I have a summer flu/cold. I hate these illnesses worse than the ones that hit in winter. In winter, when you’re sick, you don’t feel like you’re missing much. It’s cold, gray, and staying inside makes sense. Today is blue skies with just a little wind so I feel a little insulted. I am missing a nice day.

The Carbon County Traveler

Mike Armstrong

I enjoy spring.

I am lucky because I have little to no allergies as flowers, bushes and trees start throwing out their pollen.

Maybe the Cottonwood gives me some sniffles, but I know people who have to take allergy pills and have to fear allergy attacks.

Spring Is Here Bringing Beauty Traditions and Fresh Starts

By Susan Davis

Carbon County Comet Contributor

By K.J. Schricker

Reporter, Carbon County Comet

I cite these books as sources of entertainment. Their contents are thought provoking in the realms of bushcraft, survival and outdoorsmanship along with being just plain well written. But don’t just use the descriptions from these books to forage for food or plant based medicine. Make sure you know what you are looking for.

The Carbon County Traveler

Mike Armstrong

The first time I went to Ocean City, Maryland was right after my prom. It is an amazing place.

In winter, itßulation of just under 7,000 but when summer hits, the city becomes the second largest city in the state of Maryland with a population that fluctuates from 330,000 to 350,000. 

I lived in a few different places growing up.

I started off in Virginia because I was born there and was where the first NASA headquarters was located.

I did not know it when I came into the world, but in the first 20 or so years of my life, I was going to be very much exposed to the world and industry of space flight.

It started when my father left the Air Force as a captain and a jet fighter pilot and went straight to NASA which was being newly formed.

I went to Newcastle the second time that I lived in Australia. I was on the search for where I planned to live the next year or so.

I had not been in Australia long.

I was still sort of adjusting to the fact I had just bought a townhouse in Saratoga and I knew that my time in Australia was actually finite. I literally had bought the house from Teense and Sandy Willford about two months before. 

When I lived in the D.C. area, where I started getting my first jobs, I was somewhat unaware there were people who took advantage of situations at the expense of others. I was the target a couple times. I was young and didn’t realize exactly what was happening at first, but I knew enough to get out.

I don’t feel like a lot of harm came to me because I more or less shrugged it off, but I realized there are some unsavory characters out there. 

The first time I picked up a basketball in the gym and shot it, I made the basket. I was in 7th grade and it was the beginning of basketball season. I don’t remember how everyone knew that, but I was picked pretty early as teams were being formed.

Well shooting a ball and making a basket is way different than playing the game, and in my early years of trying to play basketball, I was embarrassingly bad. By 9th grade, I was always one of the last boys picked to be on a team. 

I make no secret that I love the tropics.

My first taste of the tropics wasn’t Hawaii, but the Florida Keys.

I know Miami is considered tropical, but the Florida Keys feel like the real deal, that Florida north just seems to lack.

Also the Keys feel exotic when you start driving over the Seven Mile Bridge. It almost feels like you are going into a different country. But you are not.

When I was at the Governor Conference for Tourism a few weeks ago, I was walking outside to meet my fellow board members for a reception and dinner at Little America in Cheyenne. I like the facility and although it was still sunny from the daytime, it was cold and ice was starting to form at various walkways.

The sidewalks were mostly dry around the lodges but I found an icy patch.

Boy did I.

The first time I went to Hawaii, I was in my mid-twenties and trying to figure out what to do with my life. 

My furry little beast that I found about 10 years ago at a friend’s house in her large flower garden might disagree with the title. 

She is a gray longhair cat.

Not that she has ever really come into contact with a dog, really.

Scooter was about five weeks old when I found her, and truthfully, I had no intention of keeping her.

A friend that I was a business partner with sent me a video of his son playing guitar on stage and singing.

His son is 14.

Wow.

It seems like a very short time ago my friend was living here in Hanna, while we were trying to get our company up and running and finishing up a bartending book.

We got the  book done and published, but on a trip to Las Vegas for business, we met his future wife on a plane.