Friday morning we finished loading our RV for the long drive to Smelterville, which is just outside of Kellogg Idaho, to compete in the Eddy Brown Memorial steel pistol match.
We arrived late in the afternoon, drove out to the range to check it out, then came back to camp out beside the river for the night.

I whipped up a quick meal of bacon, hash browns and eggs for our supper which we ate while watching the river. It was so relaxing to just sit and watch the water flow by, especially for Mr C after such a long drive.

The water was so calm you could see the far bank, and trees mirrored on the surface of the water.

A couple of guys drifted on by, one rowing the boat while the other was fly fishing.

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Early next morning, we drove out to the range and on our way in, we passed by the old zinc smelter facility. The range is located further up the valley from this facility and we were told that many inches of the contaminated topsoil had been removed and replaced with clean soil.

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The day was a little cool at 7am but soon warmed up.

The 'Friends of the NRA' set up, as a fundraiser, breakfast and lunch in the building. They had all kinds of breakfast rolls, they cooked hamburgers and hotdogs on a BBQ and had coffee, soda and water.

The hills on either side of the range rose straight up, and as the day wore on and the sun beat down, it became very uncomfortable in the trapped heat.

Thank goodness we had some shelter from the burning sun, but there wasn't all that much relief from the heat. I wet a large men's handkerchief with water, and tied it around my neck, and that helped cool me down a little.

The long drive to get there, the heat and pesky flies at the range, were all worth it, as I came home with this award for placing second. Mr C placed first, and another person in our squad placed third in .22 rimfire. Two other members of our squad also went home with awards for winning in other classes.

Our worst fears realized

I am still being a wimp, the tooth I had pulled on Monday is now a dry socket. The stench is awful, the pain being controlled by over the counter medications, and the worst part, the infection is in my right sinus. This morning I went back to my dentist and had more medication applied to the socket, a medicated wad inserted and sent home with anti-biotics. I stopped at the drugstore on my way home and bought a neti pot to flush out the sinus. I have to take very good care of myself or there could be serious consequences due to the infection of the sinus.
I am glad my two clients canceled for today, so I can stay at home and rest.

Groan!! I am not usually a wimp but....

I am wimping out to day.
A week ago, I went to my dentist to have him take a look at a crowned tooth, I thought had decay right at the gum line. Sure enough, there was decay so the crown had to be removed. This crown had been put on by another dentist many years ago so Dr Bob did not know what he was up against. It was not an easy job to remove the crown. After much work with what felt like a hammer and chisel, the crown finally broke free. Dr Bob showed me why the crown was so firmly fixed in place, it had a post down the center and a whole lot of glue. I was sent home with instructions on how to take care of the uncrowned tooth, actually just a little of the root was left sticking out from the gum line, and given an appointment to be back in a weeks time (yesterday) to see what we had.
Dr Bob took a look and said the decay had eaten away a good portion of one side, there was not enough left to be able to work with to reinstall the crown, so the rest of what was left of the tooth had to be removed.
Having a tooth pulled was not something I was looking forward to, but knew it had to be done. After deadening the area Dr Bob got to work. He worked and worked on getting that root out, I thought he was going to have to put his knee on my cheek to get leverage to pull that stubborn tooth. At one point he asked if it I was OK I signaled that I was not, what can you do but signal when you have a mouth full of Doctors fingers and dentistry tools, Dr Bob injected more of the good stuff to deaden the area some more and went back to work.
The root finally came loose and Dr Bob showed me why it was such a hard one to remove. Instead of the usual pointed root, it had a rounded end, what he called a ball. Well that was all over, so I thought, but evidently there was not as much blood flowing to form a clot as Dr Bob would like ( you need a blood clot to help in the healing process, other wise you could end up with a dry socket, which means more problems) Dr Bob had to traumatise the area around the empty socket to induce more blood to flow, there still wasn't a whole lot, so he placed a wad of gauze in the gap and sent me home. We were hoping the wad of gauze would hold any clot forming blood in place.
As the effects of the shots wore off I started taking an over the counter pain killer and went to rest on my bed. I was feeling quite traumatized by now and my mouth was hurting. I managed to get some sleep, but this morning my injury site is very, very sore so I will have to keep on pain killers for a while yet.
Dr Bob and I discussed putting in an implant but I looked in the mirror this morning and the gap is far enough back to where you can't even see it when I smile, so I am opting for letting it all heal up and not going through any more traumatic surgery just to have a tooth there.
Now all I have to do today is get through a two hour shift on my job, then I can come home and relax. Dang! I don't ever remember ever having been laid so low after any previous dentistry.

