Life at 612 Charles Street, TorC NM

Finally!!! Our internet and our house phone has been set up!!! Our new phone number is 575-297-4064. Forget trying to remember it--brain is over 60 years old. I just hope I don't have to call home for anything! Did some more digging today, or rather, my trusty servant David, did some more digging, and got half a bed of tomatoes and peppers planted. Will work on the rest tonight when it cools off a little. Yesterday it was 103 when we got home. Wretched trip without AC. Will try to get that fixed tomorrow. Trip to CO to see Elizabeth and family was so wonderful. Look who I got to meet: Rowan Thomas Edward Gallagher. And isn't he just the cutest thing. I love holding babies--especially my

GREAT-NEPHEW. Do we get old quickly, or what??? But it's fun--at least most of the time!!! Brigid is the most wonderful Mom, but then again, why wouldn't she be??? She's a most wonderful PERSON! I love how Rowan looks so much like her, with that shy little smile with his eyes half-closed, like he has a special secret that he's not sharing with anyone. Tom and Elizabeth have great kids, all, and are pretty wonderful as well. News of the rest of their family: Cora and Caitlin are both thriving in their jobs, Kevin is working hard this summer before he returns to Norwich in the fall, Patrick is doing handy-man jobs this summer and looking forward to August when he attends the Maine Maritime Academy, and Liam is his usual helpful and lovely self. I told him his job was to carry on the moniker of "Uncle Fun" that he and his siblings gave our brother Jonathan long ago, and the way he was carting little Rowan around, I bet he gives Jon a run for his money!!! Lovely, lovely visit.

Am planning a little photo tour of our little "hovel" once all the planting is done. But we cannot rush these things--after all, we seem to be retired now and then there is the heat, which requires a nap and some iced tea, always. And it seems we have forever--amazing concept. For those who wonder how I'm doing, here's a picture of me doing something I haven't been able to do for a couple years--my favorite thing, actually. Look!!! She's standing!!! She's lifted something!!! She has her hands over her head!!! She's smiling!!! Yes, folks, all of the above. And I'm walking a little around the house unassisted by even my walker. Then there are days that I can't do much, when I just have to sit in my chair and read because nothing works. But there are actually days when THINGS WORK!!! And that is a very, very good thing. We've made the right move, coming here. I think I can get better here and I know that David and I are very, very happy. Life is a blessing, and I'm the luckiest woman I know. Truly.

On the Road Again (temporarily)

I'm sitting in our room at the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, NM while Annie snoozes. Yesterday, we had a short road trip north to Trinidad, Colorado to meet Annie's sister Elizabeth her husband Tom who were traveling west for a family reunion. We met for a picnic lunch in a little park by the river. Also along with Betsy & Tom are Patrick, Liam, Bridget, and the newest addition to the family, Bridget's son Rowan. I'll post some pictures of them later, but for now, let me catch you up on the last few days.

It's hard to believe we arrived in TorC almost two weeks ago. We pulled into town with only fumes in the gas tank (note the "distance to empty" display in our van) and booked a room for a week at the Charles Hot Springs Resort and began to explore Truth or Consequences. After two weeks, we still haven't taken a bath in the Hot Springs which originally drew us to this place. With temperatures in the 90's, the idea of sitting in hot water isn't all that appealing. Within two days of our arrival, we found a house to rent (see our previous post). We found the place on Craig's List while traveling and it was the first and only place we looked at. We ended up staying at the Charles for only 5 nights before moving in and beginning the process of furnishing our new home. The only detail remaining is Phone & Internet, which should be hooked up tomorrow. Before we even moved in, Annie had scoured the local greenhouses and we began planting in the yard. There was a flagstone walkway which was difficult for Annie to negotiate in a wheelchair or with her walker, so I dug up the stones and made a small rock garden. Our house is one of three units on a small city lot right in the historic Hot Springs District. The other two units face Charles Street. Our little house (about 650 square feet) faces the alley behind. It faces south and the drive and yard are shaded until around 10 in the morning. Annie is like a little Anole lizard and likes to sit in the sun first thing in the morning to get warmed up before starting her day, so I wheel her across the street to the vacant lot filled with gravel and tumble-weeds, (behind me and to the left in the photo) where she sits and drinks her coffee. We spend several early mornings at yard sales. I do mean early mornings! Because of the mid-day heat, they generally run from 7-11am. Here's Annie outside our front door, one of our favorite shady spots to sit with a glass or iced tea. This retirement thing is not for the faint-hearted. There's so much to do: Get up and check the weather, make iced tea, move from the sun into the shade when the day starts to heat up, make more iced tea, take a nap when the day's too warm, then repeat the above.

