Category: The Valley

I was checking my weather maps today and confirmed that we are the coolest spot in the country. At 0730 this morning the temperature was 40° with a high of 77°. I marked our location with a green dot on the map below, not to be confused by the black blob below that’s known as the Great Salt Lake.

It’s sad days around here in Teton Valley, and probably most people don’t know it because we don’t have a real News paper. The Teton Valley News really sucks lately. I can speak from authority because Steph (who used to work there) and I have hosted two of their Christmas Parties here at our house, and I got to know the old staff.

I have a scanner and I monitor everything that goes down around here, unless I’m sleeping of course. Two major events have occurred recently and only one got a blurb in the Sherrifs Log portion of the paper.

I heard the call come in last weekend of a possible infant drowning out in the Big Hole foothills. Every EMT in the Valley rolled to that event and I listened to the drama unfold. I believe the child drowned in the bathtub, but since we have no local News, I can’t be sure. I listened as the EMT’s blew off a Life-Flight helicopter, and performed CPR all the way to the hospital, knowing the child was gone. I could tell from the sad tone of their voices…

A couple of days ago I listened as a deputy approached a home on Pine Drive off 5000 S. to serve a warrant. Suddenly the deputy shouted shots fired and sure enough, the guy they were after had committed suicide. There was nothing in the News Paper about this and I understand the philosophy of not reporting suicides, but this was News! My sources said that this guy was heading off to a long sentence due to his third DUI.

The paper costs a buck these days, but I’m really starting to think they aren’t worth it…

I was shopping in Broulims today and came across these giant red peppers for $.89 a piece. Big, bad-ass, probably genetically engineered, and that’s a quarter…

There’s a sub-division off N 500 W by Hatches Corner called Leigh Meadows that I pass by every morning. I’ve been watching it come alive with a new home under construction, sparkling ponds and spacious land. It gets it’s name from the nearby waterway called Leigh Creek, but it has a personal meaning to me, as Leigh is my real first name.

My Texas daddy was named ET (Eugene Thomas) and my birth name was Leigh James. Divorce happened, but if I’d grown up in Texas I would have been LJ, ET’s boy! Somewhere along the way it got changed to James Leigh with a new surname popped on the end, and ultimately shortened to Jim. Hmmm, busdriverleigh.com?

And the view’s not bad either…

That Eastern Storm floated over the Tetons this morning and just hung out as clouds most of the day. Our neighbors to the West basked in the seventies today and finally we had a short downpour around 1600. This is why weather around here doesn’t faze me…

I’m watching the news tonight and they’re talking about a storm coming in from the East. Huh? Storms always go from West to East so, intrigued, I brought up my weather maps and sure enough, there it was. I really don’t care much about weather around here, it is what it is, but this is interesting…

Our weather guy said it’s due to an Omega Block pattern, so I checked it out:

Learn something new every day, I say…

Steph’s in Washington State meeting her newest grand-daughter and her sisters grand-daughter, so I’m the designated keeper of the cat. Nothing wrong with that, I can certainly run the house and take care of my kitty!

I drove down to Idaho Falls this morning to check out a few things and on the way back I stopped at our Lookout Point, just like a tourist, and took the shot below. The valley’s looking good, the land is clear of snow and the Teton River has thawed out.

I’ve survived another winter here…

I also picked up a nice little radio:

The Driggs-Reed Memorial airport is a 7300′ by 100′ runway with a double wheel landing gear weight capacity of 75,000 pounds. In other words, we can handle big planes. The Huntsman patriarchs from Utah have a huge presence here with a five-star hotel on the way, and they needed a commercial airport to handle their customers.

In the event of a plane crashing at our airport it’s good to know that the Junior High would be the first to go. If the high school was the first hit we would lose that whole two-year educational investment! In other words: what were they thinking?

Steph runs the Suburban Propane outfit here in Teton Valley so I hear a lot about the propane business, and my awareness of propane tanks has heightened. Some of the tanks around here have weathered many harsh winters over the years, and it shows in what I perceive as an artistic way.

These are a few I’ve noticed recently and I think I should build on this post as I travel the Valley.

A new double-wide is going up in the Driggs Gemstone sub-division at Ruby and Garnet. You out of towners may wonder why I’m even mentioning this but it’s kind of a big deal. This sub-division has been frozen in time since we moved here, a victim of the crash, and I haven’t seen anything new show up here, until now.

Gemstone was designed as low-cost housing with a view and a new double-wide fits right in with the neighborhood. Somebody has actually bought this plot, acquired a modular home, had it shipped here, and built a concrete foundation for it.

I did a little research and this .31 acre plot at 265 Garnet Ave (lot 265 blk 4 gemstone sub sec 35 t5n r45e) was purchased for $10,000 by a Wyoming non-profit corporation, the Karl M. Johnson foundation, out of Jackson, WY.

Hmmm, I suspect this is intended to be a rental. Buy a plot in a low-cost area, ship in a double-wide, rent it out. Not a bad business plan…

btw: I know the sweet little old English lady that lives in that house in the background. She rides with us frequently…

I’ve been following an amazing response to a missing 8-year-old boy in Victor on my scanner this evening. Everybody was called in for this one, Search and Rescue, Air Idaho, Sheriffs Department, Idaho State Police, Fire Department and the Church for manpower. Fortunately, the boy was was found safe!

My scanner followed it all in real-time and I have to admit tears welled up in my eyes when the call came that the boy was safe in his fathers arms. I know the area involved well, and there’s a major creek that runs nearby.

Our emergency response teams are the best.

On my way home for lunch today I spotted these enterprising boys on the corner of Fifth and Little. I suspect they escaped from the daycare down the street, and just wanted to make some quick cash with their rhythm. Best couple of bucks I spent today!

Here’s a short video clip:

Things that make you go hmmm. I wonder if Aaron talked the City boys into putting off repairs on this tire-busting pothole right next to his tire shop? They’re all long-time members of the Teton Valley good old boys club! :-)

I hit that pothole last week when it was covered in snow and now I dodge it religiously. It’s right in the line of travel of a right turn onto Ashley.

I really hate the loss of life. I don’t kill life myself, as much as can be avoided. I have never killed a human, I have never hunted an animal other than shooting a few birds with my .22 when I was a kid, and a woodpecker that Steph coerced me to shoot a few years back, and lately it’s difficult for me to kill an insect.

I heard a deputy dispatch a deer tonight that had been hit by a car, on my scanner. He calls it in as a shot fired, and often his buddies come out to harvest the meat. Nothing wrong with this, just sad…

When I drive to work in our low-light twilight mornings I move at 35mph in a 45mph zone. I’ve managed to dodge a lot of pretty deer as they fly across Ski Hill road in front of me, only hitting my mirrors once.

It’s been pretty nice and relativly warm around here lately, a transition period I call sprinter (half way between spring and winter) and there’s still a lot of snow on the ground. I was out in North Tetonia this afternoon and took these shots of a snow pack that’s not going anywhere soon.

Fresh out of a computer science degree in the early seventies I went to work for a medical billing company in south Oakland, CA. It was a Cobol shop and my first assignment was to flowchart and document the concept of Level Breaks. I won’t bore you with the specifics but it was a technique I carried on to a very successful career through the seventies and eighties working with IBM mini-computer systems and RPG 3. Tonight I brought back some of those old techniques as I processed my carefully crafted 10,000 element database of Teton Valley addresses. The results are amazing and I can’t wait to introduce the new program.