First 'Real' Snow

Drove to Kalispell yesterday for a day in the 'big city' =)...The drive was beautiful and the little Rav did awesome! I stayed on the road the whole trip =)

Fisher River

Home for Thanksgiving

Walking through the door of my parents' home is always a treat. There's coffee in the pot, comfy chairs, a crackling fire, music and lots laughter.  A friend and I drove down there to spend the holidays and enjoyed every minute of it there.

Liesel with her sweet uncle

 

 

on the hayride and talking with Grandpa

hiking McDowell Creek Falls

 



the new additions to the family--lots of fun here!



 

Thanks, Dad!

      This pack has been many hiking miles so far this summer. Dad gave it to me at the beginning of the summer, and wow! It's been great. In this picture it is full of sun-bleached pieces of a cow's spine=). Teachers need things like this. Nathaniel and I found the remains scattered around the trail while hiking up onto a ridge. As I've been in need of consecutive spinal column pieces for sometime, we loaded it up in my roomy pack and took it back to the lodge. Thanks, Dad! =)

A storm hung over the Gravelleys as I drove home last Sunday. Some storm clouds are pearly and bronze, without pattern and very magical looking. Such were these. I could see the storm brewing on the right side of the road and stretching lightly over toward the Madisons on the other side of the valley. Only it thinned out into a rainbow on that side. It was gorgeous! I felt treated to a movie scene.

The Centennials

The flat-topped, rocky, basin-filled Centennials form a solid boundary between Idaho and Montana. They also form a large valley of the same name. If you can picture an upside down 'T' then separate slightly the perpendicular lines you will be picturing an elementary map of the Centennials and the Gravelleys. The Gravellys being the up and down part and the Centennials being the across part. The Centennial Valley dives through the space made by separating the lines. It is a beautiful, grass-laden valley. Harsh in the winter and oh, so rich in the summer. This picture is taken looking southward toward the Centennials (from the perspective of the very southern end of the Gravellys). The lodge is placed at this point and if I would have pointed my camera slightly downward, you would be able to see it in the middle of this picture. Speaking of which, ignore the differing blues in the sky. I tried to combine a few photos and they weren't exactly the same color!

Sheridan is probably one of my favorite towns in the Ruby Valley, and the Ruby Valley is close to my favorite place in Montana. Here's one of the reasons. Serendipity is a cute, fun little place that is sparkling clean and good smelling. Sometimea curl of homemade pizza smell wafts passed as someone is being served their lunch or the inticing coffee scent of a freshly made  americano guides your eyes to the drinks board. Yum! 

My good friend and I went the other day and this delightful huckleberry milkshake is what I ended up with. It was a hot day and we had already been plant shopping. It was time for something cool. I also bought my sweet little niece something there. The proprietor has a wonderful selection of quality, valuable toys and kids items along with some other things like candles, shirts, jams, etc. A cute little girl helped me pick out the puzzle. She was an efficient little saleswoman!

This is my sweet little saleslady.

                                                                                                                                        
Another great place to go is Kindred Spirits Gift Gallery. While at Serendipity we ran into the gal who owns this place and this prompted a little walk down the street and across for a visit. It's wonderfully eclectic and 'ritzy' feeling. She has art of all kinds: paintings, cards, wooden works, iron works (like these hooks made by her husband), painted brooms, jewelry, and more. In addition she has a great selection of books to peruse through.


Kindred Spirits Gift Gallery

There's lots of great stuff packed into this little town, and I haven't even begun talking about the fields, cows, nice people, gravel roads, charming yards, tranquil rivers, beautiful mountains, great greenhouses, and shimmering round bales of hay!



A Meal

Elk Lake...dinnertime for the workers brings wonderful things to the table. We take turns cooking. Sometimes we pull out delicious leftovers out of the fridge, sometimes it's a mix of old and new, and sometimes it's all new. Laurel's turn was last week and we enjoyed some great food! We had a round-the-world food week. One of my favorites was jagerschnitzel. Pronounced yeagerschnitzel this meal comes straight from Germany.

Laurel put together a yummy fresh salad with a sparkling vinegarette dressing and roasted corn; homemade French fries; and pound, breaded and fried pork cutlets; and a rich, smooth mushroom gravy to pour over both pork and fries.

Earlier in the day I had walked into the kitchen following the sound of pounding coming from it. Laurel was pounding a bunch of plump little pork steaks into the thin, wide pieces she needed.  This is not a little amount of work.

The smell of the gravy drew me in later as it bubbled in readiness on the stove. The final product was delicious as I already stated. We were all 'full as ticks' as the saying goes!


Laurel, the chef of this meal, has a blog called Eating Up the Road that I would be remiss if I didn't mention. It's a chronicle of her and her husband's travels and experiences as caretakers of Silver City, ID. Take a look!

