Home again-Gone again

As you all know, we have been home for 5 days. In three days we will be on the road again to Wyoming to be the photographers/videographers of our Stake youth trek. Then we will be home with no plans to go anywhere for at least a few months.

Once we are back we will post a few stories and pictures of our Glacier trip. Just too tired right now!

Glacier

We are on another trip. It is nice to be in the Empty Nest and free to use up all the vacation days doing fun stuff. This time we are off to Glacier National Park. We have Liz with us (she likes to hike to unreasonable places with us) and she has been lots of fun.

Moms neck/back/arm still hurts, but she is being a brave little soldier. It is beautiful here, wonderfully green with waterfalls and plants (trees and flowers) everywhere. We drove from Orem to Missoula, MT the first day, then on to Kalispell the second day and tonight we are in Columbia Falls. This is one of those trips where you change hotels every night. But hopefully, we will be able to do some fun stuff.

Tomorrow is a little hike (6 miles +3,000 feet gain) to Sperry Chalet It should be a good hike, we are expecting great weather and with three of us, no self respecting bear should want to share the trail with us.

Life is good, it is amazing to be in the mountains to see the creations of Heavenly Father.

Home Again

It is nice to sleep in your own bed. We traveled over 2200 miles (in the RAV4) as well as I bet at least 400 miles in the bus. But all was well we are safe and sound. Other than almost hitting an orange barrel in a construction zone, the trip was completely uneventful (at least from those scary kinds of events). It is a great blessing to be able to travel so far safely.

Mom makes it sound like I am depressed by the Utah scenery. It isn't that, I just wonder how I ended up in the desert when I really don't like the desert. But then you would have to ask why I hike the Grand Canyon when I dislike the scenery there as well. I guess you can't always do things the way you would like, sometimes you just have to adjust to the world around you.

We have a great job, the house is paid off and life is pretty good. I enjoy my Church job and am close to the majority of my family. I guess things are pretty good. But I will still visit the "green places" on this earth.

Road Trip - Day 13

Home again, home again. Today we have traveled home. We left arid Ontario, Oregon and drove through arid Idaho to get home to arid Utah. We took a short scenic drive along the Snake River, which was pretty arid but did have a stretch where lots of springs come out of the cliffs above the river. When we got back to Utah, Orland was pretty overwhelmed and dismayed by how arid and unattractive it is here. It will take some time to adjust, but I think he will feel better just in time to go spend 10 days in Montana, where it is not so arid. We'll help him make the adjustment again just in time to go to Wyoming for three days. It's OK, it's arid in Wyoming, too, so he won't have to make any adjustment when we come back.


Here is a picture of one of the springs along the Snake River.

It is always a little worrisome coming back home because not only is it the part of the trip where the vacation ends, it's the part of the trip where you find out what went wrong while you were gone. Did something die, run off, break, etc? In this case, a few plants did die, but they were no big deal. A few were wilted because I need to adjust their timer. The lawn is pretty dry because I forgot to set the timer back to the right number of minutes after the yard was sprayed. It will green up quickly now that I have reset that controller. Tomorrow I will check the two vegetable gardens. Then we'll spend the next week getting ready to do it all again.

We will not be posting every day now that we are back home, but we will post when we have something interesting happen. It may not be interesting to anyone else, but it will be interesting to us. That's what it's all about, right?

Road Trip - Day 12

Today we went to Silver Falls State Park and walked a trail loop along the Silver Creek that went past six waterfalls and two trickle/seep falls. Lots of shade, birdsongs and greenery. The water in the creek reflected the silvery morning light. Just a beautiful hike. The trail took us behind three of the waterfalls. There are more waterfalls in the park but we took the short loop. Definitely a place to go back to. There is some kind of lodge and some campgrounds in the park. Maybe we will recruit some company for our next visit. Any takers?

We will spend the night in Ontario, Oregon- right on the Idaho border. If we have time tomorrow, we may take the scenic drive along the Snake River near Twin Falls. Then we’ll push for home. Home to see what has died and what is thriving in each garden, finally see the Tommy and Jonah (who were too jet-lagged to visit before we left) and be amazed at how much Little J has changed in just two weeks. Home to get ready for the next trip. Since we wish we could stay on vacation, we will probably feel like our Glacier trip came just in time!

Here are some pictures from our day, including a view of the back side of water- but better than the view on the Jungle Cruise.

Road Trip - Day 11

Today we went to church with Chris. Their branch has a nice little chapel. After the block of meetings we hung out for a few hours and visited with Chris and Terry. We found that we all enjoy cruises and Orland and Terry share a keen interest in home solar power. They plan to keep in touch whenever one of them comes across something new or interesting about solar. Orland clued Terry in to Home Power Magazine, on-line solar radiation calculators (for figuring out how much energy can be generated based on the conditions that are normal for your area) and to the classes and seminars available the Real Goods alternate energy center.

We had a nice little drive up the coast and inland to Salem. Tomorrow we will spend the first part of the day at Silver Falls State Park and then head part way home.


Here is a set of road signs that we thought were so funny we had to turn around to take a picture.














When we got to our Motel in Salem, these cars were in the parking lot. They are Plymouth Prowlers. As you can see, two of them have little matching trailers. Pretty fancy!

Road Trip - Day 10

Today we visited the International Rose Test Garden and the Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother, both in Portland. The rose garden had lots of roses. Since it is mostly a test garden, there wasn’t really landscaping, just lawn and walkways with lots of square flowerbeds that had lots and lots of roses. These are some of the roses that Orland liked the best.





Here is a sign that I thought was kind of funny- oh, the image it brings to my mind!












The sanctuary had a grotto with a statue of Mary. It is a Catholic sanctuary, retreat and monastery with gardens and sculptures. It was interesting to see a different perspective. There wasn’t much about the joy of the gospel, atonement or resurrection; the focus was more on lots of sorrow. Of course, we were only seeing one small garden and one perspective.

We got to ride the MAX again and really enjoyed it. It would be great if we had something like that in Utah Valley. So nice to just get on, relax and then get off at our destination.

We got to Waldport late in the evening and visited with Chris.