The missing ducks...

Upon rereading my previous post, I noticed that the photo of Georgetown Lake did not show the ducks well. Here is another photo I took of the lake. The ducks are swimming in the middle of the lake under the low-lying cloud.

Georgetown Lake & Lost Creek State Park

After exploring Granite, we arrived at Judy's lakehouse as it was getting dusky. Judy & her husband built this home completely themselves from logs taken from the part of the ranch near Philipsburg that Judy inherited. Her husband is a carpenter & electrician. The quality of their work inside & out showed they are both perfectionists.

This is the view of Georgetown Lake from Judy's boatdock. If you click on the picture, you can enlarge it enough to see the ducks in the foreground. We drove about 20 miles from the lake to Lost Creek State Park, north of Anaconda, for our next hike.

Unusual geologic formations, home to bighorn sheep & mountain goats; Lost Creek Falls & an old Forest Service road through a forested canyon were the backdrop for this wonderful hike.

We found a couple of old cabins to explore on this trail, as well. After finding what appeared to be rat droppings, we chose to stop our thorough exploration. :)

Crossing the ice-cold creeks was a highlight of our hike. Judy tried crossing on the couple of tree trunks that had been placed across the creek. The makeshift bridge was unbelievably springy, dumping her into the water shortly after I snapped this photo. The rest of us decided to roll up our pantlegs & wade across. Our feet were numb by the time we reached the other side.

Fall Hikes - Varied Terrain

As beautiful Indian Summer weather has returned, the hiking group traveled to
Philipsburg, once a mining town & now a farming community & tourist town. We "hiked" around this quaint town with its many historic buildings now housing gift shops, the sapphire gallery & the Sweet Palace candy store. I learned that sapphires & rubies are both aluminum oxide crystals. All the colors except red are considered sapphires, whereas rubies are the red ones. Did you know that the next hardest substance after diamonds is sapphires/rubies? They are harder than stainless steal. My birthstone is a sapphire, so I own a star sapphire ring. Guess I won't worry about scratching it anymore. I bought some chocolate truffles & a chocolate-caramel Bear Paw to take home to Louis, my chocoholic sweetie - even though the candy store is known more for its homemade taffy.

This building, housing about 30 swallow nests, looked like an old time saloon on the bottom floor & a boarding house or place for "ladies of the evening" on the top floor.

Philipsburg is located on the outskirts of the Pintler Mountain Range. We entered the foothills above Philipsburg to find the ghost town of Granite, where millions were made mining silver.

We explored the mills, the mining shafts and what remained of the town of Granite that once housed around 5000 people during the height of the mining days.

The buildings were not built to last long, but some tin-roofed shacks are still standing.

Apricots & more apricots

This last couple of weeks have revolved around giving away & processing our bountiful apricot crop. Our apricot tree is the first to bloom in the Spring. Often the blooms are blown off the tree or newly formed buds get frozen. Not so this year. I had to thin the buds just so they would have room to grow. Our tree yields two varieties of apricots: some larger, orange apricots & many more of the smaller, yellow type. They taste about the same, but the yellow ones tend to ripen first. We have learned to pick our fruit before it is fully ripe to beat the wasps, birds & other natural robbers. This year the grasshoppers not only ate almost all of our green bean plants, but flew into the apricot tree to eat the fruit while it was still green. As shown in the picture, we laid the fruit on tarps in a spare downstairs bedroom to ripen. We gave apricots to friends & family and I started canning 7 quarts at a time. I stopped at 50 quarts & began cooking & canning apricot syrup (7 quarts) & jam (2 quarts, 1 pint). All my deserts for the Beth Tephila meals on Shabbat have featured apricots... apricot crisp, apricot bars, plain apricots in bags to take home. Louis & I are fighting diarrhea from eating so many recently. Actually, I don't want to process another apricot for at least a year!!

Photo missing - Jewel Basin

Somehow this photo got dropped from my post on the Jewel Basin hike. This was the view into Jewel Basin when we topped the ridge. You can see the "China Wall" of Glacier National Park in the first main ridge of mountains dead center. The colors of the lakes reminded me a little of the pools around Mammoth in Yellowstone National Park.