Delight in the Details

As you know, this country begs to be hiked and I love to do it! Who wouldn't like meeting the sweet-smelling wind at the top of a ridge then dropping down into the still air and lush vegetation at the floor of the next draw? Wide panaromas and the veins of a flower, hot sun and cold springs, steep hills and flat cattle trails...many different aspects make hiking something that calls to many of us.

Here are pictures of some little details pulled from a vast country. The first picture is of a bitterroot, our state flower. It was growing on a steep hillside which we were scurrying up, I using my hands extensively! What a place to capture a picture. I had to balance against the slanting side while working the camera. My companion held back grass that was in the way for me. We got it then continued the scramble up the side.

This little froggy was interrupted in his sunning as we came down a ridge and upon his little stream. My companion remarked, "This is a good place to see some frogs and turtles." No sooner said than done. This little guy plopped into the water and 'hid'.

Look closely at these neat old boards! Rough cut without the bark removed, these bright boards cloth most of the buildings in the 1930s sheep camp we came across. They are still so bright! That sheep camp had a barn with a corral built over a stream. I've seen that more than once in old corrals around here. It's a built-in water supply.  Back in Oregon something like that would create a muddy mess I would think!



While vast occures in one's mind as they hike through this country; the words tiny and delicate also enter in. Look at these flowers which fulfil both adjectives. Add beautiful as well!

This post wouldn't be complete without a man-made detail. Our starting point was a 'shack in the woods' tucked into a hill out in the middle of what some would consider nowhere. It is in a beautiful nowhere. And you reach it on a beautiful dirt road which wanders past a curving and warm creek, up past jutting rocks and down into another peaceful valley skimming away from the base of the mighty Sheep Mountain in the Gravellys. It is the dream of a neat man named Billy. His place will be a hunting 'camp' which hunters may rent and use as a base of operations. It's gorgeous! Wood everywhere, a big fireplace, a huge and lovely kitchen with the awesomest looking 6-burner gas stove! This painting shows the lodge's name and was done by a relative of the builder. It's a lovely spot.


Comfort Food

Soup...I usually end up ordering a cup of soup and a roll at a restaurant. This is for a couple of reasons. First it's in the category of comfort food. The other reason that I got into the habit was because that way I could justify also ordering a piece of pie, another comfort food. Here are two Elk Lake versions of both.

Hearty Vegetable Soup

Lerrina made some spectacular hearty vegetable soup a few weeks ago. Our morning routine has us in the kitchen and when Lerrina was making this there was pile of vegies going into it. I didn't look at the recipe but she must've sauteed herbs, butter and onions at first because it was smelling so good!  It got great reviews in the form of the same people ordering it multiple times. Delicious!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Pie is American, it's delicious, and joins soup in the comfort realm. We make lots of pies here. The one pictured here is special because it came from a healthy little rhubarb plant growing on the banks of little Narrows Creek as it flows through the yard. That little plant has survived winters up here! Lerrina and I went out and cut it fresh for the pie. The strawberries weren't from bush to pie, but they were great anyway! The topping is a crisp topping with browned coconut added. Yum!

Mornings...and some food pictures

A birthday cake we made last week

 We have fun here! It's good to be back at Elk Lake working with Craig and Lerrina and the other employees, Jake and Laurel. Food is obviously a large part of the fun we have here. These pictures are of some recent productions.

 

Yummy!! Craig and Lerrina's famous baby back ribs. Seriously good!

Our morning kitchen routine is something I look forward to. It's a time to work with friends and enjoy their company. Learning new recipes or perfecting old ones is part of the fun. Probably another reason I love it is that it is creating something which people will enjoy (usually!). 

A basket of warm rolls to nibble on as you view the menu...

In the morning we make things for the next day's breakfast. This morning I made Grits, Sausage and Egg Casserole. That stuff is good! We've had grits-hating guests say they liked that dish. I also started a batch of cinnamon rolls. Lerrina worked on our Savannah Red Rice for dinner between answering guests' questions, answering the phone, and keeping the breakfast table loaded. Mornings here are busy but fun!

A Jeep and a boy! Pretty fun combination. Jeeps are gas and tires and noise and hills and a good dose of scare-your-sister potential.

"Anna, let's go up this little hill."

"Ok." (I'm gripping the sides. My bugged out eyes gauge the little hill which is not little. As well as being not little is is also muddy. Not only that but the tires are bald.) The awesome thing about this moment is that my brother is grinning the whole time. His eyes are also glued on the road. Mostly glued on the road anyway. He does keep glancing my way.

I was on a visit home and my littlest brother had come roaring up to the porch with his Jeep. He wanted to take me for a ride. Of course I'd go...

