Cider Bend-August

 

Airbnb:

The airbnb stayed booked for August. We've had such fun guests from all over the place, and it's been so fun chatting with them, and sharing the farm and animals with them. We're still holding strong with all 5 star reviews!

Donkeys:

I love these girls so much!

Now that we extended the corrals, it's so fun for me to look out the back windows and see the donkeys zooming around. I often grab my phone to go out and film them, but I usually only catch the tail end of the zoomies.

I love that I can just take a few steps out of the house and be with all my animals. It's the best!

Goats:

The goats are still doing great and entertaining us. 

They all still love taking their daily walks, and it's a bonus when Mark is home so Reeses can go at the same time as them.

Cows:

The cows are still a big hit with everyone who visits the farm. They are so cute and friendly. I just love them to pieces!

We had guests from Poland, and we were out in the corrals chatting with them, and looked up to find Ace like this. 😂 Be the tree Ace, be the tree!

Opal is a good sport when Mark is in charge of brushing her. 😅

Oh my gosh, his sweet face!

Sometimes Ace can be demanding! 😆

Opal had her second bath, and now that I know she likes it, I can be more thorough. We bought fun new scrubbing gloves, and a blow dryer and she loved it all!

Chickens:

The chickens made us Instagram famous! Haha, of all the cute animal content I post, it's the disgusting reel of chickens eating bugs that went viral. It fascinates people! Mark just came up with a way to draw the bugs out of the ground so the chickens could get more protein. We're at 6.6 million views and still going! We have 164 thousand likes, 60 thousand shares, and over a thousand comments. It's crazy! My goal was to be at 1000 followers by the end of summer, and now thanks to the chickens, I have over 4100 followers. Enjoy the reel below.

I'm still having tons of fun letting the chickens try new food. I told Mark that my phone search history is hilarious. It's just a bunch of 'can chickens eat (fill in the blank).' 😂

When the chickens aren't making viral videos, they are laying fantastic eggs! There is something so satisfying about waking out in our own yard, and coming back in with breakfast. I love it!

We have such fun colors!

Lucy lays a ton of double yolkers. I remember as a kid, if we cracked a double yolker, we felt like we won the lottery! 😆

So many people told us to post more chicken and bug content, so we did another reel. This one got over 86 thousand views.

Misc. Farm Stuff:

If you remember from last month, we started letting all of the animals out together. It took a bit for them all to get used to being together, but now they all get along great. We've had some crazy wind storms, and we got our big trees trimmed, so we've had a lot of branches. The animals really enjoy them, and I've been surprised at how good they share with each other.

Often times I go out to the barn to check on everyone, and all seven of them are crammed into the same stall together. 😂

Some of our biggest farm news of the month is that we got a tractor! Mark is so excited! Now we can get a lot of the projects done that we've been holding off on.

Nora wanted to name the tractor Honk, so Honk it is! 😆

I love Mark's cute grin as he's on his way to get the first project done on the tractor list. 

We're still loving life on the farm, and we're still working hard to build the farm of our dreams. One step closer with each project we finish.

August Adventures

Hyndman Peak: 

If you read my last month's post, you remember that Joyce, Jenn, and I attempted Hyndman Peak for our first Idaho 12er. We got a quarter mile from the top and had to turn around due to a crazy storm that blew in. Joyce and I went back a few days later and conquered the mountain! We had much better weather, and had the entire mountain to ourselves. This was the perfect way for us to start the quest for all nine Idaho peaks over 12 thousand feet. Nothing about this one scared us. It was just slow going with a lot of rock scrambling along the ridge. We loved it! The hike up to the saddle was pretty, and the views from the peak were amazing! I can easily see how people get hooked on climbing these mountains.

We started in the dark before the sun came up.

I was so excited to be trying this one again!

The pretty lake before the climb to the saddle.

Joyce is a little speck! We were about to climb the last big push to the saddle. That's where it would start to be slow going.

The Ridgeline behind me is what we had to follow to the top.

Picking our way through the rocks along the ridgeline.

You can see the saddle behind Joyce. We had come so far, but still had a lot of climbing left.

Loved these views!

We made it to the top! 

It felt like we were on top of the world!

I do a ton of trail running, but summiting big mountains like this is not something I do very often. I knew this project was going to be out of my comfort zone, so I was thrilled to be at the top of our first one! The Idaho 12ers isn't going to be as much about pushing my body, as it will be about pushing my mind. I'm ready for it!

Love that we're tackling this together. 

Wolf Flats:

Jenn and I had a beautiful early morning 10 miler on Wolf Flats. This one is awesome in the dark.

It's peaceful to run along in the dark hearing the river beside you.

The sun starting to come up.

Bigalow's X2:

Ashlee, Jenn, and I did Bigalow's Beast twice for our hill day. Definitely felt the burn on this one!

Kelly Canyon:

I've loved my early morning Kelly Canyon runs with the ladies this summer. This was a fun morning with Ashlee, Jenn, Becky, and Mark! It was fun to have Mark get to join us for one.

Pretty sunrise!