Saturday. July 4th, was an especially busy day. We picked up a practically new sofa with built-in double recliner at a yard sale for a ridiculously cheap price. We were home by 9am and Annie reminded me that it was Farmer's Market Day. We trundled down to Ralph Edwards Park and bought fresh vegetables, local honey, roasted Pinon Nuts and local eggs, then I met a trumpet player that was playing in the park accompanied by a drummer and a bass player whose accomplishments could best be described as minimal. We got to talking and he invited me to go home and get my sax. I played with them for about 45 minutes and then he invited Annie and I to his house for drinks and to watch the fireworks. He and his wife have been in town for a little over a year and he's looking for places to play. We plan to play on the sidewalk this coming weekend for the weekly ArtWalk. To give you an idea of Real Estate prices here, they bought their house a year ago for $140,000. It's probably close to 2,000 square feet with all new tile floors, new cabinets, landscaping, beautiful stucco arches over the entry and a backyard that drops straight down to the Rio Grande and looks across at Turtleback Mountain. The Rio Grande is actually larger here than it is downstream on the Tex-Mex border. It is a beautiful green, as are many of the rivers in the area, and flows out of the Elephant Butte Reservoir, just north-east of town. The city of Elephant Butte is much more upscale than TorC, with higher priced homes, but the place itself is butt-ugly: dry and barren with a view of speedboats on the lake and miles of sandy desert. There was a picture in the paper this week of a 50 pound striped bass caught in the reservoir, so i can understand the attraction, but I'll take our little town with its cheap rents and funky shops anytime. Well, I've rambled on for long enough this morning. We have to head home and get busy resting up for whatever happens next.

Our New Home at 612 Charles Street

We haven't had internet at the motel, so haven't kept you all updated. We have rented a cute little house, just a couple of blocks from the Rio Grande. We've been in the process of moving in, getting plants, hooking up utilities etc. We'll order a phone and internet later today. Our address is PO Box 1445, Truth or Consequences, NM 87901. We'll have more pictures and details as soon as we're hooked up. Needless to say we're really excited and have lots to tell. Right now we're sitting in the car in front of the Senior Center to get a signal. Not the most comfortable place to type. More to come soon.

WE'RE IN NEW MEXICO

Annie tried to get a picture of the Welcome to New Mexico sign, but it flashed by too fast. This is just a few hundred yards into NM heading down from the top of Raton Pass. We left Castle Rock this morning after getting a tire patched. (footnote: If you ever get a chance to hear a singer/songwriter named Chuck Pyle, do it. He has a song called Castle Rock, which is why I mention it.) Colorado was so green, compared to Montana and Wyoming, it almost seemed surreal. We drove past mile after mile of GRASS!!! no sagebrush, no rocks, just beautiful grazing land, with cattle packed together instead of spread all over hell looking for a bite to eat. As soon as we topped Raton Pass and got to New Mexico, it was back to dry, sere landscapes as far as the eye could see, punctuated by buttes and mesas rising out of the flats. I was compelled to buy a new hat yesterday at a farm and ranch supply store where we stopped for gas and an espresso. Annie has inherited my ratty old hat I bought in Chacala, Mexico last year. As we pushed along South on Interstate 25 at 75 miles an hour in temperatures that I had believed would make me melt, the tire I had patched back in Pinedale blew. It was in the middle of a vast expanse of desert. I changed the tire, and never even broke a sweat. That "dry heat" stuff is really true. No humidity and a stiff breeze and 96 degrees isn't so bad. Our air conditioning unit in the van doesn't work at all. I've been told that 5 years of not using the AC lets the seals dry out and the freon leaks out. Therefore, we have been driving with the windows wide open. The speed along with the wind makes listening to music or conversing difficult. We need some of those headsets with mics that we've seen motorcyclists using. We stopped at a rest area that had a neat little serascape garden with cactus etc. From the smile on Annies face, you can see that she's enjoying the heat. I know Annie has been planning to post a bunch of wildflower photos, but we've been putting in long days and she hasn't found the time. I'm going to steal her thunder with this photo of cactus flowers. We got to Las Vegas, NM around 6pm. It's at the base of some hills and is a very old Spanish town. We had great New Mexican food a Johnny's Kitchen, (posole, beans fahitas, carnitas... yum) and asked the waitress if any of the old hotels in town might be wheelchair friendly. We stayed in a Hampton Suites last night, and it was fine, but we wanted a change. She called the Plaza Hotel and said they had a room for us. It's on a town square with a bandstand in the middle. Teenagers were dancing to Spanish Music when we drove by. It's a great old hotel: 12 foot ceilings, antique furniture, very friendly staff. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow. Having a drink in the hotel bar, we met a guy who's family has been here for generations. He talked about how most of the spanish speaking people in the area didn't come here from Mexico. They were here when this was Mexico. This area was settled by the Spanish long before the Mayflower landed. There's great history here. We're really entranced by Las Vegas. It's got everything we're looking for (including hot springs) but is a little more expensive than T or C. It also has a little more winter, but is a little cooler in the summer. We'll push on to Truth or Consequences tomorrow, because that has been the plan since the beginning, but don't be surprised if we eventually end up here in Las Vegas, at least for part of the year.

