Poetry, pastures and a pot of gold

From our muddy walk around Melrose last week. Above, the stone marking the site of the Eildon Tree, where in the 13th century Thomas the Rhymer is supposed to have met the Queen of the Fairies and been spirited away to Elfland from where he returned years later as a prophet. His prophesies are meant to include the death of King Alexander III in 1296, the succession of Robert the Bruce to the throne, and the Union of the Crowns in 1603.
Below, typical rolling Borders landscape.

On our drive home we passed through sun and showers, and a succession of glorious rainbows.

Disposable Gloves Dispenser

Tuesday, August 14

Mui uses disposable gloves to do all kinds of chores around the Phaeton.  They are especially handy when dumping the tanks.

At first, he was keeping the box of gloves in the wet bay, but that wasn’t ideal.  So, he shopped around for a dispenser he could mount on the inside of one of the basement doors.

Nothing he found really fit the bill, so he started thinking outside the box.  From a thrift store, he bought a mesh inbox — you know, the kind that you put on the desk to collect bills and whatnot — and he cut it down the middle.  A couple of snips of the cross wires on the bottom created a wider opening to make it easy to pull gloves out.  After filing down any rough edges, all it took to then install the dispenser was a couple of self-tapping screws.

Total cost: $1.  Can’t beat that.

When the box is empty, it can be slid out from the top to replace it with a full box.

The dispenser is on the inside of the basement door where Mui installed
the custom-built sewer hose storage tube.

I'm still here

I had the mole removed today. The procedure wasn't as difficult as I'd feared, and it won't keep me off the bike for long (I'll be back on it tomorrow morning actually). According to my doctor the most likely cause is something that happened during childhood, when most of the damage that ultimately leads to skin cancer is done.
Prior to this morning's ride I headed out to Currumbin Valley for a quick 65km. I was supposed to be relaxing myself, but my form on the bike was so poor that it probably worried me even more. Sleepless nights (which happen a lot in a Queensland summer due to the heat) can do that sometimes. I did see a few interesting things along the way -- there seem to be some new inhabitants in the valley.

They would have had to deal with a couple of storms that moved through the area last night. I heard some rain fall, but alas, I was too late to really watch the cloud lift from the surrounding mountains. I probably should have spent 15 minutes less trying to get to sleep.

I did, however, take a short walk at the end of the valley out to Cougals Cascades, largely on an "I haven't done this for a while" basis. That whole area is lovely, and getting out their early on a weekday basically meant that I had the whole area to myself. Sometimes I wish I could get out there through the week more often.

Monster Catch-Up!

Here we are, tryingto play catch-up, but we keep tellin' Ma that it's futile! She most definitely needs to post every few days heheh! (She's been flummoxed by the new blogger, cause it hasn't let her post lotsa pics that are BIG until today, when she finally figgured it out!) We're gonna attempt to bring yous alls up to date since Moab, which is hilarious, since we didn't update our Moab fun except on Facebook (check the posts out here and there at this place: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=709652356) Below...


...is Mom's and Dad's fave arch that they saw. It's name is Mesa Arch - in Canyonlands NP. Until they came to Moab area, they'd never seen or been on a mesa (wow - the views) or seen pictographs or petroglyphs. What a stunning vista!
And here we are sitting in the shade (after running around a bit, investigating...) under an amazing boulder full of pictographs. It's called the "Birthing Rock" and you can see why by looking in the upper right corner of the boulder. We had to pack up and leave the next day... for Fort Bridger, Wyoming, via Provo, Utah. After settling down, eating and sleeping that first night, we took off to explore Flaming Gorge! Guess what we saw by the roadside on our way there? A major rarity!
A herd of male Mountain Sheep! We wanted to bark loudly to announce our presence, but Ma and Pa kept feeding us goodies, so our mouths were full and we were furry cooperative to the pawrents. But as if the sheeps weren't enough, there were herds of mules deeries, which of course, we needed to bark at. It didn't do much good, cause they were perty tame...


