HUNTING SEASON IS OVER

There are a few news items around our place.  1) Hunting season ended yesterday so life can get back to normal around here we hope.  We were able to go for a nice long hike to the east of us this morning and did not run into hunters who were hunting in areas they are not allowed to hunt in.  2) We are getting very close to finishing up with our flooring project.  3) Not new, but the elk are still around and hanging around our place.  I even took a couple of pictures of them today.

Gary and I went around the fences and fixed them up to where they will keep the horses in hopefully.  There were a few places that really needed fixing, but not as bad as we had anticipated given all the elk running around in the past month or so.  We plan on turning the horses out into the meadow again tomorrow and start feeding them down there.  There is about a quarter of mile of jackleg fence that is down on Jenkins Lane where we used to pasture our horses in the winter.  We don't use that pasture anymore so will wait until later to fix it all up.

Nice morning for a walk by sagebrush flat.

Jack spends more time watching the elk than he does eating.

You can see the elk on the other side of the corral fence.

When I went to get my fencing bucket from the wood shed, I found it full of pine cones courtesy of one of the local squirrels.

They have also hid a lot of them in the wood of the woodshed.  Maybe it is going to be a hard winter.

UPDATE 22 NOVEMBER 2011

We have completed the flooring downstairs in the kitchen/front room area, well we still have to put the trim back on and a few other finishing touches.  But the floor is down.  Our knees are sore and we are going to take Thanksgiving off and will work on it later. 

The weather has sure warmed up.  It was in the 40's today - the snow melted and now we have mud on the road.  Still snowing in the mountains and the big news is that our ski resort is going to open on the 1st of December.  That means I have to get skis down and tune them up.  Connie is looking forward to skiing this year - I am trying to convince her to get some fatter powder skis.  We will see. 

Still lots of elk hanging around.  There were 70 head in the hayfields below Gary's place yesterday.  Today 40 some head were in our place.  We can sure tell when they are around as the horses spend a lot of time with their heads up watching or listening to them in the trees below the corrals.  They also refuse to eat on the west side of the hayshed when they are around.  Afraid to turn their backs to them I guess.  Travis got a buck deer on the sledding hill yesterday and was texting his brother with a picture of it when some elk walked withing 40 yards of where he was sitting. 

A work in progress.

Measure twice, cut once - a great saying Connie's dad Wendell taught me.

The kitchen finished except for the trim.

Catmay's favorite position while watching TV next to where I sit.