Pink and I have been somewhat distracted this week.  Pinky had a kidney infection and had to go to the hospital for antibiotics.  She eventually got sent to Lewiston for a couple days but is home now.  My left eye has been acting up, and I have to go to Spokane on Monday, tomorrow to see an eye specialist.   Spokane is about four hours away.
On a more postitive note, there has been a little bit of precipitation which has cleared some of the smoke out of the air.

I think fire season should be over now.  I can't see the mountains clearly from here on the Camas Prairie, but I expect them to start to appear more clearly this week.  At least scenes like this pic should be past now.

Pink and I did get up into the forest for a day.  The smoke still dominated the landscape then, but we did watch a fawn trying to convice its mother that nursing should still be an option.

I am still buried in Idaho County property and court records.  The back rooms of the Courthouse is not the place to take off some weight, obviously.

The work is going well, even though it is a little tedious.  I'm reminded of my days as a bricklayer, one brick after another all day long.  Research is a similar chore.  Pick up a piece of data, put it in its proper place (organize it), pick up another . . .  I hope to be moving to the Nez Perce County Courthouse by the end of the week, depending on how long it will take for my eye in Spokane.  On the other hand, Moscow is not that far from Spokane, and I hope to go through the artifacts from the 1999 Kittle Rockshelter dig conducted in Lawyer Canyon.  I will be choosing pieces to be displayed in the Flying B Ranch Lodge.  The University of Idaho stores nine cubic feet of artifacts from the excavation.

The rock shelter contained a ten-thousand year record of use and even evidence of habitation before the Masama eruption that created Crater Lake filled the shelter with four to five feet of ash that washed into the cave.  A summary of the dig can be found in: "A Brief History of the Flying B Ranch".

City of Grangeville, ID Visitor Center's Mammoth Display

The Camas Prairie which embraces the arms of Lawyer Canyon is rich in Archeology.  This replica of one of the Mammoth skeletons uncovered at Tolo Lake, just a few miles from the house we are currently staying in, is displayed at the visitor's center in Grangeville, ID. 

No one is entirely sure how long these "Columbian" Mammoths lived here on the Prairie.  Mammoths appeared on the North American continent around one and a half million years ago.  They disappeared around the same time most scholars point to humans arriving to this continent, +/- 12,000 years ago.  Thomas Jefferson wanted Meriwether Lewis to be on the lookout for a live Mammoth on the Corps of Discovery Expedition.  Lewis of course didn't find any, but here at Tolo Lake, for unknown reasons, hundreds of the animals died here.

Well that's about it for this week's update.  The air is clearing up, the leaves are colored and blowing in the wind, and I am beginning to miss having students.  As a closing bit, I have always enjoyed the following video describing one of the reasons why the Lewis and Clark Expedition got along so well with Native Americans: