Author: cosmo

Now that summer is waning, we can watch the sun setting more and more to the south along the far shore of Flathead Lake. Even though we still have 15 hours of daylight, we’re losing about 3 to 4 minutes of it each day. Yet that ol’ ball of gas still puts on quite a show. Here’s tonight’s view from our front yard:

For years, Thom has been encouraging me to use manual mode on my camera. I’ve resisted because I’ve felt like my photos end up terribly over- or under-exposed, grainy, or otherwise messed up in some way. But I’ve gritted my teeth and practiced it, and yesterday I think I finally hit a point where I feel good about fully-manual photography.

Yesterday’s canvas was, not surprisingly, Glacier National Park. We went up there for the day with Kyra and Hannah. When we arrived in the late morning, the sky was overcast and everything was colored in a muted grey. Like pretty much every other time I’ve been to Glacier in the last year! We started at St Mary Lake on the far east side of the park, and I caught some “moody” shots.

I was kind of complaining about the grey weather to Kyra, and she told me I needed to have a better attitude. As if on cue, the clouds started to clear and the sky turned blue. The picture below was taken precisely 11 minutes after the one above. Notice the incredible difference in the color of the water (and pretty much everything else):

So that made me happy. The rest of the day was a brilliant sunny one, which was great for photos but kind of warm for hiking. We spent a while enjoying the cool glacial water of St Mary Lake.

It’s a truly beautiful lake– one of the most-photographed spots in the world.

Ooh, here’s a slightly more artistic angle:

And here’s my beautiful bride:

Hannah had a fierce blister from the hike up Mt Aeneas last week, so we couldn’t do the five-mile jaunt up to Avalanche Lake as we’d hoped. Instead, we took a few shorter trails, including one to Baring Falls. With a tripod and a couple of neutral-density filters, I succeeded in taking a sweet waterfall shot.

Of course the girls had to pose around pretty much every bend in the trail.

As we cruised along Going-to-the-Sun Road, naturally I stopped the car frequently to grab some shots of the amazing views of the valley.

It’s hard to capture the immensity of this place with a camera.

But, with some nice pictures on full-manual mode, my confidence is up and I plan to continue working on technique. It’s a good thing I have such an impressive canvas!

It was about a month ago when we last hiked Jewel Basin, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now that Kyra’s best friend Hannah is visiting for the week, we decided to head that way again. They wanted to summit Mt Aeneas, the highest peak in the area (at 7,500 feet). We donned our trail runners and headed out.

The first few miles were pretty tame: a wide trail with a fairly easy upward slope. But the last mile or so was where the trail earned its “strenuous” rating. It climbed through the forest with switchback after switchback, finally coming out on a ridge that runs upward to the peak. Here’s Kyra surveying the last half-mile of the route:

The summit is the highest point, of course. Already pretty tired, she and Hannah heaved a sigh and set off.

Despite the difficult climb, the peak was worth every calorie getting there. The views were astounding. To the north are the Picnic Lakes and probably Canada.

To the northeast, the peaks of Glacier are visible.

The southeast features Hungry Horse Reservoir, an enormous man-made lake (it’s visible in the distance, just before the mountain range).

And to the west, the always beautiful Flathead Valley. Here’s a shot of Pepper overlooking the land below. Flathead Lake is, of course, the huge body of water in the center. It makes Echo Lake, a popular tourist spot, look like a tiny pond (it’s in the lower right). We could also see the Flathead and Swan Rivers. Pretty awesome.

Kyra and Hannah took a few minutes to catch their breath at the top, and then posed for a picture.

It’s always cool to summit a mountain. “Top of the world, baby!”

Okay, maybe only five of the Seven. Two years ago, five of us met up in Indianapolis for Gen Con, and last year four of us were at Casa del Becher in Florida. This year, my new(ish) house was the destination. Since travel is all weird this year, Bech, Derek, and Dirk piled into a rental van and drove from St. Louis to Montana. Twenty-six hours on the road, with a stop in Omaha to pick up Aron. Oof.

Once they were here, though, we had a grand time. We mostly played board games, with breaks to go out on the lake or shoot some pool or just talk and laugh about our thirty-plus-year history together.

Derek enjoyed relaxing in the cool lake water. He decided paddleboarding wasn’t for him, so instead he just floated behind his board for about an hour.

Aron worked on standing on his paddleboard and eventually managed it. Then he decided to strike a yoga pose; this is some odd form of warrior:

We learned some new games, including Rising Sun, which turned out to be fairly complicated and not worth the effort.

The perennial favorite Power Grid probably saw half a dozen plays, which was great because it’s one I really enjoy. Also, I win that one a lot.

