Exploring and Hiking

Yesterday was our day for exploration of the little town of Big Timber. There was a farmer's market until noon, and Janna & Mike came by the rv park around 10. They led in their vehicle, while Mark drove his Jeep for the 4 of us. We explored the farmer's market and ended up with some wonderful, fresh, whole wheat bread and some home-made sausage. Then we walked around the 2-block downtown of Big Timber and stopped in at a few shops. The men did their own shopping at the Ace Hardware, while Janna showed us the quilt store, a small boutique and the shop she used to own.

Jim wanted to find some habanero peppers, and Mark was looking for a trucker antenna for their internet air card, so Janna and Mike led us to the little (but bigger than Big Timber) town of Livingston, where we had lunch and then stopped at a Verizon store, and a Radio Shack. (There was an antenna, but not the correct adapter, so Mark decided to wait until he could talk to the folks at 3gstore.com, which is where I purchased our router and antenna. Nice folks. Real people answer the phone, and if you have a question, the same real people actually answer the question and help you out.) Then on to Albertson's. Yay, they had habaneros, so Jim was set to make another batch of his "peachanero" jelly.

When we got back to the Spring Creek RV Park, Janna and Mike left us with our goodies and we settled in for some jelly making and trip planning.

This morning, Dortha and I left the guys to do laundry while we went for a hike with Janna. Yes, the guys were invited to go on the hike, but they chose laundry instead. Hmmmm....exercise avoidance at its best! Well, they missed some awesome scenery, and the hike was pretty easy, without any really extreme climbs.

I'm not sure what the sign says for mileage, but our gps units told us we hiked about 3.5 miles round trip.

Janna and Dortha at our turn-around spot:

Which was this stream with a pretty waterfall:

There were whole hillsides covered with these beautiful wildflowers:

I was concentrating on looking at the beauty around me and watching the path where I was putting my feet when all of a sudden, Dortha, who was in the lead at that point, stopped and turned around and said she saw a bear run down the hill and across the path in front of us!

We were more alert to the possibility of seeing either the same little bear or it's mom the rest of the way back to the car!

But all we saw was a marmot, although we saw a few deer back on the road and near Janna's house where we'd left our car.

It was a beautiful hike, what a great way to start the day.

When we got back home, it was time for a little break and then we started talking trip plans again. We had our plans and reservations made as far as our next two stops, but after that we did not have the specifics down as to where and when. So we spent an hour or so discussing and making reservations, when Janna called and said they would not be able to come for dinner as planned because Mike ran into some delay on a job he was helping out with.

We rearranged our evening to prepare a quick "breakfast for dinner" meal so we could save our planned menu for tomorrow, when, hopefully, Janna and Mike will be able to join us. We were still talking about plans when all of a sudden, a storm came up and a huge gust of wind knocked a large, old cottonwood tree down just in front of our sites. Good thing it fell away from us! However, it fell right across the road out of our loop. The campground managers were able to get it taken care of nearly as soon as there was a break in the storm, and it's completely cleaned up already.

In between all the activities, I'm working on cleaning up my hard drive. By moving pictures to other storage media, I've opened up several gigs of space, but I have a ways to go. I know I should take care of that little maintenance task as I go along, but somehow, I always seem to find other things to occupy my time! Imagine that.