SkyWatch Friday: "Harvest Moonday" Hike, Early Snow

It's been a week of many seasons - Monday and Tuesday were definitely summer, with highs of 90ºF. Most nights and early mornings recently have had the chill of Autumn to them, and Wednesday was a chilly, rainy, Fallish day. Wednesday night and Thursday we were under a Winter Storm Warning and it snowed several inches (14" in our neighboring, higher elevation town of Story and up to 18" in parts of the Big Horns). Though we didn't get nearly that much (about 4" at our house), by early this morning our temp had dropped to 19ºF.

But let's begin with the summery weather and Harvest Moon of Monday, before the flowers, trees and shrubs were dealt such a cruel blow that also likely annihilated our chances for fall foliage.

Monday morning, before it got too hot, we loaded up the dogs and took them walking on a new extension of the wonderful Sheridan Pathways system (on the attached map, it's the red and black path near the bottom right, running between the yellow and purple signal light symbols). This part of the path leaves very busy Brundage Avenue and as it heads toward Sheridan College it takes you into a different world… one of trees and marshes and birdsong and tranquility. And shade - which was our chief objective on such a warm, sunny morning!

Here are BW, Willow and Josie crossing one of two handsome footbridges that cross the marshy stream meandering through this area...

Once over the footbridge (you can just see it in the bottom right of this next photo) and out of the trees and into the meadows, you get to enjoy this beautiful view of the soon-to-be-snowcapped Big Horn Mountains (if you know where to look, you can even see the road that led to our old house on its way over the mountains!)…

Look at that clear blue cloudless sky!

Oops, I spoke too soon. Startin' to cloud up. :-)

And you thought I was joking about it clouding up, didn't you? ;-)

Here's Willow enjoying a rest in the shade back at the trailhead after our walk. Notice her leg draped elegantly over my foot, her way of keeping me from wandering off! :-) …

She was intently watching BW deploy our wonderful PetLoader, which Tess demonstrates...

That night, of course, unveiled the full Harvest Moon, seen here rising over the dry hills to our east...

Rarely satisfied with how my moon closeups turn out, I decided to have some fun and make this one a little funkadelic….

And now for a too-soon taste of things to come, the wintery scene from our patio yesterday…

We covered our front flowerbed Wednesday night, but could do nothing for our large rose bush except pluck this last beautiful, fragrant bloom and bring it inside to enjoy for a while. The bergamot on the right had already broken off when I went out at 5:30am to knock the snow off the trees and shrubs, so I brought it in, too. I think the rose looks sad, and doubt the reassurance that our temps will return to the 80's early next week offers much consolation…

Wishing you a week of lovely skies! 

We'll be spending it in Big Sky Country (Montana) with our dogs and camper! 

SkyWatch Friday: Happy houses for "Flutter Mouses!" :-)

Last month, during our long stretch of balmy weather, we took the dogs to the Sheridan VA Medical Center a couple of times for fun romps. The VAMC has been on BW's UPS route for years, and he enjoys taking his lunch break there - it's a beautiful place of panoramic mountain views, lovely parade grounds and handsome old buildings (it began life as Fort MacKenzie in 1898, and the first troops stationed there, in 1901, were "Buffalo Soldiers"). Though BW knows the VAMC well, our off-road hiking led to some fun new discoveries - including a very impressive array of bat houses! We estimated that there were about 50 of them and they stretched for close to a mile. Some looked a bit aged and weathered, others brand new. We have no idea what their story is, but my theory is that they're made by some of the resident Veterans as a therapeutic project. I think that would be great - something that helps the vets and the bats!

By the way, I much prefer the German word for "bat" - Fledermaus, which translates to "flutter mouse!" :-)

On our first visit I didn't have my camera, so I insisted we return the following weekend - Thanksgiving weekend - so I could photograph them (and some other goodies, fodder for future blog posts). As you'll see, we enjoyed quite a variety in weather and skies during the hour or so we spent there...

