Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Howdy from Mountain Home

We're in the Mountain Home, Idaho, public library.  Really funky public terminals.  Ancient cathode ray monitors that I can barely read--balky keyboard, too, so please excuse any typos.  We have had a great trip so far.  It's been wet.  Rained off and on all day yesterday.  The six hour stint on the firing line for the interviews wasn't too bad--we did collect 21 interviews from the 42 cars that passed us--that's 50% and not too bad.  We baked a ground turkey meatloaf in the new and improved dutch oven thing.  I finally got smart and opened up my Harbor Freight infrared laser non-contact temperature scanner. I was able to "shoot" the side of the dtuch oven with the laser and keep an eye on its temperature.  I got it up to 425 and then backed the coals off to maintain an even 350 for an hour.  Dutch oven cooking has never been easier with my new high tech toy!

Susun loves her new cot--she's sleeping better than ever before.  She practically BOUNDS out of the tent early each morning with so much energy it's kinda scary!  She sure loves that hot springs, too.  I have to admit, after packing the truck this morning, I felt dirty and tired.  I sat in the hot springs while the rain pelted down and became rejuvenated.  What a gift.

We went to the Mountain Home museum and found a great file on Rocky Bar.  There's no book on Rocky Bar but the file has everything I really need.  I will have to come back and spend a day with that file--it's fat with a treasure trove of information about Rocky Bar.  We did make contact with Dr. Heather M's this afternoon--they are returning from The Dream Ranch on the East Fork of The Salmon River.  We will drive out of Mountain Home in about 90 minutes and get to Heather's Mystic Ranch about 5 pm.  Hopefully, they will have had time to unpack their horses and stuff and take a breather by then.  We're supposed to bring ice cream.

Well, it's been raining most of the time and it's raining here in the Snake River Plain Desert at Mountain Home.  The deserts outside of Mountain Home are normally a burnt drown color.  Now they are the most surreal green we've ever seen--it's eerie.

We will head back up to Baumgartner Thursday and will leave there early Sunday morning for the gruntover to Big Cedar.  Well, that's about all we have to report.

Have a great day & Cheers, jp

2 comments:

Maggie said...

Good to get an update from you guys. Definitely not rainy here - going to get in the high 80s in Flag this week.

stasea said...

Looking forward to Rocky Bar info.