Journal: The Beautiful Tetons, the Canyons, & the Hills...

 

While staying at the RV Park in Alpine, Wyoming, I sent the kids a few pictures from the campground.

Hannah wrote back to say, “We stayed in Alpine.”  (They were on vacation a month or two ago.)  “The motorcyclists were thick,” she continued.  “As in, they were everywhere.”  😄

I was glad that the campground was less than half full (maybe even less than a third full).  The camping season is winding down (though you would never have known it, to look at the campgrounds in the National Parks).  It certainly should be winding down, especially out there in the mountains, where the temperatures are dropping below freezing each night.

The less people around, the less trouble I have with blepharospasm.

So... why is it called Benign Essential Blepharospasm?  Benign???  I think it’s malicious.  As for ‘essential’... Essential for whom?  Certainly not essential for me.  Who named it, anyway?  Some guy whose mortal enemy came down with it, and he felt downright smug about it, or what?!

Tuesday morning, Larry rode his bike to a nearby Ace Hardware store to get an essential bolt (see, that’s what one should use the word ‘essential’ for) that got lost the previous evening when he was working on the pickup, putting in a new water pump.  Can you see him riding down the lane there?

I stayed at the camper and took pictures of, among other things, a magpie feasting on big, fat, sluggish crickets under the rail fence.

Larry returned, finished putting everything back together again, and started the pickup.

>> clank, kerplunk! <<

The lost bolt fell out of its hidey-hole and landed on the ground, just like Larry said it would.  (And no, it would not have been good to have started the pickup before putting in that essential bolt.  All sorts of things might very well have flown apart, necessitating a trip to something other than Ace Hardware.  Or maybe necessitating a call for a wrecker.)

Larry put the bolt in his toolbox to save for the next time a similar bolt gets lost in some pickup somewhere.

He then installed the powerful inverter we had gotten shortly after leaving home.  It has enough oomph to run my juice-slurpin’ laptop, but the pickup fuse blew every time I plugged in the computer.  So Larry wired it directly to the engine and fastened it securely under my seat with the outlets aimed toward the door, where I could easily reach them between seat and door.

Next, he fixed whatever the previous owner had put on the muffler to hold it in place.  It was metal against metal, with no rubber cushioning in between, so that every time we stopped or started or gave the engine some torque, it clattered terribly.  Larry couldn’t hear it enough that it bothered him at all.  When such is the case, I consider it to be my bounden duty to be as irritating as possible every time the irritating noise occurs.  If he wants me to hush up, he has to fix it, right?  Right.

Why, when we were driving through Jackson, Wyoming, at about 4:30 p.m., a busy time of the afternoon, a light turned red, and we had to stop rather abruptly.  Something under the pickup (Larry had not determined just what, as yet) went, “Clatter!  Clank!”

“Your tin foil and nails just fell out of the back of the pickup,” I informed Larry.

But that wasn’t half as bad as when we started out again when the light turned green.

The pickup is a manual-shift, and it has a lot of power.  Indeed, it needed a lot of power at that particular corner, because it was uphill, and of course we were towing a big camper.

“Rattle clank clangity clash jangle!” remarked the pickup gaily as we took off.

Several pedestrians jumped as if someone had shot at them.  Recovering themselves, they whirled around and stared.

“Your bucket of bolts and nuts and several gutters and eaves just fell out,” I told Larry.

Thus, whilst he was working on the water pump and the inverter, he also took the opportunity to scoot under the pickup and find out what might be causing all the noise.  Discovering the uncushioned bracket, and seeing that it was a superfluous piece of ineffectiveness, he removed it. 

The pickup sounds much better now, whether under acceleration or when stopping.  There is still a clanking sound somewhere, but it’s much less obtrusive.  And it doesn’t sound like vital components are coming apart.  I shall keep still about it – unless the volume increases.

We liked the campground so much, we decided to stay another night.  We would spend the day exploring and hiking here and there.  There were plenty of pretty places to go without driving too far from the campground.  I’d rather be hiking than riding!

This day, nothing would go to pieces on the truck, nor the camper, either.

