Riverbend Journal

  When we decided to head out to Wyoming for this vacation, one place that immediately came to mind was a trip to visit the former ranch of my great great grandparents. If one goes out to your great great great grandparents, one has a maximum of 62 direct ancestors. Of my 62 direct ancestors, all have direct ties in Iowa and all but 4 of those are buried in Iowa. Two of those not buried in Iowa are buried only 50 feet south of the state line and the other two are buried out in NE Colorado though they were born in Iowa. Those two people moved independently out to Wyoming, met, married and bought their first ranch in SE Wyoming, not far from the path we were going to use to head back home on this trip. So I plugged the coordinates into my GPS and off we went. Eventually the paved roads ended and we turned into a private two track gravel land running through pastures over cattle guards and with numerous private property signs saying no trespassing. I figured since I was planning on in...

  A couple days prior on our way from the Bighorns to our AirBnB rental, we drove through the town of Thermopolis and saw the sight you see above which I knew nothing about. So on our third day trip, we retraced our route and stopped to more fully explore what is touted to be the "World's Largest Mineral Hot Springs". It was indeed warm to the touch with the hottest part nearest the source coming out around 127 degrees F. As one might expect, the area is quite developed with the park you see above and walkways over the mineral deposits. To the right and out of frame was a public pool where you could swim in the water for the health benefits and the deserted remains of an old sanitarium and other infrastructure.  In doing some research for our trip ahead of time (after seeing the area on our drive a couple days prior), I wanted to check out the bridge over the Bighorn River you see above. According to online sources, a rancher wanting to repair a tractor on one side of the...

  Our first day trip from basecamp was a drive up to see the Grand Tetons, a place I hadn't seen before outside of pictures too. My plan had been to drive up to the northern entrance and make our way south along the inside of the scenic look drive there up closer to the mountains. Instead, we ended up on the outside of the scenic look driving south. Although later we would drive north up the inside loop and retrace our drive a second time heading south on the outside of the loop, I preferred the outside part of the loop better. Being some distance away from the mountains just gave them better perspective and beauty than being up close and personal. Plus everyone and their brother were on the inside loop, so much so, that the Jenny Lake parking lot was completely full and people were parked a half mile along the main road in both directions. It was scorching hot that day so we didn't even stop there. We did stop at a little chapel near the southern entrance of the inside part of...

  After our visit with Devils Tower, we still had a fair amount of driving to do to get away from the Sturgis motorcycle rally and find an open motel. We ended up finding a vacancy in Sheridan, Wyoming which is situated at the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. We decided to do a little exploring after getting checked in and drove up a nearby canyon formed by the Tongue River. It didn't disappoint. We drove as far as we could and eventually the road came to an end due to the canyon walls boxing us in and a small gravel parking lot. There we parked and cooled our heels as dusk fell on the Bighorn mountains. Above us were two natural arches high up on the canyon walls though only one can be seen in the picture above. It was a beautiful place to end our day. Our plan once arriving in Wyoming was to set up a basecamp of sorts at an AirBnB and we had one reserved for us in Riverton, Wyoming near the foothills of the Wind River mountain range. But to get there, we decided to ...

  Back when we were kicking around ideas for my wife's second week off over the summer, we began kicking around ideas to head west. Particularly, my wife, not natively born in America, wanted to see the "Rocky Mountains" from ground level. She has technically seem them in the southwest but I admit, that isn't the same as seeing them further north. We started talking about Montana but ended up deciding on Wyoming. I have been to Wyoming a number of times but mostly in my youth and certainly not since I have been married so I was looking forward to returning to some old sites as well as seeing some ones I have only seen in pictures such as Devils Tower seen above. Wyoming is a big state and depending on where we were heading, we could go different ways. So we ended up choosing to go in a big circle and with Devils Tower being our first stop in the NE corner of Wyoming, we decided to head there via South Dakota. This effected us in two distinct manners. The first: Going ...

I'm hopefully back from vacation and writing upcoming posts this morning but while that is happening, I thought I would post one more picture of my altar build project that I completed earlier this spring. We didn't get back from our first vacation until Sunday afternoon so headed down to the church that I built the altar for which only has mass on Sunday evenings. Above is how the alter now looks in place and with the chairs rearranged to create a central aisle. Before, there was an aisle down either side and the chairs stretched across the middle. You can still see the marks in the carpet where they had sat for years before. I think the altar is a perfect match for this small rural Catholic church. I'm happy I took the project though I must confess, had it been for someone else other than a church, I probably would have declined the project. The priest saw my family in attendance and mentioned that I, builder of the altar was in the congregation, in his closing remarks be...

A reminder that I should be arriving home from our vacation tomorrow afternoon and will hopefully be back to normal blogging by Monday. With the new freezer, I am better able to preserve our tomatoes. Before, I always planted more than I possibly needed so there was always a lot ready when I went to pressure can them. This year I have only four plants and I pick about a half bucket every two or three days. I cut up the ripest ones and put them in a ziplock bag in our freezer for a later date. The ones that need a day or two on the counter to fully ripen do so and then join their brothers in the ziplock bags in the freezer. Then as time allows, I gather all those plastic bags of cleaned and prepped tomatoes and simply dump them into a large stockpot where with some time, the use of a tomato mill, more time and a pressure canner, turn them into tomato products for our pantry shelf. The first batch above was turned into non spiced tomato sauce. As we do most years, we like to try growing ...

Reminder that I'm away on vacation and will return in another four or so days. Deep in our storage/laundry room in the basement has resided a 4.5 cubic foot chest freezer that we've had for probably two decades. It has served us well though it frustrates us frequently. It has been completely full for nearly all of its life with this and that and finding the particular this that you need for your meal means a lot of rummaging around and shuffling things left and right. As you can imagine, over time, things that might have started off neatly stacked get shuffled around to where you can't find things you thought you had but can find things you had forgotten about putting into the freezer many years ago. For several years now, I have been wanting to fix this problem and make the freezer work better for us, namely make it easier to see and access what we have and also get a bit more freezer space so as our fruit crops start becoming more plentiful, I have a way to preserve them....

  Reminder that I am still away on vacation and will get to your comments when I return a week from now. One of the first tasks upon our return from vacation one was to get caught up on sweetcorn which was mostly ready for picking. For some reason, this year we have had a lot of ant damage where they have desiccated the ends of nearly every ear of corn. Fortunately, it has been such a good year for sweet corn that I just cut off the damaged ends and still have long ears of sweetcorn remaining. However, instead of husking it inside on a piece of plastic where it is comfortable, I had to husk it all on our front porch. Fortunately that particular day there was a slight breeze so it felt more like being in a convection oven instead of a regular oven. With everything husked and de-anted, I set up my workstation inside and got to work preserving it. I just parboil the sweetcorn for three minutes in my large basket lined pot and then dump into into a sink full of cold water to stop the c...

  I mentioned two or three weeks back that my wife had scheduled her time off for two separate weeks with a single week of work in-between. Thus, as you read this we are off on our second vacation of the summer. Our first was a road trip east of the Mississippi and this one will be a road trip west of the Mississippi. Most likely responses to comments will be non-existent for the next 10 or so days but eventually I will respond to them all. Above is one of many similar garden harvests that we've had this summer. Every other morning, I go out into the garden and harvest things as needed to stock up our pantry or in the case of the sweetcorn and tomatoes, as it ripens. The okra above is for the most part, far too big and woody to consume but I picked it for this picture and threw most of it into the compost. This particular picture was taken after our return from our first week long vacation and okra doesn't stop growing just because we aren't here.