PapaCoyote's Journey

2011-12-01T22:03:00.004-07:00

Pile of oak leaves that I had to move outside the fence and burn. Got the job done just in time because the next day winds hit forty miles and hour. I would have had those piles of leaves all over the yard again. I sure could have used some grand kids to jump into these pile. I raked just as many leaves in the front yard the next day and got those burned just in time.

Entertaining Grandson

2010-08-19T19:51:00.020-06:00

K's parents had to make the difficult decision to "put down" Jake, the family Golden Retriever, who has been a part of the family since before K's grand entry into the family. That was hard, but they are dog-sitting a friend's dog, Lucy. Lucy is as old as K. She is a pretty sweet dog.

M and K waiting to drive a car at Wahooz in Boise. J and I had a good day watching these cousins play. I played a couple rounds of mini golf with them. The kids can't beat the wiley coyote, but they played pretty well. We had fun.

M caught six smallmouth bass. These were the two biggest that we kept. The larger one was the second bass caught. The other was the first bass. He had the first fish on in about two minutes of having dropped the worm to the bottom of the reservoir. The bigger fish pulled really hard. In fact the smaller fish gave M about all he thought he could handle. He was not so sure that he could land the bigger fish, but he kept with it and got the job done. Pretty exciting. We will have fried fish for breakfast tomorrow along with fried potatoes from the garden.

Looking into Hell's Canyon from the Visitor's Center located below the Hell's Canyon Dam. We spent Thursday afternoon fishing from the docks and dodging the big jet tour boats when they came in to dock.

An Oklahoma Fishing Experience

2010-07-30T22:43:00.007-06:00

A few pictures of the Oklahoma fishing experience. Read more below.

Black Bass caught with spin cast reel and rod on The Grand Lakes of the Cherokees.
The guide was Tony Coatney. I enjoyed my four hours with him. He is a very knowledgeable bass fisherman.

My story. Several months before making our trip to Missouri and other states in the neighborhood, I went online looking for a bass fishing guide on the Grnd Lakes of the Cherokees in the NE corner of Oklahoma. I contacted by e-mail a Dempsey Guide service. In a few days I had a response. So a date was set. His wife did not ask for a down payment. Months went by without contact, so I called. A few days later I got a return call and the time was set for six in the morning on the 20th of July. He would pick me up at the marina at the resort I would be staying at (World Mark, or the former Shangri La). Still no requirement of a down payment which is the usual modus operendi of guides. Jane and I arrived at the resort and checked in the day before the fishing adventure was to begin. Since there was no marina at the World Mark Resort as there was on the Lake of the Ozarks where we stayed in Missouri the night before, I decided I had better do some scouting so that I am at the right place at six in the morning. I get information that the marina is about a half mile away. I visit there and talk with the owner of the marina. He tells me that Dempsey is not welcomed at this marina and that I should be hiring Tony. He also tells me that Dempsey is not a bass fishng guide, but a paddle fish guide. He calls Tony immediately and puts me on the phone with him. Am I feeling like I have walked into a territorial fight here? uh huh! Tony says Dempsey is not to pick up clients at this marina and that he knows he is not suppose to do so. I called Dempsey, but as usual, he doesn't pick up. I eft a message that I was canceling the trip. I arrange to go with Tony Coatney who charges $50 less and is reputed to be the best guide on the lake. He even had his own TV show for eight years I found out later. Go to his website: http://www.grandfishingwithtonycoatney.com/

While visiting Tony's website click on his picture section and you will find a picture he took and posted of me with the bass I caught. Pretty cool!

We started the morning fishing for sand bass. I caught a few. Hooked a big catfish that I broke off. Tony was cathing more, and bigger sand bass than I and he caught five or six nice size crappie that went about a foot long. They have to be ten inches to be legal in Oklahoma. Ha. We would hardly ever keep any here in Idaho with that rule.

Oh, yeah. It was seriously hot in Oklahoma. Tulsa had heat indexes of 106 while we were there. A few days it was even higher. We were about an hour and half drive from Tulsa. The temps were in the mid-nineties and the humidity was in the mid to high nineties. That is some kind of hot for a Western boy. We spent a lot of time in the condo or the air conditioned car. I did tour the Cherokee Museum while there. It was a good experience. Jane passed on that adventure.

Later,
Papa Coyote

Pictures of some Family Members.

2010-07-30T20:04:00.011-06:00

A view of Couer d' Alene Lake. Hard to take a picture that does justice to the lake. It is big.

The following pictures were taken at a birthday party for Uncle Bud Stockton. I am late posting these, but I guess, better than never. Several members of the family were missing due to a conflict with some graduation parties for Ashley Eachon, Doug's daughter (Doug is the sone of Marilyn Stockton Eachon and the graduation of Mariah, the daughter of Patti Hamilton, the daughter of Sylvia, the daughter of Leah, the daughter of Roy Stockton (bd 1885).

Robert "Robbie" Eachon, son of Marilyn Stockton Eachon, daughter of Roy and kellie Stockton, daughter of Dean "Bud" Stockton

Tim Stockton, son of John and Gen

Ken Stockton, son of John and Gen Stockton

Marge, daughter of Gene Stockton, the oldest son of Roy and Gen Stockton the widow of John Stockton, son of Roy Stockton

Cindy Stockton Gordon and her husband. Cindy is the daughter of Frank and
Shirley Stockton the son of Roy Stockton.

Brenda and Dean "Bud" Stockton on Bud's 78th birthday dinner held at Templin's in Post Falls, Idaho on June 19

4-H Day Camp for 10-14 Year Olds

2010-06-29T19:59:00.016-06:00

This morning the Indianhead Fly Fishers taught six young curious wannabe fly fishers how to tie a woolly bugger and how to cast with fly rod and line. A brother and sister from Spokane were visiting Grandma and Grandpa and were happy to have a chance to join in on the 4-H day camp. Thanks to Melissa for arranging this day camp for now the third year. I should have taken a close up picture of their flies, but I was busy helping one of the young tiers. Many thanks to Perry who led the class. He is truly a master tier. He also tied a beautiful Woolly Bugger for each of the campers.

We did not have much success catching fish at the pond. Spencer had one on and lost it. That was the grand sum of our success. He was happy because he outfished his sister. He said it was his secret competition. Sorry, Spencer for letting the cat out of the bag! The trout are showing signs of stress as the pond heats up. The F and G did drop a truck load of bass and catfish in the pond. A twenty inch catfish gave quite a thrill to an older gentleman who hooked the cat. He had no idea the catfish and bass had been dumped into the pond. He was used to catching the 9-10 inch rainbows, so when the cat took off on a fifty foot run, he was flabbergasted.

Sorry not to have pictures of the youngsters fishing. Again I was busy like all the other Indianhead Fly Fishers working with the youngsters as they learned to cast a fly rod.

One young camper, Hunter, told me how much fun it was to learn something new and how he looked forward to finding a fly rod and reel. I told him have Mom and Dad keep a watch on Craigslist.com.

If you click on a picture you will enlarge the picture.

So long for now,
Hope your lines don't suddenly go slack,
Papa Coyote

A Fathers' Day Celebration

2010-06-28T21:12:00.012-06:00

Five fathers and their families gathered for a campfire and cookout over the fire. Kids and fathers had a great time. I think the moms were enjoying themseleves as well. After all they are an integral part of this father gig. Thanks to all for making the day so much fun.

Sometimes one has to experience modern technology, e.g., the digital camera from a kids point of view to truly understand the importance of the invention. Remember standing in front of the mirror making faces when you were a kid? Digital pictures makes the experience even better.

What is for dinner??

Brother and sister

What wonder this rain! Why do these silly grown ups run in from the rain when the rain is sooooo delightful.

Contemplating the days gone by?

Roasting some hot dogs and pocket pizzas over a campfire.

The two Papa's on Fathers' Day checking out the fire.

Thoughts on the Perfect Engineer

2010-06-20T10:11:00.003-06:00

Happy Father's Day! 2010

If our legacy is what we leave to our children and grandchildren, then what will be our legacy?

I am thinking American society here, not individually.

And how can the sum of the parts, ................?

Reading Troutbirder's latest entry inspired me to go through some pictures taken this spring while on a Oyster mushroom hunt and write about nature's wonderful engineer. Native American people held the beaver in high regard for his wisdom and work ethic. Duh! Oh, yeah, most native people did not differentiate between people and animals. They are all part of the whole and have their importance in the Big Picture. Some how our people have not comprehended such a basic concept of survival.

You can visit Troutbirder at (http://baron-troutbirder.blogspot.com/)

This is some of the damage done by our local beaver or beavers. I have yet to see them at work. They have placed a dam on the slough that runs near our house. These poplar trees that have been chopped down are up to sixteen inches in diameter. A few winters ago I was exploring through this area and realized that there were several trees partially chewed through. Evidently, a beaver has to spend a few days cutting down a tree. I had recently read a book about a fly fishermen who was attacked by a beaver and suffered some life threatening cuts to the leg by the beaver's razor-sharp teeth so I was a bit edgy thinking of a sudden attack by the local beaver whose territory I was sloshing through. Then I hear a rustle that increased in loudness. Geez! I thought I was under attack. But, it was only one of those partially cut through trees falling. The branches brushed against me as the tree crashed to the ground. Wow. That was close. So when prowling through a beaver's territory on a windy day, BEWARE!

Mari Sandoz in her book about the history of the beaver trapping and trading industry tells of a beaver dam reported in Canada to have been over 2500 feet long. Now, that is some serious engineering and a lot of steady work. Maybe even teamwork. They are a marvel.

Incidently, if anyone is interested in Mari Sandoz' book on this subject see (http://www.amazon.com/Beaver-Men-Spearheads-Empire-Bison/dp/0803258844/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277051506&sr=1-10). I have to say that she is not the very best of writers so reading through the book can be a bit of a struggle sometimes, but the information is well worth the effort.

Hope all you fathers have a wonderful day. Enjoy your families. My wife cooked a wonderful breakfast. The day is starting well.

Yeeeeoooooowww,
Papa Coyote loves you all

Strange Find by Bryan

2010-06-14T22:39:00.009-06:00

Ever see a fish that looks like this? The fish at Bryan's feet was frantically trying to get out of the lake. There was a pretty heavy duty thunderstorm creeping over the Owyhee Mtns. toward us at the time. Seems as though this is standard behavior for these fish when the baromoter takes a sudden plunge; hence the name Oriental Weather Fish. Some people like to keep these fish in their aquarium because they forecast storms. They are of the loach family. Bryan and I were fishing on the shores of Halverson Lake (http://www.canyonco.org/parks.aspx?id=846) when Bryan looked down and saw this weird looking fish. He was thinking that he may have seen his first Snake Fish. We collected it and I brought it home to identify. I called Mark Sands, our area conservation officer, and started to describe it. He finished the description. I asked him if he wanted to see it, but he said no. He knew what it was but could not think of the name off hand. He called the state office first thing the next morning to get the name. He said that Charlie Daniels had found one in the drainage ditch across the street from his house four years ago. They are now throughout the lower Snake River valley. They most likely have been dumped by owners of aquariums who are moving and have no one to give their fish to so they dump them in some nearby body of water. These fish manage to survive and can grow to 20 inches. They are natives of Asia and Africa. The Idaho F and G is not too worried about them because they don't compete for food with our popular game fish. In fact they probably provide a meal for bass. The loach is an edible fish, but then so is the carp. I talked to Charlie about his finding of the fish. He said that he put it in a jar and took it to a regional public meeting held by the Fish and Game. Turns out that he was the only citizen to attend the public meeting. His fish caused quite a concern at that time because our fisherery people had not seen an Oriental Weather Fish in Idaho waters yet.

For information Google "dojo loach" or "Oriental Weather Fish"
http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/loaches/DojoLoach.php

Barbara and Millie's Birthday Celebration

2010-06-13T11:22:00.017-06:00

We spent the afternoon at Barb's celebrating Millie and Barb's birthday. Just before we got there Millie's ten year old son had his fingernail partially torn off. That resulted in a trip to the local Doc in the Box, but William did well with the injury. Halibut, Bryan's salmon that he caught in the Boise River, steamed clams and hamburgers were had for dinner. Lisa and I even managed to beat Chris and Jason at a game of Corn Hole. I think the underdogs got lucky. I left immediately after claiming victory scuttling any chances of a rematch. Great Partner that Lisa!

S likes these big, plush green table grapes. She had to take several breaks from the kiddie swimming pool for a handful of grapes.

I did a pretty poor job of getting pictures of all the participants. My apologies if I have offended anyone. I was tired that afternoon and not functioning on all four cylinders.

Got to go and see what I can do about cleaning up the pond. Truly a yucky job. Oh, and smelly, too.

Papa Coyote LUA

Busy Saturday at the Community Pond for Free Fishing Day

2010-06-12T23:30:00.008-06:00

Nathan came over to learn and to practice on four separate occasions. His ten year-old brother, Ryan, tried once and did quite well, then Dad decided to have a go after watching a couple hours of lessons. Dad did real well. Dad decided to send the boys to the 4-H day camp on June 29th so that they can learn to tie flies and cast. The Indianhead Fly Fishers will provide the instruction to ten boys and girls between the ages of ten and fourteen.

The Indianhead Fly Fishers assisted the Idaho Fish and Game who brought their trailer of rod, reels, tackle and bait to the pond so that families could enjoy and learn fishing. The pond was stocked earlier in the week. Families were having a great time on a beautiful 75 degree day with a mild breeze. Perfect!

Saw this little guy when I was out looking for morel mushrooms. Since the Middle Fork of the Weiser River road was closed due to the flooding last weekend, the mushroom hunt failed. Bummer. I think it is time to turn my attention and efforts to fishing

Hanging out in with the granddaughters and their Mommy

2010-06-10T08:06:00.021-06:00

L looking into the pond. She is about to lead me on the mushroom tour of her property. She knows I like to find and try to id mushrooms so she has all the mushrooms located before my arrival. She is a great mushroom scout. We found several varieties.

D and H and the girls built two garden boxes last Sunday. J and I spent the day helping H and the girls build the raised strawberry bed. D and H chose redwood lumber which looks very pretty now, but it will weather to gray in a year. But, redwood will weather very well and should give them a lifetime of use. They will eventually build some more boxes in the future, but for now strawberries, tomatoes and possibly herbs are planned. H has started many types of tomatoes and Alpine strawberries from seed and the plants are ready to be planted. Our neighbor Susan bought 8 tomato plants from L who plans to put the money in her piggy bank. Last month she tapped into her bank (she is a fanatic saver skimming whatever pennies she can find to put into her bank) to buy with the help of Mom and Dad a bicycle which she rides around with the aid of training wheels.

Above you can see my scout checking the amanitas. Very poisonous. May be the Amanita ocreata or the Death Angel. It has the volva and veil on the stipend are apparent in the picture below.

Checking out a huge flush of Coprinus. I have not identified these yet, but there are hundreds here along with polypores attached to the rounds of cottonwood trunk.

Grandma helping the girls get some water in the swimming pool. We have not had but a few, very few, days of 80 this year and it did get into the 70's on this day. So the little one just plopped right down in the pool diaper, pajamas and all. Grandma got the clothes off and she was a happy camper.

G checking out the water before sitting in the pool. She might be checking for spiders. The girls can find the most minute spiders. L and I took a picture of a tiny green spider with my macro lens, but then I inadvertently deleted it. Bummer, it was a great picture that I would have liked to have posted.

Helping Mom transplant some seedlings to sell to Susan.

One of the best parts of transplanting seedlings is that you get to get your hands dirty!

Working hard at printing the names of the tomatoes on the popsicle sticks so Susan will know the name of her tomatoes. This is pretty hard work and takes a great amount of concentration when one is only four and writing on little popsicle sticks. She stuck with it and got it done. When L and I drove to Home Depot to buy some lumber and supplies for making the raised strawberry bed box she was telling me the importance of having a list when one went shopping. (We had a list that her Mom had given us of what she needed at Home Depot) I agreed and asked her if she made a list when she went to the grocery store. I was just kidding and was surprise when she told me that she did. She was pretty firm about that answer, so I am thinking okay, whatever. At dinner that night I found that she did indeed make the grocery lists when she and her Mom went shopping. Her Mom would spell out the item and L would write it down on the list. The current list was posted on the refrig and J commented about H's nice printing, but was told, no, that was L's printing. Wow! L really does make a list when she goes to the grocery store.

Enjoying a Rocky Road ice cream cone after dinner and a hard day of mushroom guiding and building.

How about an ice cream cone for this cutie? If you overlook the fully clothed plop into the swimming pool, she has been a real good girl today.

No, this is not racoon vomit. This is another form of a fungi known as slime mold. It really is slimey--just touch it. No smell.

Studying an Agaricus. Agaricus campesteris has flushed out all over the Weiser golf course after the recent rains. Agaricus campesteris is the better tasting wild version of the white mushroom sold so prevelantly in the super markets.

Papa Coyote has to go call some wood working pals to try to solve a wood working problem.

See you all later,
Papa Coyote

Visitng the Oregon grandchildren

2010-06-04T10:21:00.011-06:00

All the Oregon grandkids are doing well and so are Mom and Dad. M has only a few days of school left and is looking forward to the summer vacation. He enjoys Scouts and is looking forward to Scout camp and another campout with the family in late June. He will spend a few weeks in August with grandma and grandpa. Lots of fishing and camping and maybe some huckleberry picking if they are still on. We have had a very cool spring--only 14 of the last 65 days have been above normal temperature and we already have surpassed our average annual rainfall. We are at about eleven inches. You Midwesterners are probably laughing, but we think we are drowning.

Thinking of Midwesterners---I see the Twins now must be the worst team in baseball. They dropped 3 of 4 to the Mariners and the Mariners really are bad this year, at least to date. Maybe they are going to start scoring some runs and earning some of the millions they are paid each month. I can only hope. Sorry, Troutbirder. I don't know how the Twins could lose 3 of 4---hmmmm, maybe something to do with a blown call at second that went in the Mariners favor? Could be. I can tell you that the Mariners have had far too many blown calls go against them so far this year. Speaking of blown calls. Did anybody see the perfect blown call at first in Detroit? Wow! Tough to umpire in the era of instant replay!!!!

Here is G enjoying a climb.

Even the two year old climbs--and does he ever climb. He scares parents of the the other kids. They are afraid they are going to see him fall and suffer a terrible injury and they probably think he is a horrific example for their own child. Some child development specialists say children don't learn risk assessment until they are about six or seven, but both E and G have an acute sense of risk assessment from the age of two. E just does what he knows he can do and doesn't even try stuff that he knows he can't do. He is incredibly strong, fast and has an unusual sense of balance. A cute little eleven year old girl said he was adorable and played with him for half an hour, then lost her interest when he filled his diapers with a smelly load. She could not believe he was in diapers.

Even the thirteen month old is into climbing. They all climb except the oldest.

Nice kids playground in Wilsonville, OR. Wilsonville is the home of several large hitech companies in the Silicon Forest.

When the shoes come off, you know the kid is serious about playing--IN THE SAND! Even dumped a handful in his hair and when you have hair like E, that is not good. Pick him up and turn him upside down, and the sand runs out.

A picture of the 4'x8' boxes R is building for their garden. There will be eight of these. I managed to build two boxes and the end pieces for three more after the deluge of rain on Wednesday. It can rain pretty hard in Western Oregon. But, we seemed to have brought the rain east with us on our return trip. The rivers are raging, there are warnings not to travel north on highway 95 from Weiser unless the need is great. I was up this morning at 6 to head out to McCall for SIMA's spring mushroom foray, but with the flooding, rock slides and threats of more, I am home doing this and tying flies. I need to tie several chironomids, damsels, prince nymphs, pheasant tail nymphs, humpies and several versions of caddis nymphs and adults. Whew! Overwhelming.

Best face of the week. Also a great carpenter's helper. I got a lot of work done for the kids with this five year old's good work. He soaped the deck screws and handed them to me so that we could move right along making the raised garden beds.

She is pretty happy with herself since she got a taste of mom's strawberry yogurt smoothie.

Another face. Seems like my grandchildren make really funny faces.

Got to go tie some flies.
Love you all,
Papa Coyote

Busy May

2010-05-30T19:32:00.019-06:00

May has been really busy with the last meeting of the Indianhead Fly Fishers before the summer break. I have been doing a lot of work getting ready for the Smithsonian traveling exhibit hosted by Fruitland.
And I have been working in as much time as possible looking for morels. Sometimes I have threatened to retire from retirement in order to get some relaxing time.

Karen and Bob looking over the 100 morels we found on Saturday. We were suppose to be fishing on Oxbow Reservoir for smallmouth bass, but as we sat in Buckey's in Cambridge eating breakfast we decided it was too cold for fishing. I suggested a morel hunt. Karen and Bob had never done a morel hunt and were game. Bob found the first two. They decided it was a real good day and took 67 morels home.

We found some oyster mushrooms on Saturday and then again on Wednesday. I just ate the last find tonight.

Debbie and Jim and I collected 137 morels this past Sunday.

One hundred mushrooms.

Mushroom hunter taking a hiatus to Italy at the highth of the morel season. Tsk! Tsk!

First time I have seen a tree frog. Reta gave a scream when she almost stepped on it and it jumped to this hole for cover.

Some morels. We brought home 100 morels or 3 pounds and 12 ounces.

We found several of these in a patch of 54 morels in an area about 10 feet by 15 feet. Quite a find since we had been walking for hours up and down some steep hillsides finding only groups of from one to about five or so.

Here is a picture of a boy catching a seven inch trout that would have been planted last year.

The fish are brought from Bend, OR. Most of the fingerling were dumped into the Owyhee River--about 30,000. The rest--about 7,000 were put into a net impoundment at Bully Cr. Res to be held overnight until, Ray, Al Sillonis of the Indianhead Fly Fishers in Weiser, ID and me showed up to dip them out and into a tank mounted on the pickup. We started this job at 8 in the morning and ended at 6 pm. It was a long day on some really rough roads that sometimes were only a faintest of traces across the desert. Since it had rained in the past few days, we were concerned about being able to make this trip in what can become Eastern Oregon gumbo, but we did find.

Here is Ray making notes on the condition of the reservoir. The water temperature was 61.

Here you see the first lake we stocked. Most of these lakes except for Littlefield can be fly fished from the shore and cover all the water. Pretty small.

This typical of the desert reservoirs that I helped Ray Perkins, Eastern Oregon Fish Biologist, stock on Friday. We stocked seven with 7,000 rainbow fingerlings. Only one of the seven can be found on a BLM map. These are very remote, but some people find them and the fishing can be spectacular.

Lots of these clumps of sweet pea.

The Eastern Oregon desert has been well watered by Mother Nature this spring so there are a profusion of wild flowers for our viewing pleasure. I was somewhat surprised to see an occaisional Indian Paint brush in bloom. We were at about 4200 feet in elevation. We saw lots of lupine, phlox and clumps of sweeet pea. I was surprise not to see arrowleaf balsamroot which is in bloom throughout the desert of SW Idaho right now.

Visiting with the Idaho Granddaughters

2010-04-24T21:43:00.011-06:00

Life has really been busy for both J and me. We have not done any traveling of late, but with J's business and my scrolling, fly tying, fishing, gardening and looking for mushrooms the grass has not been growing under our feet. Thinking of grass, yeah, did have to mow the lawn once already and probably will do so tomorrow. I have more pictures of recent activities so will get those on the blog soon.

This little girl loves to dance and show her happiness. She is a delight.

We had a great dinner cooked up by or son and daugher-in-law. Here is the grill master.

Grandma loves watching her Grandchildren.

Put a puzzle in front of the girl and she gets a puzzled look on her face. She put the puzzle together four times. I learned a few things about four year olds and how they go about solving a puzzle that I will put to use in making the next puzzle. I also got some ideas from the scroll saw club meeting about making a better state puzzle. Really, I learned a lot from those experienced scrollers.

Playing with Daddy is the highlight of any one year old's day.

Catch her unaware of the camera and one can get a normal face. Pretty cute thinks this Grandpa.

The youngest likes to make faces into the camera. Even though she is only one, she likes to see the monitor of the camera to see her picture after I take it.

Puzzle and mushroom hunt

2010-04-08T18:10:00.006-06:00

Spent part of the week making an Oregon puzzle. Also planted a row of potatoes, two rows of snow peas, a row of beans (may lose them to frost, but taking a chance), a row of spinach and have already planted lettuce. I have radish seed and carrot seed to put in, but the day turned cold and very windy. Forecast is for light wind and temps in the 50's so will probably try my luck on the Owyhee River tomorrow. We had planned to do that today, but decided the wind was too much.

The levy's passed in both Fruitland and Weiser. I think that is good. Fruitland's money from the State will be $1.2 million less than last year so the $475,000 approved by the voters will help. The Governor crowed after the session how the legislature held the line and did the right thing by not raising taxes and cutting budgets. Well, how can it be argued that the legislature did not raise taxes when all they did was to pass the buck on to the school boards and the school district patrons to raise the taxes? Am I not to regurgitate when the legislators campaign this fall about how THEY held the line and did not raise our taxes? Hah!

Here are the mushroom hunters in action. Still too much snow in the forests where we are likely to find morels.

But we found this

We were looking for this but did not find it.

Finished another puzzle. Michael is in the 5th grade in an Oregon grade school so maybe he should know his counties in Oregon. I know much more about Oregon counties now than I did a few days ago.

Got to go tie some flies and see how the Cubs are faring agaist the Braves. Hope the Twins slap another big loss on the Angels. The Mariners appear to have another anemic offensive team. Could be a long season. Maybe Cliff Lee and Eric Bedard will hit top form by mid-season, then the losses will be 1-0.

Papa Coyote moving on,

Resume posting on April Fool's Day

2010-04-01T20:21:00.008-06:00

Pictured below are some of the puzzles I have been scrolling. Read blog for explanation.

This is the puzzle with the letters put in place. I added dowels dyed red in the holes of the letter like the "a" and "o", etc.

Below is the latest puzzle. This took about sixteen hours to complete.

Resuming posting after two months hiatus on April's Fool's Day is rather ominous. Kind of like the snow Mother Nature laid on us today for a few hours before noon. Only about a half inch accumulated and it was gone by the noon hour.

So what have I been doing that would cause me not to post for two months? Well, for one I bought a scroll saw and have been trying to learn to have the steady hands needed to become an adequate scroller. So far, I have been sticking with puzzles because the interlocking pieces are forgiving. I would like to graduate to making bowls and baskets and then intarsia, but having just scrolled a piece of red oak last night, I can see I will be making puzzles for a while longer. That hard wood definitely is more challenging than the the pine that I started with (the finished pieces break too easily) and the poplar which works pretty well, but lacks the grain definition to make really beautiful pieces. While scrolling takes time, the sanding and finishing takes a lot of time. Yesterday I finished an apple alphabet puzzle that took about sixteen hours to complete. I intend to make a couple more because as I complete a puzzle I immediatedly have inspirations how I can make some modifications and have an even better finished product. Look at the pictures to see what you think of these two puzzles?

I have purchased a few books with patterns from Woodcraft and get other patterns online. I take the books down to a local copy shop to get copies of the patterns in the book. The patterns usually have to be increased in size. Sometimes I take a finished puzzle so the lady who owns the shop can see what becomes from these patterns she copies for me. I have had three offers to buy my puzzles from customers in the shop. I tell them that the time it takes to make the puzzles precludes even the thought of trying to sell them. But, I am having second thoughts. I could never recoup my hours even at a dollar an hour, but I might be able to charge enough to cover the cost of materials and be able to buy materials to make two more just like the one I sold. Hmmmm. Might think about that for awhile.

I also have been tying a lot of flies, attending seminars about fly fishing and will even be attending the Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo in Boise tomorrow and Jane and I will attend the banquet Saturday night. I also have been reading quite a bit about flies and fly fishing. Right now I am reading Gary LaFontaine's book about caddis flies. Pretty good. Unfortunately the author is deceased--Lou Gehrig's disease.

And, I have been reading quite a bit and have been doing research for an endeavor my son is involved with and research on the Native Americans of this area because I have to prepare a display for Fruitland on the Native Americans of this area for this fall when the traveling Smithsonian display called Journeys comes to Fruitland for six weeks.

The presidency of the Indianhead Fly Fishing Club in Weiser and membership in the Southern Idaho Mycological Association is also keeping me busy. Reta and I have to scout out the Mann's Creek drainage Monday through Wednesday of next week to determine if there is going to be a flush of morel mushroom large enough to warrant our members who are mostly from Boise to come out for the weekend of the tenth.

Oh, yeah, there is a Powwow in Boise on the tenth and eleventh. Guess I will just make the eleventh this year. So, yeah, things are really busy. Good thing I am retired because I really don't have any time to be working.

More about flies and visits with the grandkids in Newberg on the next posting.

Yippeee, Yeooooowwww,
Papa Coyote is back

Oooops!

2010-02-01T12:21:00.001-07:00

I posted some pictures for the family, but by mistake I put them on my mushroom blog. So, if you would like to see some old pictures of the family, go to http://papacoyote--funguy.blogspot.com/2010/02/collection-of-old-and-recent-pictures.html

She Turns Four!!

2010-01-30T16:06:00.020-07:00

A birthday party for a special little princess.

Grandma and grandpa Omas looking on.

Playing a hand game with the king.

A gift from the prince to the princess

Time for the birthday girl to open her presents.

Serious cake and ice cream eating taking place here.

This young princess is a veteran of many fine parties,

Whoever came up with the idea of a birthday party and cake and ice cream should be knighted.

The King and princes join in celebrating.

The Queen Mother said let them have cake and the Prince is getting down on that cake and ice cream.

Gathering to divide the spoils.

Pretty big candles for a little princess to blow out all at once.

Gathering around the table for a sing-a-long.

I can be a princess, too.

Words of advice from one princess to another.

Just enough time before the party to practice a few dance moves.

Granddaughter points out the pictures that grandpa needs to pay attention to.

Baby sister gets a present, too.

Mom made a beautiful cake. The theme of the party was princesses and princes.

Dad helps out by unloading and loading the dishwasher.

The oldest grandaughter turned four and Mom and Dad put on a great birthday party. The kids gathered at the other grandma and grandpas house for and afternoon kids' party, then the adults and kids gathered at Mom and Dad's house Sunday night for a party of family members. Then the kids did a slumber party for the grand finale. Granddaughter had a great time and of course she liked the presents and very respectfully thanked each person for their gift. Pretty sweet of her.

2010-01-19T22:15:00.004-07:00

It has been awhile since I have posted. I caught a cold a few days after Christmas which settled into my chest. When I was a three year old I was sick with whooping cough for several weeks. I remember that cough well. One really does whoop when one coughs with whooping cough. I have heard older people say how much they suffered listening to their child cough when they had whooping cough. I can feel for them, but, as one who had whooping cough, the parents' torment is nothing compared to surviving whooping cough. Not all of us who had it survived. Today some people talk about not having their child immunized. They might be right, but if I did nothing else, I think I would at least have my child vaccinated for whooping cough and polio. I write the foregoing because many of us who had whooping cough have problems as adults with a cold that settles into the lungs. I coughed for weeks and still have some nights when I get little sleep because of the lingering cough. Last weekend over a three day period I was coughing so hard that I passed out four times. My wife grounded me from driving. Probably a good idea. I don't think anybody wants a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup barreling down the highway with a driver behind the wheel who is unconscious. I know I would not. But I am feeling better so hope to get out and maybe do something interesting enough to make blogging worthwhile.

For those of you who are my age you may remember your childhood when we caught every childhood disease imaginable. Remember measles? We could catch the German measles, also known as the hard measles or the black measles. Those measles could put one down for a couple weeks. Or one might catch the red measles also known as the three day measles. I had both of those. I know I had the red measles at least three times. Remember the mumps? Now those were bad. I caught the mumps on one side of my throat during the 3rd grade and missed a week. Went back to school for a few days just long enough to make up my missed work after school and then came down with the mumps on both sides of the throat. I think we referred to that as the double mumps. I was out of school for two weeks over that and the school was talking about holding me back for a year because of all the class time I had missed. I spent several days after school making up work. Looking back on that I now realized how many days that poor teacher had to stay after school while I finished assignments. I am sure I did not appreciate her doing that at the time and probably did not even think to thank her, but now I understand the sacrifice she made. Thank you, Mrs. Silvera. I was fortunate to have had the mumps after the Major League Baseball season was underway so that I could listen to the Game of the Day broadcasted on the Mutual Radio Network while laying in bed. When one has the mumps, one just wants to lay in bed. TV was just beginning broadcasts at the time in Spokane. I still think the radio entertainment was superior to the entertainment we get on TV today.

I never had polio, but were our parents ever worried! When I was a kid, we played hard outside all day long during the summer. Sometimes I would have terrible leg pains (not cramps) from playing so hard. Grandparents referred to those pains as growing pains. I don't know what they were all about, but I just know they were terribly painful. Mom and Dad would come into my bedroom and massage my legs for sometimes hours. I know now they were terribly worried that I was catching polio. In the heat of the day, parents would call us kids in for quiet playing because the theory circulated that if a kid got too exhausted from heat and exercise, he/she was more susceptible to catching polio. We put a lot jigsaw puzzles together and played a lot of rummy. And we read a lot. Kids don't read as much as we used to. Hey, what could one do. If the baseball game was not on the soap operas were and, well, I just wasn't into the soaps like my grandmother. When I lived in Valpo we played a lot of workup--a baseball game. Or sometimes we divided into teams and made hitting into one of the outfields an automatic out because we might only have five or six kids on a team. We had one kid who had crippled legs, but he could stand with his leg braces. He had a good arm and he pitched for both sides. He was pretty good and he liked doing that. That way he could play baseball with the guys. Worked real well.

Oh, yeah, about everybody got chickenpox. Ouch. I hated the itchy sores left. My next door neighbor lady, Mrs. Fisher, had her grandson live with her for a year while his dad and mom worked in the oil fields in Saudi Arabia. This was in 1949 or 1950. Arthur got scarlet fever. I still am not sure what that was all about, but I know he was a real sick kid for a long time. He missed a whole year of school and had to repeat the grade. Seems like there was always Pink Eye going around. I think we dabbed a solution of borax water with a cotton ball in our eyes. Maybe it was something other than borax, I am not sure right now. I will have to ponder that for awhile. I know I had pink eys a few times. Oh, how could I forget ring worm. Had that at least once.

When I was in the sixth grade in Valparaiso, there was an outbreak of diptheria in a neighboring town and several kids died. Wow. Things happened fast. There was a rumor that we all were going to get shots and before we could forget about the scare of that rumor lo and behold a nurse shows up at school and everybody got a diptheria shot. Forget about parental consent and all that bull roar. We were lined up and shot. Even the wimps had to stand there and take it like a man or woman as the case may be. They did at least afford us the comfort of not being shot in front of our classmeates. We were taken to the cloak room (remember how they smelled like wet wool in the winter?) adjacent to the classroom and shot in solitude. Thinking of shots we all got vaccinations for tuberculosis.

The vaccination was something that was even inflicted upon us as teachers early in my career. I was standing in front of my history class in Payette when the school nurse came in and said I needed a vaccination. I protested that I had been vaccinated as a kid, but my protest was of no concern to the nurse. She said raise your sleeve (I was wearing a shortsleeve shirt) and she vaccinated me right in front of the class. I thought that was a little wierd.

