home. Dusty got home about 3:30pm, and from there we headed up to the fabulous Virginia City! We walked around VC, then picnicked in the park before catching a Follies Show.

Someone couldn't wait until the picnic and had to eat some fried chicken early.

Oh the Follies. Inappropriate humor in the form of song and dance.

Although the Follie’s started off slowly, I think the high point of the trip may have been Jen’s trip to the bathroom at intermission. Some dude was exclaiming to his friend how his, um, PARTS got so big. He “put it in the beans!”. Ha ha! Post-Follies, we spent some time playing darts and dancing around in the Pioneer Bar.

Saturday we started slowly and had breakfast at Main Street Overeasy. Dusty worked on that triple bypass he’s been eyeing and ate something with a LOT of gravy… After the gavy fest we drove over the pass to Livingston, and did some walking around. We checked out the free museum in the Depot, which was awesome!

The Depot Train Museum, which is FREE this summer!

After the Depot, we drove down to Chico Hot Springs and played in the pool for a few hours before heading back to Bozeman for a BBQ and more Beverages.

The Murray Hotel, in Livingston. I love their lobby!

Sunday we hiked around Palisade Falls and basically hung around until they had to leave for their flight. Jen and I walked through an open house in our neighborhood, which was fun too. I’m excited to start really looking for a house sometime soon!

He's a jumper. On a log.

Waterfalls!

Overall, it was absolutely lovely to have Jen and Ryne here. It is so great to have friends that you can not see for a long period of time, but then fall right back into that easy friendship when you do see them. It was fun for them to meet Dusty, and I think all parties got along well. Hopefully we will be able to go visit them in Denver soon!

This One's for the Girls

I have a number of really, really awesome friends to be proud of.

My friend Erin just finished her Master’s Degree in Social Work, and about two hours ago accepted a position as an elementary school counselor in Astoria, Oregon (yes, the Goonies was filmed there). I’m so proud of her for pursuing the Masters’ Degree she wanted while still also working 20 hours a week!

I think we were headed to One Shot Charlies...

Alli will also finish her Masters Degree in Geographic Information Systems this August. She’s 100 pages into writing a thesis, and has been going to school while working for the Army Corps of Engineers in Nashville. Although she’ll probably stick around Tennucky for a bit, hopefully the west will call this Colorado girl home soon.

Jen, Alli, Kristin and me in Lexington in the fall of 2006.

My friend Kristin also finished her Masters Degree in December, and works for a car company in Detroit. Although things in Detroit aren’t going swimmingly, she’s figuring out where she wants to be in the long run and contemplating the big move to Denver!

Sarah will finish her Masters Degree in Education this fall. Sarah M’Bera and I grew up together, spending summers boating and riding our bikes to each other’s house. She now lives in Moses Lake, Washington, with her husband Tyler.

God love her, Sarah has always been unable to keep her eyes open in a photo.

I have two friends who own their own business as well.

Kelly is a professional photographer who takes fantastic photos of newborns, as well as senior portraits, engagement sessions and weddings.

Joslyn, and her husband Mark, started a landscaping company in Polson three years ago, and by the sounds of it have as much work as they can handle!

Kelly, me, Kristin and Joslyn at a MSU football game vs. Colorado State in the fall of 2004

These standouts are just a few of the great friends I get to have in my life. From Shawna, with her quick wit, near PhD in Psychology, and adorable dog Ava, to the ladies I work with at Gift Corral.

Its pretty awesome to see the successful people we have become. I'm proud of all of us :)

And I forgot (almost!) to mention my mom and sister. My sister aims to run ESPN one day. Clearly she's a shoe-in.

This is Gretchen. She's kind of a big deal.

June 23 Ten on Tuesday

1. After DJ leaves for work promptly at 7:17 am every morning, I usually grab coffee, go back upstairs, crawl under the covers and surf the internet for a half an hour before getting in the shower for work. I'm not a morning person, but I love being up, and home alone in the morning for a little while. Between work and well, work, I rarely get to be home by myself.

2. It was cold last night. I walked outside to check the plants when I got home and I could see my breath. I put a blanket on them for the night. Hey, the peppers are blooming and I don't want to stress them!

3. The peppers also had this weird black discoloration at the stems, right where branches meet. Mold? We've had some pretty wet and rainy weather and maybe they're not getting enough sun? So I moved them out from the house into the patio. Here's hoping for some serious sunshine today! (pepper plant photo)

Dude, what is that? mold?

4. I closed at Gift Corral by myself last night. AHHHH SOOOO NICE to not have to train someone or make small talk for 2 hours! LOVE.

5. While at Gift Corral last night a gentleman from Colorado came in with his service dog, a yellow girl Labrador retriever named Gage. The owner, and the dog, were very fun to talk to. But oh gosh, Gage, Gage the lab! She stole a little spot in my heart! Something inside of me wants a dog so badly right now that I get a little teary eyed at them. We also met Klancie the golden retriever last weekend. Sigh... Although I keep asking DJ if we can get one, I know its not a good idea until we have a house. With a yard. With a fence. Because while I wouldn't mind walking a dog every night, I don't want to do it in the -40 degree weather in February. :::sniff, sniff, but they're so soft:::

I really thought about stealing this dog.

6. DJ's dad and dad's wife arrive tomorrow. It’s the first time in 5 years that Dennis will have been in Bozeman; since before DJ moved into our condo. His dad reminds me a lot of my uncle Paul; both are mechanics for big machinery. It will be nice to have them here (although not staying with us) for a night before they leave on a road trip to Deadwood on Thursday.

7. Which is good because Jen and Ryne arrive later Thursday night after my Preservation Board meeting!

8. I'm hosting the Preservation Board meeting on Thursday at AOII. A number of the members expressed interest in seeing the house, and board member Jane Davidson Klockman's grandparents donated the library!

9. Now I've got to go dust the library so Jane's not mortified at the state of her grandparent's books.

10. Oh yeah, I'm a farmer. In about a week we should have enough snow peas for stir fry and strawberries for shortcake!

Strawberry!

The Farm.