Turtle shell

Occasionally, down by the river, I see turtles sunning themselves on logs or river debris along the river bank.  Recently I came across an empty turtle shell on the river bank.  Cool marking on the shell.

Mystery scat

A few days ago I found some unusual scat on my property down by the river.

It looks like there are nuts and seeds in the scat. I allow a friend to hunt deer on my property and last week he shot and gutted a buck. That may account for the reddish color as this animal must have eaten some of the guts.

As you can see by my shoe in the photo (the only thing for size measurement I had on hand), the amount of scat is relatively small. The bear scat piles I have seen when hiking have been definitely larger.

A small bear? Some other animal?

I sent out this photo to a few friends -- who have friends.  I got back an answer.

A person who works in the Fish and Wildlife Resources department of a local lumber company said:

...looks like coyote scat after eating nuts and grains. If it was bigger I would think it could be a bear.  This time of year the scats are fairly “squishy” with berries, nuts and remaining green vegetation.

A coyote!   Yes, that is who the scat may be from.  While bears can travel this river corridor, I often hear coyotes near the river and the nearby ridge.  The guy I let hunt deer on the ranch told me he saw a small - maybe baby - coyote one day when he was sitting in his deer stand.

It is a good thing it may be from a coyote and not a bear as Tammy and I plan to have a bonfire some night this month to burn another tree stump if the weather cooperates.

Contra dancing 2011

Saturday night Tammy and I went to a contra dance.  This month the dance was held at the Senior Citizen Center in downtown Kalispell.  The room is a little smaller than the usual location at the Salvation Army Center.  Lots of people showed up so the dance floor was full.

The contra dancing group invited a Kalispell group of swing dancers to demonstrate some swing dances.  During intermission eight young dancers demonstrated several Lindy Hop styles of swing dancing.  The swing dancers also danced some of the contra dances have never done it before.  For one contra dance where Tammy and I sat out the dance they asked me to record them dancing using one of the member's iphone.

Tammy is not crazy about contra dancing as she thinks it is corny.  It was a role reversal as I had to encourage/drag her out onto the floor to dance.  It was fun swinging her around and around for that section of the dances.  I could never get her to balance as part of the balance and swing move.  Tammy would always go in for the swing move.

The people dancing ranged from a five/six year old girl to people who looked to be in their 70s.  The skill level ranged from people who danced before and knew the dance moves to people who never danced before.  As contra dancing is a social dance where you dance with your partner and with a series of other dancers, it could be a challenge when the other dancer was a shy young child not knowing what to do next.

I did pretty good as I only got confused or forgetful of the dance moves a few times.  Contra dances have a small number of dance moves with each dance being a different combination of some of the moves.   We had a caller to help people learn/walk through the moves for the particular dance before the dance started, then they called the moves during the dance.  We also had several performers playing live music.  They had a good sound for only two musicians.

We didn't stay for the whole dance as Tammy had her fill of dancing.  After the intermission where we saw the swing dancers perform I got only one more dance in.  Tammy wouldn't dance anymore and a woman in her 60s came and asked if I would dance with her for the next dance.  Tammy didn't mind, so I danced.

First Snow 2011

I woke up this morning to our first snowfall of the season.

An Associated Press article mentions what we here in NW Montana already now, all the snow from last Winter didn't melt.  Unlike what the global warming believers say, all the glaciers are not shrinking.  The weather forecast for Montana this Winter is for an identical Winter to last year.  Which mean more snow to add to the glaciers' size.  Since the glaciers are not shrinking I guess the Glacier Park marketeers will have to come up with something else to entice you to visit Glacier Park now instead of later.

Old Snow Stays in Rockies, Adds to Glaciers’ Size

Montana Tammy's blog

Tammy has created a blog about her life here on the ranch.

http://montanatammy.blogspot.com/

She doesn't always see things the same way as me.  I mean... I didn't have useless stuff in my kitchen cabinets.  To her it may have been useless, to me it was good stuff. 

Septic

I dug up the septic tanks for the bathroom.   When a lot of water is flushed down the drains in a short period of time the water goes down slowly.  With one person the septic system works fine but with two or more people the septic begins to drain slowly. The problem seemed familiar.  When Francis and Linda visited me a number of years ago a tree root had infiltrated a pipe via a joint causing the water to drain slowly.

The advantage this time is that I know where and how deep the septic tanks are located.  I got to work since rain and snow were forecast.  With the overnight low temperatures well below freezing the ground is frozen until afternoon.  It took two afternoons to complete my work on the septic system.

The septic system is an old fashioned gravity system.  As you can see the tanks are a few feet underground.

This time I couldn't find a "smoking gun" as to a reason for the slow drain. No tree root masses were in the tanks, pipe from the house or the drain field pipe.  I did find several good sized tree roots along the tanks on their north side. I got an axe and chopped them out.

