I'm a Blog Slacker: Part 2!

Hellooooo ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, German foreign exchange students, and spybots from Russia! Welcome to another episode of Adventure Time with Straw and Rowdy, where the facts are all made up and the opinions are always true! My name is Josh and I'm sure you know me, but if you don't know me, I'm sure you wish you knew me. And yes, you guessed it... I'm a recovering blog slacker. How could you tell? I've joined a support group that utilizes a five step program and I'm well on my way to recovery. As you can see, joining the Blog Slackers Anonymous (BSA for short... not to be confused with Body Surface Area) has made a huge impact on my life and I have already made one post in the past 23 days of the trip! Overall, it has only been 23,241,600 seconds= 387,360 minutes= 6456 hours= 269 days= 38 weeks (rounded down) since my last post. My last post on July 27th, 2013-- not coincidentally titled "I am a blog slacker..."-- topped the charts at a record total of 67 views, so I have high hopes for this one as well.

Take it all in and cherish this moment, because me posting on the blog is rarer than bigfoot eating Jack Links Beef Jerky under a waxing gibbous moon on a leap year. Side note: Have you ever wondered if bigfoot was actually blurry in real life? Like... maybe it's not the camera guy's fault. There's actually a huge blurry creature wondering around the countryside. I don't know about you, but that's extra scary to me. I realize that I've already lost most of the readers at this point, since you've realized that the rest of this post will be mostly nonsense and on top of that, your favorite writer-- Andrew-- isn't at the helm of the keyboard. But let's face it guys... I don't really do this for you. This is 100% for my own personal entertainment. It's true. Sorry to be so mean about it.

Oh, look at the time... I've already spent waaaay more time than the 5 minutes I had originally alotted to putting together this poor excuse for a blog entry, so let me keep this short. For the sake of time and energy (I'm still a blog slacker at heart, remember?), I've condensed all of my thoughts about the entire trip thus far into an acrostic poem. For those of you out there that did not go to elementary school, an acrostic poem is "a poem or other form of writing in which the first letter, syllable, or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out a word or a message" (per Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Acrostic. Accessed 22 April 2014. Available from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrostic>). The title of my poem is MONTANA. Yeah, yeah, yeah... real original... I know. See if you can find the acrostic within the acrostic... Complex... I knowwww... It's like inception in the poetry world.

MONTANA

Miles of nature that always necessitates ambulation

Only the west side of the state has mountains

No fish exist in the entire state

Takes forever to get anywhere

Always dropping phone calls like I just ate a bag full of buttery popcorn

Nothing of interest in the entire east half of the state

America, the beautiful

Well, there you have it folks. What do you have? I don't know. But thanks for reading. If you're one of the 1.7% that made it all the way to the end, good for you. I might lick your ear or shake your hand the next time I see you... I haven't decided which yet, so be on the lookout if you don't like handshakes. I'll promptly file your certificate of completion away in the cylinder file under the sink. 

Stay tuned for more updates on the sweet life of Josh and Andy (he hates it when I call him that)... or don't. 

P.S. Sorry if all the posts for this trip seemed delayed, since I'm sure you were all sitting at the edge of your seats to see what would happen next. As the official blog photographer, it is my responsibility to get all the pictures and media to Andrew in a timely manner. I have clearly neglected this duty, and for that reason, I'm officially resigning from the position.... April Fools! But I promise I'll do everything in my power to stay the same and keep sending pictures to Andrew in a very delayed and drawn out fashion.

For this post, I included a picture of the Wolf Point class of 1967. This motley bunch yielded a vast array successful people... Stephen Hawking, Joe Theisman, Morgan Freeman, and Betty White-- just to name a few. To the untrained brain, this picture seems completely random and meaningless. However, it serves to accomplish three very important goals:

1. It's a great space filler since I'm using my iPad to write and I'm too lazy to make any effort to sync photos to it

2. It serves as a motivator to keep the tradition of Wolf Point excellence going strong as we teach Indians about diabetes and stuff 

3. I couldn't come up with a third reason but I already told you that there were three goals

4. I lied... there's actually four goals but I still can't remember the third or fourth

Sluice Boxes on Easter Morning

The rest of our Saturday did not really go quite as I had envisioned. We went to a few fishing spots but they were not what they appeared when I researched them online. The 30mph winds were also not very conducive to fishing. To top it off we had planned on camping in Lewis and Clark National Forest but could not due to the depth of the snow. The higher elevation was keeping about 1-2 feet of snow on the ground. Instead we ended up staying the night at Sluice Boxes State Park just north of Lewis and Clark. We were able to get the Subaru back to a good camping area and cook some supper consisting of seared meatballs and toasted peanut butter, jelly, and marshmallow sandwiches - all your favorite campfire staples.

The temperature was very nice and we were able to sleep fairly comfortably in the back of the Subaru. We woke up to watch the Easter sunrise and had our own mini worship service. Soon we packed up everything and enjoyed a beautiful drive to Great Falls. There we visited Giant Springs - a natural spring that brings about 150 million gallons of water to the surface each day. It was pretty amazing how clear the water! You could see it bubbling out into a large pool right there at the surface. After reaching the surface it falls over a rock wall and dumps into the Missouri river about 200 feet later. Nearby a trout hatchery held thousands of fingerlings about ready to be stocked. We continued our drive to the Fort Peck Dam where we fished some more. The winds made it very difficult to stand up let alone fish. We spent quite a while but had no luck at all. No one else was out there and I think that I know why! It was another good weekend but I believe that Josh and I are both ready to get home.

