I’ve Been So Busy Not Baking!

 

Here in southeastern Wyoming summer is very short.  It stays fairly chilly through the first part of June and doesn’t really heat up until July.  Once that happens, however, it’s like living in a frying pan for two months because the SUN DOES NOT STOP SHINING AT FULL POWER FOR 12 HOURS EVERY DAY.  Little cloud cover, high elevation, long hot days, no air conditioning, yadda yadda = absolutely no sane reason to turn on your oven.  On the plus side, we have zero humidity and the hot weather lasts about two months, tops.  I can already feel the crisp, cool autumn-y air on my morning walks so fall is just around the corner.  During August here, days get noticeably shorter, the nights get profoundly cooler, and all the green stuff starts turning brown.  As a cold-weather person at heart, I say amen to that.

So, I’ve been doing a lot of morning hiking in the mountains and this morning as a breeze picked up I just felt it – autumn is definitely on its way!  And that immediately triggered one core desire: baking.  I CANNOT WAIT to get back in the kitchen and bake.  Taking all this time off has been disappointing on the one hand but I think it also resparked my passion for this project.  So thank you for being patient with me!  The weather forecast for next week predicts no days above 80°F so we’re already heading in the right direction… the thought that I could be back in the kitchen full-force in a few weeks makes me pretty happy.

Until then, some non-recipe photos?  These were taken in various hiking destinations around Laramie this summer – Happy Jack Recreation Area, Red Feather Lakes, CO, Medicine Bow National Forest, and Laramie Peak.  Hiking is how I spend most of my free time in the summers and I’ve gotten into geocaching this summer too.  So these are photos from hiking/geocaching outings.

I need to look this up in my field guide - they're everywhere in the range east of Laramie right now and all around Red Feather, CO

It's hard to tell because I was crouching to take this pic but this is at the top of a very steep climb in the path. I love how the roots create natural foot holds.

Roller Coaster Trail is a short connecting trail at the Happy Jack Recreation Area east of Laramie. It's beyond fun on a mountain bike.

Another fantastic plant I need to look up in my guide. I could spend hours and hours photographing and researching plants. I would have loved a career in Botany.

Jäger comes along on all excursions - sometimes we'll hike 10 hours a day and he never gets tired. I always stuff a KONG with kibble and peanut butter, freeze it, then throw it in the cooler so he has a treat on the way home. He usually eats it all within 5 minutes.

I have so many photos from hikes this summer – would you guys like to see more?  I always wanted to keep this blog pretty MSBH-specific but I wonder if it might be nice to have something to fill the dead air until I can get baking again?  Let me know!

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