When I was a little guy I had a lot of ear aches. Mom or Dad would put warm oil in my ear and then stuff a wad of cotton into my ear. We had hot water bottles in those days rather than heating pads and I often had to lay on the hot water bottle to bring relief to my ear. And side aches. Remember those? We were so active outside that we would have a lactic acid build up (didn't know the cause for side aches until I took a health class my freshman year in high school). All the kids in my neighborhood suffered from side aches. We just knew that we got them when we ran for too long or too hard. I wonder if kids today ever get side aches?

Moms have always fretted over their children's health. I was fed every morning what my Mom and her eight siblings were fed--one quarter of a cake of yeast (actually not bad), one tablespoon of blackstrap molasses (the sulfur had not been extracted and therein lay the health factor) and one tablespoon of cod liver oil. Gag. I started with yeast to coat my throat and ended with the molasses to hide the flavor of the cod liver oil. I cana tell you that blackstrap molasses did not taste all that good. All of that and I cannot say I benefitted in the least. I still caught about every childhood disease known to kids and lots of colds to boot. Oh, yeah, they allowed me to drink coffee when I was five for a year and then after I was thoroughly loving my cup of coffee in the morning decided that the coffee would stunt my growth. They must have been right. So they started me on Ovaltine. I must say it was a poor alternative, but there was a neat decoder a kid could send for to use in connection with a favorite radio program sponsored by Ovaltine. Funny thing is that to this day I now cannot stand the taste of coffee. Go figure.

I remember getting a cold and cough when I was a little kid and Dad would rub camphorated (sp?) oil on my chest. That seemed to really help. Smelled good. Sometimes Dad would make a mustard plaster and put on my chest. My God! but that would burn. Was suppose to loosen up the phlegm. Worked. I often wonder what his recipe was.

I always dreaded getting a really sore throat. I can remember my Mom and Dad on a couple occasions going to the local doctor and having their throats painted with iodine. I can't even imagine. Do you remember getting a cut and having iodine put on it? Geez, that hurt worse than the cut, by far. When my Mom had to have her tonsils removed, Dad walked (we did not have a car) her to the doctor and she sat in his chair at the office and without anathesia of any kind the doctor reached into her throat and cut out the tonsils. Dad walked her home and it took her a couple weeks to heal. The doctor's office was only a block and a half from our house. His office was just in the front of his home. Kind of like a big enclosed purch. Oh, he did make home visits. I remember him answering a call several times to our home. He carried a black case just like in the movies.

I think I have covered all the childhood diseases that most of us caught as kids. I am glad there were immunizations for my children so they didn't have to suffer through some of what us old timers had to deal with. But, we survived okay somewhat worse for the experience.

I used to get canker sores when I was a little kid in Spokane. They hurt so bad. Dad had the answer for them. Old time remedy. Alum powder. My God, that hurt. I think the alum powder burned the canker sore so badly that it cauterized the sore. It worked, but oh, geez, that hurt. Thinking about that for some reason reminds me of brushing our teeth. We pored a little baking soda and some salt in the palm of our hand, wet the took brush, dabbed it into the mixture and then brushed our teeth. I remember one day Mom brought home a can of Colgate powdered toothpaste. Man, did we ever think we were uptown.

Maybe I will post again some of my childhood memories. I think I am unusual in one sense. I have very clear memories of some parts of my childhood dating back to when I was eight months old. At a later time, I will post some of those memories.

Oh, one quick memory of losing the first tooth. My sister tied a string to a very loose tooth that I was afraid to pull out. It was just barely hanging. She convinced me that the easiest way to deal with the problem was to tie a string around the tooth, then to the door knob and then slam the door. My God, I was dumb. I actually agree to that. It did work, and she was right. It didn't hurt and the next morning I will be darned but she was right again when a dime showed up under my pillow in place of the tooth I had put there. That was in the good old days of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny! Oh, by the way, a dime could buy a kid a lot of stuff in those days. A package of Twinkies was only 7 cents and bubble gum with a baseball card or an African animal or native person cost only a penny. And a haircut 75 cents, but I never had to pay for those.

Love you all,
Papa Coyote

What If

2010-01-06T21:22:00.008-07:00

Could it really come to this?

Ohhhh, me, oh my. I hate these winter colds. I seem to get one or two a year. Sometimes I can get to the sauna early enough to kill the virus, but not this time.

I finally gave in and went to the "Doc in the Box" and got a prescription of codeine-laced cough syrup and Azithromycin. At least I am not coughing as much. Maybe I will get some sleep. I can tell you sleepless in the coyote's den is not nearly as sexy as sleepless in Seattle.

After we had spent all those hours decorating and cleaning the house. J had spent all those hours converting her production facility back to living and sleeping rooms in the basement for our daughter's family, What if I had said, upon seeing the two littlest granddaughters with runny noses, "Nope can't come in. Go back home. You will cause grandma and grandpa to get sick." Never crossed my mind really. We were so pleased to have all the family under one roof for a few days and nights. Well, grandma would still have me running the ridges behind the house looking for a meal. That scenario equates to Papa is in the dog house. I would be in so much trouble. Well, at least kicked out of the house. Now grandma and grandpa do have colds, but we will recover. The doctor did tell me to get lots of rest. I told grandma that she was under the same orders, but she does not respond well to orders. I do and I am resting.

Love you all,
Papa Coyote

The Family Christmas Dinner

2010-01-03T20:14:00.022-07:00

After days of decorating and cooking---well, of course, you understand, MamaCoyote gets all of that credit. Papa tries to lend a paw when appropriate, but, well, I just am not much of a decorator. We had twenty-eight family members coming for dinner and dad gum it all, MamaCoyote was in full enteraining mode. Having eleven kids eleven and under made the day all the more exciting. We even had three nursing mothers in the house all nursing babies several times a day. I could never see what all the fuss is about with mothers nursing in public because there just is nothing to see unless one would rush in and jerk up a blouse or sweater. If one were to do that, then he/she should be arrested. As I type this I am hacking and coughing. I started coming down with a miserable cold the day we left for McCall for some rest and relaxation. Well, that is about all I did. Rest, and well, can't say much for the relaxation part. First time in all the years that we have gone to McCall that I did not XC ski, but did get a couple books read and many FB games watched. Yearn for the old days when there were only four bowl games and they were all played on New Year's Day. What was for dinner? Lots!! Everybody brings some part of the dinner so you know how that goes. Lots of tasty stuff. MamaCoyote cooked a huge prime rib to perfection and included roasted chicken and ham. We had squash pie which we call pumpkin pie. Psst: Don't tell John. No one had a chance of going home hungry.

Until next time,
PapaCoyote loves you all

Catching Up on the Holiday Family Gatherings

2009-12-29T20:36:00.014-07:00

J and I had three family gatherings for Christmas. I will have pictures of the big family dinner held at our place the 19th in the next blog. The following pictures are from the 25th and 27th. Daughter and her family came Christmas day and stayed through the 29th. They had planned to leave son-in-law's family a day earlier, but the two-year old had the flu so bad they had to take him to the hospital for an IV. He was very listless through the 26th, but when he recovered on the 27th, he was definitely on the go and we could harldy keep him full. He was making up for a huge fuel deficit and he was doing it in a hurry. Son and his family arrived the 27th, so we had another round of present openings. The six grand kids liked this multiple Christmas days with the various grandparents because they got to open presents on three days. J and I immensely enjoyed having both families home with their six children aged 8 months to eleven years. Makes for a very busy household, but lots of fun interaction with grandkids who don't see each other but at the most twice a year. Sure fun to watch the 8 month old and the 14 month old interact.

Well, the grandparents are pretty tired. We will be relaxing for the next few days.

Daughter flew home with the 8 month old and her husband drove home today with the three boys. The guys hit snow at Hood River and encountered snow covered roads on I-5 and 205. Lots of wrecks and so things really got tangled up. So far they have been able to avoid any fender benders of their own. The girls were delayed an hour in their flight out of Boise because of icy conditions in Portland and then had to circle Portland for an hour when they did get there. So the family at this writing is dining at the Red Robin and waiting for the roads to hopefully clear before trying to head home south of Portland. Meanwhile we are experiencing 20 degree weather and dry conditions. Kind of nice for a winter day.

p.s. They arrived home 11:30 pm PDT. They pulled off I-5 so mom could nurse the baby. They were on U.S. 99 and asked a policeman if getting back on I-5 would be the quickest way home. He told them to stay on 99 since they could pull off into a parking lot when the kids needed attention. Good advice. They talked to one woman who had started home from work in Portland at 5:00 and 10:30 she was still an hour or more from home. Seems as though there were a lot of abandoned rigs on the freeway and only one lane had moving traffic. Maybe the long stalls caused people to run out of gas. I don't know. Wow. What a trip home to see moms and dads.

Until next time,
Love you all,
Papa Coyote

Final Report of the Owyhee River Redd Count

2009-12-08T21:29:00.003-07:00

Ahhh, summer time. The river is frozen over in many places where the water runs still and deep at this writing.

Ray Perkins to the left

I talked to Ray tonight at the Indianhead Fly Fishers Christmas party. He completed the count yesterday. Told me that I should have come along with my camera because he fell into the river. He has been on my case all year after I fell into the river last year. That river is cold. Ray took the temperature near the "Rock Garden" and found the water to be flowing at 31 degrees. Yup. That would be cold. The fish are not now active, so fishermen, wait for a warming trend. Temperature is predicted to be below zero in SW Idaho and Eastern Oregon tonight.

The redd count this year for the seven designated sample areas is 1504 redds. Last year the count was 995, the year before 961. The increase from last year is 51%. That is statistically significant, duh. Ray does not know the cause for such an increase, but there are a lot of fish eggs awaiting to hatch next April. One conclusion that might be drawn is that the brown population is large and very healthy at this time. Barring a major gully washer flood there should be a zillion little browns in the water next spring---lots of food for the big browns. There is not likely to be a flood on the Owyhee this spring because predictions call for below normal precipitation and above normal temperatures. Judging by the temperature at the time I am typing this, we are going to have some pretty warm winter weather this winter to balance out what we are having right now.

PLEASE BE AN ETHICAL FISHERMAN AND DO NOT WALK IN THE RIFFLES WHERE THE REDDS ARE LOCATED. IF FOR SOME REASON YOU MUST WALK IN THE RIFFLES, DO NOT WALK ON THE GRAVEL HUMPS--THAT IS WHERE THE EGGS LIE.

Until next time,
May all your trails be gently downhilll,
PapaCoyote

Annual Redd Count on the Owyhee River in Eastern Oregon

2009-12-04T21:17:00.013-07:00

You may view any picture in much larger format by clicking once on the picture. Click on the return button to return to the blog.

The members of the Indianhead Fly Fishers organization of Weiser, ID helped Ray Perkins make his annual count of the redds in the Owyhee River. We have helped him make this count for the last four years. It is a unique opportunity to learn about taking scientific data and talk about fish in the Owyhee River with the man that I call the "Father of Owyhee Brown Trout". Ray made the decision to plant the Owyhee with brown trout about twenty years ago. He has been the only manager of this fishery that is now recognized as a world class trout river. Brown trout in excess of 20 inches can regularly be caught. The biggest brown trout caught in the river was thirty-seven and one-half inches. Wouldn't you know it, the lucky fisherman was a ten year old girl. She did have to release the fish because the brown trout fishery on the Owyhee is catch and release.

Are there a lot of browns in this river? Well, for the last four years the redd count has been holding at about 950. This year, with one of the seven stretches of the river that is counted every year yet to be counted, the count will probably exceed 1250. That is a lot of fish. We see a lot of fish, big fish, when we walk the river making the count.

Not only are there a lot of fish, but this river might possibly be the most food laden river in the U.S. Ray has counted, now I don't know how fish scientist do this, 26,000 aquatic insects to the square meter in the river. The river is alive with all kinds of scuds, mayflies, caddises, stone flies and more. The river is so rich with food for the trout that the fisherman had better have exactly what the fish is looking for or he will be skunked. That being said, fishermen show up in large numbers all year long and from all over the U.S. and even the world. We are so lucky to have such a great fishing opportunity so close by.

There are rainbows in the river, too. The Oregon Fish and Game started stocking the river in 1938 with RB. Last year our IFF members helped Ray stock 113,000 RB into the river. That was a lot of fun and am I glad I helped him do that. The only fish I caught on the Owyhee this year was a six inch RB. I helped put him there:} It takes the big browns about three minutes to figure out that fingerling RB are being planted and then we can see dozens of big fish close in for the kill. As we dump a net full of four inch fish into the water the browns are at our feet chomping and swallowing on the offering. I guess 113,000 fish planted will mean that some will escape to provide enjoyment to fishermen at a later time.

Just getting into the river and starting to get their "river legs".

Ray explains to the boys what we are looking for and not to walk on the gravel piles as that is where the eggs are to be found. The fish know to build their redds (a Swedish word for fish nest) in areas of the river where the water will flow through the gravel pile thus bringing oxygen to the eggs. The eggs will hatch in April.

Ray counting redds. The power these fish generate to move rocks out of the way and pile up gravel up 18 inhes high in which they lay their eggs is just incredible. That is why it is considered unethical to fish the riffles and runs of rivers in the fall in which brown trout inhabit. They are pretty well tuckered out from the effort of spawning. Counting the redds can be a little tricky because brown trout will build a redd where another has previous dug out a redd. So we can find five, six or even more redds in one place. We make a good guess as to how many redds when we find a depression three feet long and seven feet wide and a pile of gravel that is as big and a foot and a half high. Ray refers to the brown trout's sex life as European groupies.

This panoramic shot of the crew working their way up the river counting redds well illustrates the exotic nature of the Owyhee River. This area receives about 11 inches of precipitation annually. Thus very few trees. I think the area is beautiful with the multi-colored rock formations. There is a dam about five miles upstream from where I took this picture.

Ray Perkins leads Dave, his grandson, Colin, and Collin's buddy Jake up the river counting redds. Redds are found in the riffles not the pools so when we walk the river, we can skip the pools. It is a lot easier walking on dry land than up the river against the current.

Before I try to explain why Colin had his shirt off allow me to preface the explanation with the fact that when the picture was taken the air temperature was seventeen degrees. There was no wind and not a cloud in the sky, so it was pretty pleasant if one is dressed for the occaision. Now why did Colin have his shirt off? Hey, he is a fifth grader and such actions of all fifth grade boys are usually not explained by rationale understood by the grandfather generation. But Colin and his Jake had a good time helping to count the brown trout redds and seeing some seriously big fish swim by and even between their legs.

Near the end of the redd count we were buzzed by two military jets. Anybody know what kind this is? They made two passes over us, but I doubt they had us on their mind.

So, if you want to fish the Owyhee this time of the year, you might consider fishing the stetch of the river close to the dam. The water is warmer there. In the afternoon about 1:30 a hatch of midges will come off and you might have to tie on a zebra midge pattern size #28. I can't even see that fly, but oh, well. Sometimes a BWO hatch will occurr so be prepared. Fortunately, a big honkin
Woolly Worm or Zonker will work and I can see to tie those on.

Time to say good bye,
Papa Coyote Loves You All

Thankful for a Wonderful and Healthy Family

2009-11-26T21:46:00.016-07:00

We met a J's nieces house for a Thanksgiving Dinner and a visit with J's side of the family. J was up at six this morning to put the 21# turkey in the roaster. She prepared fresh cranberry sauce, gravy and stuffing to take into Boise for the dinner. Everybody who attended brought something to round out the dinner. Nephew John brought the usual rolls that the school cooks in Jerome bake, but he also brought his new girlfriend. We, of course, gave her the old routine that we were sorry for her having hooked up with John. John had warned her that she would probably hear the likes.

We are thankful that Bryan, who had suffered a stroke six weeks ago, was able to come home for the day. He has about a week more of physical therapy at the convalescent center and then will be home. He has gone from not being able to walk, to using a walker, to using a cane. I think he is just about ready for a fishing trip. Jody, had half of a thyroid removed last Friday and was in attendance and looking very well. This has been a rough stretch for the family. We are again blessed with several small children at the family gatherings. We had a spell there when all the little kids had grown up and had not yet married or had started families. It is a joy to have the little ones to play with and watch.

Here are some pictures that I took. You can figure out who is who.

Grandma Selling Her Creations at the Idaho Center

2009-11-23T22:05:00.001-07:00

My wife is an old so and so. Hmmmm. Let me restate that, My wife is a sew and sew. She loves to create fun things to wear from fabric. She likes to make an original creation and then go on to make another original creation. She sells these at bazaars and online (www.hattiejane.com). She does not like to sew several of the same things. She cooks the same way. She is a very good cook and I have the girth to prove this statement. When our son was still living at home, he would have a friend stay over for a night or two and of course eat with us. When his friend would say that something he had for dinner was particularly good, D would say well, you will never have it again. Seems harsh, but what he was referring to is that J never uses a recipe and so the taste she creates is a one and only taste. Not that the next effort at the same dish won't be delicious, it just won't be quite the same as the previous creation.

After long days stretching into nights of sewing, J had lots of stuff to sell at the Christmas Bazaar in Nampa. She will again have a booth in the first weekend of December at the Fair Grounds in Boise. She hopes to do even better there. It takes a lot of planning to try to show her creations in such a small allotted space as 8x8. Maybe next year she will buy two booths, but that would double her cost. Of course the cost of gas going back and forth runs up the costs pretty fast.

J does not really have to have the money for us to eat and clothe ourselves, but she loves to see the enjoyment her creations bring to the little ones and their mothers and grandmas. Men, seem to lack the ability to enjoy in the same manner. We kind of get excited by the grandkid catching that first fish or baseball. Now that is fun.

So, if you are in need of a chemise, tutu, purse, wallet, wine bag, bag, passport carrier, apron, princess dress or a Superman cape click, click, click on www.hattiejane.com. Christmas is coming sooner than you think!!

