Sister Reunion 2009

This years Sister Reunion is in the books! We had a really great time out in the back country of the Nebraska Sand hills. Kiley and Jason work on a ranch there and we had a great time getting used to the back woodsiness of it all! It is so funny that a bunch of farm girls could seem so much like city slickers out there. I tried to get some pictures to show the remoteness of their place, you think you live in the middle of nowhere, this gives new meaning to the middle of nowhere! This is the lane up to their house, the house is in all of those trees. We arrived Monday night after a 13 hour adventurous drive. We saw lots of fun sites along the way like Abe Lincolns head, a tree growing out of a rock, and lots of windmills blowing in the Wyoming wind!

Here you can barely see the dark line of trees way in the back of the picture, (that's her house)these are some of their cows, the ranch is something like 15,000 acres, yeah that's BIG!

We spent Tuesday in the kitchen, Jason had his branding scheduled for Thursday morning and Kiley feeds all of the "help" after they get all (850!!) calves vaccinated and branded. After we finished the cooking we went out that night to "help" Jason doctor sick calves. Our helping consisted of us driving around in Kiley's suburban looking for calves that we thought looked sick, I think we thought they were all sick, but he assured us that they weren't ALL sick, again showing how little we know about ranching! He was a good sport to put up with all of those women all week!

We enjoyed the show too, Jason would chase the calves down on his horse Roxy and then rope them to doctor, what a cowboy!

Wednesday was our trip to town, it really was a trip, an hour and a half driving straight through, we of course didn't do that though we stopped at any and every point of interest along the way. We crossed the Platte River which the pioneers crossed, the Mormon trail was on the North side the Oregon trail was on the south side:It doesn't look that bad now, but back when the pioneers were following along it, it was about a mile wide, how would you like to cross that in a wagon! My favorite stop was this place:

Chimney Rock. I am sure it was a welcomed sight for the pioneers, after miles and miles of flat, and rolling hills to see such a landmark brought them GREAT joy! There was a nice museum that we checked out while we were there too. The boys loaded and unloaded this wagon with all of the provisions that travelers would need, including Claire Bear!

We also passed the largest Tractor "bone yard" in the United States, I had to get some pictures of that for Ryan. Then we drove on to Scottsbluff for the rest of the day for some shopping, we got home late that night, it really is a lot of work to go to "town" I see why Kiley doesn't go very often.Don't Claire and Dallie look like they have had a long day!

Thursday was the big branding! Jason had some neighbors and friends that came to help brand those 850 calves that were all born last month. It was quite amazing to see all of the cattle and all of the wranglers, there were about 40 of them in all!

They were happy to see us, we brought them out a morning "snack" Some of these guys get up at like 3:00 in the morning to drive to the brandings, just because they are "neighbors" doesn't mean they live close by!

That's a lot of cows and calves!

Here is the branding pot, they don't use electric brands like we do, these things get really hot!

Can you tell how hot they get! It was a pretty cool site!

Claire and I held down the back of the pickup, we made sure none of the snacks and drinks got away!

It only took a couple of hours to do all of that work and then they all came up to Kiley's house for lunch. We had a picnic in her yard, it turned out nice, they were all jealous of her trees, there aren't a whole lot of trees in Nebraska. Lunch turned out good, there was plenty of food, and help! We had a good time!

Friday we relaxed! We took a little 5 mile drive (that took 3 hours) out to an old cemetery on the ranch. We discovered three graves before the rattlesnakes chased us off. Mom is quite an adventurer! Kiley, Trish, and I drove out to check on some of Jason's windmills and water troughs (Jason was at a ranch meeting until late and asked Kiley to go check on stuff) We had a nice drive out, but the way back in we got covered in that wonderful Nebraska sand! I cant believe how much the sand blows even though there is grass all over it, it was yucky!

The windmills are so cool! I love that they harvest that free wind, I'm glad the miserable stuff can be used for something!

We had a great trip and cant wait to do it again next year...at my house! I better get planning! Thanks Kiley and Jason!