I love my new camera.

I am getting better at using many of the features on the Kodak Easyshare max Z990 I recently purchsed. I think this photo shows this.

There and back in a flash

This post is all about a road trip we took showing some of the contrasting landscape we drove through, and it is done so my family and friends in New Zealand, can see just how different the territory is between Western and Eastern Washington.
Friday late afternoon, we left Whidbey Island for the long drive to Moxee which is just the other side of Yakima WA, to compete in a pistol match on Saturday.

We arrived at the range close to 8pm after stopping and enjoying a dinner at Big Red's 50's style diner. We parked our RV and settled in for a quiet night before Saturday's pistol match.

From where we park the RV there is a spectacular view out across the countryside, and the sunsets are more than spectacular.

As day slipped into night, we could see lights from the community in the distance light up, twinkling softly against the shadowed mountains far behind.

Ty timing Mr C

Saturday dawned bright and sunny and we knew we were in for a scorcher of a day. We left Whidbey Island in the upper 60'sF and they were forecasting the upper 80'sF for Moxee. I was less than happy with that news as I do not do well in the heat. You can see the high berms surrounding this bay, and I can tell you, if there is no breeze, you feel that you are being slowly baked in an oven.

Sure enough, it was hot, hot, hot. I found an old, past it's best umbrella in the RV, which gave me some much needed shade, as I wrote down the times for the guys on our squad. When it came time for me to shoot, I made haste and got it over and done with as quickly as possible, so I could get back in my shady spot. Fortunately it was only a five stage match and we were done shooting by about two pm, and back on the road for home. But, we did stop on our way out of town at Dairy Queen for a large Blizzard. Yummy! and just the thing to cool us down.

From where our RV was parked looking back up towards the first bay.

A view out across miles and miles farmland and orchards to the mountains in the far distance. If it were not for irrigation, this vast land would still be a dry, sagebrush covered desert.

With Yakima behind us, we had miles of driving through hot dry sagebrush covered terrain, climbing a couple of very steep passes before dropping over the other side into greener farmlands.

I have always loved this view of miles of rolling farmland, with the spectacular mountains in the distance.

Such a lovely view, and I really prefer green to brown *grin*

I was in awe of the wind turbines my brother took me to see when I was back in New Zealand a few years ago, especially when I stood at the base of one, and now here we have them in Washington, harnessing the power of the wind.

There is a lot of construction going on, on Snoqualmie Pass, in fact, quite often there is a report on the TV that the road will be closed for an hour or so, so the workers can get some blasting done. They are removing thousands of tons of rock to widen the highway to three or perhaps four lanes.

We certainly have beautiful scenery in Washington State and when driving Snoqualmie pass you will be in awe. Of couse if you live here, after a while you are inclined to take it for granted, but I can imagine how visitors would view these majestic mountains.

How can you not be in awe at such beauty?

Back to reality, driving the freeway.

Mr C had a white knuckled grip on the steering wheel, of our non power steering RV, as we went through Bellevue. For a change the traffic was a little lighter, but still no fun to drive with some of the idiots on the road.

What a welcome sight, there is Whidbey Island across Puget sound, and the Mukilteo ferry dock just down the hill. We were lucky that there wasn't more traffic waiting to get to the island. When we left on Friday and drove up this road, the vehicles were backed up in the ferry lane, for miles. There would have been a two hour plus wait for their turn to board the ferry for the crossing.

There she is, the Cathlamet and we will board her in just under an hour.

At last, we are driving the dock to take our place on the ferry.

There are two, actually three decks on this ferry, if you count the passenger deck up above. On the left and right, there are upper and lower decks, with two lanes a piece, then in the center, are three lanes. This is where all the larger vehicles are parked, semi trucks, RV's etc. then smaller vehicles take up the remaining space. It is only about a 20 minute crossing to Clinton, Whidbey Island, then just a 15 minute drive from the ferry dock to our home.

So family and friends, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed going on this mini, ummm! vacation with us. *grin*
Oh! by the way, in the pistol match, I finished 4th out of 8, in my class.