I think my body language was giving him the impression I wasn't in a relaxed state. He was taking me on an adventure and I displayed a shameful lack of enthusiasm. No wonder guys roll their eyes at girls. The Jeep began to bog down a little on the little bit of mud on the little hill. I freaked out and jumped out before the inevitable backwards roll down the hill. Once again Donny was giggling and I was...well...I wasn't giggling. No, my knees were shaking. My goal of being an understanding, fun, easy-going sister was taking a major hit. Donny rolled to a stop at the base of the hill where I met him. He looked at me with a sweet sympathetic smile. "Hop in and I promise we won't do that again." He shook his head, grinning. "It wasn't that bad really, but I can understand being a little nervous."

With my hand gripping my side of the Jeep we puttered and bounced homeward. On my side of the road there appeared a blackberry vine. As we came closer, Donny decided to go around it to avoid my getting scratched in the face. Around meant sidehilling. I don't sidehill well. "Donny. DoNnY. DONNY!" He was giggling out of disbelief by this time. "Anna, this is flat(giggle) ground. You almost couldn't tip over. (giggle) I do (giggle) this all the time (giggle)." Donny got me very safely home. I smelled very much like gasoline. This vehicle gets maybe 2 miles to the gallon. I feel like there's a connection there.

Speaking of which, on another trip home just recently, I was headed out the driveway with another brother. We met Donny walking down the driveway toward home. Marshall started chuckling as he rolled down the window. "Run out of gas up there?" I think he had some experience in this department as well. The noise and the fixing and the rock crawling and running out of gas a mile from home must have a hidden fun quality. Actually, though, I enjoy watching them enjoy it and getting lots of fun out of it. You can't help but enjoy someone else enjoying something. That's how this female sibling can truly enjoy Jeeps. I love you Donny!

A Relaxing Evening

My dear cousin sent me Pioneer Woman's recipe book. This is no ordinary cookbook. It is a book full of short stories, frozen frames from daily life in the ranching business, and lots of good food! It's like a comfortable coffee conversation with a friend. In line with the food topic, I had some frozen chunks of pumpkin in my freezer and had been wanting to make a creamy soup out of it. This I did. I took my new book and my soup experiment (no tomato next time I think) out to enjoy the summery spring day on 'my' front porch.

Puffy Pancake Recipe

Here Jeanine, I think this is the right one =) !

Flying Apple Flapjack
Betty Crocker: Baking for Today

2 Tbsp butter or margarine
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 medium cooking apple, thinly sliced (about 1 cup-ish)
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 tsp. salt

1) Heat oven to 400 degrees. In 9-inch glass pie plate, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over butter. Place apple slices on cinnamon-sugar mixture.

2) In medium bowl, beat eggs slightly with wire whisk or hand beater. Beat in flour, milk and salt just until mixed (do not overbeat). Pour batter over apple slices.

3) Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until puffy and deep golden brown. Immediately loosen edge of pancake. Place heatproof serving plate upside down on pie plate; turn serving plate and pie plate over to remove pancake (if you want to remove it).

Puffy Pancakes for Saturday Morning

A puff pancake made from a recipe book my sister-in-law gave me. It's been fun going through it! This is alot like a Dutch baby pancake. It puffs up in the oven, forms a crust of sorts then settles down as it cools. I ate it with sour cream and syrup =). Yummy!

Paint the Day

At this sweet house I'm in, there are wooden cutting boards which I use all the time! I had a clusters of red tomatoes, olive oil, green basil, and purple onions on the chopping block and couldn't resist taking a picture. Color is such a blessing to a day!

A cattle ramp in the Madison Valley. We stopped on the way to or from Bozeman. This was before I moved to MT. I was in the beginning stages of discovering my desire to move here!

A Visit Home

The times when I find myself at my parents' home are treasured indeed. The privilige of seeing my family, eating breakfast and dinner around the family table, cuddling my precious niece, and driving around the place with Dad is one I cherish. Liesel is quite the chunky cutie these days. In this picture, she and grandma had been organizing wrapping stuff. Somehow some ribbon ended up in her hair! Cute! They walked the mile or so up to where Dad and I were inspecting a beautiful old barn hence the barn boards for a background. Fun times! Wow!

