Stuff, stuff and stuff

Bill has headed to the mountains with Kiwi. That means two Border Collies get to be top dogs today. Kea will hang out with me while her buddy follows Bill up a trail up a mountain in the Smith Creek drainage near the Canadian border. He told me the name of the mountain, but I can't remember.

We went to the trail head three years ago with Kiwi, so it's her second trip. She was just a pup then, experiencing her first snow on that October day when we took the Union Road off from Smith Creek and walked to an area that leads to Long Canyon.

Anyway, the two of them expect to return in early evening. In the meantime, I've got a "going to town" day. Various sundries need completion, and that means having to drive to town. The idea of going that way gets less and less desirable as I live here longer.

I used to never view it as "having" to drive to town. I looked forward to it because I could see lots of friends and wave at just about every driver I met cuz they didn't have darkened windows and I knew 'em. I'm constantly learning that a lot of others feel the same as I do about going through Sandpoint.

It has also occurred to me that the folks south of town have it worse than we do. They can fight the traffic on the bridge or sit there (as some did Saturday night when a hay truck caught on fire; don't know the details to that one but I do know it kept a wedding from starting on time and I do know it illustrated one more time the line that gets spit out rather sarcastically and quite often around here: WE DON'T NEED A BYPASS).

Anyway those residents south of the bridge cannot get much of their business completed with the ease that we can here in the north country. We have banks, feed stores, grocery stores, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, two post offices, lots of restaurants, the Mall, etc. They've got Badger Building Supply, Northern Lights, Inc. a couple of convenience stores, a post office and the flea market (four months out of the year).

If they choose not to go to town, they also have a choice of fighting even more traffic by driving to an even crazier place: Coeur d'Alene, while we can drive to Bonners Ferry in a hop, skip and a jump.

We have a pretty good deal being located here. If we could have a flea market here north of town, life would be complete.

I said this posting was "stuff, stuff and stuff," so on to more stuff. I rode Lily again last night. We went down the road all by ourselves. Her only concern was the silver end of the culvert sticking out in the ditch along the Colburn farm driveway. A couple of words of encouragement, and she walked on past it.

Laurie will ride her in three classes this Sunday afternoon at the Bonner County Fair horse show, which is a month early this year. I don't know why they rescheduled it, but I know I'll kinda miss going to a horse show over Labor Day as I have for so many years. Anyway, when the show is over, Lily comes home, and I can saddle her up and take off through the woods. When that happens, this year's horse dream will be complete.

Meanwhile, Lefty is once again getting some attention because he'll be going down to Coeur d'Alene next week for the Coeur d'Alene Fair horse show. Barbara is taking a couple of her horses for the halter showing, so they asked if I wanted to take Lefty along.

He's just been a pasture horse for the last couple of months, and he's got plenty of dings on his hide. But, I'll work at him and will do my best to get him spit-shined for one more halter class this year.

Let's see, what other "stuff" is there? Oh yeah, I've personally picked 1.75 gallons of dewberries so far, and the triplets picked half a gallon. I really did hit the mother lode, and I could easily go pick another half gallon today, but I'm gonna let the stickers in my fingers have a chance to drop out before putting them through that torture again.

Guess that's all for now. Gotta get going and get that trip to town marked off the schedule. Plus, there's a lawn out there in need of mowing and a top dog anxious to harass the mower. I'll tell you about Kea's obsessive-compulsive behavior later.