A visit from Tonya's sister

In October right before we moved to Seattle, my sister came to visit. We had a great time hanging out and exploring. Here's a few pictures of our time together.

Hiking Blodget Canyon overlook It was a little overcast and rainy that day but we had fun anyway! (I think my poor Texan sister was freezing though!!)Awwwwww.

We did have one good day of great weather so I took her to National Bison Range, hoping to see Bison but also knowing the views would be spectacular. Unfortunately this is all we saw of the bison!We had some fun! Opps, bad timing......There we go! (Toyota! they need a little pick me up right now)Did I mention the views we spectacular?We were silly.. "No, Tara, you don't eat meat!"Did I mention the views were spectacular?We also drove up to Flathead lake and walked around on some of the docks. Did I mention the views were spectacualr??When we got home that evening we hiked the M trail above UM. We let Erik go with us this time!Here's a shot of the M Trail as seen from down below. It was so fun to have her visit! I miss her already!

A bit of randomness!

Today I'm just showing some ramdom pictures from our last couple months in Missoula. In Sept Erik took me fly fishing on the Blackfoot River. It was a wonderful day and fun fishing even though we didn't catch anything!Here's a gorgeous sunrise I saw one morning in early Oct. In Oct. we did the Carlton Ridge hike that I've done several times before. Here I am part way up looking out over Lolo Creek and Hwy 12.Here's Erik. Way in the background in actually Missoula but it doesn't show well in this picture at all. Pretty snow and trees!At Carlton Ridge. Lolo Peak in bckground. Remember I climbed that in 2008?Two of Erik's fishing buddies. This was on Nov 25th. the day before Thanksgiving and 5 days before we left Missoula.
Watch for my sister Tara's visit in Oct.

Hike up Mt Sentinel

Hey folks! We're behind on blogging again. No matter how much I beg and plead Erik just "forgets" to do the posting ! So I'm back again. Here's pics from a hike we did in June. We hiked up past the "M" (the hike by the university campus that we've mentioned before) and went all the way to the top of Mt Sentinel (we did this earlier this year also) and then down the backside towards Hellgate Canyon. Here's some of the photos:

The Peters at the top.I-90 going west at the top, you can also see alittle bit of the Clark Fork River and of course downtown Missoula:The streets of Missoula from the top:This is Mt. Jumbo from the top. We live right over there. If you look close at Mt. Jumbo along the sides you'll notice what looks like water or beach lines. That's exactly what it is. A bunch of years ago in the glacier age there was a Lake Missoula that was huge. Read more about it here:.Until next posting!

July was nice!

So it's getting to be monthly updates. Sorry about that! It's just hard to sit down at the computer after a long day at work. I keep trying to get Erik to do the posting since he's home all day now, but I think I'd better just let him try to cook meals and keep the house picked up right now.
Well you all mostly know that Erik got let go from his job a couple months ago. So while we're job searching we've also been working hard to see as many things/places as we can in can we do have to move again. So every day I have off we are out and about in Montana somewhere. We've taken some pictures but sometimes we forget. Here's some of the adventures we've had recently.
Backing up to the last weekend in June. Erik's parents came for a visit. He picked them up on the Amtrak train in Whitefish (a reasonable option if you'd like to come and visit us, hint hint!) Then they decided to camp in Glacier for three nights before they had to get Karen back on the train to Seattle. Karl came to Missoula with Erik for a few days before he took the bus home. (I was working most of the time). Erik hardly took any pictures in Glacier but he did take some. Glacier had an excellenct snow year and the Going to the Sun Road was not fully open yet. Also there was snow on almost all the mountains. Erik took a bike ride on the Going to Sun Road and he got up pretty far. Here's a pic that Erik took at the top of his ride.

They also drove the car up as far as they could which was just past the Weeping Wall. Here is Bird Woman Falls: Mt Ober (l) and Cannon (r) with Bird Woman Falls in the middle:

The Weeping Wall:And a stitched together photo (sorry we dont have a high pixel camera and this is the biggest I could show this without it being blurry):

Here's a fun picture of us in fornt of our Pink Palace. We had to take this for our adoption file.

4th of July weekend we stayed at our friends cabin on a Placid Lake. We had a good time watching fireworks, playing with their 5 kids (yes, 5), relaxing and hiking. Here we are in the pontoon one night:

Here's sunset on the lake:This is Morrell Falls that we hiked to: (Remember when I hiked there last year?)

We didn't do much camping in July, just some day hikes and I must not have taken any picutres. We were in MN for a visit at the end of the month. We got to see lots of friends and our families. It was great but too short. On to August.......

MTN bike ride

Hey all look what we did the other day. This is a short 20-30 min ride from our front doorstep! I'm still getting used to the mountain bike. Luckily there is a nice wide path that we can take way back into the wilderness area. Erik's idea is that one weekend this summer we will load our backpacks, ride the bikes up to the wilderness area and then set off on a 2-3 day backpacking trip. Sounds like fun!

We've also been hiking and running around town, no pics. It's still cold and rainy alot here so we haven't ventured out to do any camping yet, maybe this coming weekend.

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!