We’ve had spring cleaning in the fall this week. One of the little girls got so exuberant with their new water colors, they splatted the antique satin drapes in the living room. Oh, well; they had about a century’s-worth layer of dust on them. So, down came the whole works: big front windows, fireplace windows, and music room windows. And off I went to the cleaners.
When I arrived, I hopped out, grabbed half of them (which is all I could hold), dashed in, and plopped them on the counter.
“I’ll be right back,” I said brightly, “as soon as I get the rest!”
I rushed back out, snatched the last big pile, and trotted back in. I noticed the lady who does the deliveries, who is the daughter of the people who do the cleaning, looking at her mother, shaking her head in dismay. She turned slowly to stare at me, tripping right along with the second three-foot stack of draperies.
“When do you want these?” she asked slowly.
I shrugged. “Oh, sometime before Christmas, please,” I said.
Boy, you should’ve seen father, mother, and daughter brighten up. “Whew!” sighed the daughter; “We thought you wanted them before Thanksgiving!” (It was Monday, three days before Thanksgiving, and they were swamped with clothes to clean.)
I came home and pulled the lace sheers down next, leaving the front ones up to give us a little privacy. When the first load came out of the dryer, I got the front ones down. Hannah went off to put them in the wash machine, while I began putting the clean ones up at the front window.
That’s when I discovered I had three clean ones and one dusty one--meaning Hannah had gone off with three dusty ones and one clean one. So we spent the remainder of the evening on public display, until the sheers were finally dry.
I finished Hester’s poinsettia dress, and then made her a gold-sequined, burgundy velvet-lined drawstring purse, like Lydia’s. I got them both the most adorable little gold shoes with big gold bows on the toes, and gold metallic lamé bow barrettes. They are terribly excited. (The girls; not the barrettes.)
I got Larry an ulu (ōō΄lōō) for Christmas. I ordered it from a little Inuviat village in Alaska; it’s a knife shaped like this: Ϡ (well, sorta)
The handle is made from bone, and on it is carved two husky pups which look remarkably like Aleutia did when she was a pup.
Keith has about six penpals in the Philippines, and they are all girls. It seems that about three of them are having feuds over him. They all try to outdo each other in gushiness (“Everdearest Keith:”) and in badmouthing their ‘friends’. Keith thinks it’s all a grand lark, and tries to make sure he sends the same number of pictures, pages, etc., to each girl. He wrote to Wilma: “I do not wish to be the cause of trouble between you and your friends. I hope you will all be kind to each other.”
We soon received a letter from Lorgenia: “My friend Wilma show me your letter. She say you advise ‘Be kind each to other.’ Why? Did you tell her what I write you?”
“Oh, help,” muttered Keith.
I think we'll let the penpal stuff peter out.
I like hats. But they’ve been rather hard to come by for a few years in our vicinity. So, imagine my delight when I happened upon a whole raft of ’em at Wal-Mart--in the little girls’ section! I snatched up eight of them and fled for the checkout stand, chortling with glee all the way.
Shoppers stared at me strangely and gave me a wide berth. Wheeeee! I was as happy as the mad hatter. Little girls’ hats usually fit Hannah, Dorcas, and me just fine... that’s the advantage of being a pinhead.
Hannah served tables at our Thanksgiving dinner at church today, successfully avoiding the enacting of her worst dream--tripping suddenly, and putting a big bowl of mashed potatoes upside down right smack-dab on somebody’s poor unsuspecting pate.
When we took down the curtains, we discovered our windows were terribly dirty. So Keith washed them all, one balmy afternoon. He’s a very useful person to have around these days: he reaches things I can’t; he opens jars I can’t; he moves furniture I can’t; in short, he appears to be taking right after his father.
Larry once carried a pickup box to his car trailer and set it down all by himself, after the two men on the other side tripped and fell flat, and Larry hung on because he didn’t want his new box damaged. Both men have been excessively polite ever since.
Thursday, November 24, 1994
Saturday, November 19, 1994
Saturday, November 19, 1994...Forever-and-Ever, and Sick Shoes
I’m almost done Christmas shopping! And wrapping, too. I ordered a beautiful little watch pin/pendant, which is antique silver, shaped like a cuckoo clock, about 1 ½” long, complete with little pull chains and a pendulum with a sparkling crystal at the bottom. I ordered it for my sister. But I no sooner opened the little box, when it suddenly made an agile leap straight into my jewelry box, and from there onto one of my best sweaters! No help for it, I guess; I’ll just have to keep it.
The school children, grades one through three, were given the assignment of writing letters to their pastor. My brother read a few to the congregation. One read as follows:
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, I have a dog. He catches frisbees real good, I really like to play with him, and he bites.”
By the end of that spiel, you can be sure everybody was laughing uproariously.
Joseph got new glasses. The Helpful Hattie there at the Optimetric Center busily adjusted them with all her might and main, using everything but her feet and a crow bar. We watched, cringing. We had only just gotten home when the nose pad (yes, the very one Hattietta adjusted) fell right off, ker-plunk. Back to the Op Center we went, to be confronted by close-set beady-eyed Helpfulness Herself, who peered at Joseph over the top of her specs accusingly and announced knowledgeably, “He bumped them on something.” And in her delicate way, she pounded a new nose pad onto the hapless eyeglasses, while we obligingly cringed again. I didn’t know they used sledge hammers at the optician’s, did you?
We went out to Lake Babcock one day to see the Canada geese and the mallards. The geese, with a great deal of honking, departed quickly to a more remote area of the lake.
Lydia, watching the ducks diving for food, giggled. “Hee hee hee! Bottoms up, kids!”
The kids--children, that is--got their report cards. Hannah and Joseph got all A’s (and several A+’s) as usual; Keith got four A’s and three B’s; Dorcas, three A’s and four B’s; Teddy, five A’s and two B+’s. Hester got her kindergarten report card marked clear full of ‘Excellent’s. Then Larry and I had the quadra-yearly argument over which one of us our children inherited all those smarts from, arriving eventually at the usual impasse.
Lydia’s Favorite-Word-For-The-Week was ‘forever-and-ever’: “Are you going to wrap presents forever-and-ever?” “I really like my dolly forever-and-ever.” “Caleb likes me to play with him forever-and-ever.” And various other winsome statements made with no grammatical care: “Is it going to snow pretty soon forever-and-ever?”
Answers to questions: “Yes.” “That’s nice.” “That’s because he likes you.” and “I hope so.”
I dyed some satin and lace shoes for Hannah to match her blue satin and lace suit. Now the blue suit looks teal, and the blue shoes look purple. Bah, humbug.
I once dyed some satin shoes for myself. I wanted them to be peach, to match a beautiful peach satin suit I was going to wear. Now, most satin shoes sell in the vicinity of $35. To have them dyed is $10. So, imagine my delight when I found a lovely pair of satin shoes at Payless for only $20! I snapped them up quick and scurried home to order a dye kit--$6--from J. C. Penney.
