Life.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Mom and Dad's Springtime Visit!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY DAD!

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Hello all dedicated blog readers...all zero of you. We have slacked off, enjoyed life, broken the digital camera, and started a master's program in education since we last added an entry, and all of those are very good excuses for why we have not touched the blog since Meg and Brian's visit back in October of 2007! It is now May 13, 2008, and it is high-time to make some new additions. Without any further ado!!!!!!

October 2007 through April 2008 were relatively uneventful for us Betzlers. We were able to witness our cousin Erik, and new cousin Kiki (no they were not related cousins) tie the knot in an awesome cermony back in MN. We had a blast hanging out with the wedding crew, as well as relatives and friends. The reception was a blast, with my highlight being a hip-hop dance with Grandma Sowles, some say the first bit of rug-cuttin' she's done that has ever been witnessed! If we can get a pic, I'd love to put one up at a later post. She was suprisingly light on her feet for just undergoing back surgery after a spill. I hope that when I'm in my late seventies I'll be able to do the same!

LINNEA ARRIVES!

Our big event out this way was a vist from Linnea in the spring, April I believe. Brian was out of the country, so Linnea took the opportunity to come out for somewhat of a wintry weekend. The spring weather is always a gamble, in this case, it was 100% winter. We had fun up in the mountains though, doing some xc skiing and otter-sliding down some great inclines. Again, our digital camera broke back in November, so I'm not sure if we have any pics of her visit...we were having to much fun to document! We had a lot of nice down time as well, sitting around the fire trying to keep warm! Thanks again for coming out Linnea, next time you'll have to bring Brian along! If you have any pics email so I can put some online...thanks.

GLENN AND JULIE ARRIVE!

Our next visitors were Emily's parents, Glenn and Julie, back after successfully helping to tear apart and build the roof over the kitchen in Sept. of 2007. They came for a well-deserved vacation...the only heavy lifting Glenn did the entire trip was a couple of beers and a fly-rod...now that's more like it! I guess he had to push the midieval steel-plated drift boat onto the trailer, but that shouldn't count as work.

Glenn and Julie enjoyed a great weather weekend, mild and sunny with just some limited rain. We got out on the Bighorn River for the maiden voyage of the yet-to-be-named boat...we spent 1/2 the day figuring out the wiring for the trailer, but to no avail. Seeing that this is Wyoming, and that we'd be back before dark, we lived on the wild side (feeding of the adrenaline) and took the boat up anyways...We pulled up to the boat entry, and slid/shoved/forced the boat off of the rusted rollers...I've given those rollers an entire can of WD-40 since that initial "slide". It was a huge bonus that the boat floated...it would have been somewhat awkward to have the boat sinking upon entry into the water...not exactly impressive to the inlaws.

We floated over the next 4 hours or so, with Glenn and Julie trying their hand at fly-fishing. Glenn had a number of hits, and managed to land a nice brown near the end of the float. The Bighorn can be a demanding and tempermental river, but they did very well for the conditions, and seeing that it was their first time doing the whole fly-fishing thing.

STEVE AND CINDY ARRIVE!

Mom and Dad came out the weekend after Emily's parents were here....we'll save that for the next one!

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Brian and Meg and snow

Emily's sister Meg and her boyfriend Brian came to visit in October. They arrived just in time to enjoy the foot or so of the first snow of the season. We were fortunate enough to have some friends let us use their mountain cabin, at about 8000 feet. We had snow all night, and woke up to a sunny 40 degree day...it's not often you get fluffy snow, sunny weather, and no wind here in Wyoming, we're still not sure what happended weather-wise that weekend, but we loved it!

We ate a lot of good food, competed in The Ultimate Competition (I can't remember who won), and had a great time. Thanks so much for making the trip out here, we loved hanging out!

Emily and Meg in full winter garb for fake winter.

Bighorn mountains (13,000) view from a 10 minute hike from the cabin!

Holt Hideaway treated us well...thank you Holt's!

South Fork of Clear Creek which ran right past the cabin...

Here's Emily and Brian demonstrating the main source of heat during our cabin stay! We had to open the windows...Brian how many pairs of socks are you wearing? Nice slippers!

Playing some Euchre, or smoking Meg and Brian in some Euchre!

Skunk and Bear

This blog entry is long past due...sorry guys. Bjorn and Erik came out for a "guys" trip while Emily was away visiting family in the south. We ended up doing a "tour de sheridan", fitting in everything from Tongue River caving, biking, hiking in shorts, camping in snow, baking an Italian feast, fishing, and I guess that's about it. Hope you guys had fun. Sorry about that snow...I should've checked the weather!

The caving was a blast, we were in the dark for about 2 hours, hiking and crawling through limestone caverns to an underground crystal-clear decent size river. Lots of fun, and I'm not sure where else a person can explore a cave without guides/maps etc...thank goodness for all the graffiti on the walls!

We took a trip up into the Bighorns, with the destination of some high glacial lakes that recieve little or no pressure during the short high altitude summer. The plan was to bike as far as possible--the wilderness boundary--then hike a few more miles to put us in striking distance for the next day...spending 2 nights before packing out. We picked up an extra bike for Skunk courtesy of Buffalo's cop shop...a beautiful wally-world special used in a recent hit and run. I cleaned it up for Skunk, but we didn't figure out that the seat was broken until we were about 10 miles into the 2 hour bike ride...sorry about that...we were wondering why he was going so slow on the way up....hope you can still have kids...if not, sorry Kiki.