Final set up at home in the 8x8 allotted space

Setting up at the Idaho Center

Setting up Thursday night at the Idaho Center

In action at the Idaho Center

Got to go beddy bye,
Papa Coyote loves you all

Flies and the Materials of Which They Are Made

2009-11-21T09:41:00.000-07:00

Oh the mysteries of fly fishing. One can read thousands of articles (no exaggeration here) about matching the hatch. Theories abound about why fish strike one fly and not another of the same pattern. Should the fly have been a size 18 or a 28? With all that concern about matching a hatch some guy fishing next to me can be constantly hooking up only to find that he is using a Renegade or a Royal Wolf or a Prince Nymph. Now I ask, "What is that Royal Wolf matching?" Joke is on us fly fishermen. Some of the best flies don't match anything that fish regularly dine upon. Oh, one other thing. One can read article after article about how fly fishing is a stress reliever. If one wants to relieve stress he needs to dig up a canful of worms, cut a fine willow branch, tie on some line, attach a bobber and a hook, sit back with a fine book on a warm, slightly breezy day. Que sera, sera.

In the mid-seventies I started backpacking for a full week once a year with a friend, Otto Rast. A few years later we added Delbert Kuntz and some years a relative or two would tag along. I met Otto while bowling in the Nisei Night Owl League. Later he became the State Tournament Director of the Idaho State Bowling Association. At the same time I was on the State Board of Directors representing the Western Idaho District. On long car rides across the state we became aware of our mutual love for fishing mountain lakes. In twenty of the next twenty-one years we spent one of his two valuable weeks of annual vacation time packing deep into the Idaho mountains and definitely off the beaten trail. And did we ever catch fish! Over the years I have managed to walk into over 700 mountain lakes. Otto has probably visited over 800 lakes. We owe our wives a big thank you for putting up with our passion. Otto started off as a worm fisherman, but was concerned about hooking fish deep because some of the fish needed to be released. I had learned at Priest Lake from an Idaho Fish and Game fisheries specialist to use a spin casting reel and rod and a clear plastic bubble in which water can be trapped. A leader of about seven to nine feet is added after the bubble and a fly attached. The fly can be made barbless and I find a barbless hook lands as many fish as a barbed hook if the fish is played properly. Fish do not swallow flies, but on the very rarest of occaision, so we could catch 50 to a 100 fish in a day, keeping only a few for our dinner.
I started to tie a fly pictured above. I used seal fur mixed with some muskrat or beaver. This fly can be fished dry, but works best just under the surface of the water while being retrieved in quick, long jerks. The theory about quick, long jerks is that the fish does not get a good look and has to make a quick decision to strike or the opportunity is lost. So matching the hatch is not so important--in theory at least. We also used a black or dark olive green Woolly Bugger. These two patterns will keep a mountain lake fisher in all the fish he can hope to catch. The fly I tied with seal fur was as they say a real killer. Except we only killed enough to eat. And so for years we had great success and then in steps the Federal Government and bans my fly. Really!----from the NOAA.gov website

"The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) [pdf] was enacted on October 21, 1972. All marine mammals are protected under the MMPA. The MMPA prohibits, with certain exceptions, the "take" of marine mammals in U.S. waters and by U.S. citizens on the high seas, and the importation of marine mammals and marine mammal products into the U.S."

So now a U.S. citizen can only legally possess a fly tied of seal fur if the seal fur was in his or her possession prior to 1972. An Australian, a Canadien, or New Zealander can continue to fish with seal-fur-tied flies for trout while laughing at their American counterparts' attempts to duplicate their succees.

Seal fur was regularly sold in fly fishing shops throughout the Seventies as stock on hand was sold out. Not being able to obtain seal fur I have tried numerous substitutes. There is SLF and STS Trlobal Dub designed to be used in lieu of the real thing. The texture is different and the ease of spinning the dubbing material is definitely easier with these substitutes. But, as the owner of the West Wind Fly Shop in Calgary says, "All the substitutes lack the translucency of the real seal fur and therefore cannot really substitute for seal fur." He is right. Forget theorizing, he is right.

Some how or another I came into possession of several packets of the real thing. I cannot remember for the life of me how this happened. Dang Al! So I am back to tying the Betts Mountain Special (BMS). I gave one of the flies to Mary, the treasurer of the Indianhead Fly Fishers organization of which I am now the president. We had hiked into a mountain lake (in a snow storm). She used the fly and had a few bites. I had one. Fishing for cutthroats at 7500 in a snowstorm is probably not conducive to catching fish. She then used the same fly on her next four fishing trips and constantly caught fish until she wore the fly out. Her husband tried to copy the pattern without the same success. He does not have seal fur. I have tied some more for her and will give them to her when I next see her.

So what does this fly match? Beats me. Kind of like the Royal Wolf, but this fly is always my go to fly while fishing anywhere, especially mountain lakes.

Got to go work on the basement wall where we had the plumbing done.
Until later,
Papa Coyote

Old House Needed Some Emergency Repair

2009-11-16T07:47:00.000-07:00

Total cost $423 plus the cost of new wall and insulation and the new storage shelves.

Much of this lumber is useable so I have to find a place to store it. Problem!

Got all the shelves torn out

Jane starts de-constructing the storage shelves
Our house was built in 1922. We think it is a pretty neat old house. We have insulated, rewired, added on, re-roofed, resided, re-landscaped, repainted, carpeted, re-plumbed, new septic tank and added a new septic tank and drain field and ... Well you get the picture. May have been better to have bought a new house instead of the country hovel in 1972 that cost us $11,500, but, we have country charm and it is "our" house in every sense of the word. We even had to cement part of the basement floor. Half of it was just dirt. I even killed a snake on the basement floor in the early years. Than can't happen now, but we still get mice. This story begins with J sorting her fabric and organizing it and storing the fabric in plastic sealable containers. In the process she started to find some wet fabric. Not good. The leak was as bad as it can get. The old cast iron (old as in 87 years old) sewer pipe leading from the bathroom outside to the septic tank had sprung a foot long crack and leak. The pipe walls are only an eighth of an inch thick. I was surprised. I thought cast iron pipes would have much thicker walls. With the price of everything my first reaction was there goes the plan to replace the living room windows this year and take advantage of the government's $1500 tax incentive to do so. The repair bill was not as bad as I first feared. Our third generation Weiser Plumbing plumber, Jeff, charged us $383 at fifty dollars an hour for labor. We had to dig out the pipe on the outside. We needed a hole five feet by 3 feet and three feet deep. My wife was adamant that I would not get to do that and she called Tom the Handyman. He came out and said he would charge $15 an hour to do the job. I don't like hourly rates and figured I would have to ante up about $80. He dug the hole and refilled it for $35. I could hardly believe my ears. I gave him two twenties. Let me know if you need a good handy man and I can give you his phone number.

Got to run, got work to do as you can see by the pictures and have to get ready to teach a fly tying class Tuesday evening,
PapaCoyote

Grandson Turns Eleven

2009-11-15T10:46:00.000-07:00

Here he is four years earlier.

Mama and Papa Coyote headed west to Newberg, OR to visit daughter's family and celebrate her and her eldest son's birthday. I think I had fun. I was walked on, walked, slobbered on, head butted, slugged, climbed upon, jumped upon, rolled on, rode on, fed good food, and loved. I can't tell you how many times I read "The Cat in the Hat." What did the fish say?

M had a Mayan temple birthday cake made gluten free from scratch. Tasted really good. Nobody remembered to buy candles so he easily blew out the seven that could be scrounged up. I think he easily would have handled eleven.

Papa Coyote loaded the eleven year old and his five year old brother (the G-Man) to go visit Kaufman's Fly Fishing Shop in Tigard and then to meet the rest of the family in Washington Square Shopping Mall. Now here is a leap in faith and courage. My guide was the eleven year old. He was perfect. Even navigated the backways home to avoid rush hour traffic with his expertise. Not bad for an eleven year old.

At Kaufmans's I learned that M wants to learn to fly fish and tie flies. Okay. We will do that this summer. He might have to come for a longer visit than he has in the past summers. I talked to the clerk for some time and learned that he would like to come do a program for our Indianhead Fly Fishing club. That is cool. He gets paid to do his programs. I told him we don't pay for programs and that I could set him up with an expert Owyhee River fisherman (not Papa Coyote, LOL) while he was visiting. He said we could talk.

Walked into a toy store at the Mall and a guy tried to sell me a model of a bass boat. Why would I want a model for COL!? We got to talking fishing and turns out he is an avid steelheader on the Alsea and the Silitz Rivers. He got his wife to turn over the notebook computer and I saw several HERO pictures. I learned techniques to fish for steelhead on the coastal rivers.

So it was not too bad of a day even if I had to go to the Mall. We started the journey with the requisite trip for fries, burgers, hot dogs, and chicken strips at Burgerville. Burgerville is a cool place with the best milkshakes. Our grandchildren love as in LOVE fries.

I am here to tell you that two and one half days with an eleven year old, a five year old, a two year old and a seven month old can be tiring. We had a really good time and felt kind of bad having to leave our poor daughter to manage that bundle of pentup and sometimes not so pentup bundle of energy. I could not help to think of those thoroughly stupid women who get medical assistance to have a baby at the age of sixty. You know they could not have had kids or their minds have gone blank and they don't remember. Parenting day after day, week after week year after year is a physically and emotionally draining job.

Oh, we also learned some new vocabulary. "Ungy, yumyum" means, "I am hungry." That is two-year old speak. I guess it is kind of cute, but not so much at two in the morning. He is very stubborn and one about has to feed him when he is ungy.

I had hoped to take the kids for a walk on some trails and look for mushrooms, but I was overridden and had to go to the Mall. People watching can be almost as entertaiing as a good mushroom hunt. As luck would have it I found mushroom in a parking strip of grass next to our car at the motel in Wilsonville. Of course, I am at a loss for what kind of mushroom I found. I will post those pictures on my mushroom blog.

You can click on pictures for more detail.
Papa Coyote loves you all

Granddaughter Turns One

2009-11-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

Grandpas and granddaughters were all over the place. This is one of the coolest grandpas.

The first buggy ride is a pretty exciting adventure.

The father of the birthday girl confers with one of the grandmas.

Hmmm, now I wonder where Grandma got this tukiliit?

Ah, Cake. She had been waiting for the cake! We all had been waiting for the cake. Yummy.

Now if she could just get a hold of that hat of Dad's.

Lots of friends and relatives came to celebrate the birthday and what a surprise--pony and buggy rides. The little ones loved this surprise!

Sometimes one just has to take a break and contemplate all the activity.

Gets a helping hand from Mom for her first "Cowgirl up!".

This one year old birthday girl is lucky to have two grandpas

This is the new one year old. She is thinking about giving her Grandpa Coyote a kiss. I don't know why she would get such a big laugh out of that thought. Go figure.

Mushroom Hunt then on to West Yellowstone

2009-11-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

J and I traveled to West Yellowstone on Wednesday. We were to have left on Saturday, but I did not feel right skipping the IFF board meeting Tuesday night so we got a late start. The Park closed on the 2nd so we missed that. The road to Cody, WY, goes thru the Park, so I missed the visit to the Buffalo Bill Plains Museum. I really want to see that someday. I did fish the Madison River between lake Hebgen and Earthquake Lake. I hooked three fish, landed two and had a couple other strikes that I missed. The two I caught were 18" whitefish. They don't make big runs like brown trout or jump like RB, but they just resist real hard and bury themselves in the current. I had fun landing them even though they are not considered one of the premier gamefish. Another fisherman visited to see how I was doing and said he is local and fishes the Madison often and thought the day was slow, He had only caught one smalll RB so I was feeling pretty good. I don't have pictures of the fish because I don't like to have the camera on me when I am wading a river. I have a wading staff, but have been known to go down while using two wading staffs.

I thought Earthquake Lake was pretty ugly. Hebgen was pretty. You can see a picture of the intersection one takes to access Hebgen and Earthquake.

West Yellowstone has very few stores open this time of the year. Activity picks back up when the Park opens on the 15th of December for the snowmobilers. See the sunrise from our condo which overlooked the Wolf and Bear Discovery Center. The first morning there I opened the window of our bedroom at 4:30 to listen to the wolves howl. Sounds much more like a moan.

I went out to fish again on Friday but the wind was howling worse than the wolves so I gave that up (don't need another Bow River experience). J and I packed up a drove home. On the way we visited Upper Mesa Falls on the Henry Fork of the Snake River. You can see the pictures. We thought it was pretty impressive.

The Tuesday before leaving my mushroom hunting partner and I spent the day looking for mushrooms. The pictures shown are from Cabin Creek Campground on the Middle Fork of the Weiser River. We found sixteen different mushrooms, but I have only identified a few. We found the edible Coprinus altramentarius which is closely related to the Inky Caps. We found these in the yard of the Second Chance store on the corner of lane and the highway. These are edible mushrooms, but can make one very sick if alcohol is consumed at the time or even a day later.

Got to go and see how the U of I is doing against Fresno State. Go Vandals!

Papa Coyote loves you all

From the Flathead Reservation, Montana

2009-10-29T22:02:00.001-06:00

To start us off.

What a cutie!

A handsome young man with his loving mother.

The pictures above are some more of J' ideas for a fabric print.

We saw several sculptures on our trip. This is in front of a cafe along highway U.S. 93 in St. Ignatius. We stopped at the General Store next door owned by the same man who died a month ago. The General Store is really cool. It had every type of bead one could possibly imagine in every size imaginable. They stocked about every thing an Indian would need to make the regalia and dresses needed for Pow Wows. J and I both bought some beads. I will use some for tying a certain type of fly. I also bought some sinew. Often J and I will meet people who will tell us their life story out of the nowhere. I don't know why we attract that type of behavior. The woman clerking the General Store is French, born in France, of a Mescalaro Apache father who died when she was young. She was raised in France always curious about her Indian ancestory. Then as a young woman she met a Blackfeet Indian in France whom she married and came to live on the reservation in Browning. Her husband drank way too much, his family of 18 brothers and sisters were constantly at her house drunk and bleeding from a multitude of fights. Her husband was in a serious auto accident and was in a coma for five months. He was paralyzed by the accident. She tried for several years to stay with him and take care of him, but the drunkenness and violence of her in-laws and Browning drove her out. She was concerned for the safety of her daughter. She has since re-married to a non-drinking Flathead Indian and she now lives in St. Ignatius. I thought she had a pretty interesting story so I am sharing it with you.

This the first building built on the mission grounds. The sign on the building said it was constructed in 1854. It is where the first fathers lived. I didn't take pictures inside the church (it was allowed) and probably should have. The art work was done by one of the fathers assigned to the mission. He was an incredible artist. This URL address will lead to a good article about the history of the mission and some good pictures. http://lakeshorecountryjournal.com/daytrippers/stignatius.html

This is the Catholic Church built with the help of Indians on the Flathead Reservation. The location is St. Ignatius, MT.

I

I like the informative signs on the Flathead Reservation because the info is written in the Salish language then translated into English. You might remember an earlier picture I posted here taken on the Couer d' Alene Reservation with both languages used.

Later Gator,
Papa Coyote

Glacier, West Entrance

2009-10-28T07:20:00.000-06:00

It was a dark and dreary day. Well, ok, the sun was shrouded in heavy clouds all day, but it was not all that dreary. Edgar Allan must have had a different mind set. We drove to the West Entrance. The Going to the Sun highway was closed about half way to the summit, so we did not get the spectacular views the park is known for. We drove alongside McDonald Lake and walked the Cedar Trail alongside Avalanche Creek. The pictures are of Avalanche Creek. J is intending to experiment with creating some fabric patterns based on nature. There are a few pictures of bark and rocks that she will work with.

Visiting Glacier in late October probably is not the best choice. No crowds though. I was told that the best time to visit is the week after Labor Day. I think any time in September would probably be good. I will post more pictures in the next post that I took at Marias Pass and at East Glacier.

Papa Coyote

Trip to the National Bison Range

2009-10-26T20:49:00.001-06:00

There is a cool story about how a Flathead Indian went on a buffalo hunt on the Plains just as the buffalo were disappearing. He captured six calves and brought them over the mountains to Pablo, Mt. Four of the calves survived. He babied those calves until he had a herd of 700. They were essentially the only buffalo left. Sad that we could go from some 30-60 million buffalo in 1800 to only fifty or so wild buffalo by 1890. Anyway, this Indian offered to sell his herd to the U.S. Gov't but the government refused. A local rancher by the name of Conrad bought some and the rest were shipped to Canada because the Canadian government bought them. Conrad's herd was used to stock the National Bison Range. They keep from 350-500 buffalo on the range. There is a sale every year. Do you need a buffalo?

See http://www.fws.gov/bisonrange/nbr/

I have this book in my library and highly recommend it for information about how the buffalo were saved by this one visionary Indian.

http://www.amazon.com/Will-Be-Meat-Salish-Reservation/dp/0917298845/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256616627&sr=1-6

This sculpture is located at the parking lot of the hospital in Browning, Montana on the Blackfeet Reservation. I would have liked to have taken many pictures in Browning, but the town has an appearance that us white people would say is trashy and it reflects badly on the people who live there. The Blackfeet deal with huge unemployment rates and they are poor materialistically, but not so poor in ways that white people don't understand. So, when a white takes pictures, it seems as though we are making judgement on these people and I really am not. So I don't want to look as though I am judging. Does this make any sense to you? The really interesting observation is that there is no leash law. Really. Know of any town in the U.S. that does not have a leash law? Dogs run free and there are a lot of dogs. This would be just like a Blackfeet village 150 years ago. I think, possibly, that allowing the dogs to run free is a statement about freedom in general. Indians believe in freedom and practiced such prior to the white's arrival. Real personal freedom that white people are uncomfortable around. We like to have a more orderly society. That need for orderliness is reflected in our yards. Indian yards are not so tidy. They let the grass and weeds grow naturally. Something to be said for such a belief. While I am mowing the yard and raking the leaves, my Indian counterpart is hunting and fishing. Now, I ask, who is the smart one? Hmmm.

