Happy Anniversary

Hi Everyone,

I suppose you've been wondering what we've been up to and as this is the first time I've updated the blog since September the answer is 'Not a Lot'.

Yesterday (Friday) was our first anniversary since arriving in Gillette. It's hard to believe we've been away so long and it will be good to catch up with everyone when we are home at Christmas.

Summer is almost gone, it's 2C outside at the moment although the sun is shining and it's a beautiful day. It was -3C when we got up this morning.

In our last blog we mentioned that we were off to Denver and would be going to the baseball. We had a great time in Denver and the game was good fun but the Colorado Rockies; the closest to a home team we have, were flogged 13 to 1. Since then however they have won 27 out of 28 games and made it into the world series against the Boston Red Sox so it's been interesting to follow their fortunes.

On the way back from Denver we came through Fort Laramie on the Oregon Trail. It's an historic fort that was part of the westward movement of people in the early 1800s. I can't say it would have been a lot of fun living there; it must have been freezing in winter and very isolated back then.




Not far from there we drove past one of the abandoned missile silos from the cold war. It's hard to tell what they are now but there is a ring of them around from South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming.

October saw our first snow fall and it was nice to see although it didn't last long. At this time of year the weather is really changeable, going from below zero to the mid 20s in a day or two and then back again. Snow was predicted again for last night but nothing eventuated..

These two photos are looking out our front door on Sunday morning after the snowfall.





Gae went off to Custer State park one Monday with one of the wives from work to see the buffalo round up. Those of you who have been over would remember we drove through there on our way to Mt Rushmore.

Anyway, each year they get the herd in and separate out some for sale or you can buy a ticket to shoot one and have its head mounted on a plaque; I think it's about $10,000 to do that.




Since then we've been back to Denver twice so Gae could do a glass fusion course on the weekends. We've had a great time and it's been good to get a bit of 'city' life.
Last weekend we had plans to drive across the rockies to Craig so I could work at the mine on the Monday but on Saturday night and Sunday morning there was 14 inches of snow in the mountains and the freeway looked pretty slippery so we decided against it.

This last photo is some of what the artist has produced in her few days of class.

Pretty talented really.



We don't have a lot planned until we go to Nashville for four days in late November. There has been some talk of me going to Perth in ealy November but I don't know what will come of that if anything.

Good news is though, that I've been asked to come to Brisbane on the 1st of December so we're both flying over then and will stay until after new year. We haven't told the boys yet and may just turn up on the door.

That would be a surprise!!

We'll end up having 5 weeks in Australia instead of the planned 4 so that will be good. Our plans for Victoria and Sydney haven't changed, we'll just fly from Brisbane to Melbourne instead of LA to Melbourne. We will come back to Gillette a week earlier than planned.

That's about it for the update. It will be great to see everyone in a month or so; it's not far away. Gae's off in Rapid City today fo some retail therapy with a group of ladies and I'm just going to take it easy.

See you all soon.

August Update

Hi Everyone; time for our August update.

The week after the Sturgis motorbike rally I had to work in Salt
Lake City so we took off in the car on Friday afternoon for the eight hour drive. After 6 hours we reached a place called Rock Springs, stayed there for the night and then drove on through Salt Lake to a place called Wendover on the western border of Utah where it meets Nevada. To get there we had to drive across the Bonneville salt flats where they set all the world land speed records. As you can imagine the road across the flats is incredibly flat and dead straight.
Wendover itself was a pretty ordinary place; it's claim to fame is that because part of it is in Utah and the other part in Nevada they can have casinos, a la Las Vegas. Well it is the most unlike Vegas town you will ever find and we were glad we only decided for one night.




After working the week in Salt Lake I took the opportunity to fly across to Melbourne for Jess' 21st birthday. It was a very quick trip for only a little bit of time at mum and dad's place but it was well worth it. It was great to catch up with all the family; Ben came down from Brisbane and we all had a great time. I arrived back in Gillette on Tuesday night after Gae had picked me up in Casper; worked Wednesday and Thursday and then jumped on a plane to Portland, Oregon for a four day weekend.

