Crazy Squash

One thing’s been amusing me all summer long. It’s my insane delicata squash (sweet potato squash) vine.

Sources I read said it could grow to be 6×9′, so I gave it that much space. It quickly outgrew it, stretching in all directions. When it started to overtake my flowers, I pulled out a huge stack of hollow vines.

Recently, I decided to let it have its way, including allowing it to smother the flowers, just to see how far it will spread. I think it’s about done.

It’s about 12×32′. It produced numerous squash, which aren’t quite ripe yet. I hope they’ll ripen before first frost, which could happen anytime now. I discovered delicata squash for the first time last summer.

If you haven’t tried it, it’s readily available in grocery stores and it is delicious.  

Harvest at 110 degrees

If you’ve ever heard about the cushy life of farmers who harvest their fields from the air-conditioned cabs of their combines, and truck drivers doing the same, well, it might be true for BIG farmers, but for average Joes like us, the American Small Farmer, it’s hardly true at all.

Yes cabs of our very old combines are air-conditioned. But … these cabs are designed like mini-glass greenhouses to begin with. If they weren’t air-conditioned, the combine driver would literally fry to death.

Frequently, it’s necessary to open the door a crack, because the outside air IS actually cooler. But then the dust blows in. (Before cabs, farmers used to get emphysema from all the dust.)

If the air-conditioning is working well, it can only keep the inside of the cabs about ten degrees cooler than the outside air. So yesterday, it was 90 degrees in those tiny little glass boxes.

But the truck drivers have it worse. Yesterday, we had a skeleton crew. Our older truck driver, Ken, is out for the rest of the season, due to the fact that he thinks he may be suffering from lyme disease. (He hunts bears in Michigan every fall, which is where he may’ve contracted it. We have no lyme-bearing tics in this area.) Our daughter with the three children also took the day off (and me! not babysitting her kids and puppy).

The truck-driving crew was down to Rosanna and our 21-year-old nephew, Jens. Fortunately, we were harvesting at the River Ranch, where we have home storage (grain bins) and it wasn’t necessary to truck the wheat more than a mile or so. Home storage means that fewer truck drivers are needed to keep up with the output of the combines. Assuming both combines are running. Very often, one or both of them is broke down.

Back to harvesting at 110 degrees: Rosanna drives the Kenworth, which is does not have air-conditioning at all. But the air-conditioning in the other trucks is faulty at best. 

Poor Rosanna, with the heat coming off the truck’s enormous, (Cummins) Diesel engine all day long, the inside of her cab was about 110 degrees. 

She complained about it, but not as much as you might think. She is a real trooper out in the harvest field, and an excellent semi-driver.

What do you do when you’re working in that kind of heat? 

• You drink, literally, a gallon of water throughout the day. 
• And you hop inside your dad’s “air-conditioned cab” whenever possible, to enjoy the mere 90-degree heat. 
• You also confiscate every lunchbox ice pack that you can find–your own, your dad’s, your brother’s–and press it against your overheated body until the ice in the ice packs melts. 
• Then you get out the towels you had soaked in water and press them against your skin. The towels are wet, but unfortunately, they’re not cool. 
• You look forward to when it’s time to unload your truck, so you can get out and stand by the auger at the grain bins and watch while the wheat unloads. (You also need to be proficient at getting your truck in exactly the right spot, running and manipulating a 60′ auger. Rosanna can do it!)

So that’s what harvesting at 110 degrees was like yesterday. Rosanna’s biggest beef was that a half-dozen photographers from Seattle (or somewhere) had discovered the River Ranch Road and were there, taking pictures of the incredible views. But also of the trucks as they passed by them on the dusty, single-lane, sometimes winding road. I guess they were taking pictures of the “wildlife” (combine/truck drivers) in their natural habitat. 

Oh, and Rosanna had never seen the GeoCache that someone had planted behind a tree ten years ago. She opened it up and studied its contents. Unfortunately, there was tree sap all over the openers, and so her hands got pretty sticky.

The dust, the heat, the sap … her energy was still quite sapped (pun intended) this morning as she headed off for work.

But we called in reinforcements … her sister will be out by 11:00 am, and I will be babysitting again … 

Of Harvest, Gardens, Grandkids and Puppies

For our crew, which includes two combine drivers (husband and son) and three or four truck drivers, harvest so far’s been about keeping the combines and trucks running so that the grain can be cut and taken to storage. That’s what it’s always about.