Photographing every detail

And finally the buffalo on the range.

A herd of antelope were sighted in my favorite elk hunting spot. Now that is wierd.

There is more than bison on the range.

There are also elk, but we never had the fortune to see them. Might have to walk into the hills nearby for that.

What you see in the lobby of the National Bison Range at Moise, Montana.

Fly Fishing the Bow River below Calgary

2009-10-08T10:23:00.000-06:00

Click on pictures for a better, more detailed view.
John Wolter pictured above owns the Angler in Boise.

The fly above I learned to tie from John Wolter who owns the Orvis Shop in Boise. The fly is a modifed version of a Zonker.

The fly below is one that was given to me by Curtis Lawrence. I traded the Wolter's Zonker for the Curtis' fly.

Guide Curtis Lawrence prepares to net a fish.

One of the six rainbows that I caught on the 28th of Sept.

Looking down the Bow on a blustery, but pretty day.

This is probably one of those trips that can be described as a trip of a lifetime. I certainly had a good time and learned from a very good, friendly guide, but I have had better days catching fish at a mountain lake. One of those no name lakes. Really. The lake does not have a name.

I contacted BowRiverFlyFishing.com to set up a trip. The cost was $495 (Canadian) for a full day guided trip. With transportation and license the trip cost $590 U.S. Probably not worth the cost, but I can't complain about the excellent guide and his professionalism. He put me on the fish in terrible conditions.

When J and I arrived at Canmore I called to tell Doug Massig I was ready to go on the scheduled day of Wednesday and gave them my local phone number. Doug, owner of the guiding company, returned my call Sunday night and told me that cold weather was coming in. I knew that from watching the televised weather reports. Wouldn't you know it, they were having unseasonably warm weather in the mid-80's the week before and catching lots big fish. How many times have we fished the lake or river with little luck and meet a guy who tells us, "Man, you should have been here yesterday!"? I can't count the times. I agreed to go the next day because the guide was available and we might beat some really bad weather later in the week. Hah!!!

As it happened the guide lived within one block of the condo we were staying for the week. He picked me up at 8 and we had an hour plus drive to Calgary where I bought a fishing license and some fly tying materials that are not available in the U.S. 'Nough said on that matter. The guide and I saw eye to eye on any matter of political and social issues so we had a very pleasant conversation through out our 14 one half hours together.

We put into the river just downriver from Calgary and all seemed well. We dressed for the cold, but it never got unbearably cold. A minute later the winds came up. He was told by the lady who runs the shuttle service that the winds were from the SE. I said that where I lived that was not good news. How about here in Alberta? He said, "Not good news." We had not gone but a few hundred feet when the winds became fierce and it was all but impossible to cast a fly let alone the three flies and a bobber (ooops, dang, I keep forgetting---a strike indicator). with all my upper body and arms I could get the flies out about fifteen feet. Forget about form and technique and looking cool while letting the rod do the work. The next morning I was stiff, sore, and tired from the effort.

Curtis, who has guided for 13 years on the Bow, asked me to sit down after a mile on the river. (We would cover 25 miles by the end of the day.) The wind was so strong that he could not control the boat or even make headway with me standing up like a big sail. That was alright with me because standing more than an hour is hard on my back. There are leg braces at the bow and stern of the drift boats and the fisherman is expected to stand while fishing. But not today.

The wind was so strong that if Curtis was not rowing, we were blown up stream and this is not a gentle, lazy river of the type one might find in Georgia. On one wide spot the wind kicked up two foot high waves. There were white caps on the river throughout the day. Curtis said that it was the worst he had ever seen and he even developed a blister and this after rowing 80 trips that year. I really appreciated the guide's expertise because he constantly had me on fish, seven of which I managed to hook and lose because I did not play them well, but I did land six rainbows and one brown trout. They ranged between 19'' to 13". I probably missed several because I just did not get the hook set quick enough. Curtis would yell, "Set the hook." I would, but too late, or I hooked weeds. The wind was churning the water so much that weeds were torn loose from the bottom and were churning through the current. About every third cast (if you can call my efforts such), Curtis would call for a weed check and there almost always were weeds that had to be cleaned off at least one of the hooks. One funny part about the trip was trying to keep "river left" and "river right" straight. Curtis explained to me what I already know from river rafting that when he says cast left he is meaning on the left side of the boat as we face downstream while moving downstream with the current. Simple enough. But, because the wind was so terribley strong, Curtis had to row with the bow upstream so that he could get his back into the oars. So now I am facing up stream (sometimes we were even moving up stream when Curtis took a break from rowing). So he would say cast left and I would. We were moving upstream and I was facing that direction, but, of course, he meant to have me cast to the other side. Finally, we used a lot of pointing.

Curtis thought the wind might be blowing 70 to even up to 90 km/hr. We had no way of knowing for sure, but I don't think this is an exaggeration. The wind was just unbelievable.

I had a very difficult time holding onto the pole (ooops, there I go again, "rod" is the proper term while fly fishing) because the wind was so strong. At one time while I had lost my grip because of the wind, a fish (a big fish, of course) struck hard and completed the wind's efforts of knocking the rod out of my hand. I reached quickly with my left hand and was able to save the rod from going into the river, but not before the fish had made his escape.

Much later in the day we took a bladder draining break. I was just doing up my waders and reaching for my raincoat which I had stuffed into a hollow log when I see Curtis bounding over the small boulders in a dash toward the boat. I started to run also thinking the boat was being blown from the shore. Curtis had a heavy anchor and had set it so the boat was safe, but the wind had lifted the fly rot out of the boat and deposited it into the river. Curtis saved the rod, but in the excitement I forgot the raincoat. It never did rain that day, but the coat was a nice windbreaker. Anyway, Curtis had a client for the next day so he found the raincoat which had been blown out of the hollow log and returned it to me the next evening. I was lucky that he only lived a block away. What were the chances of that?

Curtis and I exchanged a favorite fly that we each. Here is the website of the guide company that I hired and a website of the Canadian Geographic magazine featuring Curtis guiding an author and photographer on a trip on the Bow through the city of Calgary.

http://www.bowriverflyfishing.com/; http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/travel/travel_magazine/sep09/bright_lights.asp

Six of the seven fish I caught were caught on a small, brown San Juan River worm. The other was caught on a Bow River Bugger.

Want to tie the Bow River Bugger? http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/bowriver/

The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Drumheller, AB

2009-10-04T18:32:00.001-06:00

These are some of the pictures I took while we spent the day in the museum. Double click on a picture to get more detail. They had a very well done special exhibit about Charles Darwin and the importance of his interpretations of his observations. Evolution is very important to paleotolongists. This is the head of a bison that roamed North America over 7,500 years ago. The ancestors of the First Nation (Native Americans) used to hunt these animals that were much bigger than the bisons hunted in the past several thousand years. Using a four foot spear thrown with the aid of an atlatl was quite a challenge. Hunting in well organized groups was the key.

The mammoth stood ten feet tall at the shoulder and some stood as high as thirteen feet. Anthropologist now suggest that First Nation people of the Paleo Era probably rarely hunted these animals, but used the meat of those animals who recently died by accident or old age. Obviously, there was massive risk in hunting these animals and since these people traveled in small bands, the whole group would be endangered by the loss of an important hunter.

These salamanders are survivors from some 165 million years ago. They now live in Mexico. Well, these, of course, live in Alberta, Canada.

http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com/

If you will click on the picture of the prehistoric turtle, you can see him about to make lunch of a fingerling trout. Fellow fisherman. Haha.

This is a diorama that greets the visitors inside the museum.. The albertosauras is depicted in all its real life glory. The museum is located in the Canadian Badlands where coal has been mined and fantastic fossils are now found, collected, studied and presented to the public.

Calgary, AB sits on the Plains of North America. To get to Drumheller one must cross the Plains. That is pretty flat terrain. It has been several years since J and I have traveled the Plains. Pretty flat. As I once read some plain dweller commenting about the forests and mountains, "There are too many things getting in the way of the view. I feel all hemmed in."

We came home to find that the garden had been well killed by a frost while we were gone. I have harvested the squash and melons. Not a lot, but enough squash for the winter and a few to give away to the kids. We have had rainy and cold weather the past two days.

J has spent the day puttering with sales tax preparation for the State of ID and fighting a cold. I have been working on Indianhead Fly Fisher agendas for the upcoming meetings. We have the Grand Opening of the Weiser Community Pond this month so there is a lot to do concerning the pond which is continuing to fill. Fish and Game will plant 1000 catchable rainbows in the pond this week sometime. Now the wonder is how high will the water rise. We hope that we don't have an oooops in the making. Haha

Papa Coyote loves you all,

Yeeeeeoooowwwww!!!!!

Our Adventure in Canada

2009-10-03T17:08:00.000-06:00

You see some of the condos in the village in which we stayed. We had a very nice two bedroom unit with full kitchen on the ground floor. We loved it.

You might recognize Lake Louise.

Here is a view of Canmore, AB where we stayed for six days. It is just to the east of Banff and about 100 km from Calgary.

We entered Canada at Eastport on Highway #95. We had two cars in front of us and took about ten minutes total to enter Canada. Sure different crossing the border north of Seattle in June two years ago. What a mess. Took almost two hours.

What I love about the city center sign at Plummer, ID, located in the Coeur d' Alene Tribe Reservation, is the translation. Personally, I think the Couer d' Alene wording should have come first, but, I suppose, there would have been some violation of the wording of the grant. This is located at the Southeast terminus of the Hiawatha Trail. The trail follows the old Milwaukee Trail, thus the Hiawatha name. I was wondering if the Coeur d' Alenes would recognize the Hiawatha name on their reservation. No, they don't. The trail is referred to as the Trail of the Couer d' Alenes as well as it should. The railroad was laid out on the ancient route established by the Coeur d' Alenes when they crossed the mountains to hunt for one, sometimes two years on the Plains. You know what they were hunting?

It took us fourteen hours of driving to get to Canmore. Same to get from Canmore home. The distance is 688 miles, forty miles more than the drive to San Francisco. Canmore has grown a lot since we visited in 2000. They have been affected by the recession. Many of the condos near us were three-fourths finished, but have been left in the unfinished state. Hopefully, funding can be found before the elements ruin what has been accomplished so far. We had good weather, but, the fishing trip, oh well, that is a whole nother blog. On our way home we hit snow on the Pacific side of the Continental Divide and had rain all the way to New Meadows. We got out just in time.

Later

"Murder by the Book"

2009-09-23T21:31:00.002-06:00

Perry and I were asked by the director of the play Murder by the Book to build three bookcases for the play. We shopped for lumber at Home Depot and found a pretty good grade of plywood made of fir. We priced alder, birch and oak plywood, but thought the price too great. This is a theater in the round, well, technically in the round. The audience of 82 actually sits on the stage with set pieces behind them or around them. So we must build furniture and set pieces that look really good. When building for a conventional stage production, the furniture and set can be somewhat shabby because the audience never gets a real good look up close. We consulted with a clerk at Woodcraft in Boise about painting plywood in such a manner that the grain of the plywood would not show or at least not be prominent as is usually the case when one paints over plywood. He suggested that we sand down to a 320 grit sandpaper and then shellac the plywood. We did this and were really pleased with the results. We did face all the raw edges of the plywood with poplar and then painted two coats of a dark chocolate latex. Perry and I spent some time looking at paint chips and just knew we were going to screw this decision up. You know what women think of men and their choice of colors. So we told the director to go buy a gallon of paint that she thought would work well. Haha. We dodged that bullet. She did well. And we are looking good. Haha. We got the rich look of an old Victorian style bookcase. We had to create the molding at the top of the bookcases with a router. We dadoed grooves into the side panels to fit the shelves. We glued all joints and resulting in three very sturdy bookcases that stand seven feet tall and thirty inches wide.

Since we are not likely to have a need for book cases soon, we suggested to the board of directors that they conduct a silent auction during the six nights of performances to sell the bookcases. The accepted our idea. We have about $250-300 into the three bookcases. I don't know the exact figures because Perry was keeping all the receipts. We are hoping the theater can recoup the cost of building the cases by selling them.

You all have a wonderful day. If you are in Weiser the second or third weekend of October consider joining us for dinner and a nice performance of Murder by the Book. And, of course, you can bid on those very well built and nice looking bookcases. Call the Weiser Chamber of Commerce for tickets. 208-414-0452

Papa Coyote loves you all

2009-09-23T21:31:00.001-06:00

2009-09-23T21:31:00.000-06:00

Fly Tying Lesson

2009-09-22T20:24:00.000-06:00

The master is teaching the class.

We have several women in the club and many come for the fly tying lessons.

See Marvin and Perry contemplate tonight's hopper pattern. Marvin tied this patter without the use of a fly tying vice. He is also a master fly tier.

You can see the grasshopper pattern. The body is of one-quarter inch closed foam rubber. The wings are made by taping a hens feather to a clear piece of two inch wide celophane tape used for wrapping packages.

Perry is the master fly tier and the teacher for the September class. He taught us to tie a grasshopper pattern.

This is a fly tied by Marvin Orwig a very accomplished fly tier and rod builder. Marvin worked in the Angler's Habitat Fly Fishing shop in Caldwell, ID and worked as a fly fishing guide in Alaska for eighteen years.

Son's Birthday Party

2009-09-21T21:09:00.000-06:00

The sure sign that one is getting old is when his parents give him a present that is a tool so that an every day or at least weekly chore might become a little more easily accomplished. Such was the case for D's BD when his Mom and I gave him a Stihl leaf blower (also blows an inch or so of fresh snow real well) with the bag for vacuuming. Kind of like the five year old getting clothes for his birthday. Well, the other sign of getting older is when one is glad to get such a gift and D was pleased. He called today and said that he was out blowing pine needles off the deck this morning.

D and H and the girls came out Sunday for steak dinner with twiced baked potatoes. Also, home made ice cream. J baked two cream cheese cakes. So for desert we had cream cheese cake, homemade ice cream topped with huckleberry jam that J made. L helped Grandma make the twice baked potatoes. She gets into her work real well and for a three year old really is a good help. She also helped Grandma make tomato soup from tomatoes from our garden. She really liked the soup so Grandma sent home three pints of fresh tomato juice from which H and L can make soup for the family.

L helped Grandpa glean some onions from the neighbor's field of onions. Well, alright, the onions have not been harvested yet, so we picked up small onions that would be sorted out and culled anyway. Grandma fried the onions in a little butter to go with the steaks. Yummy! And, as is the ritual when L visits, she fed the gold fish. The gold fish get several helpings (BIG helpings) of food on the days L visits. I am sure the gold fish love to see L come to visit. Uncle D, L, and I raided the tomato patch for the little cherry tomatoes that are so sweet and flavorable this time of the year. Along with some swinging and bouncing on the bouncy ball, playing with the play-kitchen. L seemed to have a good day.

G will turn a year old in a month and she is doing the Marine crawl across the floor real well. She can really travel. She loves to laugh, just like her older sister so they are both a lot of fun to play with. Great aunt S enjoyed visiting with G, also. H and D are great parents. We are so proud of them and just love visiting with them and the grandchildren.

J had very good sales at the annual Hyde Park event in Boise this past weekend. She is very happy with how her products sold. I am very happy for her. She works hard at creating and sewing and her real joy is seeing people appreciate and enjoy what she creates. The money is nice, but that is not her first love with this business of hers. Hey, the money from sales buys fabric and the fabricolic has to support the habit;)

Papa Coyote love you all

Upper Hazard Lake and a Sea of Sheep

2009-09-18T23:21:00.000-06:00

Just had to get away and walk into a mountain lake. I picked Upper Hazard Lake because it is an easy two mile walk, it is pretty and I wanted to see how the introduction of nearly 500 six inch tiger-muskies two years ago has affected the fishery. The lake was its usual beautiful self. I walked around in a clockwise manner the edge of the lake til I came to a very large rock which one can sit on about ten feet above the water and have clear casting for the back cast. Thirty-eight years ago I sat on this rock and caught a fish so large that I could not get it to come in towards me and broke it off (not on purpose, mind you). Since the lake only had Eastern Brook Trout, I must have hooked one of the old big fish that some people caught back in the day so to speak. My old time backpacking buddy, Otto, is married to a lady who as a little girl visited her grandfather in McCall each summer for a few months. She is about 74 so this was about 65 years ago. Her grandfather managed the McCall fish hatchery and she remembers a story her grandfather tells of having to dump all the fish in the hatchery because the State ordered a closure of all hatcheries when WWII started. He planted several of the mountain lakes in the area with these brookies which are not native to the Western U.S. I don't know why the fish were in the hatchery to begin with, but suspect the plan was to plant streams in central Idaho. Brookies are very successful reproducers and these lakes began to become overpopulated with stunted fish about six to seven inches with heads that would better fit a twelve to fifteen inch fish. Upper Hazard has been a favorite of mine for taking kids to because the walk is just right for little ones and the brookies were thick and easy to catch and they taste really good when cooked alongside the lake. A great experience for kids. The Idaho Fish and Game has long pondered this problem of overpopulated lakes and about fifteen years ago planted large lake trout in the lakes with the idea that they would clean the lakes of the smaller brook trout. For some reason that did not work. Maybe fishermen caught the lake trout. The latest idea is to plant tiger-muskies which will devour the brookie fry and then as the t-m grows begin to work their way through the adult population of the lake. So I had to check that out.
I caught a total of five fish. Four were brookies of about nine to ten inches. They are a beautiful fish. I released them. So the plan seems to be working. Also, there were very few rises on the lake compared to before the plant of the t-m. I put on a #20 emerger with the idea of catching one of the three inch fingerling and succeeded. I wanted to see what kind of fish those fingerling were. I got the little guy up on the rock, but he fell off between my legs and wiggled his way back into the lake before I could get a really good look, but I think he was a rainbow. If so, then the F G has started planting the lake too soon. F and G does not show a planting in this lake this year, so I will have to wait for a few months for them to catch up on their record keeping. But, the little guy may have been a brookie. I will go up there every year to watch the progress of the experiment. I met a retired couple from McCall who were geo-caching. They have lived in McCall for 18 years and before that 25 years in Coeur d' Alene. They knew the family that lived on a farm next to my grandfather and grandmother on Lake Coeur d' Alene. Fun talking to them. They live in McCall six months of the year and six months in Maui. Tough life, but as he says, "Somebody has to it." Well. I told him I did not think he was tough enough to live through a McCall winter (I was not trying to make a friend here) and he agreed. Haha.

