Eagle Cloud Formation

Amazing eagle cloud east of Hwy 97

We were driving to Omak on Monday and I saw this in the sky. By the time I reached for the camera and took a picture, half its head and right wing had evaporated. Before I could take a second pic, the whole right wing was a small puff. I have never seen anything as clearly as this and completely devoid of clouds elsewhere in the sky.

Aspen are in bloom

We are feeling the pollen and here is one of the sources. Things are blooming including the aspen around us. The blooms are looking like skinny, fuzzy caterpillars. Achoo!
In the Okanogan valley the fields are mostly green, flowers are starting to bloom and buds can be seen on lilacs. Snow is expected Sunday night.

Today is 100% chance of rain predicted for the Aeneas Valley and we already had some. Here is the sky I woke up to this blustery day. We can use the dust control and the pastures need water to boost the grasses. The wild horses have only been by once in the last week. The long-horn cattle came by with a newborn black and white calf. It was so cute. Sorry I didn't have any good pics to post of them.

Storm a coming!

Daylight Savings is This Weekend!

So not having TV has a few disadvantages. I just found out Daylight Savings is THIS weekend, Sunday, March 8, 2015. Yes, that even happens out here in the Aeneas Valley.
So don't forget to set your clock AHEAD 1 hour Saturday night.
Talk to you later.

Welcome to my world,  Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

Last weekend Frontier Hubby and I went to the Seattle area, Kirkland to be more specific. It was a birthday party for my granddaughter who recently turned one. It was a great party with lots of adults with 1 year old kids. My daughter-in-law made lots of tasty food and my son made punch.


What is that Thing? Yes it is.
(An unusual siting of a VW Thing)

After a day's drive to get there, we were certainly not the party animals. We did meet some very nice people and enjoyed ourselves.

My granddaughter's family prefers privacy so I am not posting pics of the party, I did however take many pictures of the drive over on Highway 2, one of the most beautiful, scenic drives ever.

The pictures start as we drove into Wenatchee about 3 hours after we left home. Including East Wenatchee, population is just over 40,000. The Columbia River divides the two, east from west.

Looking over Wenatchee

Leaving Wenatchee

The drive takes about 5 hours from Aeneas Valley with just gas stops. I put the pics in small, but you can click on them to see them bigger.


Welcome to my world,  Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

Driving through Leavenworth



A rock tipped up on end

to become a mountain!







Leaving Leavenworth



On the road again . . .

Frost line way up high

Almost to the top of Steven's Pass



Steven's Pass has snow!

Coming down some cool clouds

A moss covered tree lane

 

-Tunnel- Get ready to honk your horn

Rugged mountains on the wet side

No Trespassing

Many properties in Aeneas Valley have "No Trespassing" signs posted. Many people have not posted the signs, but expect people to know and understand that no one should trespass on private property, and this is all private property.
The public forest starts at about the top of Mount Anne to the north and the mountains to the south. So if you are unsure about whether you are walking on private property or public, don't cut across, especially if you are crossing a fence or gate. You know, they make maps that show where the public forests start.
Out here, not everyone plays nice. If you can, contact the owner of the property, ask for permission. Let them know your purpose and when you will be on the property.
Thankfully, the two people here are crossing with permission. A few others tried, mostly hunters or snowmobilers. Their trips on private property ended abruptly as they learned a little more about the facts of life and moved on to public lands.
Be sure to carry whatever it is you feel will deter the wild animals, too. Bear, cougar, wolves, and even deer can be aggressive at times. They are not likely to run from pepper spray, but it could happen. Are you feeling lucky today?

Welcome to my world,  Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

Local Weather Link

Woke up to a feeling of very light shaking. Reminded me of a bus going by houses or apartments I have lived in. I am guessing it was a trembler, as in extremely mild earthquake. I really have no idea and there are none reported near here.
Seems I am getting a lot of  requests for the weather link I use for the local, and I do mean local, weather report for my surrounding square mile or so of earth. So, click here to go to the link. It is set up to see the weather at the entrance to Aeneas Valley. On the map, you can scroll in or out, move the center of the map to your area of interest and click on the most accurate spot that you can determine.


Frontier Living Weather Site

The screen shot is scrolled down from the top of the page, which gives national major weather warnings and such. Below the map, is the GPS location of where you selected and I think an average elevation of the area. It does not match my known elevation for where I live, and that is where I put my mark for weather. Once you have your place picked out, bookmark it. Easy.
It is fairly accurate as weather forecasts go and certainly better than general weather forecasts for areas miles away. I would say + or- 5 degrees Fahrenheit and if it says 20% chance of rain, usually, one out of 5 times it rains.
Just for fun here is a picture of where I set this weather report up, the entrance to the valley, taken last week. It is 12 miles east of Tonasket on Highway 20.

