Sunday, July 15, 2007

This Is What Happens When Sunday Morning Is Spent With Papa

You get Goat Yoghurt and Green Peas.


And Time is wasted at the village cafe dinking iced coffee.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Modern Day Ghost Town

Have you ever driven through or visited somewhere that seemed eerie yet warmly fascinating? Well, last month on my cross-country journey I stumbled upon such a place. The town was Jeffrey City, Wyoming. It was just a small dot on the road atlas, but as I drove through and past the town, I found myself pulling a u-turn to get a closer look.
Looks like a deserted suburbia

Jeffrey City was a ghost town. It was not your typical "old" ghost town or the "slowly everyone moves away" town. Jeffrey City had modern townhouses, a large school, typical service stations, library, a bowling alley-all closed. I saw one skinny older gentleman wearing an army green jumpsuit smoking outside of one of the boarded-up townhouses, but when I circled around a minute later he was gone.
One of the several townhouses

I pulled over on the edge of town just past the large empty school to snap some pictures and take a quick walk down one of the desolate city streets. I noticed an antelope was keeping a close eye on me. I wondered if the guy in green was as well.
The antelope keeping an eye on me

The whole time I was thinking "what happened to this place?" I mean it was out in the middle of nowhere-at least 60 miles from a decent sized town. Which made me think "why was anyone out here in the first place?". I figured maybe some type of mining, but it seemed so much different than the mining towns of Minnesota, the UP of Michigan, and Northern Idaho that I was familiar with.
The remaining foundation of a one time resident of Jeffrey City

I hopped back in my car, drove back through the downtown snapping a couple more pictures, and then headed off down the highway to try and find a place to pitch my tent before darkness settled in.

I'm glad my car needed no services

I gave the place little thought until I loaded my pictures onto my computer. Even then I just showed Moh the photos and told her about the "weird, creepy place" I visited. It wasn't until today that I had a vision of the town and the guy in green that I decided to Google Jeffrey City to find out once and for all it's history. Here's the story if anyone is interested.

The House of Worship.....Still in use?

Sunday, July 08, 2007

I'm Back........A Nutshell Posting

Okay, I know I have a lot of explaining to do, but honestly I have been busy. The move took longer than I expected, I had to take the train back to pick up our car in Wisconsin, I started working right away, and it took what seems like forever to get internet up here.

So with all of that in mind, I'll try to continue.

We ended up moving into a condo on the Schweitzer Mountain ski resort. We can only stay through mid November so we'll miss the ski season. It's not ideal, but the rent is reasonable, the landlord is chill with dogs, and we were able to line things up from Wisconsin. Plus the views are great from the bay window.





Driving over 2000 ft into town isn't the most fun. In addition I pretty much killed my car driving it through Wyoming completely loaded down.



It's starting to smoke on occasion so the engine doesn't have much longer. I'm trying to find a reasonable VW TDI that I can run on biodiesel. I found one I want, but it's in Dallas and I'm not sure if I'm up for a road trip yet.

As for work, right now I'm doing odd jobs for someone. It pays much better than most work around here. There was a state park job I was interested in, but it only paid $7.00 an hour. Hopefully something will come up soon.

As for the weather...it sucks. Too hot for me, even up on the mountain. Over the 4th we took a trip up to Kootenay Lake in BC. We went up north of Kaslo where the temps cooled down a bit. Plus the lake was colder than all heck. It was a nice getaway. Really it was our first leisurely trip since KIA was born.

Speaking of which, she is doing wonderful. She's staring to roll around, able to stay sitting up, eating more solid foods, and charming the pants off of strangers it's almost annoying. I mean I can't take her into a store without people coming up and commenting on how cute she is.

Her sleeping has been up and down. She has been sleeping through the night, but still doesn't want to go to bed until 10:00 or 11:00. It's like she's on our schedule. That doesn't give us a whole lot of free time though.

Naps have been a bit more frequent lately

Well, there is a bit of what is happening. I apologize for the incoherence of this post, but at least I'm posting. Now to update my info and see what's going on out there. Ta Ta.