With the daylight getting less and less with the oncoming winter season I felt a little extra light on REX might help when we plow snow before Becky goes to work in the morning!! These driving lights aren't installed or hooked up yet but I put in a call to John B and he said he would help me out with it!! Seems like everything I have touched or tried to do lately has resulted in a total disaster!! I will update you when the work is completed!! Stay tuned for updates!!

John showed up and he did a professional job of installing and wiring my lights!! Thanks John!!

Here Is REX with a full set of ATV tire chains on with the snowplow hooked up and ready to plow some snow!! I had made some homemade chains for the 350 which didn't fit near as nice as these "store bought" ones do!! LET IT SNOW!!

The trees in both the front and back have turned colors as you can see.. The wind blew hard early this morning and a lot of leaves fell to the ground so this must mean winter is near!! The weather guessers are saying rain turning to snow by tomorrow night!! As you can see in the blog above this one Becky, myself and REX are ready!! Let it snow!!

REX IS HOME!!

I got Rex back from the Polaris Doctors and his checkup was A-O.K. Photo's tomorrow on some new additions!!

Stay tuned!!

Well it is almost October and the weather hasn't been too bad!! A few cold snaps with some rain/snow but not enough to close the interstate 80 between Laramie and Cheyenne!! Ah Haw!! but today it is closed due to multiple accidents!! What is it going to be like this winter?? One can only wonder!!!..

O.K. I must confess the new 2004 Chevy got its body reshaped by an Aspen tree here recently with it being my "stupid" decision to use a worn/defective snatch strap .. Sorry no photos's as it is bad enough to remember it once. When the diesel pulled on the tree to pull it into the field it was too much for the strap that had been tied into a knot several years ago.. Moral of the story is it too much power or should I have replace the used and unworthy equipment while using high horsepower!!

With the new "side-by-side"(which will be called by the name of "Rex" from now on) needed a service call to change the oil and it's 25 hours servicing, I am without a 4 wheel drive vehicle at my disposal for the first time in a long long time!!

As a side note getting back to I-80 It might be a long long hard winter!!

Wish me well on my commute to Cheyenne to work this winter as it might be an adventure!!

HOUSE CRITTERS!!!

I decided to blow out the sprinklers today with an approaching cold front coming our way and when I opened the control boxes in the front and rear I found my old buddy that was there last year.. The salamander!! He/she is 2 years old now and there wasn't a bug or spider-web anywhere!! Way to go little buddy!! I seen a couple of grasshoppers so I slightly smashed them and boy he gobbled them down whole while I was opening the valves!! In the back box I found a tiny green frog that I had seen earlier in the spring.. He was good and fat and again no bugs in that box either!! Outside house pets make good sprinkler box cleaners!!

SNAKES!!!

Anyone who knows me knows that there are only 2 good snakes.. One in the zoo and a dead one and I'm not sure about the zoo!!

This monster had the guts to try and slither into "my" garage without me knowing it!! Ha Ha!! It is now in the catagory of a dead snake!!

I HATE SNAKES!!

Now I'm on the look out for more so if you hear a scream it is only me finding one that needs to be put filed under dead snake!!

It has been a long long time since the driveway was "void" of firewood!! Finally after a long summer of hauling it down and a long fall getting it split and stacked it is finally FINISHED!! yeah!!
My thanks to Bonnie and Jim for the use of their splitter as it sure took the really hard work out of it!!

The New and the Old!!

I tend to keep 'things' till they are no longer useful!! But in this case I splurged and bought a 12' car hauler!! Some might say "only a 12'er" but it fits my needs just fine, hauling the Ranger and whatever wood I want to haul home!! With electric brakes ( my first both of us Becky and I) have hauled a "load" and it pulls really nice with my diesel truck!! Am I spoiled or what? The old blue trailer that my Dad built me for my old old 300 Honda with a snow plow is exactly 4' 1/2" wide to accomadate the 4' plow that I used on the my "new 350" for years!! Sure is handy when I need it though!!

BECKY CRUISING!!!

with a big smile on her face too!! Both her and my Daughter in Law Angie both felt really comfortable enough to go cruising up the mountain on some "trips"!! I love It!!

It didn't take much to get the little ones (Abby, Ally and big Sister Amber) with the great help of Gramma Beck to put some miles on that cute machine with the big flag on the back ( to aid in parents and grandparents to see where they are)!!! Oh the smiles and the thrills!!

can"t wait till Tyler and Nora get up and get to put on the required kid size helmets we make them use to zoom around the 1/8 mile race track!!

Sorry Bonnie and everyone else up there but we might have created a monster!!

The Ranger will double as a "play toy" and "work horse" as I ordered it with an 4000# electric winch and a 5 foot snow plow to use in the winter time here in town!! The steel cab with doors and a tip out windshield should really help out on the need to wear my new insulated bib coveralls that I used on the old 350 that nephew John B is gonna hopefully get fixed up and back in service for a second "toy" at the cabin..

LOADED UP!!!

My new "toys" that I bought are loaded up and heading to the cabin at Albany for the labor day weekend!! With 0.1 on the odometer on Ranger and the new 90 sportsman 4 wheeler in the front of the trailer we were gonna put some miles/hours on them both!! And we did just that! I came home today and there was 18.9 hours and 200+ miles on the ranger and who knows what was on the little machine as it doesn't have a speedometer or odometer on it!! By the way the little machine is "throttled" down to a max of 15 mph with a top speed of 30 mph if I let it run that way!! No need to do that as the 15 mph is plenty fast enough to run the "Albany 1000"!!!!

Becky took these photo's above Cinnabar park on a road we nicknamed the "yeah haw" road!! At one time we cussed the clear cuts but now they will have the only surviving pine trees when this beetle epidemic is over and done with!! The Snowy Range peaks are in the distance!

This series of photo's shows the wood that I split today and the old stumps from last year that still need to be split and what we have already cut, split, moved and stacked at various places at the house!! I am not sure where this pile on the driveway will wind up maybe on the west side for "reserve"!!

On a recent drive above the cabin towards Lake Owen I took these photos which show the devastation of the beetle kill in the mountains which is our backyard!! The caboose is at Lake Owen on the old railroad that we called "The Coalmont Local" branch which originated at Laramie and ended at Coalmont which is south of Walden Colorado. A distance of 98 miles!!

Notice the haze in the photo overlooking Albany below and the Centennial Valley in the distance from the fires in California..

As you can see in this series of photo's that Becky took, Jim and Bonnie ordered some roadbase gravel for the drive into their cabin and Jim was smoothing it out. They say there are 2 seasons up there, mud and no mud so hopefully this will help them this fall and winter. The tractor that they have sure gets a lot of work and the Bean's sure appreciate being able to get to our cabin when we get the urge to in the winter.

Thanks Bonnie and Jim we appreciate all the work that you do up there..

2 places 2 different types of weather!!

While I was recovering from the sore toe I went to the cabin to rest up. When I was able to wear a shoe with a toe on it it was time to get to work on the wood pile again.. Only while we were up at the cabin in relative nice weather ( it rained for a while is all) it was a different story in town!! The sunflower at least survived the severe beating of the hail that totally destroyed the vegetables growing in the backyard garden!! The large green pepper now has ugly black holes punched thru it and the leaves and flowers of the vine plants are gone!!

More wood to get split today but with Labor day just around the corner and the Denver Bean's coming up to enjoy the last weekend of the fall it should be fun and hopefully relaxing with good weather I hope!!