What else are we up to?

We went to Erik's works annual Retreat at Fairmont Hot Springs. See last year's post. It was ok this year. We left early but on the way home we did a scenic drive here: winter wonderland!

Isn't it pretty?:

Well at least it is for those of us who love the beauty of snow covered mountains! ;-)

What else do we do in our spare time you ask? Collect and work on bikes! At least Erik does. ;-) Here we are readying the bikes for another spring/summer/fall of commuting and hiting the longs and uphill rides. Erik bought himself parts for a new mountain bikes since he found out the one he's been riding was too small for him. SO I get that one and he gets a new one. Here we are putting a carrying rack on the back of my "new" bike. See now I can run errands anytime! ;-)

Mind you, I did do alot of the work I just had to ask for a "little" help from Erik, really! Then I snapped his pic! A great shot of the top of his head! LOL!The finished product! Let's go to the grocery store, after I find those bungee cords!Rio's got the bird's eye view. Opps now you can see our boxes piles to the ceiling in the garage! Can you tell our place in MT is less than half the square footage of the place in MN? I'm thinking of a garage sale this summer....One more pic, I'll probably regret putting on the web. I got new glasses and my sis in TX wanted a pic of them. So I snapped one. Now I hadn't showered or even gotten out the pj's yet. But here's a peek at the new glasses. Do you like them? Mom helped pick them out when she was here visiting.

Spring is here

So late time I left you Mom was coming for a visit. We had a wonderful visit. I had the four days off that she was here and we got to spend lots of good quality time together. We had lunch, we "antiqued" and both found some cool stuff, we went on a scenic drive on a day that it wasn't quite clear enough to see the "scenic part"! (oh well) and we had dinner ever night with Erik. So I didn't take many pictures because Mom took lots. I had her send them to me but I'm having just a little trouble opening them (don't worry Mom I'll figure it out.) So I'll show you those pictures later.

Other things we've done this spring is we started hiking again! This post shows that start of our hikes last year. I love it, mostly because I love all the pretty flowers in the Spring. Our spring has been much like the Midwest and been unseasonably cool. Today is our first day of 60's in a row. We hit 60 and 70 before but it was always for one day then it's be back in the 40's. Anyway, back to hiking. There is still a lot of snowpack in the mountains so we stuck around town and hit some of the more popular places that have had good snow melt. "In town" we get much less snow than at elevation and it melts quicker and it's much drier.

We went to Blue Mountain a few weeks ago. You'll remember our hike there from this post

Here we are in the parking lot, very excited because it was a 70 degree day!

Here's one of the views on the hike: The pic just doesn't capture the mountains very well!

See we hiked through a little snow! Hey, what's that in Erik's hand?! No look at the hand in the back , the one he's trying to hide.....

Hey, here's that cute couple who keeps popping up on the blog all the time. And aren't they also wearing some of the same clothes they always wear. (Yep, you caught us again in our hiking clothes and my red MN Wild hat!) In the background is a little of Missoula and the surrounding mountains.

Then a week after that we went on a hike in the Rattlesnake. That's really close to where we live. It's a great place to hike and Erik LOVES to mountain bike there. It's a bit too challenging for me to bike.

Here I am. The area behind me used to be an old ranch. You could still see bits of the foundation in some areas. Now it houses a HUGE colony of prairie dogs, you could see them running and squeeking their allert signals. Sorry they were too quick for me to get a pic of.

Erik's always in front of me.....

It was an overcast day. It even sprinkled some snow on us. Here's the best "vista" shot I could get.Well that's one update. More too come!