Scoping out the premises

One match wonder

Camp special

Perfectly roasted mini marshmallow

Happy Resurrection Day!

Camp site was at the far end of the valley

Visiting Malta

This past Friday we were able to only work a half day which allowed us to get a head start on traveling for the weekend. Our first stop was Malta which is about two hours to the west of Wolf Point. There we visited my friends Roger and Shari Solberg and also little Erin! We got a tour of their farm and got to see Roger starting to plant some peas. They farm about 3400 acres which was quite impressive. After supper we even got to color some Easter eggs. We had a nice breakfast Saturday morning and then headed on to the next adventure. It was a very nice visit and was fun playing with Erin. 

Dinosaur egg

Josh and Macie

Failed Fishing Attempt: Part 4

After work we were invited to go out to eat at a local restaurant with the pharmacy staff. Since it wouldn't make much sense to drive all the way home only to come back again we decided to put in some time around town until the time we were to meet. While I made some phone calls Josh made a fashionable statement on the banks of the Missouri river in his work attire. As he says, "Look good, fish good". Needless to say he came away empty handed.

Failed Fishing Attempt: Part 3

We had planned to meet a nurse practitioner early Monday morning (6 AM) to go fishing since we were given an additional day off. He called to say that he was too hung over to meet us so we had to come to him. He had no bait or tackle prepared. He eventually did take us to a stream about a half hour away but with it being about 18 degrees there was ice forming in the eyelets of our poles. None of us caught anything and it was a disappointing end to the weekend.

Apparently there is a natural crossing area here where buffalo used to cross. Occasionally you can find petrified bones here

It was a cold one out there

Red Lodge Skiing

The whole trip Josh and I were hoping to ski. Joseph said he'd like to come along to so we set our coordinates on Red Lodge Ski resort. We left around 7:30 AM and ascended the mountain in the continuing snow storm from the previous day. On our way to the lodge we came across a car that had got too close to the edge and almost gone over. Joseph was able to borrow a tow rope and easily pulled the little Volkswagen out. In the meantime I rented my ski equipment and found out that the girl at the register was the daughter of one of the pharmacists we work with at the clinic. 

The fresh powder on the mountain was easily above 2 feet deep, many places above our knees. Since I had never skied before, and my training was solely a series of youtube videos, the first run was difficult - especially since Josh and Joseph started me on the intermediate hills. They believe in the learn by failure technique so on the second run we went to the peak of the mountain (9,432 ft) and skied down the black diamond trails. Luckily the depth of the powder padded my falls and slowed me down somewhat. I did get better as the day wore on but the deep powder was very tiring. I fell quite a bit and got heckled by multiple people on the ski lifts above. I was amazed at the size of the mountain, the number of ski trails, how young some of the skiers were, and how easy some people made it look. Once at the peak we were above the clouds and also the snow storm. I've never quite experienced anything like that! We got home around 12:30 AM and had no trouble sleeping. We owe a big thank you to Joseph for making it a great weekend. 

Roy was my alarm clock

We're going up

Bad place to get stuck...

Pretty awesome headdress

People do some serious skiing

Notice my snowplow technique

It's deep fellas

Can almost see the lodge from here!

Subie deserved a wash. Lookin good

Rollin' Boulder Outfitters

The weekend of the 12th Josh and I got the chance to visit my friend Joseph Leyo. He has moved to McLeod where he works for Rollin' Boulder Outfitters as a horse wrangler and hunting guide. The winter is a slow time so we were able to visit his place and get out on some trails. We arrived Friday night after weaving through herds of mule deer along the roads. His cabin was quite a ways from the paved road but we managed to find it in the dark.

On Saturday morning we finally got to see everything in the light and realized that we were in some serious mountains. Joseph got some horses rounded up and we headed to Gallatin National Forest. We rode our horses up the mountain and tied them when the rest of the way was too steep. We hiked further up the mountain to an Indian cave with a few pictographs inside. I surmised that one appeared to be a man making a pizza. I also suggested one to be an octopus but Josh interpreted it as the sun. The view from the cave was magnificent. The mountains themselves were quite impressive. As we took the trailer back to the cabin the snow moved from the snow-capped mountains to the valleys as well. There were over 100 elk on the mountainside as well as few moose and plenty of mule deer. We got a glimpse of the natural bridge and visited with some painters before making it back to the cabin. It snowed the rest of the afternoon while Josh and I hole-up in the cabin grilling up elk steaks. Joseph had to run an errand and when he came back we made plans for the next day.

The cabin

Josh and Roy, Joseph's border collie horse dog

Obsessed with the chaps

It's snowy up there!

Rose, Derby, and Reba

Our great guide and horse dogs

Pizza chef? Brontosaurus? You be the judge.

Cave makes a great shelter and viewpoint

One of two caves on the side of the rock face

A real cowboy.

Still obsessed with the chaps

Water undercuts the cliff to create a natural bridge in the winter and flows over top in high-water

This would be the creek bottom in high-water

Life is rough

Failed Fishing Attempt: Part 2

We were invited by some other pharmacy students from Midwestern University to go fishing with one of the nurse practitioners at the clinic. We met them at the river near the clinic and fished for a bit. The Missouri river is moving really quickly now and we did not catch anything except a shiner. Nevertheless it was a gorgeous sunset.

Cattle Branding

Our first weekend here we were asked to help brand some cattle. We showed up on the ranch Saturday morning with a clinic doctor from India. All three of us learned how to hold the calves down so that they could be given two antibiotic shots, one growth pellet, castrated, and then branded. As a group we did 70 calves in a couple hours.