85F and Sunny in February!

Our what-has-become-annual trip to Palm Springs to see my parents and escape into paradise for a few days during the winter was fantastic this year. We had the warmest, sunniest weather we have ever had in four years of going. 85F and sunny nearly every day!

This year Susie was there, and she dictated much of our daily activities. Instead of going out to eat, golfing, and shopping all the time, we instead went for walks and played fetch and chase. Having a year-old beagle and no fenced yard adds complexity to a vacation. It also reduces the amount of money you spend on eating out, golfing, and shopping. So it all evens out for the best. Besides, as I have mentioned before, Susie is irresistible and has stolen my heart.

Between my dad's tendency to favor routine and Susie's need for it, we quickly established one. Here's how it went:

7:30 Wake up to whimpering and pawing at the bedroom door. After all we are a pack, and the pack needs to be together. No one can be in a separate room behind a closed door, especially Mom.

7:30-9 Read the paper, watch TV, eat a freshly-picked (from our yard!) grapefruit.

9:00 Watch a 30 min lecture on economics. I brought a series of lectures on DVD, and everyone seemed to enjoy them.

9:30 Take a shower.

10:30 Take Susie for a walk. Smoke a cigar if you're my dad. Sit in the sun and read if you're Rick.

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11:30 Start fixing lunch. Have a bloody mary if today = Sunday.

12:00 Eat lunch.

1:00 Take a nap and smoke a cigar if you're my dad. Read a book or work on a jigsaw if you're Rick. (He read 3 books and did at least 5 puzzles.) Otherwise, go shopping.

4:30 Take Susie for a walk.

5:00 Happy hour, no matter who you are.

6:00 Start fixing dinner.

7:00 Eat dinner and then watch the Olympics and work on jigsaw puzzle.

11:00 Go to bed.

That's what we did pretty much every day. All in the setting of a very comfortable condo located in a beautiful oasis in the desert. This is a life I can easily enjoy!

One day we did deviate from the schedule to go visit the Salton Sea. It turned out to be a stinky stagnant place with lots of bird poop. But we got to see part of rural California desert and passed by many fields of palm trees where they were growing dates.

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Another day we went to the Riverside County Fair in Indio. The fair was quite large for a county fair. There were something like three ferris wheels!

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The Palm Springs area is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been - right up there with the mountains in New Zealand. Another great vacation is captured in the blog.

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Christmas, Finally!

Wow. January 2010 is almost over and I haven't even reported on Christmas!

I was once again fortunate to be able to spend two full weeks in Kansas with my parents AND my wonderful husband came with me. The time flew by. My parents live in a parallel universe where you're left wondering where the hours between meals have gone. Combine that with a few road trips to visit family and friends and it really becomes a whirlwind trip.

Susie was glad to see us. Mom and Dad won't play chase with her. It's a bad game Rick and I have established, but she is so cute when we chase her around the living room and she stops to do her beagle howl.

On Christmas Eve, Mother Nature stepped in and changed our plans for us. Sleet and then drifting snow kept us from driving to Topeka for the traditional Christmas Eve get together at Grandma's and Christmas Day dinner at Uncle Jim's. Instead, we waited until the 26th to go. The worst part was that Aunt Anne got stuck at her farm near Lawrence for WEEKS! Fortunately we had made a day trip to Topeka about a week before Christmas. Rick went shooting with Uncle Jim while Mom and I visited with Grandma and Aunt Anne. So all was not lost.

Mom made Rick his favorite: cherry pie.

We spent most of our evenings by the fireplace. Here we are on Christmas Eve.

On Dec 27, Rick and I set off on a grand road trip straight through the great state of Oklahoma and into Fort Worth, TX. Our first stop: my cousins', Paul and Jaime Kuhn, house to eat pizza, drink beer, and most importantly meet their new baby girl, Stella Avery.

