4th of July Fireworks

August 28, 2015

I caught a mousie!  I caught a mousie!  I caught it, I played with it, I ate part of it.  My humans will be so proud when they see what I left them!

SMOKY!  The smoke is incredibly dense.  It was like a campfire outside our bedroom as the smell wafted across as we slept.  The sky was obsured by the smoke.  You can see the haze in the pictures.  Oh well, let's fish!  Notice the bald eagle observing...

But wait... what is that on the floor?  Eeewww!  It is the hind end of a mouse!  Ewwww!  Oh no... the other night when Rudy was chasing something on the bed by my head... oh no... EEEWWWW!  I bet he brought the mouse on our bed!  GROSS!

After a brief stint of fishing (Spouse  caught a trout but we let it go), we decided to head up to Stein Mountain Lookout.  It is a fire lookout (getting lots of use this year, no doubt!), up a dirt road called 4th of July Creek.  We pack a lunch and head out.  Oh wait... left front tire is low.  Spouse uses his little compressor to fill it, and we note there is a nail in the tire...  We will take it down to Salmon tomorrow.  In the meantime, Spouse packs the compressor just in case.

The road starts out paved, going past homes on large properties.  After about a mile, we pass a sign that says 'beer' with a picture of a bear with antlers, the road turns to dirt. 

  Beautiful properties, many for sale, some with ponds, others with creeks.   The homes fade to woods, where the undergrowth is turning to the fall colors.  As the road continues, it gets a little rockier.  As we turn on the bridge crossing Big Hole Creek, the road gets a lot rockier.  Into 4wd we go, it is like riding on Indiana Jones at Disneyland.  We are going slow.  The road gets narrower.  If another car comes by, somebody is going to be doing a whole lot of backing up.  I am really glad I made that one last trip to the bathroom before we left!  The road climbs.  Look how steep it is going down!  Wow!  The road climbs through forest, then through what looks like major rock slides.  Uphill are a gazillion boulders waiting to fall to greet the gazillion boulders on the downhill side of the road.  The road gets narrower still.  We are crawling.  DON'T LOOK DOWN!  Spouse, DON'T FIDGET!  Both hands on the wheel!  We climb.  I look down and see a lake.  It is WAY down there!  Don't look!  We are uncomfortable with the way the road is slanted.  It leans to the downhill side instead of the uphill side.  I have to go to the bathroom again, and so does Spouse.  His is big potty, can he wait till we get to the watchtower...  The road is really rocky and slanted and we actually start to skid.  The 4wd does the job, but there is finally a clearing and we both 'use the bathroom'.  Not a chance to hold it a minute longer after that!   It seems we are at the top, then we turn a corner and another mountain creeps on in for us to climb!  At this point, it gets a little less rocky and we continue on.  The slant is not as bad.  Finally, we get to the top.  All I can think of is the ride back down... Ugh!

We are on top of the world.  Unfortunately, the smoke kills the view.  We can see some of the peaks popping through, but that is it.  We could only imagine what this view is like on a clear day. 

The keeper of the watchtower is Bob.  There is a weather station and a wind sock should a helicopter need to land.  The tower is roughly 20x20 with windows all around.  And this is where Bob lives 5 days a week.  His bathroom is an outhouse about 30 feet down the hill.  He does have a basement for storage, and a carport for his truck.  With his windows, there is no privacy, but who needs it there!  He has a heat stove, a mini kitchen, tools of his trade and a bed.  He has to bring his own food and water.  Occasionally, someone else will bring it up for him.  On a day like today, with so much smoke from so many fires, there is not much for him to do. So this is how he has spent his summers for the last 13 years.  Interesting.

But now, we have to go back down the mountain.  I start out walking while Spouse finishes talking to Bob and gets turned around.  I haven't been doing my walks the last couple of days so why not in this beautiful setting.  Spouse finally catches up to me and we start down.  At 'potty field' Spouse pulls over to put air in the tire.  That takes a while, so I start to walk again.  Much better to walk down this awful slanted spot than to ride in it anyway. Spouse catches up to me after a while.  We rock, we roll.  Now I am on the other side of the view looking up and looking down.  Long way down...  and steep, wow.  It is somewhat comforting knowing that we can only roll about a couple of thousand feet rather than 5 thousand feet, go figure.  We finally get down to the sane part of the road.  Spouse needs more air in the tire, so I walk, carrying a trekking pole should I need to fend off a wild critter.  Spouse finally catches up to me and we figure we better get down to Salmon and get the tire fixed.

Down to Salmon, tire fixed, grocery shopped, and dinner eaten, back up we head.  Do a little fishing on the way back.  See a beaver with his tail out of the water.  That was so cool!  No fish to catch... time to call it a night and have my vodka tonic.   Nothing like sitting outside with my cocktail and my cat with a bald eagle circling overhead.  No wonder why Rudy was uneasy!  Now he is sitting over by the recliner again... looking for his next toy to expose itself.  Ugh...