Touring helicopters flew over, low, now and then.  I like to watch them.  I’d like a ride in one – and my hair would probably be standing up on end the whole time, even if it was fun.  Reckon you can request a hotdogger, just to make it even more entertaining?

A friend wrote to tell me I had yet another new great-great-niece.  That’s two in a week – and they are first cousins.  Gracie Anne and Naomi Faith.  Both are granddaughters of my late nephew David Walker.

I think that’s neat, that there are two little girl cousins just a week apart.  Our little granddaughters who are close in age are the bestest of friends.

It was 2:00 p.m. before Larry finished working on the pickup.  He was not at all troubled by this; he has always considered ‘grease monkey’ to be a title of honor.  In fact, that very afternoon, he inquired as to whether I didn’t think we were having ‘a lot more fun’ than we’d had whilst driving to Paducah in the Mercedes.

“I certainly love this part of the country a lot better,” I responded, and if he noted that I had not commented on our mode of travel, he did not mention it.

That afternoon, we drove south through the Snake River Canyon.  We found a couple of places where we could hike down to the river.  I wanted to just keep hiking along the edge of the water, it was so beautiful, and the trees smell so fragrant, this time of year.

The river was deep, and cold, and flowing fast.  The color was spectacular – a dark teal green.

I have posted a video here.

I hadn’t hiked very long before the soles started coming apart on one of the cute little Nikes I got a few months ago on eBay.  Larry patched it up with gorilla tape when we returned to the pickup, and I proceeded on.

Before we got back from the second hike, the other shoe was losing its soul.  Er, sole.

Good thing I brought my good pair of Asics to wear.  They’re really nice, and I didn’t want to wreck them up on some of those difficult mountain trails.  But they were the only other pair of hiking shoes I had brought.

When we returned to the campground that evening, Larry bought a bundle of wood.  After we ate supper, he built a fire in the brick firepit a little distance from our camper.  Then we sat beside it in the comfortable Adirondack chairs they provided at each site, ate Townhouse Pretzel Flipside crackers (that was me) and Ritz Original crackers (that was Larry) with Mozzarella string cheese, and sipped piping hot Toasted White Chocolate coffee made from fresh-ground Christopher Bean coffee beans.

The waxing moon rose big and bright over the eastern mountains.

A ‘bundle’ of firewood isn’t very big, did you know that?  It cost $7.00 – at least a dollar for every stick of wood, if indeed there were seven pieces.  It didn’t seem like very long at all before the fire was burning low.  Larry stirred it up a few times, but the hot blue glow at the bottom of the logs ate that wood hungrily.

I gestured at the rail fence just a few feet away and said, “There’s plenty of wood right there.”

Larry started laughing – and began recording our conversation on his phone, unbeknownst to me!

“I doubt if we’d get away with it, even if we are a nice little old grandpa and grandma,” I said, then went through a possible scenario:

Campground manager:  “How could you!”

Me, pointing at the fence:  “Well, it was just sitting there, all in a pile...”

Larry added, “On sawhorses, just to make it easier!”

The fire finally died down and the breeze grew chilly (the temperature would be in the mid-30s that night), so I retired to the camper.  Then, sipping Bentley’s Mango green tea, I typed up ‘The Winding Thread’ query of the week for my Quilt Talk group.

Here’s a little Least chipmunk we saw in the canyon that day.  It’s our smallest chipmunk – but it can run almost 5 mph.

As soon as he finished the seed he was shelling and eating, he decided he’d been in a photo shoot long enough, and off he went, giving an impressive display of that ‘almost 5 mph’.  I hit the shutter button, thought I missed him entirely – but there he is!

He’s blurry, I know, but I still think it’s a funny picture.

That rail fence was about fifteen feet or so behind our camper.  Wasps were landing on it that morning, cleaning their antennae, peeking up over the top at each other, and having small feuds.

Victoria sent us a video of Baby Willie, 8 months, sitting in his highchair, playing with Carolyn, 5.  Carolyn handed him a plastic measuring spoon, and then turned as if to walk off. 

Willie dropped the spoon over the edge of his highchair tray.