Right now a friend, who is working for a neighbor, is working to make the water running down our drive, less problematic. He has heavy equipment and used to make a living moving dirt before retiring. He is fast and accurate. The neighbor was having more egress problems than we were as he is farther up this road, so we will help cover the costs of making things drivable. What we need is about 10, 9-yard loads of gravel. At $200 a load, I don't know how to swing it, but it is the only way to prevent the gouging and dirt runoff we are experiencing now and probably for the next 3 months of rain this spring.
Maybe we can trade for the many tons of rocks we are growing in the pasture. Every year a many more pop up from the freeze/thaw cycle. That is when water gets under a rock, freezes and the expansion force of freezing water pushes the rock up, and eventually, out of the ground.
I am looking forward to being able to drive around again!

Welcome to my world,  Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com


Trapped a Bit More than Less

So, it is a stay in the house day. I still have to go outside for the essentials, like feeding the animals, but I do not want to spend time out there today. It is windy, the clouds are heavy and wet with some mist falling around us. (Has turned to rain since I started writing.)

The paw prints are about 2 inches deep. Notice the green grass peeking out under the ice.

The ground has unthawed about 1-2" down making mud that is extra sticky and slippery at the same time. I found myself walking on the ice instead. 
The driveway is a mess. I toss straw on the snow/ice or ashes to give it some traction, but it wasn't much help today.

It was much easier to walk on the ice as I had my "clippies" on my boots. I actually hate them so only wear them when it is super slippery.

The pic below is the drive up to our gate. It has a ditch in the middle of it about a foot wide and even deeper than that in places. My car cannot survive crossing this ditch no less a fall into it, so I am staying home today. Good thing yesterday was dentist day. I almost did not make it back up here yesterday on the dirt road coming up the canyon. Ice, slush and snow were mixed together and pulling the car all over.

On a good note, the wild horses were back waiting for some food. I got to touch two of them on the nose as I fed them. That's about 6 feet closer than ever before.



How many horses do you see? (These are the wild horses)





The birth of a lake . . . at the bottom of our meadow.

 

Yep, I think it is broken

Welcome to my world,  Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com



 

Frontier Christian Living

I have a new blog, Frontier Christian Living.
A day is mixed with what is around me and what I feel inside. That becomes a combination of how I relate to things around me, how I relate to God and how I relate to others. This blog, Frontier Living Today, is more the how I relate to what is around me, while touching on the other 2 relations. Frontier Christian Living will be more about my relationship with God through His Son, Jesus. Maybe, someday, I will start one about relationships. I am no expert in any of the above areas. My expertise is from my experience, which I have quite a bit of (My kids would say I'm old) and I have learned so much from others who are "experts" (Meaning they know more than I do!). Learning is a core characteristic that I love.
There are times I would like to share with others who may be searching for some of the things I am learning. Blogging is a great outlet. Feel free to comment, pass my blog links to others, and consider blogging, too.

Last week as we drove through Omak, I caught some great creative snow sculptures. They were a few days old and most the pictures did not come out well. However, here are a couple that did come out nicely. Enjoy.

Welcome to my world,  

Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

Super Bowl Weekend

A couple inches of snow fell since Saturday night. It is still a gray day outside and no interesting photo ops yet. I did take a couple pics of the cold front coming in Saturday around noon. The sun had finally come out and there was blue sky. As we headed for Omak, we saw a nearly clean line of clouds coming from the southwest. It was very striking.
The pictures were taken from Highway 97 about halfway between Tonasket and Omak heading south. The sun was just peaking out from the edge of the first pic. It was completely behind the clouds on the second pic.

On a sadder note, the Seahawks lost yesterday. We went to a friend's place for a super bowl party. Had a good time despite the loss. Why did they throw the ball when standing next to the goal line? Football is a rarity for us, but we root for the local team. Glad we don't live in Dallas. Haha.

Our spring-like temperatures are having a bad affect on local plant life. We are seeing trees getting color back. Those with red limbs or yellow are turning more so. That is 2-3 months ahead of schedule. although no buds yet they may be here soon. I hope we don't get a hard freeze after the buds come on the fruit trees. It will be a big problem for the apple / pear / cherry growers in the county.
It is snowing again! Big fluffy flakes ATM. Expecting another inch today here in Aeneas Valley. I think its time for some more wood in the fire.