Living in community 

That large building in the background is the commanding officer's quarters. More staff residences follow the line of bat houses into the distance. Having bats as neighbors provides great benefits, as a single little brown bat can eat 1000 mosquito-sized insects per hour. And that's just one benefit bats provide to their eco-systems, and to humans. The vast majority of bats (2/3) are insect eaters, consuming many insects that are damaging to crops or that spread diseases. Most of the remaining 1/3 are fruit and nectar eaters, making them important pollinators and essential seed dispersers, playing an especially major role in rainforest regeneration. (Read more about the benefits of bats).

Mystery solved!

The actual houses face toward the mountains and away from the VA grounds, so when we first saw them from behind they just looked like a lot of very tall blank plywood signs! As we approached them to see what, if anything, was on the mountain side of them, we could start to see that they were three-dimensional and not just flat squares of plywood, but agreed they were awfully tall to be birdhouses. So I guessed they might be bat houses, and ta da! Indeed they were. I love the little bat image to help clarify it (for the humans rather than the bats, I'm sure!) :-)

Vacancy 

It's definitely the off-season, as bats in temperate climates must hibernate or migrate to warmer places. But we look forward to seeing how many residents might show up with the insects this spring!

A well-planned community

Bat Conservation International provides great instructions and tips on building and/or installing bat houses, and it sure looks like the VAMC definitely did everything right.

No trespassing!

The metal sleeve helps keep any predators from reaching the bat bedrooms!

And isn't the sunlight pretty on the distant dry hills? The views are lovely in every direction.

A vibrant, diverse neighborhood

That huge brush pile on the right, which extends well beyond the edge of this photo, is a popular habitat for many more critters, especially bunnies!

Rooms with a view

That bats are blind is one of the many myths surrounding these misunderstood critters. Though they use echolocation (sonar) to navigate in the dark, which allows them - through sound alone - to see everything but color in great detail, many also have excellent sight vision. So this spectacular view is not wasted on them! :-)

Learn more about the fascinating lives and myriad benefits of bats, install your own bat house(s), and/or help bat conservancy with a visit to Bat Conservation International!

:-)

And, as always, enjoy wonderful glimpses of skies around the world with a visit to...

PNW Road Trip: Day 2 - Wanapum-Lymans-Seattle

Welcome to Day #2 of our road trip from Sheridan, WY to the PNW!

Ah, road signs... we adored many things about Washington State, but their road signage wasn't one of them. When it came to giving an adequate heads up or marking street names, WA seems to follow what my college communications professor called The COIK Principle: "COIK" = "Clear Only If Known." And since it was all new territory to us and definitely not known, and we don't have GPS, we wore more baffled looks and executed more bat turns than we'd have liked! (It wasn't just Washington, we had issues with Missoula, too! And while I'm the first to admit I have no sense of direction, BW was a highly trained and skilled USAF navigator so I'm pretty sure it wasn't our fault). :-)

Anyway, our whining about Washington's inadequate signs began when we crossed the state line from Idaho the day before. I'd intended to get a photo of it like I did the giant welcoming Idaho sign, but we got a foreshadowing of things to come when we saw the barely noticeable (and completely unphotographable) "entering Washington" sign. It was on the left side in the median (who puts them there on a 70mph Interstate?) and might - MIGHT - have measured 18"x24". Washington was far more friendly and welcoming than their official welcoming sign would lead one to believe!

But the little town of George (get it? I love that!) did a much better job 150 miles later...

Frankly, it wasn't till George's exit sign that I realized the highway number background

was George Washington's profile instead of just a random blob! :-)

I also thought their water tower was clever in its simplicity and clarity (and I like to think I know a good SkyWatch candidate when I see one, lol)...

Or when I see another one! ;-) ...

Wind farm near the Columbia River

Our friend Andrea in Seattle sent me an email the day before we left home that suggested "stopping at the Columbia River Gorge in Eastern WA. It's kind of a rest stop (with no facilities) but it is very beautiful to walk the paths leading to the cliffs overlooking the river. You have to actually walk down, not just look from the parking area. The vegetation is more like what you'd expect in New Mexico than Wash. — very desert-like and beautiful. I don't think you can access the area on your way home so try to stop. It's worth it!"

And so we did, and she was right! These next few photos are from our 30-minute stopover overlooking the Columbia River and Gingko Petrified Forest/Wanapum State Parks in the Wanapum Recreational Area. We were glad Andrea told us about it, otherwise we'd have driven right past the turnoff to it (I doubt I need to mention how discretely it was marked)...

