Fishing or playing with Nightcrawlers?

We're marking off lots of 'firsts' this summer with the girls, including fishing for the first time. Spin fishing in a local pond wouldn't be complete with a a trip to Wal-Mart. We stopped in and grabbed a container of Canadian Nightcrawlers, a few bobbers, handful of hooks and a case of BudLight - just kidding. Next stop, Silver's Lagoon. Fishing held their attention for oh about 2 minutes, then they wanted to swim, then explore the bushes and more importantly play with every worm in the bucket.

Amazing how a little girl can boldly grab a spiny perch and hold it like she's done it before. Then the next minute dig into the tub and shove a worm in her sister's face. Absolutely great.

Here sissy want a worm?

I like worms!

T and I also got away for a night of camping all by ourselves. We headed west out of town and checked out the Fish Creek area. Along the way we checked out Montana's Largest Pine - a Ponderosa 350-year-old, 200-foot-tall, what a beast (see below).

The two photos below were captured from the North Hills area, check out the rainbow emanating from Mt. Sentinel.

Water

It seems like you can't get enough of it or be close enough to it during the summer. As the days start to shorten here in Montana, I find myself trying to incorporate it into my plans as much as possible. Here's a few pics from this summer's water escapades.

P-dog commanding the water gun

Up the trail from one of Montana's finest sandy beaches

Another sandy beach just down the road from the house

And as usual I'll throw in something that might make you damn. This boy has some ballz and then some. This is on the Truckee river in Tahoe, like they say if you're gonna be tough you gotta be stupid.

Not so fast there Fall

As always Montana's got some weird weather. Watching the news last night, most of us here were a bit surprised to hear the Winter Weather Watch for Glacier NP and the Bob Marshall. They are calling for 3" of snow above 7000ft. Ha, I ain't ready for that. I could use about 2 more months of flipflop weather.

T and I got the chance to check out the Rodeo the other night at the fair here in Missoula, and take a few pictures. I left there wanting something with a bit more zoom, but actually for sitting as far away as we were the 50mm didn't do too bad. We of course indulged in some fair food gut-bombage, a huge funnel cake followed by grade A people watching.







More pictures here

Western MT fair

Devastating Russian wildfires

Fire season in the western US seems to have been checked by regular rain/thunderstorms. Most of the nation has not seen any sizable fires yet this year, staying below Preparedness Level II thus far. The torrential downpours have been an almost daily occurrence for the last 2 weeks in Missoula. Everyone seems to comment on the mild summer we've seen so far. There hasn't even been a day that busted 100, I can dig that.

But over in Russia, the conditions have been quite the opposite. --

Moscow health authorities announced Monday that the number of deaths per day in the Russian capital had nearly doubled to 700 as the city and most of central Russia entered the seventh week of a heat wave. High temperatures, hovering around 100 degrees on some days, have destroyed 30 percent of the nation's grain crops and triggered massive fires in forests and peat bogs that alone have killed more than 50 people and devastated dozens of villages. - From the Seattle Times article



Another article on Russian smokejumpers