On Friday we picked up our hire car and took off for Mt St Helens in Washinton State. It was great to be driving through all the greenery and the magnificent fir trees.



Mt St Helens was great. We could remember back in 1980 when the volcano exploded but weren't sure what we'd see after 27 years. The drive to the mountain is about 40 miles from the interstate with 3 or 4 visitors centres along the way. As you would expect the mountain looks like it's had it's top blown off and it's easy to see the boundary of the blast area where all the trees were blown down. Many of the logs have just been left to rot away floating in the top of the lakes.
What was once a deep valley with a river in the bottom leading down from the mountain now has between 60 and 200 feet of silt and rock in it that swept down from the mountain.




We took a helicopter ride up the valley to the rim of the crater which was really great. The volcano is still active with a lot of steam rising up so you are not allowed to fly directly over the top. The mountain is actually growing back; there are two domes of earth in the crater that are growing at the rate of a dump truck every 4 seconds and in 100 years they expect the mountain will be as big as it was before the eruption.

After leaving Mt St Helens we drove south west to the Oregon coast to a little seaside town called Seaside. Because it as the labour day weekend here in the US and the weather was fanatastic the whole area was really busy. Seaside was a quaint litle place; we had been expecting something like Caloundra or Mooloolaba but everything was quite old. We still enjoyed it and it was great to walk on the beach and put our feet in the pacific. The water was freezing so there was no chance of going for a swim.
While we were there they were holding a kite buggy competition on the beach. Although there wasn't a lot of wind while we were watching we thought it looked to be a lot of fun.




From Seaside we drove down the coast staying in Lincoln City Saturday night and then back into Portland on Sunday night. The Oregon coast was very pretty, lot's of cliffs and beaches to visit and have a look.




We decided that Portland was another place we could easily live in the US; Gillette is slipping further down the list.

When we arrived back in Gillette on Monday afternoon it was 40C and now (Sunday) it has dropped to 7C. I guess that means that summer has finished and we could get snow within the next 3 or 4 weeks.

Make sure you click on the lighthouse below for some more photos of our trip.

We are having a very quite weekend at home this weekend and then off to the baseball in Denver next weekend so hopefully we'll have some photo's of Americas number one game from there.

Oregon Weekend

Lake Angeline and Sturgis

OK everyone, this week we get a double dose of the action.

As I said in the last blog I was going to attempt to hike to 10,600 ft to go fishing and I'm pleased to say I made it up there and back. The other thing we've done is visit the Sturgis motorbike rally; a great spot for bike enthusiasts and just the place to pick up a second hand harley going cheap.

Firstly though, Lake Angeline.

Lake Angeline is situated in the Big Horn mountains 10,600 ft above sea level. The only way up there is walk or by horse as no wheeled vehicles are allowed in the wilderness area. It takes about an hour to drive from Gillette to Buffalo then another hour to get to the edge of the wilderness area where we had to leave the cars. The last 40 minutes were along the worst 4X4 track I think I've ever been on. The walk starts at about 8000 ft and it took us about 3 hours to get to the edge of the tree line, where we camped at 9,800 ft. It's pretty much all up hill with not a lot of places where it flattens out, but we took our time and all made it up there.





It was nice to be up in the cool air after the heat of Gillette and after camping the night we took off in the morning for another hour up hill to where the lake is.
The view from the top is pretty spectacular although fires in Montana meant that a lot of the prairie looking east was too smoky to see. Evidently on a clear day you can see forever; the next highest point east is the French Alps.

Up above the tree line thre is not a lot except for rocks and a few scrubby outcrops. The rocks have all been left there by glaciers that carved out the mountains. There is still a small glacier that feeds into the lake that we were able to walk on; pretty good considering it was the height of summer.

During the day we managed to catch 7 good sized trout (I caught 2) that we cooked over the open fire that night; they were beautiful.





