Well, everything I see on TV is reminding me about summer. They show people baking, and sunburned. In my world, it recently snowed after an 82 degree day. It was over 80 today, and tomorrow will be in the 50's. Lows can be in the 30's. Snow can happen any month. Now, it's just pretty when it happens, but it still happens. I'm looking for the next one. On the other hand, it's putting a crimp in my hiking. Looking forward to hiking Mt Blackmore again when the snow melts a bit.

More Dish saga.

Well, there is more to the story now. I moved to a condo, and the owners had the SAME setup I had, including the same DVR and receivers. So, I thought I could simply hook my receivers into the same spots they had. Unfortunately, it was not that simple.


The problem was the satellite DISH was a different type, so I had no channels at all! I went to setup on my receiver, and tried to GUESS at the type of dish. I could not. I called Tech Service at DirecTV, they could not guess either. So I had to schedule a service call after all.


During that time we had a surprise BLIZZARD, so the poor guy was trying to get to the roof of the condo to fix the dish (replacing the SWM) and rewiring the whole damn thing. Typical day for me.

The DISH saga.

My next DirecTV experience. It started to snow last Sunday, and many people lost the satellite signal. I thought nothing about that until Monday night when I was missing the NFL game. Oh well. The next day though, still no signal. As you can see, the DISH was buried under the pine branches loaded with heavy snow. Well, this is 2 stories up and I could not get to the dish to free it from the snow covered branches.

So, I called a tree company. I called back every day, and they never called me back. I heard from other DirecTV customers that they could move the dish to a better location.

The response I got from them was that "they would not move the dish for "cosmetic reasons"....I should go pay to have it moved myself.

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A COSMETIC REASON????

Anyway, thanks to Ted Preiss, he came out to the house on Thursday night with a long ladder, and worked in the snow, at night, helping me get signal back to my dish.

No thanks to DirecTV. They were not very helpful.

My DirecTV experience

This is just amazing. Very funny if not so frustrating. I have a house in Missouri, it has DirecTV. I am setting up a new account in Montana, with a new install.
CALL #1 to Customer Service: I explain above. Rule Number ONE: No changes to account in Missouri. New install at such and such address in Montana. I get a confirmation email: they are doing the new install in MISSOURI!
CALL #2: I explain all above. Yes, they had it wrong, but it is fixed now.
CALL #3: Installers are calling MISSOURI number, looking for the install address. They are 1500 miles away. I explain again, they show up in Montana, at the new address. Dish up, TV is on! But, no local channels....install was scheduled for Missouri.
CALL #4: Installers try to fix the install address so I can get all channels in Montana. They make it happen for about an hour.
CALL #5: Angry call from home in Missouri: Local channels have gone out, and it says Mountain Time, not Central Time.
CALL #6: I call Customer Service again: they had changed the install address in Missouri to the Montana address. We go over again the different account numbers, and the install addresses for EACH account. We go over the phone numbers for each account. We make sure there are different billing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers. All seems good for the moment.
I go online to check the accounts: The addresses seem OK, but the phone numbers for contact are wrong again. I give up for today! God only knows what channels I will or won't get tomorrow. This is my thanks to DirecTV, from me to you.

Today was a great day for hiking. Getting up to 70, and sunny. Yesterday I found mud, today I found snow. Went down to Sourdough Canyon to hike to Mystic Lake. It is about 8 miles or so up the singletrack side.

It was an easy 4.7 miles to the turnoff at the bridge. To the right is a road, snow covered. To the left is the singletrack, and there was a lot of snowpack by the river in the shade. After postholing about 1/2 mile, the trail heads up the side of a hill, rising steadily. I was out of the snow, and in the sun. It was gorgeous. I crossed over a fallen log, and rounded a bend to run right into a fresh deer leg on the trail. No snorting or chuffing, but I was stopped dead in my tracks staring at that leg. There was no smell, the blood was fresh, and I got very nervous.

I turned around slowly, and looked all over. I was crazy enough to get a picture as I backed away slowly, back over that same fallen log, and slowly making my way back down to the snow. I never did see a bear, but I was not going to keep going up the trail in case I ran into one on the way up or the way back. No thank you.

Deer

After many months of not posting - I have been playing with Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Gmail, and on and on...it seemed like a good idea to post a thing here. There were 5 deer laying around in the back yard under the trees. They gave me dirty looks when I looked at them, and then they slowly sauntered away.

July 5th Hikes

I started out today for Kirk Hill. It's just south of town, and has a good look over at the Madison Range. There are three loops that you can follow. You start in a marsh, climb to the top of Kirk Hill, and look over the valley. You can follow 19th Avenue as it heads back to town, and follow it right to the Bridger Range. At the top of the hill is an ambitious trail you can take over to Hyalite Canyon. Not for me today though. I made a series of the three loops to get a good hike in. I could hear thunder as I was finishing my hike, but I was still dry - 2 days in a row I just missed the rain.

It was still early, so I went to Hyalite Canyon to the reservoir to look around. I was pleased to see lots of campers and cars heading out, back home. Lucky for me I live here! I had just missed a major downpour in the canyon, so no one was hiking. I went to Crescent Lake, and I only saw 4 people and a dog on the trail, but I counted 3 bear prints.

The thunder was moving in again just as I finished my hike. I drove back to town in the rain, but I never hiked in it today. Just another beautiful day.