My blog is named for Mehitable Day, a woman buried in the 1800s behind the Maine farmhouse where I lived as a teenager. Whenever I'd have a day that was especially challenging, eventful, or just plain odd, I'd tell my friends, "I've just had the most Mehitable Day!" And so this blog is where I share the events, discoveries and random musings
of my Mehitable Days. :-)
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant
After several days of overcast, chilly, rainy/snowy weather with wind gusts over 60mph, Friday was finally a thing of springtime beauty. And the fact that BW got the day off made it more beautiful still. So after walking the dogs and spending much of the rest of the day doing yard work, we decided that Happy Hour was best spent on the front porch with homemade margaritas (1 part each lime juice, triple sec, and tequila). But alas, we were out of tequila! So, off to the liquor store. On the way, this 1959 Dodge Custom Royal convertible, looking rather like a lemon meringue pie on wheels (I had citrus on the brain), caught our eye as it sat in the visitor's parking lot at the hospital….
"So, Laloofah," you are probably wondering, "Do you always take your camera on tequila runs?" No, my delightfully smartass but astute blog readers, I do not. :-) But since we live just a mile and a half from the hospital, we bought our tequila (priorities!), took it home and grabbed the Rebel and returned to take these photos just for you. It was the least I could do, since we didn't have enough key limes to invite you all over for margaritas...
Check out the cool trim on those headlights…
And the unique pushbutton transmission selector on the far left side of the dashboard…
If you want to read about and see more details on a '59 Custom Royal Convertible, inside and out (with top down) and under the hood, I found this beautifully restored example. They call its two-tone color scheme "coral/quartz," but in keeping with my snappy citrus theme I prefer to call it Ruby Red Grapefruit Margarita. Cheers!:-)
Please pardon my absence and failure to keep the vacation posts coming lately. I spent several days last week in Havre, MT visiting my mom, and we had a nice time and got quite a bit accomplished, but those visits are never easy for a variety of reasons. I was zonked when I got home Tuesday evening and had a lot to catch up on. Good thing I got a lot of it done on Wednesday, because I spent the next two days down for the count with a monster headache. My body always lets me know when I need to take a break, but I wish its clues would be more subtle! (Of course then I'd just ignore them...) I'd hoped to finish Part 2 of our Seattle visit early this week but there's a lot left to do on it, and even when I've had some time I haven't felt like blogging or even being online. My in-laws arrive Monday for a 5-day visit so we've been busy trying to get projects done before they arrive and August is history, plus this month has been filled with appointments. All the distractions prevent my feeling focused and creative, especially when it comes to the vacation posts, which take so much time and effort to put together. When blogging feels too much like work and not enough like a fun creative outlet, it's time for a break. The first time BW and I visited our English friends Iain and Sophie, they took us out to dinner at a very fancy restaurant in a historic country house hotel. Iain told us during dinner about the last time they'd eaten there, when he'd felt that the waitstaff was being a tad too eager about whisking away their plates and cutlery between courses. So as one swooped in to abscond with his latest barely-finished dish, Iain put his hand over it and quietly said, "May we have a pause, please?" BW and I just loved that and love to repeat it (usually just to the Universe, there being no waitstaff to say it to - which is probably part of the problem, lol) - whenever things are pressing in on us and we're feeling overwhelmed. Anyway, just thought I'd explain my post's title. Just make sure you read it in an English accent, or it won't sound right. :-) I still have so many photos from our PNW trip to sort, cull, edit and upload that I've been taking very few new ones. But a handful has accumulated, both local and from my Havre trip, so I'll use this opportunity to share them. I took most of these with the iPad, which sure takes some impressive photos! Hope you enjoy, and I promise to return in September to wrap up our Seattle visit and get us at least started on our visit to eye-candy intensive Victoria, BC!
Sunrise, July 30
Thunderstorm, Aug 3
Another thunderstorm that same day, illuminated by the sunset (the white dot in the upper right is a plane)
We had several of these pass by in early August, but got nary a raindrop from any of them. Noooo, that waited till early yesterday morning, since I'd just finished washing the last of our many windows the night before! Grrr...
