Little Stinker

As I was fixing our evening meal last night, (I would say supper, but a long story) I looked out the window just in time to see this little skunk running along the fence.  Little stinker, anyways.  Hope he doesn’t decide to take up residency!

Lil Stinker

My Day – Cows..Cactus..Killdeer..Peonies

Today on our three-mile walk, there were some cows in the middle of the road.  At first, when the cows saw that we were approaching their territory, they ran up the road a ways, turned around and watched us.  When we reached where they were, well, as you can see, they could care less that we were there.

The cactus are really blooming.  I took this picture so my sister could see them.  I am going to cut off a few colors and take them to her.  She has a lot of different cactus from various places and I thought I would take her a few Idaho cactus.  She said that once you cut them off you need to just let them sit for about a week then stick them in dirt and they start growing again.

As I was making my way home, I saw two Killdeer along the side of the road.  One just stood there and let me take a picture.  I didn’t realize they had such a prominent ring around their eyes. 

I took the following picture of Killdeer back in 2008 while visiting my family in Utah.  They don’t look anything like the picture I took today.  Maybe they are female, or maybe young Killdeer…….?

At home, my last red peony bush is in bloom.  Peonies are such a pretty flower…..too bad they don’t bloom for a longer length of time.

High School Friends Visit – Part 1...Bayhorse Ghost Town

A couple of my high school friends from Utah came to Idaho for a few days.  It’s been some time since high school but when I get together with these two friends, it’s like time has never passed.  I feel as comfortable around them as I did back then.  We talk with such ease and laugh….a lot.  On Monday, I decided to take them over the mountain to Sun Valley.  Neither one of them had ever been there so off we went.  The fun thing about our adventures was that we had three cameras going.  What one person didn’t get, the others did.  Our first adventure was driving through a cattle drive.  The cattle stayed on the road for quite some time before moving off to the side and our travel was S-L-O-W moving.

Not too far up the road from the cattle drive, we spotted some antelope…..a buck and two does.


The rest of the way to the top before dropping down into the Sun Valley area was just beautiful scenery…………






Up until reaching the top, the road was great.  I’ve actually never seen the road look this good.  But, once reaching the top, it was a different story.  The road was rough and rocky and off to the side is a long, long drop.  If your not used to heights, this road is a bit intimidating, for some.




The Sun Valley lodge is huge.  They were just putting out all the flowers in the gardens and the pond in front had some swans.


After walking around Sun Valley for a time (I really don’t think my friends were too impressed with Sun Valley)  and viewing some of the little shops, we decided to head over to Ketchum…..maybe 5 miles or so.  We went to the “Gold Mine”…which is a second-hand store and purchased some great finds.  By this time, I think we were all a little hungry so we went to Grumpy’s.  Grumpy’s is actually a bar but some old friends introduced us to Grumpy’s quite a few years ago and we really liked their hamburgers so as kind of a joke, my husband said to take my friends to Grumpy’s.  Bars are definitely not our thing, but food is – Ha!…and, in the middle of the day, it’s really low-key. 


The walls were covered with beer cans and we were totally astounded at how many different kinds of beer there are.


We drove around looking at the town and then headed back to Sun Valley to make our trip home.  While meandering (and talking….lots), I made a wrong turn and didn’t realize we were headed up the wrong mountain towards Stanley.  We were 30 miles out of the way when I finally realized….oops, so we turned around and made our way back.  Approximately 45 minutes from home, we stopped off to visit some good friends.  Wonderful people!  The husband makes homemade ice cream in many different flavors and we were invited to have ice cream with them.  Mmm, mmm, mmm – good stuff.  As we were leaving, my friend took a picture of their flags, one being the Philippines flag.  She took 3 pictures and for some reason, all three pictures showed a very vivid 3-striped rainbow.  It was very windy that day and in the two photos I’m posting, you’ll notice that the flags are on opposite sides of the flag pole but both photos still have the rainbow.  Interesting. 


Getting closer to home, we took a few more scenic photos, including one of the Three Sisters mountain range. 


Oh what a fun day it was and the next day was equally as fun.  Old friends, good times!

Kitty Rescue

This morning as my friends and I were walking, one friend pointed out that she could hear a cat meowing and she spotted it at the top of a power pole.  We kept calling the kitty trying to see if we could coax it down from the pole.  We could tell by its actions that it was a tame cat.  I called my husband, who works at the electric company and asked him if they saved cats from power poles.  He said in a slow, sliding kind of way…”Yyyyyeeeeeeeeeeesssssssss”.  So then I went into my spill about how we had found a cat stuck at the top of a pole.  He stated that they give the cats a day to come down on their own before attempting to make a rescue.  So, that was it and after trying a few more times to coax the cat down, with no success, we continued on our way, walking away from the cat.  We felt so bad for the kitty because as we were walking away, it started meowing louder and sounded so forlorn. 

As we were continuing our walk, my friend said that she had gone walking this same route on Saturday and had heard a cat meowing and just thought it was out in the field.  I called my husband back and told him that we thought the cat had been on the pole since last Saturday and then we hung up.  A minute later, he called back and said that a couple of men were on their way to get the cat and asked it’s location.  One of my friends who lived approximately 1 mile away went to her house to get some cat food while I waited in the area for the men to show up.  Within 10 minutes, the men were on the scene rescuing the cat.  This was amazing to me….I really didn’t think they would come just to get a cat off the pole.

After getting the kitty down, we all made a fuss over him and he calmed down immediately.  I sat on the ground by him and gave him some of the food my friend had brought.  He was pretty hungry and started chowing down.

My friend said that it might belong to some people that lived about 1/2 mile away and we decided it was too tame to not belong to someone so she got in her vehicle and went to the home to see if they were missing a cat.  While she drove to the home, I stayed with the cat while he continued eating.  He was such a nice kitty that if we couldn’t find its owners, I was thinking of bringing him home.

Within a few minutes, my friend was back and said that it did belong to the people down the road and the lady was very excited we had found him.  He had been missing since Friday and she had been looking all over for him.  We took him back to his home and gave him to the lady………she was excited to get him back and told us that his name was Tucker and he was a highland lynx.

Well Tucker, I guess today was your lucky day but you’d better be careful because you only have 8 lives left.

Mackay Idaho Parade – 6.21.2014

Here it is, the first day of summer, and it was cold, windy, and raining but nothing put the damper on our old home-town parade.  Both sides of main street were lined with people as the parade made its way through town.  No super fancy floats, but I can tell you what we did have…..something you always find in small, home-town parades…..good fun for all!  Enjoy the parade in its entirety!