L-O-N-N-N-G DAY !!!

Well, where to begin. Yesterday we were in Rock Springs WY, a dusty coal town nestled (?) in valleys surrounded by rocky desert cliffs. I realized that I was almost out of prednisone and so we stopped at a Walgreens to refill my prescription. Because we're two hours ahead of AK we had to wait around so they could call the pharmacy in Homer, receive a fax, etc. etc. etc. So we didn't get out of there until almost noon, although we had done a wonderful job of being moved out of our motel room by 9 am. We drove to Laramie WY and then took 287 down to Denver. THAT was interesting! The first part of the trip took us through some beautiful farm country. We watched the countryside shift from sage desert to grasslands. Wide open spaces, for sure! Consistently there were signed about "High Winds" and this photo shows the miles and miles of snow fences we saw along the road. We also saw some wonderful rock formations as we got farther south. (Remember that you can click on any of these photos to see them blown up). Other absolutely gorgeous formations appeared as we got closer to our destination (or what we THOUGHT was going to be our destination--a little town called "Ted's Place". It was on the map and it sounded like a cool place to spend the night. Along the route, it became apparant that we were having trouble with our right front tire. Every time we stopped at a gas station David had to fill it with air--a slow leak was slowly turning into a moderate leak. Yikes... As we drove along, we realized that just because there's a name on a map doesn't mean there's any kind of distinguishable hamlet. Duh. We should have been able to figure that out. So we filled the tire with air again in Ft. Collins and off we went to find a motel. FOUR HOURS LATER, and south of Denver, we finally found a motel in Castle Rock, which is where I am at the moment. If the name of this town sounds familiar, it's because Steve King made it famous as the location of the big hotel in The Shining. Anyway, I'm signing off now. Once I get all my flower photos identified I'll do a blog on all the wildflowers we've seen and photographed. Some of you may want to skip that upcoming blog; seeing flower photos may be as appealing to some as watching paint dry! It's in the upper 80's today in the sun. My bones are HAPPY!!!

