Our Summer Swimming Hole

Last summer, a great public swimming area opened in Lakeside. Although Flathead Lake is HUGE there is very little public swimming access. This place is beautiful with a gazebo, bathrooms, a grassy area and plenty of parking. We just went down to hang out the other night. "They" let the water in Flathead Lake out through the Hungry Horse Dam in the winter, and then they let it back in a little at a time during the spring. The level is just now starting to go up. Can't wait til we can swim in it this summer. The docks and large rocks in the water make it a super fun place to swim. Last year, since it was new, we don't think a lot of people knew about it and it was never very crowded. We expect this summer to be a different story.

The Dunham Fun Bus

And a bus it is!! We have had car issues all winter.....the Expedition is still doing great, but the truck (AKA The Black Beast) is not. It is a no-wheel-drive that has no business on the road anytime even resembling winter . And we haven't even discussed cosmetic issues - the poor guy has been through a lot and is missing all his teeth! See??


He is a great beater ranch truck, though, and unfortunatley, gets the best gas mileage of any vehicle we have. Brad has had to drive the Expedition while working this winter and so I have had to go out in the truck a number of times. I have been stuck twice and even had to call USAA to pull me out. I was not even a block away from home that time (if we had blocks out here by us). I was taking the neighbor's driveway because ours is way too steep and there was NO WAY I was getting up on account of the ice. I had visions of trying to drive up the driveway and sliding back down - backwards - into a big logging truck...not pretty. Even our neighbor's drive was too snowy for The Beast and about halfway up, he stopped going and the tires started spinning. I tried to go backward and landed my behind in a snow drift. The guy that came to pull me out had a good laugh at my predicament. HE would never have gotten in that situation ( I am pretty sure he's right - McGyver would never have ended up that way either) and he probably figured I was blond underneath all this dark hair. It's okay, I can laugh at myself...it didn't help that my then 14 year old son was laughing too.


And the Suburban has looked like this since the weather got bad. It needs a front end something-or-other and won't get that until the weather gets nice. Even then, the engine needs an overhaul. It will be a while until McGyver gets to that project.

So, as you can see, the situation was bleak....a wife that can't drive worth a darn in the snow, one non-working car and another that couldn't drive in the snow even if the wifey could. Brad has been sort of looking for a diesel truck so that we could haul a trailer of bison. However, a truck won't fit us all, so we would still have to drive two vehicles to CA when we deliver. Brad went in to talk to the diesel guy in town about engines/trucks, etc. The guy asked if we'd ever thought about a diesel Excursion. We had, but they are hard to come by and expensive. It just so happened that he was selling his personal vehicle that had been meticulously maintained. It has low mileage and the price was good. So, we are now the owners of one 2002, Ford diesel bison hauling Excursion with a 7.3L engine (somehow that was a good thing). The thing is indeed a bus and, compared to the Expedition, it has so much room we don't know what to do with ourselves....I am sure that real quickly, the kids will figure out how to drag everything they own into it when we go out. That is just their way.

Ah, Spring!!!

Last week, this is what we woke up to....you gotta love spring in Montana.

Easter

We celebrated Easter in what has become our tradition....a joyous Easter service at church and then the rest of the day at the Millers. We eat way too much great food, let the kids hunt for plastic Easter eggs filled with candy, eat more food, watch the kids bounce off the walls and then become comatose from the sugar, go to the park for some football/frisbee/whatever, come back and give everyone a snack and then drag ourselves home - tired and happy. It is a always a great day with great friends celebrating the joyous life we have in, and because of, Christ.

What Bored Children Do When They Hijack the Camera

These are all lovely self portraits Micah took as she sat in the tractor freezing her patootie off - she was bored and she had nabbed the camera. She cracks herself up. Odd child!!

Ranch Welcome

Saturday we went to the ranch to feed some hay to the bison and check on them. When Brad left last week, the fields were clear of snow (on the Eastern Front it snows and then blows away into drifts). There were still huge piles of snow then and he wasn't able to get into the driveway, but the fields and most of the drive (past the top drifts) were clear. Saturday when we arrived, we couldn't even get to the gate from the road - there was snow everywhere.....at least a foot covering everything. We had to hike in to the shop (about 3/4 mile??) to get the tractor out. It was a perfectly beautiful day and we were greeted by all the horses who were happy to have company.

Of All the Places to Love........

The above two paneled painting is hanging on our living room wall. Since I scared everyone with the bison head boiling post, I thought I ought to post something pleasant for all of you about bison and the ranch.

A dear friend of ours, Scott Paul, is a painter who is an artist. Among other things, he paints unique finishes in high end custom homes - last year, on a job, he painted the outlets and other wall "things" in a bedroom to match a custom birch bark wall (literally, a wall made out of birch bark). The switches matched so well that they couldn't find them.

Scott has been to the ranch numerous times to help "harvest" bison (a little happy terminology for our CA friends) and has also has gone out with Brad at times during the winter so that Brad didn't have to be out in the remote recesses of Montana all alone. Scott is from Montana and is a true outdoorsman - he is a fisherman, hunter, and bison-harvester extraordinaire. He loves the eastern front and appreciates the beauty of the ranch as much as we do. As a surprise gift to Brad this year, he painted the above. It is truly a treasure. I wish you could see the detail.

This is a photo that I just took on Saturday from the same view of the ranch as the painting (a little farther away). Scott had to tweak things a little to get them to fit, but isn't it beautiful? Truly, it is the most amazing gift. Not only did a dear friend paint it for us (and choose to give it to us instead of selling it for oodles of money!), but it is of our favorite view of our favorite place in the world. Of all the places to love, the ranch is MY favorite. Where else do enormous looming glaciers, tall stands of prairie grass and free roaming bison make all the difference?