Carolyn whirled around, long hair and bow flying, exclaiming, and bending down for the spoon, while Willie screeched with laughter.

Carolyn handed him the spoon, turned, started to walk away – and Willie dropped the spoon.

Back flew Carolyn, hair swirling around her head, with Willie yelping with laughter.

I think Carolyn, energetic as she is, would’ve worn plumb out long before Willie ever thought the game was over.  He thought it was just as funny the sixth time as it was the first time.  He was finally laughing so hard, he couldn’t even get a grip on the spoon before it slid from his grasp.

By the end of the video, Larry and I were laughing every bit as hard as Willie and Carolyn, and Victoria, too.

Wednesday morning, Larry went off to fish in the Snake River, which was about 500 feet south of our camping spot.  He didn’t keep at it as long as usual, because it was only 33°.  It would get up to 69° in Jackson that day; but we would be in the south part of Yellowstone, and it was a bit cooler there.

I wish we could’ve seen the entire Park, but we needed to start heading home that day.  Larry generally supposes he can travel 1,000 miles a day.  But he starts resting his eyelids after only a couple hundred miles.  His eye that had the mini stroke in it last year bothers him, and sometimes after thinking he can drive another 100 miles, he is suddenly too tired to go any farther.  So we were only able to see a small part of Yellowstone this time.

A friend asked me, “Did your family get the Sears Christmas Wish Book when you were growing up?”

“I don’t remember,” I answered.  “I would’ve had my nose buried in Sugar Creek Gang books, as opposed to any ol’ ‘Wish Book’.”

But we got them when our older kids were little.  Hannah was just 8 months old when I was holding her on my lap, rocking her just before bedtime, and we were looking at the toys page.  I wasn’t saying anything, because she was about to fall asleep, her little thumb plugged securely in her mouth.  She was dressed in a yellow fuzzy sleeper, and her dark hair was freshly washed, and smelled good.

I turned the page – and there was a baby doll with dark hair, dressed in a yellow sleeper.

Hannah’s thumb came out of her mouth in one quick hurry.  She pointed excitedly at that baby doll and exclaimed, “He-uh’s Han-han!  He-uh’s Han-han!!”  She looked up at me and beamed.

Of course, I had to order the doll (which, fortunately, wasn’t too big for Baby Hannah, nor too expensive for me).  She absolutely loved that dolly.  When she opened it at Christmas time, she laughed and laughed, hugged it tightly, and exclaimed, “Oh, Han-han!  Oh, Han-han!”

Hester, upon seeing the picture of Larry and me by the campfire, wrote the next morning to ask, “Did the chipmunk take the picture of you?”  Then she added, “Just kidding.  That looks so cozy and peaceful 😌.”  

“Haha!” I responded.  “I set up my tripod... set my camera to take a picture in ten seconds – and then this morning I couldn’t understand why my camera wouldn’t take a picture.  About the time I gave up and pulled it down from my face to look at it, it took a picture of the inside of the pickup door.

“Then I remembered.  Oh.  Yes.  Quite so.  (In a Winnie-the-Pooh tone)  Timed shutter.”

We wanted to walk down to Jenny Lake, which is directly east of The Grand Teton itself, but the small parking lot near the main path to the lake was chock-full.  We continued on down the one-way road, which is marked for a narrow bike lane on the left.

Eventually finding a turnout big enough for our rig, we pulled in, got the bikes off the rack, and rode back to another trail down to the lake.  We parked our bikes in the trees, stuffed our gloves into our helmets, hung our helmets from the handlebars, and scrambled down the path.  (The scramble back up was a lot harder than the scramble down.)

Video of Jenny Lake here.

These Asics held up just fine, unlike the Nikes.  Those are the crystal-clear waters of Jenny Lake.  The Grand Teton itself is in the background (see photo somewhere above).  It rises to a height of 13,775 feet.

The Snake averages 16 feet and 4 inches deep.  Jenny Lake is 423 feet deep.  Its current water temperature is 51°.

