Last day of July

Seems only yesterday I did a blog post called "Uno de Who-Lee-Oh," or something like that.  Now I'm hearing echoes of the ancient Monkees tune "Last Train to Clarksville" which peaked at #1 on July 25, 1966.  Yep, we're catching the last train out of July today and we will arrive at that August Station early tomorrow.  Summer's all downhill from here.

Susun and her friends will get a kick out of today's Pickle's cartoon above.  It needs no comment.

It's been a long time since we've been able to go to the Farmers Markets.  We're both looking forward to a good ol' dose of an Idaho Falls Saturday today.  The markets should be brimming with colorful produce at or near its peak plumpness.

We've been having a regular bakeapalooza this week.  Each day brings a new "something from the oven."  How did that jingle go?  "Nothing says lovin' like something from the oven?" Yep, it was the Pillsbury Doughboy's jingle.  Maybe he's my alter ego, who knows?  Anyway, baking stuff is a lot of fun and it's been providing seemingly endless entertainment for me this week.  It's probably just a foodie fad and the newness will wear off and life will return to normal again soon.  Yesterday's cornbread turned out great--a few tweaks and we're going to be good to go with cornbread.  Last night, we baked 10 turkey meatballs.  WOW, they sure were yum when served with green peas and pearl onions.  Who knows what it will be tonight?  Perhaps something we find at the Farmers Market(s).

We're pretty well done with preparations for the next trip to Salmon tomorrow.  We logged about 30 hours of volunteering on that project this week.  The BLM Staff really went "above & beyond" to help with their end of the deal.  The mapping specialist even made a custom mileage map starting at Stanley and going all the way down to Corn Creek.  I had been guessing it was a 200 mile stretch.  That was a pretty darned good guess as it turned out to be 190 miles.  That's basically half of the 400 mile river.  The other half is well documented.

We really have quite the little tricked out rig for making long one-day floats.  We've remedied every "issue" we found last week and added some new tricks, too.  We're going to be good for upward of at least 6 hours on the river--maybe even as much as 8, depending on the food and water we can carry.  Six will probably be our max of wanting to sit that long.  We shall see.

Guess what?  There's actually WIFI at the Cottonwood campground.  The camphost Duane W. put it in at his own expense just as a service to his loyal repeat customers.  Duane's been there 12 years and he's a legend in his own time.  People from far and wide return like swallows to Duane's Place.  Bill & Judy from Sierra Vista, Arizona, have been coming to Duane's Place for 10 years.  We know of others who are in the 5-7 year range.  For us, it's 7 years. and hopefully many more in the future.  The place wouldn't be the same without Duane.  Anyway, he just figured it would be a nice thing to do for "my friends," as he told us.  Duane's Sweet!

Anyway, we're taking two laptops up to Cottonwood this time.  The old XP machine will be used to get our waypoints out of the Magellan GPS.  The newer 4 gig Windows 7 machine will help us post photos, make maps, and, gee, maybe even do a blog post or two.  It's going to be interesting to see just how much stuff we can squeeze into each day up there.  The more we do, the faster the time flies.  Too bad we don't have a way to catch time in a bottle like we do the flies.

Stasea sent a nice article from Hawaii about SUP--Stand Up Paddling.  At first, I thought it was just kind of a fad of some sort.  WRONG!  Man, SUP is amazing and the health benefits appear to be off the charts.  It definitely has my attention and I'd actually like to get my hands on one of the boards and paddles to check it out.  Click here to check out the SUP Surf Mag.  The current page shows a woman doing an exercise on a SUP board.  We've already decided to adopt that exercise for this week's paddling regime.

We had lunch yesterday with Matt Q.  He was formerly our "bahs."  "Bahs" is pronounced softly like that sound that sheep make.  It's Georgia Southern Slang for the words "boss."   We enjoyed working with Matt for almost 2.5 years.  As Charter LBRs know, this blog was born the day after we learned of Matt's departure.  We started this blog to document the inevitable changes we expected to occur this year.  It's been a good ride so far and we hope to cover a lot more ground as the year unfolds.  Anyway, Susun and I really enjoyed visiting with Matt.  He's a lot of fun, especially when he's not our "bahs."

Looks like Ol' Airy Zonie has been bombarded with Monster Monsoons lately.  Great big water balloons sneak up out of Ol' Mexico and splat themselves down upon the land like fire retardant from a slurry bomber.  We've been getting various reports from our Arizona LBRs and it sounds pretty wild down there.  Sounds like it might be a good idea to drive around with a life jacket and a helmet, too!  We actually got a real good corker rainstorm twice last evening.  Luckily, I had moved the Turco underneath our big blue spruce tree so I could continue to bake in peace and almost dryness.  When you're this far north of normal monsoon country, the arrival of moisture from the south is purely "hit & miss."  However, today looks like a repeat of yesterday.  Here's a poignant piece of prose from our local Weather Wonks:

.DISCUSSION...ANOTHER ACTIVE 24 HOURS ACROSS EASTERN IDAHO. MONSOON MOISTURE CONTINUES TO STREAM ACROSS THE REGION. STORMS
 WILL PICK UP IN COVERAGE AND INTENSITY BY THIS AFTERNOON. PRECIPITABLE WATER VALUES AND SOUNDING DATA INDICATES THE  POTENTIAL FOR STRONG TO SEVERE STORMS WITH HAIL AND STRONG WINDS. HEAVY RAINFALL IS ALSO A THREAT. EVERYTHING INDICATES THAT STORMS SHOULD BE STRONGER THAN YESTERDAY AS A STORM SYSTEM PUSHES A LITTLE CLOSER INTO WASHINGTON. THIS IS CONFIRMED BY SPC AND A  SLIGHT RISK ACROSS NORTHERN AREAS...BUT JUST ABOUT ANYONE IN EASTERN IDAHO COULD SEE STRONG/SEVERE STORMS.


I've stopped doing the Bearanoid blog for awhile.  I really can't take the sadness of researching and writing about human fatalities at the hands of bears.  The latest case up near Cooke City is just so sad it really wrenches my heart.  Gosh, I guess I am not very detached on this subject.  Things like that are like lightning--it came strike anyone anywhere--and it could happen to any of us--at least if we were camped in Bear Country.  So, I'm taking a break on updating the bearanoid blog.  Maybe I will resume later and maybe not.

Well, that's about all we have for this morning.  Now it's time to do something different--I think I'll cook up a mess of bacon.  It's always fun to fill the neighborhood air with the aromatherapy of simmering bacon--I know it drives the neighbors into a fantasy food frenzy--I just KNOW it does! 

Cheers, jp