Two days later the dye arrived, and the Great Artistic Endeavor ensued.
(Before I continue, I should tell you one additional small detail: the shoes had already been dyed mint green. Thinking this should pose no problem, I happily set to work.)
One coat of peach on. . .and the shoes turned a sick pink. Hmmm. Another coat of peach. Sicker pink. Another coat. Ghastly pink. Coat after coat, until finally I ran out of dye. Well, nothing else for it, but to head for the professional shoe dyers.
I marched in, holding those sopping shoes gingerly in separate boxes. “I need these shoes dyed peach,” I announced nonchalantly.
The bored Femme Fatale behind the counter snapped her gum and reached for her ticket book.
“We’ll have to bleach them first,” she said, eyeing my poor sick slippers with distaste, “and that’ll be an extra $6.”
“Okay,” I said unconcernedly.
She filled out the ticket and reached over to pick up those abominable clodhoppers with her manicured, blood-red talons.
“EEEYOOOO!” she shouted unsophisticatedly, having come into actual contact with the twin drowned rats. Her gum disappeared entirely. “These are all wet!” she explained loudly, looking at me like Einstein would’ve looked at Mortimer Schnerd.
“Hmmm,” I answered intelligently, staring wonderingly at the shoes.
“Well,” snapped The Fashion Plate, “these will have to dry before we begin on them. Can you pick them up in about three weeks?”
“Oh, no,” I exclaimed, “these are for Easter!” (It was Thursday, the day before Good Friday.)
She bugged her eyes out unflatteringly and batted them, looking remarkably like a frog in a hailstorm.
Well, the end of the story is, the shoes got done, and I wore them on Easter, although I did feel just a wee bit damp around the toes. One thing for sure, though: I certainly brought that Disinterested Doll at the shoe shop out of her doldrums in one quick hurry.
Today we all went for a long ride out through the Nebraska countryside. We saw several orange-clad hunters, but no deer anywhere, even at dusk. They are all well-hidden, this time of the year. We saw a flock of eleven wild turkeys. One was a big old tom in full display, his wattles all a-bobble as he proudly strutted before his harem. That was the first time I ever saw a tom do that.
Hester said in amazement, “Is that what we’re going to eat Thursday?!”
Caleb is walking a little more bravely every day. Aren’t babies adorable when they’re learning to walk?--arms held high for balance; cute little smile of delighted accomplishment on their faces.
Lydia is tickled pink over her little brother’s new feat. “Now he can really play with me!”
This morning Hannah put Hester and Lydia’s hair up in ponytails pulled to the side of their heads and fastened with a big ruffly barrette. Lydia came skipping into the kitchen to show me, ponytail swinging merrily. “Two of us little girls have our heads on crooked!” she told me gleefully.
That girl at the shoe shop ought to have eight kids; then she wouldn’t be so bored.
Life is fun; life is interesting; it’s just a happy house, when the children are all each other’s best friends.
I took some pictures with one of those panoramic cameras, a cheapie I thought I just had to have. My big expensive Minolta was so insulted over my betrayal, it ruined half of one of my rolls of film that day!
The quality is inferior to my good camera; but it’s rather novel, don’t you think?
The school children, grades one through three, were given the assignment of writing letters to their pastor. My brother read a few to the congregation. One read as follows:
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want, I have a dog. He catches frisbees real good, I really like to play with him, and he bites.”
By the end of that spiel, you can be sure everybody was laughing uproariously.
Joseph got new glasses. The Helpful Hattie there at the Optimetric Center busily adjusted them with all her might and main, using everything but her feet and a crow bar. We watched, cringing. We had only just gotten home when the nose pad (yes, the very one Hattietta adjusted) fell right off, ker-plunk. Back to the Op Center we went, to be confronted by close-set beady-eyed Helpfulness Herself, who peered at Joseph over the top of her specs accusingly and announced knowledgeably, “He bumped them on something.” And in her delicate way, she pounded a new nose pad onto the hapless eyeglasses, while we obligingly cringed again. I didn’t know they used sledge hammers at the optician’s, did you?
We went out to Lake Babcock one day to see the Canada geese and the mallards. The geese, with a great deal of honking, departed quickly to a more remote area of the lake.
Lydia, watching the ducks diving for food, giggled. “Hee hee hee! Bottoms up, kids!”
The kids--children, that is--got their report cards. Hannah and Joseph got all A’s (and several A+’s) as usual; Keith got four A’s and three B’s; Dorcas, three A’s and four B’s; Teddy, five A’s and two B+’s. Hester got her kindergarten report card marked clear full of ‘Excellent’s. Then Larry and I had the quadra-yearly argument over which one of us our children inherited all those smarts from, arriving eventually at the usual impasse.
Lydia’s Favorite-Word-For-The-Week was ‘forever-and-ever’: “Are you going to wrap presents forever-and-ever?” “I really like my dolly forever-and-ever.” “Caleb likes me to play with him forever-and-ever.” And various other winsome statements made with no grammatical care: “Is it going to snow pretty soon forever-and-ever?”
Answers to questions: “Yes.” “That’s nice.” “That’s because he likes you.” and “I hope so.”
I dyed some satin and lace shoes for Hannah to match her blue satin and lace suit. Now the blue suit looks teal, and the blue shoes look purple. Bah, humbug.
I once dyed some satin shoes for myself. I wanted them to be peach, to match a beautiful peach satin suit I was going to wear. Now, most satin shoes sell in the vicinity of $35. To have them dyed is $10. So, imagine my delight when I found a lovely pair of satin shoes at Payless for only $20! I snapped them up quick and scurried home to order a dye kit--$6--from J. C. Penney.
Two days later the dye arrived, and the Great Artistic Endeavor ensued.
(Before I continue, I should tell you one additional small detail: the shoes had already been dyed mint green. Thinking this should pose no problem, I happily set to work.)
One coat of peach on. . .and the shoes turned a sick pink. Hmmm. Another coat of peach. Sicker pink. Another coat. Ghastly pink. Coat after coat, until finally I ran out of dye. Well, nothing else for it, but to head for the professional shoe dyers.
I marched in, holding those sopping shoes gingerly in separate boxes. “I need these shoes dyed peach,” I announced nonchalantly.
The bored Femme Fatale behind the counter snapped her gum and reached for her ticket book.
“We’ll have to bleach them first,” she said, eyeing my poor sick slippers with distaste, “and that’ll be an extra $6.”
“Okay,” I said unconcernedly.
She filled out the ticket and reached over to pick up those abominable clodhoppers with her manicured, blood-red talons.
“EEEYOOOO!” she shouted unsophisticatedly, having come into actual contact with the twin drowned rats. Her gum disappeared entirely. “These are all wet!” she explained loudly, looking at me like Einstein would’ve looked at Mortimer Schnerd.
“Hmmm,” I answered intelligently, staring wonderingly at the shoes.
“Well,” snapped The Fashion Plate, “these will have to dry before we begin on them. Can you pick them up in about three weeks?”
