The last couple of weekends...bringing us to an end to summer

Wow, I can't believe the summer is over. What happened? Where did it go? There are so many things this summer lacked. We only ate out on our patio half a dozen times, didn't even hang out back there much this summer, and the only fire we had in our pit was just last weekend. We planned on going camping a lot this summer, instead, only one big trip this coming weekend.

We have done a few things that were first's for us though. This last weekend we did a day trip over to Colville, Washington. I sold a BUNCH of stuff on Craigslist to a lady that has a horse ranch even further west than Colville and it was a good meeting place to exchange. I have never been any farther north in the eastern part of Washington than North Spokane, so I was looking forward to seeing some new country. What a beautiful drive and a really pretty area. It was like driving through a valley area with mountains all around.

We also went out to Carver Farms (our second trip out there since our first time was last October when we went to get our pumpkins) to pick zucchini and peppers. This is the first year we don't have a garden so we had to buy our zucchini instead of being able to give a bunch away. I spent the last two days making zucchini bread and blanching and freezing the rest to use all winter. Zucchini is one of my favorite vegetables and I even tried a piece after blanching it and it was good only slightly cooked...so then I ate several more slices.

The weekend before that we went Huckleberry picking. We've been meaning to do this for years and just never have. Last year, Scott accompanied our neighbor (who partially owns a satellite internet company and has a tower) up to the top of Rathdrum Mountain so he could do some maintenance work for them. On his little trip up there, he found LOTS of huckleberries and so many of them untouched because the land is primarily owned by Inland Paper and there is a locked gate you have to get past to get up there.

(The picture on the left has the tower at the top that we went up to / the one on the right is the locked gate we went through to get up there / the one below is of the road going up - very steep & rocky) So we went up and found several bushes along the road that we may have gotten 30-40 berries off each bush but then Scott stopped in one area and walked back in and we found at least a dozen or more bushes that were laden with 4 times as many berries on each one. It was at the foot of this rocky area all around that he found them.

(The picture on the left is looking from the top down -so at the bottom of all the rocks is the picture on the right - where we found so many huckleberries)

We ended up getting almost 6 quarts and I'm hoping that is enough for all I have planned to do with those little berries.

We did purchase this handy dandy little "Huckleberry Rake" to help us with the picking and Scott was able to pick 3-4 times more than I was by hand. We only bought one because we wanted to make sure it wasn't a waste of money first and now that we know it works so well we'll get another next year so I can use one too.

You can see all the huckleberries we found on these plentiful bushes.

We've had a lot of fun the last couple of weekends and just trying to cram in a few fun activities before the snow starts to fly, because we are both not ready for that to happen.

Here is a little video that I did at the top of Rathdrum Mountain and all the areas that can been seen from it....beautiful.