We're back!

We're back!  And such a lovely little trip we had...  Our route (both ways) took us around Bear Lake, then to Evanston, Rock Springs, and finally Lander, Wyoming.  We saw far more wildlife than we expected to!  On the stretch from Bear Lake to Evanston we saw many Sandhill cranes, and a few pronghorn antelope (the latter exciting for us, as we don't see them often).  But on the stretch from Rock Springs until about 30 miles before Lander, we saw hundreds and hundreds of pronghorns.  We found out later that they migrate to this area every spring so the pregnant females can feast on emerging forbs – rich in the minerals they need at that point in their pregnancy. They sure were a feast for our eyes!  They were still there on our way home yesterday, too.

Friday we spent all day in the Lander area.  The big event was visiting Eagle Bronze – the foundry selected by the sculptress (Christine Knapp) who created our mountain lion statue.  She'd told us to expect to be there all day, though we had absolutely no idea why.  We had the very mistaken idea that sculptures were made by pouring bronze into a mold, letting them cool, then taking them home.  That turns out to be very wrong. :)

The first thing we saw when we walked in was the statue at right.  The color in the photo is accurate – that's actually what it looked like!  I thought it was clay at first, and that we'd had some enormous misunderstanding with Christine!  But then I remembered we're at a foundry, so there must be bronze involved somewhere...

We spent the next four hours enthralled by the two “patina people” – artists in their own right – transform what you see at right into the statue we took home.  They were fine with us watching and asking a million questions, something we both enjoyed very much.  The collection of photos below are those I took as they were working.  The overwhelming takeaway for me from watching them was that this process is complicated.  The photos below are in sequence, and you can see each part of the process – washing, buffing, applying chemicals, using heat, drying, polishing, lacquering, and (the last step!) waxing.  I had utterly no idea that there was so much use of color and texture in making a bronze statue!  Just a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.  To make the eyes stand out, the orbs were carefully buffed, then polished with jeweler's rouge.  For certain areas of their pelt (tip of the tail, back of ears, etc.) the fur is darker, almost black.  In those areas, the patina people heated the metal (to open pores in the metal), gently sprayed black acrylic (some of which seeped into the heat-opened pores), then let the metal cool before buffing the acrylic off.  The result is a subtly darkened area of the metal, with a nice gradient to the areas that weren't darkened.  Watching these two work, and learning from their knowledgeable responses to our questions, was an experience I'll cherish...

We took one small break from watching them at the urging of Christine, who wanted to show us an amazing statue of a horse that would soon be leaving the foundry (after having been ten years in the making!).  That thing is 28' tall from the floor to the tip of its nose ... just look at Debbie – she doesn't quite come up to its knee!  The statue is made of bronze, with the “skin” being about 3/8" thick (roughly the same as our statue).  That's not nearly strong enough to support the weight of the statue, so the horse has a gigantic steel armature inside of it – and interesting piece of engineering all by itself, complicated in form, and with some challenges in making it strong enough to handle all possible wind loads.  Eventually this statue will end up in Singapore (where the customer is), so they won't have to worry about snow loads. :)  This same foundry makes miniatures the size of your little finger, and I'm told this horse is only the third-largest (by weight) statue they've ever made.

While in Lander, we stayed at Lander Lodging, and a very enjoyable stay that was!  Our hosts, Don and Laural, couldn't possibly have been any nicer.  In fact, they rescued us from an awkward car-charging situation by giving us a couple of rides into town, something we greatly appreciated.  Most of all, though, they were “our kind” of people: farmers, animal lovers, full of stories (especially Don!), and dispensing good cheer in all directions.  Their little spot in the Sinks Canyon is truly beautiful, with great views, lots of trees, and plenty of animals for us to meet.  We particularly enjoyed their miniature horses Star and Indy (below).  We learned from Don that the miniature horses were developed specifically to work in mines, pulling carts of ore.  I'd always thought they were more modern than that, and developed mainly as pets – not so.  These two had very sweet and curious dispositions, and both were jealous if we paid attention to the other :)...

