This 19th of August we were married for 19 years! Wow, how time flies indeed, honey!

                    
Since James needed some more parts (what else is new), we decided to make a little bit of a 'day' of it, by going down the hill and do some sight-seeing for a change also.
We had it all planned and were almost out of the door, when James went in the garage to grab our Styrofoam boxes for frozen groceries and he came across this ...



Overnight the cabinet that was holding a quart of red (oil-based) paint and one of dark-brown stain, had come off the wall, the cans had opened and paint had splattered everywhere!!
It took us almost 2 hours to clean up most of the mess .. sigh .. not a very good start of the day.

But, determined to make the best of it, we proceeded according to plan (somewhat), drove down the hill, and had coffee at the Hammer Creek Recreation area that we had driven by many times but never checked out before.



Fortunately I had packed some home-made blackberry coffee-cake, so we had at least something celebratory with coffee to munch on (instead of the planned pastries at the coffee shop).

It is a popular put-in spot for boating the Lower Salmon River via raft, kayak, jet boat or power boat. It has 12 campsites along the Lower Salmon River and is surrounded by mountain peaks.

After picking up Sam's truck at Wet Gulch (and a broken lawn-mower) we drove back to Grangeville, dropped off the mower and the truck (don't ask, the AC is misbehaving again), picked up the parts from the lumber-yard and drove to Cottonwood where we had lunch at 'the Hangout'.



Not much of an 'haute-cuisine' place but he Hawaiian hamburger was good, the 'Malt' so-so.
We were very hungry and it hit the spot, so .. good enough!

                 

Cottonwood has a Monastery, which has a yearly Raspberry festival, that we missed, but we were interested in visiting so we drove the 6 miles into the hills behind the town.
I didn't expect much, but coming around one of the curves, all of a sudden the enormous building loomed in front of us ..

              

They build them big in those days, didn't they!

We first visited the museum which explains the history of the Monastery that was founded in 1882 by three Benedictine missionary sisters from a cloister in Sarnen, Switzerland.




Afterward we visited the beautiful sanctuary :

We concluded our visit with a walk along the Way of the Cross behind the Monastery towards the cemetery, while also visiting the Grotto at the 4th.

All in all, a beautiful anniversary day, despite or maybe because of the splashy start!

Talking about splashy, my morning walk often brings me by this small pond, about 1.5 mile down the road from us:
 

I've been told you'll often come across deer or elk here, but I've never seen them, even when I got up as early as 6 am. 

Nice water-lilies though, and often some busy wading birds, like this Solitary Sandpiper ..

Other walks bring me to the opposite site of the hills, up into the meadows, looking towards the (cloudy) hills in Oregon ..

Lately I've come across a large group of White-tail deer that hang out together. 
They're mostly males with only a few does:

Their antlers are still 'in velvet', but I saw a few young ones play-fighting and head-butting each other. 
Practice for the 'rutting' season, which is coming up in a month or so!

                                                                  

  As soon as they get a whiff of me they're off, white tails flagging!

We also had another visit of Mr. Coyote yesterday morning. 
He's coming awfully close to the house, but runs as soon as he hears or sees us ..

Good looking specimen though!

I'm steadily working on our frozen Blackberry-stash. This time I went for a blackberry coffee-cake:

After 40 minutes it looked done, but when I went to cut it after cooling down, the inside was still completely raw! It took another 20 minutes to cook through and through, but fortunately by than it was quite good!

It's fire season, all the grasses are dry and dead, and the fire danger is extremely high at the moment!
But we are prepared .. look what's parked in the driveway:

 

That is Sam's old fire-truck, lovingly restored and painted. 
The tank is full and the engine checked, so it does work, but I hope we won't have to use it!
James would love to take it for a spin around the block, maybe we just have to 'test' it one of these days ..

In the meantime, he's still working hard on the mudding and taping of the drywall of the suite and the basement.
It's something that takes a lot of time!
On the outside we had a few guys working on the 'chinking' of the suite which was never done.



A flexible sealant is used to seal the joints of log homes, called chinking, which is important for insulation and protection against the weather.
James could have done it himself, it's not rocket-science, but he's never done it before and required buying some (expensive) tools, so he decided to sub it out.

They did a good job of it and fast too! It was done in two days!

Phew, that was quite a post again. 
I never think I have that much to say, but than I remember more and more, and can't seem to stop.
But here it is .. the end ..