The tanks could use cleaning and I cleaned them.  First by using a pump to empty the tanks.  That worked until the material got thicker and harder to pump.  While I stopped and cleared the hose several times when the pumping got tougher, my pump decided to up and quit one time when I plugged it back in.  So the rest of the job to clear the tanks was done via manual labor and buckets.  It is a good thing that I don't have a great sense of smell.  And that I have a pasture that could use some fertilizer.

I then borrowed a metal snake from the guy who hunts on the ranch.  I ran it into the pipes and found no clogs.

Now to wait until the tanks refill to see if the minor stuff I did resolved the problem.  Otherwise I will have to dig up the drain field pipe and see if tree roots have clogged it.

Moving: cold

I forgot to mention in the previous post how cold it was in the house when we arrived.  The heat wasn't on when I was gone and the outside temperature was below freezing when we arrived.  Under a clear star-filled sky the air had a frosty chill and the temperature was falling fast.

Inside the house the temperature was only 47 degrees.  A bit chilly.  It was too late to start a fire in the wood stove to heat the house before we went to bed so we went to bed fairly early.  And the bed's sheets were cold.   "Freaking cold!" as Tammy gasped when getting into bed.   That is the reason for all the blankets on the bed.  They eventually helped us warm up.

In the morning I lit a fire in the wood stove and warmed the house up.

Moving, part 2

For our drive from North Dakota to Montana we got an early start.  The distance was 700 miles.  In North Dakota Hwy 2 is four lane, but in Montana the highway is two lanes, and old and narrow in some areas.  It would be a long day of driving.

We left at 6 am. Minot was quiet at this time.  After gassing up the moving van (another $70 to $80)  we took 4th Ave NW west through town to the bypass.  We drove through an area hit hard by the Spring flood.   Stoplights weren't working and street lights were off between Broadway and 16th St NW.  Some houses had lights, some houses had no windows or doors. Most houses were dark.  It was eerie.

The day before, as we drove through town with my brother, we passed through areas that looked like they were from a war zone.  Few people or vehicles were seen.  Lots of debris were still on the boulevards. Houses without windows. A few houses had only studs for walls to hold up the roof.

As we drove west out of Minot the traffic picked up.  Soon the traffic was a long string of red taillights in front of us and a long string of headlights behind us.   ND rush hour.  Ten years ago when I drove this route I maybe saw a dozen vehicles the 130 miles between Minot and Williston.  Now?  Pickup truck after pickup truck.  People commuting to work in the oil field.  This road had more traffic than the interstate highway in western Minnesota and in North Dakota.  Amazing.

As I drove through Stanley, ND I saw the Cenex gas station is now a big truck stop.  At 7 am it was jam packed with trucks filling up with fuel.

In the morning dark both Stanley and Tioga were lit up with lights.  Both towns looked much larger than the sleepy small towns I remembered them being before the oil boom.

Instead of darkness with a few scattered lights from farms across the wide prairie, now there were lights all over. Some lights were the gas flaring off oil wells.  Other lights were from the over 200 active drilling rigs.  The rigs were lit up like a night time space shuttle launch.

These are not the best photos as I took them as I drove, but the first two photos are of the gas flaring off oil wells.

Bad photos of oil rigs drilling for oil.  Over 99% of the oil rigs strike oil.  An amazing statistic.

Near Williston we saw the sunrise.  Mara, Tammy's former co-worker, had asked Tammy for a photo of the sunrise after Tammy retired.  She claimed it was a tradition people do the day after they retire from the Mayo Clinic.    We were a few days late in taking the photo.

At Williston we got gas for the moving van as the towns in eastern Montana are few and far between.  While the gas price in Minot was $3.53, the gas at most stations in Williston was $3.79.   I spotted a station that sold gas at $3.53 and we stopped there.  There was a line to fuel your vehicle, then a long line inside the station to pay for gas.  And that was with three cashiers.

Williston was hopping.  Vehicles and people everywhere.  Taco John advertized jobs at $15 an hour. About 1/4 of the ads on the radio station were for companies looking to hire people.  There is no recession in North Dakota.  The economy there, especially in western ND, is in overdrive.  It's crazy.  This is the modern day version of the California/Alaskan/Black Hills gold rushes.  If I was in my 20s or 30s I would head to North Dakota to work.  It's crazy.  It's hard.  It's exciting.  It is a once in a lifetime experience.

As we drove west of Williston the traffic quickly died off even though there were still a few oil rigs drilling here and there.  It was quiet when we crossed the Montana border.

Montana border

In Montana we encountered road construction.  Montana is finally improving the old part of Hwy2 that used to go up and down and up and down over the rolling hills.

