Is April The New November?

Looking out the window this morning and you would swear it is November instead of April. Snow is on the ground and the creek is low. If it was not for the birds and elk being here you would certainly think it was November.

Usually at this time of year, the field in the photo below is underwater, the creek is out of it’s banks and it is greener. Unless we get some good rains in the coming months it is going to be a dangerously dry and very Smokey (forest fires) summer.

I don’t ever remember it being this dry this early. I remember the spring that we graduated from 8th grade (1981) we had a ton of snow melt and rain. So much that the field in the photo literally looked like a lake.

It was so flooded our neighbors brought down a little John boat with a small outboard motor and were puttering around out in the field beyond the fence. Yes there was some alcohol involved, but it was comical watching them puttering around the field.

The two lane road (which is now Interstate 15) got washed out between us and Boulder, MT. It was a crazy wet spring that year. One of our family friends used to run the bar/restaraunt in Basin, MT and she was running out of certain supplies (namely bread and hamburger buns). So her brother came out to the ranch with some bread and buns and a bunch of us piled into my Dad’s Studebaker and went to deliver the groceries. Now this was the days before mandatory seatbelts and we certainly had more butts than belts in that car. I think there was 8 of us in a 5 passenger car.

My Mom still says it was the stupidest things we ever did (and there was no alcohol involved in this escapade). So we are driving down to Basin and we get just outside of town and the water is up over the road, but we continued on. How that old Studebaker did not stall or get washed off the road is still a small miracle but we made it, delivered the groceries and got the hell out of there. It was not long after that the road that we traveled also got washed out.

Like I said before living in the country is never dull!

Well enough reminiscing for today!