Welcome to my world,

Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

Saturday.
The day was booked solid. Getting work done around here for a couple hours then leaving for our big metropolitan area known as Omak. Population under 5,000. LOL
Lots to do including taking showers in town. (Did I mention no indoor plumbing?)
Thought I would share my morning with you. Woke up to Frontier Hubby showing me a can of Monster Java, my morning brew. He opened it as I was still groggy and dangerous with something so spillable. And yes, I actually ended up spilling it. Bah!
After a day of bleakness outside on Friday, where the farthest I could see was about 500 feet because of fog, I have some pics to share from Friday and Saturday.
The hoar frost was on everything. Here is a baling twine covered with it. The little piece hanging off the left of it looked like a seahorse head and neck.
Looked up "hoar" and it means grayish white. Hoar frost is pretty white. No gray that I could see other than the day.

The fog leaves everything in its touch covered with the hoar frost. The mountain behind these trees were not in the fog or its trees would be white, too.
The black looking trunks and the white limbs make this almost look like black and white photo, but it is in color. The overhead clouds do not bring out much color either.

Here is Mr. Rooster eyeing me through the hoar frosted chicken wire. This rooster is a road island red and stands at least twice as tall as the hens. He is 3 years old. Although not a pet, he is pretty comfortable about letting us in the coop and run.
The hens were laying the average number of eggs to date, 3. But someone is an over achiever! The egg on the left is way bigger than the others. I see a double yoker in my future!

Welcome to my world,

Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

.

What's bugging me?

Found it! Tough little thing. Tried the flyswatter, hard, to no avail except to make it mad. So, I took pictures and spent hours yesterday trying to find out what it is. Not a hornet it seems. It is a paper wasp: Polistes aurifer. After spending hours looking for what it was, I felt like they were everywhere by evening. Creepy. When it flies, the sound is low and slow. It's legs dangle down like it is ready to grab me and carry me away. Now my job is to find it again . . . .
The day is sunny and warm (36 F). Wild horses have not shown up yet today. The batteries are happily cooking at 30.5 volts (24 volt system).
On semi-sunny days the batteries do fine. In the summer the batteries do fine. On heavy cloudy days in the winter, the batteries need help.
We have a gas generator hooked up and have had to run it as much as 4 times a day for 30-45 minutes. Those days I was not online or even on my computer. Just the minimum load: fridge, dog fence and answering machine.
We hope to pick up a couple more solar panels to get more juice to the batteries in the winter. The sun is at about an 18 degree angle from the horizon on the solstice. That's pretty low and weak. In summer it's up about 19 hours a day and travels right over us. (We must be the center of the universe with that language.) In fact dusk to dawn is one long stretch for summer solstice. It gets dark, but you can watch the glow from the sun moving across the north.
Wish I could take a picture of the stars at night. WOW! It is beautiful here. Such a low population density making little light, the starts are very bright and so numerous. the Milky Way almost glows from one horizon to the other.

Speaking of low population density, the official definition of rural is 6 or less people per sq. mile. Okanogan county is 7.75 (41,194 in 5315 sq. mi.). If you get creative and remove the big metro center of Omak/Okanogan cities ( 7368 in 4.8 sq. mi.). the math comes to 6.4 people per square mile. Since you cannot have .4 people. round off and you have 6 per square mile. :) I would suspect that this valley is under 6 per square mile as there are other towns where population is denser, like Tonasket, Winthrop, Twisp, Methow, Conconully, Oroville, Brewster and Pateros to name a few.  So, take off another 4000 people over 15 square miles and from the equation and you get 5.6.
The picture with Okanogan county circled is from http://frontierus.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2010_Frontier_Counties_Map_fin062612.pdf. So we are officially designated as frontier.
Well, I have to make some dinner. Going simple tonight. Grilled swiss cheese on garlic sourdough bread if frontier hubby remembers to bring home the cheese. Mmmm, tasty.

 Welcome to my world,

Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

What is so "Frontier" about my life?

Where I live is hours from a medium size city and almost an hour to the closest town. The closest Costco is 3 hours away! We have low density population and still have range cattle to deal with all around us. We live with wild animals and predators walking on our property. We do not have grid-tie electricity, we do not have a finished house, we do not have indoor plumbing and we do not have our propane tanks piped into the house. We do not have paved roads for the last 3.5 miles to our place.

The weather is extreme, down to 40 F below in winter, snow on the ground for 3-4 months, pipes and stored liquids freeze, our home is heated by wood only with some solar gain. Summer is hot but relatively short. Temps can be around 100 F for days or weeks. Growing tomatoes, peppers, corn and melons is a crap shoot because there is always a threat of freeze, and a lot of work for a probable poor harvest.
The land is rough. Eastern Washington is considered high desert. Here, in Okanogan county, are lots of hills carved out by glaciers, huge rock cliffs, and mountains. Thick forests rise on the north side of the terrain. Sparse ponderosa and sage on the south facing terrain. Fire danger is a huge threat. The Carlton Complex fire, in SW Okanogan county, last summer burned over 250,000 acres (over 400 sq. miles) was started by lightning, a regular visitor to this area. The nearest fire hydrant is miles away. Did I mention no indoor plumbing?
There is no cable TV, only satellite. Internet is via satellite, broadband if you have line of site (small % of people can do this) or dial-up. Electricity is not pervasive and is expensive to bring in. Phone lines managed to touch most property lines, but the phone service (appropriately called Frontier BTW) does not have a voicemail service! Oh, and there is no cell service or texting service here. You have to go to town to see if anyone has called or to call out and don't break down on the way as you cannot call for a tow.