The bonus of this trip was that I saw some really neat mushrooms and got some good pictures. I will have to work on identifying them, but three I am sure of, they are boletes and considered to be one of the very best eating mushrooms and only make their appearance in the fall. Kind of nature's counter balance to the morel which appears in the spring.

I had only traveled a mile or so down the gravel road from the transfer parking lot on the way home when I came upon a band of sheep on the road. The herder had the Ford 350 PU along with the trail horse parked blocking the road. (the other herder was at the head of the band about a mile down the road). He told me that they were moving the herd down the road a mile or so then would move them up above the road to bed them down for the night. I would have to wait an hour or so. I told him I was okay with that. I asked the herder (Peruvian whose English was quite good) if he was herding for Harry and Angie. He says, "You know Harry and Angie?" He was surprised. He said this was one of three bands and that each band numbered 2,200 sheep before the wolves made dinner of a few during the summer. When he learned that I knew Harry and Angie, he told me that I could drive through the band. I have done this several times before about thirty years or so ago. If one just steadily moves along about five miles an hour the sheep will part and let one pass through. Took about 20 minutes to drive through. Fun to watch the Great Pyrennes doing their guarding. I never got to see the shepherd dogs, but I knew they working hard because sheep kept flowing down on to the road and up to the road. The five dogs can control a whole band of 2200 sheep. It really is an amazing feat, in my mind at least.

For some reason the upload function of the blog service is not working at this time, so I will close and come back tomorrow and hopefully can upload some pictures of the mushrooms, fish, scenery and the sheep, guard dog and one of the herders.

Later,
Papa Coyote

A Birthday in the Family

2009-09-15T07:22:00.000-06:00

J and I traveled West for six and one-half hours, stayed four nights, celebrated a birthday, watched our daughter get a cold and cough (poor girl), learned to photograph drops, and had a good time visiting with all the grandkids. What could be better? Well, the G-Man would probably say "FRIES!!" Yup, we took the grandkids to Burgerville for the fries and they can eat fries until we run out of money. On Saturday, R and I made a run to the hardware store and on the way back bought three large orders of sweet potato fries. The kids love sweet potato fries. Burgerville does a real good job with sweet potato fries.

Check out Burgerville at http://burgerville.com/.

We first learned of Burgerville by listening to http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/. Jane and Michael Stern started their report on Burgerville with an apology. Well, Burgerville is a fast food chain, but nothing like McDonald's. I could go on about Burgerville but that should be a whole 'nother blog. Oh, the Splendid Tables' program this coming Saturday will feature Amy Goldman who wrote The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table. I love our garden fresh heirloom tomatoes. What Taste!

By looking at the pictures you can guess the E was the birthday boy. We bought him a Plasma Car which at the age of two he has no problem going FAST. He can wear out the toes of his shoes pretty quickly, but I noticed that when he is barefoot he can go just as fast and manage not to drag his toes. I think I would but him out to play barefooted as my generation played at that age. He can walk over gravel and thistle without a wince. I challenged him to walk over our goat weed in Southern Idaho without a wince.

I liked the picture of the G-man and his ghost. G-Man was not too sure about that picture. Hope I did not give him nightmares

R and I had a good time taking pictures of water drops. I learned a lot about my camera working with R. Thanks, R.

I have to run. Perry and I have finished the bookcases for the Little Theater. Now we have to transport them, carefully, to the theater where we will paint them. I will take pictures. We think they look good and they are well constructed. We used plywood because we knew they had to be painted and using dimensional lumber of any type runs the cost up in a hurry.

Later,

Papa Coyote

Shopping in Chinatown, San Francisco

2009-09-07T19:38:00.000-06:00

The first picture is looking down Bush Street from Stockton. We stayed at the WorldMark which is very nicely located for a lot of fine dining, entertainment, shopping, and sightseeing. One had better do a little tuning up of the old muscles before visiting SF. We definitely had many chances to exercise little used muscles being that we live in the flatlands of the Snake River Plain in Idaho. I have found that it is a misconception that some people have that rural people are in good physical shape and city dwellers are potbellied slugs. Haha. Cities have fine public transportation, but the buses, trolley cars, or subways don't service every block. Sometimes it is just faster to walk instead of wait for the bus, and, of course, a lot cheaper to walk. So we do a lot of walking when we visit cities. In our rural setting we do a lot of driving and not much walking. When we visited NY with our family in 1989, we walked 84 blocks the first day. And that was after arriving after lunch. Our son was nine years old and daughter was 13. Geez, we walked the legs off those kids.

SF has its own special challenges with those hills. I have to laugh when I think of Idaho's famed Sawtooth Wilderness Area that gets over a million visitor days per year. The U.S.F.S. have reconstructed all the trails to have no greater than 7% grades. Really nice for walking, but if SF ever was taken over by the National Park Service, there would have to be some serious re-engineering of the streets and sidewalks. Don't think it is going to happen.

We rode the cable cars. Always a joy. And, yes, sometimes the passengers do have to get off and push the cable car for a few feet, I guess so that the cable can catch the car. Pretty cool to see a bunch of passengers jump off and start pushing the car in the middle of the street.

We were located one block from the Bush and Grant St. entrance to Chinatown. Our first visit netted a take home dinner from one of the bakeries and a big discovery. Well, a big discovery for J. After asking a few shopkeepers if there was a fabric store in Chinatown and being told "NO", J found one. What glee. Her reaction upon entering a fabric store reminds me of my buddy, Perry's reaction to entering a flyfishing store. A pure look of competence and anticipation. Makes me think of an alcoholic looking at that first drink of the evening. It was such a big find, that plans were made to return a few days later after thinking of what she could make with all that beautiful silk fabric and have time to really go through each bolt of fabric. And go through every bolt of fabric she did do. Yiyiyi, my aching back! Really. The salesgirl found me a stool to sit on while the two of them went through fabric. You can see the silk fondlers in the pictures. This was one smart saleslady knowing that keeping the husband contented was the secret to making a big sale. And a big sale she did make! I got to talking to her and found that she had lived in Boise, ID for a year, but it was too cold and she did not like it when her car made a 360 on the street one winter night. We Idahoans are always hoping for a real hard winter in hopes that it will drive the Californians back to California. They like Idaho until the winter sets in. Come on hard winter!!

A day later, J, caught a cab (I went to a bookstore and sat in Union Square reading the book, well, not really. I watched the homeless people. They are really interesting.) and went to the
Garment District of SF. There is an outlet there for some big merchandiser that I don't know the name of and they had bolts of fabric, too. J was seeing these numbers on the ends of the bolts and she thought it was the price. Like 35 etc. Well, it came to be that each bolt sold for the same price, something like $3.50 a bolt and the number at the end was the yardage. Well, that put the old fabricholic over the edge. She returned with three big black garbage bags full of fabric that must have totaled a hundred pounds. It took her several days to wash, dry and fold the fabric when we got home. Hey, a hundred pounds (a guess, but probably not much of an exeggeration) is a lot to handle when you are a retired lady.

She has plans for sewing outfits for the grandkids and, of course, sewing outfits to sell on the Etsy site under the name HattieJane's Creations. You can go to HattieJane.com to catch a link to her online store.

Just thinking of walking those SF streets and lugging around that fabric has tired me out all over again.

To all those Coyotes out there, Yiyiyi.

Papa Coyote loves you all

A Walk to Serene

2009-09-06T21:37:00.000-06:00

The fishing was so satisfying. I mostly used a light color emerger pattern that really does not have a name. I just tied a pattern that I thought might work on the Owyhee River and it worked well last Friday. I caught six fish before a front begin to move in and the barometer fell. The first two fish were about 14-15 inches and the rest were about 10 inches. I tried to lift the second fish with my 7X tippet and the fish was too heavy for that. Nice fish. Cutthroat won't jump, but they do fight hard and, they are easier to fool and catch than rainbow. I kind of like fish that are easily fooled unlike those blankety, blank brown trout on the Owyhee River. Oh, well. Oh, yes. I use barbless hooks and properly release the fish safely back to the waters.

Ahh, the lake. Serene Lake is well named. I feel serene around this lake. Well the truth is I find serenity around all mountain lakes. Sometimes I just have to hike into a mountain lake and fish. It seems like something draws me there. Can't fight it. Problem is that I can't talk friends of my age group to go with me. Since my balance is not as great as it used to be and my legs are not as strong as they once were, these trips are getting more problematic, but I move along carefully and smartly. After all I have a lot of experience doing this. I have requested that my ashes be scattered along the Monumental Creek lakes out of Cougar Basin out of Big Creek Guard Station. It is in my will.

I don't know where these pictures will show up on this blog, but there is a picture looking back from near the lake to the ridge that must be crossed to get back to the trail head. There is about a 300 foot elevation gain in a rather short distance--translated as a steep climb, but there is a trail. I found two stout sticks and used them as walking sticks. That really helped with the climb---kind of like putting it in four wheel drive. Does cause some sore shoulders to go along with the sore legs the next day, though. I was surprised that I did not get leg cramps in bed that night, then remembered that I have been eating four or five tomatoes a day out of the garden along with an uncountable number of cherry tomatoes (I pop them like candy), so I think the potassium load is preventing cramps.

The trail sign for Serene Lake points the wrong way. That is because the tree that it was once attached fell down as a result of the tree. The sign was placed in a convenient spot. Because of the way it points, I never did find the trail last year when the ground was thoroughly trampled by the sheep.

These pictures show that a fire raged through the area some years past. Some years as in 17 years past. About 250,000 acres burned in 1992. McCall, Idaho's air quality was so bad that one could hardly stay in the town. See the trail marker on the tree? Ha, not much left. The tree did not fare much better than the trail marker. When I first started backpacking 43 years ago, all trails had blazed trees along the trail so the hunters could follow the trails when snow covered the ground. I wish the Forest Service continued to blaze trails in this matter because some trails are no longer well maintained (I guess we spent that money in Iraq) so the trails are sometimes only faint traces.

Sometimes a walk to a mountain lake means walking through a band of sheep and a sheep herders camp. The herders are friendly and usually one or more speaks passable English. If a fisherman catches fish in a mountain lake, the herders welcome having a few left in their camp. This time I was fishing a trophy classified lake which means the only fish that can be kept are those 20" are longer. I did not see any that big let alone catch such a big fish. The sheep are moved all summer along a designated stock driveway estblished by the U.S. Forest Service. So if one goes back to an area where one hiked the year, or years, previous; one will see the sheep again at the same time of the year. I did not get to see the herd dogs work on this trip, but that is a real treat. Those four or five little dogs work so hard moving a thousand or even two thousand sheep along according to the commands of their Peruvian herders. The commands are shouted in their native tongue and one can heard for a mile or more depending on the wind and lay of the land. Then there are the big Great Pyrennes for herd protection and, of course, four or five head of horses. The horses are hobbled and one wears a bell (the bell mare). The herders keep the horses about a quarter mile from their camp, I suppose so the bell doesn't keep them up all night long. Some years the owner of these particular bands reports losses of a hundred or more sheep due to wolf predation. There is now a hunting season on wolves in Idaho. The hunt is to last until 22o wolves have been killed. There is an estimated 800-1000 wolves in Idaho. The tags sold for $11 and over 11,000 tags have been sold. I would suspect that the owner of these sheep would welcome hunters who hold a wolf permit to hunt along the edges of his band of sheep. The Great Pyrennes are not especially welcoming to alien beings though, so beware.

Time to move on. Perry and I have been working for three days now building three seven feet tall by 30 inches wide five shelf book cases. These are for the Little Theater. We will propose that the bookshelves be sold at a silent auction during the seven night run of the play. This way the theater can recoup the expense of making the bookcases and possibly make some profit. We don't have the space to store props, so it would be better that some person made use of these evne if the theater does not recoup the cost because otherwise we would end up destroying the cases. Seems like a waste and they really are sturdy and well constructed.

Time to catch some ZZZZZ's because we are going to spend another day working on the bookcases.

Night, night.

Papa Coyote loves you all.

Getting to the Wine Country Tour of Sonoma County, CA

2009-09-02T21:01:00.000-06:00

Just after crossing the border from Oregon into Nevada, one comes upon the first casino located in McDermitt. If the Say When is a memorable casino, then it would probably be memorable for all the wrong reasons. The Indian casinos in Idaho and Oregon are much nicer.

The price of gas was usually around $3.06 in CA ,but there were some places where we could have paid $3.23. We respectfully passed those stations up. The picture shows gas prices in McDermitt, Nevada. The price of regular unleaded in my fair village is $2.70 a gallon. What does it cost in your neck of the woods?

To get to the Sonoma Wine country and San Francisco from Idaho, one has to travel Nevada highways. This picture does not do justice to the fact that one can see forever down the road and the road does not take a curve for as far as the eye can see. Incredible. Also, we had times where we never saw another car for as much as ten minutes at a time and that while whizzing along at 75 mph. When I was in college and for awhile after, there was no speed limit in Montana and Nevada. Even after the speed limit was put into effect, it was common knowledge that drivers could drive the Nevada state highways at any speed because speed limits were apparently not enforced on state highways. The state highways are in excellent condition and are just as straight as U.S. #95 as pictured here. J and I drove back from San Francisco in 11 and 1/2 hours. If not for construction north of Winnemuca and on Donner Pass, we probably could have made the trip in eleven hours. It cost us $180 dollars for gas for the round trip. It cost us $128 to park for four days in SF. We spent about $20 for snacks and drinks on the round trip (we pack our own lunch). Airfare to SF and back ranges from $600-690 for the two of us. Then we have to catch a shuttle to our SF hotel. I think the shuttle would cost us about $80 for the two of us round trip. Then we would have to rent a car to go to the wine country. The cheapest I can find online for four days is $167. Trips range from four hours on up. We have to be at the airport 2 hours before departute (so they say) and it takes us two hours to get from home to inside the airport. Then there is the hour at the end of the trip getting the baggage (10% chance of losing it or having it arrive a day late). Then there would be parking. For nine days at $8.25 equals $74.25. So the whole trip by air would have cost us $922. And the time would be nine hours. Now lets review. Nine hours to fly, eleven to eleven and one-half hours to drive. $922 to fly and $328 to drive. Hmmm, any wonder why we drive?? I think the boredom of driving is about equal to the hassle of flying.

Visiting Sonoma County, CA

2009-08-30T21:39:00.000-06:00

The cast iron pot shown is said to be one of only two left in tact in the U.S. Interesting that they put sand on the ship's deck, placed the pots (notice the shape) on the sand, then lit fires under the pots to "try" the blubber. The work those men did on the 18th and 19th Century whalers is absolutely mind boggling. May I suggest Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea-The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. This is an awesome story so very well written.

We saw as many as 13 surfers in the water at any one time. They, of course, are wearing wet suits. I talked to one of the surfers who appeared to be about 50. Says he surfs two to three times a week. In 18 months he will have his house paid off and plans to work only a few days a week, so will be able to surf more. I surfed Laguna Beach when I was 18. I remember having a really abrupt introduction to the bottom of the ocean when I missed a wave. Ouch.

Sonoma County is known for its wines, but the county's western border is the Pacific Ocean. J and I spent one day at Bodega Bay and tasted its reportedly great clam chowder. Now I am a clam chowder afficianado. While I can say the clam chowder at the restaurant where the movie Birds was filmed is good chowder, it is not as good as Mo's clam chowder at Newport, Oregon or other Mo's along the coast and the best chowder can be found in my sister-in-law Judy's kitchen or at Al Scoma's restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Now that is more like clam stew----lots and lots of clams. Yum, Yum, Yummmmy!

I will work on the wine country part in the next blog. We did tour the Charles M. Schulz Museum which was great. Could not take pictures in the museum and for some reason the pictures I took outside the museum did not record on the disc. This is a mystery. As some of you well know, Schulz was a Minnesotan and brought some of Minnesota with him to Santa Rosa by building an ice skating rink in Santa Rosa and playing ice hockey regularly. Way to go Charles. We did not have organized hockey where I grew up in Valparaiso, but we did play a sandlot variety when the city would plow out a rink each winter on Spectacle Lake. I loved playing hockey. Makes NFL look like wimps.

Note: Double click pictures for more detail.

Later, got to go rest this old body. Got lots of work to do tomorrow.

Yeeeeoooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.