The informational sign at this spot identified the winding dirt road below as a remnant of an early day "post road," the pre-railroad dirt (and later macadam) roads built for the distribution of US mail, and went on to say, "The first roads in this area were constructed in about 1918 and followed the contour of the hillside down to a ferry landing." This road served until 1930, when an improved highway was constructed.

And do you know what this is?...

Why, a fork in the road, of course! Every road trip comes upon one eventually. ;-)
(Sorry, couldn't resist!)

It was still morning but already getting to be hot and hazy, yet I still think this was a lovely scene looking down the Columbia River past the Vantage Bridge (which we crossed shortly after resuming our trip)...

The Columbia, meanwhile, flows on past Wanapum State Park, Yakima Training Center, and then winds around the notorious DOE Hanford Site where dreadful things threaten it, but thankfully devoted people are working diligently to protect it. 

Speaking of devoted people working diligently to protect what's important... we stopped in Ellensburg for a wonderful visit (and delicious lunch) with our friends Howard and Willow Jeane Lyman...

We've known Howard and Willow Jeane since August 2000 when we met them through our neighbor Vistara, who's known them for decades from their mutual hometown of Great Falls, MT. The day we met and spoke to Howard is the day we went vegan, so how appropriate that I'm getting to post this on the first day of our "veganniversary" month! :-)

Howard and Willow Jeane are not only wonderful people and generous hosts, they also have a delightful home and garden that we really enjoyed getting to see. Willow Jeane is an extremely talented and prolific quilter (as is her daughter Laura, who owns a huge quilt shop in Billings, MT), so I wasn't surprised to see that she has a fantastic and colorful quilting room which I photographed not only for this post but also for my friend Jo (aka AdventureJo), also a quilter extraordinaire...

Willow Jeane's impressive "fabric stash"

Note her prize ribbons (probably only a small sampling!), and her ironing board cover, because here's a closeup of the same fabric, designed by her local quilt guild and also used for her sewing machine cover...

The ladies all represent the guild members, with words and phrases that have personal meaning to them. Of course, the words "Road Trip" jumped right out at me! :-)

This gorgeous quilt, which rightfully has pride of place in the Lyman's living room, took Willow Jeane about 2 years to complete, though she said she set it aside from time to time when she "got sick of it." I understand, I've got cross stitch projects like that. Heck sometimes this blog is like that! :-) ...

Here's the beautiful spread that Willow Jeane and her sister (who was there on her annual summer visit from Great Falls) had prepared for us! Lots of local organic produce - including two varieties of heirloom tomatoes - from the Ellensburg Farmer's Market, lemon-blueberry scones with homemade preserves, breakfast casserole, and crispy hash browns. Need I say it was all incredibly delicious? Didn't think so...

Willow Jeane was kind enough to share her recipes for the lemon-blueberry scones and breakfast casserole (pictured below on the left), both of which you'll find here. She also passed along her great tip for putting the crispy "brown" in oil-free hashbrowns (pictured on the right): Grate cooked & cooled potatoes. Toss with onion granules and bake on parchment paper for an hour or so. It's the onion granules that brown so you need to cover the potatoes well...

We filled our plates (with the first round of helpings!) and took them outside to dine al fresco under their shady Wisteria and Virginia Creeper-covered arbor (a bit of which is visible on the right) in their lush and lovely back yard they created from bare dirt and rock since moving here seven years ago...

I loved this beautiful suncatcher mobile under the arbor, made by a local artist from found bits of glass and a piece of driftwood...

All good things must end, so after a very fun visit we had to grudgingly depart and finish our drive to Seattle, where we planned to stock up on Remedy Teas (which I'm addicted to thanks to gifts of it from my friend Rose!), check into our hotel, and then meet our friend Mike for some fun activities (like a ride on the Seattle Great Wheel) before our 6:30 dinner reservations at Sutra. But we left the Lyman's an hour later than we'd planned, and shortly afterward got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic driving through the Cascades at an average of 2mph (when it moved at all). So instead of arriving in Seattle at 3pm, we barely made it in time to grab the tea, check into the hotel and make it to the restaurant on time. Such a bummer, especially since it was the only time we were going to get to spend with Mike, whom we hadn't seen since he stayed with us during his move from Portland, ME to Seattle 10 years ago! Oh well, all you can do (besides cuss the traffic jam, which I did impressively) is roll with it. At least the scenery was even more impressive than my cussing! :-)

On our way to our whirlwind stop at Remedy Teas, I got my first glimpse of the iconic Space Needle and insisted that BW detour a block and stop so I could get this photo - dinner reservations be damned!...

