First Day of Fishing This Year, Yahoo!

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

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

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

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

On the Pacific Coast with Grandchildren

The two large light colored buildings at the center of the picture constitute the Rockaway Beach
Resort. We have owned three weeks of time share here since 1983. We have been vacationing there every year or have traded weeks to visit other parts of the U.S. and Canada. We feel that we really have received value for the money we spent on these. The resort is exceptionally well administered by the board of directors and managed by some very dedicated and friendly people. We could not be happier with this resort experence. The pictures show how wide and expansive the beach is. Most of Oregon beaches are very rocky and picturesque, but this is the only beach where one can walk for more than six miles with no obstructions.

This pictures the little village of Rockaway, Oregon.

The ever-present denizens of the beach out catching a late-in-the-day snack.

Picture of Manzanita and Rockaway Beaches taken from Oswald West Park. This is a great vantage point for watching whales swim by in the spring.

The Twin Rocks off the coast of Rockaway.

Looking north on the beach toward Oswald West Park.

M dressed for crabbing at Brighton Marina. Unfortunately, we were unable to catch any legal size crabs. Two years ago at the same time of the year and at the same place, we had great success and fun.

Brighton Marina looking into the Nehalem Bay. Even the salmon fishing was slow that week.

G dressed for crabbing. Children under 12 must wear PFD which the owners of the marina provide free. E is strapped to his mother's back and he really likes life from that position. We had a wet walk on the beach Thursday afternoon and that is the manner in which he walked the beach.

J and I had beautiful weather from the day we arrived (Friday) through Tuesday when S and the grandboys arrived. That Wednesday it rained and we went crabbing. Thursday it rained even harder, then the day we left (Friday) the weather turned beautiful with temperatures even hitting the low 80's Sunday. Wouldn't you know it!! The grandboys had fun each day in the indoors swimming pool at the resort. Oh, yeah, they liked the visit to the Tillamook Cheese factory. Pictures of that visit to follow soon. My daughter and I took off Thursday morning for a breakfast at Nehalem while J and the boys entertained each other. We had fun. Oh, S had just found out that she is pregnant and will have her second natural child making four children in the family. She has two adopted boys.

J and I spent the weekend in Newberg visiting with S, R, the boys and S's in-laws and daughter. The in-laws just returned for a month in Scotland visiting their granddaughter and grandson. More on that visit in the next blog.

Until later,

Papa Coyote

Middle of September, work, play and WOW!--the colors in the Rocky Mountains

You might think we have done little this past week, not true. I took the camera, but forgot to take pictures and who wants to read a blog w/o pictures. J and I spent this past Thursday night at our WorldMark Condo in McCall. We had a very pleasant evening with the Kelley's. Perry and I fished Horsethief Reservoir in our kick boats on Thursday. I caught nothing (this has been a very bad fishing year for me) and Perry caught, but one, and he is a very good fly fisherman. Of course, the worm drowners were having success on the bank. Highlight of the trip was breakfast at the famous Pancake House. They added on this summer!

Believe me, this is not a working Great Pyrenees!!!!

Before we go playing there is some work to do. Everyday I feed the fish a couple of times. Well, okay, that is fun, but the filter screen needs to be cleaned twice a day and that is a tad bit of work. I have counted 21 fish and there might be one or two more. Five are still black, four or five are half black and half orange and all the others are all orange.now.

I finished up painting the back wall of the garage and the east side of the house, sans gables for now. I follow advice of a friend, Hershall, who said never set out to paint the whole house in a year. The task will seem daunting and one might never get started. Paint one side a year and if one gets really in the mood, heck, paint another side. In four years, the house is done. I am following that advice, but also am throwing in the retired guys' motto--turn a day job into a week. Note the contrast of the new white paint on the existing white paint applied in 1992. The job went faster than I expected so the whole ceiling was finised in one afternoon, but the edges still need to be painted.

Seems that half of the work is getting ready to paint, but preparation really cuts down clean up time.

I took Tuesday off to gain a little serenity at Lake Serene--a two mile hike off Vance Creek Trail off the road to Hazard Lakes. For those who have gone to Grassy Twin Lakes or Coffee Cup Lake with me, I am using the same trailhead. This is a view looking back toward the road from a high point one-half mile from the road.

