Visit with Mountain Girl, Paula

On Saturday, August 23, the family and I travelled to Leetonia to meet Mountain Girl, Paula. What a beautiful place she has. In a way I 'm am so jealous that she gets to live up in that beautiful spot all year. I'd love to be able to live there. However, the 3 1/2 hour commute one way to work every day would problaby take it's toll rather quickly. We talked for a while, then Paula showed our daughter her Tee Pee. After our visit, Paula invited us to drive up to her million dollar view at the top of the ridge. We took the truck up to the top and parked. She didn't underestimate the view at all. What a gorgeous spot. We went on a hike back into the Pines on her property. We weren't 100 yards into the pines when my wife spotted a very large buck sneaking up over the hill. I'm not sure how many points he had, but his antlers were much wider than his body. In the woods, we found the perfect picnic spot. There were several pine stumps set up in a circle. Nearby, someone had made carvings of a bear and an eagle (surprised?). We sat down and enjoyed our picnic lunch. On the way back down the trail, we saw two very large turkeys. Although I wanted to stay all day, we eventually had to head back home.

We're all thankful that Paula appears to be healing well from her accident. She has the most original body cast you'll ever see. (visit her blog at http://leetonia-eaglebear.blogspot.com/). When you pass the spot where her car went down over the bank, it is amazing to realize that she climbed back to the road using her one good arm. We enjoyed getting to meet our new friend in person, and look forward to seeing her again in the future.

Summer of 2008

Well, we were able to get up to camp a few times over the summer. This summer's weather was ablsolutely gorgeous. Very few days saw the temperature get above 90. We just spent a weekend in Cedar Run and the daytime temperatures were in the 70's each day. Everything at camp is ok. Over 30 cabins have been broken into this summer. However, the only problem that we have had this summer is porcupines. Yes, the porcupines are chewing everything they can get their teeth on. We've had to replace entire sections of decking, and railing. This past week we realized that we never had this problem when we were allowed to keep a salt lick at the camp. We now think they are chewing the wood to get the sodium that is in the treated lumber.

I'm looking forward to getting up to camp at least once in the fall to hunt turkeys. There are a lot of them around this summer. We have seen very few deer, but the deer we have seen have been nice sized and appear to be very healthy. We've seen several groups of fawns. Bears seem to be everywhere and many times these days seem to outnumber the deer.

You can hardly tell where the Bull Run fire went through except for the burned out laurel in some places. It's amazing how the ferns have come up and the trees have opened as if the fire was never there. It will be interesting to see if the burned out areas will change the movement of the deer this fall.