While we were stopped and waiting for a pilot car to lead us, three cattle came to the road.  After looking the line of vehicles over they turned around and went back to where they had escaped from.

A small town we passed by with two cute small water towers.

Then miles and miles of Montana roads.

The Sweetgrass Hills are in the distance beyond the freight train.

As we drove Tammy noticed the truck's shadow and the strange shape rising from the roof.   Was something on the roof?  Or something coming off the roof?  What was it?  After a while she realized it was the shadow from the truck's right side mirror.  

Eastern and northern Montana is the home of a number of dinosaur bones. At a couple of places the locals placed dinosaur statues near the road.

Part of why we got an early start (well, earlier than normal for me) was to avoid driving through the mountains at night after a long day of driving.  The following photo was taken was shortly after we entered the mountains.  The yellow are the Western Larch trees turning color before their needles fall off for the season.

By the time we exited the mountains and entered Flathead Valley it was getting dark.  It was black by the time we got to the ranch.

The truck didn't have enough power.  A stiff headwind slowed us down by 5 to 10 mph.  For some of the steeper hills we were down to just 35 mph - though if I floored it I could have gone a few miles an hour faster.  Fortunately across Montana the traffic was pretty light.  In the mountains we had a few more vehicles and when I was able to, I pulled off the road a few times to let the vehicles pass by.  That's not to say I never passed any other vehicles.  We did encounter a few vehicles going even slower than our truck.

The journey took 14 hours.  The truck averaged between 9 and 10 mpg.  We spent over $500 in gas. 

We unloaded just the stuff we needed in the morning or that would freeze overnight as under a clear and starry sky, the temperature was dropping fast.  Tammy slept in late the next morning.

Moving, part 1

On Monday Tammy, her parents and I loaded up the moving truck with her household stuff and left Rochester.

It took longer than normal in the morning to get the moving truck as the old guy at the Budget rental office had an old-fashioned tube computer, and it and the Budget rental software wasn't working right.  Over and over he tried to complete the rental before it finally took.  Then, after I drove the truck to Tammy's house, he called and Tammy had to go back to his office as he still hadn't completed the rental correctly. 

It took four hours to load everything in the truck.  Because we were pulling the mini-van behind the truck the minimum size of the truck was 16 ft.  While that was larger than what we thought we needed, Tammy didn't sell her furniture as planned.  We filled the truck.  We had left a few items at my brother's house so the photo below doesn't show how full the truck was when we left Rochester.

It was after 3 pm when we finished loading the truck: too early to stay in Rochester and too late to drive all the way to Minot.  Then I remembered my friends Francis and Linda in eastern North Dakota.  A perfect distance.  And I hadn't seen them for a few years now.  A quick call to them and then Tammy and I were on our way.

A fully loaded truck pulling a mini-van can't go very fast so the drive took a lot longer than normal as we couldn't even make it up to the highway speed limit.  What could be done in five hours took us seven.

I had concerns about driving this big rig around the Twin Cities due to all the traffic.  But the traffic wasn't too bad and we didn't hold people up much.

We had a nice chat with Francis and Linda and slept on a comfortable air mattress on their living room floor.  Tammy and I got a late start after noon Tuesday as we chatted with Francis all morning.

The highway between Jamestown and Minot is mostly two-lane.  The traffic was light so we didn't hold up many vehicles with our slow speed.  It took five hours to get to Minot.

October train to Minnesota

Friday, October 21, I took the Amtrak train to Minnesota to get Tammy and move her here to Montana.  Unlike the previous day where the train was over 5 and 1/2 hours late to Whitefish, the train was on time the day I rode it.  The train lost some time as it went across Montana so I arrived in Red Wing, MN twenty minutes late.  For Amtrak that is not bad.

My train car was a little over half full with passengers but I was able to get two seats to myself.  When I walked through the three other coach cars I found that they were less than half full with a number of two seats without people.

I only had 3 1/2 hours of sleep the night before so I slept as the train went through the mountains. I woke up east of the mountains and this is what I saw.  Yup, fresh snow on the mountains.   When I returned home there was much more snow on these mountains.

East of Browning, MT

Between Malta and Glasgow, Montana the train tracks go near the Milk River as it curves back and forth.  It is very pretty in the Fall when the colors change.

In this area the BNSF railway had upgraded their communication network - apparently to satellite as they had removed all of the power line poles along the track and had quite a number of stacks of poles along the tracks.

At Havre, MT the train stopped for 20 minutes for refueling and we could get off the train to stretch our legs.  The weather was nice.  Here is the car I rode in.

While I noticed several border patrol agents on the platform outside the Havre train station this was the first time the agents didn't walk on the train asking everyone if they were U.S. citizens.   After I got home I found out why.