😍😍😍

We had our Wind Rivers camping trip with lots of running and hiking, but I did a post all it's own for that weekend.

Women's Run: Persied Meteor Shower:

I haven't been able to make a lot of the women's runs lately. Between bottle feeding the cows, and coaching cross country, the timing just hasn't worked out this summer. I was thrilled when they had a late night run on the Butte to watch the Persied Meteor Shower. It was so cool! We were there for a long time, and we saw several of the meteors.

Amanda-Tricia-Nora

We had a great sunset as we were getting started up the butte.

Such a fun night with these ladies!

Big Elk & Bruno:

Ashlee, Ashley, Becky, and I had a beautiful run up Big Elk and then climbing Bruno. Man I love this area. Perfect 12 miler with these cute ladies.

Ashlee-Tricia-Ashley-Becky
Big Elk Creek

Palisades Reservoir from up on Bruno.

Batman Ridgeline:

It's been a few years since Mark and I have done this fun route, so we put it in our training program. We were excited for Jenn and Michelle to see it. Such a great day! We covered almost 22 miles in the most beautiful country.

Jenn-Tricia-Michelle-Mark

The views along the Garden Canyon ridge are so great!

Love all of our adventures together.

This was a fun way to celebrate Michell's birthday!

There are the Tetons in the back ground making an appearance.

Dropping into the Paradise Loop. It's easy to see how it got it's name.

Deer Park/Horse with no Name:

I needed a 10 miler, and I also needed to get a few more Lost Souls routes, so Jenn and I did 'Horse with No Name' and 'Deer Park' for an early morning run.

It was a beautiful morning.

The Tetons peeking up next to the butte.

Endless fields of sunflowers at the end.

Sidewinder w/Cairn:

I don't like doing Sidewinder in the summer, and I really don't like bush-wacking to the cairn this time of year. Too many rattle snakes in this area. I needed this route to become a citizen in this year's Lost Souls event. Jenn agreed to go with me to scare all the snakes away. 😅 Luckily we didn't have any snakes, but we were treated to a great lightning show on the way up, and then an amazing sunrise on the way back down. Great morning!

Made it to the cairn!

We had a stormy sky all around us.

The sunrise on the way down was amazing!

Look at the cairn standing tall and proud in the amazing orange sky!

We got lots of miles along the Beartooth Highway, but I did that awesome weekend as it's own post as well.

Thunder Ridge:

Another early morning with Jenn. I hadn't run anything in the Thunder Ridge area all summer, so we decided to give it a go.

The old swimming pool.

Mount Idaho:

Joyce and I completed our 2nd 12er! I'll be honest in saying this was not my favorite, and I won't be doing it again! I loved the ridge line and the summit, but the rest of the trail sucked! We did so much research for this one, and still ended up in every sketchy situation possible. There were at least 3 hours of mistakes added to our day; some of them our fault, some of them from a bad map. We learn a little more with each climb, and here are some things we took away from this one:

*We are newbies so we're still learning to trust the ridge line. On the way up we thought it looked safer to go around a few things, and we ended up in some sketchy shoots a few times. We handled it really well, but learned our lesson and took the ridge-line all the way back down. Mush better!

*Don't use Alltrails for the big peaks! We were on the WORST trail on the way back! I was more scared on this trail than any part of the peak or ridge. It was pure nuts! We now know that if the route finding is hard, get a gps file from someone who had already done it the correct way. We had read all the reports to avoid this trail, and yet we found ourselves on it anyways. 

*Despite not having a great experience on this one, we are both still stoked to keep climbing these mountains. We want to get one more done this season for sure, and depending on how long the weather holds out, possibly two more.

The sun coming up on our hike up.

Almost out of the trees. We had to climb up to that ridge, and that's where the fun would start.

Making our way over the first spine.

We finally got our first glimpse of the actual peak we were climbing up. We took one look at this ridge line and wondered how the crap we were gonna make it up that. 😅

After getting in some bad shoots, we were finally almost there!

A view from the top!

We did it!

It was cold and windy on the way up, but we actually had nice weather on the peak itself.

The views from the top were amazing. We were looking at all the surrounding peaks wondering if they were ones we were going to climb. We had great views of Mount Borah.

Two down, seven to go! 

Climbing back down. Once we were off the ridge line it should have been smooth sailing, but that's where we got off and had a scary hike out.

On the way back down, we turned around and got a good view of what we had climber up. I drew a blue line on this picture so I could send it to Bailey to show her what we had to climb up to get to the saddle. Talk about one step forward and two steps back. 😅

Kelly Canyon:

I did the Gnarly Climb to Cranky Cowboy with these ladies. Always a great morning in Kellys.

Ashlee-Ashley-Tricia

The Butte:

I needed one more route to be a citizen of the Lost Souls, and Ashlee needed some elevation, so off to the butte we went.

Ririe Roads:

Mark and I were pooped and super busy, so we finished off the month with a nice flat 8.5 miler around our  block a couple times.

I love running along the dry bed.

It was a busy, but fun running month for us. We're hitting the peak of our 100 mile training, and it's going really well so far. I hope we can carry this momentum into our last couple months.