Mountain Adventures

March 31, 2026

I awoke at 7:30 AM. I laid in bed meditating for awhile, until Angel woke up and came into my room asking for breakfast. I got up and made myself tea. I made Angel breakfast. Then I cut up a cantaloupe and fed the seeds and rinds to the chickens and rabbit. Angel had put her rabbit Oreo in his cage that we move around the yard so he can eat grass. 

I walked around the corner to church for music practice. I started singing with the worship team a while ago and I love it. We have people that play a mandolin, guitar and bass for the instruments and it’s like singing in a bluegrass band. I have a girl crush on the bass player but he’s way too young for me regardless I’m having fun with my secret crush which I guess isn’t a secret anymore, since it’s in my blog now. Anyway, the songs we sang today were wonderful and practice was great fun. 

I walked back home and did some things around the house until it was time for church. Then Angel and I walked to church together. Pastor Amy is out of town and we had a guest pastor. She was funny and gave a wonderful sermon on faith. Angel had a slight meltdown when the person passing around the offering plate passed her by but she got over it pretty quickly. 

After church, a man I hired to help me with work around my place had just arrived. He got started and I cleaned up all the dead wood around the yard and burned it in the fire pit. Then I cleaned out an old chicken coop that was given to me and turned it into my garden shed. 

Angel had gone to my sisters and I picked her up on the 4-wheeler. We went to the Assembly of God church to watch a Pinewood derby that Angel had designed a car for at Girls Club. Angel had a hard time at the race. Some kids that Angel wants to hang out with were ignoring her and when Angel’s car raced, it didn’t win. She had another minor melt down and we left early so she could have some time alone to get herself together. 

At home, there were neighbor kids playing in the cul-de-sac. Angel joined them while I cleaned up the yard and shed. The man I hired finished up his work and he had done a great job. After I paid him, I laid in the hammock out in the yard and took a short nap until my phone woke me up. It was a client asking about doing more work for them. 

Angel asked for a smoothie for dinner which I was more than happy to make. Then I read a couple of chapter from a Hank the Cowdog. I like doing different voices for different characters, I really get into it 😂. At 8 PM we went to bed. I wrote my blog for the first time in a long time and it felt good. I drifted off to sleep at around 10 PM. 

June 1, 2026

Today was a very enjoyable free day to do whatever I wanted. I accomplished a lot and it was all great fun. 

After my morning mediation and tea, I attempted to take the 4-wheeler to drop off recycling, pay a couple of bills and buy more bananas. I loaded the box of recycling onto the 4-wheeler, turned it on and pushed the button that starts it. Click, click, click…was all that was happening. My 4-wheeler has been doing that, making a clicking noise when I push the start button. I found a way to start it without using the button by pulling the rope pull (which sticks sometimes). When the 4-wheeler is cold, I haven’t been able to start it by pulling the rope but after a few pulls the start button will work again. This morning, I pulled the rope and pulled the rope and pulled the rope for a half hour before the start button would work. I went through a whole emotional process while pulling on that rope. At first I was patient and at peace with the process, then as time went on and the 4-wheeler still wasn’t starting…. tension began building and frustration took hold…. rope pulling became more forceful while shaking the 4-wheeler back and forth while yelling at it. When I became conscious of my shift in energy, I questioned whether I wanted to continue on in the same energy or move forward in acceptance and gratitude. I chose acceptance and gratitude. I stepped away from the situation, took a deep breath and went over my options. I could take the truck instead. No, that didn’t sound fun. I calmly and patiently went back to pulling the rope…. and eventually the 4-wheeler started. Yay!! 

That’s all I wrote for today but I decided to post it anyway.

June 23, 2026

Dear Diary and Friends,

Angel went to children’s church camp today. She was super excited last night and it took her a long time to fall asleep. This morning, she was a lot calmer. After eating breakfast, she loaded up her luggage that she had packed last night and we headed up the mountain to Cascade. I decided driving there on the highway was boring and instead I took the Forest roads up and over the west mountains. There’s a few roads that will get you all the way over the mountains and they are only accessible in the summer. 

The drive was lovely, we saw a lot of deer. I had my sister Missy’s little dogs with me and we drove with all the windows down all the dogs could look out. We listened to an audiobook, The Temple of Orcsfrom the Island of Fog book series. The book finished right as we pulled into the camp. Perfect timing! 

We parked and got out of the truck when Angel announced that she had forgotten to pack tennis shoes or flip flops. I look down at her feet and she is wearing her dress sandals. Why did I not notice what shoes she was wearing when we left the house? I asked her why she didn’t put her tennis shoes in the truck when I asked her to, she shrugged. I searched the truck to see if she had any shoes in there. I found a pair of closed-toe water shoes under the seat that I wasn’t sure would still fit her. Thankfully they did because I wasn’t driving an hour and half home and an hour and a half back to camp just to bring her shoes. 

Grateful that drama was resolved, we got in line to get her registered. Living in a really small town, I’m not used to standing in line and the line seemed to take forever. I entertained myself by people watching. People are fun to watch, when I lived in Boise I would often sit downtown and people watch for the fun of it. 

We finally got Angel registered and once she was under the wings of her group leader and felt comfortable, I headed out. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my day but I did know that I was going somewhere up in the mountains to explore. Since I was on that side of the mountains, I decided to continue going east and explore the north fork of the salmon river mountain range.

I drove to Trail Creek hot springs. There were only 2 cars there and I thought about stopping but I had the 4 dogs with me and wanted to stop where they could run around. Just past the hot springs, I turned off on a forest road and we were in new territory. I had no idea where the road went but I was happy to find out. 

