Been a long time gone!!

Well, I'm back! I didn't disappear from the earth after all.......just lazy and to busy to post. Sorry.

So, what has gone on in the past two years....lots! The usual spring, summer, fall, winter stuff. All the Holidays and trips to family gatherings and campouts,a great trip to my Daughters to go to the big quilt show in Houston where her quilt ( that took her 11 years to finish) was entered,

and a good visit with the Grandkids and I even found an arrowhead up on the hill by their house and got to see what a "horney toad" really looks like! There's been many fishing trips and many flies tied,

lots of knitting, basket making, beading,

and COOKING.....my new passion! I'm going to weigh a TON!!

We even ran into a herd of elk up where we pick mushrooms this last spring! Too cool! Right now I'm trying to figure out how to deal with a new laptop computer and all that it does, which is a LOT more than my old desktop! Maybe that's because my old one is 6 years old which means the software is, too. Lots of cool things have happened to computer software in the past 6 years.

Well, that's about all for now....we went fishing on the Grand Ronde a couple weeks ago. I caught a 20 inch or so Dolly Varden but since they're protected in Washington, it went back in the river, not the skillet! My DH, Larry, hooked a HUGE steelhead, but it joined my Dolly (NOT Larry's idea, either). Our Son, Aaron, got a really good look at it, since he was about to grab it for his Dad, when it pulled the hook straight and got off. Aaron said it was at least 36 inches maybe more. The river was high and fast and all our favorite places to stand were under water. Don't think Spring fishing on that river is for me......I'll stick to October on the Ronde!

Hope everyone has a great spring.......I can't wait for the morels to pop up!

Well, here we are, almost to Thanksgiving and I never got around to the rest of our Summer Trip. Maybe later..... Been busy around here. Lots of Fall Color and projects, mainly baskets, to get done. This is apt to be a topsy turvy blog today. My Daughter is making me feel really guilty about not putting anything on my blog, so here goes.

Speaking of Fall Color, guess what......it happens everyplace!! Even at our fishing grounds!! The River was so pretty this year.

I guess we've never hit it "just right" before, but this year the colors were so vibrant and the air so crisp, (and water soooooooooooo COLD), it was definitely Fall! This is at our yearly trek to the Grande Ronde River in the southeastern corner of Washington. We didn't catch any BIG fish, but had lots of fun anyway. You can see the "monsters" I caught! By the way, all of our fish were returned to the water unharmed, so they could grow bigger so we can catch them again next year!
This fish was all of about 10 inches long.

And I didn't measure this one!



My husbands luck was just like mine (we're a matched pair!)

Here's what it looked like right outside our trailer door. This is where I paddled around. No fast water for me!


We saw lots of wildlife, mostly deer, but the sheep did put in an appearance,


and there was one really nice ram in the bunch.

We didn't see as many quail as usual, but I did manage to get a nice snapshot of one. They're so cute!

I love to see them in the spring when all the little babies are trailing Mom.

Before we left (in October) we got our grapes and potatoes harvested. There weren't as many grapes this year as usual, either,

but what was there was really nice. I gave three big lugs to a friend of mine who makes raisins out of them.
This year I decided not to have a garden.......so I planted my garden spot in fingerling potatoes. I've never tried to grow these before. I had maybe 10 short rows of them and got 140 pounds of fingerlings!!! We're set for the winter when it comes to potatoes!!



In September we went camping with my Sister and Brother-in-Law. Had a good long weekend just doing nothing!

We took the 4-wheeler so the guys could go hunting and get wood,


for our morning wake-up fires.

They brought their new puppy, Bandit, who has sooooooooooooo much ENERGY!!!

And we brought our two "mellow" family members, Charlie (the one under the blanket)

and Tippie (also under a blanket!)



He's such a sweet little thing. A very timid chihuahua. Charlie loves to oversee any card playing that might be going on!



Besides vegging out by the fire, I showed my Sister how to make a basket and hers came out so cool, but I didn't get a picture of it! It was her first basket, too!! She decided she needed to refresh her shooting skills, so she wounded several trees while killing targets!