This year, there’s been so many combine breakdowns that if the crop yields are good enough, and our cash flow warrants it, it’s time to upgrade to a newer combine sometime before harvest next year. We’re driving combines that are 20 and 35 years old, and metal fatigue is setting in big time. At least one of the combines breaks down just about every day. What a headache, and hours’ worth of lost production time.

For me this year, harvest has been about babysitting three of our grandchildren while their mother (our daughter) drives one of the semis. Our other daughter is also a truck driver, as well as our nephew and Ken, a retired truck driver who is no relation to us. It is a house full, with MaryAnn and her kids camping out at night on the sofas in the living room and a queen-sized air mattress that sits between the sofa and the TV. Our other daughter has her own bedroom in the basement, as she is living with us for a few months. 

Besides babysitting the kids, I’ve been taking care of the kids’ 6-week old puppy, Ruby, who is a Boston Terrier/Boxer mix. (Well, that was how old she was when harvest started. Now she’s 8 weeks old, and by the time harvest is over, she’ll be 9 weeks old.) The puppy loves and wants to make friends with our cat, but the cat is afraid of the puppy, so the cat hides out most of the time, outside, or on the third floor, or in the basement. 

The puppy is adorable, simply adorable, but I also discovered that she is SUCH A DOG!

Whenever I take her outside to pee, her nose zeros in on all the booby traps in our yard, namely dead mice that the cat caught and left under the shrubs; cat poo; dried up bird carcasses–all of which the puppy has chowed down on. Disgusting!

So when the puppy comes inside, she gets her mouth cleansed with pieces of cooked chicken, pork chops, whatever–and, nonetheless, I warned the kids not to let puppy lick their faces. Oops, looks like puppy’s about ready to lick Felicia’s face. 

Besides the wheat, garbanzos and barley being ripe, so are our gardens. We have two–a traditional field garden and a raised-bed garden, which was something new this year. The raised beds are so overflowing with produce (onions, beets, bush beans, lettuce and carrots), they look like Chia Pets. 

My flowers are also pretty. The rose on the deck is done blooming, but you can’t beat annuals to keep flowering throughout summer until frost. 

I’ll be babysitting most of next week too. It’s been fun (and exhausting) to be “mommy” again. The grandkids have taken to calling me “Mom–I mean, Grandma …” 

With luck, my daughter will get a day off next week and so will I. When that happens, I plan to drive out to the River Ranch and ride with my husband in his combine for a couple of hours … assuming it’s he’s not standing outside of it, welding up a huge crack in the metal or some other annoyance. 

Weekly Update: "Ain't that the most beautiful snow you've ever seen?"

That's what hubby said when we got up yesterday and looked out the window. 

We're in for some VERY cold weather over the next two weeks. The temperature will remain in the teens at all times, with the wind-chill factor bringing it to below zero. Brrr!

Snow is significant to us. If it hadn't snowed, the cold weather probably would've frozen out the fall wheat we planted in September and October. If that happened, we would need to replant it in the spring, which is expensive. It could mean the difference between earning a livable income in 2014, or not.

But it snowed, and so we are safe for now. Snow acts like a blanket to insulate the crops from the ravages of too-cold weather, same as a blanket helps to keep us from freezing to death.

Last week's highlights: 

(I am shamelessly borrowing some of my heading titles this week from Molly, who writes extraordinary posts--thanks, Molly!)

Thanksgiving was wonderful. My three children, their spouses and our grandchildren all came for dinner. Everyone got along. No one pushed anyone's buttons, like last year. Yay!

We ate a feast at 4:30 that included turkey, of course, but also a melt-in-your-mouth seasoned prime rib from Costco. While the gals spent hours in the kitchen fixing dinner, the guys and the grandkids were outside tooling around on their motorcycles and four-wheelers and making movies with Mike's new GoPro camera. Between dinner and dessert, we watched the GoPro movies on our big-screen TV. The grandkids also decorated a gingerbread house.  

Some good friends invited us to their house for dinner on Saturday night. Thanks, Sharon! Check out her blog for a wonderful acappella version of Little Drummer Boy. Afterwards, we saw Catching Fire. 

It was a disturbing movie, but I wanted to see it in order to be aware of what popular culture is viewing these days. Regarding TV shows, I don't keep up with popular culture at all--except to watch Homeland. But I do like to take in some of the current movies. 

Currently Reading:

I am working through Darren Rouse's e-books on how to make your blog successful. For $107, which is 47% off the price of buying each e-book separately, I got the following e-books:

31 Days to build a Better Blog
First Week of Blogging
Blogging for Business
Blogger's Guide to Online Marketing
Blog Wise-Do More with Less
Scorecard for Blogging

I've finished First Week of Blogging; Blog Wise--Do More with Less; Scorecard for Blogging and am currently on day 18 of the 31-Days e-book. I am learning so much. If you've been blogging for a while, you don't need the information in First Week of Blogging, but as it came as part of the package, I decided to blast through it anyway. You never know when you might learn something new. 

Based on what I'm learning, and if I were to grade my blog, I would give my current level of effort about C-. 

The e-books are filled with links to online articles and sources of information that greatly enhance your understanding of the materials, so if you buy the e-books, do not neglect to read the additional links.  

Writing: 

No writing this past week, however I did spend two days looking at the stats on each of my 437 published blog posts and putting the information into various categories in a spreadsheet. This is helping me to understand more fully which area readers are embracing, and which areas are duds. It will help me think of new post ideas as well as new directions for my blog.

Are you interested to know which areas get the largest page views? The biggest duds?

Largest number of page views: In general, the category of posts that consistently gets the largest number of page views are our flying adventures. There are isolated posts from all of my 26 categories that have gotten more reads than many of the flying posts, but as a category, the flying posts consistently get the most hits.

Duddy page views: The categories which are a total dud for me, meaning that the posts each garner 50 page views or less, belong to the categories of Holiday Posts and Seasonal Posts . . . i.e. Autumn on the Palouse ... Winter on the Palouse ...

Crafting: 

I ordered some pens for my Silhouette Cameo Portrait so that I can use it to draw as well as to cut. Eventually, I might order the Designer Software, so that I can create my own designs and upload them to the Silhouette store for sale. (Or am I only dreaming?) I completed a scrapbook layout of our flight to Kamiah, Idaho. 

On the horizon: 

My book group meets tomorrow night, and my women's club is having its annual Christmas luncheon on Friday. Hubby's getting interested in taking up skiing again, and so we plan to go skiing when the weather warms. 

Oh, and there is a manuscript to finish ... 

How was your week? 

The Bull Next Door

Hubby's taken a shining to the bull next door, which he calls "Bully Bully." Whenever hubby goes down to the airplane hangar (that is on our property; not the one in town) to fly his Kit Fox, he likes to walk a bit farther, to the very edge of our property, and say "hey there" to the neighbor's bull.

He's taken to giving the bull apples, which the bull will eat right out of his hand. The picture is deceptive. This bull is a really, really big guy. But isn't he a sweetie? Don't you want to run your fingers over his soft nose?

Overgrown Petunias!

Oh, my, but the petunias have seen better days!

Harvest on the Palouse

Fall wheat cutting is winding down now, as is the barley. There will be some spring wheat to cut and then, early September, the garbanzo beans, which currently bring in more money than any other crop we grow, even Dark Northern Spring wheat.

Over the years, we've shown a number of people our farm. Frequently they are from India, Asia or the Middle East, as we live near Washington State University, and graduate students in agriculture are interested in learning about farming in the U.S. Or, more specifically, dry land farming on the Palouse.

Sometimes it's relatives or friends who want to get a small taste of what harvest is like. Last night, we finally got around to showing some very good friends, Vince and Sharon Himsl, what it's all about. It's often hard to coordinate these visits, as they need to work out for both parties. On our side, weather, breakdowns, and moving machinery from one farm to another have a way of complicating things.

But this was finally able to happen. Sharon took a bunch of pictures and posted them on her blog today.

Please check it out. She did a great "outsider's view" of the whole experience. And yes, I warned her that she would get dirty! 

The Cattle are Grazing; the Zucchini is Producing, and Big Tires are Going Flat

Oh, it's harvest! Harvest is ultimately about getting the grain cut and into  grain bins. (We don't call them silos here.) To do that, it's mostly about keeping machinery running. That's two combines, two Kenworths, and several smaller trucks. Also several pickups and an auger.

What do you think of our neighbor's cow? Aren't those horns long? The neighbor has a herd of them. They like to eat another neighbor's wheat on the other side of the fence. They also like the tender green grass that's on our side, where I'm standing.

Hubby's wondered why the cattle's horns haven't gotten stuck in the barbed wire, pulled the fence down and the whole herd gone free. And wouldn't that be a mess. Call out the motorcycles and four-wheelers. We tend not to herd cattle with horses around here, but with motorized vehicles.

Back to harvest. My son's combine has been beset with problems so far this year. He called Arrow Machinery to come out and fix it. They needed to order parts. So he called Jones Truck and Implement, who also needed to order parts. It meant the combine would be out of commission for 4-5 days, which we cannot have during harvest. Hoo, boy. No way, no way. So my son hauled it home to fix it himself.

It's so sad to see a sick, limping combine rolling slowly down a road.

With a degree in diesel mechanics, my son spent an entire day jerry-rigging it back together.

Don't you just love zucchini? When I was younger, and also a big sugar consumer, but also, being the ridiculously practical person I am, I couldn't bear to let any zucchini go to waste. So one year, in addition to canning 25 jars of zucchini relish, I made 25 loaves of zucchini bread. The relish got eaten within a year. The bread? It seemed that we could enjoy a loaf every other week for a year. That didn't happen. We grew sick of it long before it got freezer burn and grew dry and stale.

Back to harvesting. The cows aren't the only thing around here with long horns. We also have herds of deer, and some with big racks. Last night (yes, we work on Sunday during harvest, as well as every other day), my son's combine suffered yet another breakdown. A deer antler poked a hole through a tire and the tube went flat. Considering the size and thickness of the tire, that deer antler must've been impressive!

I got hubby to stand beside the tire for scale. The flat tire is the one he's touching. You can't really tell by looking that it's flat, but trust me, it is. We're not going to fix this one ourselves. Les Schwab Tires said they could get a guy out first thing this morning.

Although, it was already 7:30 am when I took the picture. Where the heck was Les Schwab?

Just wanted to share another slice of Country Living.

Happy Saturday

It's been almost a week since I last posted. It was a productive week in many ways, but there were breakdowns in others.

Living where we do, we pay through the nose to get fast internet service, although even at its best, we can't stream things. No NetFlix for us, or even watching YouTube videos, which is fine. We're too busy to watch much TV anyway.

But this past week, our Internet went out entirely. It's powered by a solar panel at the top of one of our fields, which somehow catches a signal from the nearest town. The solar panel went out, and we were without internet for almost a week.

I still managed to get on each day, briefly, via a modem that gets a signal from Verizon. But the modem overheats quickly, and its battery doesn't last long.

Then last night, our hot water heater finally gave up the ghost. Hubby said he could take cold showers until harvest is over (three weeks from now!), after which he could fix it. He's a DIY guy, not the type that would ever call in an electrician, plumber or any other type of fix-it person, 'cause he can do it himself better, and for less. ; )

Well, he might think he's tough and could get by without hot water (SERIOUSLY???? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND???????), but I cannot.

After I objected, he gave it a second thought and decided he'd rather have hot water to shower in as well.

So our son-in-law will replace it for us TODAY. He's been out here anyway, beginning to rebuild our deck. He remodels bathrooms for a living, and so he's also replaced many a hot water heater. He said he's never heard of any lasting longer than this one did. It's been in the house since 1979, when we built the house.

My flowers (above) are still looking very pretty. The marigolds are beginning to really fill out. And I'm beginning to get a bunch of ripe cherry tomatoes. I've never grown tomatoes, and those vines just kept putting out blossoms. We'll be having a frost in as little as 2-3 weeks, so I cut off the blossoms, hoping the plants will put their energy into making those hundreds of cherry tomatoes larger and redder, instead of continuing to grow new leaves and blossoms.


On the writing front, I've revised the first 25 pgs of my new manuscript, and have almost completed a revision of my original synopsis (1000 words). I noticed that I changed the ending somewhat from when I first wrote the synopsis, so I need to go back and change it to reflect my new plans.

I'm still planning to enter it into several August and September RWA contests. The first deadline is on August 15. I hope to get some good feedback. If by some chance I final in any of the contests, I might need to scramble to finish writing the last three-quarters of the book.

Wouldn't that just be awful? (Not.) The agents and editors who will be reading the manuscripts that final in each category are fabulous.


On the reading front, well, I haven't been reading much lately. Instead, I've been looking at all the pictures I've taken since the beginning of 2013 and am preparing to make scrapbooks. There's a method to the way I do things. First I digitally crop and/or otherwise adjust the photos that I have deemed worthy of scrapbooking. Then I open up Microsoft Publisher and start dropping them into a 12x12 (cut in half) template, which gives me a two-page layout on one 8.5x11 page in landscape.

I find it much easier to play around with photo and journal block arrangements when I do it that way. It gives me the option of changing my mind about whether a picture should have a horizontal, vertical, or square shape before I actually print it out. And I am guaranteed of getting a nice balance of horizontals and verticals in each layout. Because I make sure that I do.

Seeing each page in miniature, it also gives me a good idea for background colors. Predominant colors show up more readily on the screen than when looking at the actual pictures placed on a 12x12 background.

By laying out an entire album before printing even one picture, I can make sure I'm not repeating layout patterns, but am getting a lot of visual variety, apart from the sizes and shapes of the pictures themselves.

Anyhew, I spent six hours this week doing just that. In addition to the Disneyland album, which I finished last week, I've got pictures for three albums. I'm still using strap hinge albums, although when my stash runs out, and that will be soon, it looks like I'll be switching to three-ring binders. I've never liked post albums at all.

Next up is actually printing the pictures and trimming them to shape. After that, I slip them into the album on the page where they belong and select initial background (cardstock and/or patterened paper) colors. Then comes matting, mounting, journaling and finally embellishing. Each album generally takes about a 40-hour labor of love. 

How was your week, reading, writing or otherwise? 

Sometimes it's nice to own a couple of Kenworths

I've been feeling disconnected to my blog and to my writing over the past few days. Here's why ...

Yesterday, I spent 3 hours building (re-building) a brick retaining wall on the back patio. The wall has undergone some changes over the years. It started out as 12' long, reaching only to the spiral stairway that came off the deck. A few years later, we added another 12' beyond the stairway.

Unfortunately, the access to the septic tank is located in the embankment that the retaining wall holds back. 

Every five years when the septic tank needs to be pumped, the shrubs get torn out; the wall gets dismantled; the bank gets dug out with our bucket tractor--all due to the fact that the lids to the tank (were) 4' underground in the 6' total embankment depth. What a headache! With constant replanting, the embankment looked sparse, then great, and then horrible, over and over again in the 30+ years we've lived here.

Finally, I convinced hubby that something's got to change. 
I called Roto-Rooter and asked them to bring out some taller culverts when they came to pump the tank. 

After getting the septic tank pumped yesterday, this time, we raised the culverts over the tank, so that hubby will need to dig down only 2' to get to them. He could probably even do it by using only a shovel. Next time, there will be no need to rip out the wall, scoop out all the dirt, and so on. I've even talked him into terracing the bank, which will take some work, but not an incredible amount.

Those bricks are heavy! I'd estimate 15-20 pounds each. But it's done now, and so we can start filling the dirt in again, and creating the terrace.

But that's only part of what needs to be done. For the past three years, we haven't had a deck. Not that we ever used it much. My son-in-law doesn't remember us ever using it, and he's been in the family for 16 years. He's wondering why we want to build a new one. For one thing, there's a new, $1200 sliding glass door that opens to a 10' drop-off. Pretty good reason to build one.  

But also, as I said to him yesterday, when I asked him if he wanted to build the deck, "Dad and I are getting older. I'm retired. It's possible that we (or at least me, if not Dad), might  want to sit outside and read, or maybe want to eat outside, sometimes."

That we seldom sit outside might seem odd to suburban or city dwellers. I think it's because hubby doesn't see any particular draw to it. He's a farmer, and during three seasons of the year, farmers spend most of their time outdoors to begin with, so why spend more? For me, it was because I worked full time and was seldom home. When I was at home, there were too many other things that needed to be done, to consider sitting outdoors for a few minutes.

So the big project this week (and in the coming weeks) is outdoor work. I already replanted the 30' x 4' flowerbed that runs along the north side of the house. It's been a mess for the past two years, since hubby re-roofed the house, and then last year, when we put in all new windows and new siding.

I need to design the new deck. It's probably going to be just a simple deck with a pergola and some retractable shades that can add shade to the pergola's "roof," as well as to the West and East sides of the deck. Sun exposure was another reason our former deck was never used. With a southern exposure, it was never cool or shady, however there was shade on the patio beneath the deck.

Accompanying that, I'll be pushing some dirt around to create the dual terrace on the newly redesigned embankment. We'll need to rent a packer to pack the dirt down, so that I can build a second retaining wall. Then, next summer, I'll plant perennials. Or maybe annuals. I might start growing plants from seeds in the basement, under grow lights, like I did many years ago. It might seem hard to imagine, but I used to spend 20 hours/week gardening. But then I realized I wasn't making any money at it, and so I decided to pursue full time employment instead.