We ate a light supper beside Lewis Lake:  smoked turkey, Mozzarella cheese, Pepper Jack cheese, and vine-ripe tomatoes on 12-grain bread, cottage cheese, strawberry applesauce, and some New Zealand Koru apples we had gotten at Alpine Broulim’s Fresh Foods store right next to our campground.  Here’s the view from our camper window.  We saw fish – big fish – jumping right and left out there in the lake.

Larry tried to skip rocks on some of the lakes, but he couldn’t find any flat rocks to save his life.

“They’ve all been skipped out to the middle of the lakes already,” I told him.  “You’ll have to wade out, if you want some.”

He decided not to.  The water in those mountain lakes is colder than our well water!

That night, we checked into Absaroka RV Park in Cody, Wyoming.  There’s Larry, getting everything ready to go the next morning, which was Thursday, October 6 – my birthday.

Children and grandchildren were busy sending greetings, all day long.

Victoria sent a clip of Carolyn and Violet singing Happy Birthday.  They have to start low to accommodate Violet’s bass.  haha  Well, it’s not bass, of course; it’s a cute and sweet little voice, but quite low-pitched.  Halfway through, Carolyn switches to tenor for several notes.  She’s right on tune, but a bit unsure of herself; so she returns to soprano.  😄

Like Bobby and Hannah’s children, to whom they are doubly related, I do believe these two are Bostonians, judging from their accents:  “Happy boithday, de-uh Grandma!”

We left Cody, Wyoming, and headed east.  We were still undecided (that’s in “Larry is undecided” – I prefer to decide things well in advance, and keep with the plan, while he prefers going with the flow [others in the family call it ‘going on wild goose chases’]) as to whether or not we would go over the Big Horn Mountains or take the southerly route.  I love the Big Horns, but there is a noise from the front end of the pickup that bothers me a bit.  I think it might be brakes.  Larry, who can’t hear it, wonders if it might be a bearing.  Wouldn’t that be ducky, to be without breaks or a working bearing, whilst a-sailin’ down one of the high passes on the Big Horns.  Aiiiiyiiiyiiieee.

(We do have good trailer brakes and an engine brake on the pickup that works so well Larry rarely has to step on the brake pedal.  Still, ...)

Larry headed due east on 14 out of Cody, angling for the town of Greybull, and then the Big Horns.  I made sure my seat belt was on.

A mile farther on, he changed his mind, made an about-face, and back we went to the 14/120 junction, where we turned south toward Meeteetse, population 750.  The population has more than doubled in the last four years.  I wonder why? 

The town’s name is derived from a Shoshone term for ‘nearby’.  Nearby what, I wonder?  The only thing I know of is the Greybull River.  There’s a Buffalo Bill Museum there; but then there are Buffalo Bill Museums everywhere.  (Our boys used to call him ‘Biffalo Buff’.  I therefore have a hard time saying it correctly.  😂  Fair game, I guess, since I got them all mixled [Teddy’s word] by calling George Beverly Shea ‘Borge Sheverly Bay’.)

The first birthday greetings arrived:  a pretty, animated Happy Birthday picture from Hannah.

No, that’s not right.  Emma beat her to it by a couple of hours.

No, that’s not right, either.  Levi beat everybody to it, by informing me a few days earlier that he had baked me a nice, big chocolate cake for my birthday – but because I wasn’t there, he ate it all.

In a little less than an hour, we were at Thermopolis.  We filled with fuel and turned south on Route 20 to drive through the Wind River Canyon, through which the Bighorn River flows.

There were antelope everywhere as we drove through Wyoming.

Dorcas sent a video clip of Trevor and Brooklyn, with Brooklyn swinging in her little baby swing, and Trevor singing Happy Birthday.

Keith, Joseph, and Caleb sent birthday greetings, too.

Then came one from Amy, telling me they would leave a gift for me at our house.

“We’ll be home tomorrow,” I told her, “and we have a gift for you, too.” 

Amy’s birthday is the day after mine.

Hester invited me to a birthday luncheon with the other girls at her house when we returned home, and Lydia sent a beautiful mountain picture that said, “Blessings on Your Birthday.”

