on saturday while bob, scott and others sorted off the dry cows, trav, dorothy, dallas and i went and gathered up these 16 pairs and put them in the corrals. not really sure why we did... because bob, scott and i turned right around and kicked them back out sunday morning:
this is why i just do what i'm told up there, when i'm told to do it. it's the easier thing. :-)
but they did all look very pretty kicked out on the green meadow just above the house. we've had another wet spring here in wyoming, with quite a bit of rain, really, so everything's all green and growing and the pastures look great.
lucy got to spend the whole weekend with her sisters, except for when we went back to town sunday to mow the yard and trim the grass around the house. this is her with meg, the short, broad puppy with an attitude and ears like a bear.
the fishing reservoir up at the association got a hole in it somewhere this spring, and it's quickly losing water, and it's a shame because it was a really nice reservoir, with quite a few fish. various family members and friends have been trying to fish out of it and catch as many as they can before it runs completely dry.
as soon as we were finished riding sunday morning i headed back into town to look after my yard. lucy and i mowed and went and got some grass clippers and trimmed around everything, and we finished potting flowers and cleaned the roundup office before heading back up to the ranch and getting there about an hour before dark.
monday morning wasn't very busy, and that's when we all piled in the truck for a driving tour of the nearby reservoirs.
we drove over to look at pathfinder dam, which is closer to spilling over than it has been in a long time. i'd never seen it, or the reservoir, so it was kinda neat to walk over the dam, which was built in 1909.
scott walked over it with me and patiently carried the camera bag while i took pictures. along the way we encountered this sign, which scott is reminding me of in the photo below as i walked off the trail to get a better photo angle on the dam.
but how else was i supposed to get this picture, without leaving the trail? right now reclamation is letting water through the tunnel at 1,000 cubic feet per second. it was really gushing. and i didn't fall into the canyon, and it wasn't fatal.
this is the view looking downcountry from pathfinder. the water makes its way through fremont canyon before getting caught again in alcova reservoir, then being let out into the north platte river and flowing southeast through wyoming before getting to the nebraska border.
this is pathfinder reservoir, with ferris mountain in the background. it'd be a pretty lake on which to boat, but i have no boat, and scott is scared to death of water.
we took all three puppies with us on the driving tour. this is meg and sugar.
when we got back to headquarters scott and i grabbed our guns and some shells and took off again, stopping first to have another look at my heifer. you can't see the brand very well in this photo because the zoom on my little red camera isn't that good, but she's got a 'lazy v' on her shoulder and an 'open A' on her hip. and my earmark in her right ear.
on our way out to the pickapin hunting grounds scott kept stopping when he saw one and shooting out the window, until i finally said, should i get my gun out too or what?
turns out there weren't too many out to shoot. although it was sunny it was a little breezy and chilly, so i think most of them were in their burrows. i did get a few, and a few prairie dogs. lucy helped me find them. ok not really - although she wasn't scared of the guns, she was bored and thought they were too loud and stayed in the truck most of the time.
i was using the rifle that my dad gave me last christmas in exchange for the colt pistol i'd had. i haven't really used it a whole lot, so it was nice to get it out and mess around with it.
the first pictures we took made scott look really short, so this is the second try. :-) he's got his earplugs in because he was shooting a couple of his pistols, which are really quite loud.
so after spending an hour or so hunting down small rodents, we had to head back to headquarters so i could load up my mares and get them back to town by 4 to meet my horseshoer, who made a special exception for me and came to trim them at the fairgrounds even though it was memorial day. scott and friend jamie are convinced he's got a thing for me, but come on, he's like 65 years old.
following the hoof trimming i put the horses back at jake's, visited with him for a few and then headed over to trav and dorothy's for a rib dinner, accompanied by grilled asparagus, mushroom scalloped potatoes and all kinds of good stuff.
i got back to my house about 9:30, and that was pretty much the end of memorial day weekend. it was very busy, with not much relaxing, but it was a lot of fun.
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