The Water is Back On, Sort of

Riverton, Utah        High 97 Low 70

It is still way too hot to enjoy. We have been staying inside, in the air conditioning, mostly.

Friday I had a colonoscopy which wasn’t too much fun, but unlike the last one, this time they didn’t find any polyps, so I don’t have to have another one for 5 years. I have been having trouble swallowing pills and so they also did an endoscopy. Fortunately I was out for both procedures. They found some damage from stomach acid and so I have one more pill to take in the morning.

Saturday the secondary water was turned back on in the late morning, but there wasn’t much pressure, perhaps from all the people using it. But it soon turned into a small dribble. Yesterday morning the pressure was still way down but we had some water. Then this morning, there was no water at first. We have 8 valves and by the time the 6^th one opened all of a sudden we had good pressure again. I restarted the timer and it seemed to work this time, so maybe the water will stay on this time. We have some brown lawn and I hope the water pressure stays up this time.

We have picked our fill of apricots and the neighbors have picked some, but the birds are still knocking more than 5 gallons a day on the ground.  

We finally got a few ripe tomatoes but there are not enough for Cindy to do the canning she wants to do. The ones off our vines are way better than what we can buy in the grocery stores.

That’s about all that has been going on our way.

Thanks for visiting. 

The Birds

Riverton, Utah         High 95 Low 70

It’s a good thing for air conditioning! It has been too hot to sleep at night lately. The next few days are going to be even hotter. Salt Lake City has set a few new records.

I have spent the last few days working on getting nets around the grapes. I had Devon help me one day. We could only work on it for a while in the morning until it got too hot and so it took me a lot longer than I really wanted. When the grapes were smaller, I built 9 foot frames around the grapes,but they have grown so big that I had to make new 10 foot high frames.

The finished frame.

I finally finished putting all the bird net on the cage this morning.  It was good to get done because I had to chase some robins and black birds away while I finished installing it. We have quite a few grapes this years and Cindy wants to make grape juice from them. They probably won’t be ready until late September.

We have been working on putting up apricot jam and syrup. Cindy’s burns have slowed her down and I’ve had to pick the apricots in between building the cage for the grapes and quilting and whatever else needs doing outside until it gets too warm.

The apricots are ready, especially the top ones, and the birds seem to like them. They have knocked a lot down after only taking a few bites. We have picked up about 5 gallons of over-ripe and partially eaten fruit. It’s a good thing the tree is loaded this year. One branch was so heavy that it broke and will have to be cut off after the fruit is picked.

Every day when we go out the sidewalk looks like this. We are constantly picking them up.

Riverton City turned off the secondary water because of an algae problem in Utah Lake where it comes from. They don’t seem to know when it will be turned back on, so we have had to hand water everything with culinary water which costs us a lot more. Not to mention how dry everything is getting because of the heat.

In spite of wishing I were some where cooler, it is a good thing we are home.

Thanks for visiting.

We Are Still Here

Riverton, Utah       High 97 Low 68

It is still hot here. We are wishing for some of the cool weather we had on the Coast, although I guess they have had a lot of rain for the last few days.

We have been busy working around the house getting lots of things done. I also started working on one of Cindy’s quilts. It is going to take a while. We have started picking apricots and Cindy started making them into syrup. The jam comes next. When I look at the tree, I can hardly tell that I’ve picked any. There are still a lot of apricots left to harvest. Cindy was picking up one of the bottles of syrup when it slipped. The lid came off spilling hot syrup on her arm and face. Right now she is hurting from the burns. She wants me to handle the hot jars from now on.

My next job, in between picking apricots, is to get bird netting on the grapes so we can have them instead of the birds. We have a large Bing cherry tree, but when we got home all that was left was pits hanging on stems. The birds don’t even wait for them to get ripe. They would do the same thing with the grapes if I didn’t cover them. The tree is too big to put net over all of it. Next year I might try netting a few branches. Fortunately I can cover all the grapes.

 Friday our granddaughter turned 10. We had a party for her yesterday with Cindy’s kids and Alysia’s cousins. We had quite a few people here. For a while there was a lot of noise and everyone seemed to have fun. It wasn’t too hot on the patio yesterday, but would have been warmer today.

6 year old Taylor. Notice the missing teeth.

Skyler and Taylor with their mother (Heather). Tammy in the back ground.

The birthday girl, Alysia. Stephanie in the background.

