Do you recall how we departed Yellowstone
just in front of a snowstorm?
I read on a Yellowstone National Park news
website that several people who were in the Park the day after we were there got
stranded anywhere from a day to five days, depending on where they were located
when the snow came down.
Big
Iron Auction (or the sellers) should’ve given us a discount for all the trouble
we went through, being given the wrong jack, and then tracking down the man to
whom they’d given Larry’s jack.
Plus, because of the time spent finding the man, we missed seeing the
northeast part of Yellowstone, which was a bit disappointing.
Ah,
well. We might’ve gotten stranded in that
approaching snowstorm, had we tarried. 😏
Isn’t
it hard
to believe, from just looking at a picture, that an adult moose is about 7-8
feet at the shoulders, and around 10 feet, if you factor in the head and the
horns?
Last Tuesday evening, I sent a text to Larry,
asking him to bring home bread, butter, Lipton Onion Soup & Dip Mix, and
sour cream.
He wrote back in the affirmative.
I’d found a recipe for crabmeat casserole,
the better to use the can of crabmeat that we’d found in the Riverton, Wyoming,
Tomahawk Motor Lodge. The recipe called
for bread, and I didn’t have a solitary slice in the house.
The Lipton soup mix and the sour cream were to
go with the can of spinach we had also found; I planned to try making soup
similar to the delicious Cream of Spinach soup I’d had at The Irma restaurant
in Cody, Wyoming.
At a quarter ’til 8, I texted Larry to find
out where he was, and when he’d be home.
“I’ll be there in about ten minutes,” he
replied.
“If you forget the bread,” I informed him, “you’ll
have to go back for it, because everything is ready and waiting for it.”
He finally got home at 8:35 p.m. – sans
bread. He had plenty of other
stuff, stuff I hadn’t even requested; but no bread. And no Lipton soup mix. At least he’d tried to find that.
He headed back out... and decided to drive the old blue pickup, just
to keep it in good running order.
He tried for several minutes to get the
lights to stay on when he switched to dims.
Five minutes later, knowing his infinite
patience with such things (he can fiddle around for hours trying to make
something work), I texted him: “Maybe
you should just drive something that works. I’d like to eat before
morning comes. Besides, your pickup is stinking up the house.”
Amazingly enough, he was already out of the
pickup and heading for another set of wheels before my text even reached him. He must’ve been really hungry!
In about 20 minutes, he was
back again with the bread – plain whole wheat bread rather than the 12-grain we
particularly like, because he’d gone to Dollar General on the west edge of town
in order to save time, and that’s the only kind of whole wheat bread they carry.
Because after tasting the crabmeat I’d been
afraid we wouldn’t like it (fishy-fishy!), I looked online for a good recipe. Seeing nothing I thought we’d like, I gave up
and pulled one of my Taste of Home cookbooks from the bookcase. In Volume 1 I found a crabmeat casserole with
ingredients that sounded good. Plus, the
picture looked yummy. 😉 So I made it.
Sorta. I changed things to suit
me better, adding an extra egg, and using Schwan’s red and green pepper and
onion mixture instead of only a green pepper.
And guess what! It was really
good. There was enough left over for
supper the next night, too.
That night, I posted photos of Days 1 & 2
of our Trip to Wyoming:
Or, if you prefer Facebook’s format:
Andrew and Hester left a gift in the Jeep for
me Wednesday night after church: a
pumpkin spice quick bread mix, pumpkin caramel butter, pumpkin fudge, an Irish
linen tea towel with robins printed on it, and an old-fashioned crackle-glazed
pot with an Ohio star quilt block painted on the front. There’s the perfect spot for it upstairs on
one of my old treadle sewing machine desks.
They gave me a birthday card that sported a pop-up piano, too.
Hester got the pot at a shop in North
Carolina and the Irish linen in an antique store. I sent a thank-you note, and she replied, ‘Lolololol,
how did you know it was Irish linen?’
“Well, I thought it was, when I saw it
and felt it,” I told her; “and then whataya know, it said it, right
along the side, on the selvedge!” 😄
The pumpkin fudge is yummy, and I’m carefully
rationing it out, half a piece at a time (I can’t eat very many sweets at a
time, in any case).
We went to Hy-Vee to get the onion soup and
dip mix Larry hadn’t been able to find the previous night.
The entire rack of Lipton onion soup mix was
all gone, plumb emptied out. So I got
the Hy-Vee brand, which is never quite as good.
When we got home, we ate the rest of Tuesday night’s
crabmeat casserole. Unlike chili,
crabmeat casserole is not better on Day 2. I popped my plate into the oven and broiled
the stuff until it was a bit crispy on top; that helped.
But I sympathized strongly with Teddy, age 2,
when I’d put a bowl of something he didn’t particularly like onto his high
chair tray. “That’s really good,’ he’d
say, scooting his little bowl back (at least he was polite about it), “and I’m full
now.” hee hee
I woke up at 5:45 a.m. Thursday morning when
Larry’s alarm went off. I couldn’t get
back to sleep, so I finally got up at about 6:45 a.m. It was trash day, and Larry had already taken
the big container out to the lane. I
decided to haul out some boxes and a stack of plastic bags from wood pellets
that Larry had saved for some unknown reason – well, actually, it wasn’t
unknown; he thought they’d make good cat litter bags. But... I don’t want a tall stack of dusty
wood pellet bags in my basement! We
don’t use many cat litter bags anyway, since the cats go outside. And cat litter bags are cheap, and come
rolled up in a neat little box. Much bettah.
 |
| Yellowstone Lake |
I’d watched a couple of hoarding videos on
youtube the previous night; maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep: those boxes and bags were weighing heavily on
my mind. ha
After working for three hours, Larry went to
Lincoln for a dental appointment at 11:00 a.m. He got there half an hour
late – because the clutch went out on his red Chevy pickup.
That’s been a bum clutch ever since he got that
pickup, when he traded his silver Dodge for it.
He’s worked on it several times, and hoped it would last a little longer
before he had to buy an entire new clutch for it. The previous owner put a Cummins motor in it,
but didn’t upgrade the clutch, against the advice of a man who sells the right
clutch for those motors. Larry, hunting online for answers on that
clutch, just happened to call that same man (in Virginia, I think?) – and
whataya know, the man remembered talking to the guy in Lincoln who wanted the
cheaper clutch. This man tried to talk him out of it, telling him it
wouldn’t work; but the young man wouldn’t listen.
 |
| Gibbon Falls |
So Larry is suffering the consequences.
The guy with whom he traded pickups was a liar and a cheat. He fixed things just enough for it to seem
all right in Larry’s short test drive, and he didn’t tell him about any of the
potential problems.
Anyway, Larry managed to coast into a Lowe’s
Home Improvement parking lot about two miles from Affordable Dentures. He
called the dental office, told them what had happened, said he was going to be
a little late, just how much depending on the transportation he might find to
get himself there – taxi or hoofers.
Then he spotted part of a sign a little ways
away: ‘-will’. That must be a
Goodwill, he thought, and headed that way on foot.
Sure enough, it was. Maybe they have a bike in there, he
hoped, and hurried on in.
Right there in the
front vestibule sat a nearly-new Trek mountain bike – for only $59.99. He bought it, rode back to his pickup, put on
two layers of sweatshirts, a stocking hat with a facemask, and his thick gloves
with a mitten part that folds over the fingertips. He didn’t get cold on
his ride to the office, even though the temperature was in the low 40s or high
30s, with a strong, cold wind blowing.
After they adjusted his teeth, he called me
and told me his dilemma. It was 11:55 a.m. I headed to Lincoln in the Jeep and brought
him home again.
Since he hadn’t had anything to eat all day,
we stopped at Long John Silver’s, and he got a fish and chicken meal with green
beans and rice. He shared a little with
me, and I obligingly ate some, even though I wasn’t hungry. I try to never eat when I’m not hungry; it’s
bad for the circumference, you know!
We got home at about 3:30 p.m. Larry worked the rest of the afternoon, and by
7:30 p.m. was on his way back to Lincoln towing a trailer behind another pickup
– his old white Dodge – that is none too dependable itself. I hoped he’d
make it home alright. He would be tired, with all these wasted hours.
He’s pretty pleased with that bike, though.
It’s quite a nice one, worth somewhere around ---------- Oh, good grief! I just looked at the Trek website, and
discovered that the Trek Butterfly Madone bike, ridden by Lance Armstrong,
sold for $500,000 at Sotheby’s cancer benefit charity auction. The bike is
decorated by real butterfly wings, which resulted in the wrath of People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who called this bicycle a horrific barbarity. 🙄
Other bikes Lance Armstrong has ridden have
sold for $200,000 and $160,000.
On Trek’s website, the prices range from
$289.99 to $11,999.99.
Okay, this particular bike, according to
Larry, is worth a mere $250-$300. But
perhaps I should tell him not to tear it apart to repair another one, just in
case Lance Armstrong once touched it with his leeto baby finger. We should have it dusted for fingerprints,
maybe!
The odometer on our Jeep rolled over 90,000
miles on the way home. That was the first
time I had driven it since we got new tires put on it before we left for
Wyoming. It drives like it did when we first got it!
A box arrived from Wal-Mart, and in it was
the Lipton Onion Mushroom Soup and Dip Mix I’d ordered Monday. I wouldn’t have needed the Hy-Vee brand after
all. But... I wouldn’t make spinach soup
that night, since Larry wouldn’t be here.
Instead, I heated up some potato salad we’d
gotten at the store the night before. It
didn’t taste like potato salad; it tasted like cold and not-quite-done baked
potatoes, with sour cream and bacon chips.
I heated it enough to cook the potatoes a bit more, then added a heap of
butter, and it was mmmm, good. I had a
thin slice of strawberry-rhubarb pie with whipped topping for dessert. And that was enough for supper; I’d already
started on my supper early that afternoon, after all, with a piece of Larry’s
fish.
At 11:28 p.m., Larry called. A fuel line had split on the Dodge, and he’d
coasted onto a country road about 6 miles south of town, 13 miles from
home. It took me 18 minutes to get
there. Larry had two 5-gallon gas cans
in the back of the red pickup. I’d
brought a couple of big black garbage bags to wrap them in before putting them
in the back of the Jeep. Then off we
went to Phillips 66 for diesel.
Then back to the truck we went. Larry poured the 10 gallons into the tank and
tried to start it. The battery began
running down. I pulled the Jeep forward ’til
it was nose-to-nose with his truck, and he attached the jumper cables.
And then he realized: the fuel line wasn’t just split, it
was broken right off from the fitting.
Each time he tried to start the pickup, fuel gushed out. No way would it make it home like that; the
ten gallons would be all drained out before he went half a mile.
He took the fittings apart, and we went to
the shop (Walker Foundations, that is), 8.5 miles northwest of Columbus. After a lot of searching through various tool
and parts boxes, he found a rubber hose and two clamps that were the right
size.
We returned to the pickup, and shortly after
2:00 a.m. he had it fixed. We got home
at 2:35 a.m.
I sat down in my recliner, put a heating pad
behind my back, and edited photos. An
hour later, I gave up. I could no longer
keep my eyes open, having been up 22 hours. So I didn’t finish editing the 10-16-19
Riverton to West Yellowstone folder of pictures as I had hoped.
I took my camera with me to Lincoln, of
course, so now I have even more photos to edit. Ah, well.
Mañana!
Friday evening, I made the anticipated Cream of
Spinach soup, using the can of spinach we found in the motel in Riverton,
Wyoming. It would’ve probably been lots
better with fresh or even frozen spinach; but we liked it okay. I first made the Lipton Onion and Mushroom Soup,
then added the spinach. When everything
was cooked, I added a cup of sour cream and let it simmer a little while
longer. There would be enough for Saturday
night, too.
That night, I posted photos from 10-16-19,
Day 3 of our Trip to Wyoming:
If you prefer Facebook’s format:
I got several pictures of oil wells in
Wyoming. Astounding, how deep they can
drill. It takes almost 5 years to go
deeper than 20,000 feet. The following
is from an article in the Casper Star Tribune: ‘It actually takes about 60 drill bits to do
the job, beginning with a 24-inch diameter bit at the surface and going down to
a 6-inch diameter bit by the time they get to 25,000 feet, where the
temperature is 430 degrees Fahrenheit.’ Imagine the disappointment – and the loss of
about $35 million – at this: ‘The
company’s Bighorn 6-27 well, drilled in 2001, is the deepest well at 25,821
feet – but it was a dry hole and doesn’t produce.’
This is amazing: ‘Burlington Resources holds two well depth
records in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain fairway. Its Bighorn 5-6 well, drilled in 2000, is the
deepest producing gas well at 24,938 feet.’ Here’s the article: https://trib.com/business/deep-into-wyoming/article_c1b3467a-4853-53dc-8e83-ba5351679f73.html
Once I got started
researching, I couldn’t stop! 😅 I’ve always loved research. Here’s an article about the deepest bored
holes in the world:
The deepest is 40,230
feet – that’s over 7.6 miles down. They’d
intended to go to 45,000, but it got too hot.
Every time we approach the Rockies, we wonder,
what in the world did the pioneers think when they topped a hill and beheld the
mountains looming there before them? And
if they managed to get over the first range, imagine their amazement when they
saw, rolling before them, range after range after unending range. Daunting, to say the least.
Saturday evening, I watched 20 minutes of a
45-minute hoarding episode on youtube, and could stand it no longer. I paused the video and headed downstairs to
gather stuff I don’t need. 25 minutes
later, I had the back of the Jeep full of clothes I rarely wear, a metal clothes
rack we don’t use, a box of hangers, and a pair of deck shoes Victoria doesn’t
want anymore.
That was enough for the moment. For the next Goodwill jaunt, I’ll start going
through some bins of craft items that I will never use in a million years. Someone else can make use of them.
Tiger and Teensy thought I was packing to go
on a trip again, and they dogged (catted?) my every footstep, meowing plaintively.
Larry came home from trying (and failing,
thanks to a sheared-off bolt) to bale hay at Teddy’s, carrying a big bag full
of all sorts of things from the bread store in Omaha where Teddy gets oodles of
it at smashing bargains. The bread,
bagels, and muffins nearly filled our freezer.
Yesterday a quilting friend wrote, “I have
been looking for my quilt instructions for a week now. Couldn’t imagine
what I had done with them. But I did get my Christmas quilt off the frame
and the binding applied. I noticed when putting the binding on that it
made a funny noise. I found the block that was making the odd noise – and
discovered where my instructions were. Yup, they are quilted into the Christmas
quilt. I must have laid them on my longarm, and when I was loading the quilt,
the paper must have been clinging to the top and in it went. I wonder what I can do to top that one?”
She’s not the only one who inadvertently sews
things into other things.
In February of 2017, I was making a set of ‘Monthly
Hang-Ups’:
I had all the blocks sewn together and
turned, and was hand-stitching the holes shut at the bottom. I was
turning them right side out as I went along, using my Oxmoor House point
turner.
I sewed another block... turned it... reached
for the point turner...
It was gone.
I looked high and low... and then I looked
low and high. I looked in the trash can. I looked under my sewing
machine. I looked under my laptop. I looked in the other sewing
room. I looked in my pockets. I gave up and went for my other point
turner, which isn’t quite as pointy.
Flash forward:
I finished stitching shut the hole on hanging
block #6, reached over to lay it on the stack –
Uh, wuzzis? There’s sumpthang sorta
hard and plasticky inside this thing.
?
Oh. Yes.
Quite so. (In a Winnie-the-Pooh tone.)
So I ripped it back open and extracted my
Oxmoor House point turner.
A friend sent me pictures of her family
wending their way through a corn maze.
I’ve never been to a corn maze. (Wonder
why they don’t ever have a maize maze?)
Larry came home today at noon, heated up some
potato soup, and headed over to Teddy’s to see if he could get the hay baled
before the rain or snow came. He’s been
trying to do that for weeks now in what little spare time he has, but the baler
hasn’t cooperated. Saturday evening he
finally got the thing working again – or so he thought – and then it ran out of
gas. It was time to come home anyway.
The baler refused to work right today. The bolt that broke and got jammed in it Saturday
evidently messed up the timing. In
addition, it had a flat tire. Plus, snow
started coming down shortly after he got there.
So he went back to work.
Someone asked me about my pictures from the
Bighorn Mountains, wherein I stated that one can see the Yellowstone Rockies
from the west side of the Bighorns, 170 miles to the west, and the Black Hills
from the east side of the Bighorns.
I used Google’s mileage charts to get that
number, so it’s not a straight line, but rather the distance by road. So it wouldn’t be as far, in a straight
light.
I did a bit of reading about this matter of ‘how
far one can see’. When one is at sea
level, one can see 2.9 miles across the ocean.
However, if one rises 100 feet above sea level, one can then see 12 miles.
That’s 4 times farther.
So... if we apply this mathematically, it
would seem that when one is standing on a 14,000-foot mountain, one should be
able to see 1,680 miles. ??!
We can’t, so obviously the curvature of the
earth ruins the ratio.
And now this has become a story problem, with
equations of which I know not.
In Colorado, we can see the Rockies from Ft.
Morgan, about 100 miles to the east. East of Ft. Morgan, the elevation is
lower, and the hills around the town block anything farther to the west from
view.
A little more info, this from nasa.gov:
1.
From a tall building on a clear
day, you can see mountains as far away as about 100 miles.
2.
From the top of Mt. Everest on a clear
day, one can see 211 miles.
Mt. Everest is 29,029 feet high, by the
way. And with that, I hereby conclude my
research. 🧐🤓
Oh! Waaaait!
Hold the phone!
Here’s something else, from
the Quest website: The most distant
individual star visible to the unaided eye is a little over 4,000 light years
away, in the constellation Cassiopeia – and though it appears to us as a fairly
faint star, it is in reality a supergiant star over 100,000 times more luminous
than our Sun.
This afternoon, I sent an email to our children,
asking them what sizes their children wear. Hester responded that Keira is in size 18
months.
Keira is 18 months.
“18 months!” I wrote back to her. “It does
our hearts good to see her growing and learning and just being so sweet and
bright.”
“We had her 18-month appointment last Monday,”
Hester told me, “and she’s basically caught up with regular 18-month-olds! 🙂🙂”
Isn’t that wonderful? Many, many
prayers were answered for that tiny baby who started life in this world at 2
pounds, 8 ounces.
Aauugghh, there’s a cricket in the back hall!
Time out...
Okay, I’m back. Since we’ve already named PETA once in this
letter, I won’t tell you what became of the cricket.
Speaking of large, crunchy insects, one time
when Hannah was about four years old, we were having a picnic in the back yard,
sitting around the picnic table. There
was Hannah, leaning back and peering under the table.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“There’s a June bug under there, a-kickin’
and a-screamin’!” she informed me.
I leaned down and peered under, too.
And there was a big ol’ June bug, upside
down, and kicking for all he was worth, trying to flip himself back
upright. 😆
The dryer just buzzed... the last load of
clothes is dry. Tomorrow I need to
exchange all my everyday summer clothes for my winter ones. It’s only 24° tonight, and tomorrow the high
is expected to be only 40°. Wednesday’s
projected high: 33°.
Yesirree, I need some long-sleeved sweaters
in my closet!
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
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