I am trying to find the perfect color for the walls of our spare bedroom/office area. The room in general has a western look with a wall full of pictures of our grandkids and myself on the backs of various horses.

I think it is a cool room. However, my wife thinks that in general it is a mess. It is where my writing and town business information is kept, and the room also houses the kennels of our two dogs. It has the mounts of two mule deer bucks and one 12-inch antelope buck. Truthfully, it has a lot of junk in it and I would like to clean it up a bit.

I am looking for just the right color for the walls and since the ceiling is lofted and goes from 8 feet to about 14 feet, the sidewalls are huge and will stand out if I choose the wrong color. I put black frames around the mounted photos, so I want to choose a color that will make the photos catch your attention.

I tried a reddish-orange color, but that turned out way too red, and so I need to find something else. Just a few minutes ago I let my beagle out and noted the color of his coat and the hair on his head. It is a brown with a little bit of a red or orange tinge in it. I told my wife that Casey’s head is the color that I wanted.

When I told my wife about my choice, she just suggested that I wanted a beagle room to honor my beloved beagle/terrier Suzy who is in dog heaven.

The problem is that she could be right, but nevertheless, I will find some color that fits with a mess of horse photos, and a couple of dog kennels.

I wonder if every house has a room like this. It seems to serve a multitude of vague purposes, but really has no definite use.

This week when I am not painting my walls over and over again, I hope to spend many cooler hours riding my two horses and getting them in shape for the remaining four months of what I hope is intensive trail riding.

In general they are in good shape, but I never got on them once last week in the heat. I hope to test them on a few camping trips in July and August and then some extended ones in the fall. I may write a little more about my trips in the future and let the politicians shoot themselves in the foot without my help.

They seem to be doing such a good job with the self-inflicted wounds that I really can step back and just watch.

I can still remember the media frenzy when Dick Cheney wounded his hunting partner, but this mess makes that look like minor news. The one thing I remember about the Cheney incident was that his wounded hunting partner was a lawyer, and somehow that seemed to make the incident a little less serious.

I will finish or should finish all the work in the living quarters of my horse trailer by the end of this week and then I will be ready to hit the road.

I had hoped to find some partners to go to South Dakota with some time this summer, but everyone seems too busy with other trips or projects. I have joined a horse club recently and hope that I can find some riding partners in that club who can find some time to ride in the middle of the week.

Well, I hope to get my painting done soon and everyone will know the color I have chosen by the spots on my shirt and pants. Sometimes I even get some paint on the walls, too.

– Terry Turnquist is a combination of Andy Rooney, John Wayne and a 16-year-old boy with a new sports car.