7-17-11

Summer time with family and friends.

I went to the airport and picked up Sheila who came in from Michigan and then met Tova coming in from Florida with Anna and Joanna that are living in Bogotá, Colombia.  When we made it back to the doghouse we found Lisa and Sam there. Lisa is living in Springfield, MO and Same drove over from Big timber, MT. My wife Susan had five kids and I am sure lucky to have such good ones. The only one that didn’t make it is Amy who is busy raising a family back in Maryland. It sure made the doghouse happy to have my family here.

Lisa is the oldest and as you can see, very beautiful.

Sam, the middle of the group is a serious hunter and fisherman and perfectly situated in Big Timber to harvest the wild ones.

Anna and Tova came with Susan to my farm in Nevada to live.

Tova always looks good in a hat with her world-class hair.

Joanna kept everyone busy with her little projects.

We went over to Sam’s place in Big Timber and had a nice party over there with some of his friends. I had loaded up a bike and Sheila and I took off for a look at the Natural Bridges site where with the major amounts of rain, it was flowing over and through the rocks.

The country is just covered in the yellow clover along the road and hill sides with all the rain we have had this year.

The next day we took a ride up to White Sulphur Springs and took several soaks in the hot spring there.

After we got back Roger Muggli called and wondered if I wanted to ride up and check out the water coming over the Fort Peck dam. Well, “Yeah, lets go!!!”

It was bone dry last year when I went up with Craig Whitley. What a difference eh?

The water just booms down into a river below.

Sheila was set to take a ride so we hopped on a couple of bikes and took a nice ride down to Sturgis where we spent the night in the campground on the edge of town. The campground was almost deserted and that wont be the case soon with Sturgis Bike week that will soon attract thousands of bikers from all over the country as well as some from all over the world. The next morning we rode up to Deadwood and then on down for a quick look at Mount Rushmore.

From there we rode up to the Devils Tower and spent the night in the campground there.

Amazing structure and there was a family next to our camp that had their dad up on the rock climbing it. They were watching from camp with binoculars.

Next morning was breakfast in Hulett, WY. A nice couple in this Chevy pulled up as we were leaving. He told me that he took out the 350 and replaced it with a 305 to get better mileage. It is called ‘Blue Velvet’…. I really like his ‘Street Rod’ license plate.

The Black Hills are sure nice this year, although a little TOO green for my taste.

Sheila is becoming a very accomplished bike rider now. She feels more comfortable and it was nice to not have much traffic on the roads.

This is what is happening with my camera now on a regular basis. The covering on the lense doesn’t retract and I have to bump it to get it to open. Since I am headed to OZ in a few days I decided to get a new camera. I have been looking at the Canon PowerShot SX130 IS and finally went ahead and bought one.

The main thing I am interested in with this camera is that it has a 12x optical zoom lens for taking those long shots of distant objects. In the photos below I took a photo with normal settings and then zoomed in using the 12x, and then the camera will digital zoom another 4x so the third photo is 48x total.

This set of three photos is taken from my door toward Signal Butte. I think these would be better quality if I used a tripod rather than just hand held. The camera also is supposed to take High Def Video’s….. Wow, and this is all in a $200 camera. I hope I get some good shots down under. Stay tuned….