Rock Springs, Wyoming

Before we left Pinedale this morning, we found a great little hippy coffee shop. I asked the waitress why there wasn't a place like this in Pinedale 40 years ago when I hitchhiked into town with my dog and longhairs had to tuck their hair up under their cowboy hats so they wouldn't be attacked with a pair of sheep shearing shears. She had no clue, of course, being only in her late 2o's and clueless about what was happening in the late 60's. When I first came to Wyoming, hippies were not exactly welcome. I do remember the Stagecoach Bar in Wilson, just outside of Jackson, where the cowboys and hippies had a sort of truce. I once saw some guy play Yakkety Sax on a Duck-call at an open mic Sunday. The previous act was a young cowgirl singing D-I-V-O-R-C-E (a Tammy Wynette classic, for those of you too young to remember.) We drove south 99 miles to Rock Springs, a rather depressing coal mining town on the Wyoming/Utah/Colorado border. Met up with my friend Bruce and went to a brew-pub for dinner. Didn't take a lot of pictures, because the drive from Pinedale to Rock Springs is through a hundred miles of sage brush flats, with the distinguishing feature being a 20 foot tall sandy bluff above another hundred square mile sage brush flat. We did see some beautiful Indian Paint brush. There were also a few wind-mills pumping water into stock tanks and a few natural gas rigs pumping gas into pipelines that Alaskans are wetting their pants dreaming of. Outside of Pinedale, which was a typical western cow-town when I worked here, we saw llamas, of all things. It felt a little like the time I went back to East Conway, New Hampshire and found a field of arugula in my Uncle Stubba's hay-field. What's going on here? The thing about getting older is that everything changes except your memories, and your memories are subject to very subjective interperatation. We have about 13 hours of driving from here to Truth or Consequences. We'll probably take 3 days to do that. In the back of my mind I've been a little worried about how we'll deal with the 90 degree heat. This afternoon set my mind at ease. It was 87 degrees, and I hardly broke a sweat. The humidity is low, there's a breeze, and as long as I don't have to bust my ass framing a house I can deal with this, no sweat. Tomorrow, we're off to Colorado.

Long Day Short Blog

Another great day. We got up early again and drove out of Pinedale into the Bridger National Forest, climbing from about 7100 feet to probably close to 9,000 feet in the foothills of the Wind River Mountains. We climbed a ridge above Freemont Lake, a 9 mile long, 600 foot deep lake just outside of town. We took over 75 pictures, because the view was so spectacular, and due to the recent rains the wildflowers were at their peak. Annie took dozens of flower picture out of the van window and sent me on numerous picture taking expeditions just off the road to document each new species. I'll let her post those photos later, but I have to say, I've seen more wildflowers in a day with Annie than I saw in my entire stay in the area 40 years ago. I've hunted mule deer and antelope in the hills around this lake, but as a 22 year old cowboy wannabe, I never took the time to really stop and look around. Thank God we get older and wiser (or at least more observant.) The road goes through sage brush hills into aspen groves and then into softwood forest. We are continually amazed by the number of species of softwoods here; several kinds of pine, spruce, fir, cedar and larch. It's a big change from Spruce, Spruce and More Spruce. On the way back to town we stopped at the Museum of the Mountain Men. I was expecting a little, tacky tourist trap. Much to our surprise, this was a really fine museum, with elaborate, well researched displays. There's a lot of money in Pinedale these days. It sits on one of the biggest natural gas fields in the country and Sublette county has one of the lowest unemployment rates in in the US. I won't bore you with pictures of the exhibits. You can see them online. Just check out their web site http://www.museumofthemountainman.com/ and see for yourself, but Annie got a picture of a prairie dog on the boardwalk, and I just couldn't resist it. After the museum, we shopped at a tiny natural food store and had a picnic in a beautiful little park right in town on the banks of Pine Creek (that's crick, in case you haven't traveled in this part of the country before.) I had a little nap and then we did laundry, had dinner with George again and then spent the evening at his house, reminiscing about old times. Oh yes. Annie and I did have a drink at the Cowboy Bar, where George and I used to play. OK, it wasn't such a short blog. I know Annie is itching to post a bunch of wildflower photos, but she's sound asleep, so I guess it's time for bed.

Pinedale, 37 Years Later

Got up early and had breakfast this morning . I was eager to drive south and see if I could find the ranch I worked on 37 years ago. From the development around Pinedale, I was afraid the ranch wouldn't seem as remote as I remembered it. From the picture, you can see that it's still pretty darn remote. The ranch is the little dot in the center of the picture. Thirty-seven years ago, the front gate to the Buckskin Crossing was an old wooden gate with a sign Bill Edwards and I burned with a hot poker. We drove in and looked around, but there was nobody home. The old cabin and most of the other ranch buildings were gone, replaced by a new kit-log home. The ranch is 40 miles from Pinedale and there's not much for miles around but sage brush covered flat land, sage brush covered hills, sage brush covered ravines, and a thread of green grass and trees along the river. We saw dozens of antelope and finally got a more or less close up shot of a couple of does. (Bea says they knock her socks off.)
We got a comment from Lucas and Brooke on the blog today. They had been looking at the pictures and Brooke said she liked the one of Bea and Grandpa on a horse. Maybe she'll be able to come out to New Mexico some day and we'll go riding together. We came back to the motel for a little nap and then took another drive around town and saw this mule deer doe just a few blocks from Main Street. Then we met
my old friend and bass player, George Ditton for dinner. We plan to spend some more time with him tomorrow. He's still playing music. I hope I look that good in another 25 years.