We learned Endeavor and after a few games, had the strategy down.

Let’s not forget Terraforming Mars, which is pretty high on the complexity scale but definitely popular with this group.

Grilling burgers and steaks, commenting on the hot summer weather (and lack of air conditioning in the house), sitting around in the courtyard until 2am… it was really awesome to hang out with these yahoos from my childhood.

Where will we meet up next year? It’s not clear yet, but since this is the third year in a row, it’s now officially an annual tradition. Maybe one of these times we’ll actually get all seven of the Magnificent Seven together…

… But mostly this is a story about bears.

For the past few weeks, we’ve watched the cherries in our orchard continue to ripen as the time for harvest approached. We also watched a couple of black bear cubs– who we’ve named Shawn and Gus– visit the orchard. On at least four occasions, we’d be coming up the driveway and see the two of them scrambling to get out of the orchard, like kids caught sneaking cookies. We’re sure they’re the same mischievous cubs Kyra and I spotted climbing our tree.

I didn’t mind that they nibbled on a few cherries here and there. After all, we have 92 trees, and they were looking good. I didn’t mind, that is, until yesterday. That’s when we took a walk around the orchard in preparation to have it picked, so we could sell our cherries and make back the money we’ve spent managing the orchard all year (pruning, watering, spraying, mowing).

We discovered that the bears had pretty much picked the entire orchard clean. As in, many of the trees didn’t have a single cherry left. There were a lot of instances of this:

Notice all the cherry stems without cherries. This particular tree had literally this single cherry on it. Several trees had broken branches, because bear cubs climbing to get the high cherries can be heavy:

Although I would love to see a bear cub in a cherry tree fall down when the branch under him breaks, it was pretty clear that these guys had systematically eaten through our orchard. The only trees with any berries at all were near the driveway, and I suspect it’s simply because the bears hadn’t had time to get to them yet. Give them another day or two, and those trees would’ve been empty as well.

So, this morning we went out and picked everything we had left. It was actually kind of fun.

Here’s Pepper picking the sun! Just kidding– it was an accident but kind of a fun shot.

There were a few cases where there were a bunch of cherries still on the branch:

Of course this should’ve been the case for nearly all of the trees, not just two or three of them.

While we were walking through the orchard looking for any remaining fruit, we had to avoid stepping in the bear scat that was littered throughout.

Yes, that’s right, I have a photo of actual bear poop on my blog. Notice all the cherry pits in that one. Sigh.

After an hour, we’d picked the orchard clean. We ended up with three half-buckets of fruit:

According to some friends in the business, in an average year our orchard should easily produce around $5,000 in fruit (of which we’d get roughly half; the other half would go to the pickers). Today we ended up with $0.

On the bright side, I spent the afternoon driving to various friends’ houses, giving all of them a couple pounds of cherries. They all loved it. And we have a few pounds left for ourselves, which I’m sure will get eaten soon. They’re delicious.

So, yeah, we learned a few lessons for next year…

I’m really digging the astrophotography options around here. Last night the stars were brilliant, with the Milky Way stretching from one horizon to the other. Here’s the party house beneath Cassiopeia:

Looking north toward Woods Bay and the distant lights of Kalispell… check out Ursa Major above the trees!

There’s something magic about sitting in the hot tub on a cool summer evening, watching the incredible stars above. Last night Alex and his friends retired there and spent about an hour chatting. I snuck a picture.

Today my beautiful daughter turned 21. Or maybe 22. And what better way to celebrate than with a trip to the town dump, to get rid of some garbage that had accumulated in the garage?

Today was a beautiful sunny day, and we finished all of our chores, so we decided to head out to the lake. I grabbed my paddleboard, and Pepper and Kyra took the jet skis out in search of boat wakes to jump. It was nice to stand, sit, and even lie down on the board while the waves gently rocked it.

Definitely a great spot for a nap! I watched the beautiful azure sky above.

After a while, Kyra found me and we traded. I rode the jet ski for a while, trying to learn some new tricks, while she laid on the board. She had a brilliant idea: tether the board to a weather station out in the lake, so she wouldn’t drift with the current!

After jumping wakes and working on tricks, we decided to head in. Kyra was feeling a little lazy and didn’t want to paddle back to shore, so I towed her. Nice!

“Raking the driveway” isn’t a household chore you hear about very often. But that’s exactly what I did today.

Our half-mile-long switchbacked driveway gets terrible ruts from running water after storms. It makes it tricky to drive in places, and isn’t kind to the jet ski trailer.

I decided to smooth out some of the ruts by raking rocks and dirt into them. We could really use some more erosion preventers, but that’s a project for another day. Good times.