A walk

    Yesterday evening, I decided to take a walk in the back pasture and go see the horses for a bit.  I think they are pretty hot and lazy with the temperature's pushing close to 100.

I tried training my horse Ruby, this spring to come when I call her name.  I've read novels where the cowboy whistles and his horse comes running.  Well I can't whistle... at all.  But I thought how fun would it be, to still have your horse head your way when you call.  I don't know if I just got lucky or if she's really catching on, but when I went out, I yelled Ruby, and she lifted her head up and started walking my way.  All the other horses, looked up and went right back to eating.  Yay!

 Eventually, the rest of the horses made their way over to me as well.  Once they realized that I hadn't brought them a treat, they went back to doing their own thing.

When I walked back home, the kids told me that there were elk out in the field again.  I tried putting on a longer lens, but it was getting darker by that point and the quality didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped.  But it was fun to see the babies. 

  They watched me for a little bit, but they never seemed worried about me being there.  I really wanted to walk out and get a little bit closer, but I figured it wasn't worth the chance that one of the mama's would want to take me out! 

Montana Road Trip (part 3)

  This will be my last post about our MT road trip.  The next day after seeing Bannack, we headed over to Nevada City and Virginia City.  In Nevada City we panned for gold.  Nobody struck it rich, but we saw a few tiny flakes of gold.  They were so small you couldn't grab them with your fingers.  It was a fun experience, but not one I would want to do everyday for hours on end.  :)

  After we looked for gold, we stopped at this little bakery to have lunch.  When was the last time you had a meal under a roof like this?

 It was a fun little place.  Dessert was definitely the best part of it.  I had Scottish shortbread, which was really good!

Then we made the guys pose in front of the Saloon.  Haha! 

 Look how tough they look!  ;)

 

 Emma wanted to take a picture with my camera, so I posed for her.  I didn't see until I uploaded my pictures on the computer that my husband was being a goof in the background. 

One of the buildings we visited is said to be the oldest standing school in Montana.

 

After seeing most of Nevada City we headed back over to Virginia City to look around.  They have a small little train that will shuttle you back and forth between the 2 towns.  It takes about 15 minutes, but I think it's only a mile long.  

Here are a couple pictures inside one of the mercantile's.  It was really hard to just view it from far back and not be able to walk around and really look at the things on the shelves.  But I am a rule follower, so I stayed put!  ;)

We wrapped up our visit here by taking a stage coach ride.  Very fun!

 We did make our way towards Butte the next day and then we headed back home.  Four days on the road was perfect.  We had a lot of fun, but we were ready to head home.  We saw and experienced a lot, and really wore our kids out.  :)

Trip to the Lake

We headed up to play at Flathead lake this weekend with Dan's family.   I'm so glad that my kids are close to their cousins on both sides of our families.  They always seem to just pick up right were they left off.  I could just tell you that we had a great time... but I think I'll let the pictures say that instead.  :)

Montana Road Trip (Part 2)

  Bannack was probably my favorite stop of the whole trip.  It is such a neat place.  It is an old abandoned mining town.  The street is closed off so you can only walk through it.  Nothing is open in this town except for the visitor center.  Everything else is abandoned.  So neat!

 

These are the old hotel stairs.  Aren't they neat?

The top floor was the masonic temple and the bottom floor of this building was used as the school room.  If you look closely you can see the old merry go round in this picture below.

 

We got the kids to pose for a shot in the old jail. 

And here we got the whole crew lined up in the old bar. This was after spending a few hours walking around the town and the kids were about to drop. 

Isn't it beautiful!?