Driving home from Lewiston the other day, I was marveling at how sunny and warm it was. The hillsides look so green and beautiful. For the first time in a dozen years, I will get to enjoy my summer!!!! For the first time in a dozen years, I won't be cooped up in a library all day long, 12 months of the year.

Now, I've finally earned the freedom to enjoy my summers again. Even if it means being up to my elbows in dirt.

I'll give you my writing update in the next post. Yes, I actually did make a tad bit of progress on that front over the past week.

Wheat Harvest 2010

Wheat harvest is in full, dusty, and glorious swing.
I love the sound of combines as they travel down a road. I think it's the sound of the hydrostat, (whatever that is). I need my husband to help me with this post. The header bounces along. Combines remind me of ginormous grasshoppers--don't ask me why--they don't jump!

The tires stand almost as tall as me (5'4"). To get inside the cab, you have to climb a pull-down ladder with about 10 steps. In the fields, they are incredibly maneuverable. We used to run green combines (John Deere), but for the past couple of decades we've been running red (Case).

View from inside the cab. Wheat is gushing out of the arm into a waiting truck. From the truck, it's taken, in our case, to on-site grain bins. After harvest is over, we empty the bins, one semi-load at a time, and haul it 25 miles to Almota, along the Snake River. From Almota, it's put on barges. The barges follow the Snake until it meets the Columbia, and then it gets unloaded in Portland. Our soft white wheat markets are mostly in Japan and China.

Deer in a Harvest Wheat Field

Hubby and I were taking a stroll and chatting about the ripening grain when we spotted a deer in the wheat field. At first, all we could see were the deer's ears, but then it heard us, and took off leaping across the field.

The wheat will be ripe for cutting in two weeks. The air has taken on the delicious, ripe-grain scent of harvest.

More Views of the River Ranch

If you drove around our River Ranch, you would take some dips and turns over several miles of non-paved road. In fact, just getting there would take you across four miles of gravel road. Even before you get to the property line, the road changes from gravel to dirt. In the case of the picture at the left, it's puffy dirt, with rocks beneath it. It's not something you would take your car on, unless you don't mind getting dust in your trunk (as well as all over your car).

Yes, Virginia, there are still non-paved roads in this country. A writer friend of mine's NY editor once asked her to remove a reference to a gravel road from her manuscript. The editor said "there aren't gravel roads in America anymore."

There are probably more non-paved roads in my county (Whitman, Washington) than paved. They say Alaska is the last frontier. Well, the west is still quite "wild." When I was a girl, I fell in love with the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I grew up outside of Seattle, but I knew, after reading the Little House books, that I would love to live on a farm. The interest grew when I looked in World Book Encyclopedia when I was about 10, and saw a most welcoming picture of a farm, complete with red barn and grain silos.

The road (above) is at the top of the ridgeline (picture below) that separates our wheat field from our scrub ground, which goes down to the river. You can hear hawks fly overhead, and the sounds of the Palouse River below. Wildlife abounds: deer, a resident moose. You would find rattlesnakes under the rocks. The air smells heavenly; it is so clean and pure. I grew up watching "Bonanza." This is our Ponderosa, except it's not as isolated (or big!). 

If you stood on the ridgeline and looked out, away from the wheat field, you would see, across the canyon, a fingerlike projection of land, and the meandering river below it. A railroad line once went through this area. I zoomed my camera, and took a picture of the tunnel that cuts through the fingerlike projection.

My husband and two of our kids once walked through the tunnel. He said it was the scariest thing he'd ever done. (And that man has done many scary things. He's a pilot. 'Nuf said.) [What made it scary was that our kids were with him, and their possible lack of safety worried him. Otherwise, the man is fearless.] The railroad apparently blasted out the tunnel. The blast left a pit in the center of the tunnel. My husband said it was so dark that you couldn't see a thing, thus he had no idea how deep the pit was. He and the kids worked their way along the edge--hugging the rocks--and finally made their way through to the open air and sunshine.

Below: A picture of the fingerlike projection. This is the side the hubby and kids came out, and where I was waiting with our younger child. Because the county now owns the land where the tracks used to be, and because the views are beautiful in this area, the county turned it into a popular bike trail.

However in order to get to the tunnel, you have to cross the river, which isn't (easily) possible anymore. There used to be a bridge, but during the fall firestorm of 1990, a field fire destroyed it.

Steptoe Butte in the background.

Ever wonder how country-dwellers mow their lawns?

I always chuckle when I see my husband out mowing our lawn. Yes, we have a riding lawn mower. A really BIG one.