Denise was concerned about my plan to leave at 2:00 a.m. and do the drive in one day, and she instructed me on exercises to avoid deep vein thrombosis from extended travel. Being the dutiful husband, of course I complied. Here I am at our first daylight stop past Ft. Worth, working the clots from behind my knees....
Jack caught up on some reading on the long trip, and was still in high spirits at our last stop in Bernalillo, NM. The mountains really got him fired up (as fired up as Mr. Reserved can get, anyway).
We made it to Steve's ranch 4 minutes ahead of our projected arrival at 8:00 p.m., but he was ready for us. After a good night's sleep, we spent Saturday getting oriented to some of the work Steve had lined up for Jack. We also pulled his gamecam cards ( revealing a pair of mountain lions and a couple of bears in our projected work area - yikes!). But Jack was still game for doing some mountain work.
We helped Steve clear his old barn that day and got set up to pull some old barbed wire fences. I sent a pic of Jack in his new work garb to Joe, who thought his son looked like a migrant worker..what do you think?
Jack's little black friend is Steve's newest addition to his Colorado family...Bonnie the lab mix. She was the first in the Polaris any time it started up, and was up for any adventure.
Well, Jack wasn't a migrant worker, but he pulled fence like one. We cleared the rest of the fence on the boundary with the National Forest and took out one interior fence through a nasty thicket.
We were also there when Steve had his new portable sawmill delivered. After sawing through the demonstration log, he turned over the mill operation to Jack and moved the heavy stuff with his little track hoe. He has a good start on some ponderosa beams that will be put to good use in the future.
Here's Steve with first sawdust on his mill...
He has his first log squared off before you knew it. He set the beams aside to cut lumber to his need later.
It wasn't all work in Colorado. We went fishing for bass on Lake Navajo on a break between work days and caught a good mess of fat smallies. Here's Jack with his first ever smallmouth bass.
I had to coach him on the proper way to hold a fish for the camera shot. He was having a little trouble getting the hang of it with one one his bigger bass that morning, also.
He might have struggled with the proper way to maximize a fish hoist for the camera, but Jack caught on to the important part of the process later that evening.
He did that much better, let me tell you. Cold water bass that were swimming in the lake that morning...not much is tastier than that. (We ate on it for a couple of days).
No summertime trip to Colorado is complete without a foray into the mountains to try for some trout, so we took another day off work and headed up the east fork of the San Juan just west of Wolf Creek Pass.
Jack got into it right away, but unfortunately snapped his (dad's) rod in the first hole we fished. We had to share the remaining rod for the rest of the day, but only used a single panther martin lure the whole trip.
We caught 5 keepers, enough to grill for our supper that evening. Jack had a couple of browns and a rainbow. I thought I'd snap a picture to see if he took my fish hoisting picture tips to heart.
Some improvement, but not quite there. I thought I'd better give him an actual demonstration. Here's a 5 inch rainbow to go along with a smaller cutt-bow I had put on ice for my contribution to the night's intended feast.
Fish hoisting aside, it was a very satisfying break from the ranch work. Another opportunity to sample the activities associated with the ranch was a shootout at Steve's custom gun range. The targets were varied...
There was variation in the weapons, also. We shot the 357 mag carbine and pistol, and tortured some of those stuffed animal targets with my 45 long colt, too.
That 45 caliber tommy gun hanging from the tripod in the middle picture was especially fun to shoot.
We decided to try for more bass on our last full day in Colorado; we caught a few more than on our earlier trip, and they were all bigger than the first batch (that we already had consumed). I thought I'd try one last time to get Jack to display a fish properly for a picture...
Still not quite right! He said I'd have to take him fishing some more until he got the hang of it, and I realized that it wasn't the fish that was getting played. Oh, well! We spent our last evening cleaning fish and enjoying the view from Steve's porch. We'll be bringing back memories that will certainly outlive the fillets we put on ice that night.
Meanwhile, back on the (Louisiana) ranch...Denise had taken advantage of our absence to make sure she wouldn't be outworked by her two absent guys. The house painting to which I alluded in an earlier blog post commenced with the screen porch.
It looks like we also got an upgrade on our porch furniture...to make sitting under the fan that much more comfortable during the upcoming dog days of summer.
The transformation of the front porch is currently under way...it will take a little while to get the entire exterior, but we're abandoning the piney woods revival church motif in favor of the colors you see here.
...and now send the children to bed before you proceed to the adult-themed portion of the blog.
Denise found these interesting critters hanging out (if you want to call it that) at the pool.
I've never seen that before...and don't particularly want to watch caterpillar conception again any time soon.
Also while we were away, she was removing laundry from the dryer, and when she was shaking out her panties (to fold) this little fellow dropped on her.
I never expected that to drop out of delicate wear!
Finally, I must admit that although I teased her about pruning our Rose of Sharon so severely that we should call it the "Stump of Sharon", she has had the last laugh.
...and like the many unopened buds on "Sharon", I leave the promise of a future blog for you to contemplate because this one is done.
