Montana

AN ELK AND A TUTU?…

It’s funny…I travelled way out west….and every once in awhile I would feel like I was being followed….and indeed I was….I took a tiny hike with my daughter-in-law……turned around and saw that she had been ambushed….

Not too long after recovering from the shock of seeing my daughter-in-law with a tutu perched atop her head, I was by myself, surrounded by the quiet of the frozen, beautiful landscape of the valley…I was taking pictures and I decided on the shot that I wanted and fired away… as I took the shot, I thought I saw something just to the left side of me moving…as I checked the image that I had captured, I SAW A PINK TUTU IN THE IMAGE!! I am SURE that it was NOT there right before I took the shot !!!

If you want a really terrifying look at a pink tutu incident..look at the following image…if not just look away!!!!!!!! (The image is stretched a little and looks really weird, but what can I say…consider the subject matter)

While staying in Missoula, I stayed at the C’mon Inn….just a half block from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation building…..imagine my surprise when I drove by early one morning and I found the majestic Elk statue in front of the building sporting a pink tutu!! No wonder I love Elk…..

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING MORE SERIOUS AND AWESOME…a friend sent me a video….an award winning video about Elk that is involved with, of all places…the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation…which as I said before was right near where I stayed…I’ve been there several times..I LOVE this video…It really touches my heart and inspires me….during my visit to Missoula, I kept seeing hats, magnets, etc. with the saying, “The mountains are calling, and I must go”….throughout my adult life,I keep hearing the mountains whisper to me….and hopefully, if I’m lucky..I will go, yet again.

If this is still displaying a link, please click on it to watch something wonderful…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUOQ_yPW_0s&feature=share&list=PLlyUllNl5enI4Bsjb6Uhq7QEe_UkPZ08T

January 29, 2013 | Categories: Montana, Photography | Tags: elk, Mountains, Rocky Mountain Elk, travel, TUTU | 23 Comments »

THE LONG RIDE HOME…

My trip home was something else….notice the foggy conditions in the first image? I was supposed to depart at 5:30 a.m on Monday morning….at 2:30 a.m., I got a call from my husband saying that my flight had been delayed until 1:30 p.m……Since I was already up and dressed
I decided to go to the airport to make sure my new schedule would work…

Turns out I was going to miss all of my connections…and I wouldn’t be able to get home until WEDNESDAY!!! Considering the fact that I was supposed to fly to Florida on Thursday, it was a little disconcerting to think that fog could mess up my flight again on Wednesday….

The wonderful people at Delta airlines worked and worked and finally came up with a plan to get me to Indianapolis by 10:30 Monday night….but hubby would have to drive two hours there to pick me up and then we would have to drive two hours back home…..temp. around 0 degrees and an even lower windchill…..we arrived home at 1 a.m…..by the time I went to bed I had been up 23 hours…

The good part…Delta flew me back first class on the three hour leg of the trip! Sometimes it pays to be very calm and nice when things aren’t going well…..the last image is of the mountains surrounding the airport in Salt Lake City Utah… no matter the difficulties, it was the best, after all, after almost two years of not seeing my son and daughter-in-law..I’d do it all again in a heartbeat!

January 29, 2013 | Categories: Montana | Tags: airplane, Delta, Delta airlines, FOG, image taken from airplane, montana, sky, travel | 29 Comments »

ALMOST TO THE END OF MONTANA…

O.K…..Just a few more pictures of Montana…so bear with me….this is my far-away son…….

And this is me ready to take a ride with my far-away son…wearing my daughter-in-law’s tiny little helmet….

January 28, 2013 | Categories: Montana | Tags: montana, Snow, snowmobile | 20 Comments »

ALL YOU PEOPLE ARE CRAZY…

WELCOME TO THE LAND OF CRAZY PEOPLE!! O.k. I know that I’m probably offending some of you, those of you who are brave enough to strap two tiny strips of material to your feet and throw yourself off the side of a mountain. I apologize…but you have to understand..I am a great big chicken and the whole idea of this makes my toes curl up and yell “HELP ME MAMA ! “..( I am not making this up….I HEARD them screaming) actually it makes me want to lay down on the floor and superglue myself to the floor…I feel like I’m going to fall down just looking at these pictures.