This pictures shows the burned trees from the 1992 fire that burned 250,000 sq. miles north and west of McCall. We had experienced a long drought (well, we still are) and the spruce trees had suffered a devastating invasion of spruce beetle. When the trees are distressed for a lack of water, they cannot produce the sap necessary to fill the bore holes the beetles make, thus causing the tree to eventually die. By the time of the 1992 fire, most of the spruce trees were dead and very, very flammable--and did it ever burn. I hiked in the forest in November after the fire had died out and I sunk a foot or more into the soil which had turned to ash. That was not ash from the trees, but roots and other vegetation matter in the soil that had burned to ash. I thought the forest would never recover, but by the next July bear grass was growing--the first plant to recover from the fire.

The forest is just alive with color right now. The predominant color is a rusty red brought to us by the dead sour dock. The mountains are covered by this plant which is the first to die with the first sign of frost. The three other most common flowers, and they are thick, are paintbrush, aster, and pearly everlasting. The red, purple and white mats of flowers are unbelievable. I even found some lupine in bloom which surprised me for this time of the year.

The most spectacular color is the bright, bright, red and scarlet of the huckleberry bushes that have turned because of the frost. My camera does not even get close to capturing the colors of the mountains this time of the year and this lousy camera is really frustrating me.

Sour dock and pearly everlasting.

Mostly pearly everlasting with some sour dock. Incidently, sour dock was used by the Native People to relieve menstrual cramps. The plant has several other common names, such as, yellow dock. And the plant is reported to have many other medicinal uses.

I thought this tree was rather unique since only one half of it burned in the fire. The other half seems to be carrying on quite well. It is interesting how some trees can completely survive a fire with every other tree in a hundred yard radius dead. Another interesting observation is that the forest service had made no effort to replant this huge burn area allowing the trees to reproduce naturally. Well, nature is not doing too well. One can find a new tree five to ten years old and not see another for hundreds of yards. Evidently, our prolonged drought and warmer than normal temperatures are not going to allow this forest to regenerate. I don't think it would do any good to plant because the planted trees probably would not survive. Idaho is going to look like New Mexico in another hundred years or so.

You may have to click on the picture to see the enlarged version in order to see the subject of this picture. If I had taken a video with sound and smell, you would know immediately. Sheep! and lots of them. This is one band. I came upon two other bands later in the day. There are about 2,000-2,500 sheep to a band. That is a lot of smell and baa-baa-baahs, folks. Listening to the Peruvian herders call out to the herd dogs (Australian Shepherds, If you have never seen sheep dogs work a herd you are really missing a treat. Put that on your bucket list.)

The bad thing about this particular band is that they were being moved down the trail from Serene Lake and the guard dogs--Great Pyrenees--did not think I should be moving up the trail amongst his sheep. These are seriously big dogs when you get close to them and they growl and bark like they mean business. Oh, and they don't look nearly as pretty as they do in the pictures you see on the internet. In real life they are kind of dirty, thin, show signs of mixing it up with some predators and just generally don't look very sociable.

So I walked on past the turn off a couple of miles to see if there was another way to the lake when I topped over the ridge. There was not, so I walked all the way back, through the sheep again (guard dog never showed) to the car and drove five miles or so to Hazard Lake and CG.
There I fished, unsuccessfully, and enjoyed several hours of the sunshine and a sunny, crystal blue day.

Time to feel the hot shower, mmmm, I am feeling a bit tired and sore from all the times i went up and down that ladder and walking four miles in the mountains.

When I left town I filled the gas tank of the 1987 Toyota Camry station wagon which has endured 322,000+ miles to date. I was anxious about the price of a gallon because I had talked to Howlin' Howie of South Bend, IN, Sunday night and he reported that gas had spiked from $3.63 a gallon to $4.39 a gallon because of (so say the Big Oil execs) Ike. Whew! Price was $3.84. Upon returning to town I filled at the same station (Wow! price had dropped to $3.77). I had driven 218 miles on 5.87 gallons of gas. Not bad. My handy calculator tells me that mpg is 37.14. I spent $22 for gas on that trip.

If I had driven the pickup----ooooh!-----really bad mileage. The rocks are probably not good for the tires on the Camry, but nothing flat, yet.

Note for M: there is a dangling gerund noun clause in this posting. Can you and your Mommy find it? It is dangling so it lacks a verb to finish the sentence. Let me know if you two can find it.