On the way home, we had to pull over quick, cause there were just bunches of mommas and babies cows comin' down the road right towards our truckmobile with cowboys and everything. You might just as well have been in Spain at Pamplona - whee!
So we finally made our way to Jackson, Wyoming, where there is so much more wildlife and snow and... and... Above, here is a beautiful male Pronghorn.
And at Grand Teton NP, Avalon dared defy the authorities' dictum and swam in String Lake in the Park!
Not to be outdone, Sammie had to investigate the lake herself!
Later, we found these gorgeous bald eagles!
Lovely Cottonwood Creek... we didn't get to SWIM!!!
And LOOK what we found again... by the side of the ROAD!!! Buffaloos! We barked and barked, but they wouldn't go away!
Oh how beautiful! We are at Jenny Lake with Mount Moran rising behind - isn't it gorgeous? If the rangers caught us here, we'd be in deep doo doo, so we didn't get to swim!

Oh dear... Momma was walking along a beach by Jenny Lake, and a bird flew off from a small pine tree. She tried to get a pitchur of the bird, and look what she found. She took a quickie pic, and left, praying that the momma bird would come back. She did.


Then we took an amazing drive to Kelly, WY to Slide Lake, where we got to SWIM!!! Here is Avalon gliding through the waters in the afternoon sun!

One of our fave scenes on the way home from Slide Lake was this buffalo drinking from a puddle in the middle of fabulous downtown (tiny) Kelly!

You have no idea how many of these prairie doggehs made us crazy! They'd cross the road in front of our truckmobile and we jus couldn't get at 'em!!! Oh how frustrated we were! This was in the National Elk Refuge in Jackson - we've seen too much cool stuffs!

Okay... so Momzers and Dadzers took us to a cool place, outside of Jackson called Cache Creek. Tons of trails where we could go offleash and boy, did we have a great time! We got to swim in the creek and play on the trails there!
THEN... we got to go to the Bridger-Teton National Forest lands above the Elk Refuge and run our hearts out! Look at those views!Finally, we had to check out and leave for Cody - Buffalo Bill Country! Pawrents freaked out when they had to drive through three (THREE) tunnels that looked like this! They were askeered their 5th wheel wouldn't fit through this! (But it did!) And we arrived safely in Cody! Below is a collage of "The Scout" - a beautiful bronze homage to Bill Cody. We sure loved seein' it and will be back, as we are here for 4 days!!! Be seein' ya! xoxoxoxoxo

Happy New Year

This was the image on my sister's Christmas card this year, but I think he makes a good New Year's Koi too, don't you? (It seems like he's swimming in confetti.)
I was impressed that my 4th grade niece had colored such a pretty carp. Then I found out that she'd actually drawn it! She said they'd had something to copy from, but it isn't traced.
I think we've got a budding artist in the family.

Summer Mem'ries...

Mom today: for the last couple of months, I've been searching for old photos of family enjoying summers at a place we went to each year. My mother and sister are compiling family stories and photos for a book that will be published by next summer. I found many pictures that I took as a girl, teen and adult, chronicling decades of summers spent at "Camp Togus" or "Camp Killoquah" in the Adirondack mountains of upper New York state.
My parents loved black labs - here is Cleo, who, along with other family dogs, got into all kinds of trouble in the wild woods up here!
The boathouse and dock: where we cast off for lovely paddles, where we fished from, from where we dove into those velvety black waters and emerged totally refreshed!
A paddle on Forked Lake.
Secret fishing places... So many beautiful places there - lost to us today, but wonderful memories will linger forever! Have a super Friday!

Winter Sunset, Whitecaps Bay

Here's a recent sunset shot from Grand Portage. This was taken a few days ago, one of the best sunsets of this winter so far. Most of our sunsets this winter have been met with very cloudy skies but this one had a few patchy clouds, just enough to really help accent the sunset color. The temperature was relatively mild when I made this shot, but the wind was really strong off the lake, elevating the wind chill and making this shot a bit of a challenge. Even with my gloves on, my fingers had a good chill after shooting this blustery winter sunset.