It was a blissful drive through the mountains. On our first stop, we hiked along a creek until I found a good spot to sit and sunbathe while I drank the fresh tangelo juice that I brought with me. It was heavenly. I sat on a big log that had fallen across the creek and watched and listened to the water and bird while the sun warmed my skin. The temperature was in the low 70’s, perfect! The dogs ran around exploring and I worked with my sisters dogs on commands using positive reinforcement. Dogs love positive reinforcement and it’s so easy to train them using it. 

We wandered through the mountains for hours. Driving and stopping to walk around and explore. There were beautiful flower gardens everywhere and at one point, I came around a corner and both sides of the road were filled with beautiful blooming Indian paintbrush and purple silver lupin. Bright red/orange and purple/blue color mixed in with shades of silver and green. I started laughing as I was overcome with joy. I was gloriously fully in the moment and high on the powerful energy of all the plants and vibrant colors. 

Eventually, we got to a paved road that led back to Highway 95 below Cascade. It had been a great day of exploring and I headed home. I stopped in McCall and got a couple of watermelon and some other fruit at Ridley’s. The watermelon were only $5 each, yay! Then I stopped at Natural Grocers and got some more produce. When I got to town, I stopped to say hi to a friend and went to my older sisters to get my mail and visit for a while. 

When we got home, I unloaded the groceries and put them away, checked on the chickens and rabbits, answered messages on my phone, took a bath and went to bed. I played my daily free New York Times games to keep my mind sharp and went to sleep at around 10:30 PM. 

Thank you for reading my blog and being a part of my life. I appreciate you.

Love, Victoria

June 24, 2026

Dear diary and friends,

I awoke at 3 AM and actually wrote a blog post.  I finished writing at 6 AM, but I was too tired to post it on my website and I went back to sleep. At 8:30 AM I awoke again and jumped out of bed. I was supposed to go get Mr. D at 9 AM so we could go on an adventure to an old mining town called Mineral. Mr. D is one of my clients that I clean for. He is 89 years old and is a sweet happy man. This last winner he mentioned to me that he had always wanted to go to Silver city, Idaho but he had never made it there. I suggested that I take him there sometime and he was overjoyed. So in May, I took him up there. It was a long day since it’s four hours each way to get there, but Mr. D was all smiles the whole way there and the whole way back.. So I asked him where he wanted to go next and without hesitation he said Mineral, Idaho. We picked out a day to go and that day is today.

After realizing what time it was, I jumped out of bed, I made my morning tea and an extra big smoothie to last me all day. Then I hung laundry on the line, checked on the chickens and rabbits and made it to Mr. D’s at 9:15 AM, amazing!

Mr. D was waiting for me and ready to go. After filling the truck up with gas, we headed out. It was a beautiful sunny summer day and I was excited to explore new-to-me territory once again. This would be two days in a row of playing in the mountains, yay!

We drove over to the Hiit mountains, which are in between Hells Canyon and Midvale/Cambridge. I see those mountains all the time going back-and-forth to Weiser and I’ve been wanting to explore them. We turned off the highway onto Upper Mann creek road, in between Midvale and Weiser and headed up the mountain. The dirt road was in good shape until we turned on a side road to head to Mineral. That road wasn’t maintained, but still wasn’t too rough until we got to the top of the mountain overlooking Hells Canyon. Going down into the canyon was one of the steepest roughest roads I’ve ever driven in my life. It was very rocky and had a lot of loose slippery sand. I had the truck in low gear and the grade was so steep that it did nothing to slow the truck down. We inched along at around 3 to 5 mph with my foot on the break, glad that I had good brakes and good tires. 

I mentioned to Mr. D that he hadn’t told me how rough this road was. He laughed and said that if he told me ahead of time, he was afraid that I wouldn’t go but he knew I could handle it. I laughed too and told him thank you, I was up for the challenge and if I had known ahead of time how rough the road was, I would’ve gone anyway excited about the adventure.

I stopped several times on the way down to give the brakes a rest and to walk around taking pictures of flowers and while I was at it, I gathered some biscuitroot seeds. Yellow arrowleaf buckwheat, covered the hillsides with bright yellow patches. It was amazing how many flowers were still blooming on the hot west side of the mountain going into Hells Canyon. 

When we finally made it down to Mineral, there was only an area where the smelter had been that showed signs of the old mining town. There was a little creek flowing where trees grew. I wanted to stop and let the dogs run around and get a drink from the creek but there was poison ivy everywhere. Mass amounts of poison ivy!

We got down to the Snake River at Brownlee Reservoir and the road followed along the reservoir for a few miles. There were people homesteading all along the reservoir in campers. I remember seeing land for sale along Brownlee Reservoir for really cheap and I knew it was cheap for a reason. It was steep and covered in cheatgrass. People managed to find flat spots for their campers next to the Reservoir and had little homesteads set up with solar panels since there’s no electricity out there. That is a rough area to set up a Homestead, but for some people it’s worth it to live cheaply without all the overhead, I’ve thought of doing it myself.

We followed the reservoir for a while, then the road went up into the foothills towards Weiser. Mr. D pointed out his grandparents homestead, it was on some barren land. Two Poplar trees where the house had been was the only thing you could see for miles. 

When we got to Weiser, we stopped at a pizza place where I enjoyed the salad bar and Mr. D enjoyed a mini pizza. 

The drive back to Council on the highway was uneventful. I got Mr. D settled in at his house and drove home. I checked on the chickens and rabbits and put water on the yard. I had a restful evening and went to sleep at around 10:30 PM. 

Thank you for reading my blog and being a part of my life. I appreciate you! 

Love, Victoria