It was a lovely trip, and now our mountain lion statue is parked on our trailer in our back yard.  On Tuesday my brother Scott will be here, and with his help we're going to move it into a temporary position until we get its permanent home on a water feature built.  Once I get it unpacked and placed, I'll take some photos of it and post them...

Ramblings...

Ramblings...  Yesterday afternoon we wandered up Blacksmith Fork Canyon again.  I spotted the first mountain wildflowers of the season (at right).  They were nestled in some exposed rocks on a talus slope, each plant no more than an inch or so high.  There was a cluster of plants about 8' in diameter.  I've no idea what they are, but the flowers look a bit like pea family flowers, and they were pouring out a sweet, strong smell.  Those thorned leaves belong to that plant, and those sure don't look like the pea family!  Oh, lovely they were...

As we got to Hardware Ranch at the end of the paved road, we took the back (dirt) road up to the visitor's center.  The scene at left is from that little drive.  That's looking just about due east, back toward Hyrum (16 miles away and out of sight).  You can see the obviously green meadows, but if you look closely you'll see that the deciduous trees are still bare.  Close up, some of them have popped-open buds and the leaves are a-coming.  In another couple of weeks, this scene will be considerably greener.  I'll try to remember to snap it again then...

We've had a busy day today, scrambling to handle a few last-second chores before we set off on another three-day trip.  This time we're headed to Lander, Wyoming to pick up a mountain lion sculpture that we commissioned a few months ago.  Hopefully by the end of this summer that sculpture will be sitting atop a water feature in our back yard, just off our deck.  I will of course post photos after we pick it up on Friday.

One of our chores today was to visit Rudy's Greenhouses in Logan to collect eight hanging basket of color.  A few weeks ago, we bought “tickets” to get these baskets – Rudy's works with the local Boy Scouts each year to help them raise money.  Everybody wins: the Boy Scouts get some cash, Rudy's raises their volume and gets more people to know them, and the ticket buyers get some gorgeous baskets at a discounted price – in our case, eight of them to go around our deck (at right).  We drove in right at opening time to get the best selection, but we needn't have worried – there were vast quantities of those hanging baskets to choose from: over 3,000 of them according to one of the workers.  The staff there were ludicrously helpful – they wouldn't let me load my car by myself, and one of them suggested plastic sleeves (they offer them for free) to avoid messing up the car.  We chose our baskets in just a few minutes, and were getting ready to load 'em up when we spotted a friend driving in: Michelle H., and Lizzy and Lilly were tagging along.  After some happy, friendly chat, we set off for home and I got all the baskets hung up.  Lots of smiles from Debbie and I each time we see them.

Shortly after that, Debbie gestured to me to follow her into our bedroom, to look through the door of our sun room at the scene of feline luxury within (at left).  There were eight cats in there, all absorbing the sun and occasionally waking up long enough to chatter at a robin hunting worms on the lawn outside.  The robins seem to completely ignore the cats – they've apparently figured out that the cats can't get to them.

This afternoon I hooked up the trailer to our Model X as practice, and to test the lights.  Our trip starting tomorrow will be the first time we've used the trailer in earnest – the mountain lion sculpture will come home riding on it.  We're taking a path that's mostly off the Interstate, though we'll be on one for a short while in order to rendezvous with a couple of superchargers (one in Evanston, Wyoming, and another in Rock Springs, Wyoming).

As usual, blogging on the trip will be light-to-nonexistent.  This time we don't even know if our lodging has an Internet connection!

New project arrived...

New project arrived...  Well, the essential ingredients for one, anyway.  A while back we ordered a built-in grill from Solaire – and yesterday, it arrived.  That's it, sitting on the sawhorses on our deck at right.  The big unit on the right is the grill itself, with a rotisserie attachment (that's the little motor sitting on the grill).  The smaller unit at left is a two-burner stove.  These arrived via freight, in six boxes shrink-wrapped onto a pallet.  The pallet weighed just over 300 pounds, but the actual components at right are just under 150 pounds – so there was over 150 pounds of packing material.  That will give you some idea just how well packed these things were.  There wasn't a ding or a scratch on anything at all.  The workmanship on the grill is superb, nothing like any of the grills we've owned before.  Debbie's gonna go a little crazy cooking on this thing, methinks. :) 

The rest of the project is to build a cabinet for these to sit in, on our deck.  The tentative plan is for a 9 foot long cabinet, 30" deep, with the grill sitting right in the middle and 3' of granite counter top on each side.  The cabinet underneath will have big, deep drawers in it; not sure how many yet until I get the dimensions all settled down.  It will be redwood-sided (2x6s mounted to plywood) to match the deck.  It will be quite the cabinet-making project for me!

