Mountain Trip - Letter to Jo

I typed out a letter to my friend, Jo, but it would not send. So I pasted it here:

 The mountains were very nice. It was good to get out of the heat for a week. Toby was supposed to join me on Friday when my friend Joy's husband came up. But things turned out differently. Toby bought seven longhorn cows and their calves. The guy who sold them to us was out of grass and water and the cows were looking pretty poor. I helped Toby get the fence ready for the cows before I left for the mountains. The guy kept the calves to wean them off the cows and is supposed to deliver them later. In the meantime, the fence did not do much to hold the cows in. They were looking for their babies. Several times they jumped fences (which is better than going through the fence, maybe). They jumped the fence and the cattle guard to go to the neighbor's place to the north of us. The guy is not very friendly to me and called me to let me know he didn't like my longhorn cow.  He is better with Toby. Little does he know that it is me that he should fear. Naa, I will be good, but not friendly. The guy is an a$$. Anyway, Toby spent my week in the mountains rounding up cows and working hard for Halliburton and decided not to come. By the time I got home on Sunday, the cows were more settled and staying in. Toby sent me a picture of himself wearing a cowboy hat and said that he was no longer all hat and no cow.

My friend, Joy, has a cabin up Bitter Creek not too far from the cabin that my father built back in the late 50's. The cabins are on Forest Service land and have lots of restrictions. They are older cabins and so very wonderful.

I loved drinking my coffee on the porch in the early morning or sitting outside in the sunshine in the rockers visiting. We had several visitors - old friends mostly. People would just show up and sit for a while. We also took the old Jeep that came with the cabin 50 years ago and went for a little drive.

We drove up to the Upper Valley. There was amazing devastation from the 120 mile-an-hour wind last December. Roads  and trails were still closed, although they had a few cleared. We stopped to see an old friend who lives in the Upper Valley. She said she had been home when the wind hit wiping out trees on the hillside beside her home. She was lucky  that none of the trees hit the house. Lots of people were not so lucky. People in Red River are still talking about that wind and the downed trees.

We drove down to Cerro and El Rito to have lunch with Patsy. You met her at the Suzy Boggus concert that we all went to in Taos years ago. Patsy's flowers were beautiful.

Then we went to another friend's house to eat lunch. Her flowers were beautiful too. It was great seeing old friends.

I took pictures of the flowers and painted a little watercolor from the photos.  Jesse drove up to RR on Thursday, and that night we went to listen to Michael Martin Murphey at the Cowboy Evening thing further up Bitter Creek.

They served barbecue. The music was good, but it had been raining all day and was pretty cold. It was an outside venue - a huge tent had been set up since it was raining.

We went home early to get into our pj's and snuggle into blankets and watch TV. Gosh, I love the mountains!

It has been a busy week since I got home. We have our CTAC season kickoff this Friday. I had to help hang art and get ready for the reception. Not to mention all the catching up around the house. It is good to be home. Did I mention how much I love the mountains?