Such a wonderful day for me, to see where David worked and played just before we met so many years ago. It sure is remote!!! It seemed like we drove and drove to Emmy Lou Harris and "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." Sagebrush everywhere, irrigation ditches, creeks (cricks, out here), and a river or two. Water is extremely high as it has been raining cats and dogs in this area for several weeks now according to the local paper. Redwing blackbirds, magpies, killdeer everywhere--even saw a goldfinch in town. Pretty soon I'll have a list of all the wildflowers I've seen--this is surely the right time to see the desert. Karen, you were right, the desert IS blooming for us!!!!

Pinedale, Wyoming

Another banner day: Lots of amazing country, flora, and fauna. As you may have noticed, Annie is entranced by the numerous new species of wildflowers we've encountered on this trip. I finally found a field guide to plants of the Rocky Mountains in a Yellowstone Park bookstore and she's been a happy camper all day.

We left Gardiner, Montana early this morning (at least early for us. We checked out at 9am.) The entrance to Yellowstone is only a few hundred yards outside of town. There's a huge stone arch, designed by Teddy Roosevelt, at the entrance. The park actually pre-dates Roosevelt by decades, becoming the nations first national park in 1867. (There will be a quiz.) The first part of our drive today climbed from around 5,000 feet to over 8,000 feet through beautiful canyons, valleys and finally over a snow covered pass. Every day, we see amazing geology and every day we're awed again by the size of this country and the vast area with no roads, no houses, no human presence to speak of. Even in the park, you can look for miles and miles and know that save for a hiker or two, there's nobody there. The traffic was much lighter than I had feared, but almost every parking lot at various points of interest was full, or nearly so. We made a few side trips off the main road to see lovely rushing streams and waterfalls and mountain valleys that were lush and green following the spring rains. By early afternoon, we were inside the caldera (remnant of an ancient volcanic eruption) and saw a few of the many thermal features. We saw dozens of bubbling springs of boiling water, mineral rich pools with turquoise water, and acres of steaming geysers. There were fly fishermen standing in rivers and casting just yards away from small streams coming from boiling hot pools. The wildlife in the park seems to be adapted to the crowds on the roads. This cow elk, sporting a chic transmitting device, grazed along the verge of the main road, with cars on one side and a parking lot on the other. At the Old Faithful Visitor Center, a whole herd of buffalo was grazing all around the parking lot and between the building, just a few feet from the camera toting hoards. We had seen numerous large bulls in fields and valleys all along the road, mostly singly or in small groups. This bunch seemed to be mostly cows with calves or yearlings. Most were still patchy with winter coats falling off in patches, exposing areas of sleek, smooth, summerwear. I took this picture a cute little calf and didn't notice the nursing calf in the background until I uploaded it onto the computer. No, that's not an extra long tail on the cow! Be careful where you step if you enter the Old Faithful Parking Lot.Our final few hours in the park were dampened by a torrential downpour that pretty much obscured the veiw. South of the Park, we did catch some impressive vistas of the Tetons as we entered Jackson, and then it cleared up somewhat as we drove south to Pinedale. Jackson has really grown since the early '70s, and I hardly recognized it. Pinedale has grown as well, with huge chain motels and suburban sprawl extending onto the sagebrush flats for miles in every direction. We're staying in the Half Moon Motel, an old and funky structure dating from my days in the area. We'll be here for a couple of days while we explore my old stomping grounds, then head 100 miles south to Rock Springs to meet up with another old friend, Bruce Bloy. Bruce and I taught together in Gary, Indiana in 1970, and then took a cross-country trip together.

By the way, I think I finally figured out how to upload a video I took of the rodeo in Gardiner last night. If this doesn't work, let me know.

Along the boardwalk of the "Artists Paintpots" I took this photo of the turquoise blue water in a hot pot and the grey, yellow and red "sand" that surrounded it. As you walk through this amazing array of baby geysers and steam vents, you realized how close the center of the earth is here--huge vents from deep below the ground open up here and superheat the ground water. Because of the pressure of the the land the water cannot turn to steam but stays in liquid form. When the water hits the surface , the water is over 200 degrees and boils and bubbles like crazy and turns to steam right away. It's very weird and very wonderful.