Icy Air, Hay, Mountains, Blue Sky, and a Willys Jeep

Car time sometimes takes up more of my time than I ever imagined. It takes at least 10 hours to get to my two main destinations. The country I pass through and get to see, the people at the little cafes I get to converse with, and the air I get to breath make the driving part of the fun usually. This trip back up to Libby was no different. On the way down I stopped at a little family run cafe in Whitehall. I bought a yummy muffin and asked the laid back folks the best way to Ennis from there. Not very often, but sometimes, you're actually told what you WANT to hear! They told me the quickest way was through Twin Bridges and Virginia City. Exactly what I wanted to hear. I sped away muffin crumbs projecting from my window every mile or so =). Naturally on the way back I went the same route. They weather was even more beautiful on the way back. picture~ Sphinx Mountain

The route takes me through Ennis, Virginia City, Alder, Sheridan, and Twin Bridges. This is the Ruby Valley. The Ruby with it's cattle, fishing, and Tobacco Root Mountains. I love it in winter too. This is just outside of Sheridan I believe. I saw the coolest thing close to here. A rancher had his small, old pickup rigged to haul two round bales at once! It sat the pickup down fairly far, but it worked.



This beautiful Jeep was outside of Virginia City. Somebody wants to sell it. It's cute isn't it!

Elk Lake in January!

The Big Hole

The Big Hole River
southwest Montana

The Big Hole

Recently I withdrew an old crackled cassette case marked On the Road from Libby's library shelf. Later that evening as it spun it's story into my snug house, I found myself enjoying the world through the quaint perspective and kind voice of Charles Kuralt. I love southwest Montana, probably too much. As the book closed he began the final chapter with the words "a place to come home to" followed by a heartfelt description of a place he loved. My ears perked up. I'd been there, unintentionally, but there all the same. It's a place near Twin Bridges, MT. And though written about his place, I think his words could apply to the region as a whole. Enjoy...

"A place to come home to…
There’s a cabin in a grove of cottonwoods beside a western river. The cabin and a timber bridge across a creek to give access to the cabin are the only disturbances of nature along the river which runs as it has for centuries between deep cut banks leaving gravel bars on either side of its frequent bends. When Lewis and Clark passed a few miles from here in 1805, they sent one of their sergeants to explore westward up the river. He reported, “Tough going through thickets of wild roses on the banks.” The roses are still there a few steps from where the cabin now stands. They still discourage travel along the river. Every few hundred yards, a creek enters the main stream. These creeks are the homes of beavers whose broad tooth marks girdle every cottonwood within falling distance of water. The beavers are notoriously busy and very patient. They may wait for many seasons for a huge and ancient tree to fall…They know one winter a storm will come and seize the tree by its spreading upper branches and wrench it down across the creek and the giant will be theirs...Elk, migrating moose, and wandering brown bears are visitors to this place, but always move on after a few days. Sandhill cranes arrive in spring to spend the short summer in the meadows, and Canada geese claim the shallows of the river for a month or two.

I’m in this place now. I’ve been watching a pair of barn swallows. Every few daylight minutes for a week they’ve been feeding their chirping young in a mud nest on a porch beam. And today I watched the chicks leave the nest one by one, clumsily trying to learn to swoop and dart like swallows. It’s getting late in the year for them. They have to find their wings quickly because they have a long trip south ahead of them, all the way to Mexico. The sun will be going down soon and the big brown trout will be swimming out from beneath the log jam to sip their supper. A male pheasant in full plumage just strutted past the window without his harem. A white tailed doe and her two fawns have been passing every evening and I expect them presently. I hear an owl hooting from the top of a not-yet-fallen, beaver-girdled cottonwood. A coyote is moaning somewhere in the dry hills that look down on the small, green, river bottom Eden. The moon is rising. I love this place. When I am here I think I would be happy never to leave it."
~taken from Life On The Road, Charles Kuralt

Back to Montana

Often the travel back and forth between Oregon and Montana means a train trip for me. Trains are nice for sure, but they can't beat traveling with people you know. This Christmas my brother and his friend drove me back to Montana. Sweet! On the way up we stopped at Cabelas in Idaho and the frozen Yaak Falls. Teaching began for me on Monday, but my guests found plenty to do. They called for wolves, hiked up hillsides, explored the old haul road, visited a world-class taxidermy shop, and toured the dam.
Picture ~ Cabelas and the MT/ID border


The Yaak River Falls are a gradual stairstep of the river hung with 2-foot icicles and trimmed with ice and snow. The middle is running clear, but the edges remain cold and frozen on top. I haven't explored that are much yet, but I'm beginning to.
Picture~Te-bowing at the falls



The guys got special treatment at the dam. A personal 2-hour tour and and all the info they could learn. Susan, the tour guide, is great up there! She gave my class a tour and did a great job. The staff seem to enjoy their jobs. Their interest and cheerfulness make visiting the dam an even better experience!
Picture~Libby Dam



Bryce, Marshall, and I went up there a couple of days before their tour on a clear, cold, beautiful Sunday afternoon after church. It's been dry and cold here which is great! That afternoon was one of the most beautiful so far. Maybe it helped them feel intrigued enough to go back for a tour.
Picture ~ Marshall and I