There is only one paved road and that is the main road up most of the valley floor before becoming a gravel road. If you live where you travel on dirt roads, you can expect regular vehicle repair bills for suspension, wear and tear, vibration damage, dirt contamination, slamming into a small boulder in the road because the car slid or it was hidden, tire repair for flats and wearing out tires faster. Everyone's car is the same color, dirt brown.
Jobs are scarce with no city around. Most jobs have to do with construction, animals or health. Shipping rates are high and delivery times long as we are so far out.
Did I mention no indoor plumbing? We have hauled our water for years. Lots of fun driving a couple miles at 5 miles an hour to fill up 55 gallon drums, in a truck missing a back window and very stiff suspension, and trying to empty them before the hoses freeze because the temp is under 10 degrees F and the wind is blowing and your face is tingling from the cold. We are now able to use an outdoor faucet for ourselves and the animals. Still darn cold in the winter!
Everyone waves at each other. Whether you know the person or not, it is cultural here to wave as you drive by or others drive by. Love it.  Unlike the city where people do not want to deal with others, people here interact with strangers more often and more comfortably. People stop to see if someone needs help when parked along the road . . . no reason to be there unless something is not normal.
Where else can you watch a herd of wild horses run by, or stop and eat a while? It is just my kind of place.

Welcome to my world,
Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

<< Taken last summer. This is the same wild horse herd that we fed on Monday night.

 

Intro to Frontier Hubby

I took this of my frontier hubby after he tossed some more hay over the fence for the wild horses yesterday. He laughed and told me I could post it to introduce him. So, now you have the backside pics of both of us. All who know me know I hate my pictures. Hubby seems ok with his pictures, but this way you get to see us with something in common. Guess what that is.
Here he is my animal loving, Christ following, hunk of a guy, Frontier Hubby.

I also wanted to post a pic I took a couple of days ago. I looked outside and there was a fog wave in front of the mountain. It was not flowing over a hill or anything as there is nothing there. It was like a wave in the ocean, but without previous and following waves. An anomaly.

 

Welcome to my world,

Frontier Woman @ Frontierlivingtoday.BlogSpot.com 

Look what we came home to today! Those are wild horses. Well technically, they are feral, but they run wild around here. This is our 3rd herd in the area. We are not sure what happened to the first 2 herds. It is possible they were captured and taken to auction. So sad. The emotion of seeing a wild herd running across a field is astounding. There are a number of wild horse herds in the valley and many more in Okanogan county.

The weather, although mild, has left the ground covered with snow. This herd does not usually come near the house, but today they were close by. We decided to throw out some hay to them. The hay was a big hit. All 11 horses came to eat.

The gray is the stallion, but he is not the boss. The mares and young ones got to eat first and he watched over them. When he felt it was safe, he came in to join the others. It took more than 1 try as the mares would chase him away.

I love the marking on the forehead of one of this younger horse. It looks like an apostrophe. Here is a picture of it.

Welcome to my world.

Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com

Winter Morning

 

Early day today. I saw the sunrise. It was at 8:20 so not real early, but I miss it about half the time in the short days of winter. I rarely catch it in summer, which is about 4 am.
So, I got dressed and went out to get some pics. I love this place with its trees, hills, mountains and the lighting is incredible! I thank God to be here. This place reminds me daily of Him. Instead,
when I am in the city with so much concrete, asphalt, glass and structures mostly with no wow value, I find it depressing. I'm wow'd daily here.
The first pic, on the left, is taken outside. The sun is sun rising over a hill. The other two were taken out our windows.

The second, to the right, is a water dog. For those unfamiliar with that term, it is a small cloud that wanders often near the side of a hill or mountain. It was lit up by the sun more so than any thing around it. There is a layer of fog just under it. It was actually from a couple weeks ago, but I really like it.

The last one, below, captures the rising sun hitting some trees and the fog that is often found below us coving the valley floor. We are about 700 feet above the valley floor.

I am thinking about adding a new blog about relationships. It would be mostly about marriage and making it better, but with a strong emphasis on understanding how men and woman think, react, communicate and expect the other to behave. It has REALLY help us become a much happier couple and we can joke about the differences when they show up... a lot!

Welcome to my world.

Frontier Woman @ frontierlivingtoday.blogspot.com