We moved to location #4 on Tuesday the 12th – a little further away from Jordan, again. We just keep moving further and further west. The further west we move, the closer to the “Breaks” we get. The “Breaks” would be the Missouri River Breaks. These are pine tree-lined buttes along the Missouri River – the very same buttes Lewis and Clark would have seen so many years ago. The prairie just drops off into something completely different. I’ll get pictures of this when we actually get to location #5.
Jamie sent me a picture of Callie’s first day of school as a Junior. How can this be???
Location #4 is a little more “western” than the previous three locations. There are deep ravines cutting through the field that have been left from water and there were a few rocks. I was a little more stressed at the end of the day because of the rock situation. Lucky for me, none jumped in my header!This wagon truly is sitting at the edge of the wheat field. I asked our farmer (who is in his 80’s) if he could give me any history on it and he said he could. The wagon belonged to his dad and they used it to haul “cake” to the cattle in the winter. Apparently something new eventually took its place and it was left to weather the storms on the great prairie. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. Isn’t it gorgeous? I would love to be able to step back in time and see this wagon when it was new.
The biggest excitement for this location is it RAINED! I had just finished the last acres, Jim finished blowing the combine off and putting the header on the header trailer for the move to location #5.
We can’t get any phone service but the phone rang.
So, Jim crawled to the top of the combine hoping to keep his call when all at once this very dark cloud moved directly overhead and started thundering. I suggested that maybe he should come back down with the lightning/thunder. 🙂 Probably not a good place to be when it’s going to storm.
See, no dark clouds…yet!
He finished his call and then it started to rain. Jim had just enough time to think maybe we should get the heck out of there and then it began.
When it rains here, the roads turn into a slick mess; you want a 4-wheel drive pickup and to be on a road with gravel. We had neither. So we sat in the pickup for at least a half hour. What will we do? I wasn’t concerned, we had a lunchbox with sandwiches and the Pete (a bed). I thought it would be a great adventure. No lights to dim the stars, the night sounds of the Montana prairie and no clock.
Jim, however, was concerned about how we’d get out of this predicament.
It felt so good to me! And it meant a break.
After it quit raining, he decided he’d make his way to the road to see exactly what sort of trouble we were in.
As he was scoping the situation over, a white pickup was coming from the south. It wasn’t coming STRAIGHT down the road…it was swerving from left to right, from right to left and sometimes sideways. When they saw him, they came to a stop. Most natives know if you see someone near the road, they probably need help.It ended up being a blessing for both of us. The woman driving the pickup wasn’t from here (but her passenger was) and had never driven on muddy roads like these before. When she stopped to talked to Jim, he said she was trembling. They would wait for us IF Jim would drive the rest of the way for her. So, we gathered our stuff and headed back to the pickup. And then the phone rang again. This time it was our farmer’s daughter-in-law. The farmer was worried that we hadn’t made it out of there before the rain. Jim verified that we hadn’t but we had a ride to the main road. Could the farmer pick us up at the main road and take us back to Jordan? Yep, he could do that. As it was, the “coincidences” that occurred happened at the perfect time. If you know me, you know I don’t believe in coincidences. God definitely had his hand in our situation – once again.
Jim talking to the daughter-in-law.
A couple of shots of the countryside I took while we were headed back to town
The best part of this whole story is it rained! I was going to get a day to get caught up…or so I thought.
