One of the things we did last summer was have several family picnics on Casper Mountain. Oh those were so fun and it's about the only time we get together to see exended family. We are thinking of setting a date for each month in 2010 like 2nd Sunday of each month.
Here's some photos of the last one in September which was rainy but we had fun anyway! So we set up the canopy outside the trailer door and it worked well.
Now there is something very frightening in this photo. It's called Pine beetle and it's hitting the forests in the West hard due to global warming. It doesn't get cold enough in the winter to kill the beetles (requires it to get to 22 below zero). They are predicting in the next 5 years 90% of the pine trees on Casper Mountain will get killed by the pine beetle. I find that very very disturbing and wonder what the future holds for us. Also Colorado is now experiencing Aspen die off (the gorgeous yellow trees in the photo) and they do not know what is killing it. That worries me also that maybe we will lose ALL the trees. They do have an insecticide program for pine beetles but it's very expensive and all the forest cannot be treated. But we will treat the trees on our small lot but it won't help the wonderful vistas we now have.
I can only hope that some day our granddaughter will get to enjoy Wyoming and her mountains the way we have. So much of it and the way of life is disappearing. One of the things I used to love when I was a kid was going up to cow camp for the summer. Now a lot of ranching families do not do that anymore. I'll post more on it on the next posts.
Merideth