“Oh, no,” I exclaimed, “these are for Easter!” (It was Thursday, the day before Good Friday.)
She bugged her eyes out unflatteringly and batted them, looking remarkably like a frog in a hailstorm.
Well, the end of the story is, the shoes got done, and I wore them on Easter, although I did feel just a wee bit damp around the toes. One thing for sure, though: I certainly brought that Disinterested Doll at the shoe shop out of her doldrums in one quick hurry.
Today we all went for a long ride out through the Nebraska countryside. We saw several orange-clad hunters, but no deer anywhere, even at dusk. They are all well-hidden, this time of the year. We saw a flock of eleven wild turkeys. One was a big old tom in full display, his wattles all a-bobble as he proudly strutted before his harem. That was the first time I ever saw a tom do that.
Hester said in amazement, “Is that what we’re going to eat Thursday?!”
Caleb is walking a little more bravely every day. Aren’t babies adorable when they’re learning to walk?--arms held high for balance; cute little smile of delighted accomplishment on their faces.
Lydia is tickled pink over her little brother’s new feat. “Now he can really play with me!”
This morning Hannah put Hester and Lydia’s hair up in ponytails pulled to the side of their heads and fastened with a big ruffly barrette. Lydia came skipping into the kitchen to show me, ponytail swinging merrily. “Two of us little girls have our heads on crooked!” she told me gleefully.
That girl at the shoe shop ought to have eight kids; then she wouldn’t be so bored.
Life is fun; life is interesting; it’s just a happy house, when the children are all each other’s best friends.
I took some pictures with one of those panoramic cameras, a cheapie I thought I just had to have. My big expensive Minolta was so insulted over my betrayal, it ruined half of one of my rolls of film that day!
The quality is inferior to my good camera; but it’s rather novel, don’t you think?
Monday, November 7, 1994
Monday, November 7, 1994...Bird Brains
Friday I went to the bookstore to make one last stab at identifying that beautiful bird that took peanuts from our hand with such a hard jerk at Yellowstone National Park. The library had nothing to shed light on the matter, and I really thought I just had to know what that bird was.
Without much effort at all, I found it: it was a Clark’s nutcracker. Now, perhaps a Clark’s nutcracker is common as a crow in that part of the country, but I had neither seen nor heard of one before, so I was terribly pleased to have solved the mystery.
In the meanwhile, I was wondering why in the world there was such a crush of people in that little bookstore. Finally I noticed the balloons and banner:
WELCOME! BOB DEVANEY AND JERRY TAGGE!
It turns out, our famous former football coach and famous former quarterback (that is, I think that’s who he was) were there autographing their new books. Franks sizzled in a roaster, and reporters with enormous lenses bustled about importantly, looking down their noses at lesser mortals.
That’s when I realized that everybody was looking at me a bit strangely as I knelt on the floor in the corner right beside the door behind which lurked the coach and quarterback, waiting for their cue to exit. There I sat, totally engrossed in birds--while everyone else was on pins and needles, waiting for the celebrities to appear. It wasn’t hard to tell what they were thinking: “Just get a load of that birdbrain in the corner, wouldja!”
I hastily departed. But I’d found the bird! I was just as happy as if I had good sense.
Thursday was Larry’s birthday: he has now advanced to the ripe old age of 34, same as me. I’m not quite one month older. I like to periodically remind him that one must respect one’s elders.
Now I am sewing Hannah’s Christmas suit: dark blue satin with gold dust all over it, and black lace with blue embroidery. It has great puffy sleeves to just below the elbow, then tight cuffs with many buttons to the wrists; and a very full ruffled peplum covered with lace, and lace covers the bodice from the waist up to 6” below the shoulder. The lace has a scalloped edging of blue. The skirt is circular.
Christmas program practice starts the Friday after Thanksgiving. I still have to rewrite one song, change a few words on another, and get all the notebooks in order. Then I shall finish sewing a jumper and blouse for Hannah, a dress for Hester, a purse for Hester to match Lydia’s gold sequined one, a blouse for Lydia, and a shirt for Caleb. Buy more presents; wrap them.
Help! Stop the world! Whoa! Wait for me!
Without much effort at all, I found it: it was a Clark’s nutcracker. Now, perhaps a Clark’s nutcracker is common as a crow in that part of the country, but I had neither seen nor heard of one before, so I was terribly pleased to have solved the mystery.
In the meanwhile, I was wondering why in the world there was such a crush of people in that little bookstore. Finally I noticed the balloons and banner:
WELCOME! BOB DEVANEY AND JERRY TAGGE!
It turns out, our famous former football coach and famous former quarterback (that is, I think that’s who he was) were there autographing their new books. Franks sizzled in a roaster, and reporters with enormous lenses bustled about importantly, looking down their noses at lesser mortals.
That’s when I realized that everybody was looking at me a bit strangely as I knelt on the floor in the corner right beside the door behind which lurked the coach and quarterback, waiting for their cue to exit. There I sat, totally engrossed in birds--while everyone else was on pins and needles, waiting for the celebrities to appear. It wasn’t hard to tell what they were thinking: “Just get a load of that birdbrain in the corner, wouldja!”
I hastily departed. But I’d found the bird! I was just as happy as if I had good sense.
Thursday was Larry’s birthday: he has now advanced to the ripe old age of 34, same as me. I’m not quite one month older. I like to periodically remind him that one must respect one’s elders.
Now I am sewing Hannah’s Christmas suit: dark blue satin with gold dust all over it, and black lace with blue embroidery. It has great puffy sleeves to just below the elbow, then tight cuffs with many buttons to the wrists; and a very full ruffled peplum covered with lace, and lace covers the bodice from the waist up to 6” below the shoulder. The lace has a scalloped edging of blue. The skirt is circular.
Christmas program practice starts the Friday after Thanksgiving. I still have to rewrite one song, change a few words on another, and get all the notebooks in order. Then I shall finish sewing a jumper and blouse for Hannah, a dress for Hester, a purse for Hester to match Lydia’s gold sequined one, a blouse for Lydia, and a shirt for Caleb. Buy more presents; wrap them.
Help! Stop the world! Whoa! Wait for me!
Thursday, November 3, 1994
Thursday, November 3, 1994...Trick or Treat
You know that stupid old saying, “The early bird gets the worm”? Well, it’s true. When you buy Halloween pumpkins too early, you end up getting worms. They lasted only long enough (the pumpkins; not the worms) to have their faces carved real purty and their pitchers tooken while they sat out on the porch glowing ... and then they quietly curled up and died. So there’ll be no pumpkin chiffon pies (the only kind worth making, I think) out of those! More’s the pity.
After the rush of trick-or-treaters had died down, we took our kids out to a few of their friends’ houses. Keith and Hannah decided (albeit reluctantly) that they were a bit old for such nonsense; but Dorcas had no such qualms, and gleefully donned her tall witch hat, sparkling half-mask, and joined her little brothers and sisters. The four younger ones (not counting Caleb) had rubber masks of the Tasmanian Devil (Teddy); Bugs Bunny (Hester); Donald Duck (Joseph); and Tweety Bird (Lydia). Lydia, who wasn’t nearly as timid as usual inside that mask, thought it great sport to say, “Tricker Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet...” followed by a great many giggles.