At a gas station late that afternoon, the young man in the station asked us if we’d ever had their crispy fried chicken before.  Larry said no, and he proceeded to give us a big piece of chicken – on the house.  (Did I look like I was having a birthday??)  Larry got a carton of battered, fried cheese sticks to go with it.

With grapes, apples, yogurt, and ‘Naked’ (ugh, why did they have to name it that?) mango or berry smoothies, it altogether made a good enough supper that we didn’t have to stop and cook anything.  Not our usual fare, but maybe all that fruit will keep us from croaking from all the fried entrées.

So now I am 62.  I can retire!  Haha, hoo hoo!  Oh, wait.  I’m already retired, sorta.  How do some of you people ever find time to work?!

Observance of the Day:  You know you are having a terrific vacation when the GPS lady continuously and solemnly intones, “GPS signal lost.”  😄

I’m always sorry to see those last views of the tall, tall mountains.  Fresh snow had fallen on them, and they were glistening in the sunlight.

That evening found us driving in fog.  We were glad to get to a campground in Crawford, Nebraska, before it got too thick to see.

Not far away was the Crawford Livestock Market, and the cows sang songs and ballads and arias all night long.  There was an auction the next morning, with a woman announcer using a loudspeaker.  Boy, oh boy, was it ever a loudspeaker.  Even Larry, who is hard of hearing, could hear every word clearly, even when inside the camper with all the windows closed and the furnace running. 

(And no, she was not an auctioneer; most certainly not.  She was only an announcer, and a slow one, at that.  But LOUD!)

We ran out of propane in the middle of the night, and it got down to about 30°.  It had only risen to 37° by 9:00 a.m.  Fortunately, we had a small electric heater, and plenty of warm blankets and quilts.  Larry went off to get the propane tanks filled as soon as the station was open.

While I waited for him to return, I made Toasted White Chocolate coffee.  I am not in the custom of drinking coffee before my shower.  If I drank it right then, would my whole day be all inside out and backwards??

(I drank it.)

Someone was telling me how healthy they had become, drinking mostly water now instead of the energy drinks and sodas they used to consume.

Hmmph.  I drink ‘mostly water’, too.

’Course, it does have a good bit of ground Arabica bean mixed in.

In this picture, Larry is hitching the pickup back up to the camper.  Somewhere back behind all those trees is the cattle yard.

By 2:30 p.m., we were in Alliance filling with fuel, 312 miles from home.

We took Route 2 through the Sandhills, the better to see the damage caused by the fire in the Nebraska National Forest.  Though the fire jumped the highway, it was mostly concentrated to the south, burning over 35 square miles of forest.  Here’s the northern edge of the devastation near the Middle Loup River.

I spotted a large hawk on a branch of a dead tree and grabbed my camera.  Just as I zoomed in and realized what it really was, Larry said, “That’s a bald eagle!”

A little later, I saw another big hawk on a phone pole – but as we drove nearer, I discovered it wasn’t a hawk, either.  It was a great horned owl!  I didn’t have time to take a picture of it.

The only pictures I’ve ever gotten of owls were at either the Henry Doorly Zoo or at the Nebraska Raptor Recovery Center.

A friend, seeing my various photos and updates on our location that day, wrote, “It seems you’ve been driving in Nebraska for days.”

“Well, after all,” I retorted, “it’s 498 miles across the state (402 from the Wy-hoe-ing [as that scammer trying to gyp Teddy out of his pickup, back before he was married, spelt it {you’d think a person would know how to spell the name of the state in which he supposedly lives}] state line to our house), and we’re traveling by covered wagon, and one can only go about 15 miles per day via such mode of transportation.”

(The above sentence makes perfect sense, if you just pay attention to the parentheses, box brackets, and curly brackets.)

We made a pitstop in Taylor, Nebraska, population 207.  All through the town are scattered ‘The Villagers’ – stand-up paintings of old-fashioned people doing all sorts of old-fashioned things.  Many are representations of actual people who lived in the village in days gone by.