Current and former Border Patrol agents said field offices around America began receiving the order last month — soon after the Obama administration announced that to ease an overburdened immigration system, it would allow many illegal immigrants to remain in the country while it focuses on deporting those who have committed crimes.

 The full story can be found here: US northern border checks scaled back


Before the North Dakota oil boom few people got on and off the train at Williston and Stanley, North Dakota.  On this trip the three top destinations were: Chicago, Minneapolis/St Paul and Williston.

A Montana truck driver getting off at Williston told others that Williston and the area is like living through a gold rush.  He claimed there were over 6,000 trucks operating the Wiliams County alone.

Minot, ND was devastated by a flood this past Spring.  The train tracks, which were flooded, are located at the south end of the valley.  As the train came into Minot I looked out the window for the city lights.  I could see the lights of North Hill, but one can always see those lights before entering the city.  This time I turned around and looked out the south train windows to find we were in Minot as those lights were bright and I could see where we were.  Large areas of the valley to the north that were devastated by the flood were still without house and street lights and it was eerily dark.

The Minot train station is still closed due to the flood damaging the train station and platform.  The train still stops there for refueling but no one is allowed to get off the train during this time.

While the train refueled at the closed Minot train station I talked with a man heading home to St Paul for a break from work.  He had a job laying new train tracks.  Private companies are building oil loading terminals and also new train tracks. 

The Bakken boom: Rail terminal construction picking up speed

The St Paul man had a job back in Minnesota but his brother, working in the oil fields, strongly encouraged him to come to North Dakota to work.  His wife and kids are staying back in Minnesota but he hasn't regretted it as he is making good money and paying off his house mortgage, his debts, and is building a nest egg for his kids' college tuition.

But then he hasn't spent a winter in North Dakota.  He said the train track continues to be laid even in the dead of Winter.  The company has a large structure that covers the area where track is to be laid and heats the ground allowing for track to be laid when normally the ground would be frozen.  With the oil boom going full blast no one can wait and allow Winter to slow things down.

While the St Paul man and I were having a pleasant discussion on ND and Minnesota winters another man chimed in about how the wind blows in North Dakota and not Minnesota and North Dakota winters suck.  He didn't know that I had lived in Minnesota and can call his BS about the wind not blowing in Minnesota.  I lived in southern Minnesota and the wind there blew just as much and strong as in North Dakota.

This second guy was also from Minnesota and he was a prideful ignorant Minnesotan who thinks Minnesota is better than all other states.  He reminded me of what a person who had lived in both Minnesota and Texas (but was not a native to either state) once told me: Minnesotans are like Texans in that they think they are better than others.  The difference is that Minnesotans don't have a sense of humor about it.

Here is another example.  A bicyclist rode across the U.S. and had a blog on the New York Times website describing his ride.  He wrote about how nice and friendly people in North Dakota are.

Welcoming Monks and Wild Horses, in North Dakota

Of course a Minnesotan couldn't let it be.  Here is her comment on the article:

Funny.  When you read the bicycle rider's blog about his ride through Minnesota he didn't mention how nice Minnesotans are.  Gasp.

Anyway the Minnesotan on the train - who was wearing a t-shirt with the saying "If you can read this, thank a teacher" - wanted to brag about Minnesota to me.  Uh, oh.  Wrong person.  I lived quite a number of years in Minnesota and know that "Minnesota Nice" is just a marketing slogan.  Only Minnesotans or former Minnesotans use this phrase.

He was a classic case of cognitive dissonance.  He used two methods of resisting information: attitude bolstering and selective exposure.  For more on cognitive dissonance, click here.

For example, since he couldn't get anywhere bashing North Dakota and Montana and saying how much Minnesota is better than these two states, he switched and said he was happy to pay higher taxes as Minnesota schools are the best there are and he would never live in Alabama and Mississippi because they have low taxes and bad schools and roads.

Another point he tried to make was Minnesota was better than North Dakota and Montana because Minnesota had more people than these other two states. He tried to ridicule Montana and North Dakota because they have less people than Minnesota.  Really, then why do so many Minnesotans take their vacations in Montana? And why are so many Minnesotans working in North Dakota?   Here is a Minneapolis StarTribune article on the subject: Minnesotans drawn to North Dakota’s siren song of prosperity

From another Minneapolis StarTribune article...

So even with facts on your side one can't argue with people like this.  It is a waste of time. They have a closed mind and are annoying.  So I excused myself and left the observation car and returned to my seat.  The St Paul man had left earlier after the second Minnesotan hijacked our conversation.  I left the Minnesota man to wallow in his "Minnesota niceness" and superiority.

Willow tree in the Fall

I took pictures of my willow tree now that the leaves are turning and starting to fall.  Here is how the tree looked before and after I cut it this year...

Another view...

Last view...