Skyler sure likes Penny, Penny doesn't like Skyler so much, she kept trying to get away.

Taidan and Teesa. He is taller than his dad, who is over 6 feet tall.

That’s about all that has been going on.

Thanks for visiting.

It’s Hot!

Riverton, Utah              High 73 Low 56

With that being said, today actually cooled down, but it is only going to be today and then is forecast to get hot again. We left Pocatello Saturday and drove into what felt like an oven. It was 96 degrees when we got home.

Yesterday we went to Orem to spend some time with Cindy’s Mom. She seems to be doing a little better, but still is very weak. Cindy wants to give Linda a little time off from taking care of their Mom.

The reason we came home is that the Apricots are almost ready to pick with perhaps a week to go.

Some of the branches are on the ground.

Cindy also has a lot of honey dos for me to work on including refinishing the redwood deck around our hot tub. I got a good start on it today.

I found a bunch of pictures of the old buildings in Deer Lodge on the camera and I want to put them on the blog, so here they are. Sorry they are late.

This was the oldest building we saw.

The quilt store we visited. Its in an old bank building.

A neat old train from 1950.

Old state prison.

I read that this old clock still works and has to be wound by hand 3 times a week. It chimes on the hour and half hour.

Tomorrow we have a lot more chores to do.

Thanks for visiting. 

Almost Home

Pocatello, Idaho         High 90 Low 57

Yesterday was a lazy day and the only thing we did that amounted to much was going to a quilt store to get the free Row by Row pattern. Cindy did buy about $20.00 in material, so the free pattern wasn’t really free.

We drove from Deer Lodge, Montana to Pocatello, Idaho today. We are staying at Sullivan’s RV Park using Passport America. This Park isn’t much to look at and the only really good thing about it is that we have 50 amp full hook-ups. The Passport rate was $15.00 plus $1.00 tax.

It is awfully hot here and we are missing the cooler weather we had on the Oregon and Washington coast. It is supposed to be even warmer in Salt Lake City. It’s a good thing for the 50 amps so we can run our ACs which haven’t shut off since we have been here.

We drove about 7 hours from Sandpoint to Deer Lodge and about 6 to here. These are both with stops along the way.

Tomorrows drive is about 180 miles and should take about 3 ½ hours plus a few stops, except we are noticing more and more traffic. I’m sure that by the time we get to Ogden there will be lots of traffic the rest of the way to Riverton.

We both have lots to do when we get home.

Thanks for visiting.

Big Sky Country

Deer Lodge, Montana        High 66 Low 37

Monday night Ken took a group of us out on the Lake to watch the fireworks. We saw a lot of fireworks going up in one corner of the bay that Ken told us was where a local dentist lived. We stopped and watched his fireworks display which went on for at least 30 minutes,

After a while we changed locations and watched the fireworks being set off by the City of Sandpoint. It only lasted about 15 minutes. Even though the city fireworks were larger, we all enjoyed the private display better.

First thing yesterday morning we took Penny to the groomers. She remembered the place and wanted to leave as soon as we got out of the truck. But the groomer told us that she got along well with her after she talked and cuddled her for a little while. Today she acted like she was freezing to death because of the lack of all the hair.

Penny after her haircut.

Yesterday Sabrina took us to the Bird Aviation and Discovery Museum. It wasn’t large, but had a lot of information about airplanes, helicopters, and a lot of other inventions.

We were told that it all started from Dr. Forrest Bird getting a large model airplane, which he flew once and then decided to put it in a display case. That turned into putting the display case in a large building which grew to what it is today. We only spent about an hour going through it, but could have easily spent more time. Dr. Bird was a pilot and was interested in all things about planes.

This model helicopter started it all.

Peddle car hanging from the ceiling.

This morning we left Ken and Sabrina fairly early (for us) because rain was predicted for later in the morning and we were going into Mountain Time which lost us an hour. As it turned out, we had rain off and on all the way.

Part of the scenery.

About half way to Deer Lodge, our Tire Pressure Monitor went off and showed that the right rear tire on the trailer was losing air. We found a place to pull over before it went completely flat and I put the spare on. It has what looks like a large screw in it, which I will have repaired tomorrow. This is the third time that the TPM has saved us. This time the tire looks like it will be OK with just a patch.

Here I am starting to change the tire.

We are staying at Indian Creek Campground. We will be here for two nights before heading closer to Utah. It looks like it will be quite cold here tonight. 37, burr.

Thanks for visiting.