When the Cousins Come to Call

When the cousins come to call we put them to work and we talk their ears off. We do. We do it with all of our visitors really, but recently Mark's cousin Rick and his wife Brenda detoured on their pilgrimage to Bakersfield and we made a special case of them.

We promptly put them to work loading wood

and feeding critters.Mark took Rick on a wood delivery " over the river and through the woods". While the delivery was made to just behind that closest ridge you can see in this photo, it takes about an hour and half on the main road. And the story goes that taking the shortcut on the return journey almost proved to be more than they bargained for as their tires hardly even spun as they slipped and slid down this cut off. This is the same road that Mark took guests up on last year and had use a winch to navigate. Does Mark never learn? Does sliding down seem safer than winching up? Or perhaps he just likes to keep things exciting for visitors.

I took Brenda on a nice sedate tour of the ranch in our little orange Kubota. I did make her help me load the hay though. I was just coming down with a cold and she took pity on me and lent her muscles to moving the hefty 125 pound bales.She took some lovely photos along the way and she shared them with me so I could share them with you.

Here is the pond at the cabin,a little creek we passedand standing firewood with the gleaming skin of the madrone

We enjoyed having the cousins come to call. Not only did we get to catch up on all the latest comings and goings in our lives, we got free labor and we even got some cold, hard cash for some fence posts we sold them. Thanks guys.

Now we are planning a motorcycle trip to their ranch this June. They live on the forks of two major rivers in far northern Washington State and the King Salmon should be running then.