Muley Schooly :-)
School starts this Tuesday and kids have been showing up at the elementary school across the street since late July to register. But these three mule deer bucks who showed up one morning look more like teenage high schoolers to me! :-)
Soldier Ridge Trail
A new 4-mile walking/biking trail opened near our house a few months ago, and we finally got a chance to check out about 1.5 miles of it with our dogs a couple of weeks ago. Except for a lone jogger we saw near the end of our hike, we had it all to ourselves. It passes through private land and no motorized vehicles or hunting is allowed, which will make it a real treat for us this fall when the weather cools off and we plan to take a day to explore the entire trail.
And now to Havre...
Montana Used Car Lot :-)
Spied this collection of used cars for sale off Highway 87 about 11 miles south of Roundup, MT. Not quite the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from there! ;-)
Hubcap of Doom
While in downtown Havre to check out their farmer's market, I happened to park next to the vehicle sporting these intimidating hubcaps, so of course had to snap a pic!
Hill County Courthouse
Havre is the county seat for Hill County, and while I think their stately courthouse is quite photogenic, I also took this for sentimental reasons as my late grandmother worked here as the Hill County Auditor. Which was ironic, since she had quit high school over an unbearable math class and its equally unbearable teacher, and wouldn't earn her high school diploma till she was in her mid-80s ~ the oldest person in Montana (at that time, anyway) to do so! She was an excellent auditor, however, re-elected every time she ran until she retired in the early 1970s. Wonder what her high school math teacher would have thought of that?
As a child in the late '60s, I loved to visit her at work because I'd get to type merrily away on one of the state-of-the-art IBM electric typewriters, writing letters back home to my dad (mom and I would spend a month in Havre every summer). And I'd get to gape at the giant murals painted in the impressive main stairwell. Mom and I had to go to the courthouse on this visit to register her vehicles, so I went looking for the murals to photograph them. But alas, turns out the building was extensively remodeled in the late 1970s, and the murals were covered up! Sheesh.
Sunrise over Havre
I was up by 6, about three hours before Mom, every morning during my visit so I could let Willow out and feed her. Then Willow and I would drive to the library, where I could access their free WiFi from the parking lot. Sometimes we'd also go for a walk and I'd take photos of some of Havre's old homes and email them to BW, since the library is right near the historic residential district. (Click here and here for two views of my favorite Havre cottage!) On our way to the library on the last morning of our visit, I'd only made it part way down Mom's block when I had to stop to take this sunrise photo. Mom's neighborhood sits atop a hill with wonderful views in every direction, and in this one you can see into Saskatchewan.
Enjoy more incredible skies from around the world!
Wishing you all a safe and happy end to August and, to those of you in the US, a wonderful Labor Day weekend! See you in Seattle when I'm ready to move my finger on Life's DVD Player from "Pause" to "Play!" :-)
Welcome to Part 2 of Day #1 of our road trip from Sheridan, WY to the Pacific Northwest!
After our lunch in Butte, we continued on to Missoula where, despite only being halfway to our day's destination, we stopped to see the Carousel for Missoula. As we made our way through Missoula's downtown to the carousel, we passed this Studebaker wall mural...
... which proved prophetic, because just a couple blocks away in the carousel's parking lot, we happened upon the tail end of a classic car rally! And the first classic that met our eye had Molly's name written all over it! (Well, not literally - literally it had Route 66 stickers all over it - which also had Molly's name written all over them!) :-)
1959 Ford Ranchero & vintage Airstream
Of course we had to spend time among the vintage cars, parked prettily next to Caras Park (hmmm, a carousel and classic cars by Caras Park - this calls for some carousing!) :-)
And then we finally wandered over to the carousel, our purpose for stopping in Missoula to begin with (we are easily distracted, lol), where I didn't take it for a spin but did enjoy choosing and photographing a few of my favorite critters. You can read about all of the carousel's critters & chariots here. There's a Clydesdale named "Bud" that I didn't notice, but in reading about the ponies learned was "adopted" by Bunts and June Watkins, long-time close family friends of my late grandparents! Bunts owned a beer distribution business in their hometown of Havre (and later in Missoula and Spokane), so "Bud" the Clydesdale was an appropriate pony for him to sponsor!...
