Early Spring Seens

I saw in a Facebook post yesterday that a group had ascended Scotchman Peak over the weekend. Is that unheard of in winter time?  Maybe so.  It surprised me to see their collection of neat photos. 

Scotchman Peak, at 7,009 feet is the highest point in Bonner County.   Ongoing efforts have been in motion for several years to protect the peak and an area of peaks around it along the Idaho Montana border through a wilderness designation. 

Scotchman and Lake Pend Oreille---courtesy photo from http://www.scotchmanpeaks.org/about-the-friends/about-the-peaks/

I climbed to the top once with Bill and friends, only to meet  head-on with a blustery winter-type storm on July 3 back in the early 1980s.  With no visibility offering anything like the view in the photo above to reward us and with ice cold, numb hands, we ate a quick sack lunch and descended. 

So, to imagine a group climbing Scotchman on a crystal clear day in February offers another "Wow" factor to the unusual springlike month in 2015 that offered so many unusual outdoor opportunities. 

People are riding horses and bikes and hitting the mountain trails. Yesterday I saw a note on Facebook about a plan for a group of women's hikers to go up the Mickinnick Trail which winds its way up Greenhorn Mountain northwest of Sandpoint. 

Early spring continues to abound in early March----a month, which in the past few years has dished out our biggest helping of winter.  The deer, which usually stay away until sometime in April, are starting to show up in farmers' fields.   I saw two across the road while getting this morning's paper.

Yesterday, Annie and I drove out to Gamblin Lake southeast of Sandpoint and pulled into the Wildlife Management area where a gentleman, his family and their two adorable labs had just wrapped up a morning of fishing from his boat.  He could have done some ice fishing, but more than half the lake has thawed. 

During our brief stay there, we walked the trail and Annie found a geocache.  It was apparent that much work needs to be done to clear out last summer's violent storm blowdowns as trees lay scattered all different directions. 

Later in the afternoon I saw a pair of geese just off Center Valley Road.  I think they're the same pair who inhabited a nearby temporary pond last year.  

This week we'll be up to the mid-50s with more lovely weather.  

While we are delighting in dry ground and spring activities, my brother who lives near Tacoma, has headed to the south land to enjoy the sun and warm weather for a couple of months. 

Most of his driving toward Houston, though, has been through snow.  This morning on Facebook, he described Post, Tex., in one of his photos as a neat little town.  

Bill, the kids and I went through there and even stopped in Post (named for the cereal guy, as Mike noted) back in the early summer of 1980 when the Texas heat wave was making the news.  

That was before we had air conditioning in the car, and it was also the onset of convenience stores as we know them.  Annie had just gotten over the chickenpox, but on the trip, her pox became infected, due to the extreme heat. 

Her head with thin toddler hair wasn't too purty as those pox oozed and matted up her locks.  So, we stopped in Post, went to the hospital where a doctor looked her over and prescribed some medicine and then headed on our way.  

That was a trip of many stops at convenience stores to get some ice and to enjoy a few minutes of storewide air conditioning before returning to that hot car and traveling another 40 or so miles to the next convenience store.

It took us five days to get through Texas on that trip. The doctor's treatment worked,  as Annie's pox soon cleared up, but Bill is still mad at that doctor who charged us twice.

Anyway, Mike and his wife Mary liked Post, but they really enjoyed eventually getting out of the snow-covered roads of Texas. Maybe spring will soon show up there like it has in North Idaho. 

Looking ahead here at home, I will get a little taste of winter tomorrow when I slip on some snowshoes.  My sister's fifth graders are going to the fire station area up at Schweitzer to learn about water levels on an experiential education outing.  I'm told there's still enough snow up there to require footgear other than tenny runners. 

The nice part:  we can pretend winter and after a few hours come back down the mountain and continue to enjoy our unusual spring. 

Happy Monday.