While we were gone, someone demolished one of our pumpkins. I imagine he gave it a good healthy kick ... and then, envision his dismay when, instead of a THUNK--CRAAACK!!, he heard, SSSQUISSH!!! SLURRRP! (That ‘slurp’ was when he finally got his foot back out of the mushy, gooshy thing, after a great deal of dancing about, shaking his foot like a cat after a puddle.) Oh, ha ha ha. Just what he gets. No need to wonder why they only destroyed one pumpkin; after all!--there’s only so much gore a petty criminal can stomach!
After the rush of trick-or-treaters had died down, we took our kids out to a few of their friends’ houses. Keith and Hannah decided (albeit reluctantly) that they were a bit old for such nonsense; but Dorcas had no such qualms, and gleefully donned her tall witch hat, sparkling half-mask, and joined her little brothers and sisters. The four younger ones (not counting Caleb) had rubber masks of the Tasmanian Devil (Teddy); Bugs Bunny (Hester); Donald Duck (Joseph); and Tweety Bird (Lydia). Lydia, who wasn’t nearly as timid as usual inside that mask, thought it great sport to say, “Tricker Tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet...” followed by a great many giggles.
While we were gone, someone demolished one of our pumpkins. I imagine he gave it a good healthy kick ... and then, envision his dismay when, instead of a THUNK--CRAAACK!!, he heard, SSSQUISSH!!! SLURRRP! (That ‘slurp’ was when he finally got his foot back out of the mushy, gooshy thing, after a great deal of dancing about, shaking his foot like a cat after a puddle.) Oh, ha ha ha. Just what he gets. No need to wonder why they only destroyed one pumpkin; after all!--there’s only so much gore a petty criminal can stomach!
Sunday, October 23, 1994
Sunday, October 23, 1994...Christmas Poetry
I have been working on the Christmas program. It must be done by the day after Thanksgiving, for that is when we have our first practice.
Here is a poem I wrote, most of which was taken from Isaiah 49:
Thou Redeemer of Israel,
So Holy, yet so hated;
A Light to all the Gentiles--
The Light so long awaited.
Before He was born,
He was mentioned by Name;
Formed from the womb
To be Servant, He came.
In His mouth, a sharp sword;
In His hand, a gold rod:
With oil of gladness
Is He anointed by God.
As a Root from dry ground
Before Him He’ll grow;
Sorrow and grief
He often shall know.
Though men so despised Him,
And nations abhorred Him,
Yet kings did arise,
And princes adored Him.
To the prisoner He saith,
Go forth! Thou art free!
And when thou art hungry,
He’ll surely feed thee.
He guides those that thirst
By the cool water springs;
To the afflicted and desolate
Salvation He brings.
Every valley He exalteth;
Through the mountains makes a way;
Behold the glory of God
Revealed as bright as day.
Sing and be joyful,
O heavens and earth;
Break forth into singing
At His miraculous birth!
Though having not seen Him,
We still dearly love
This same lowly Jesus
From heaven above.
With unspeakable joy
And glory untold,
We await His coming,
His dear face to behold!
This is the kind of a poem that takes me a while to write. Now, here is a poem that I can crank out as ‘slick as a tater’, as Larry says (this was for a friend of ours, who was having her 15th birthday):
When driving your car, and you plan to go far,
You really should know (you know it’s so)
Just where the cops are making their stops:
’Cause if you’re not cautious,
(The thought makes me nauseous)
You’ll surely get caught!
(And make your father distraught.)
Then they’ll haul you away to St. Vincent Millay,
Where nobody drives, and the pedestrian thrives,
’Cause kids of fifteen are neither heard nor seen.
They’ll give you a bicycle, (or even a tricycle)
And order you huffily to drive more cuffily!
So heed this warning every fine morning
When you rush out the door to go to the store
(Or even to school to learn many a rule):
Drive careful and prudent, you wild, wooly student!
And you might stay alive ’til age ninety and five!
As you can see, I do better in the ‘Dr. Suess’ mode.
Two weeks ago, on a warm, sunny day, I took the children’s Christmas pictures. We actually got a good one, too, if you discount the fact that the dog looks a bit disgusted with the whole rigmarole. And tomorrow they are having school pictures taken. Hester gets to go in the morning with the big kids (she usually goes in the afternoon), and she is just as excited over that, as she is over the picture-taking, I think.
I am now sewing Lydia’s Christmas dress, which is burgundy crushed velvet on the bodice, and the three-tiered skirt is black velvet with burgundy flowers and forest-green leaves, all outlined in gold sparkly thread. I hope I can sew it well enough to do justice to the beautiful fabric! It cost $18/yd. for the black velvet, and I used one yard. The burgundy velvet was a leftover piece from a jacket and vest I made myself when I was seventeen. So, even though the price of that black velvet was absolutely outrageous, it still turned out being mighty cheap for a velvet dress. I’m copying a dress which I saw in an expensive little catalog for $125. Yipe!
Last week two tornadoes touched down in Nebraska, destroying a barn, downing trees, and knocking out electricity here and there. Mighty strange, for October. Tonight we had a sudden cold, icy rainstorm. Now the temperature is dropping, so I expect the streets and sidewalks will be icy. The neighbors’ red maples are proving to be worthy of their name, and the oaks are all orange and gold. The kids gathered up a bag full, and we glued them on poster board (neon pink, and neon orange), along with several handfuls of small rocks and twigs. We outlined all this with locust shells, and then glued Dorcas’ bugs on strategic points across this whole artistic mess. I for one will be immensely relieved when we get these awful bugs out of our hair. Of course, Teddy will have to collect them next year. Bother.
Tonight we can hear the wild, haunting cry of Canada geese as they fly over, far up in the sky. The stars have come back out now, and everything smells crisp and fresh. Every now and then we catch glimpses of the white undersides of these big birds. Just imagine; they’re flying anywhere from 60 to 85 mph!
I got Keith and Teddy a new navy/multi-colored comforter with shams and decorator pillows to match for Christmas. We hope to get them a drawered pedestal for their waterbed, too. It seems like there are never enough closets, and never enough drawer space in this house. I also got a mauve/dusty rose, blue, and green comforter for Hannah and Dorcas. But the shams that matched it had only flat, mitered edges; and, further-more, they were $25 a piece. So I ordered a matching California-king sheet set, and made ruffled shams, several different decorator pillows, and a round ruffled table scarf out of this sheet set. I’ve been keeping it hidden in my sewing chair, and only sewing it after they go to bed, or when they are in school. One day I was frantically trying to finish a long ruffle, get it folded and hidden away before the girls came in, when in walked Hannah before I knew it!
