May 11, 2001

Hi folks! It has been awhile and there is lots of news to report.
Cheryl and Vince are moving here from Montana. Vince is already here and is helping with the lodge, Cheryl will be coming around the 18th of May. She needed to stay and finish up her job which was teaching at the school in Grant, Montana.

Uncle Dave had prostate surgery on April 30th. John came from Virginia to help out and now Pat is there with Dave and Francis. Pink Shinsel and his wife Beth are also coming to help out. Reports are that Uncle Dave is doing well, we are certainly glad to know that.

Kent has purchase four horses and I bought one for myself. Travis has brought his horse from Montana and Vince will be bringing one soon. so there are horses up at the ranch again. It is such a beautiful sight to see them out in the field. It took a little while for them to all get adjusted to each other but they are doing very well now. Kent, Travis and Vince are going to be building some corrals.

This is the new horse trailer Kent bought.	This my horse. I named her Chiquita so no jokes about the banana song.	This is the first horse Kent bought. They have named him "Comanchee".
	This is a yearling mare Kent bought, she is registered and has quite a bloodline behind her.	Here is another view of her. She is a very beautiful animal.
The Bay horse in the background is another one Kent purchased. His name is "Digger".	The paint on the left is Travis' horse. He is about two years old. The horse on the right is one Travis is training for a lady in Pinedale.	The horse headed for the wide open spaces.
		Shading themselves by the old shop.
Kent on Comanchee.	Kent and Tanner riding Comanchee.

South Cottonwood Fire

Around the middle of April, Corbin Ball was burning some willow on his ditch near South Cottonwood and since it was pretty hot and dry that day it caught the meadow in the school section on fire. Kent and Travis went to help fight it but when it jumped the creek and started up the hill in the sagebrush, they decided they had better call the fire department. There were five fires in the county that day all started with control burns. But since we didn't get as much snow this year things are pretty dry. Every fire department was out in the county that day. There were two fires near Daniel which were fought by the Daniel and Bondurant fire department. One up by Cora which Pinedale Fire Department fought, ours on South Cottonwood was battled by the Big Piney fire department. The fifth fire was up at Copeland's but they managed to get it out themselves. Pictures will be on the family section. The fire ended up about a third of a mile from the ranch.

The burn along Cottonwood and you can see where it burned the sagebrush on the hil.	This is a pretty good view showing the burn on the meadow.	It jumped the creek and headed up into the sagebrush.
It burned the bottom of a couple of power poles.	Looking out from our ranch onto the meadow.	Now the meadow is starting to get nice and green so I suppose it did do some good.
Again the burn up the hillside.	It took out quite of few of the willows along Cottonwood.	It will be easier to get to the fishing.
This is at the entrance to the school section.	The first time we've seen that much of Cottonwood.	We are very grateful that it didn't get to the ranch.

Well that's all for now. I am going to get this up today so it won't be another 6 months.