Wouldn't want to get caught skulking around her place!
Speaking of baskets.....
here's the baskets I've been working on, Thanksgiving presents, Christmas presents, and just fun baskets to make. The bird houses are all hanging in our yard, waiting for some little bird to need shelter this winter.







This is my Farmer's Market basket that was so much fun to take with me when I shopped our local Farmer's Market. Somehow it was alot more fun to fill it up with yummy stuff, knowing I'd made the basket!


Here's my "Cake Taker" basket with a Pineapple-Mango Upside-Down cake in it.

This is a wee tiny basket I made for my Daughter. I filled it with Everlasting and it came out so cute. She makes beautiful dolls and this was supposed to come out small enough for one of them to carry, but I'll bet it's probably sitting by her work station being a "supply" basket!



My Daughter has around 20 (or so) chickens, so I made her this to gather her eggs in.



The first egg basket I made came out so weird that it won't stand up, so I put a solid bottom in this one so it definitely will sit without toppling over!



My Niece always has us to her home for Christmas dinner and I like to take her something special for all the work she goes to. This year she's getting a double wine basket. Now I just have to put some wine in it!

Her it is all decorated and ready for "wine".


We're headed to my Sisters for Thanksgiving. She decorates her house so pretty for the holidays, so I made her a cornucopia and filled it with Fall leaves and a cute little artificial quail. She can swap out what's inside so she can use it year round if she wants to.


So, there's what I've been up to. Maybe this winter I'll get around to blogging about the rest of our summer trip. I've got lots of pictures, just not much time to tell about it. January is always such a blah month......maybe then.
Hope you all have a very Happy and safe Holiday Season!

Crater Lake

The trip to our Daughter's was really fun, since we took our 10 year old Granddaughter, Lacey, with us. We've been to Glacier, Yellowstone and the Tetons, but Lacey hasn't so we decided to make this a "National Park" trip. Our first "Park" was Crater Lake. Oregon has some beautiful country and Crater Lake is a part of it.

Even though it was the middle of July, actually the 20th, there was still snow in the high country, yet the wild flowers were in full bloom. I guess their warm seasons are short lived so you see flowers that bloom in summer popped up right along side of early spring flowers. The shoulders of the road were ablaze with color in places, but it was always places that we couldn't stop to get a picture!

Coming into the Park you can see how high you're getting. Due to all the forest fires in California, we had a lot of smoke in the air, so our views were pretty "smoggy".

But once there, it was still inspiring! This usually doesn't happen....me in a photo! I'm always the one behind the camera, but since Lacey was happily snapping pictures, I guess she made my DH feel guilty, so he even snapped a few, this being one of them.

Lacey and I found out later that we were in a spot that we weren't supposed to be in (off the beaten path)! Oh well, really a pretty view from here.

Rather than try to tell you all about Crater Lake, the tourist info placard pretty much says it all. Much easier to take a picture than try to remember everything.

Looking straight down was awesome! I couldn't believe the color of the water...an electric blue and green in places. I'm sure the entire Lake probably looks like this on clear "smokeless" days.

So, here's the two of us, as seen by Lacey, looking like Old Fart Tourists, especially my DH! I wonder what else he could have hung around his neck! He still looks like a tourist, too, since he bought a T-shirt at every Park we went to (and wears one every day).

So now we leave the Park on or way to points beyond.

Coming down from on top, the forest and canyons are incredible. The trees are HUGE! We stayed that night just across the Oregon line in Nevada. The next morning we were treated to an AWESOME sunrise!

It was cloudy off and on all day, so it made for nice driving...not too hot. We didn't see any wild horses. I'd been watching for them since I'd heard about them getting so over-populated in Nevada that they were trying to give them away. I didn't realize that it was on their preserve that they were having a problem and that's in the southern part of the State. We did see lots of antelope....

And wild donkeys!

Even some babies!!

As the day wore on, we drove by a couple of rain storms, but they never reached us. They just sort of appeared out of nowhere, emptied their contents and disappeared back into nowhere.

This area isn't much for scenery. I need trees and mountains! I don't think I could live in a place like this....much too flat and too much nothing! So ended our second day of driving. Next up, Zion National Park.