So I said in alarm, “Oh!! What’s all over the back of your sleeve??!!” and she rushed off to look in the mirror.
By the time she came back, looking puzzled because she hadn’t found a thing on the back of her sleeve, the table scarf was long gone. hee hee
The other day after church, Lydia said to me in quite a horrified tone, “Mama! That little boy picks his nose and eats it!”
“Hmmm,” said I, “he ought to mind his manners.”
A bit later, she was playing with her doll. She made it put its hand up to its nose. Then, “Mind your nose!!” she admonished the hapless thing.
“Mind your manners,” I corrected her.
Said Lydia, “But I can’t say ‘manners’; it’s too hard for me to pronounce that word clearly!”, pronouncing each word distinctly, as clear as a bell.
Hester’s kindergarten teacher, Rebecca, told me that when the children all sit down on the floor to listen to her read a story, or to play with puzzles, or something of that sort, Rebecca suddenly hears Hester’s piping little voice saying, “I’m squished!” and she turns around to see Hester grinning, and all seven little boys trying to sit beside her. (There is only one other little girl in the class, and she is quite timid.)
Hester told me, “There are quite a few boys that I would like to marry; but I think I’ll wait and see how tall they get first.”
The last few Saturdays, Larry has been cutting and splitting wood. I wish it would hurry up and get cold enough that we could light the fire! I really like a fire blazing away on a frosty winter day.
Well, it is about time for me to go to bed, or I will have a terrible collision with myself getting back out of bed to fix breakfast. Wouldn’t that be awful?!
Here is a poem I wrote, most of which was taken from Isaiah 49:
Thou Redeemer of Israel,
So Holy, yet so hated;
A Light to all the Gentiles--
The Light so long awaited.
Before He was born,
He was mentioned by Name;
Formed from the womb
To be Servant, He came.
In His mouth, a sharp sword;
In His hand, a gold rod:
With oil of gladness
Is He anointed by God.
As a Root from dry ground
Before Him He’ll grow;
Sorrow and grief
He often shall know.
Though men so despised Him,
And nations abhorred Him,
Yet kings did arise,
And princes adored Him.
To the prisoner He saith,
Go forth! Thou art free!
And when thou art hungry,
He’ll surely feed thee.
He guides those that thirst
By the cool water springs;
To the afflicted and desolate
Salvation He brings.
Every valley He exalteth;
Through the mountains makes a way;
Behold the glory of God
Revealed as bright as day.
Sing and be joyful,
O heavens and earth;
Break forth into singing
At His miraculous birth!
Though having not seen Him,
We still dearly love
This same lowly Jesus
From heaven above.
With unspeakable joy
And glory untold,
We await His coming,
His dear face to behold!
This is the kind of a poem that takes me a while to write. Now, here is a poem that I can crank out as ‘slick as a tater’, as Larry says (this was for a friend of ours, who was having her 15th birthday):
When driving your car, and you plan to go far,
You really should know (you know it’s so)
Just where the cops are making their stops:
’Cause if you’re not cautious,
(The thought makes me nauseous)
You’ll surely get caught!
(And make your father distraught.)
Then they’ll haul you away to St. Vincent Millay,
Where nobody drives, and the pedestrian thrives,
’Cause kids of fifteen are neither heard nor seen.
They’ll give you a bicycle, (or even a tricycle)
And order you huffily to drive more cuffily!
So heed this warning every fine morning
When you rush out the door to go to the store
(Or even to school to learn many a rule):
Drive careful and prudent, you wild, wooly student!
And you might stay alive ’til age ninety and five!
As you can see, I do better in the ‘Dr. Suess’ mode.
Two weeks ago, on a warm, sunny day, I took the children’s Christmas pictures. We actually got a good one, too, if you discount the fact that the dog looks a bit disgusted with the whole rigmarole. And tomorrow they are having school pictures taken. Hester gets to go in the morning with the big kids (she usually goes in the afternoon), and she is just as excited over that, as she is over the picture-taking, I think.
I am now sewing Lydia’s Christmas dress, which is burgundy crushed velvet on the bodice, and the three-tiered skirt is black velvet with burgundy flowers and forest-green leaves, all outlined in gold sparkly thread. I hope I can sew it well enough to do justice to the beautiful fabric! It cost $18/yd. for the black velvet, and I used one yard. The burgundy velvet was a leftover piece from a jacket and vest I made myself when I was seventeen. So, even though the price of that black velvet was absolutely outrageous, it still turned out being mighty cheap for a velvet dress. I’m copying a dress which I saw in an expensive little catalog for $125. Yipe!
Last week two tornadoes touched down in Nebraska, destroying a barn, downing trees, and knocking out electricity here and there. Mighty strange, for October. Tonight we had a sudden cold, icy rainstorm. Now the temperature is dropping, so I expect the streets and sidewalks will be icy. The neighbors’ red maples are proving to be worthy of their name, and the oaks are all orange and gold. The kids gathered up a bag full, and we glued them on poster board (neon pink, and neon orange), along with several handfuls of small rocks and twigs. We outlined all this with locust shells, and then glued Dorcas’ bugs on strategic points across this whole artistic mess. I for one will be immensely relieved when we get these awful bugs out of our hair. Of course, Teddy will have to collect them next year. Bother.
Tonight we can hear the wild, haunting cry of Canada geese as they fly over, far up in the sky. The stars have come back out now, and everything smells crisp and fresh. Every now and then we catch glimpses of the white undersides of these big birds. Just imagine; they’re flying anywhere from 60 to 85 mph!
I got Keith and Teddy a new navy/multi-colored comforter with shams and decorator pillows to match for Christmas. We hope to get them a drawered pedestal for their waterbed, too. It seems like there are never enough closets, and never enough drawer space in this house. I also got a mauve/dusty rose, blue, and green comforter for Hannah and Dorcas. But the shams that matched it had only flat, mitered edges; and, further-more, they were $25 a piece. So I ordered a matching California-king sheet set, and made ruffled shams, several different decorator pillows, and a round ruffled table scarf out of this sheet set. I’ve been keeping it hidden in my sewing chair, and only sewing it after they go to bed, or when they are in school. One day I was frantically trying to finish a long ruffle, get it folded and hidden away before the girls came in, when in walked Hannah before I knew it!
So I said in alarm, “Oh!! What’s all over the back of your sleeve??!!” and she rushed off to look in the mirror.
By the time she came back, looking puzzled because she hadn’t found a thing on the back of her sleeve, the table scarf was long gone. hee hee
The other day after church, Lydia said to me in quite a horrified tone, “Mama! That little boy picks his nose and eats it!”
“Hmmm,” said I, “he ought to mind his manners.”
A bit later, she was playing with her doll. She made it put its hand up to its nose. Then, “Mind your nose!!” she admonished the hapless thing.
“Mind your manners,” I corrected her.
Said Lydia, “But I can’t say ‘manners’; it’s too hard for me to pronounce that word clearly!”, pronouncing each word distinctly, as clear as a bell.
