Thursday, September 1, 1994...School Daze

School has started--last Monday, August 29--for Keith, Hannah, and Dorcas. Teddy, Joseph, and Hester will start Tuesday, the day after Labor Day.

Hester looked longingly out the door yesterday and said, “Why do they let the big kids go, and not us little kids? We like to go to school, too! And I do have all my stuff!” She peered around the corner toward the parking lot. “Rebecca’s even there!”

Rebecca is her teacher, but she also teaches high-school science.

Oh, our vacation. I suppose you want to konw about our vacation.


Well, we headed out west, going past Jail Rock and Courthouse Rock near Bridgeport, Nebraska; then Chimney Rock near Bayard, Nebraska.

The children loved watching the tiny mountain squirrels of Wyoming, Montana, and Canada; they are only about 5” long, and quite tame.

We liked the Hanging Gardens in Glacier National Park, Montana; they were in bloom and oh, so colorful. Going-to-the-Sun Road was an adventure in itself. Lake McDonald was smooth as glass, reflecting the surrounding mountains, but by the time we got to St. Mary Lake, East Glacier, the water was rippled by the strong mountian breezes.

We were so pleased to find a secluded little picnic area, after accidentally getting on this cow-path of a road. It is exactly between Banff and Yoho National Parks. Thinking no one was near for miles and miles, we ate supper on a picnic table right smack-dab at the edge of the road. Well, guess what: a tour bus (Greyhound-size) came through approximately once every five minutes, whereupon everyone bailed out and rushed madly about, yammering excitedly in French, pointing at signs and our heaping, steaming plates of food alike. I reckon they imagined us to be just part of the animated tourists’ attractions they’d paid to see!

Lydia got out her new ‘bee-noc-lurs’ and stared back.

We saw mountain goats in Glacier National Park, Montana, drinking from waterfalls right alongside Going-to-the-Sun Road. At the top of Logan Pass, the sun shone brightly on the glaciers, and Caleb said, “Bwight! Bwight!”

On August 13th, Teddy turned eleven; Caleb turned ten months. Teddy opened a big pile of wrapped presents in the morning before we started through Teton National Park. We’d hidden them in drawers and cupboards in the trailer. And wasn’t he surprised! That National Parks bag around his middle was one present, the watch another. The watch has a picture of a horse on it, and a horseshoe revolves around the dial once each minute. Teddy thought that was just the ticket!

If you don't care to drive over Logan Pass, there are 25 or more tour buses which young drivers race furiously over Going-to-the-Sun Road in the hopes of giving elderly people heart attacks, thereby alleviating the population crush, and to enliven the lives of the middle-aged, who have a tendency to get in a rut. At the top is Mt. Clements, Crown of the Continent. On the east is the flat-topped Chief Mountain of Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada.

We saw a pasture full of llamas, seemingly all colors of the rainbow. One particularly shabby one, looking like he was going through a bad molt, came to the fence and peered at us.

“I can’t do a thing with my hair!” I intoned.

Another, in patches of black and white, came and looked at us, a quizzical look on his face. "Am I a Holstein?" I asked in a growly, nasal tone.

Those llamas had not before been the cause of such hilarity, I'll warrant.

I took a picture of Lydia in front of Chief Mountain, little pink mug still in hand. A Rufous hummingbird came whizzing out of the trees, whirred around my head, and hovered near Teddy’s red-clad arm before darting several times through the crook of his elbow, making him laugh.

We saw Dall sheep in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, and a mallard-black hybrid duck in British Columbia.

The glaciers in Jasper National Park were bright, seen from the Icefields Parkway. What looks like piles of sand against the mountainside is crushed rock, left behind by glaciers moving down the mountain, grinding everything in their path to fine silt. The turquoise color of the lakes is caused by glacier ‘flour’.

Immediately upon entering Kootenay National Park, we found ourselves in a rock-walled canyon. The temperature abruptly dropped 10°. I took a cute picture of Caleb that night, fresh from a bath. After the third person asked me, “Boy, or girl??”, I gave him a haircut.

Hester and Lydia trotted down the Forsaken Channel of Sunwapta, following Teddy and Joseph. It was steeper than it looked. I worried, because there had been cloudbursts not so long before; but the channel stayed dry as a bone.

We took ferries across both Revelstoke and Koocanusa Lakes. As part of the Canada highway systems, they are free. We camped at Balfour on an 80-foot ridge between Kootenay Lake and a rushing mountain stream, where the lights of the ferry could be seen every half hour all night long as it neared the shore. Kookanee Creek was at the bottom of a cliff directly behind the trailer. Good thing nobody sleep-walked, aye?

The northern Idaho mountains were so smoky, our throats and eyes hurt.

A tame bird in Yellowstone took peanuts from our hands -- rather rudely, I might add: he jerked them away with all his might and main. He was a couple of inches bigger than a robin, and when he went soaring off, his black wing feathers showed a white feather between each two blacks. I learned from my bird book that he was a Clark's Nutcracker.

There were elk beside Tower Creek, Yellowstone. You should have heard them whistling! We headed south through the Tetons, with Mt. Moran and Jackson Lake on our right.

Well, some friends of ours have invited us for supper, so I’d better go comb hair, wash hands, tie shoes, and that sort of thing. We don’t often get invited for supper; not many people have enough room, enough food, or enough time to cook it all, I think! (Maybe I should feed everybody first, so our friends will have enough courage to try it again, sometime.)

This story will be told in full in my next post, Canada Bound.