Perfection

After starting yesterday full of unexcitement at the laundromat, I stayed at home and rode herd over the children while my wife went out to get her hair did.  After returning home with her smoking new hair(I'll have to take pictures in the sun...she's got her natural dark brown, then about three shades of dark red 'lowlights'...as Borat would say 'very nice') we loaded up the car for a road trip. 

Following my first visit to the Oak Creek Feeding Station last Sunday, I thought my girls might get a kick out of seeing 150 elk in one location, so that was out first stop.  At this point in the season, after being fed hay at a feeding station for almost 4 months, this is really only one step away from the zoo, but these are still wild animals, and my girls, even the wife, did have an appropriate sense of humor.  I feel like with my daughters and the outdoors, I am facing a similar challenge as I am with shooting...keeping an interest peaked while not pushing too much. 

The feeding station has a neat little visitors center, staffed by volunteers.  On this particular Friday, there were about half-a-dozen older gentleman gathered there, swapping lies stories.  The funny part is it's not the 'Save The Environment' granola types that at there...it's the same guys that are going to be chasing these elk around in the fall again, doing their part to ensure a sizable herd makes it through the winter.  My wife says she can picture that being me when I am one of those 'older guys'.  As usual, she is probably right. 

Right outside the window of the visitors center, they have a bucket of food, and scale, and the hope is some of the elk will step on the scale while they are eating.  While we were there, a nice looking 5-point obliged...kind of surprised me though...he only weighed 461 pounds.  One of the gentleman visiting pointed out with the milder winters, cow elk on the Olympic Peninsula are 100-150 pounds heavier than that.  

Then it was back in the truck.  Prior to leaving the house I had made quick notes to about 7-8 properties I wanted to drive by.  My wife and I are both thinking that if we are going to spend another year(at least) renting, maybe this is our window to buy some vacation land.  Naches is one of the areas we both like...sage brush and Ponderosa Pine country.  The first few places we drove by were more agricultural properties. 

Heading back through Naches, I threw the wife a bone, and we stopped at La Kat Gallery, a neat little place in where they sell a lot of very nice, and reasonably price, reclaimed wood furniture and accessories.  Assuming whatever new house we buy has a 'guest room', my wife and I have both always thought we would go for a North Woods Lodge type feel.  If so, we will be visiting La Kat again.

There were another couple of properties between Naches and Ellensburg I wanted to look at, so off we went on the back roads north of Naches.  One bunch of properties looked very nice, Conrad Ranch.  There were three or four lots for sale, 40 acres-100 acres, going for $800-1000 an acre.  Once upon a time, it must have been a nice 1000 acre ranch, that is now being split up in to 40 acre minimum estates...rolling sage brush hills and canyons, close to the Oak Creek Wilderness Area.  It was better than the farmland south of town, but still not exactly what we are looking for.  There are some covenants there that might crimp our building style...they want houses, not a park model dropped off for recreation use. 

Just north of Lake Wenas, we found a piece of property that is what we are looking for.  10 Acres for $35,000...less than 30-seconds after we pulled onto the dirt road leading to the property, we jumped a herd of 15 mule deer.  Realistically, we know we can't afford a hunting spread of our own, so we need something that borders state land, which this piece does, backed up against Umtanum Ridge.  If we were buying right now, this would be the kind of place I would be very interested.

Property research done, we headed up to Ellensburg via dirt roads.  We had been climbing throughout the afternoon, soon found ourselves driving though 3 inches of snow, which did not impress SWMBO.  You could tell she was not pleased by the way she stopped crocheting to grip the door handles. 

Dinner time found us in Ellensburg, where we had the best dinner ever, at a place called the Yellow Church Cafe.  It was the third time we have eaten there, and it really deserves it's own post.  All you really need to know is that all told, I spent 5 hours in the truck with my family yesterday, with the Yellow Church Cafe being the bait all along...and it was worth it.  My children were amazingly well behaved at dinner, despite being cooped up in the truck for a long time(usually, when we finally free them from a vehicle, they are all bouncy and crazy). 

The only really lame part of the day was the drive home after dinner...Ellensburg to Richland via Vantage.  It was 100 miles of dark, twisty roads, and I was wishing for a time machine. 

I would do again today in a heart-beat.