Hester’s kindergarten teacher, Rebecca, told me that when the children all sit down on the floor to listen to her read a story, or to play with puzzles, or something of that sort, Rebecca suddenly hears Hester’s piping little voice saying, “I’m squished!” and she turns around to see Hester grinning, and all seven little boys trying to sit beside her. (There is only one other little girl in the class, and she is quite timid.)
Hester told me, “There are quite a few boys that I would like to marry; but I think I’ll wait and see how tall they get first.”
The last few Saturdays, Larry has been cutting and splitting wood. I wish it would hurry up and get cold enough that we could light the fire! I really like a fire blazing away on a frosty winter day.
Well, it is about time for me to go to bed, or I will have a terrible collision with myself getting back out of bed to fix breakfast. Wouldn’t that be awful?!
Tuesday, October 4, 1994
Tuesday, October 4, 1994...Word Processor
I am now the proud owner of a Word Processor! I’ve been having lots of fun playing with it and writing letters to everybody I could think of. It can justify the right margin ... and it even has a disk drive.
Last night Larry went to Denver to get a couple of smashed vehicles: an S-10 Blazer, and a Ford Windstar. He is now almost home, and it is 1:30 a.m. I just talked to him on his new cellular phone. Now, that’s a marvelous invention: when you are worried that your husband is falling asleep after driving too long, you now have options other than lying awake worrying: you can call him on his mobile phone and wake him up when he’s just decided to have a short nap at a roadside rest area. Or you can wake him up when he’s just begun napping at the wheel, making him jump out of his livin’ hide and drive promptly into the ditch. So you can see it is a very handy device.
I just cut out Hester’s Christmas dress. The top is dark blue crushed velvet, and the three-tiered skirt is a lavender/blue/periwinkle floral taffeta. If I’d quit playing with my word processor, I just might get it sewn!
I finally got done with my last roll of film from our vacation and had it developed. I accidentally got double prints. I'm looking at them, remembering some things about that vacation that I'd forgotten.
And then they get a comprehending expression, and look hopefully behind me to see the husband that surely must be the most handsome devil around, in order to cancel out all those ugly genes which I donated.
Last night Larry went to Denver to get a couple of smashed vehicles: an S-10 Blazer, and a Ford Windstar. He is now almost home, and it is 1:30 a.m. I just talked to him on his new cellular phone. Now, that’s a marvelous invention: when you are worried that your husband is falling asleep after driving too long, you now have options other than lying awake worrying: you can call him on his mobile phone and wake him up when he’s just decided to have a short nap at a roadside rest area. Or you can wake him up when he’s just begun napping at the wheel, making him jump out of his livin’ hide and drive promptly into the ditch. So you can see it is a very handy device.
I just cut out Hester’s Christmas dress. The top is dark blue crushed velvet, and the three-tiered skirt is a lavender/blue/periwinkle floral taffeta. If I’d quit playing with my word processor, I just might get it sewn!
Here's Bugaboo Point. There is a Blazer up there at the base of the point, and that tiny black dot to the left of the vehicle is a black lab! Aleutia must have telescopic vision, because she suddenly spotted that dog, although it was nothing more than a speck, and she began huffing and snorting, making all the kids laugh.
We drove down into Flaming Gorge. The children all wanted to take the runaway ramp, just for the fun of it, but for once their father was not game. There was a big pasture full of mules next to a lake. Could you guess the name? No? But, of course!--it was Brayer Lake!
Caleb is learning to pull himself to a standing position. He'll be walking soon!
Teddy caught a baby mouse. It toddled from hand to hand, trying to escape, and finally it laid its little ears back, squinted, and tried to sink its baby teeth into Teddy’s finger, which ticked and made him laugh.
Well, everybody’s stomachs are rubbing their backbones, so I’d better go stir up some grub.
There are three reasons why there are no pictures of me from our vacation:
We drove down into Flaming Gorge. The children all wanted to take the runaway ramp, just for the fun of it, but for once their father was not game. There was a big pasture full of mules next to a lake. Could you guess the name? No? But, of course!--it was Brayer Lake!
Caleb is learning to pull himself to a standing position. He'll be walking soon!
Teddy caught a baby mouse. It toddled from hand to hand, trying to escape, and finally it laid its little ears back, squinted, and tried to sink its baby teeth into Teddy’s finger, which ticked and made him laugh.
Well, everybody’s stomachs are rubbing their backbones, so I’d better go stir up some grub.
There are three reasons why there are no pictures of me from our vacation:
I am as finicky as a cat with an ulcer over this state-of-the-art camera of mine, and I hand it over only to Larry, and that with reluctance, although I know perfectly well he is every bit as careful as I am, and sometimes even more so.
I brought along my tripod, so as to take pictures of all of us together in front of a piece of magnificent scenery; but, the truth of the matter is, . . . I forgot.
And, last, but not least, is the small matter of my nonphotogenicality. (That’s not in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, but it certainly ought to be, and if he’d have seen my picture, he’d’ve no doubt thought of it.) I don’t mind if I am ugly; I just don’t want to look uglier than I really am!
In my wallet, my driver’s license, with a picture of me that looks as if I’m dying of anorexia, and plenty mad about it, too, is directly across from an adorable picture of all the children. Thus, when I must show my license, as identification, I can see the disconcerted look on the face of the cashier:
“How did that poor woman produce such cute kids!”
Well, as Eeyore said, “We can’t all, and some of us don’t.” Anyway, if anybody ever takes a picture of me that even vaguely resembles me, I’ll be sure to send you a copy. In the meantime, … >>>>>>>>
Thursday, September 8, 1994
Thursday, September 8, 1994...Science Projects, New Bikes, and Nole Crows
Hester is now an official kindergarten girl, and isn’t she delighted! She went off cute as a button in her royal blue flowered seersucker low-waist, a huge white sash tied in a jaunty bow at the side, a big white seersucker platter collar with tiny colored hearts on it and three big blue hearts appliqued on, and a giant blue double bow on top of her head, holding back long streamers of curls which bounced as she walked. She had bright blue socks with white lace and white shoes with little purple hearts and flowers on them--and they lit up with bright red flashes when she walked. So you see why she thought she was absolutely the cat’s meow.
I've just printed a gazillion pictures. I can’t ever seem to do anything in a moderate fashion: if I have a lug of cherries, I make a dozen pies. All at once. If someone gives me a bag of zucchini, I spend the afternoon making twelve loaves of ‘bikini’ bread (Larry's brother Kenny accidentally called it that once), six zucchini/chocolate sheet cakes, and six zucchini ‘apple’ crisps.
Last summer when my Junior Choir kids were having a jolly good time being Secret Pals, I made 47 loaves of bread for each child to give their pal. (That is, one loaf apiece.) (And that was before Larry gave me the bread machine, too!) One time several of our friends gave us many sacks full of apples. So I made 28 deep-dish apple crumb pies, four pans of apple crisps, and four pans of apple/cheddar/raisin bars. Then we loaded everybody into the car, put a pie on each lap, and headed off to dole out pies to all the friends and relations. Cookies? Take the recipe times six. At least.
