Life's Good!

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Unfortunately, this beautiful snowy landscape is NOT around us!

James had to pick up materials in La Grande, Oregon, about 5 hours away from us so he drove up on Thursday and came back on Friday.

He was very surprised to encounter nothing but snow as soon as he passed the town of Pollock, only 19 miles to the south of us!

Look how beautiful! This was just after sunrise, it still has a little pink glow to it ..

Past New Meadows ..

Up over the mountain range ..

And down on the other side towards Fruitvale, Cambridge and Ontario ..

Gorgeous!

I know it's good for the job that we don't have any, snow that is, but I'm still rather bummed about it! It's so beautiful!

We'd learned this spring that Riggins is situated in the so-called Idaho Banana Belt, as in:

A banana belt is defined as any segment of a larger geographic region that enjoys warmer weather conditions than the region as a whole, especially in the wintertime.

Shielded from storms by the eight- and nine-thousand-foot peaks of the Seven Devils to the west, the low elevation and the canyon with black rocks, which absorb heat from the sun and radiate the heat down into the canyon, Riggins boasts a “Banana Belt” sub-tropical climate.

Go figure! I guess that means little snow indeed!

Any-who, James spend the night at a hotel in La Grande, and after loading up the materials and picking up some groceries at the local Walmart, he went home the next morning.
It had been a freezing cold night there (19F), and there was some snow on the ground but the roads were all clear and he made it home safe.

Which was fortunate, since it so happened to be that it was his birthday that day!
We celebrated the next morning with a belated birthday cake:

I left out the other 60 candles .. they didn't fit!

That Sunday was a beautiful day, 51F and sunny and we went for a little drive to Slate Creek, where James had to pick up a water tank from Don.
We decided to do some sightseeing afterward and drove up Slate Creek road for a few miles ..

It's a pretty drive, and a decent dirt road leads you into a deep canyon ..

After 4 miles you enter the Nez Perce National Forest, where there was a sign that the upcoming road was partially washed out, so we turned around.
Back into 'town', we turned onto Nut Basin road and followed it all the way up .. look at this view!

We drove over the hill to the other side where you enter a large open basin .. Nut Basin, I presume ..

And back up again across the basin, towards the snow!

You look towards Grangeville here, but can't see it ..

As you can see, there's snow all around us, but not down below at the river where we are .. oh, well!
Let's see, what else is new .. one of last mornings I discovered this herd of Elk on the hill towards the back of the canyon. I could actually see them from inside the RV!

This time there were a few males among them!

The work on the house is progressing nicely. Like I said, no snow, or much rain either, and the temperatures are much better than last week and it looks like they'll stay that way for a while longer.

So far it has been a much milder winter than normal, but that's what you get when we're in town!

After the concrete was poured and cured and all the trenches for pipes filled back up, it was time to install the new material that James had brought from La Grande.

It's called , made of Styrofoam and very light weight and easy to work with ..

It's like building with Lego blocks!

The only problem is that when the wind blows (and boy does it blow!), it has a tendency to get airborne, so they have to make sure to hold onto it and anchor it down quickly ..