All day I've been thinking about my dear friend, Lindy, whose Celebration of Life was today at her home. Bill put together a wonderful party for her, I know, which would be just as she would have wanted it. I feel badly that I wasn't there to be part of it but every time I've seen a butterfly or a new wildflower today I think about her, so I know she's around. I wonder if Bill put Woodstock (Lindy's ferret) in one of his costumes, maybe the tuxedo??? I'll have to ask someone!

Was feeling ssoooo good last night that David and I had a wonderful ice cream cone at one of the little tourista shops in Gardiner. I haven't eaten ice cream in months. Oh, what a big mistake. Between the white sugar and all that dairy plus the change in the barometric pressure, my little joints ached like mad all day. C'est la vie. I know better...

The scenery was so magnificent that we travelled most of the day with no music, but later we listened to Abbey Road and then Jabula (African music). "And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make..." Lennon & McCartney

Just Outside of Yellowstone Park

Kicking back in the Radon Room at the Free Enterprise Health Mine, Boulder MT.

Here's a photo a a rock just down the road from the mine. The picture doesn't quite capture the essential bullfrogness of this rock, but it gives you an idea. We spent a couple of hours at the mine before heading south toward Yellowstone a little after noon. Rather than drive due south and hitting the park at the west entrance in Idaho, we jogged east on Interstate 90, through Bozeman and Livingston, then south on Route 89 along the Yellowstone River. We took a back road to the east of the river, through mountain valleys and past huge ranches, most of which seemed to be for sale. Either the ranching business has gone to hell or all the hollywood stars with Montana retreats have fallen on hard times. At right is a picture of Devil's Slide, not really a landslide, but a chunck of soft sandstone that originally lay horizontally before being thrust up and then eroded into this odd looking chute. I caught a river raft going by. We're at somewhere between five and six thousand feet above sea level. We checked in at a TravelLodge in Gardiner, right at the Park Entrance. We're right in the middle of town on the 4th floor with a balcony overlooking the edge of the park just across the river. I took Annie for a roll around town and had pizza at a local watering hole, then we went to the annual Gardiner Rodeo, a rather typical small time affair with local ropers, barrel racers and bronc-riders. Several of the team ropers (head and heel roping) were female, quite a change from the last rodeos I saw in the early '70s. They also had an event called break-away roping, an all female event which is like regular calf roping, but instead of leaping off her horse to throw and tie the calf, the rope is tied to the saddle horn with a string and as soon as the string breaks, the clock stops. (this may make sense to some of you... or maybe not) With the bleachers non-wheelchair accessible, we were on the ground right at the fence, just a couple of feet away from the thundering hooves. Annie got quite an introduction to rodeo. One of the bulls charged the fence in front of us when someone leaned through to take a picture. An exciting end to another great day. Tomorrow we'll head into the park, then on south toward Pinedale, where I plan to stop and see George Ditton, who played bass in my band back in the early '70s at the Cowboy Bar. His brother and sister-in-law live in Homer and his niece, Dianne Ditton is renting our place for the summer. I hadn't talked to him in 37 years until I called him earlier today. He's playing for a birthday party at the Pinedale Senior Center Sunday. Well, guess what I just figured out. You can click on any picture and see it all blown up. The details, especially with some of the flower and scenery pictures is really great. The next thing we're going to learn how to do is set up a slideshow as part of the Blog. But don't expect anything too soon--we don't want to hurt ourselves...Traveled yesterday with Vince Gilbert and The Bobs (a so-weird but so-wonderful acapella group) and the ubitquitous country music stations on the radio. I loved the rodeo, especially watching women not much younger than me rope those little steers. Snaps everywhere, and pointy toes on most. Travelling through these rolling cuts between mountains, you just could imagine seeing Indians on painted ponies at the top of the ridges looking down at Lewis and Clark, or the first wagon trains and, as David said, remarking "...Well, there goes the neighborhood..."

...And a Couple Steps Back...and Then a Couple Forward Again...