Anyway, that’s my explanation for the big stack of pictures. Larry laughs at me because if I’m cold, I turn the furnace on 85 or 90°. Hot? Flip it over to ‘cool’, turn it down to 55 or 60°. (He exaggerates.) One thing about it: extremists never find life dull! (Neither do those who must live with them.)
Dorcas is collecting bugs for a science project. We have baby food jars all over the counter with bugs in them. Furthermore, they’re still alive! Oh, s h u d d e r. The kids feed those stupid creepy crawlies more faithfully than they feed the dog, I think. The worst thing is, the katydids (“Why did she?” asked Lydia) and the crickets chirp loudly throughout the night. Disgusting. And you know what? This is the third time I’ve helped collect bugs...and there’s no end in sight. Teddy will do it next year, Joseph in two years, Hester four years after that, ... you get the picture.
Lydia usually stays busy during school hours entertaining Caleb; but one day, after getting up early, he took an early nap and left Lydia in a position she had never found herself in before: all by herself. She looked out the front door: no sign of any kids yet.
Wandering back to the living room, she queried, “Mama? How loooonnng will it be before I can go to school?!”
“Two years,” I replied, “but in just about half a year, you’ll be four: and then you can go to Sunday School!”
That certainly brightened her face. She happily busied herself with her Li’l Tykes’ playhouse, having more fun with it than ever.
In the afternoons, I take Lydia and Caleb for long walks in our new twin stroller. Even Caleb begins to expect it as soon as the kids go back to school after lunch, and he looks anxiously at the door, then back at me, and says, “‘Side?” (outside)
Lydia sings away, the whole stroll; and Caleb has begun to do it, too. Yesterday he sang an entire stanza of “Jesus is the Shepherd,” right on tune! No words, just humming, very high-pitched.
Keith is in Seventh Heaven: he just got a new bike--a brilliant blue Schwinn Sidewinder. He got a little black book rack, a speedometer/odometer/stopwatch, and a black water bottle--the right color, Larry informs us, to heat up his water nicely. (Ah, well. Keep ’im from getting the cold-water cramps.) We looked at those daffy-looking biking helmets, but when the man told us they were $25, we decided that was just too much. Wal-Mart sells them for $10.
So I said, “Never mind. We’ll just let him bump his head.”
You should’ve seen the look that guy gave me. Then Keith snickered and thus disarmed the situation.
Just then, Keith’s good friend Bobby came strolling in with his new bike, to get his 30-day free checkup. And, lo and behold, we’d just purchased a bike identical to his!
“Good grief,” said I, “you’ll be fighting over them like anything!”
“Oh, not to worry,” said Bobby politely, “I’ll put a long scratch on Keith’s so as to tell them apart.”
By that time, Mr. Schwinn Man the Nervous had decided we were all fairly harmless lunatics, and he actually dared to laugh.
Hester and Lydia were recent happeners upon a gruesome crime scene: our cannibalistic dog, who as of this date remains unrepentant, had recently sampled another bunny. There they stood, hand in hand, mouths slightly agape in horror, gazing upon the small bit of soft brown and white fluff.
Then Hester stole a sideways glance at her younger sister, noted the appalled little face, and abruptly clicked her own mouth shut.
“Oh, well,” she said, marching determinedly away from the sight, “it was just an old crow.”
Lydia looked quickly into Hester’s face, but Hester’s small jaw was set firmly; and, after mulling it over for a second or two, she accepted it with obvious relief. “Yes,” she agreed, nodding; “just a nole crow.”
Today the public schools quit early because it was 97°. (It’s midnight, and it’s still 87°!) But our school children learnt steadily on, cool as a breeze in the efficient air conditioning. Our children, who all think school is just fine and dandy, feel smug. The public school children, most of whom dislike school intensely, feel just as smug.
Smug, muggy weather!
Some of the pictures I had printed was from the mountains of British Columbia, one of the most beautiful places we went. The air smelled richly of pine, cedar, and fresh mountain air. Abundant wildlife could be seen everywhere. Small villages, generally many, many miles apart, were made up of snug log cabins with a four-wheel-drive and a snowmobile by the door. At the side of each house was an enormous stack of wood. Many times, no electrical lines could be seen anywhere, and some cabins had small, well-kept outhouses behind them.
It seemed like the days of the pioneers in their horse-drawn wagons, with their stalwart spirits, were not so long past; and we felt a bit like intruders in the quiet solitude as we came rumbling through with our Cummins turbo diesel.
I have a terrible problem: I’m out of coffee, and I’m ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
I've just printed a gazillion pictures. I can’t ever seem to do anything in a moderate fashion: if I have a lug of cherries, I make a dozen pies. All at once. If someone gives me a bag of zucchini, I spend the afternoon making twelve loaves of ‘bikini’ bread (Larry's brother Kenny accidentally called it that once), six zucchini/chocolate sheet cakes, and six zucchini ‘apple’ crisps.
Last summer when my Junior Choir kids were having a jolly good time being Secret Pals, I made 47 loaves of bread for each child to give their pal. (That is, one loaf apiece.) (And that was before Larry gave me the bread machine, too!) One time several of our friends gave us many sacks full of apples. So I made 28 deep-dish apple crumb pies, four pans of apple crisps, and four pans of apple/cheddar/raisin bars. Then we loaded everybody into the car, put a pie on each lap, and headed off to dole out pies to all the friends and relations. Cookies? Take the recipe times six. At least.
Anyway, that’s my explanation for the big stack of pictures. Larry laughs at me because if I’m cold, I turn the furnace on 85 or 90°. Hot? Flip it over to ‘cool’, turn it down to 55 or 60°. (He exaggerates.) One thing about it: extremists never find life dull! (Neither do those who must live with them.)
Dorcas is collecting bugs for a science project. We have baby food jars all over the counter with bugs in them. Furthermore, they’re still alive! Oh, s h u d d e r. The kids feed those stupid creepy crawlies more faithfully than they feed the dog, I think. The worst thing is, the katydids (“Why did she?” asked Lydia) and the crickets chirp loudly throughout the night. Disgusting. And you know what? This is the third time I’ve helped collect bugs...and there’s no end in sight. Teddy will do it next year, Joseph in two years, Hester four years after that, ... you get the picture.
Lydia usually stays busy during school hours entertaining Caleb; but one day, after getting up early, he took an early nap and left Lydia in a position she had never found herself in before: all by herself. She looked out the front door: no sign of any kids yet.
Wandering back to the living room, she queried, “Mama? How loooonnng will it be before I can go to school?!”
“Two years,” I replied, “but in just about half a year, you’ll be four: and then you can go to Sunday School!”
That certainly brightened her face. She happily busied herself with her Li’l Tykes’ playhouse, having more fun with it than ever.
