We headed up to the Boles Aero trailer on Friday, arriving in the afternoon.  That evening there was a couple of pretty rainbows further down the valley.

The next morning I headed out on the first of many walks with the dogs.  This dead tree was looking majestic to me for some reason.

Walking a beagle means patiently waiting while she explores smells.

 

 

 

And here the sun is rising up on the property, and you can see the two trailers.

I ended up walking further east at this point and saw where my ex-step mother’s cabin had burnt down.  I hadn’t appreciated before how close her cabin was to her ex-husband’s cabin which hadn’t burnt.  I asked my dad about this, and he felt that the latter cabin had less trees close to it, particularly on the downhill side where the fire originated, and he had more of a gravel driveway surrounding it which may have helped.

I told myself I wasn’t going to take photos of the wildflowers this time, but I couldn’t help myself.  These purple flowers were just too pretty.

And this large seed head was spectacular.

My father and his friend Mo had arrived on Thursday, and my brother and his friend Sue came up Saturday.  He had his newly restored 4Runner.  He attached a WHITE emblem that he had found at the crash site and placed it on this truck.

Saturday evening we had a nice early Father’s Day dinner with three amazing dads in attendance.

Sunday morning was another early morning walk with the dogs.  The angle of the sun was emphasizing undulations on the hills across the valley.

I experimented with trying to cast long shadows below me.  I had wanted to get my shadow on the next hill over but never was able to get the angle right.

We went down to a rock ledge on the lower portion of the property and looked up at the mountain toward the trailers.

Once again I couldn’t help myself with the flowers.

Mo drove the Ranger for the first time, and I decided to commemorate this.

 

She took this photo of our dirty Steve.  He loves rolling in dirt for some reason.

Tom and Dad replaced the Arlo camera in a windstorm.

 

Everybody left that afternoon leaving Tom and I with the dogs. I got some reading done in between dog walks so that was nice.  I also watched some storm clouds collecting across the valley.  Tom went riding.

That evening I decided to try to figure out the geology of the area.  I have been long curious about the rocky formation that extends into the valley below us.  I always wondered if it was an old lava flow.

I looked at geologic maps of the area, but the problem was they lack labeling of roads, creeks, canyon, etc to identify our location.  But then I found a cool website at the Washington Geologic Information Portal.  It did have landmarks I could identify.  So I figured out that we are in the brown area, and the area I was curious about was in the yellow.

 

So the brown, where the Boles is located, is volcanic.

Bu the yellow area below us is a landslide.  That makes sense.  It must have been a huge slide though.

When Tom and Dad were out riding on Table Mountain on Saturday they ran into a guy named Andy who had travelled with his well-furnished Land Rover from New Mexico.  His plan is to go from Alaska to Patagonia next.  Here is a screen shot of his Instagram feed we explored Sunday evening.  It is quite fascinating as he had traveled all over Europe prior to this trip.

I have a security camera trained on our front pasture trying to see if I can identify any predators.  No luck with that so far, but I did catch the wild birds singing and the roosters crowing near sunrise yesterday morning.

 

I realized yesterday morning that it was the tenth anniversary of our trip to Walla Walla, Pendleton and Eugene.  In this trip we camped at Birdtracks Springs.  I finally had a chance to relax enough to contemplate my career and realized that I could take a retiring colleague’s position and become full time at Skagit.  It was an important decision in my life, and I appreciate this campground in my memory for allowing it to happen.

Tom went off riding again while I walked around more with the dogs.

I did notice this storm cloud in the area where Tom was riding to.  Later he told me he noticed it too and decided to go a different direction.

In the afternoon we listened to music and relaxed.  In the evening he went for another ride, this time on the quad, and I read.

This morning one final walk with the dogs.  This time we explored the west end of the property.

Now we are stuck in traffic trying to get home.  It was a wonderfully relaxing trip.  We saw wildlife including elk, deer, quail, grouse and a marmot and heard wild turkeys.  It was windy almost the whole time, but otherwise was perfect.