The Lewiston Hill and the Camas Prairie, Idaho

2009-08-18T21:53:00.000-06:00

Hopefully, the pictures that appear above this information will be of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers taken from atop Lewiston Hill. When driving from southern Idaho to northern Idaho on U.S. 95, one must drive up Whitebird Hill (named after the Nez Perce head man at the time of white contact whose band lived on the Salmon River). The old road is said to have had 33 switchbacks (one can still drive this road if they want) as it gained 200o or so feet in elevation. You can imagine traveling this route in the winter. The new road is a pretty straight road. It just keeps going up and up and up. The famous Battle of Whitebird Hill was fought alongside the road. The Nez Perce put the big hurt onto the U.S. Army in this battle. It was the battle that started Chief Joseph's famous flight toward Canada. The old Lewiston Hill road was much like the old White Bird Hill road. It also gained about 2000 feet. The cars that were built in the seventies and before often overheated on the way up. We saw lots of cars pulled to the side with radiators steaming. Travelers regularly carried five gallons of water when making this trip. The first picture should show the Clearwater River flowing west toward Lewiston (ID) and Clarkston (WA) and its confluence with the Snake River. (Note the winding road pictured) The Clearwater is the first river that Lewis and Clark were able to put canoes on after crossing the mountains. They stayed with the Nez Perce at Canoe Camp and while making their dugout canoes and much enjoyed their time with the Nez Perce people. When I was a little kid I was scared to cross the Snake river because I thought it was full of snakes. Actually, it was named after the Indians who lived along the river upstream from Weiser to the Wyoming border. The sign language for these people among other tribes was to show a hand moving in a weaving manner or as a snake would move. Actually, it had nothing to do with the reptiles, but with how well these Shoshone people could weave and were known throughout the West as master weavers. White men got it all wrong and the Shoshone Indians in southern Idaho became known as Snakes. Well, so did the Paiutes. They were also called Diggers. Not especially complimentary, but these people were masters at digging roots for food.

These three panels are located at Tolo Lake on Camas Prairie. The prairie was one of the favorite places for the Nez Perce people to gather in June to harvest the camas root. They would harvest, roast and store literally tons of these bulbs. Tolo Lake was a place where several different bands of Nez Perce would meet. After the long winter, the people were enthusiastic about seeing members and relatives of the different bands. Of course, the young people, if of age, were looking over the members of the opposite sex with much interest. There was much gambling by the men, horse racing, and foot racing. Are you knowledgeable about Indian culture? Test: Did the Indians tell stories around the fire at night on the prairie at this time? See answer at bottom of the blog. I will not restate what is written on the panels. If you will double click the pictures, the picture will be enlarged and you may read what is written on the historial panes. Incidentally, Idaho does a very good job with their historical roadside markers. I have driven in all but two of the states and I think Idaho does the best job.

Oh, yes, the answer. Indians told stories only during the evening hours of the winter. Stories were very entertainingly told. Most tribes considered it to be bad luck to tell stories once winter camp was broken. I think it was because the work of gathering, fishing, and hunting food for winter storage was such hard work that they just collapsed into their beds at dark and said to heck with telling stories. I have prepared and tanned a hide. I can tell you that it is very hard work. My son and I also dug sego lily bulbs for about 20 minutes. We dug seventeen bulbs. If we had had to exist on our gathering skills, I would be a very fit and thin person.

Time for bed,

You all take care and enjoy the day. You know the old saying......

Yeeeeoooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.

This panel about the mammoth is of particular interest. When the first carbon dating results were returned, the tests showed the mammoth remains to be only about 4,500 years old. The mammoth are thought to have gone extinct with the rest of the megafauna about 7,500 years B.
C. or thereabouts. I have a good Mormon friend, Jim, with whom I taught, who was ecstatic about those test results. Somehow the idea that mammoths lived 6,000 years longer than what had been commonly accepted by scientists played into his theology or the theology of the LDS Church, I am uncertain which. The remains were re-tested because the first results did not fit into the scientific model that had been created. I don't know if the second testing brought results more consistent with the commonly held hypothesis developed by paleotolongists or not. But it sure had Jim excited. More importantly, a man who was leaving just as I drove up to the small lake, had caught two sixteen inch bass and released them. He had pictures on his cell phone. These cell phones are going to ruin a lot of creative story telling.

Stockton Family Reunion in the Park

2009-08-17T21:25:00.000-06:00

I went to Spokane this past weekend and stayed with my sister and BiL in their motorhome parked at the Spokane Gun Club. I am always a fan of free room. We attended the family reunion on Saturday. I think 25 people showed up. I took a picture of everybody, so I can get an exact count. The oldest was Uncle Bob. The youngest was Carley. You can see her armwrestling her brother Rudy. It was a pretty special time getting to visit with the first cousins, uncles and aunts the children of them. Of course, by far most did not show up. I would have liked to have seen many more. The family in Missouri is planning the 2010 Reunion. It will be either in Missouri or possibly Boise.

While visiting I contacted a seller on Craigslist and met her Saturday morning in the parking lot of WalMart and bought three gallons of N. Idaho huckleberries for $30 a pound. They were very big berries, very well cleaned, and the gallon bag was absolutely crammed. Couldn't have asked for a better transaction. Since berries are regularly selling for $45 a pound, I felt very fortunate.

We got a phone call from my sister telling us that brother-in-law had driven himself to the hospital at eleven that evening with a kidney stone. He was in the hospital for a few hours then released. My sister is unable to take care of herself, so I was hoping that BiL could make a fast recovery.

I have been working on the sprinkler system getting it ready so that the place will be automatically watered while we are visiting in Windsor, CA and San Francisco. I have hired the neighbor to take care of the fish pond and her mother is going to collect our garden produce and make use of it. I did not want it to go to waste and there will be a bushel or more of tomatoes and about four gallons of green beans and many yellow summer squash and Japanese cukes.

Well, I am tired from working on the sprinkler system and am going to bed. Yawn. Later, Gators!!

2009-08-13T19:26:00.000-06:00

J and I used our WorldMark membership to rent a two bedroom, roomy condo in McCall for one night. Cost $77. We ate out at Lardo's Tuesday night and then at at my favorite breakfast restaurant, the Pancake House. The Pancake House is an 11,000 sq. ft. restaurant. During the ski season the wait to get a table can be an hour--for breakfast. I attended a week-long economics workshop about a fifteen years ago held at the Shore Lodge in McCall. Attendees were teachers from around the U.S. The lead professor was from Florida State Univ. He conducts these workshops for an Economics Foundation. He has conducted workshops in every state of the Union and says the the McCall Pancake House is by far the best place in America to get breakfast. He felt so strongly about this place that he chartered a school bus and required every teacher to board the bus and eat breakfast there. He bought. He had his camera ready and when the pancakes and cinnamon rolls were served, or the biscuits and gravy, he had his camera ready to capture the shocked look on the face of the participants. The pancakes and cinnamon rolls are just huge.

You can see pictures taken as we traveled over a dirt road for 28 miles up the Middle
Fork of the Weiser River to get to Donnelly, ID. We stopped in to take pictures of the failed Tamarack Ski Resort. You can see the big hotel in mid consturction when the bank Credit Suiss finally pulled the plug on the owners. This is a huge operation. The bank that loaned the money for the ski lifts is having the ski lifts removed for lack of payment. Quite a blow to the local economy. Some pretty good prices on some multi-million dollar homes are to be had.

The first three pictures show the condo where we spent the night.

On the way up I took a side trip to Brundage Reservoir to look for bolete mushrooms that a club member had reported were just beginning to flush in the area. I spent an hour walking around and only found a fool's hen for my efforts. When I get home the next day and checked my e-mail, two members are bragging about the boletes they found around Brundage Res. Huh, I must have been looking in the wrong place or I am blind.

On the way back home J and I stopped and picked three pints of huckleberries. Yummy.

Papa Coyote is traveling to Post Falls, ID tomorrow to attend my mother's side of the family re-union. J cannot accompany because she has a booth a the Eagle bizarre. I am looking forward to seeing cousins and the few aunts and uncles that are still living. I have the camera battery charged.

Yeooooowww, the Mariner game is on. Gotta go. Mariners won 1-0 in fourteen innings last night. I watched it all. Griffey won the game with a pinch-hit single. Wowzies!

Papa Coyote loves you all.

An Exotic River

2009-08-10T22:04:00.000-06:00

I think the first picture will show what I take from the garden every two days. The potatoes are a potato developed by the Incas some five hundred or more years ago. The meat of these potatoes is blue just like the skin. Peru releases a vegatable a year to the market. The Incas developed over 3,000 types of potatoes. Mostly specifically to grow at various elevations and on various sides of the mountains because they terraced gardens up the sides of the mountains. I got these potatoes from Territorial Seed in Western Oregon. My daughter turned me on to this neat seed catolog. They have an online presence. Check it out.

Perry and I went fishing for brown trout on the Owyhee River today. Perry had no strikes. He is a very good fisherman and he was bummed. I had one strike--this little rainbow that I helped plant last June. I had some big browns rising occasionally in front of me, but they could not be bothered with my offerings. This river is a classic example of what geographers call an exotic river. The surrounding terrain is desert, but the river provides a ribbon of green vegation. This river and the surrounding area is the site of of the deadliest Indian battles in all of the West. These occurred from 1864 to 1868. Both sides were brutal. Paiute and Shoshone attacks had been going on since 1851. Check out the Utter and van Ornum Massacres in 1851. Puts the Donner Party in second place. Then check out the Boise River Massacres (Ward Party) in 1854. Very brutal. So when the fish are not biting, one can enjoy the scenery and wonder what was taking place at this site in 1866. I taught four children in high school whose mother is a Paiute Indian from the band that lived on the Owyhee near its mouth at the Snake River. Their mother speaks fluent Paiute and their grandfather is the medicine man of the tribe. I some times think about how brutal her people were a hundred and fifty years ago, but then get my thinking straightened out when I think about how brutal the whites were to these same Indians.

Yeeeeeooooowwww, the Old Papa Coyote loves you all.

Forest Management and Diabetes, Yup, there is a link

2009-08-07T08:39:00.000-06:00

Just before leaving to pick huckleberries last week, I was listening to National Public Radio (NPR) while eating a breakfast of shredded wheat and huckleberries. There was an article about the Umatilla Indians displeasure with so many white berry pickers in the mountains this year. The competition was interfering with the gathering of berries. The woman interviewed feared that they would not get the berries they needed for food, medicine and religious use. The Indian lady said that pharmaceutical companies were paying pickers for berries. That got me to wonder what interest the pharmaceutical companies would have in huckleberries so I have done some research and the findings, I thought were rather interesting. I will share some of what I learned.

First of all let me tell you that the Indian women pictured are Lakota women picking chokecherries on the Plains. I don't have a picture of Indian women picking huckleberries. Now, I can tell you that huckleberry bushes do grow almost as tall as these chokecherry bushes in N. Idaho and Montana. Not quite that tall, but tall enough that one can run his belt through the bail of a pail so that the pail hangs from the picker's waist. Then the picker pulls the branches of the huckleberry (also known as whortleberry) over the pail and strip the berries into the pail. I can' pick berries that way in Southern Idaho because the bushes grow so low to the ground. I set the pail on the ground under the bush and strip the berries into the pail if there are enough berries on the bush to use that technique. Usually, there are not. The Indians used skeletons of salmon as rakes for the purpose of stripping berries, today, one can order online huckleberry rakes.

The title of this blog will not stop the heart of any USFS policy maker because the U.S. Forest Service has been dealing with Indian complaints about forest management since 1904 when the Forest Service first started managing forests in the Pacific NW. Lewis and Clark and fur trapping companies noted in their journals the forest fires that the Indians started. Indians across the continent had burned off forests to create meadows to more easily spot and shoot game, to create fields conducive to berry growth, mushroom flushes, and to travel through. And in the east to plant the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash) the staples of their diet. When the white man subdued the Indian and confined them to reservations, they began to manage the forests for timber production, not berry growth. The Indians had little interest in timber, but had a lot of interest in meadows that produce camas roots and at higher elevations meadows that produced large and profuse berries. The USFS and the Indians have been at odds ever since. So what else is new? haha. I can tell you unfortunately one is not likely to find many berries in the shade. Yeah, you really do have to pick berries in the hot sun. It seems that the berries need the sun and the fire produces ash that fertilizes the berries. Constantly burning forests is a good management tool for berry production.

So why do the pharmaceuticals want to buy huckleberries? Huckleberries may hold the key to a diabetes cure. Well, so say the natural pharmacy people. One online natural medicine site claims that their pill made of an extract of huckleberries has a 99% success in curing Type II diabetes and a 64% success in curing Type I diabetes. They also claim they have been offered $30 million by a major producer of an FDA approved diabetic medication to keep the huckleberry product off the market. Others are touting the juices made from huckleberries and huckleberry leaf teas. Some sites are saying that glucose levels can be controlled by cinnamon and huckeberries.

We know that before white contact the Indians did not suffer from diabetes. Of course, that was because of their diet. Their bodies had adjusted to the diet of the hunter/gather that allowed them to put on large amounts of weight in times of bounty so as to survive the times of scarcity which was a regular cycle of their life. (Scientists refer to this as the Efficiency Gene, which I seem to have; but this is a controversial subject among scientists and Native American people.) Now that they have ample food 365 days of the year and have plenty of fats, salt, sugar, alcohol, and pre-packaged foods; Indians have a very high incident of diabetes. Well over 50% in most nations and over 85% in the Tohono O'odham people of southern Arizona. (Tacos and enchiladas just look and taste way too good to be healthy)

I am thinking that the key to the huckleberry diet is in the words of one of the online natural pharmacy sites: "...our pill of huckleberry extract and other natural extracts along with a healthy diet and lifestyle will cure diabetes." I think the "along with a healthy diet and lifestyle" is the key here. But I do love the taste of huckleberries. And maybe I can eat the sugar laden huckleberry coffee cake and call it a health food. Hmmmm! Oh, yeah. Papa Coyote is loving this logic.

Hope I didn't bore you too much with the history lesson.

Yeeeeooooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.

2009-08-02T22:31:00.000-06:00

The first pictures were taken this morning just around the house. You can see tomato plants by the pond. There are tomato plants next to the back stoop and there are tomato plants in the garden. J was on my case about planting too many tomato plants. My argument is that I plant with the idea of losing some to frost, but, well, I never seem to lose any to frost. I took J with me this spring to D and B in Ontario to help pick out tomato plants. My idea is to get six plants. But, J is picking them out by the four pack. Then at art class this really nice elderly lady offers tomato plants from her greenhouse to all the class members. Well, I could not turn that offer down. So I ended up with eleven plants and am scrambling to find a place to plant them all. I made frames for the plants. They do keep the plants corraled, but I can't say it is any easier picking the tomatoes that are crammed inside the frames. We have slicer tomatoes, grape tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.

The p0nd had 32 lily blooms on Friday. That is a record. I got what I feel is a pretty accurate count of the goldfish Friday. There are 28 fish in the pond and they are growing. The pond is amazingly relatively algae free this year. The chemicals I learned about at the Far West pond seminar this spring are really working. Whew! Am glad of that because the algae problem was driving me to distraction. I really appreciate the Far West Nursery in Boise for sponsoring that seminar. It was free!!!

Picked about forty ears of corn this morning. J cut most of the corn from the ears and froze five quart packages. We ate about ten ears of corn today. Yummy. I have some really good size crenshaw melons growing in the garden and some of the winter squash is up to a foot in diameter. The blue potatoes have set their blossoms and the plants are nearing the time to die. Oh, and got a big picking of green beans this morning. I will have to take a picture of the Japanese cucumber we planted. Kind of a gnarly looking thing, but tastes good.

The other pictures are from the 3rd of July when D and H brought the girls over for dinner and fireworks. Big M really enjoys that day. I took a lot of pictues of the fireworks. The new camera has a setting for firework pictures. I thought some of them came out pretty good.

It has been hot here--nearly 100 degrees. Tomorrow, a Perry and I will venture forth to the huckleberry patch on the Smokey Boulder road. Everybody talks about picking two, three or five gallons of berries or more. Heck, I feel lucky to get two or three quarts and I am picking likey crazy for five or six hours. I have got to wonder how I can be so slow. And, no, I don't eat berries while picking--makes me too thirsty.

Got to go get some shut eye before having to get up to go berrying. You all be good or happy!

Papa Coyotes loves you all

2009-07-29T22:05:00.000-06:00

I am getting out and walking a mile in the morning lately. I took some pictures of the field behind and to the sides of our house. You can see that the wheat is soon to be harvested. The last picture shows our house in that clump of trees. That clump of trees works really well to keep the house cool when the temperatures get near one hundred. Our daughter called and said she was sitting on the air conditioning vent today. They live a few miles south of Portland, OR. Portland recorded 105 degrees today. Seattle hit 104 downtown. Highest temp ever recorded in Seattle was 100 degrees. This is some pretty serious heat for the Northwest, but the wheat is loving it. Should be a good crop. Funny thing about NYC recording the coldest month of July ever. You can see that our neighboring wheat field is pretty stressed by a healthy yield of thistle. There is a county ordinance--actually state law, about failure to control weeds. Evidently, farmers are unofficially exempt from compliance. Not really, but, well, really. The weed commissioner visited a couple of summers ago and did not give me any hassle about my weeds--I do a good faith effort trying to control them--but herbicides are really expensive now. There is no way I can eradicate the thistle on my property and I do have a problem with thistle if the farmer is not doing his part. The best solution I have come upon to control weeds is to plant sunflowers. They go to seed and then go wild. I have 8-10 foot sunflowers all over the place. Guess what? The weeds don't have a chance under those sunflowers. The weed commissioner was duly impressed. He had never heard of doing that before.

Hey, hey! the garden is beginning to produce. The yellow summer squash is just about a staple of our dinners now. We are getting a few cherry and grape tomatoes, but in a week or two we will be overwhelmed with those small tomatoes. Plan to give a lot of them away. We got our first ripe slicer tomato yesterday and it was yummy. Forget about buying tomatoes in the store. In-season-tomatoes are the only tomatoes I eat now. I don't even call in-store-tomatoes, tomatoes. Just some red, artificial matter. And, the first three ears of corn. Oh, that was so good. My sister and brother-in-law will be visiting in September and they have their mouths already set for those tomatoes. Brother-in-law calls the cherry and grape tomato plants candy bushes. If you eat a sun warmed and ripened tomato right off of the vine, then you know what the sun tastes like.

We had come to the conclusion that our lonely squirrel was love denied. Hah. We are sorely lacking in knowledge concerning the sexual habits of tree squirrels. We have three little squirrels running around. They make a habit of not running around together, so we don't really have an accurate count. I believe that we may have squirrel stew this fall after all. Well, maybe.