By 9:30 p.m., we were home.  The vacation didn’t last nearly long enough.  Everyone always says, “Aren’t you glad to be home!?!!”  And I always think, No, I wasn’t done yet.  😂

It took an hour and 45 minutes to unload pickup and camper and get everything put away.  I started a load of clothes, reset the mouse traps (emptying one that was mistakenly left unsprung, and which fortunately hadn’t needed to be emptied for long 😲), and watered the houseplants. 

45 minutes later, I put the first load of wash into the dryer and another load into the washer.

I made myself a steaming cup of Raspberry herbal tea.  My sister gave me a big tin of Bentley’s herbal teas – mango, sweet mint, raspberry, blueberry, lemon, orange spice, and oriental. 

After posting photos of the first day of our vacation here, I wrote the Saturday Skim for my Quilt Talk group.

My computer still thought we were in Mountain Daylight Time.  It went on thinking that until Sunday, when I got impatient with it and changed it manually.  It’s supposed to do it automatically.  My weather app thinks I’m in Ninnescah, Kansas, way down south of Wichita.

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits:

1.  If you were straddling the North Pole or South Pole, exactly over the exact pole, exactly, then your feet would be 12 hours apart.  If your left foot was in the 6 a.m. time zone, your right foot would be in the 6 p.m. time zone.

2.  Big Diomede and Little Diomede islands are about 20 miles apart, but have a time difference of 21 hours.  The Line Islands straddle the date line, with those which are part of Kiribati as much as 26 hours ahead of some of the others.

I was tired.  All the work I did that day, and my VeryFitPro watch thought I had only walked 7,221 steps!  Sometimes it seriously underestimates my steps, and I know why:  It’s because I often carry stuff in my left hand or arm, such as my coffee cup, when trotting up and down the stairs, or my camera, when trotting up and down mountains.  And I put forth effort to hold said items still, so as not to spill or drop them.  The VeryFitPro watch then, being on my left wrist, regularly does not count those steps.

Ralph Drabble, of the comic pages fame, in an effort to appear well-exercised, put his watch on Wally, his wiener dog, and then threw a stick for the dog to fetch and return.  😄

The lady at the Boise Basin Quilters guild sent my quilt home, and UPS tried to deliver it on Thursday.  It was then taken to Advanced Auto Parts Store, a UPS ‘drop center’, to wait for someone to pick it up.  Larry promised to get it for me on Saturday.

I was hunting through some of my old journals for a piece of information, and came on this from July 31, 2000.  Victoria was 3, and we were packing and getting ready to go to Columbus, Ohio.  (Here she is at the Fourth of July picnic that year, and yes, it was hot.)

(“Why Columbus, Ohio?” asked Caleb, who’d never heard of the place.  “Because we’re tired of Columbus, Nebraska,” I told him.)

I’d doled out lists to the older kids, and was going to help Victoria after I got all my things and Larry’s things packed.

But Victoria beat me to it.

She came rushing into the living room.  She was carrying her doll basket, and it was full of all manner of things that she thought she should take with her:  her biggest doll, a toy coffee pot, a stuffed tiger, a stuffed bear in a mint-green crocheted dress, books, Caleb’s corsage from Bobby and Hannah’s recent wedding, a tiny metal car, and a plastic bag from the veterinary clinic with the words Cat Stuff imprinted on both sides above a cute photo of kittens.  Inside the bag were a large car and a kaleidoscope.  But the strangest thing in the doll basket was a long plastic pipe that was part of a set of pipes that went on a big Tonka truck that used to be Keith’s many years ago. 

Hannah said to Victoria, “Are you all ready to go?” 

“Yes!” Victoria affirmed, showing her the basket.  “Here’s what I’m taking!” 

Hannah, who’d come visiting from her ‘new’ house about three blocks away, peered into the basket.  “Oh!!” she exclaimed, pulling out the pipe, “This will really come in handy!” 

She held it to her lips and spoke loudly into it, in a very good imitation of Victoria herself:  “I need to go to the restroom!”  🤣😆

Victoria looked amazed, then embarrassed, and her shoulders went higher and higher until they met her earlobes.

I took pity on the child, stopped what I was doing, and packed her things, so she would no longer fear getting left behind for lack of proper packing.

I well remember the days of traveling with littles.  This, for instance:

We stop at a gas station. 

