Good Busy Life

Life has been busy.

Good busy, but busy.

Over the past week we finally moved in to a small, airy, cute and well laid out two bedroom home in Cody.

The house was posted online for rent, I saw the listing seven minutes after it was posted, and a few hours later we had it.

We would have preferred to have found a house by now that we could buy.

 We would have preferred to find a house for rent sometime in March.

But when the price of a nice and clean rental is lower than other similar rentals in Cody and when they accept dogs, it doesn't pay to hesitate.

And so we didn't...............

We had boxes crammed everywhere in the off-season cottage we had been renting (as well as a number of large items we had stored in the attached shed) and it took a couple of days to move everything into the house.

It took another day to clean the cottage and one more day to find a place for everything in our new home-away-from-home.

And then we rented a store front for my business.

We hated to pay rent too soon because everything I need is still in storage over in Idaho, but the building was a good price (and with utilities included it was a VERY good price) and we did not want to take a chance on losing it.

I had been watching the "For Rent" sign all these months, not sure that we would be staying in Cody so not able to commit to it.

 But always following the status of the building and always hoping when we drove by that it would still be "For Rent" until LC and I could put some things in place.

The two bedroom house was the big piece of the puzzle.

And now we can slow down, get our feet underneath us, catch our breath, take our time to find something to buy.

And that feels good.

The NEXT big piece is to bring everything over from Idaho.

I feel tired just thinking about it, but we'll get it done somehow.

Just need to work on the logistics............

These pictures were taken a few weeks ago on a quiet gravel trail that follows the Shoshone River.

Entrance to the trail is at the edge of a new subdivision on the lowest level of the tri-level City of Cody.

On this day the trail was empty - no locals walking their dogs, no rafts running the quiet rapids, no fishermen casting their lines from the banks, no black bears or mountain lions (which are regular visitors at other times of year).

Just us and the three of us relished in the quiet.

Cedar Mountain.....................

With Kory off leash LC and I wandered in the snow, with one eye on our dog and one eye on the mountains...................

The trail starts in an elevated place that looks down over the river, but after a quarter mile that same trail veers sharply to the right and then drops.

From that point on the trail alternates between running along the river and then climbing, dropping and climbing, with the beautiful Shoshone always in view.

I have images of LC fishing at the river access down at the bottom of the hill once the weather finally warms up in the spring.

We are both very pleased to be here in Cody.

We wanted mountains and we wanted water, and we now have both..................

The next day LC walked with me and Kory again, and we wandered around part of the extensive grounds that surround the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

BBCW grounds are beautiful (as are the museums themselves) - filled with endless landscaped garden spaces and western-themed statues.

We didn't go far, but on a beautiful day it was a great way to spend some time together outside................

I snapped this picture of one of the aspen tree trunks because of the "eyeballs"....................

Two cowboys greeting each other on the trail...................

Quiet downtown places during the quiet winter...................

A couple of big and important things have fallen into place recently.

Which feels so good because for the last month or so LC and I were beginning to feel frustrated.

Frustrated at the seemingly fruitless house search.  Frustrated at the high prices of rentals.  Frustrated at not being able to commit to a store building.  Frustrated and wondering where we should go if we couldn't make Cody work for us.  

I'll write more about all this soon.

It's been a wild ride over the past few months, but it takes a while to start all over again when you're.............starting all over again.

Finally some things have begun to fall into place................

I could never resist the call of the trail............Buffalo Bill Cody