L-R: "Cannonball," "Snapples," "American Beauty"
"Paint"
"Catch a painted pony let the spinning wheel spin"...
The sign on his ear says, "Only children are allowed to ride on Scafti. It's a balance thing." Do you think if I'd informed them I'm an only child, they'd have let me ride him? ;-)
After enjoying the cars and the carousel, we wandered along the path by the riverside and took time to smell the roses growing there...
Clark's Fork River
It was a beautiful but very hot day, so several others were enjoying the river by actually being in it... swimming, tubing (see the two in the photo above?), kayaking, and - get this - surfing the rapids!
I'd crack my head open on one of those rocks on my first try.
As with riding Scafti, "it's a balance thing!" LOL
From Missoula, a beautiful drive through the Bitterroot Range and Lolo Pass brought us to...
I was more excited about gaining that hour than I was about entering a new state! :-)
We pulled over and I popped up through the sunroof to snap this evening telephoto shot of Lake Coeur d'Alene
The drive through Idaho was really beautiful, but very brief - we were, afterall, crossing the state's skinny panhandle. So it wasn't long before we were in Spokane, eager for dinner at Boots Bakery and Lounge, an all-vegan eatery that just opened last year...
It was about 8:15 on a lovely evening and we were tempted to dine al fresco, but as you can see outdoor seating was very limited and being a Friday night in downtown Spokane - with the huge annual Spokane Hoopfest going on just down the block - it was very loud! So we ate inside the fun old building (you can see a bit of BW in the booth on the left)...
You choose your food from a deli case by the register where that customer is standing. The "lounge" portion of "Boots Bakery & Lounge" is a small area in the back, where a man was playing very pretty acoustical guitar music to the delight of a small audience gathered there.
Unfortunately my dinner photos came out blurry, but I'm sharing the one of my plate anyway because while all of the food was absolutely delicious, their mac and cheese was the best I've ever had (and I think I make a pretty awesome mac-and-cheese if I do say so myself!) I loved Boots' mac and cheese so much I got more to go for eating the next day, but ate every bite of it later that night in our motel. And it nearly killed me to drive past Spokane on our return trip home at 7:30 in the morning - too early to get more Boots Mac and Cheese! (Which was probably a good thing, since I'd have wanted to bring several pounds of it home with me)...
The "Power Greens" salad was also awesome, and the Spinach Pesto Penne was really delicious too, but the mac and cheese ruled!
We also bought treats from their vegan bakery, of course! :-) Two for dessert later that night in our motel room and two for breakfast the next morning with our coffee. These were dessert - the one on the left was peanut butter chocolate and it was okay, but the one on the right was unforgettable - a lemon coconut bar. OH, MY!!! I'll be dreaming of their mac & cheese and lemon coconut bars till I can get back to Spokane!
Things were a little hectic the next morning so I failed to photograph our coffee cakes (they looked pretty similar to the peanut butter chocolate one, on top anyway!) but BW's was banana pecan and mine was orange pistachio ginger. Again - YUM!!! In addition to coffee cakes and bars, Boots also makes vegan scones and muffins. The room where we left all our coffee cake crumbs was in the Best Western Plus Bronco Inn in Ritzville, WA. We were zonked when we got there and finished the dreaded bag drag to our room a little before 11 that night - 17 hours and 740 miles (and a few pounds of great food) after leaving home that morning! Having no special expectations of our chain motel accommodations beyond hoping it would be clean and relatively quiet, we were very pleasantly surprised by how large and comfy our room was (as well as clean and quiet!) And it was also charmingly decorated with an Americana quilt theme especially appropriate so close to the 4th of July...
The second leg of our drive to Seattle the next day would be much shorter - but it would be another very full and fun day! So, Day #2 coming up soon!
Taken this summer on the ranch where we board our horse Mocha
Simple Stone...
A lone grave marker in Sheridan's Municipal Cemetery. I could find no other markers
in the vicinity of this grave with the rest of this person's name or vital statistics,
nor evidence of missing stones. Maybe George was secretive and wanted it that way!
Stunning Sunrise...
Hot off the press, this morning's spectacular sunrise from our back yard
Scrumptious Skillet Supper...