I also caught the dogs enjoying the sunshine.  These are the three young field spaniels.  Clockwise from the lower left: Ipo, Cabo, and Mako (looking at me).  They are loving springtime!

About a month ago...

About a month ago ... I bought a trailer to tow big, heavy things behind our Tesla Model X.  I bought some accessories for it, and yesterday I finally got around to installing them.  We're leaving on Thursday for a three-day trip to Lander, Wyoming, where we're going to pick up a bronze sculpture that we commissioned last year.  We're going to the foundry where they're pouring and finishing it – should be great fun!

The photos below show the additions I made to the trailer (as always, click on the little pictures to embiggen them).  The first photo shows the spare tire mounted, with a cover on it.  The second photo shows the mount I had to install.  The mount was quite easy to install – the hard parts were getting that cover on it, and getting the right stainless steel hardware to mount it (stainless steel because I don't want rust on the aluminum trailer).  The third and fourth photos show the box I mounted on the trailer's tongue.  There are six bolts and fender washers holding it to three frame members.  The tricky part for this thing was getting all those holes precisely drilled, so that all six bolts could be simultaneously inserted.  The six holes in the frame members needed to be in the centers of those members, and then I had to drill six perfectly matching holes in the bottom of the tongue box.  Another tricky bit was finding the right stainless steel hardware – I did a lot of bin-searching at Ridley's.  Finally, I installed a trailer lock – the red gadget showing on the tip of the tongue in the third photo.  This is an ingenious device that inserts into the trailer ball socket and locks around it, preventing anyone from attaching the trailer to their vehicle and towing it away.  Simple, but effective.  I'm completely unworried about trailer theft around home (we have nearly zero crime in Paradise), but when we travel to other places things may be a bit different.

By the time I finished with the trailer stuff, I was wiped out.  I went back into the house, and discovered that Debbie was feeling puny, too.  We both took our temperatures and found that we had matching 102°F fevers.  No wonder we felt awful!

It's a glorious morning this morning.  As I was taking the trailer photos above, our three young field spaniels were cavorting in the fenced yard, begging me to join them.  They love this nice weather!  The first photo below shows how nicely things are starting to green up, and the willow is starting to come into leaf. 

I blinked...

I blinked ... and all of a sudden it's Saturday! 

Yesterday afternoon was beautiful here, and we took a nice drive up Blacksmith Fork Canyon in the hopes of seeing some of the wildlife that spring should bring us.  We were quickly rewarded with a great viewing of an osprey, recently returned to the man-made pond just above the Hyrum City power generator.  Not only did we see the osprey, we saw it tussling with a juvenile bald eagle – and then got to watch the eagle for awhile.

A bit later on our drive, Debbie spotted our first banded kingfisher of the year.  Soon we'll be seeing these all up-and-down the streams and rivers here.  On our last drive out, a few days ago, I had a brief sighting of the American dipper (one of my favorite little birds).  Didn't see any yesterday, though.  I saw a male Bullock's oriole resting in some wild roses, looking very bedraggled – I suspect he'd only just arrived.  We spotted a single Sandhill crane, with a much-darker-than-usual body coloring – we're thinking it might have been a yearling.  We saw swallows high above us, the first sighting of them this year (and I saw a single purple martin in our yard yesterday – most likely a scout).  Then there were the deer: lots of deer.  No elk, though...

All this gave me my first real opportunity to try out our new binoculars, and these live up to their promises.  Despite being purely mechanical (and no batteries!), the stabilization mechanism does a great job of taking out the jitters.  They gave me 20x magnification, hand-held, with a perfectly clear image.  The 60mm objectives make the image beautifully bright, and I can not detect any chromatic aberration at all, even out at the edges of the field of view.  They're great!