Tomorrow I will be off huckleberrying again. Depending on how it goes, I may go back out again Friday. I got a hot fishing tip from a fellow in the waiting room at Hanigan Chrysler while we waited for our vehicles to be serviced. The creek with seventeen inch rainbows is within a few miles of one of my huckleberry patches. Hmmmm, I could possibly get distracted if the patch is not producing a lot of ripe berries.

In case you were wondering, coyotes, I am sure eat huckleberries. I use to have two Brittany Spaniels, Teddy and Leaky, who would most delicately eat huckleberries (one at a time) from the bushes. If I was picking huckleberries with them around, and they often accompanied me on such outings, I would have to pick like mad to get my fair share. A Brittany Spaniel with his pink nose and blue tongue is quite a sight. Oh, for a picture.

Papa Coyote has to go, bedtime. I won't be dreaming of huckleberries, but last week after two days of picking berries, I kept seeing berries in my mind when I tried to doze off to sleep. Geez.

Night, Night,

Papa Coyote loves you all

2009-07-25T22:02:00.000-06:00

I have not been too good about keeping this blog up, but it did not help when the last time I tried to log in the blog sponsor, evidently Google, was telling me that I needed to log in under a Google account, but if I wanted I could log in as I have in the past. Wrong! But tonight the blog sponsor must have relented and allowed me to log into my account. So I bring you pictures of our trip to Newberg go visit grandkids and return M. M had a Boy Scout day camp for the week that he had really been looking forward to. By Wednesday the poor kid had come down with a hard case of the stomach flu. When we left that morning he was Z'ed out on the sofa and missed camp.

We went to the berry patch and picked berries with S and the kids. U-pick berries are $.99 a pound--all types. I concentrated on blueberries. We ended up buying $30 worth of blackberries and raspberries. Really good stuff. J made some blackberry and raspberry Barbecue sauces.

The boys like to play with their friends in the neighborhood park which is only half a block away from their house. You can see G on the play set with some of his pals. He has lots of pals and is a very socialable fellow in the neighborhood. I see that S has not added to her blog in quite awhile, but I can attest to the fact that she has her hands full with a ten year old boy, an almost five year old boy, an almost two year old boy, and a three month old little girl. Dad helps, but during the day it is pretty interesting in the old neighborhood.

I have been sick for a few weeks with some kind of cold or another. The Doc in the Box gave me a round of antibiotics and a couple kinds of cough meds. He said it has been a particularly nasty species running around in the town. In our small burg they don't test for swine flu or any other nasties because it would mean writing reports and there is no time or staff for that falder rah. So who knows what I have had. I know it has stuck around for a few weeks and I still don't have my energy back. Heck, I have been taking naps in the afternoon. Geez!

Anyway I have been out huckleberrying last Thursday and Friday. I have two really good places, but I am going to let the berries ripen for a week before going out again at the end of this coming week.

The first two pictures show huckleberries. The temps have been in the high 90's but I have been picking at about 5000 feet. So the temps were probably more like about 85 where I picked, but huckleberries like to grow in the full sun so that was where I picked. The first day I finally was driven out by the mosqitos and the second day there were lots of flies. I finally stopped when I ran out of ripe berries and then scouted out the second spot. The second patch is alongside a road, so that might be picked out by the end of the week. The first spot is about a hundred yard walk up an old overgrown log skid trail. I doubt that anybody finds it and it is a really good patch. My mushroom hunting buddy and I found this patch while hunting mushrooms this spring. Berries in southern Idaho are quite a bit smaller than berries in northern Idaho so it takes a lot of picking. When all was said and done, I cleaned and put into containers about three quarts worth. J made a huckleberry coffee cake that is really good. I don't eat berries when I am picking because they make me thirsty. we have been eating huckleberries with breakfast. Really a nice way to have cereal.

Time to go,

Papa Coyote

Grandson visit

2009-07-02T22:15:00.000-06:00

M is beginning his 4th annual visit. J and I drove west to spend a few days with RasJane and family and bring M home for a ten day visit. We have a 3rd of July visit with D and family. M really loves to set off fireworks with his Uncle D. That is one of his favorite times of the year. Then we have a couple nights of camping and fishing on the calendar. Today we set up the pool and patches leaks. M spent much of the day in the pool and, of course, I forgot the sunscreen. He has fair skin unlike my darker skin. I rarely use sunscreen except on river float trips and have hard time rememberting to slather up M.

Here are some pictures of M's brothers and some pics from a hike intot Pearl Lake. The fish at Pearl Lake are cutthroat and they were just beginning come out of their winter hibernation. There was still snow around parts of the lake and lots of very cold runoff into the lake. Marge Lake on the other side of the ridge was still iced over and snow packed. So the fishing was not good. I had one bite.

The young lady on the sofa is the niece of a friend of mine here in town. She lives in Orlando, Florida. She was visiting with her Dad. We met them in McCall. She did not have hiking boots and walked the six mile hike in tennis shoes, but she did have a good pair of socks. She ended up with two blisters. She never complained once about the mud, the snow, the water in the trail, the blisters, or anything at all. She was quite a trooper. For some wierd reason there is cell phone service at this mountain lake. Only one I know that has that available. She and her Dad called Mom who stayed back in Orlando. Her mother is Brazilian and had declared that she is only talking to her daughter in Portugese this summer so that the daughter can practice her Portugese. The young lady was born in Mexico City so is a Tri-Citizen.

Fathers' Day, 2009

2009-06-23T11:48:00.000-06:00

I have found that I forgot how to add captions to pictures. The captions float all over the place, so I give up. If you know the people, then you know them and don't need captions.

D and H had Fathers' Day at their new house. It is kind of like going to McCall with the pine trees, water, and the cool weather. D and D barbecued ribs, chicken wings, and salmon. The salmon was quite good. Everybody brought a goodie or two and the stomaches seemed to round out quite well. Just ask Grandpa PO or me. The big boys did a little target practice with a paint ball gun as you can see in one of the pictures. There are several mushrooms flushing on D and H's property after the rain. The big mushroom that D is holding in one of the pictures is Agaricus augustus also know as Prince. As you can see it can grow quite large and it is an edible--considered quite good according to Arora in his Mushrooms Demystified.

I need to move on to lunch and tying some skwala stonefly nymphs for the first mountain lake fishing trip tomorrow. Happy days and tight lines!!

Papa Coyote

Wife, J, is tasting the "don't-eat-the-dip,Bill" dip that K made. D's father-in-law, P, looks on.

Unusual Critters in our Backyard

2009-06-12T11:34:00.000-06:00

You will need to click on this picture to get the enlarged version. You then can clearly see a wood duck. He/She landed in late March (disregard the date on the pic). The mate was on the ground behind the fence. They stayed for 15 minutes or so and then decided this oak tree and the location was not appropriate for their nesting needs. Smart birds. Our neighbor's cat frequents our backyard daily looking for tasty morsels and quite oftens scores a mouse for his/her efforts. We are fans of the cat and cheer her onto victory. We also have a grey squirrel who has established a nest in the locust tree above the dog run. The squirrel seems to have trouble attracting members of the opposite sex. Yea!! Since the squirrel is entering his second year as a resident of our backyard, I am wondering if he has been exiled from the squirrel community for grevious wrongdoings. Out in the middle of acres and acres of wheat and onions would, me thinks, constitute severe isolation for a tree squirrel. We do have three oak trees that provide a plentiful supply of acorns. So squirrel food is not in scarcity. My Pennsylavania born and raised friends say I should encourage a robust population of squirrels because they make a very tasty meal. Their argument may make sense. We could benefit from the oak trees by feeding the squirrels and then reap the benefit of the oak trees at dinner time. Sure beats buying feed, feeding on a regular schedule, building a hen house just to have chicken dinner. I like the idea of no pain, no hassle for gain. Not sure if the wife would acquire a taste for squirrel, though. In fact, having thought this out a little further, I am sure she would not even attempt to acquire a taste for squirrel. I'll have to get grandson M over here for meals. I am sure he would like squirrel and be begging for more squirrel meals.

Well, got to go and tie some Prince Nymphs and JW Clouser minnows. They are very effective patterns in this neck of the sagebrush.

Happy hunting, CAT,
Papa Coyote

ETSY market in Boise on First Thursday

2009-06-10T22:11:00.000-06:00

In Boise, Idaho the city has a First Thursday tradition. The art galleries downtown are all open and serve cheese, wine, cookies and other assorted goodies--all free. J, my wife, makes all sorts of things from fabric that people might buy and has a site on the ETSY website. That is a site where you may purchase handmade items from people around the world. Those who market on ETSY get together once in awhile, like first Thursday and display their items for sale. They have space provide at the Pioneer Tent and Awning Building on Fifth and Main which is pretty well the heart of downtown Boise. I have pictures.

The last two pictures show J set up with her various items displayed. She sold several items with the biggest purchases made as she was taking down at the end of the evening.

The second to last set of two pictures shows the Pioneer Tent and Awning Building.

The fourth picture is the Basque Center and is looking towards the Basque block.

The third picture is one of the original movie theaters in Boise called the Egyptian Theater. It has been completely restored. Some movies are still shown there plus some live entertainment. It is where J and I went to see The Godfather when it first came out.

The first picture is Boise's City Hall.

And today's bonus picture is that of a yellow breasted fly catcher. Click on picture to see this stately ariel artist in close up format. Fly catcher family returns every year to help us with mosquitos and other flying bugs that like to bug us.
Bugs--beware of the fly catcher swooping down from the heavens to end your pesky existence on earth. Yea! Go fly catcher. You the Man!!! or Woman!!! as the case may be.

Got to Go,

Later Alligator

First Day of Fishing This Year, Yahoo!

2009-06-09T20:39:00.000-06:00

Can you guess where J and I spend a spring vacation this year? Yep, part of the vacation was a day at Death Valley. I can tell you it was pretty nice sitting at a picnic bench eating lunch at the visitors' center in late February in shirt sleeves and 70 degree weather. Weiser would be a month and a half away from 70. We had an unusually cold and dry spring. Not real terribly cold, just kept hanging about 10-15 degrees below normal for the longest time. I had to completely replant the garden this year and am looking at planting the green beans yet again. Darn. There is an old saying around here that one should not plant their garden until the snow is off Mt. Cornucopia. How true, but waiting until the middle of May seemed a little extreme. Mind the old sayings. Local wisdom is hard to beat.

The fellow pix above is a character in the finest sense of the word. Marv spent eighteen years guiding trout fishermen in Alaska. He has been invited to Scotland on some occaisions by his clients to fish for salmon. He loves to fish, smoke a fine Cuban cigar, appreciates 18-year McCallum Scotch, and can tell wonderful stories. And he can catch fish, tie flies and drive an 18-wheeler all over the country during fire season. Oh, yeah. And he is a really wonderful gentleman.

Went trout fishing with five buddies from the Indian Head Fly Fishers (IHFF) club today. The fishing was fantastic. The catching, well, one never wants to start off with too big of a bang, you know. Don't want to ruin the expectations for future trips. Jim, Perry and I caught nothing. Marv caught 22 (so he says) and Mike caught a bunch and Jim caught a few. Perry called me later in the evening about some Little Theater business and was wondering if I happened to come across a little lost luck while cleaning out the pickup. Ya, right! Marv rode up to the lake with me and seems to have soaked up all the luck for the day. But, the day was wonderful and it felt so good bobbing around in my float tube on clean water and breathing crystal clear air.

I did have a really big fish on for about two minutes. Never could get it up off the bottom. It made one really big run on me and took me down to the backing on my fly reel. Then it broke off. Dirty Rack of Bricks@%@!#$$%&^!

The lily pads and flowers? In my front yard. The pond is doing well this year. The algae is under control and the gold fish are thriving. Maybe I should try fly fishing in my own pond. Might have better luck.

Weekend and Odds and Ends

2009-06-08T20:11:00.000-06:00

Son, D and his wife, H, and daugher, G (L left home, sad) came to town Saturday afternoon. We all loaded into their car and went to a wedding of his boyhood chum, A held at the his family home along the Snake River. Beautiful place, perfect for a wedding. The big, bad rain backed off for the wedding and even sunshined brightly during the outdoor ceremonies. His wife is a very sweet young lady who just graduated from nursing school valedictorian.

D is re-establishing our wireless after several months w/o. You can kind of see the new office that J and I remodeled. The red fir floors which were original with the 1922 house have been sanded and four coats of Cabothane have been applied. Sanding between each coat was with a 220 grit sanding block so the floors are very smooth. A few parts were waxed, but can't do that in the traffic areas or these old folks who work in this office would be upside down in a hurry.

You can see our granddaughter, G, and her mom and grandma in these pictures.

I have been playing with the new camera.

The mushrooms are about four and three inches across. They will get bigger. I went to work and keyed them out and am pretty sure they are as labeled. They commonly grow on railroad ties, that is what they are growing on in my front yard, and have been known in the past to have caused train wrecks. They are said to be excellent eating. Being new at this game of keying out mushrooms, I will probably pass and keep looking for morels.

Sorry about the family pictures. I had to delete them because I had labeled the pictures with names. Ooops. I guess that is a no-no in posting blogs.

Will be fishing at Lost Creek Reservoir with several members of the IHFF tomorrow. Will take pictures and report on the results tomorrow.

Yeeooowwwww,

Papa Coyote

"Back in the Saddle" with a better camera

2009-06-03T23:40:00.000-06:00

The government sent us old Social Security types $250 to spend in hopes of stimulating the economy. I have done my duty and came up with another $300 (sold my share of the canoe to my canoe-partner) and now have a Canon PowerShot G10. The camera specializes in macro photography and that is what I wanted. I can tell I will have to get a small tripod designed for macro photography.

Thursday, May 28 I and a few members of the fly fishing club helped Oregon Fisheries plant fingerling rainbow in the Owyhee River. We helped again on Tuesday the 2nd of June. In all we planted 126,000 fish. Mostly we planted the fish in nets with 20 pounds of fish per net. We formed a line like the proverbial bucket brigade to plant the fish. Some were flushed out of the truck through a pipe.

On the 29th through the 31st I attended the Southern Idaho Micology Association's Spring foray in McCall. That was pretty interesting. Found several mushrooms and learned the names of serveral that I did not know. Even got home with a few morels. Yummm.

The mushroom pictured is currently growing in our backyard. It is Psytherella candolleana. I identified the genus, but needed help in getting the last part. The wild flower is the Calypso orchid. I think it is the only orchid that grows in Idaho.

J has been busy sewing and attending bazaars. Currently she is sewing a dress shirt for AS who is getting married this Saturday. He is tall and thin and could not find a shirt off the rack that fit. How about having a tailored dress shirt for your wedding? How cool is that?

Papa Coyote loves you all

Yeeeeeeooooowwww

Bazaar in the Barnyard, Really

2008-10-03T19:40:00.000-06:00

The above picture shows the highway side of the "midway" of the Bazaar in the Barnyard. The fall bazaar was dreamed up by my wife and our friend Jerri another retired school teacher. They approached the two men who own the Second Chance store on the corner of our lane and the highway. They thought it was a good idea and put in a quarter acre of grass for the occaision.

The above picture looks down the left side of the "midway" and you can see the red "barn" in the background. That houses the Second Chance store which has been opened a little over a year. The business has flourished and J has contributed many household items for consignment. She says she has made pretty good money. She also buys items from the store. I like the guys who run the store because we had an old sofa/bed that was just really heavy. J decided to try to sell it at Second Chance and I am thinking, "how are we ever going to get that thing out of the house and in the pickup?" Whoa, what's that you said? Oh, yeah. Todd and Darren came to the house with a horse trailer and loaded all of the stuff J wanted sold on consignment. How sweet is that? Another night after closing the store they dropped by the house (we live on the same lane as the store) and delivered this old, old paint chipped interior door. It is a five-paneled door and J has a thing about five-paneled doors. They take it out of their pickup and are walking up the stairs of our front deck when I meet them at the door with, "Who has authorized the delivery of that piece of junk?" That stops them cold for about two seconds, but these guys are very nimble of mind. Darren answers, "The Boss!" Young, smart alecky whipper snappers!

Now this is a seriously good bazaar. Perry Kelley, one of the founding members of the local fly fishing club (Indianhead Fly Fishers Club), manned a booth and tied flies during the day and sold beautifully made flies (he is a true artisan of the craft) for five dollarsf or four flies. The proceeds from the sale of the flies is going toward a kids' fishing pond that the fly club is sponsoring to be dug in the town of Weiser.

The above two pictures are of J's booth. J and Jerri collected $25 from each participant and gave the proceeds to the local Rose Advocates chapter. Rose Advocates helps battered spouses and their children. Unfortunately, there is a need for such a charity in our area. J did not have a real good day of sales, but not bad. Many people did take her card so she may have some custom orders down the line.

The owners of the Second Chance store did not charge anything for the use of their property and coordinated an open house with the bazaar. They had hot coffee, chocolate and several types of cookies for visitors to the store. J reports that Darren and Todd were ecstatic about their sales for the day (Friday). They had a really big day. The bazaar is suppose to continue tomorrow--Saturday, but the forecast is for some really serious storms, rain, and high temperature of 60 degrees with wind. So, the fact is that the bazaar may be rained out. That is too bad, but the first annual bazaar was such a success that it is certainly going to get a rerun next year.

Does spelling really matter? J thinks so. In the first posting of this report I spelled bazaar "bizarre." J thought I should reconsider my usage of bizarre to describe their bazaar. Hey, kind of sounds the same, but I really did not see anything very bizarre today unless I were to count the time I got onto my hands and knees to help Perry set up his canopy and found that under the new grass was a bumper crop of goat's heads. That is a particularly loathesome noxious weed that grows in Southern Idaho. It is also known as puncture vine and the seeds really can puncture about anything. It is death on bicycle tires.

Here is barking in the bazaar to you,

Papa Coyote