Family Mellmann

July in Montana can include a lot of forest fire activity.  With smoke in the air, the mountain view has a distinctly clouded haze. I have an app on my phone that tracks forest fires (below) showing how many acres are involved and what the level of containment is.  We are the small blue dot just outside of the pink zone on the left side of the image.  While we were never in any kind of danger - the actual fires are actually many many miles from us - the smoke was clearly visible. For a reference, here is our view without smoke.

Early in the morning, as I raised my head off the pillow to start my day (yes, my bladder insisted I get moving), I startled this female mule deer snacking outside my window.  We stared at each for a few moments before moving on with our day. Later in the day, we encountered this little one.  One of two little twins, it appeared to be completely comfortable being very close to us on the patio.  It walked toward us and took a little walk through the garden before wondering away to look for Mom.