May all your trails be slightly downhill (wish mine were),

Papa Coyote

A September Saturday

Jand I spent Saturday in Boise . Here is what we did after I finished the project Friday on the garage. This is one of the trim boards. I couldn't believe how much this board had warped. Also, a pretty good case for the argument about how much the quality of the lumber has detiorated over the years. I should have used cedar instead of pine, I did replace this board with cedar and really need to replace all the trim on the garage with cedar, at least on the south side where I get the most weathering.

A little project of my own. You can see the peeling paint on the trim. This is the back side of the garage. It is the south side and the sun can be blistering and with the changing of weather patterns that we have experienced in the last 20 years, most of the driving rain and snow hits against this side. Storms now come in from California rather than from Alaska. Yeah, that's right. We have a much warmer climate, but those who think of Idaho has a cold barren wasteland just keep thinking that way. At 1.6 million we already have too many people.

I enjoyed spending Saturday with son, D, moving a wall. H asked if I was not having as much fun working with D on the wall moving as I had fishing with D in the mountains. Is this woman serious??? The question almost, almost I say, left me speechless. I will have to admit that my legs are not as sore the next morning, but my shoulders and arms are feeling like I put in a days work. I have Thoraxic Outlet Syndrome and it is a condition that limits how much work I can do with my arms overhead.

Nice to see software engineers actually doing some work! Haha. D using the reciprocating saw to start the job of removing the wall of the laundry room. It was a beautiful day and we should have been fishing a high mountain lake. Sigh!

View from the garage of the wall that we removed then moved into the garage thirty inches to create an alcove in the laundry room to place the washer and drier. Now D and H will have the room on the opposite wall to put the cupboards that H bought so that she will have a lot more storage in the laundry room. With another baby on the way and plans for one or two more, she needs the storage room.

D screwing a wall into another wall. We used all screws and no nails on this project. I learned to use screws to fasten everyting while building sets for the local Little Theater. When D and I decided that we had done one of the walls incorrectly, it sure was easy to change because all the fatening had been done with screws rather than nails. The task of roughing out the alcove is nearing completion. One more wall to put up to D's right. We had to improvise and make the two side walls (about 30" wide) out of 2x2's so that there would be room to put a new washer and drier when they have to replace what they have. Even with the two 2x2 walls, it will be a tight fit to squeeze these modern appliances into the alcove.

After a hard day at the Art in the Park, visiting dad's relatives, and shopping, it is nice to relax with a ride around the yard on one's four-wheeler. Thanks, cousin C.

Feeding the lady bugs. Actually, ants, but to this two-year old every bug is a lady bug. And she stomps them, too.

Helping Mom by adding ice to the ice cream maker (in this case sorbet maker).

This is the result of a little girl trying to keep up all day with her 63 year old Gramma. Hmmm. The old gal can tire out pretty fast unless she has her nose to the shopping trip trail. I will have to compliment her on not buying anything at the yard sale. At the yard sale she gave Brian, for his birthday, a sack full of seriously tasty molasses cookies which are one of his favorites. He gave one cookie to L then hid the rest of them away from the ravenous relatives. I did hijack three the night before so that I could approve them for gift giving and be able to lend my expert opinion on this blog page as to the taste and quality of the cookie. Yup, darn good cookies! J also made key lime cookies which were pretty good, but she is still experimenting with the recipe and is not yet satisfied with the end result. Keep on testing I say!!!

This is a watermelon sorbet made by H which was really tasty and refreshing after a very good dinner of barbecued chicken on a stick and a couple good salads with several types of fresh tomatoes. Pretty tasty after my son worked me all day, I say there---all day, Good thing I didn't show up until ten in the morning.

L gets a watermelon sorbet treat made by her mother. L had just woken from a short nap started at the dinner table. Seems as Gramma had taken her to B and J's yard sale where L got to visit with daughter C, who L really likes. Nine year old pretty girls are very cool to an almost-three year old. Besides C is really nice and L loves her. Then Gramma and Granddaughter went to Art in the Park where L got one cheek painted with a heart and another with a butterfly. Pretty cute. They got to ride the shuttle bus which L thought was a fun adventure until the bus driver scared her out of her wits when he released the air to open the door. She did not know that loud noise was coming. Then, of course, if Gramma J is with ten miles of Ross, there is the obligatory trip to Ross which of course is another credit card ambush.

We had a fun day and J drove home a tired Papa Coyote.

See you all later,

Papa Coyote saying keep the line tight and the tip up