I'm smitten with the Space Needle, so you'll be seeing much more of it in the next posts!

We stayed at the Watertown Inn, which was wonderfully located and surprisingly affordable (thanks in no small part to their generous military discount), not to mention clean and comfortable, friendly and attractive...

But the best part was our room's awesome views!...

Seattle's skyline, with the Space Needle on the right

and Mt. Rainier (taken through our window at dawn the next day with my telephoto)

We had a few minutes to gape out the windows and snap the photos, hurl water on our faces and toothpaste at our teeth, and then it was off to meet with Mike - who'd been parked outside patiently waiting for us - and zip off to Sutra...

BW and Mike with their biggest fan. *snork*

Sutra's pre-set five-course gourmet vegan dinner menu, whose content and pricing varies daily, was a relatively extravagant ($40 per person + tax and tip) experience that interested BW more than it did me. As a simple woman with more frugal dining habits, I'd had my heart set on eating at PizzaPi for years - since Mike used to live just down the block from it and would torment me with emails about it - but since Sutra gets rave reviews and is a very popular and pretty unique dining experience, when Mike suggested it for dinner that night we agreed.

Sutra is a very small place. Only open for dinner and with just 1-2 seatings a night, reservations are pretty much mandatory and they turn people away on a regular basis. Their web site says they can comfortably accommodate 35, but we take issue with the "comfortably" part. In their defense, it was 92º in Seattle that day, which doesn't happen often and so they weren't equipped for it. No a/c, no windows that open, and that fan you see in the photo with BW and Mike? Just a prop, really - the door was closed when everyone was seated and there were no fans operating that we could see or feel. And it didn't help that they served us warm water! The place was filled to capacity and we were squeezed into a tiny table in the far back corner right near the kitchen, which is open to the dining area as you can see from this photo I took from my seat... 

Hot as it was where I was sitting, I can't imagine working over that hot stove!

The dining room has high ceilings and hardwood floors, so when it's filled with the noise of chattering diners, the extraneous background music, and the bang and clatter of the kitchen, the acoustics are awful. We had to strain to hear each other and make ourselves heard over the din. Add to that the stifling heat, warm water and cramped seating, and it wore us out. So, low marks from us for ambience and comfort, at least on a hot summer evening.

As for the food... 

All the dishes were creative, interesting, beautifully plated and very tasty medleys of textures, colors and flavors. We love that it's all vegan (of course), organic and local, and prepared fresh daily. 

In the interest of space, I created a collage of the meal's five courses. But those of you who enjoy oogling food porn (and you know who you are!) can click on each course title for the larger version. I've also typed up that night's menu verbatim, but please don't ask me what most of these ingredients are (e.g. shunkyo radish, scape, urfa, aprium, mofongo), for I was clueless in Seattle. nyuck-nyuck!...

Tonight's Menu

First & Second Course (plated together)

English Pea-Hempcream-Yuzu Soup served aside a Salad of Frisee-Shunkyo Radish-Pickled Scape-Sonata Cherry & Candied Sunflower with a Lemon Balm Dressing

Third Course

Miso-Urfa Biber-Zucchini-Tokyo Turnip "Lasagna" with Grilled Aprium and a 

Sea Bean-Arame-Shiso Slaw finished with Truffle Oil and a Balsamic Reduction

Fourth Course

Fava Bean & Fig Roasted Cauliflower-Spinach-Parsley Mofongo with Cashew Cheese Stuffed Grey Morel, a Chile-Saffron-Saskatoon Sauce & Fried Caper Berry