Me:  “Everyone go to the restroom!”

Several:  “I don’t need to.”

Me:  “Go anyway!”

The several:  “I really don’t need to.”

Me:  “Go whether you need to or not!”

They all accordingly bale out. 

The ‘several’ were evidently telling the truth when they said they didn’t need to and couldn’t, because those same ‘several’, not 20 miles down the road, announce (in desperate tones), “I need to go to the restroom!”  🤣

Saturday morning I had my usual breakfast of half a blueberry bagel, toasted and slathered with butter.  When the butter was melted, I applied huckleberry honey to one side and huckleberry jam to the other.  (That’s not ‘one side’ as in ‘top and bottom’; that’s ‘one side’ as in ‘left and right’.)

We got the honey and the jam in the Alpine Broulim’s grocery store.  I like to get the jams and honeys sold in the mountains, when the fruit or flower is right there locally grown, and the jams and honeys locally made.

Mmmmmm.  I simply cannot think of a better breakfast.

Larry wasn’t able to come with me to see Loren that day.  He was just leaving Fremont with a load of forms at 3:00 p.m., and he needed to fix something on the BMW Nathanael bought from us.

So off I went to visit Loren.  I didn’t see him last Saturday, of course, so I wasn’t going to miss this Saturday.  I don’t like to skip a Saturday, whether Loren realizes such a thing has happened or not.  He is always so happy to see me.  While in Alpine, Wyoming, I got him a little model space shuttle.  The young man sacking our groceries ‘flew’ it into the grocery bag, then grinned at us.  It has a pull-back mechanism, and it really goes.  Loren was delighted with it. 

I hope no one gets hurt.  😂

When I got home at about 8:30 that evening, I found Larry loading his gray pickup onto a flatbed trailer hitched to his blue pickup.  He was heading off to rescue Teddy, whose wheel bearing on his pickup had gone out somewhere south of Beatrice, where he’d gone to get a big load of hay.  They would pull the hay trailer with the gray pickup, put Teddy’s pickup on the flatbed, and tow it home with the blue.  It was 144 miles one way, to get to Teddy’s location. 

Larry had brought the quilt home.  I opened the box to find out what my prize was for winning Best of Show.

I knew it wouldn’t be a whole lot – at least not compared to big national quilting groups like the AQS.  The BBQ (Boise Basin Quilters) is a local guild.  They sent me a $200 gift card to their local quilt shop, The Quilt Crossing, and a $100 check.  I very much appreciate the guild’s generosity.

The thing is, this Best-of-Show win also makes the quilt more valuable, so there’s that to consider, too.

And we did have a vacation over the ordeal, though we ended up vacationing at a different location from the quilt.  😏

I was texting with Hester, relaying all this information, when I went to the freezer, pulled the door open — and then wrote, “Aaaauuuugggghhhh!  Daddy ate all the ice cream!!”

And then, “Ooooo... I just noticed.  This is a group message.”

I started a new chat with Hester only, after that:  “Okay, I’m switching to just you, so Daddy doesn’t drive in the ditch trying to read texts whilst he drives (or trying to excuse himself for eating all the ice cream).”

Hester responded with laughing emojis:  🤣🤣🤣🤣

“I shall now eat the rest of his Cheddar Jalapeño Cheetos for dessert,” I told her, “whether it kills me or not.”

“That’ll show him.  lolol 🔥.” she answered.

“My version of ... ♫ ♪ I’ll eat some worms and then I’ll die, ♪ ♫ and you’ll be sorry ♫ ♪ you picked on me! ♫ ♪ ” I wrote.

And then, “Hey, I found it, I found it!  I love YouTube, haha.”

I had found the song, sung by Ada Jones, They Always Pick on Me, recorded in 1911.  That’s 111 years ago!! 

My father used to say it in a sing-songy voice.  If he knew the tune, I couldn’t tell it!  😂

A friend is vacationing with her daughter and granddaughters on the southeastern coast.  The waters are shallow many feet from shore, but she is leery of getting too far out, on account of there being hammerhead shark breeding grounds in the vicinity. 

