Where We Are

When I first started blogging, there was a girl in Kentucky whose blog I read and she read mine. We were pretty faithful commenters for each other and got to be sort of friends. Then one day, she vanished. Just stopped blogging and I had no way of contacting her other than through her blog, and had no idea if she just got bored or if something had gone terribly wrong. 

Over the weeks, I finally decided to just assume she'd gotten busy with life and her little boy, and tired of blogging and let it go at that. Because there was no way to know if anything else had happened and nothing I could do about it if I did find out. 

But I also made a promise to myself that if I ever got to the point where I was done blogging, I'd make sure I said a proper goodbye, just so no one worried.

I realize I just vanished for over a month without a word. I thought I'd come on here and say something about that, but never got to it. And for a moment or two I considered being done with blogging. But at the same time, I can't just drop it. The thing is, I've just gotten really bored. I mean, how many things can you say about the same road. It may be all new to you, but we've driven them over and over again, and frankly, it's gets a little old and I don't have anything much to say about it anymore. 

Well I finally worked up enough motivation to come on here and do a post a couple days ago, only to discover that in my absence, blogger had changed things....again....and it wasn't working compatibly with my browser. And I wasn't motivated enough to fight with it, so I took it as a "sign" that I still had permission to neglect you all. 

But then within a couple days, I had two of my blogger buddies, drop a note to say "hey, where on earth are you and are you ok?" and I realized I'd just done exactly what my Kentucky friend had done. And after a little digging around I finally figured out that I could just come over to FireFox and blogger works from here. So....sorry to make you worry. And I can't promise lots of long interesting travel blog posts, at least not at first, but maybe I'll work my way into it.

Mid-way through my blogging sabbatical, we went home. I can write all sorts of things, lengthy meandering blog posts about home! But I figure most of you got interested in my blog because of the traveling and trucking, and maybe yet another blog about farm life isn't that interesting.

Along with blogging, I'd kind of dropped the photography (how many pictures can you take of the Great Salt Lake?), and so it was kind of nice to finally find some inspiration at home to get the camera back out. The first was a sunrise that was shockingly beautiful.

And then there were all the ducks and geese up on the lake behind the buildings. I do love migration season and all it's busyness! When a flock of white pelicans stopped in for the day, I finally convinced myself to get the camera and go. Of course, by that time (it was evening) the pelicans had departed, but it was still a pleasure to sit up there on the hill by the lake and soak it all in. So peaceful!

Half way through our break at home, we flew to Pennsylvania to pick up a new truck. I don't have a picture of the truck because it's not ready yet. It's an older truck (I say new meaning new to us) and needs some tweaking and a paint job. I'll introduce you to her later. But I did take a picture of Colorado, from a different angle, a more interesting one that I haven't seen over and over again. I love quilts and that's exactly what the mid-west looks like from the sky!

We drove the truck home from Pennsylvania. Our time in this current truck is nearing it's end. We'll have been in it 3 years by August and we're already up to 451,000 miles. So we need to let it move on while we can still get something out of it. And the "new" truck is our first step in downgrading. We'll truck together in it for a while, till maybe the end of the year, and then (if I want to) I will start to stay home while Malcolm goes out for short stints between longer home times. Yes, that's right! I just might be on the verge of being a full time ranch woman! It's totally up to me if I quit or not, and right now I'm leaning towards "hell YES!" but we'll see when the time comes. I do have nostalgic moments when I wonder what on earth I'll do with all that time, and know that I'll miss being on the road in many ways. I think for the rest of my life I'll either be craving home or craving the road. Trucking has ruined me that way. 

We got back to work on Monday for a short 3-4 week stint. We go back home at the end of the month for branding and to pick up the "new" truck from the beauty shop. 

Monday morning we loaded corn in Bowman, ND, about an hour from home, and headed to Billings to a feedlot. Then took a load of sulphur to an Idaho fertilizer plant on an overnight trip. It is fertilizer season, and that's mostly what we've been hauling these last few days. We're dry as a bone at home with hardly any green yet (as seen in the above pictures), but other places have had rain and are green and starting to grow things.

 

And they need fertilizer to do it!

I like fertilizer season. We end up running a lot of short loads up in our part of the country. Two of the main fertilizer plants for our area are in southern Idaho, and so we've been bouncing around from here to there. We took the sulphur to the Twin Falls area on Tuesday morning...

...and then loaded fertilizer in Pocatello and went to northeastern Montana to a little town called Scobey. Then we reloaded a partial load of seed potatoes and brought that back down here to southeastern Idaho, where we're waiting our turn to unload. And after this, we're going 20 miles down the road to load fertilizer going to Red Lodge, MT which is southwest of Billings, and just shy of being in Yellowstone country. And after that it's another load of seed potatoes from near there that they need over in Grand Forks, ND. Fertilizer, potatoes, fertilizer, potatoes, fertilizer.....and all that is just fine with me! I like sticking close to home. Makes us more likely to end up with one of those chance weekends at home. And you all know, I never turn down one of those!

So that's the scoop, and I'll try to be more diligent in staying in touch. As to my book blog, I'm hopelessly behind. My intentions of blogging about every book I read in 2012....ha! I didn't keep a list and I can't remember what I've read in my absence! And just three days into this week I've finished three, a paper page book, a kindle book, and an audio, and blogging about them all feels like too much at this point. So I guess I'll start with the one I liked best, and maybe I can pick up the ones I missed as they come to mind.