Fifth Course

Pistachio Brittle Crusted Cacao-Coconut-Rose Tort and Fresh Strawberry Blueberry

Sounds pretentious (or elegant, depending on your perspective) as all get-out, doesn't it? (But I'm sorry, am I the only one who can never hear "fava bean" without immediately thinking of Hannibal Lecter?!) Anyway, point is it was all mighty tasty, but my favorites were absolutely the meal's bookends - the soup and dessert. That soup may not look like much, but it was the best soup I've ever had! We all agreed. (Which is quite an accomplishment on the chef's part, because who wants soup when it's 125º??) I want to weep when I think that I'll probably never get to taste it again - if only they'd ship me a barrel of it every month! (Or at least share the recipe!) The dessert, subbed with blueberries when it was discovered the strawberries had sold out, was as amazing as it looks and sounds. I can't imagine it tasting any better with the strawberries. So, high marks from us for the food, very high marks for the dessert, and stratospheric marks for the soup! 

After dinner Mike took us on a little tour of the neighborhoods between Sutra and the Watertown Inn before dropping us off there at 9pm, with promises from all of us that we won't let another decade go by before we get together again! We got back to our room in time to enjoy seeing the city lights all aglow as full darkness fell, but since we had another very full day ahead of us we crashed shortly thereafter. So I'm afraid the only scenes of Seattle nightlife you're going to get from me is the pretty neon mural in the hotel lobby! :-)

To view skies and skylines by day and by night, 

you know where to go!...

Happy Birthday wishes to you on Sunday, AdventureJo! :-)

Other PNW Road Trip Posts:

Day #1, Part 1: Butte

Day #1, Part 2: Missoula-Idaho-Spokane
Day #3, Part 1: Seattle's Chihuly Garden and Glass

Nature hike and Mocha howdy

Last Sunday was a perfect June day as well as the last day of BW's week of vacation, so we loaded up the girls and drove to the ranch where Mocha lives to go on a nature hike and then visit Mocha. I took along my easy-to-tote Kodak, so here are some photos from our expedition!

I took this photo of this antelope buck and his posse from the Jeep on our way to the gravel pit road where we hike. I was glad my Kodak has a good telephoto lens, because they had bounded quite a distance away before feeling safe enough to pose for a group photo!...

I don't know if we frightened this little Killdeer from her nesting area or what, but as we walked past a sandy area beside the road, she sort of jumped-flew out in front of us and did a funny little dance several times, then insisted on running ahead of us for the rest of our uphill walk! If we lagged behind too much she'd wait for us, looking back over her shoulder rather impatiently (as she was doing in this photo) till we caught up enough to satisfy her. She wouldn't let me get much closer than 10 yards or so, so I took this with my telephoto and cropped it so she'd be in the bottom left corner of the picture and easier to spot - she's really camouflaged against those beige stones and grasses!...

BW spied this pretty little cactus-looking flower, but I haven't had time to identify it yet. Do any of you know what it is? (Anyone? Anyone?) :-)...

Now this blooming flower I DO know. It's the infamous Crazy-Dog Plant! :-) Josie seems quite pleased with herself for posing so perfectly between these two budding Yucca flowers...

I love this photo so decided to have a little editing fun with it...

Mocha has been back in out in the pasture and reunited with his old buddies from last summer, Prairie and Flame, for for a couple of weeks and is looking great! He's put on weight and is sleek and shiny, and galloped and pranced like a colt when he saw us...

L-R Prairie, Flame and Mocha

He seemed eager to show off his hair accessories, of which he was quite proud, so I told him I'd put a photo of his new fashion statement on the blog for everyone to admire. When Josie overheard this, she insinuated herself into the photo - so please don't fail to admire her, too, 'cause that's how feelings can get hurt. ;-)

Speaking of Josie, for those of you keeping track, her heart function blood work came back inconclusive, scoring fairly near the low (good) end of the "gray area" range between definitely no heart disease and definite heart disease. Since she did well on this hike and on our walks since and has no other symptoms in her heart sounds or on her xrays, rather than running further tests our vet has me keeping a log of our walks - the temperature, distance walked, how far she gets before (and how many times) she demands a break. I call it the "Josie Crap-out Log" and between thee and me, I think Josie's quite pleased to have taken her high-maintenance reputation to a new level! :-)