10X versus 30X zoom

My new Kodak camera has the greater 30x zoom compared to 10x my old one has, and it sure does take some getting used to. I find I try to zoom in too close, and have to readjust as I tend to make the photos fuzzy. There is a focus feature which shows up in the viewfinder, which tells me when the picture is ready to take. What a fun time I am having learning to use the camera.

Photo of the day

I am learning to use my new camera, so I will be posting photos I am taking. Please enjoy as I learn.

What hoot!

My friend Joyce emailed this to me. Thank you Joyce for the chuckle of the day.

Sent by an over 70 yr old...................!

When I bought my Blackberry, I thought about the 30-year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a cell phone that plays music, takes videos, pictures and communicates with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grand kids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grand kids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world..

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say Iget lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it's red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Noble talking to my wife and everyonein the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. I had to take my hearingaid out to use it,and I got a little loud .

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside that gadget was the most annoying, rudest person I had runinto in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say," Re-calc-u-lating." You would think that she could be nicer. It waslike she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sighand then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then if I made aright turn instead. Well, it was not a good relationship.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GPS lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven't figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have to run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms andthe dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings..

The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop. I bought some of those

cloth reusable bags to avoid looking confused, but I never remember

to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I just say, "Doesn't matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." Then it's their turn to stare at me with a blank look .

I was recently asked if I tweet. I answered, No, but I do toot a lot."

Us senior citizens don't need anymore gadgets. The tv remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle.

A camping trip at it's finest

Every year we make the trip from Whidbey Island to eastern WA, to meet with our friends of The Fishin' Club.
We all stay at Coulee Playland resort on Bank's Lake and look forward to enjoying lots of fishing, camaraderie, a potluck dinner and some nice warm weather.















There are a couple of routes you can take to get to Bank's Lake, we prefer the beautiful drive up over the North Cascade highway. This year there was an exceptional snowfall, and still evidence of it to be seen.
















I heard on the news, that the road crews had to clear some 60 feet of snow from some areas of the road in preparation for the opening of the highway. That is a lot of snow removal.
















We arrived at the campground late on Thursday, launched our boat, parked the RV in our campsite and settled in for a few days of fun.
Picture taken of the lakeside campsites as we came back from a fishing trip.
















Our little Sunrader RV. Compared to most other RV's it is small, but we get good gas mileage, and it has all the amenities a person needs, in short, it suits us and our budget.

















Friday evening, Kevin cooked on the B-B-Q oysters he raises, while the rest of us played a game. I was never fond of oysters, but these, which were smothered in a seasoned butter after they were cooked, were tasty.















mmmm,mmmmm good!















Mr C and I love to motor into some of the smaller bays around the lake in search of bass. This one is surrounded by towering walls of rock and you could get a kink in your neck if you scan the heights for any length of time. I am always interested in what manages to grow on the rock face.


















Looking up at the craggy rocks way above our heads. It is amazing how the trees and plants manage to survive in such a bare environment.

















Looking back out of the bay at what is known as Lover's lane. This is where you can get through to go further on up the lake. As we have a small (12 foot) aluminum boat, we don't go too far from the campground, as the weather can change very quickly, the lake becoming extremely choppy, not a good thing to be out in, in a small boat.
















Not worth keeping a fish which is not much larger than the lure, but fun to catch and release.
















Then there was an incident when a crawdad pot was tossed out, by someone who will remain nameless *grin*, the two halves separated and sank to the bottom. Fortunately Mr C was going out in the boat and was able to snag the unsecured half with a boat hook, and return it to shore to be firmly secured to the other half.
















Saturday is the day we all overindulge in a potluck dinner. We usually eat anywhere between four and five pm so those keen fishermen who want to, can go out for a few hours fishing before nightfall, and the rest of us can sit around the campfire, burp, and tell stories. *chuckle*

First my car, NOW my camera

Sheesh! I can't win for losing. Last week my car broke down, then, thankfully at the end of our mini vacation to Banks Lake WA, my camera refused to work. I turn it on and you can hear it making noise but the lens does not come out. I smacked the camera a few times thinking a piece of grit may have found it's way down beside the lens, but no, it still does not want to work. Oh! well, it is probably time to retire my Kodak Easy share anyway. It did take very nice pictures and I liked the features, so I want something similar which will not cost me an arm & leg. Anyone out there have any recommendations. I did go online and came away very confused, as there are many, many cameras and the ones I look at seem to cost a whole lot, I really do not want to spend too much as I still have to buy my airfare to New Zealand, and that is expensive.