Debbie was feeling lousy yesterday, so early in the afternoon we took her temperature: 101°F.  Dang!  She's got some sort of bug.  I'm holding out hope that it's not the lingering malady I had earlier this month, as that was the pits.  Her symptoms are different...

Southwest 1380...

Southwest 1380...  I'm sure you've heard the story by now – if not, just search for the flight number and you can read all about it (and try to stay more in touch with the world, would you?).  Here I'm posting the audio of the communications between the aircraft and the air traffic controllers as the pilots flew the damaged aircraft to the Philadelphia airport.  They made a safe landing there.  Several passengers were injured when the left engine disintegrated, one of them died later.

It is remarkable to me just how calm the pilots (especially the captain) are as they flew this damaged plane down.   Lots of people are making comparisons to the “Miracle on the Hudson” a few years ago, and I think they're fair.  BTW, the captain on this flight happens to be a woman, 56 years old, and a former Navy FA-18 pilot.  Her husband is also a captain at Southwest Airlines.  I'll close with an excerpt from this morning's Wall Street Journal piece (The Right Stuff at Southwest Airlines):

At the outset, the pilot calmly announces, “Southwest 1380 has an engine fire. Descending.”

A short time later she reports, “Actually no fire now, but we are single-engine.” At one point she informs controllers, “We have part of the aircraft missing, so we’re going to need to slow down a bit.” Each report from the cockpit is delivered in the same even and reassuring tone.

“If you would, have them roll the trucks,” she asks politely, hoping for emergency vehicles on the runway given that her engine has exploded, passengers have been injured and perhaps killed, there’s a hole in the aircraft and shrapnel has been sprayed around the wing and fuselage.

Readers may be wondering, just as this column does, how one could not only maintain composure but even exhibit impeccable manners in such a situation. After landing the airplane, Ms. Shults says to the controllers, “Thanks, guys, for the help.”

Where do airlines find people like this? The U.S. military, of course.

The right stuff, indeed...

Apparently not all dogs like banana slices...

Apparently not all dogs like banana slices...  Idaho mogul-of-everything Doug S. wrote yesterday; first time I've heard from him in months.  Amongst a lot of catch-up stuff was this little gem:

I tried to get my dogs to enjoy bananas, but the slices just hit the floor as I get questionable looks as if they are saying what's this crap... ha ha

This led me to do some investigation on the Intertubes, and what I found was lots of dogs that love bananas, lots of dogs that hate bananas, some dogs that are actually afraid of bananas, and a few that are allergic to them.  It's clear that our five banana-loving dogs are not especially unusual, nor are Doug's dogs doing the WTF?  I'm not sure why, but I'm surprised at the variation.  Generally foods that appeal to dogs seem to appeal to all dogs.  For example, I've yet to run into a dog that doesn't love Milk Bones.

Anyway, I'm sad for Doug.  The banana-slice ritual is a big part of our mornings, every day.  I'm well-known at our local grocery for buying bananas (we go through 14 a week), and many of the clerks know I'm buying them for my dogs. :)

More weird weather...

More weird weather...  It's April, or so the calendar tells me.  Yesterday was beautiful, sunny, and warm: 70°F.  This morning when I got up at 1:30 am to let the dogs out, the back yard was covered with ... snow!  This morning that danged white stuff is still out there, about an inch and a half.  Thankfully it didn't stick to the driveway or our walkways; they were too warm.  But the grass and the trees are covered.  I'm going to ignore it, and hope that our 40°F high today is enough to melt it all...

Windy!

Windy!  We've got a fairly steady 25 mph wind, with gusts considerably faster – about 35 mph, I think.  My barn is shaking!

Since we've been back...

Since we've been back...  Yesterday morning we woke to something we didn't expect at all: snow.  The forecast had called for rain, but we got heavy, gloppy snow instead.  In the photos below (of our back yard) you can see just how hard it was snowing, as I capture quite a bit of it in the air.  You can also see that the “snowflakes” were actually more like little snowballs.  We got just over an inch of this stuff before it warmed up enough to actually rain.  By the end of the day yesterday it was nearly all gone – but we do still have a bit hanging around at the end of the day today...

