Through the Eyes of a Young Child

"Yesterday When I was young, so many happy songs where waiting to be sung.

I had a pretty amazing day yeserday. I spent the day with my 22 month old great nephew Noah.

Picking him up from daycare, I put his carseat in the middle and immediately had to move it. He definatly has to be sitting by the window and he wants the window opened.

We went to Woodward Tractor to pick up some parts. Noah thought it was pretty awesomw to check out the machinery.

Then acrossed the street to Mentock park where we played on the cool clides.

After playing at the park we met Noah's Mom Brittany for lunch at Dairy Queen, yum. Then on to Noah's house for a much needed nap.

After a two hour nap it was snack time. Noah had yogurt, then insisted on doing the dish's. He stands up on the back of a chair, so he can reach the sudsy water. Hopefully he will still like this job when he is a teenager.

My daughter Dawn had walked over to the Cody city park, so we slathered on sunblock and loaded up Noah's little shopping cart to take a stroll down to the park.

Along the way Noah found a rock, a pinecone and a stick to ad to the contents of his shopping cart, treasures from the road.

We watched in fascination everytime a loud motorcycle roared past.

We stopped to visit a few people at Rocky Mountain Manor. One man had a shopping cart like Noah's.

At the courthouse the sprinklers where on. What fun to run through them with glee.

After quite some time we did make it to the park to meet up with Dawn and her friend Brandy.

To see life through the eyes of a young child, amazing.

The Road North/by Iris Woolcock

I am quite the bookworm. Nothing is more relaxing then finding a quite spot, sitting and reading a book.

My birthday was July,5 th. We where in North Dakota and on the way back to Wyoming stopped at Cabela's to get a hammock for my present. The perfect place for reading, on a warm summer day.

Checking our mailbox on the return trip, I had two packages. One from my sister Paula and one from my brother Joshua. Both of them had awesome books and bags in them.

Joshua's book "The Road North" one woman's adventure driving the Alaska highway 1947-1948 by Iris Woolcock.
Iris was a freelance photographer who pulled a 33 foot trailer behind a little Jeep through the states and up the Alaska highway. It's amazing, the people she met and things she did, quite the adventure.

I had to chuckle last night as I read about an indian lady Iris mrt who had just gotten back from her trial for shooting her husband. He was a mean man, who cuffed her around and she decided that was the last time, so shot him as he came back in the house.

(quoted from the book)
"I suppose you'll be much happier now without him" I said.
"Oh yes." she said, "I don't know why I ever put up with him for thirty years."
But men are a dime a dozen up in that country.
Another women killed a man with an ax. When the judge asked her why she did it, she said he backed his truck onto her clothsline and ran her nice white sheets into the mud after a hard days wash.
She picked up the nearest thing handy which happened to be an ax and let fly with it. "Dismissed, call the next case," said the judge.

"A thousand miles from nowhere,

A thousand miles to go

How long how long

Noboby seems to know."

Norman Rosten

"The big Road"

1946

Penny Candy

A shiny silver dime I found sparkling up from the dirty floor board of the farm truck. A treasure, yes indeed.

I remember the excitement of having a dime to take to the Corner Market. There was penny candy back then. You could get ten pieces for that dime, or fifteen cents would buy you a delicious Hershey's candy bar (my favorite).

In Oregon there was a deposit on pop cans, so us kids would gather up cans along side the road and take them to the back of the grocery store where the nice people would pay us five cents a can. If you found a pop bottle you would get ten cents for it.

That was a great way to get candy money and it kept Oregons roadways nice and clean.

Bugs- Top or Bottom of Food Chain?

Sure everything seems to eat bugs, after all they are the smallest and don't the bigger and stronger animals consume the smaller and weaker, or do they?

There is a theory out that the extinction of the dinosaur was actually caused by small bugs carrying deadly diseases. The smallest of bacteria can cause devastating results.
Ticks and mosquitoes carry Yellow fever, West Nile and Malaria.

Have you watched the modern version of the movie "War of the Worlds"? The murderous space aliens were brought down by microscopic bacteria.

Watch out for those bugs.

Fight or Flight

Fight or flight, which one would you chose? I'm quite the chicken and always run away screaming from a scary situation.

My husband Willie had to go talk to a man about a construction job, so I volunteered to change the irrigation water. You always have to watch out for rattle snakes while doing this job, so on one part of the pipe I walked on the wet side where the water was coming out instead of risking the tall grass on the dry side where the snakes tend to hide. Whew, that part was done, so I could go close the lower pipes where the hay had been mown. With the water running, it's hard to hear the tell tail rattle of the snake.
Reaching down with the shovel to close a gate I herd a faint buzz and saw a rattler coil up and strike at me. I jumped back screaming at the top of my lungs.

I have seen the men chop up these snakes with shovels and know that is what I should have done, but every time I got close enough to try that method of attack it would raise up it's venomous head ready to strike. I was just to chicken and couldn't do it.

It's kind of like the classic tale "The Red Badge of Courage." If you don't kill it this time, it could kill you next time.

I've seen what a snake bite can do and it is pretty awfull.

Camping on Tollgate

The summer that I turned ten years old, our family went on an all summer camping trip. I don't remember all of the details, but Dad was working in different places that summer, so we tagged along in our little camp trailer. It was the funnest summer of my childhood.

My favorite campsite was up on the mountain between Elgin and Pendleton Oregon. A place called Tollgate.

Dad pulled our little gold and white camp trailer out of Elgin, past the lumber mill and up the mointain to Tollgate were we found the perfect campground.

A few days after setting up camp a nice lady forest ranger stopped by for a chat.
She gave us four kids big garbage bags to clean up the campground. We became proud members of the Woodsy Owl team and toured around on our bicycles picking up every scrap of garbage we could find.
I bet that was the cleanest campground in Oregon when we left it.

Most of the time we were the only campers, so we explored the woods and went anywhere we pleased.

A nice young couple did camp beside us one weekend. He played "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" on his guitar and taught my little brother Todd how to play frisbee.

We would pick blue berries in the woods and Mom would make us blue berry pancakes, Yum!

Dog House Repair Month

I can't believe July is here already. June has flown by in the blink of an eye.

Did you know July is dog house repair month? You better get out there with hammer and nails, to fix up that old dog house.

Fluffy's dog house is one of those plastic Igloo's, not to pretty, but it works well.

In August a few years ago, we moved to our new house. One of the last things we moved was the dog house and got a frightening suprise. When Dawn & I started to lift up the Igloo we herd the distinct buzz of a rattlesnake. I'm sure you could hear my scream for miles around.

Fluffy didn't tell me she had rented the basement out to a rattler.