A Day of Many Layers

The dogwood show on First Avenue in Sandpoint is nothing less than spectacular. 

I had to just pull into a parking space while driving through town yesterday to capture some images of these stunning trees in bloom. 

Today my brother Mike reflects on his own life and survival of this missile strike and on the many lives he and others saved as a Cobra helicopter pilots during the Vietnam War. 

Thank you, Mike.  

We're glad you were granted these 50 extra years, and we've always been proud of you for your service.

 

Today, my sister Barbara, with help from our brother Kevin, begins competition at the regional Arabian Show in Nampa.

She'll be showing her pal Dusty, winner of many, many awards, including a couple of National championship trophies. 

Good luck, Barbara.

 

Today, my daughter Annie was geocaching in Dublin.

 Apparently, the prime minister Micheal Martin addressing a news conference got in her way of finding one of her caches.

In Ireland, the prime minister is also known as the "taoiseach," pronounced "teesha."  

So, she just took pictures. 

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miche%C3%A1l_Martin#Early_life

Annie spent nine hours at the airport in Amsterdam yesterday, navigating long, long security lines and waiting for a plane to take her to Dublin.

Finally, when a ground crew eventually showed up for her plane, it was cleared and allowed to fly. 

She arrived in Dublin late, late into the night, and I'm guessing she had a fairly brief night of sleep cuz she's been out and about in Ireland.  

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Dick Gooby worries about current gas prices but not when he NEEDS to go fishing.  

Besides, Mary Ann saves them money by riding the ranch horses to nearby towns for supplies. 

Teach a man to fish, and you'll find a woman who may not share the same enthusiasm about fishing as her hubby. 

Gooby Ranch Report:

 

With the price of gas being so high, living out where we do is really expensive.   We are slowly going broke.  The only way to cut our costs is when we need to go to town, we ride the horses instead of driving the pickup.

To go to Dillon which has two farm stores it’s 30 miles.  To go to Walmart, we have to go to Butte.  That’s 55 miles.  To go to Costco, we have to go to Bozeman.  That’s 100 miles.

When Mary Ann needs salt for the cattle, she has to put pack saddles on two horses and she can pick up 8 blocks of salt.  They weigh 50 lbs. each.

When she goes to Dillon, she gets up early, does the chores and feeds me.  Then she saddles the horses and takes off.

Normally Mary Ann will get back home before dark.  While she’s gone, I spend a lot of time watching TV movies.  When I hear Mary Ann coming in, I shut the TV movies off and switch to the news channel.

As soon as Mary Ann gets home and gets everything unloaded then gets my supper ready, she heads out and feeds the horses and bulls and checks the cow pastures.

I went with Mary Ann to Dillon a couple of times but since my horse isn’t as fast as hers, we had to take our camping gear and camp out on the way home.

So, Mary Ann decided she wanted a Girl Day Out so she would go by herself and save a lot of time.

One day while Mary Ann was having a Girl Day Out, I decided since she was saving a lot of money on gas, I would drive our pickup to my favorite fishing spot which is 45 miles from home.

I fished for hours and never caught a fish. The water was so muddy the fish couldn’t see the lure.  I got home before Mary Ann got back from Dillon.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember to tell Mary Ann that I took the gas guzzler and went fishing.