Our second stop: Carolyn and Rick Carlson's house to eat a second Christmas dinner, watch kids open presents, drink, sleep, and most importantly to see my friend Smitty. Jennifer and I go way back to 9th grade. She lives in Baltimore now, and we don't get to see each other often. When I found out she, her husband Nate, and their daughter Emma would be in Fort Worth, I decided to make a reunion happen. We had a really enjoyable visit. Visits with old friends do wonders for the soul.

Go Pokes!

Rick and I flew to Kansas to go see an Oklahoma State football game with my parents. We had tried to do this last year, but the kick-off time was changed without our knowing and we missed it! This year, we had success. What fun it was! After the all-you-can-eat pregame...

...we headed out into the enormous, packed, and constantly cheering stadium to watch the Cowboys beat the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

You know, it wasn't that cold outside, but we were bundled up anyway.

I think Dad wins the award for most team spirit.

The other highlight of the trip was playing with Susie. I was surprised by how much she has grown. She is such a great little dog. Still a puppy, she has very good manners and is so much fun to play with. It turns out this beagle likes to fetch!

Our House - The Puzzle

Last year my mom gave us a puzzle of a map of the land surrounding our house. We decided to put it together last weekend when both of us were fighting some kind of the flu. "Oh this will be easy!" I thought. I was wrong. Here is a photo of the finished puzzle. In the center is a house-shaped piece where our house is located. If you look closely, you can see there is absolutely nothing there.

We checked just north of our house where HP should be - nothing. So this map is at least 30 years old and way outdated by now. Boise has grown so much recently, especially around our house. Having nothing but 1-mile grid roads, irrigation canals, the Boise River, and white space farmland in between made for quite a tough puzzle. But it was fun building the land around our home.

Inukshuk

With all the hype and preparations for Rick's sheep hunt, I didn't think we'd make it to our favorite camping spot this year, but we managed to squeak it in right before the road closed for the year.

We made our usual hike down to one of the lakes. Rick caught a few fish.

On our way out of the lake, we came to a spot where the trail disappears and it becomes unclear as to which way is the best way to get down to the lake. (We had taken the hard way down that morning but found the easy way on the way out.) To make our lives easier for future hikes in, we decided to build an inukshuk - a stone figure built by the Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic to help guide people seeking their way through the wilderness. Ours turned out pretty pathetic. I wonder if it will survive the winter.

Even though the wildflower season had passed, the land was still quite colorful.

Saturday night we rode to the top to watch the sunset and drink a beer - another fine tradition.

Labor Day Weekend

Ok, so I am way behind on my blogging.... We had a great Labor Day weekend. We visited our friend Michael at his mountain property "The Pig" on Saturday morning to wish him a happy birthday. We spent several hours there but only took one picture - this one of the flags at the driveway entrance.

Saturday evening we headed over to Dan and Lisea's traditional camp spot - the mountain goat viewing area along highway 75 between Ketchum and Stanley. The view is fantastic; it's no wonder they camp there every year. Here is the view from our tailgate tent.

Sunday morning we went on a hike into Titus Lake. It's a short and fairly easy hike. I love being in the mountains.

Sheep Hunt

I feel a tad bit like a fraud since the hunt went so very smoothly and we gained less than 1000 vertical feet during the entire hunt. I did spend lots of time speaking with the BLM, game biologist, ranchers, cowboys, other hunters, other sheep hunters, etc. Plus I flew the area twice in a small plane and spent another 7 days scouting the area.

I have put in several times for Idaho trophy species but only twice before for sheep and more often for goats. I don't know why but I just knew either my wife or I was going to draw this year, we even began scouting before the drawing results were published.

Sarah didn't want me hunting the wilderness by myself so I asked four of my very good friends to join me on my hunt expecting 1 or maybe 2 to actually make it. You can imagine how happy I was when I learned all four not only agreed to go but actually made the hunt. Imagine all four of these guys going on a hunt and not being able to shoot anything; a couple of 9mm and one Contender pistol was all they brought.