I had to break a cardinal rule of food photography and photograph this
under icky artificial light (on the sad little stove in our last rental). Sorry!
The original name of this dish is Skillet Black Beans with Potatoes and Tortillas, but we simply call it "that yummy skillet supper." :-) With potatoes, corn tortillas, beans and spices, this satisfying dish has become one of our new comfort foods. It makes a lot (use a large skillet!), and makes great leftovers.
Here it is all served up garnished with fresh cilantro, avocado, homemade vegan sour cream, and a splash of Sriracha hot sauce, since we like our sustenance on the spicy side!...
I like how the bands of sun & shade crisscross the bands of bark
A whimsical birdhouse spied on a walk...
I wonder if, when they get home, the buckaroo birds who live here belt out Gene Autry's song, "Back in the Saddle Again." :-)
And speaking of birds and houses, here's a Red-winged Blackbird on the cattails behind our new house that's being built (we hope to move in before the end ofAugust)...
I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries,
and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.
~Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)
Be sure to visit ABC Wednesday for more bevies of Bs!
(especially behold the brilliantly bewitching Breathing Bridge!)
This week has marked Sheridan's big annual shindig, when the rodeo and carnival come to town along with a crush of tourists, visiting family members and locals who moved away but return to town during this week like swallows to Capistrano or salmon to their spawning grounds. On Friday most businesses shut down early (if they opened at all), and Main Street is given over to events like a pancake breakfast, bed races (which are exactly what they sound like they'd be), and a parade, after which everyone heads to the bars, the carnival and/or the rodeo. Though we've attended in the past, for the last decade-plus we've avoided it like the plague. It's always hot (99º was the high on Friday), crowded, noisy, and filled with a lot of animals being forced to do stuff in the heat and noise that I doubt they'd ever choose to do if given a choice. Which, of course, they aren't. Anyway, it's not our thing (though I admit to being slightly tempted by the carnival rides!), but that doesn't mean we didn't get our own little private parade sneak preview early Friday morning...
It began with BW running past me, hollering something unintelligible in his exuberance, as I sat at the computer. He was so excited he had a hard time expressing what he'd seen that had him so excited and that he wanted me to come see. (It didn't help that he didn't know the name of what he'd seen!) It turned out it was our somewhat distant neighbor Rich, riding by on his velocipede, all dressed up in period clothing! By the time I got outside to see him he was hurtling past, down the street and around the corner and out of sight, and it was too late to grab my camera and get a photo. But wouldn't that have been great? Augh, curses!! Anyway, here's a simulation of what we saw, though Rich's clothing was actually much cooler-looking (Rich is actually quite cool - he's also a hot air balloonist! And clearly born a century too late)...
But, as it turned out, all was not lost! For shortly after the missed velocipede photo op we took the dogs for a walk and got another parade preview, on a nice, quiet neighborhood street, when we came upon this 1925 Glacier National Park touring bus getting ready to head for the parade route...
The owner (whose name we weren't told) lives in Billings, MT and drives his restored Glacier Park bus in parades. So maybe this was one of the two that were in the 2009 Rose Bowl Parade!
(You can see a photo of it in Sheridan's parade, where it placed 3rd in the Novelty float category, by clicking here. It's a little more than halfway down the page).
If you've never visited Glacier National Park, I urge you to do so (soon, before its eponymous glaciers vanish completely!) Glacier is, in my opinion, the most beautiful of our national parks and well worth a visit. And guess what? You can even take a tour in one of the restored buses (1930's models), nicknamed "Jammers" back in the day because of the distinctive sound their original standard transmissions would make as the drivers jammed the gears going up and down the mountain roads. And a tour of beautiful Glacier Park in a Red Jammer is more fun than a hot, crowded parade any day! And probably safer and definitely easier than riding a velocipede. :-)
Meanwhile, as the heat drags on and there's not a glacier in sight, Tessa has been finding ways to stay cool. Like sleeping with her head in the communal water dish...
...forcing Willow to complain, "Mooommm! Tess is hogging the water dish again!"
After a little intervention by Mom, all is well...
Until Tess hogs the coveted space in front of the evaporative cooler...