We didn't do all that much yesterday; made a grocery run and picked up our mail.  In the mail I got the “reward” from one of the Kickstarter projects I backed: Wood Trick.  The actual reward is a (very complex, hundreds of parts) big rig model, but they sent along two much smaller models with it.  I built both of them yesterday afternoon; somehow it was the perfect thing to occupy me – very relaxing after our trip.  Photos of these two below.  The first one is a cute little animated frog – by moving a lever in the back of him, his four legs all wiggle and his eyes goggle.  It uses rubber bands as a return spring, and wooden gears to provide the animation.  The second two photos show an amazingly realistic jeep, made entirely from laser-cut pieces of plywood.  This entire model was cut out of a sheet of plywood roughly 8" by 12".  It's all assembled with friction-fit connections – no glue or fasteners are used in the model.  The wheels turn on axles that work quite well, despite being made of square pieces of wood!  Wood Trick is a Ukrainian company, trying to break into the world's biggest toy market: the U.S.  I hope they succeed, because their products are very cool indeed, and quite reasonably priced (the little frog kit, for example, is $4 at retail)...

Today the highlight was the Lily fashion show in our living room.  Little Lily, you might remember, is the little girl that Debbie bought some outfits for while on our trip.  Well, today Michelle (the grandmom), Lizzy (the mom), and Lilly all came over to try out Lilly's new outfits.  Afterwards we all went out for lunch at Jack's pizza.  A grand time was had by all.  Below are the photos I took during Lily's fashion show (which Lily appeared to thoroughly enjoy!).  You can see Michelle at left in the second photo.  I'm partial to that yellow dress myself; everyone else seemed to like the outfit in the second photo the best....

Hanging around Kalispell...

Hanging around Kalispell...  After we arrived in Whitefish (just north of Kalispell) and checked into our lodging on Monday night, we were exhausted.  Debbie had the brilliant idea (especially in hindsight) of eating at the hotel's restaurant instead of driving into town as had been our plan.  The restaurant got good reviews on Yelp, so we thought we'd be ok.  Well, we were ok and then some!  Our delightful waitress Natalie strongly recommended the grilled elk tenderloin, so we tried it – and man, were we glad we did!  That was hands-down the best elk dish we have ever had.  So on Tuesday morning, we went there for breakfast – and it was just as wonderful as the dinner.  I had a special, pulled-pork and eggs with a mild verde sauce; Debbie had the stuffed French toast.  Both were outstanding.

After breakfast, we visited Lazy K and Advanced Powder Coatings to take care of our actual business up there.  After that, we had some time to just hang around the Kalispell area.  The first thing we did was to visit the Hockaday Museum of Art, in a former Carnegie library (my photo at right), right downtown.  We'd read about an exhibit of bison engravings they had going on, which sounded interesting to both of us.  It was even more interesting than we'd expected.  Most of these engravings were woodblock prints, but there was one exquisite engraving that was perhaps the best example of a steel engraving print I've ever seen.  The detail was such that you'd need a magnifying glass to see it.  It's hard to even imagine the patience it took to make that engraving with nothing but a block of steel, scratch awls, and an idea.  The exhibit including engravings from every phase of European's encounters with bison, and the commentary that accompanied the exhibits ended up giving us a nice history lesson – much of which is quite sad.  It treated the American Indian's involvement quite objectively, which I was glad to see.  “White men” and American Indians both carried out the near-extinction of the bison, a fact which all too many history books ignore in their efforts to blame Europeans...