I told her, after hearing this news, “I’ve decided to just stay perched on the edge of Jenny Lake or the Snake River, and dabble my fingers in the cold, clear water now and then.”

Someone asked me if there are bears in Nebraska.  There are no resident bears, but one wanders through, rarely, from the Laramie Mountains in Wyoming.  They follow the North Platte River into the Pine Ridges of Nebraska.  It’s usually a young one looking for a home territory.

Larry and Teddy got back at about 5:45 a.m.  When my alarm went off an hour later, I got up to get ready for church, and then did my best to creep quietly around and not waken him.

He was still sound asleep when I got home at about 1:00 p.m., after stopping at Victoria’s house to pick up a Mexican dish she had made with chunks of spicy beef.  She filled the top of the container with a couple of handfuls of scrumptious cherry tomatoes from her cousin Jamie’s garden.  I saved it for supper later that night.

I gave Amy and Violet their birthday gifts.  For Amy, Dr. Teal’s bath wash, foot scrub, and other bath products; a silicone lid-opener or potholder, and a Lilla Rose hair clip.

For Violet, a strawberry pillow, a strawberry purse, a stuffed, life-size Siamese cat, and a kitty book.

I returned the Atlantic Beach Path quilt to Caleb and Maria with many thanks for letting me ‘borrow’ it for so long.

Here’s another view of the Grand Tetons.  I love the mountains.  We sing a very old hymn with the following lyrics:

I Will Get Me to the Mountain

 

I will get me to the mountain,

Where the sweetest spices grow;

I will rest beside the fountain,

With the heav’nly light aglow.

 

Refrain:

’Til the daybreak, ’til the daybreak,

And the shadows flee away;

I will get me to the mountain,

I will rest beside the fountain,

’Til the daybreak, ’til the daybreak,

And the shadows flee away.

 

I will get me to the mountain,

Where my Savior died for me;

In the depth of Calv’ry’s fountain,

Finding peace and purity. [Refrain]

 

I will get me to the mountain,

To the mountaintop of prayer;

By the ever-flowing fountain,

I will meet my Savior there. [Refrain]

 

The song comes from the beautiful verse in Song of Solomon chapter 4, verse 6:  “Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense.”

Violet turned four on October 2^nd, so Sunday was her first day of Sunday School.  Victoria sent a picture of her in a pretty little blue dress with white Peter Pan collar, white cuffs, and smocking covering the bodice.  Her hair hung in long blond ringlets.

She also sent a video clip of Willie, who has just learned to wave.  It’s so funny, the way he waves, looks at his hand, and >>pop<< , thumb goes into mouth.  Then, Oh, yes, I was waving.  So he pulls his thumb out of his mouth, smiles, and waves again.

I found pictures of Loren on Prairie Meadows’ Facebook page; they were at a pumpkin farm, and he was helping choose pumpkins and gourds for a display at the nursing home’s front door.  Too bad I didn’t take a picture of the pretty display at the front door!  I’ll do that next week.  Don’t let me forget!

Some of our mouse traps haven’t been springing – but the peanut butter is gone, and there are mouse tracks around the traps.  😝  Small mice, by the looks of things.  Not heavy enough to spring the traps.

I was about to order new ones, looked up reviews to see which ones work best, and found all sorts of traps I’ve never seen before.

But then I remembered the six sprung traps upstairs in the cubbyhole drawer in my sewing room, so I trotted up there and got all six of them, and put them in strategic locations in the laundry room and the kitchen.  One time six mice got caught, one in each of those six traps, overnight.

One mouse has been caught so far tonight.

This afternoon I ordered a stack of blue fabrics from The Quilt Crossing in Boise, Idaho, from whence came (seems like I should’ve typed ‘cometh’ 😄) my gift card from the Boise Basin Quilters.  Here’s what I got:

It was a pretty day today.  By 4:30 p.m., it was 79°; the temperature was starting to come down from the high of 80° a couple of hours earlier.

Chicken legs and thighs, potatoes, and corn on the cob are in the roaster in the oven.  The house smells good.  Another half an hour, and it should all be done.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,