These boots are made for hiking!!

Finally we have gotten back into hiking mode. And we're doing great - have 3 good hikes under our belts for the summer and plans for at least 4 more.

First - up stillwater river - approximately 10 miles round trip - documented that in an earlier blog.

Second hike - Father's day. We went up East Rosebud. Stopped at signage and it said 3 1/2 miles to Elk Lake. JW said he wanted to see if I could make it the first leg of the trail and I thought, no problem, we hiked 10 miles up Stillwater, 7 will be easy. We got to Elk Lake and it was very nice and peaceful

and JW said "I forgot about this little lake" (translation: we really haven't walked as far as I was thinking we should so we're pressing on). Fortunately, JW had taken a picture of the signage

at the trail head so I knew how far the next lake was. 2 1/2 miles - wasn't tired so sounded easy. The trail got very bad - due to the "winds of November" there was blowdown everywhere. We scrambled over logs, under logs, around logs, up the rocky trail then over snow packed trail until we got almost to the 2nd lake. There right between a 50' drop off on the right and a steep rocky cliff on the left was a pile of icy snow.

Being the chicken I am when it comes to heights anyway, I insisted that I was going to somehow squeeze between the snow and the rock since the snow was a little melted on that side. There was no way I was going over the pile of snow - especially after just seeing another hiker almost slip down the slope. So i sucked in my gut and wiggled in that way and finally came out the other side although I was extremely wet. The view of the lake was definitely worth the pain:

Fortunately the trail crew had followed us up the trail so on the way back, they had cleared out most of the blowdown. 12 mile hike and I felt absolutely great the next day. No sore legs at all.

Third hike: Saturday, June 21 we decided to take a leisurely hike to Mystic Lake and do some fishing. 3 miles to the lake - 6 mile hike. Not bad. I remembered that trail - a nice walk through the woods. Jill and her two nephews and I had hiked it in 2001. Since they were little boys, it couldn't have been a bad hike. What I didn't remember that it was uphill most of the way and that there was a part where you are on switchback trail across a stretch of large boulders.

But it was a great day and we hiked on. We got to the lake and settled down to do some fishing. The lake is way down, this rocky beach should have been covered with water. Plus there was a ring of 4' high snow drifts around the side of the lake we were on so we had to meander over the drifts to get to the waters edge.

Unfortunately, when we tried fishing, the wind was blowing just enough in our direction that we'd cast out and the wind would blow the lines back into the shore. Solution to that was to hike on to the far end of the lake so the wind would be behind us. The far end of the lake is another 2 miles (seriously) and goes over the top of that hill on the left side of the above picture. I am so glad we had a leisurely day. JW caught 3 rainbow and turned them loose. I rested for the return 5 mile, 3 hour hike back down the hill. Actually, I started hiking back down 30 minutes before he did so I could take my time and take more pictures. But again the view was fantastic and it was a great day - 10+ hours of wonderful entertainment for the price of a couple gallons of gas and a can of sardines.

Next hike: Saturday - June 28th - Timberline Lake. All in preparation for the 26 mile, 4 day hike in August from Cooke City (just outside of Yellowstone park) back down to the East Rosebud drainage. HIKE ON!!!

Added note: My 60th birthday, i plan to hike from Many Glacier Lodge to Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. Get yourselves in shape and meet me there.

Renovation of one room is complete

Woo hoo - JW has finished our family room in the basement and has moved on to the next project. We love it and are talking now of putting pine up on the ceiling of the bedroom. Since we're getting the house just about the way we want it, it's probably time to put it up for sale and move on -- hoping we don't have to do that.

Here's some pix of the transformation of what JW is now calling the "man cave" and I call my office.

The room when we looked at the house.

The reunion in 2003

2005 when we started actually renovating this room.

I liked the yellow but apparently JW did not.

And finally how it looks today. At last, one room totally done.

Are we in Seattle yet?

So since May 21, we have been blessed with almost 9 inches of wonderful glorious rain. The weather has been cool - I think it got to 55 or so yesterday. The weather is supposed to continue like this at least till the weekend.

The things I planted aren't growing very much if at all, but they are healthy and I haven't had to water a single bit. And when that sun comes out, the grass is goiing to really take off in the pasture (unfortunately so will the weeds).

One major benefit of this nice cool wet weather is that the lilac bushes are blooming like crazy - wish I could overnight a bunch of cut fresh blossoms to g'ma to enjoy.

And my bleeding heart is thriving on the cool weather too, just wish I had a place to plant it where I could see it more often. It's on the back of the house and if I forget to walk out there to look at it, I could totally miss these cute little flowers.

Finally some "fun"??

So since JW now has all week to work on home projects, Friday night he asked me "What are we doing tomorrow?" I told him that I wanted to go for a walk. "Okay, let's "walk" up the Stillwater". So yesterday morning, we jumped out of bed early and drove up past the mine to the end of the road. We then got out, donned our packs (mine only weighed about 10 pounds since I basically had my camera, lots of water and my rain jacket as we are having afternoon thunderstorms).

We checked the sign at the trail head and it said 3 miles to Sioux Charley Lake - even though I haven't been on a long walk in a couple of years, I figured I could do that since the trail wasn't steep. So we headed up the trail. 1/4 mile there was a sign post saying we were now in the Absoraka-Beartooth Wilderness.

We walked and walked and walked - for the first half mile or so we were right along side the Stillwater as it crashed over boulders. JW commented that he would like to see someone come down that river in a kayak - which would be hard mainly because you would have to carry the kayak up to the top. (Wonder if alexshuman is up to that challenge)

We stopped after about an hour and had a granola bar. Then we went on. We came to a nice view point so we pulled off the trail and stopped for a few minutes. Then we heard someone yell and we saw a young couple - they said they were making noise because they didn't want to surprise a bear and she had seen my black boots and wasn't sure what it was. They were from Missouri - out visiting one of his friends in Billings and decided to go hiking. Then they asked us where the trail went - we told them it was 3 miles to Sioux Charley Lake and that's as far as we were going.

He whipped out his gps and said they had come 2 1/2 miles. JW said the lake must be just beyond the rocks up ahead. They stayed there to eat lunch, we went on up the trail to the lake to have lunch. Just a little ways up the trail, we saw this view and thought we were getting close to the lake.

Well, when we got there, we realized it was just a wide spot in the river (couldn't possibly be the lake) so we continued on thinking any minute we would get to the lake. Finally after we had walked for another 30 minutes, JW decided we would walk 30 more minutes and if we didn't reach the lake, we'd stop and eat lunch wherever we were.

We didn't reach the lake but did stop and sat on some big rocks to have lunch. That consisted of a can of fish steaks with green chiles packed in soybean oil, 2 string cheese and a few Sing Buri cashews from Costco (those things are delicious) While we sat, we decided that the "wide spot in the river" had to be the lake. After lunch, JW hiked up another 1/4 mile or so and then when he returned, he stopped to rest and I headed back down the hill. I knew he'd catch up with me anyway. We stopped a few times to rest and were amazed at the number of people hiking up the trail at 2 in the afternoon as it was starting to get a little warm. Also, we were dumb-founded that so few of them even had a bottle of water with them.

We got back to the truck about 20 after 3 and home by 4:00 to sit and put our feet up. I was so tired that JW cooked dinner while I vegged. Today, I feel great - not sure I want to do another 9 mile hike until next weekend. But I do know that every day I'm going to be hitting the hills in back of the house to get my long legs ready for lots more hiking.