Gari & I got a great opportunity to snowmobile again in Yellowstone National Park.  Two things made this ride very unique. First, this was going to be a private or unguided ride, which we learned is very rare; and second this was the last week for snowmobile riding in the park this season.  The ski slopes seen below are those of Snow King in Jackson (Hole), Wyoming.  That shot was taken from the hotel we stayed in that was just north of Jackson. This was the plan, our friends Paul and Joyce have their own snowmobile and they know all the spots.  Paul had scored a private pass to ride in Yellowstone and they invited Gari & I to come along.  We were very excited!  Our last and also our first ride in Yellowstone was guided and we rode with a guide and group of a dozen sleds.  That was great, but this exclusive ride seemed like a dream.  It turns out the park only issues one permit per day per park gate, which is four gates at one pass each ga...

This being the year of our 30th Wedding Anniversary, we decided to attempt some bucket list activities.  We survived a snowmobile ride in Yellowstone National Park last month, and this month it was a skiing excursion.  Not to Yellowstone, but to a much closer location to home at Kelly Canyon Ski Area.  Kelly Canyon is a local Idaho Falls family ski area.  It is located about 25 miles outside of Idaho Falls and about the same distance from our home.  It has been there a long time, in fact our next door neighbor worked there as a teenager and he is my age... almost 😁 We have not had a huge snow year this winter.... so far, but we did receive 5-10 inches of snow just 2 or 3 days prior to deciding to head out to Kelly Canyon.  That turned out to be a good plan, the snow was outstanding!  Kelly Canyon is situated at about 6,500 ft elevation, which is about 1,000 ft higher than our homesite.  During the winter it is not uncommon to have snow cloud bott...

We have been rethinking our indoor air filtration for a month or more.  The first thing that set us to thinking about it was the air filtration situation in our HVAC air handler.  The situation was this: Jewel Plumbing & HVAC set up our HVAC and filter system, per our requirements.  They built a 25"x 25" by 1" filter jig ahead of the squirrel cage fan compartment in the HVAC air handler.  Our furnace is a LP gas fired forced air system with air conditioning.  We had been sourcing our air filters for the first year from Jewel our installers, because it turns out that 25" x 25" air filters have not been all that common.  For the first year we never saw any air filters of that size in the local box stores.  Just recently we have seen a few start to appear.  The filters we sourced from Jewel, were of the cardboard frame variety with very wispy synthetic fibers only 1" thick.  They are the most rudimentary of HVAC air filters.   ...

2025 is the year of our 30th Wedding anniversary and also the year that the building of our last house is complete.  What I mean by last house is that we WILL NEVER BUILD another one!  Please save this statement and read it back to us should we ever start to consider building another one ourselves again!  Given that we now have more free time again and it is a big celebration year, it is a perfect time for us to get some bucket list items in the books; enter snowmobile tour of Yellowstone National Park for starters 😃 In order to avoid nighttime driving into the frozen north country we made plans with our great friends Scott & Cindi to drive up to West Yellowstone, Montana and stay overnight there.  In this way we could drive during the daytime and have a short drive over to the snowmobile outfitter.  That is Scott and Cindi leading the way in the picture below. West Yellowstone, MT is a small town.  Our ride from hotel to outfitter was less than 0.5 mi...