Where's Wayno?: Sticking around Livingston

I'll tell you what, the smoke in the region has been pretty terrible! On Saturday, September 15, the smoke billowed in from the west and we've been under it since then. Apparently all the smoke is from Washington and Oregon. For some reason, this smoke has really activated my hay fever! Oh well. I'm just going to deal with it as best as I can. Thank God for meds! At least today I can actually see Electric Peak out my window again!

On September 12 Jean and I went to Livingston to eat at Montana's Rib & Chop House to celebrate birthdays with Dad, Bonnie, Chris, Edie, Janet, and her husband. It's an annual event that we do. It's interesting that Chris' and Bonnie's birthdays are on the same day and year. It's now official--my dad is 60 years old now! Oops--did I let that slip?

Dessert at Montana's Rib & Chop House

Also this week I finished making the DVD of Betty's Memorial Service and her slideshow. I got slowed down by a couple of factors--proprietary HD video formats and faulty machines at Insty Prints in Livingston (that company has always done a great job on my DVD projects, by the way, so I was happy to wait for the machine to be fixed). I sent out the first few DVDs on Friday.

Jean has been growing a garden this year. She's gotten some nice-looking tomatoes, some big zucchini, a couple squash, and some big sunflowers and hollyhocks. Yesterday I measured her sunflower at 100 inches, give or take an inch.

Jaret and I hiked to West Boulder Meadow on Saturday September 15. It was good to hang out with him. Usually our schedules don't work out together but this time they did. After picking him up at his house, we drove southeast from Livingston on Swingley Road past Ellis Basin to get to West Boulder River.

Ellis Basin

The Pine Creek Fire is still active, which is on the other side of the mountains from where we were hiking. That fire is 8,509 acres at present and is 51% contained. It's about 11 miles from where we were hiking, so we were well away from it.

We started walking from West Boulder Campground to the south. The hike follows a lovely forest for about a mile and a half before it comes out into an open burned forest for the rest of the distance. We crossed the river on a footbridge and hiked up switchbacks a short distance before heading south again toward the meadow. Once we were there, we stayed in the north end. The autumn foliage is out now, and the colors were great. In the meadow, the West Boulder River's beach is sandy, but as one gets to the north end of the meadow, it turns into rocks. The area was full of granite, quartz, and limestone. The cliffs around us at the meadow appeared to be made of limestone. We saw a lot of rose hips and snow berries too. Round-trip, we hiked about six miles. Along the route we saw a grouse, a couple healthy white-tailed deer, and Angus cattle.