Sweet Rolls :~)

Although I am healing up from a broken collar bone, I still had a stelar week!

Lowry and Colleen came to visit on Sunday   : )

Then we went to Rich and Barb's for supper - very Yummy!  : )

I made another trip into the Wildcat Hills, and my boss drove and opened all the gates while I watched.  :)

I made another trip to Glenwood to see Steve, talked about future plans, and borrowed a concrete coring drill.  (You can see our new zipline in the background.)   :)

And to top it off, Mary ( Joanne's sister in Belgrade, MT - there are a lot of Mary's in our combined family ) sent me collar bone healing sweet roll's!  They are very yummy as well!  : )

All I can say is THANKS to everyone this week - it was GREAT!

Wildcating in the Wildcat Hills

One of our latest ideas at the oil and gas  exploration company I work for puts us in a pretty rough area in western Nebraska called the Wildcat Hills.

There are no roads up into this area, the ranchers user horses and 4-wheelers to move their livestock.

We were lucky, because my boss brought his large 4 wheeler that sits 6 people from his farm about 20 miles away. 

It really rides smooth over rough terrain, and can go up amazingly steep slopes.

Even with modern gps surveying technology, people familiar with the area, and 4 wheelers we only got to look at two spots to maybe drill and still did not get the access road figured out.

It was a long day bouncing around with a broken collar bone.

However, it was going to take a lot more than that to keep me from sharing in exploring such a cool place.

Making Honey

I have a new camera that does not integrate well with this blog- so this has taken a while to work through bugs.

While I was in Glenwood visiting Steve and his family, I also got to snoop on Steve's new hobby of bee keeping and making honey!  ( Way cool!  )

Steve has his hive in an electrified anti bear / coon enclosure up in the mountains next to Glenwood.

The hive box he has is a newer design that is less stressful to the bees when you harvest honey.



One of the coolest parts of the process is that Shane and Stennor get to help!



Then after the sun does her part, there was wax to chew and wonderful honey to enjoy!

I am considering a hive for my yard project, but visiting Steve helped realize that I need to be careful on where I would put the hive.   If the bees get agitated, it could be tough to do anything close to the hive.

I will have to wait until my yard project is done and see where a quiet spot would be - if any.   It was great to learn this through his hive.

I Feel Like Hiking More This Summer

In mountain biking momentum is your friend, however sudden impacts are not... 

Looks like it is going to be a great summer for some hiking!

2011 Memorial Day - Staycation

This Memorial Day weekend we stayed in the Golden area.

We started out on Friday afternoon to evening with 6 hours of raking the front yard, laying down grass seed, and toping off with compost.   I was very lucky that I married a hard worker and that Joanne helped, or I would have been at it for 2 days.

On Saturday, I started the next phase of my gardening adventure with planting our herb garden,

our new raised bed vegtable garden,

and our new blue berry bushes.

We also got some golf in, ( Ron - look at that form and concentration - can you tell that buying supper is on the line ? :)

and some great mountain biking in!

Pretty excellent staycation!   Had to go back to work to rest up!