My daughter-in-law took me up the side of a mountain to see a ski resort area…..as we climbed higher and higher I could feel my toes trying to grip through my boots and latch onto the floor of the truck.

You can see how crowded this area is…not much parking, so cars start to line the road way before you reach the parking area…..

Notice in the pictures the happy people lined up waiting to get on the chair lift….See the little crazy people riding the chair lift to the top?? Aren’t they cute?? Aren’t they CRAZY!!!??? Do you see the TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN ??? Where people are going to throw themselves off???

Do you see the picture with the people just standing at the top of a downhill area?? I think they were fighting over who was going to plummet to the bottom first…..

DO YOU SEE THE WOMEN WITH THEIR CHILDREN???? THEY ARE GOING TO LET THEIR CHILDREN THROW THEMSELVES OFF THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN!! Well, o.k., maybe down a little bunny hill….but still !!! Do you see the woman with the poor innocent baby strapped to her back??? The child has no say as to whether or not it WANTS to go down the mountain !!!! There should be a law that a child cannot throw itself off the side of a mountain until it’s old enough to talk, and can voice an opinion on the matter….

Do you see the scary mountain road that we had to drive DOWN ??? IT WAS ALL ICY AND EVERYTHING!!

The worst part is that the car that we had been following, had their windows rolled down….the smell of pot coming from their car was SO strong that it filled the truck that WE were driving in !! We started to have some concerns about “second hand smoke”…..my daughter-in-law was starting to wonder how she was going to explain to my son that she had taken me high up into the mountains and I had somehow gotten high…

All in all that ride up the mountain, turned out to be quite a “trip”.. (Now you know that I’m just kidding…about MOST of this)

January 28, 2013 | Categories: Montana | Tags: chair lift, children skiers, humor, mountain, mountain roads, ski, skiing, snow bowl | 60 Comments »

SUZIE’S NEW SUSPENDERS….

These aren’t really mine…exactly…in my last post, I had an image of Daisy the dog looking at the fire and jackets, etc. hanging on the wall. Before I took the picture, there HAD been a pair of my son’s old work suspenders hanging there too…..I loved the way they looked on the wall…it’s not the greatest image… my son said he was going to throw them out, he had gotten a new pair as a gift from his brother and sister for the holidays.

You guessed it….they now belong to me and they made the trip home from Montana just fine…..I took them out of my bag, held them to my nose, and it smelled like my son was standing next to me…sniff…sniff.

I just re-read that, I meant sniff, sniff as in “Boo-hoo”….not as if I’m standing around the house smelling the suspenders all day…

January 25, 2013 | Categories: Montana | Tags: montana, Suspenders | 28 Comments »

NO MATTER WHERE I GO…

Well…..I got back from Montana,,,to weather more snowy and cold than it was there! On my second little adventure look what I found…The minute I hopped out of the truck and walked toward the horses…Mr. Friendly came right over for a good pat on the back and a little conversation….since he seemed determined to stay planted in front of me, I decided that I may as well use his back as a “picture frame”. Lately it seems that no matter where I go, I find a horse.

January 24, 2013 | Categories: Horses, Montana | Tags: Animals, DIGITAL PHOTGRAPHY, horse, horses, montana, NIKON, NIKON COOLPIX p510 42x ZOOM, photo, photograph, photography, PHOTOS, West, WESTERN HORSES | 36 Comments »

SNOW DROPS…

Montana….I’ve never been there in the winter before. My first morning there, fog blanketed the valley and because of the very cold temperatures (15 degrees), and the higher than normal humidity, everything was covered with “crystals”..actually it’s called “hoar frost”, (thank you silliliss)..I missed my Nikon D300 terribly….(the resolution in the images shown here, isn’t what I’d like it to be) but after my experience with the tripod, camera and lens crashing over in a nice, dry, stable environment, I wasn’t ready to take them out to the mountains. These aren’t the greatest shots, but I had a great time…out in the quiet and the cold.