I didn't have to make lemonade after all

Well, all the woes with my car turned out OK. A friend of mine drove me to my first job then on the way back we stopped to see what progress had been made by Ben, my mechanic, in fixing the Buick. What a guy! he had it all done and it was ready for me to drive it away. Ben told me that I was fortunate indeed in making it to his garage, as the problem was a burned out camshaft sensor and the car would not start for him in the morning, so he did the repair right where I had parked it.
Mr C is back from Holland and had a grand time, he is now busy getting the RV ready for our annual trip to Bank's Lake (Near Grand Coulee Dam). We were going to leave Friday morning, but as my am client had canceled for tomorrow, we will leave as soon as I have the RV packed. I am so looking forward to getting away for a little R&R. Mr C has our fishing gear ready, I have plenty of good food, a bottle of wine and a book to read, ready to go into the RV tomorrow.
See you when we get back.

How do I make lemonade out of these lemons?

Just when a person thinks all is going well, a wrench is thrown in the works. Mike is in Holland shooting in a pistol match, and just before he left I asked which of his two vehicles I could use if my car failed, he said the blue van. I really though my car was OK until it broke down yesterday. My mechanic drove me home and as soon as I had put my groceries away, I went out to bring the blue van up to the house. DANG! it would not start, it was deader than a Dodo. I called the office and canceled work for today, and I can ill afford to lose any wages as I am trying to save for a visit to my homeland, New Zealand later this year. I am afraid the repairs to the car is going to take a large bite out of my savings, I may not be able to afford the trip at all, and that is very upsetting.
Well, that is enough crying, whining for now, just had to get it off my chest, and I really can't see how to make lemonade out of this mess. Perhaps buy a lotto, nuh! "if wishes were horses......."

We are going to be in charge.

Mr C is leaving to shoot in the European Steel challenge tomorrow. He will be away in Holland for almost a week, and as I cannot afford two trips in one year (going to New Zealand in November) I get to stay home and take care of the place. Of course I will have plenty of help from the rabbits in keeping the grass mowed, and someone to talk to *grin* I told Mr C that I would make sure all the partying and cleanup would be done before he returns *chuckle*

Go vote for my honey

Quote: from Mr. Completely

I got an email from the good folks at Lucky Gunner.com telling me that I had been nominated for a Gunnie Award for the best gun blog in the Entertainment category.

Please go HERE and read the whole story, and cast your vote.

A busy time planned for this year

Yes I have been tardy in my blogging, really no excuse except to say I haven't had much to say. Our shooting season has started in earnest. The last two weekends we have been away competing in matches, and this weekend is the Washington State Steel Challenge Championships in Ephrata.
I sure hope the weather is better than we have here, these cool overcast dreary days, are starting to wear thin. The only good thing about the cooler weather, is that my cool weather vegetable are lovin' it.
I have been planning my trip back to New Zealand later this year, but air fare is outrageous right now, so I am ummm! hoping that the price of gas will go down ( I am not holding my breath on that happening any time soon) therefore airfares will drop. It is interesting how the airlines advertise their airfares. You take a look and see an airfare around $1200 and say that's reasonable, but then, you look at the taxes and fees they tag on and it comes to a total of around $1600. Dang!
I miss my family, especially my daughter who has Huntington's disease and lives in a beautiful facility just for people with this disease. They have a family room which is offered to me for my stay, so I am able to stay right there in Amaryllis House with my daughter and see her every day. I also take time to stay with my two brothers on Drambuie, my oldest brother's boat, which is about half an hours drive from Amaryllis house, and do a little partying.
This year Mr C is going to Holland to shoot in the European Steel challenge as he and I have done the past two years, but I cannot afford to do both trips in one year, so I will stay home and take care of things while he is away Sighhh!
I am looking forward to all our adventures this year, as I truly believe that you really must try to do all you can to enjoy life to the fullest while you can. There will come a time in our lives, earlier for some, when we will be unable to enjoy even simple pleasures, because of health or other issues, so enjoy laughter and fun, and share your love with others while you can.

Happy Mother's day

This is a favorite picture of my Mother.

It will be four years come September since you left us, we miss you very much.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL MOTHERS

A little humor to brighten your day

JANE SEABROOK is an illustrator and designer who lives in Auckland , New Zealand . In recent years, her artwork has focused on paintings of wildlife for the Fury Logic series of books. She shares her life with her husband, two teenage children, and a growing menagerie of assorted animals.