After ditching the bikes, we hiked for a few hours, much to the Bear's dismay. He tried multiple times to set up camp and get situated for the night, he must have known that winter was fast approaching...we probably should have trusted his animal instinct, but we didn't. We woke up the next morning to about 3 inches of snow, with more heavy wet flakes falling. The clouds had rolled in, and at times you couldn't even see the trees 50 feet away. We decided to stay in our sleeping bags, play some cards, and relax until the clouds lifted...after 4 hours, we made the tough decision to call it quits and head back down the mountain. It was tough to do, but the hike was going to be more of a straight-up, straight-down scramble on ice and snow...we'll have to make another attempt at that one. After 7 hours we were back in town eating Mexican food.

Emily returned late Sunday, and we all day monday on the North Tongue, about an hour or so from Sheridan. It's a catch and release section for cutthroats, and everyone managed to catch a few fish, either legally or illegally (great work on the "channel squeeeze" team!)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Glenn and Julie to the Rescue!

Whew....it has been a long, long time since we've had an entry here....that could either mean that we've burned out and don't have any work (life?) to report on, or, that we've been so busy that we haven't had any time to provide updates...

The second is true...between paid work, and work on the house (pay to work), we have been unusually busy for the past 2-3 months. The latest project has been working on remodeling the kitchen. This involved reconstructing the roof that was pushed in by a large pine tree that can probably be viewed in an entry back when we bought the house. The addition that encompasses the kitchen was completed in 1936, which we deduced from the hundreds of pages of newspaper that served as insulation. We found some bleached mice skulls during the demo of the interior kitchen, and after completing the demo, we were shocked that we hadn't been ill yet from living in that portion of the house.

Glenn and Julie arrived on the scene for a Thursday-Tuesday work weekend. We pretty much did just that, with some nice relaxing courtesy of some untimely precipitation.

Friday we knocked the roof off the top of the kitchen area, and began leveling the top wall portion…we ended up with one 2x4 on the south side of the wall, and 3.75 stacked 2x4s on the north side…so the old roof wasn’t exactly level. The new one now is, which unfortunately highlights the fact that the rest of our house is indeed, slightly uneven…Glenn wasn’t too happy about that one.

We finally have caved into the realities of winter approaching and fast. Two weeks ago we hired a local contractor to complete a set amount of work for us, just to be sure that we had things taken care of before the snow flew…it has been the best decision in the history of our house work, and could become addictive. I suppose the end bill will remind us why we “love” working on the house and why we diligently keep contractors at arm’s length. Although The Acklin Brother Construction has been good to us at 134 N Linden Ave.

On Saturday we were able to finish with the new roof beams, laid the plywood down, and got the tar paper in place…it started raining about 10 minutes after we finished this, and continued the rest of the day…impeccable timing. We called it a day, and celebrated our manual laborer’s birthday by taking Glenn and Julie out for dinner and a movie.

Sunday we put a skylight in after determining that the kitchen would be too dark, placed the rolled roofing, fixed the flashing, and leveled the floor…enjoy some pics from the weekend...

Get that roof off Glenn!

Looking good!

Notice Glenn's amusement with the 2-handed swing technique...

All dry and just in time!

That's a long board!

Cleaning frenzy inside the kitchen!

Like father like daughter?

Aaaaawwwwww

As I type, we have the contractors finishing up the texturing...we plan to put flooring and cabinets in sometime before December, we will be using our oven and sink before Christmas!

Stay tuned for more pics, we'll try to keep them coming, but life has been too busy for consistency latley! Sorry! Glenn, I think you're the only one who reads this anyways though...

Monday, September 03, 2007

Cloud Peak Trek

Well, we finally got up into the mountains this past weekend and crosses an item off the Must-Do list...hiking Cloud Peak. At 13,200 it was the highest that either of us had actually hiked. We compressed about 4 days of hikes into 2, and now that we're eating icecream on the couch at home, we're glad we did that. However, yesterday evening, during mile 26 of 27 over the 2 day adventure we weren't thinking it had been the best idea...

While hiking to the top of the Bighorns was nice, we both decided that we can have even more fun sticking to the valleys full of lakes and flowers...

If it wasn't so pretty, I probably would have been mind-numbingly frusturated that I didn't bring my flyrod along to save weight...next time Emily's solar-powered heat blanket will not be making the trip with us, andthe flyrod will....

On the way off of the peak, I had the bright idea to take an "alternate route" down...about 1800 vertical feet and 1.5 hours later we were at the bottom of the valley that had seemed ifinitely closer from the top of the 12,600 ft ridge. While it wasn't a true "short-cut", we did get to see 2 lakes that we wouldn't have normally, and instead of having a pretty tough downhill of boulder hopping, we had, well, a tough downhill of boulder hopping, but condensed the elevation loss into about 1/4 of the distance. I guess it added another 1.5 miles to the hike out though...I guess I really can't put any spin on it that makes it sound like it was the right decision....oh well.

Here's Emily during the "short-cut" decent. Julie, don't look...