The next day, Sunday, it was time to head back down and home. Thankfully coming down wasn't quite so strenuous as going up and it only took two hours to get back to the car. On getting back to the car though we found both cars had a flat tyre each; pretty suss as we hadn't noticed it when we left them. We had only seen two other groups of two people on horse back up at the lake and one of the groups seemed pretty stand-off ish; we think they may have let the tyres down as both tyres tested ok when we got back to Gillette.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The Sturgis motorcycle rally started 67 years ago by a group of Harley enthusiasts looking for somewhere to go for a bit of a holiday and to ride their bikes. It's held in Sturgis, South Dakota on the edge of the black hills and has grown into the biggest biker gathering in the US. It officially goes for a week but bikes come and go for about three weeks through August.

We went over on Friday night and stayed at Deadwood which is not that far from Sturgis. As usual Deadwood was a lot of fun and the whole street was lined with Harleys from one end to the other.
With so many people around there was plenty of entertainment although Gae and I wondered if we'd fit the biker mould. We thought of buying some leathers to see if we'd fit in but then were worried someone would want to see our bike.




Over in Sturgis the bikes (and babes) were really something to see. Many of them would not have been legal back home and while the bikes looked pretty spectacular I'm sure they would not have been too comfortable on a long ride.





One of the bars we went to called The Bone Yard had organised for the Budweiser Clydesdales to parade around so we managed to see them doing their stuff.




On Sunday we went across to Rapid City to Blackhills Harley Davidson to see if there were any good specials; unfortunately it looks like I'm stuck with the push bike when we get home.

To see more of the photo's click on the link below.

Until next time; have fun. We are :-)

Lake Angeline and Sturgis

Arches and Canyonlands

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick update on our trip to Utah the weekend before last.

I was working in Salt Lake City so we took the opportunity to fly down on Friday night and go to the southern part of Utah to visit a couple of national parks there. It's amazing to see the changes in the scenery in the US; one minute your travelling through pine forest and the next it's just desert as far as you can see.

On Friday night we flew into Salt Lake and rented a small jeep 4X4. We drove to a place called Provo about 45 miles south of SLC and spent the night there then on Saturday we went further south to a town called Moab on the Colorado river. It was a very pretty place; lots of green amongst the red cliffs of the desert. There looks to be a million things to do there if you have the time; river rafting, rock climbing, 4X4 trips; mountain biking, parachuting... the list goes on.

From Moab you have easy access to two well known national parks; Arches and Canyonlands. Unfortunately the weather was really hot: +100F which made hiking around the parks a bit of a chore. We did as much as we could but next time I think it would be better to go in early spring or autumn.

Arches is famous for the arches carved in the rock cliffs by the wind and the rain. There is lots of spectacular scenery there and plenty of places to photograph. Some of the more well known spots are The Gossips, Balanced Rock, The Windows and Delicate Arch





Canyonlands is in sight of the Arches national park but is completely different. It is made up of hugh canyons formed by the tributaries that flow into the Colorado and Green Rivers. The Green River starts life up in Wyoming in the Grand Tetons (we've been there) and the Colorado starts up in the Rockies (been there too). The two rivers meet in Canyonlands and the Colorado flows on through the Grand Canyon to the gulf of Mexico.



We managed to do a bit of four wheel driving but we didn't venture too far; at over 100F we didn't want to get lost and there weren't always a lot of people about. Still it was good fun.

This weekend just gone we were in Sheridan playing in the Rio Tinto annual golf tournament; not great scoring but a lot of fun. Highlight of the day was Gae getting to put her name on the women's longest drive. Not bad for someone playing only her second round of golf and it was about the 11th hole so a lot of players had gone through before us. Unfortunately she was knocked off by the end but at least she got her name down.

Next weekend I'm going trout fishing in the Big Horn mountains. I'm off to a place called Lake Angeline which is 10,600 ft above sea level; it even has a small glacier feeding the lake. Sounds great and I'm really looking forward to it but the unfortunate part is that we have to walk from 6000 ft; hopefully i'll survive to write another blog.

Once again click on the photo below for more pictures of arches and canyonlands.

Arches and Canyonlands