Scenes of Fall

 It is finally cooling off around here. The trees are chaning, wildlife moving, and cattle work is picking up. Here are a few images from the last week, taken everywhere from central South Dakota to eastern Wyoming.

Happy Birthday Wyoming!

Happy 122 birthday to my wonderful homestate of Wyoming today!

We were the first state to allow women to vote and elected the first woman governor, the homeplace of JCPenney, where the first national park was created (Yellowstone), and where the nation's oldest national moment resides (Devil's Tower).

Today we have the world's largest coal mine in the U.S.  (Black Thunder Mine near Wright), are a leading producer of sheep and wool in the country, and host the "Daddy of 'em All" Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo each July in Cheyenne. Agriculture, energy and tourism top our revenue list each year, and we are a conservative, republican based state.

Our just over 560,000 residents are significantly outnumbered by cattle (we like it that way), and there are still a lot of wide open spaces across this great state. I've been fortunate enough to travel much of it via main highways, backgrounds, and trails - in cars, on horses and even occasional in a plane. Grab your atlas and take a look around my beautiful state with me!

 (Black Hills, northeast Wyoming)

 (northern Niobrara County, eastern Wyoming)

 (Bighorn Mountains, near Buffalo)

 (Goshen County, southeast Wyoming)

 (Powder River, near Kaycee)

 (Outside Lander)

 (Southwest Wyoming)

 (Johnson County, near Sussex)

 (On top of the Bighorn Mountains)

 (Pathfinder Reservoir running over in 2010, near Alcova, central Wyoming)

 (Between Gillette and Buffalo)

 (near Dubois)

 (northern Fremont County)

 (near TenSleep)

 (Rocky Point, northern Wyoming)

 (Yellowstone Park)

(Yellowstone Park)

(near Wheatland)

 (Laramie, 10 months out of the year)

Sunday Scenes

Here are a few fall photos from around the state of Wyoming for you to enjoy on your Sunday! God bless.

The Fall Work is Done!

In reality the work on a ranch is never done. But, we wrapped up the last of our "fall work days" Monday, when we preg-checked the last of our cows.

Every cow and calf has been shipped or trailed home from their summer pastures, the calves have all been weaned, their weights are entered in the computer, and the cows have all been preg-checked. For the last six weeks or so it has been a crazy mix of driving, riding, gathering, sorting, hauling, driving, riding, unloading, weaning, preg-checking, fencing, fixing water, etc... Did I mention driving and riding? And picking up gallons of milk as you blew through a town, learning which little espresso huts will make a coffee the fastest at 6:00 a.m. (I NEED my caffeine, and if we drove by a coffee shop would accomadate a horse trailer or semi, we stopped), wishing for a coffee shop on all the mornings (especially the cold ones) we didn't drive, or drive by one, keeping enough clothes in every pickup to ensure you're covered if it's 95 degrees or 10 below zero, and swapping my camera and computer equipment from outfit to outfit so that I can get as much work done as possible whenever we hit a town, or stay at a house, with Internet.

It's a unique time of year that's hard to explain unless you've lived it. I like to think of it as a whole lot of fun packed into a short period of time. We were blessed with beautiful weather for almost every task this year, and that always makes it so much nicer!

Now we are settling into the routine of feeding and doctoring calves, writing articles again, and getting ready for winter.

I am also going to the doctor tomorrow for an incredibly swollen ankle that has been plaguing me all fall, and which I "finished off" while gathering cows Sunday. I had to run a cow down and turn her back, which she was opposed to, and when it was all over I was one hurting unit. Hoping it's nothing serious, but have a feeling it could be.

Hope everyone else's fall has also been a busy, productive few months of working at tasks you enjoy, with people you love! I am so very blessed to have such a jam-packed schedule of things that I love to do, with my family and friends as the other people I get to do them with!

Driving over the Big Horns

I get to make the drive over the Big Horn Mountains more often than ever before in my life these days. It's one of two ways to get from my house to Adam's, and it also happens to be one of my favorite drives, so I take it whenever possible.
Here are a few pictures from my latest trip, which happened to be the day after their first big snow of the year.

Rocky Point

We are headed north, almost to Montana, first thing in the morning to start the annual fall gather of our pairs that summered on the Rocky Point Grazing Association. This job will take a total of three days - one to gather and ship ours home, one to gather, wean, and ship my uncle's calves home, and a third to go back and gather and ship his cows home.
We have been a part of this grazing association my entire life, and while my cousin tells this stroy best, here's how we remember Rocky Point gather (it was one day then) as little kids.
Your dad wakes you up in the dark, you stumble down the stairs at grandma's, eat breakfast, and head out to catch, saddle and load your horse, in the dark. You cram into a single-cab pickup with various siblings and/or cousins, and the two dads drive two pickups and trailers the two hours to the assocation, all in the dark. You grumpily get out of the pickup, put on whatever clothes you need based on the weather that day, in the dark. You get on your horse, ride out to the pasture, and head to the far side to begin gathering, in the dark. Everyone sits on a high hill, and waits for the first glow of daylight on the horizon. Then you start to gather, and in the early dawn light other riders seemingly miraculously appear as you go - people you've never met in your life. You gather and trail into the correls, then sort and load the cattle (it used to be yearlings, now it's pairs) onto trucks for the ride home. Then, after a very big day, you load your horse back up in whichever horse trailer isn't loaded with extra yearlings, or bulls, and climb back into the single-cab pickup to head home, in the dark.
It made for some long days, some of which included snowstorms, and others with bad sunburns at the days end. We didn't enjoy it much as kids, but with time it's changed to one of those jobs that's "not that bad" and actually enjoyable most years (depending on if there's snow usually).
One thing that hasn't changed is we will still be starting in the dark.
Hope you havea great week!

Fall Scenes

Here are a few pictures I took over the weekend. A couple were taken near or after sunset, and I enjoyed plyaing with my flash to capture fall colors at dusk. Hope you had a wonderful fall weekend too!