Rio and Rome

Hello everyone,

It's been a busy couple of weeks. This past weekend Erik went back to MN to see a couple good friends tie the knot and I left in the opposite direction to visit my Aunt Kay in Seattle. We both had wonderful weekends. Now we are getting ready for a trip to Germany to visit Erik's aunts and uncles on his father's side. We'l be there from Sept 24th thru Oct 9th. We are taking a 5+day side trip to Rome in the middle. We're very excited to be abel to take this trip. So needless to say I won't be posting for about three weeks. So come back and visit in middle October for some pictures from our trip!

I'll leave you all with a parting shot of our "U-shaped" kitty, Rio. He loves this spot so much on the couch that we have had to lay the cushion flat now so he wouldn't make it too flat!

Our little herd of deer

I told you about our deer that come around all day long in this post: http://montanapeters.blogspot.com/2007/03/pictures-of-life-in-missoula.html

Well, I took some more pictures. not all of them turned out that great due to lighting and my poor picture taking skills. But here are some pics of the new fawns that are now coming around.

I've gotten even better pictures of the bucks. This one is from early spring, notice the grass is still green and the felt is thick on the tiny antlers.

Now, I have no idea if one of these deer are the same but I'm sure I have a picture of the above deer later this year I just don't know who he is. So anyway, here's a few more bucks later in the summer (notice the grass ;-( ) This one's right in our front yard and I'm taking the pictureout the spare bedroom window!:

This guy's in our neighbor's backyard headed for the salt lick. See the cute chickadees on the fence?And here's a doe that jumped our little fence and was waiting patiently at our back door for scraps (our neighbor feeds them all the time) So I just took her picture!

She went over to sniff Rio and I thought how cute. But right after this picture she started stomping so I chased her outt of the yard yelling: " Don't hurt my Rio!"
Enough on the deer. Some of you in MN will see Erik this weekend as he attends one of his good friend's weddings! Sorry I can't make it. I'll be back at Christmas!

Smoky Haze

I've complained a lot about the smoke out here. I'm sorry! We thought we'd try to take a picture. On the night of this picture it looked like we were on Mars or something like that. Everything was red tinged and you could hardly breath outside becuase of the smoke. THe air quality was at it's worst at that time. We took this picture on August 12th at about 8:38pm (sun set about 9:30pm at that time) Crazy, huh?!

Visiting Idaho

So I'm finally getting caught up with the blog! I sure hope I can keep it a little more updated.

The weekend on Aug 18th we had to flee town yet again because the smoke was so bad! We were getting right sick of it! So we decided to go to Coure de' Alane, ID for the night. We had a beautiful drive there, it's about 2 hours by I90 but we got off the highway prior to towna nd took some backroads that went around the lake for a more scenic drive. It's a great area and nice to be by a lake again. We got out of the car in the afternoon and did a hike that had some views of the lake here's a picture of us with the lake in the background:

We had a little trouble finding a campsite that night but we finally did and it ended up being really nice and quiet. We even slept with the rain fly off. On Sunday we checked out the town a little bit before we headed back to Missoula. It rained most of the morning but as we drove back home the skies went from cloudy to smoky! Ughh! However, that night the rain came ti Missoula and the smoke went away! It rained off and on for a couple days (you have to realise it only totally about 1/2 and inch that whole time!) but it felt great and with the little bit of water and the cooler temps it brought some of the fires in the area were able to be brought under a little bit more control.

Then this past weekend for the holiday weekend we went back to Idaho, Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille. It was GREAT! We did do a dumb thing that actually ended up being to our benefit. We forgot to bring our checkbook and neither of us carry much cash if any at all. WE also haven't memorized our pin numbers of our cards yet so we had NO way of paying for a campsite! DOH! We stopped at the Ranger Station in town to try to figure something out and we got lucky. They had two free campsite areas, they closer one was more of a party place (not for us) and the farther one was pretty far considering it was going on 4:30pm. But she told us we could do low impact camping on any National Forest Service Land! She showed us some good areas to try and we foudn a great spot only 10 min off the highway in the deep woods! It turned out perfect, if you can live without an bathroom for a couple days and we can! Since we brought all our food with us and the hiking was free we only had to pay for gas! Yippee! We also decided that it was a great area to live in if we ever see the need to move again. So Saturday we hiked a new trail that overlooked town and the lake. Here's some shots from the top:

Here's a cool tree/rock on the trail:

Then we went down to the city beach to swim off the grim and hangout since there wasn't much to do at our campsite! Here's some pictures of the sailboats that were practicing racing that day. They are headed around that orange ball you can see in one of the pics. (EJ, we thought of you the whole time and how much you'd like this lake!)

On Sunday I had to work (the holiday) So we got up early and did part of a hike on Scotchman's Peak. It was the steepest hike I've done since New Zealand where they don't believe in switchbacks! We both said we had to go back and do it again so we can make it to the top. Here's picture from our turn around spot. We met a really nice couple who invited us to call them when we're in the area.

Another great weekend hiking and enjoying nature!

Coming up: pics of the dear in our neighborhood from fawns to 6 point bucks! Also a smoky sun and our lovely Rio.