I first saw the ram from the plane about a month before the hunt. I was surprised by how easy it was to see and judge the rams from the air. This ram just stood there while we made several tight circles in my friend's Spirit airplane. I attempted videoing him but that didn't work out. Lots of other rams were spotted but none had the wide flare of this guy and his image stuck in my mind.

The five of us headed out Friday at 6 pm and didn't arrive in camp until 12:30 am. Having selected the exact campsite the previous weekend made this late night arrival possible. I should point out this is sheep country and finding a flat, rock free, tent site isn't easy.
Saturday morning I headed in with Ryan in an attempt to locate the ram I had spotted the previous month from the plane. The other three headed off looking for another group of rams that I had spotted on an earlier trip.

We climbed to the highest point in the area and had been glassing for about an hour when the rams appeared in the bottom of my binoculars.

I was looking about three miles away when two rams came into view across the canyon about 1000 yards away. Ryan set up his Swarovski spotting scope and then placed his High Definition video camera on a second tripod and aligned the two. This provided excellent video of the ram the day prior to the season opener. We watched and video'ed the ram for 3-4 hours before I moved off to check another draw where I had seen rams but found none. The other three returned that evening and hadn't found any rams.

Opening morning had the five of us climbing into position. Finding an obsidian arrowhead on the way in was surely a sign of good luck. As I said in my initial post, two hunters came in on top of us. They had illegally driven into the Wilderness area but not after having driven through a second hunter's camp at the edge of the Wilderness - no reason to dwell on the negative here.

Ryan first spotted the rams but I had already started down to cross the canyon. He signalled me to return and I climbed back out and hurried to him. Three rams, including the wide one, had angled down into the canyon below us but where headed in our general direction. We believed the other two hunters, who stood on the skyline, had spooked the rams. We closed the distance towards the rams and took up a shooting position on a side canyon where I expected to catch them climbing out while out of view of the other two people (I have a problem calling them hunters). My Duovids where perfect, allowing me to range various points in and across the side canyon, plus to the bottom and across the main canyon, all distances were under 400 yards and I could see all escape paths headed down streams.

My other three friends, by pre-arrange plan, had circled around and were watching the upstream routes.

We all know how best laid plans fall apart, and after sitting there with my rifle on a near perfect rock for what seemed to be 1/2 hour but was likely 10 minutes I heard something and then I heard something again. Rocks in this area are plate size and about an inch thick and produce a loud distinct noise - and there I heard it again. I signaled for Ryan to close the 20 yards between us and when he reached me I told him I had heard something walking in the bottom - "There's sheep" he said as he pointed to the bottom. Three rams in the bottom slowly feeding - a quick look confirmed the wide one was there.

I'll never know how Ryan got the camera aligned and on the sheep so quickly but when I had repositioned my rifle and asked "are you ready" his reply was "don't wait for me!". I was anxious, extremely anxious that the two bozos (I have a problem calling them people) had worked down the draw after the same ram. For some unknown reason at this very moment the rams busted out of the bottom and started up the away face. My ram stopped broadside for an instant, I rushed my shot a tad and hit him pretty much dead center, too far back but a fatal shot. The second shot was even worse hitting even further back. (One can see all of this in the video.) My ram was tired of all this crap and walked towards me about 10 yards and bedded down. The other two ram had out distanced their partner but stopped and returned. The bigger of the two eventually bedded about 10 feet below his fatally wounded leader. While bedded all we could see was the glare from the bosses of his horns. I was unsure which way he was pointed so we waited, then waited some more, impatiently on my part. The second ram stood and my ram followed, it crossed my mind the other two twits may shoot my ram but this time I took the extra couple of seconds and squeezed the trigger - my hunt ended.

Wish I could now tell how much work it was to pack the sheep out but you all know there were five of us and Idaho's California Bighorns aren't that big. And to top it all off, this was the coldest day since spring PLUS when we began the climb the good Lord provided a light drizzle of rain, raised the rain level as we climbed the toughest section and then shut it off right when we reached the top.

Once on top it was mostly flat with a slight down hill to the 4 wheelers less than two miles away.