Western Wildfires

I apologize yet once again for getting behind in my posts. And you've probably guessed where we've been most days. The weather has been amazing, all the lakes and rivers have opened up way ahead of schedule. And though it may be great for us, the states out here are really in for a dry year. Last Saturday parts of Wyoming had 75 mph wind gusts. There were also High Fire Danger Warnings and this is why...

Though it was a windy day, and at times the sky spitted a little rain, the evening turned sunny so we went for a ride through the neighborhood in our truck. We were in hills and weren't really paying much mind to the sky until we got back into the open. I said to Steve those clouds looked weird like a dust storm or something. We opened our windows and smelled smoke.

So we took a little detour on our way home to see if we could find out just how close the fire was and should we be worried?

We didn't come across any emergency vehicles, thank goodness. In fact, everything seemed normal except for the heavy smoke. Steve said he couldn't imagine anyone burning controlled fires in their fields with the wind we were having.

So we headed home and saw the most amazing smokey sunset.

You couldn't even make out the familiar distinctions of the mountains. 

Turns out there were multiple wildfires. The closest one was 30 miles away near the town of Big Horn at the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. The farthest wildfire was in southwestern Montana. That's how windy it was! I haven't heard of any damage and the fires are all out.

We also have High Fire Danger Warnings today again, but so far, and I can see far, (in one direction we can see 60 miles) I haven't seen anything that resembles smoke in the air.

Thank goodness!

Big Horn Elk and Rainbow Trout

Yesterday morning, while Steve was loading the truck with road trip stuff and the dogs, (we took a day trip over the mountains), I quickly put together a blog post on my phone because it had been a few days. The post went well until I tried to "publish" it. All day it indicated Blogger was saving it. 

This morning Blogger said it was saving it.

I got on my laptop thinking it was probably just a phone thing and guess what? It's GONE.

Sigh. Technology.

So, let me start over.

Happy Spring, Everyone!

I hope you are having nice days life-wise and weather-wise. In the three years we've been blessed to do this trip, we have never experienced a spring quite like this.

(Excuse all the exclamation points.)

The Elk came down from the mountains!

The ice is off Muddy Guard #1, aka, The Trophy Pond, aka, The Reservoir! 

We went fishing!

We saw our first Robin this week!

Last year, all of this happened in April. Hence the excitement...

In 3 weeks we've only had one day of this.

The only "right on schedule" occurrence was the return of the bluebirds on March 9. Yay!

The ice is completely gone on this pond. We fished it all day Friday and watched the fish swim by. I caught an 18" Rainbow Trout, but it flopped back into the water before I could take a picture. I couldn't have kept it anyhow because this is the pond where a keeper has to be 20" or larger and you can only use artificial bait. We even got checked out by a very nice game warden. We welcome getting our licenses checked as they cost Steve and I each a whopping $105. Ouch.

Steve caught a fish, too, but it got away halfway out as Steve was reeling it in.

I told him that doesn't count.

He says we caught one and a half fish.

The dogs acted as if we never left Wyoming. Eventually Ike took a nap on these rocks and snored profusely.

Occasionally, a cow would moo in the field behind us, and that would get Bear's attention.

That's our truck on the right. In the distance is the drive down to the pond. There were just a handful of fishermen that day. It was very peaceful.

Except for mooing cows.

This is directly across the pond from where I was fishing.

This is to my left. Sometimes we fish on the other side of the hill in the middle.

We took a walk all the way around this pond exactly a week before the first day we fished it and this is what it looked like. What a difference a week can make!

Oh, and before I go, here are a couple of Big Horn Elk photos.

Have a wonderful first full week of Spring, Everyone!

(To my Yooper Friends...I pray that your 100% chance of precip for mid-week turns out to be light rain and not a downpour, snow, or ice. Fingers crossed. I'm thinking about ya.)

Good Morning!

Have a wonderful day, Everyone!

Happy St. Paddy's Day!