Time for another post. We've been here for a week and a half now, and I already love it here so much I don't think I want to leave come Fall. (that, and the fact that we have to face that horrible road again, and this time going down!
Just look at these pictures .. the one above is of the house as seen from the back meadow. 
The wildflowers are so pretty and there's all kind of critters hiding in the tall grasses. Like .. Turkeys!

And ...

             

.. A ruffed Grouse (I've never seen one before) and her brood of about 4 or 5 babies.
I flushed her out and everybody scattered, but one chick followed her in a tree ..

What a cutey!

I sure hope they all found each other when I moved on!

Like I said, the wildflowers are blooming and these pretty wild roses are all over the place. 

              

They have a wonderful smell, especially when the sun is shining and warming the air ..
These are a few more that are now blooming:



I've discovered several nice walking trails already. So far I've stayed fairly close to home, but I'm branching out a little farther every day. 
There's one that brings me through this woodsy area ..

   

.. and over a little creek .. 

 To where I can still see the house through the pines ..

Just a little further I saw this beautiful White Tail buck:

And in the meadows beyond a couple of pretty does ..

 

They sure saw me too!

Not too far from them a movement in the distance caught my eye, and when I zoomed in with my camera it turned out to be a Coyote!

I've heard since than that they have a den there somewhere, and sometimes the pups are playing outside.
I'll be back for sure to see if I can catch them in the act one day!

On another of my walks I follow the road in front of the house, the same one that we came up on, Joseph Plains Rd ..

It winds it's way through the fields and pines and is a very easy walk because of the gravel. 
It's only very hard to walk quietly, as to not disturb wildlife, because of that very same gravel.

This guy didn't mind I was so loud, he didn't budge one bit!

He was enjoying sunning himself on the open road on this crisp morning and couldn't be bothered ..

It's a Racer by the way

Eventually you'll reach this small pond. 
It's popular among Elk I've been told but there weren't any present this day.

So far the weather had been absolutely beautiful, I've been walking around in summer dresses and skirts, but than this happened last Thursday, it SNOWED!

Wow, can you believe it? One day before the start of Summer, the 20th of June!
We've had snow on Mother's day before, in South Dakota, but this is a record! It got pretty cold too:

It didn't stick, or stay, though, but since than the weather has been a lot cooler. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted!
Being at this altitude, you can expect anything, no matter what the season.

James got a very bad cold, during which he couldn't do much more than some paperwork, ordering materials and drawing plans, but now he's feeling a little better and has started demolishing some of the walls ..



This is the new bedroom addition that somebody started on, but that never got finished.

 

And he has begun with some framing ..

I promised in my last post to get a better shot of that little House Wren and his amazing narrow nest entrance. Well, here it is!
Isn't that awesome?

Well, I think this is about plenty for this week. I'll safe some for the next one! 
           (as if I ever run out of pictures or things to say).

Guess what .. we moved!
Since James finished the barn and did some work on and reorganizing at the shop/barn right next to us, it was time to move on to our summer-job.
For that we had to scale a 4880' mountainside by driving a harrowing, narrow, gravel road with about 100 hair-pin curves! 
I wasn't too sure about it, and initially we were going to leave the RV here and stay at the guest house of the farm we're going to be at, but everybody else thought it was no problem to bring the RV up so .. up we went!

  

I was driving ahead in Sam's truck, to let anybody coming down know that a big RV was coming up behind me that needed the whole road .. fortunately we only encountered one, and that was on a not so difficult flat stretch ..

Well, we made it safe and sound, although it took us an hour to drive the 30 miles up, and we were completely covered in dust on arrival!

Our new spot is at a gravel parking lot, right next to the garage and front porch of the house, and in front of the barn behind it.
We had just enough room to set up our own sitting area, but we are right next to the beautiful, and fully covered, front porch which I think we're going to use a lot!

The girls that are the caretakers of the property, Miriam and Marianne, who live in the house in the summer, have moved out for the duration of the renovation, so we have the whole place to ourselves to use when/however we like. Sweet!

 



The view  from my computer desk to the other side is of some meadows, pine trees, cows and a lonesome horse by the name of Sugar ..

The gravel road we came up on goes by the house and eventually down the mountain on the other side.
It's a little steeper and narrower that way, but without the RV we can take it down for grocery shopping in Grangeville.

See the mailbox? USPS delivers here, unbelievable! (and of course FedEx and UPS, but they go everywhere!)
We also have WiFi and telephone! I guess there's something to be said to be on top of a hill.

So far, we've encountered a few deer and James saw an honest-to-god bear when we drove op, but no pictures ..
I do have some of the many birds that have build their nest around the porch, like this Red Robin:

And this little House Wren, who's nesting in an old rusty farm contraption that is sitting in the flower border. 
I'll try to get a better shot of that later, it's amazing how narrow the opening to that nest is!

He's singing the whole day long!

I'll end with a few pictures of the final work on the barn and shop at Wet Gulch. 
That shop especially was unrecognizable after cleaning it up.

A new door was installed:

   

And, like I said, the inside was reorganized and got new shelves and pegs to hang all tools neatly on the walls, grouped together according to their usage.

What a difference a 'little' organizing makes!

 

And this is the finished barn. The soil around it was graded and the tractors were moved in:

It's a beautiful thing!