The Month of October

Well, we made it back to Emmett. We were there for only a week, which went by very fast. it was good to see friends and family again. Lorrie is taking such good care of our house for us. We sure appreciate her.

We did make time to get together with our good friend, the Walkers,
the Thomas',
and the Manwarings. We had a great dinner around their outdoor firepit.
It seemed kind of sad that we probably won't see them again for about a year. That is one of the drawbacks about having a traveling home, we don't make it back to our permanent home very often.

We got to Rexburg on the 8th of October and Terry and our son Shay left the 9th to go deer hunting. The picture above shows the "mighty hunters" and their "trophies." We were just excited that they each got one. Then on the weekend, Jill's husband Dan went back with them and he got one about the same size. The next week we went to Shay's and cut and packaged all three of them. We made hamburger out of all of ours except the tender backstrap steaks. We will make jerky out of all of the hamburger. We are so excited to be able to to that. We have two dehydrators between us and lots of spices. I think we ended up with about 26 pounds of hamburger that will make about 15 pounds of jerky!

While the guys were hunting, Jill and the kids and I went to Utah to Sarah's and canned pears. It was lots of fun and the cousins had fun playing together.
Sarah's husband, Ryan, was a good sport and entertained the kids and cooked for us!
Jenna and Kamber are such little girls. They tried a couple of times to get the boys to play dress up or other things with them, but the boys refused.
They spent lots of time playing games on the computer and
playing video games on the TV.
JT is really good to amuse himself. All he needs is an empty box!

In October, Terry's brother Ron who lives in Emmett, needed to have some surgery. Terry went home to be there for that and I stayed because we had committed to Shay and Heidi that we would watch their kids for the weekend so they could go hunting and try to fill Heidi's tag (but they didn't get anything.) I had lots of fun being with Shay's kids.

Marissa and I played dominoes and then everyone came in and we tried to make a domino train that would fall down. We didn't have too much luck with the curves so we finally made one that was just straight lines and it worked really well.
We had fun carving jack-o-lanterns. They all did a good job.
We got to help Jill's family carve pumpkins, too. They turned out pretty scary. It was fun being around family at Halloween time. That night we stayed at the Condo and handed out treats to all of the little goblins while Jill and Dan took the kids around the neighborhood trick-or-treating.

The Weather has been unseasonably good all the month of October, even though all of the Church members have been praying for moisture! It has been fun being close to Jill's and Shay's families. We have been able to go to their football games and dance classes and some of their other activities. It is fun to have grandkids come knocking on our door to visit all of the time. I think we could kind of get used to this. The time is going by really fast.

Camp Hosts at McCormick - We are done!

The "fire ban" is lifted! We finally got to build fires. It was nice to see fires going around the Park in the evenings. We had to loan out our barbecue and our electric fry pan several times when campers would come, not knowing they couldn't use briquettes or build fires, and that is all they had to cook with. We got to have several wiener and marshmallow roasts before we left.

The previous camp host planted several tomato bushes before he left. We sure enjoyed the tomatoes. He planted big ones and cherry tomatoes also. They were a real treat!

If there were ripe tomatoes when some of the Park crew came in, we shared. But, we ended up with the biggest part of them. I will miss having fresh tomatoes off of the vine.

Since we retired, we haven't gone to Church in the same place for very long. Terry thought he would be off the hook for having to give a talk in Church. Well, we stayed just long enough in McCormick and going to the little branch in Halfway, Oregon, to have to speak the week before we left. They are very friendly people and we really enjoyed getting to know them.

Last Saturday, two days before we left McCormick, we took our pontoon boat home. It had rained all the night before. When we got up that morning, there was snow on all of the mountains around us. Terry let me turn on the furnace for the first time!

When we came back from Emmett that day, we saw the wild turkeys. There aren't too many times that you travel from Cambridge to Hell's Canyon that you don't see any turkeys--that is until turkey season opens They seem to know when to hide.

We also saw our first mountain sheep up close. We had seen one other one, but it was quite a ways away up on the mountain ridge above the dam. This one was hanging out along the road as we came down off of Brownlee Dam. Other campers had told us one was there, but we hadn't seen it. It has a tracking collar on it and was pretty scroungy looking. I get confused (Terry says that is not unusual) because the goats look like sheep and the sheep look like goats.

This is a picture of the park coming down from the top of the dam. It is a little blurry because we are moving in the truck.

They planted flowers and built a little fence by the restrooms at McCormick this year. When we got there, only part of the flowers were doing very well. But after lots of care, they finally exploded! That was usually the last thing we did in the evenings is go water the flowers. Lots of campers commented on how nice they looked.

This is Steve, one of the head maintenance guys over McCormick and Woodhead Parks. He usually did the lawn mowing and anything else that needed done. When it was hot, they started early in the mornings and when he showed up at the park, lots of times we were still in bed. Even when they started work later, towards the end of the summer, we were sometimes still in bed. We told them we were "retired" so we got to sleep in! Steve was the guy we called if there was any trouble. It seemed like most of the trouble happened on his days off, but he was always there for us. He is a retired police office so he could handle anything!

Susie was a maintenance person. She had to put up with all of the guys and always accused them of assigning her to "restroom duty." When she would come with Steve to mow the lawns, he would tell her, "Go ahead and get the restrooms, Susie. I'll start on the lawns!" But, the restrooms sure got cleaned good when she did them. It was lots of fun visiting and getting to know her.

Terry, another head maintenance guy, came with Steve to do the restrooms the last day we were at the Park. I think that at least the mirrors got cleaned that day! Terry and his wife also own and run a bed and breakfast at Oxbow.

It was a pretty dreary day the morning we left. It kind of matched our mood. It was a lot of fun being Camp Hosts. We worked with great people and met a lot of really nice people. We hope that we get to do it again sometime. They fed us a great dinner of all-you-could-eat giant prawns. I could only eat four, but I think Terry had at least ten! And then they even gave us a gift certificate for Home Depot.

We got back to Emmett in time to attend a funeral of a good friend. He was our age and died suddenly of a heart attack. You never know! We are so glad that we have the opportunity to live our dream and feel very fortunate to have good health and be able to do the things we want.

We are headed to eastern Idaho after we stay here in Emmett for a week. We will stay in Jill's parking lot in Rexburg. Terry is going hunting with Shay. Jill and Dan just moved into a house in Rexburg and I think she has a few projects for her Dad to do while we stay there until after Thanksgiving. Jill and I are going to Dugway Army Base where Sarah and Ryan live, fairly close to Tooele, Utah, to can pears. Thanks for reading out blog and sharing all of our adventures so far.

Camp Hosts at McCormick Park Sep 9-23

We decided to take a break from camp hosting and go camping! We went to a Thousand Trails campground in Bend, Or. We had to listen to their sales pitch, which we shouldn't have, because we are now Thousand Trail members. But, it will really add to the parks we can stay at and there is a really good program to help your kids get membership some day. Terry's sister and brother-in-law are also members so it will be easier to camp with them a little more.

As you can see, we really did go "camping" with our tent and all! It was pretty cozy. The temperature dipped down into the mid 30's at night. Needless to say, we stayed in our tent in the mornings until the sun came up and shined in our window. A good thing about it was that we didn't bring anything to cook with, so we ate food out of our cooler and from Wal Mart deli. I didn't have to do dishes or anything! It was lots of fun and relaxing.


We took our tandem bicycle, which had a flat tire at the time. We went into Wal Mart and bought a new tube and Terry fixed it. It was fun to ride around the park. The park had 300 sites, so it was pretty big and was right in the middle of the forest. There were some big gray squirrels with long bushy tails. We came back to camp one day and one was inside the screen house. I tried to get a picture before it found its way out, but he escaped before I got the camera ready.

Several years ago, I went with Terry when he was the bus driver for the basketball teams when they had a conference in Bend. We saw this tree that had a lot of shoes hanging on it.

We saw it again when we went to the Thousand Trails campground. We stopped and took a picture. I wish we would have had an old pair of shoes to add to the tree. There were a lot more shoes on it than there were when we saw it with the basketball team.

After we got back to McCormick, we found out that one of our friends in our Ward at home, Kitty Fluckiger Carroll, had passed away. She found out that she had cancer several months ago. We have known her and her family since we were kids. We went home to Emmett for the funeral. She left behind her husband, a daughter who is a senior in high school (who was one of my special Young Women when we lived at home), a son who is about fourteen, and a married son with two little boys. The funeral was a wonderful tribute to her life.

It was kind of fun being home again for a day. We didn't get to see Lorrie because she was at work, but she had everything looking spiffy! I did our laundry and then we went back to McCormick.

We decided we better get some more fishing done so we can have more in our freezer when we leave in two weeks. We didn't have much luck with any keepers, but I sure had fun catching this big catfish. It is probably the biggest fish I have ever caught. It was about 5 pounds and I caught it on a little light-weight pole with a crappie jig on it. Those catfish will bite on anything!

We brought it back to camp to get a picture. I tried to hold it without a rag around it, but I just couldn't do it. It was so slippery and ugly and whenever it moved around too much, I would drop it (with a loud sound effect) and so I finally used a rag to hold it. Later, we tried to give it away. Everyone said it was really too big to eat, so we took it down and put it back in the river.

Our very good friends, Don and Renae Walker, came and spent the weekend with us. The first night they were here, we had a wild group of people staying along the entrance road to the Park. They were drinking a lot, whopping and hollering, and shooting some guns, round after round. We ended up having to call 911 several times and get the Sheriff's Deputy to come and settle them down. They had put a large pontoon boat in the water (after dark) and the Deputy couldn't find them. They were still there the next day and still shooting guns and partying. We got the Deputy back and he threatened them that he would get the State Police here and carry them all off to jail if there were any more complaints against them or any more shooting. He would have made them leave right then, but they were all so intoxicated that they couldn't drive, so they spent another night. They were pretty quiet that night and they were gone when we got back from Church. We were sure glad.

We were worried about the weather being bad with Don and Renae here, but it held off raining long enough for us to go fishing. They had a bet going as to which of them would catch the biggest fish. It isn't hard to see who won!

We did really good fishing and came back with 79 crappie and 2 bass. After cleaning all of them, Terry and Don decided that next time we would throw the little ones back! We had a really fun weekend, fishing, playing games, visiting, and eating.

The Snake

I just learned how to put a video on the blog so I thought it would be fun to show you the video of the snake we met our first week as Camp Hosts!

Camp Hosts at McCormick Aug 26 - Sept 8

Our little lizard is still hanging around. We never know where he will be, but he has some favorite places to spend his time. As you can see, he kind of likes hanging out on our shoes. I am always leery about putting on my shoes each morning!

He has also made "friends" with our other "pets." Here he is visiting our mama turtle.

We had one of Hell's Canyon's famous wind storms the weekend before Labor Day and some of the electrical lines going up the hill on the Idaho side of Brownlee Dam whipped together. The sparks started a fire at about 6:00 pm. It was pretty exciting.

A crew of volunteer Idaho Power people and others got up there pretty fast and with the cooperation of the wind, they had it out by midnight. It burned at least 20 acres. The wind even kept the smoke from coming down into our camp. There were a couple of little boys who came up to me really scared to go to bed because they thought the fire would come down in the park while they slept. I assured them that there were good men up there fighting it and I was sure we would be safe!

We go on walks most mornings. I took the camera one morning and caught some of the local wildlife. There were lots of fish jumping, but I couldn't get a good picture of them.

This little cottontail rabbit let us get pretty close to him before he ran away. He is the first rabbit we have seen around here.

Of course, there are always the herons everywhere. The other day we were sitting at our picnic table and saw a pure white heron fly over us. It was really pretty.

Here is a lizard we saw by the dam. I think he is the same species that hangs around our Condo, but he was quite a bit fatter. They are a little different than the Arizona lizards.

There are a lot of osprey and also bald eagles on the river. Lots of times, we see them with fish in their claws.

We scared this osprey off of several roosting places as we walked along. He was probably glad to see us get off his hill!

Everyone has been telling us that September will be a really slow month, after the Labor Day weekend. Well, the park was empty for two hours the Monday before Labor Day.

We decided to take pictures of the empty park because we didn't know how long it would last.

Well, it lasted two hours and then people started coming. We were totally packed by the weekend, which we all pretty much expected.

They were a pretty good group, though, and we didn't have any big problems.

Even the spots behind us that are in the gravel were full! We lost a few people after Labor Day, but we have kept pretty full all week afterwards and were totally full the next weekend also.

The best thing about Labor Day weekend was that our son Ron and his wife and three kids came and stayed with us for a couple of days. It had been quite a while since we had had a grandma/grandpa fix! Here is Wesley and Ryley settled in with a movie one night while Grandpa made popcorn (that is a tradition when the grandkids stay with us.)

Little Chaz was entertained playing on the Mule. Grandpa had to hide the key, but the next day after they left, he found that the lights had been left on. Thank goodness it started when the maintenance man came and got on it!

Smokey the Bear came to visit us on Labor Day. Unfortunately, he came after a good part of the campers had left, but those still there enjoyed seeing him. He had gifts and hugs for everyone.

We are headed to Bend, Oregon, on Sunday, the 9th. We are going to camp out in a tent for three nights. We are staying in a Thousand Trails Park. If we listen to their sales pitch for their program, we will get a $50 Camping World gift certificate and 30 nights free camping in their parks during the next year. Terry's sister and brother-in-law have that program, so we thought it would be fun to camp with them sometime in the next year. Also, it will be a nice break from being camp hosts for a bit. I just hope I won't think I have to replace their toilet paper in the bathrooms if I see one empty!