You can do it at a trot... you can do it at a gallop...

Me & Hunter

For those of you in Washington remember the Puyallup Fair commercial song? I tried to find it on YouTube but wasn't successful... I did find this audio track though: Do The Puyallup Fair Song Ahhhh, memories of the most annoying commercial song that stuck in your head for months...

Alright, I did it... I went to a fair and I went on ONE ride... Hunter and I went to the Northwest Montana State Fair in Kalispell, Montana and  we met Skye, her Dad (Brian), and her Sister (Sylvia) there.

I had a good time but I just don't think I am a larger crowd type of person. I think I would have rather been fishing but I did enjoy the animals & the exhibits, which would have taken me all of an hour or two to see.

The best part of the day was the 5.00 I spent to watch Hunter get thrown off the mechanical bull, not only once but twice... Here's a video. It's only about a minute long and well worth watching:

Here are some pictures...

Skye's Sister, Sylvia

Skye's Dad, Brian

My one and only ride... Bumper cars, of course!

Brian and I teaming up on getting Hunter from two sides.

Hunter & Skye

Hunter & Skye way up there on the "puke me" ride

It just never would have happened before...

Yesterday I went Huckleberry picking with Auntie Nell & Marion... It was really an eye opener in a few respects....

There is no way I would have been able to hike up that hill through brush and over downed trees being 100+ pounds heavier. I wouldn't have been even able to tolerate just sitting still in the sunshine before and not doing anything remotely physical. It was really an eye opener... I did feel muscles last night that I never knew existed but it felt good that I did it and didn't give up.

The 2nd eye opener... I now understand why there are buyer's out there paying as much as 55.00 a gallon for the berries. It's really hard picking and I certainly won't be joining the groups of people up here who spend weeks picking and selling for their income.

It was relaxing though just sitting there among the bushes enjoying the great view & peace and quiet...

Today's adventure is that I'm going to the Flathead County Fair in Kalispell, Montana with Hunter. That would have never happened before either... I'll post later how that goes.

View from the "road"

View from the "road"

Nellie (left - back) & Marion (right - front) picking away.

Nellie back in there picking.

Marion picking in her spot.

View from where we hiked up the hill.

Pretty wild flowers were all around too...

Berry juice proof that I was up there :-)

I miss the rain...

One thing that people always comment about Seattle is that they think it rains too much. I don't agree and it's one thing I miss the most from there. Every time I fly into California there's a haze over the cities that a good rainfall would clear up nicely.

On Friday when we went to Montana it rained some. Not just a drizzy but actual rain and I can't describe it but it smelled "fresh". There was even a rainbow showing that the pot of gold was over the saloon in Kalispell. No, I didn't have time to go in and find it.

I'm one of those people that like it to be, at the very most, 80 with a nice cool breeze blowing. We've been getting into the 90's with the air not moving. It was so thick yesterday afternoon that it was hard to breathe and tolerate. Needless to say we've been spending the evenings up at the lake because it's cooler than sitting around the house. The good side of this is that we've been getting a lot of fish to put into the freezer for wintertime. The bad part is that Hunter gets to scale & clean all of them today and there are quite a few... 6-Bass, 5-Perch, and 20-Blue Gill (a couple of these may be Black Crappies. I'm still learning to tell the difference.)

Perch

Blue Gill (Maybe some Black Crappies thrown in)

Bass

I miss the rain...Why is it we always want the weather that we don't have at the moment? I'd even take some snow if it wouldn't kill my garden off... I finally got my first decent size Zucchini from it yesterday.

I wish these were storm clouds and it would just rain one good downpour. Even for 15 minutes and clear up the air. We don't have smog like some places but we do have dust from the dirt roads around here.  I'm sure that someone's going to have to remind me that I said this later in the fall when it's raining constantly.

A weekend all about water...

It turned out to be a weekend that was all about water... Lakes, Rivers, Streams & Waterfalls. We took Skye's Senior photos by a lake and a waterfall, went fishing, tried to get Nana to swim (that didn't go over too well with her,) and generally spend most of the weekend by some body of water or another.

There are 9 of my favorite photos for Skye's Senior photos below. I need people to vote on which ones you like the best. Just please make a comment on which photo numbers you like.

Did you know if you slow the shutter speed wayyyy down on the camera that it shows the water flowing in a misty sort of way? (These two are my favorites of all weekend's photos that were taken... )

Here are the same shots without the shutter set faster so you can see the difference easily.

Now, back to Saturday. I woke Hunter up early and made him go with me up to Sinclair Lake to fish. I bribed him telling him if he was nice to me that I would let him drive the back road home and that seemed to work so he wasn't grumpy. We took Nana with us so she wouldn't be lonely at home.

While we were up there Hunter tried to get Nana to swim on her own. He forced her to swim but she wasn't happy about it.

Hunter even did some fishing and I did some fishing. I also took some photos for fun here at this lake. Hunter had to be at the school at noon for football stuff so we left early so he could drive home while I took some photos of more water places because I decided that would be my theme for this post.

My one and only fish (from this lake)... and yes I look totally bad.. it was a Saturday get out of bed and just go type of morning.

Proof that Hunter was actually fishing... this was his pole.

I know it's not water but I thought it was a cool shot.

Hunter went to football and we went home to rest during the hot day. Late afternoon we went to Dawson Lake with Skye so I could take some Senior photos of her. At the same time we had lines in the water... Skye won the biggest fish award and Hunter got the award for not just one, but TWO, of the dinkiest fish ever.

Hunter's dinky fish award #1

Skye's biggest catch of the afternoon award.

Another shot of the big fish.

Hunter's dinky fish award #2

Hunter finally got one worth keeping.

Hunter and Skye together.

Here are some of my favorite shots of Skye's Senior Photos (Unedited versions so far)...Most of these were taken on Sunday when we hiked to Snow Falls (first 4 photos of this blog post). The last photo is a shot taken at Dawson Lake on Saturday.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9