After our enjoyable visit to the museum, we headed up to Whitefish to search out a pottery store that we'd read good things about.  Here we were a bit disappointed.  There was some stuff there that we found attractive, but the majority of the pieces were of the imaginary category Debbie and I call “modern art”, which is really our catch-all term for art that we don't understand, don't find beautiful, and really don't understand why anyone does.  That store was full of it. :)  However, on our walk toward the pottery store, we happened by Sprouts, a store selling children's clothing.  Now you might well wonder why we might be interested in such a store.  It's all because of our friend Michelle H., whose daughter Lizzy is also a friend.  Well, six months ago Lizzy had her first child (and Michelle's first grandchild): Lily, a beautiful little red-headed girl.  Debbie was hoping to find a store with locally-made clothing for Lily, and at Sprouts she hit the jackpot.  We came home with a complete wardrobe for Lily!  :)

We were ready to pack it in for the day at that point, and we headed back to our hotel.  After a bit of discussion about where to eat dinner, we decided ... to eat at the hotel again.  It was so good!  This time Debbie had an all-appetizer meal, with a nice salad, a bowl of excellent parsnip and cauliflower soup, and luscious elk meatballs (below).   I had the soup as well, along with crispy roast duck.  I love roast duck, and have had it many times; this was among the best I've ever had.  I especially enjoyed the contrasting flavors of the Brussels sprouts and apple slices along with the rare duck.  Most delicious, that was!  We had no room for dessert, though we suspect it's just as wonderful as the rest of the food there...

Back in our room the lake fogged over in a light rain.  That made the beautiful scene at right, from the balcony of our room.  We left at 4:30 am on Wednesday, and drove back home without incident.  I did cut the battery management a bit close on the Missoula-to-Butte segment: we pulled into the Butte supercharger with a mere 6 miles estimated remaining in the battery.  That's the closest call I ever made on that!  I have no idea how accurate that gauge is, or whether there's any reserve built in (as there is on gasoline-powered cars), so I'm not entirely sure just how close I really cut it, but still...

We pulled into our driveway at about 6:30 pm, and both of us were very tired.  After greeting the animals, we were snoring in short order...

The actual purpose of our trip to Montana...

The actual purpose of our trip to Montana ... you may remember, was to pick up a bunch of metal work we had done for us by the folks at Lazy K Wrought Iron.  We arrived at Advanced Powder Coatings (they do the powder coating for everything Lazy K does, and our stuff was still there) on Tuesday morning, per plan, and got to see the work for the first time.  As usual, it was gorgeous!  But ... there was a huge pile of metal there.  Larry (APC's owner), a couple of his employees, Debbie, and I all looked at the pile and said to each other that there's no way in hell that whole thing would fit in our Tesla.  I made a mental note to talk with Abigail (at Lazy K) about either shipping the part we couldn't take, or maybe making another trip up here.  

But we were wrong.

It all fit.  I'm still astonished at this!  The photos below show the back of our Model X after we packed it all up.  Larry and I worked for nearly an hour to achieve this, and some of it was advanced puzzle fitting.  Also, there were parts that we could only get into place by angling them in a side door, rotating them (very carefully!), and then nestling them in place.  We used every packing blanket we brought.  About 50' of paracord plus a ratcheting cargo strap strategically placed, and the entire load behaved as if it was a single piece of steel.  In that pile are about 30 pieces of formed steel, some of them quite oddly shaped, all locked together as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Kevin (at Lazy K) did not design that feature – that was Larry and I carefully packing.  Note how close to the ceiling of the car we got!

For the entire trip home, there was not a single rattle, and I never needed to retie the load down.  Larry and I did well. :)  We did have one minor casualty on the trip home, though.  Before we even got out of the Advanced Powder Coatings parking lot, we heard a couple of alarming “thunks!”m, quite loud.  It took me a while to figure out what they were, but I should have known right away.  The back floor of the cargo compartment is a false bottom, covering a small luggage compartment.  That false bottom is held up by a couple of fairly flimsy plastic brackets, one of which has broken before.  This time, they both broke.  That means another call to Tesla, and probably their tech will be back out here to fix them...

If you love dogs...

If you love dogs ... then you'll know what I mean when I say that I just love hearing the sounds of dogs happily eating their morning kibble, in five-part harmony (because we have five dogs).  In the case of our dogs, this comes right after our morning banana-slice ritual, which already had me grinning from ear-to-ear.  My favorite thing about being back home is being back with my dogs...

And I know, I know ... I missed my promised posting yesterday.  You shall have it soon...