So this morning at six I was awakened because I thought that in my sleep I must have walked somewhere and fallen down stairs and then someone had beaten me up for good measure. Every joint in my body ached, and even though I had David get me my medication right away I felt really, really crappy and very, very sore. Hm-mm. So was all this progress in pain reduction "in my head" as many would think it could be, considering the somewhat bizarre program I've been on for the past 6 days or so? Or was this an example of "mine sickness" that many feel when the radon begins to really affect whatever ails you? Well, it's easy to have faith when you're feeling great and not being tried in any way; it's more difficult to continue being positive when you feel like someone has just spent ten minutes working you over with a baseball bat. Another one of the Universe's "Pop Quizzes" , I told myself, to see if I had really learned anything about being faithful or if I was just a fairweather believer that I'm able to get better. So I spent the morning sitting in bed, nursing a cup of coffee, and reassembling my thoughts so I didn't succumb to the over-indulgence of feeling sorry for myself. And while I did that, David reorganized our van, because we've been evicted for the weekend from our sweet and ratty motel room. Evidently there's a wedding here this weekend and the guy needs our room...something like that. Doesn't really matter--my hours at the mine are up tomorrow--we'll do my final two hours here and take off for Yellowstone and then on to Pinedale WY, David's old stomping grounds.

We got to the mine after noontime and I stayed in the radon room until about 3. When I left I walked part of the way, without assistance. Once again I had no pain in my knees, or none much to speak of. And my hands had stopped aching so much. So there you go, and here I am, sitting again and waiting to see what might happen next--and what might happen after this. I am grateful when I'm allowed some relatively pain-free time, considering where I was last winter. And I'm grateful to be able to sleep for several hours at a time in a relatively comfortable state. And I'm sure David is grateful that I'm not waking him up every two hours to help me turn over and re-position my pillows, etc. He's not running so much on empty any more because he's at least getting some sleep. I have no idea where this will lead, and I have to say I know I'm a long way from being able to get off the bed or out of a chair by myself and am a long way from being able to type more than a brief Blog entry without my hands aching madly. I figure it took me three years or so to get so impaired; it will probably take that to get me reasonably recovered. The illness is still at work: all one has to do is look at the directions that my fingers want to go in to know that, but this brief respite from huge pain is a wonderful and unexpected gift.

Enough of that: take a look at the flowers we saw yesterday on our lovely drive:

Yellow Lupine Something pink! Arnica amongst the Boulders

Field of Yellow Lupine

Wednesday Evening

We just took another wonderful dirt-road drive after lunch that ended up taking most of the afternoon. We headed out of town on the paved Old Boulder Road and saw 3 guys on horseback moving a bunch of cattle. Annie was impressed; said it looked just like a western movie. A little further on we say a small bunch of pronghorn antelope. As soon as we rolled down the window, they spooked and took off running, but Annie got a shot as they departed. We then continued up into the mountains into timbered hills interspersed with meadows. Saw incredible fields of some purple flower. I would have jumped out to collect a specimen, but it was too swampy. We've had a couple of days of rain and the wildflowers are going crazy. As we continued into the hills we encountered more of the boulder-strewn, evergreen covered hillsides that are everywhere. The boulders are made of a fairly soft granite that erodes into rounded, bizarre shapes. The trees grow in and around them and the pinnacles of stacked stone seem to totter at impossible angles. The combination of dry sagebrush covered hillsides with timber covered boulder fields and lush meadows where ever there's a trickle of water make these impromptu drives we've been taking almost daily absolutely fascinating. We saw beautiful, white wild iris in one damp place and Annie noticed several patches of yellow lupine. There were also several varieties of vetch and, of course, the omnipresent dandelion.

On the way back to town, we stopped to take a picture of a cut-bank beside the road, where the soft rock had been eroded into a pillow-shaped wall that looked like Mayan Hieroglyphics. This is getting to be a rather long post but yesterday, we saw some critters in a field beside the road in Basin that we at first thought were goats. Since Bea had asked if we had any goats where we are staying, we naturally turned around and stopped to take a picture. On closer inspection these things look more related to big horn sheep than to goats. Does anyone recognize these animals? The ewe and kids (lambs?) look very goat-like, but these horns don't look like any goat I've ever seen. So much for my knowledge of domestic fauna in the Intermountain West.





By the way, we keep talking about sagebrush. For those of you on the east coast who don't know what that looks like, here's a picture.