In the afternoons, I take Lydia and Caleb for long walks in our new twin stroller. Even Caleb begins to expect it as soon as the kids go back to school after lunch, and he looks anxiously at the door, then back at me, and says, “‘Side?” (outside)
Lydia sings away, the whole stroll; and Caleb has begun to do it, too. Yesterday he sang an entire stanza of “Jesus is the Shepherd,” right on tune! No words, just humming, very high-pitched.
Keith is in Seventh Heaven: he just got a new bike--a brilliant blue Schwinn Sidewinder. He got a little black book rack, a speedometer/odometer/stopwatch, and a black water bottle--the right color, Larry informs us, to heat up his water nicely. (Ah, well. Keep ’im from getting the cold-water cramps.) We looked at those daffy-looking biking helmets, but when the man told us they were $25, we decided that was just too much. Wal-Mart sells them for $10.
So I said, “Never mind. We’ll just let him bump his head.”
You should’ve seen the look that guy gave me. Then Keith snickered and thus disarmed the situation.
Just then, Keith’s good friend Bobby came strolling in with his new bike, to get his 30-day free checkup. And, lo and behold, we’d just purchased a bike identical to his!
“Good grief,” said I, “you’ll be fighting over them like anything!”
“Oh, not to worry,” said Bobby politely, “I’ll put a long scratch on Keith’s so as to tell them apart.”
By that time, Mr. Schwinn Man the Nervous had decided we were all fairly harmless lunatics, and he actually dared to laugh.
Hester and Lydia were recent happeners upon a gruesome crime scene: our cannibalistic dog, who as of this date remains unrepentant, had recently sampled another bunny. There they stood, hand in hand, mouths slightly agape in horror, gazing upon the small bit of soft brown and white fluff.
Then Hester stole a sideways glance at her younger sister, noted the appalled little face, and abruptly clicked her own mouth shut.
“Oh, well,” she said, marching determinedly away from the sight, “it was just an old crow.”
Lydia looked quickly into Hester’s face, but Hester’s small jaw was set firmly; and, after mulling it over for a second or two, she accepted it with obvious relief. “Yes,” she agreed, nodding; “just a nole crow.”
Today the public schools quit early because it was 97°. (It’s midnight, and it’s still 87°!) But our school children learnt steadily on, cool as a breeze in the efficient air conditioning. Our children, who all think school is just fine and dandy, feel smug. The public school children, most of whom dislike school intensely, feel just as smug.
Smug, muggy weather!
Some of the pictures I had printed was from the mountains of British Columbia, one of the most beautiful places we went. The air smelled richly of pine, cedar, and fresh mountain air. Abundant wildlife could be seen everywhere. Small villages, generally many, many miles apart, were made up of snug log cabins with a four-wheel-drive and a snowmobile by the door. At the side of each house was an enormous stack of wood. Many times, no electrical lines could be seen anywhere, and some cabins had small, well-kept outhouses behind them.
It seemed like the days of the pioneers in their horse-drawn wagons, with their stalwart spirits, were not so long past; and we felt a bit like intruders in the quiet solitude as we came rumbling through with our Cummins turbo diesel.
I have a terrible problem: I’m out of coffee, and I’m ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
Thursday, September 1, 1994
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 31, 1994
Homeward Bound, 1994
The price of film was absolutely abominable in these northern reaches, and I realized I should’ve bought a whole lot more at the Wal-Mart back home.
After going through the town of Jasper, we headed east and then south to see Maligne Canyon and Maligne Lake, the largest glacier-fed lake in the Western Hemisphere. We hiked down into the Canyon, which was something like a miniature Royal Gorge. A pretty white ferry was cruising across the turquoise waters of the lake, taking tourists on an excursion out to Spirit Island, which was several miles beyond our sight.
We managed to take pictures--closeups!--of a bighorn ram. He was eating alongside the road, and wouldn’t even look up and mug for the camera, no matter how we coaxed.
Here we began to retrace our steps. We drove back through Jasper, turned south on the Icefields Parkway, and then went exploring and hiking around Athabasca and Sunwapta Falls. We climbed down into a ‘forsaken channel’, where the water used to flow, and pondered our stratagem, should the river suddenly decide to take this alternate route again.
I thought I saw bears up high on a glacier. I snatched up my “beenoclurs”, as Lydia used to say, and saw...a man walking up there! The bears turned out to be big black boulders feeding in an icy blue crevice.
Driving southward, we spotted a cow moose and her calf grazing in a valley directly below the road. They were so close, there was no controversy this time about whether it was a moose or a bird. We pulled onto the shoulder to watch them, and the cow’s bristles on the back of her neck and shoulders began to rise; and when the baby looked at his mother, his hackles rose, too, making them somewhat resemble razor- backed boars. Other vehicles were not concerning them, so we decided it must be the high-pitched whine of our turbo that was causing their vexation. The calf tried to sneak around his mother to look at us, but the cow kept herself between her offspring and us.
Stopping at the top of Sunwapta Pass at The Crossing for fuel, we decided to have supper--potato and ham chowder, and apricots.
Many nights we had a hard time finding a place to camp. Each time we thought we had at last found a campground, we saw the sign: “Comple`t!”-- full, in French. Larry spent a good deal of the time entertaining us with his imitation of the French accent. I suddenly realized why he’s so good at it: he’s part French-Canadian, himself!
The trailer’s water pump was on the fritz, so we needed a place where we could hook up to water. We drove around a pitch-black little village one night, hunting for a likely parking place. Every road we went on was either sharply uphill, or sharply downhill; no road we turned on had an outlet or a place to turn around; and if we turned too sharply, the trailer had a meeting with the pop-up camper, and the after-effects were not pretty. Especially since poor Larry had only just before we left home fixed it up snazzy.
In our quest for the elusive parking spot, we ended up on a narrow road that turned out to be the driveway to a long, modern, elaborate building which I imagined to be a hospital. However, strangely enough, there was no parking lot, and, as one could’ve guessed from former experience, no place to turn around.
We began backing.
Now, that rig of ours was approximately fifty-two feet long. It bent in the middle. The wide pop-up camper blinded the driver as to exactly what the trailer was up to as it wigwagged its way backwards. And, as previously mentioned, a Cummins turbo diesel does not sound like a Dodge Stealth.
As we began backing, I noticed several quizzical faces in the windows of the aforementioned building. That’s when I noticed the sign: QUIET. RAILWAY ENGINEERS AT SLEEP. The disconcerting thing was that I was not anonymously inside the big blue behemoth; I was outside, rushing feverishly to and fro, directing traffic. Horrors.
Escaping that village, we proceeded on our weary way, running into a raging thunderstorm, through which raced hundreds of fearless eighteen-wheelers, passing us as if we were standing still. A thousand screaming trucks, 220 kilometers per hour on the straight-aways, and faster on the hairpin curves and inclines, or so it seemed.
We finally parked way back in the forest in a pretty little spot behind, conveniently, a trailer dumping station. The nearby rest area was closed, on account of...too many bears. Disappointingly, we saw none.
In the morning, we hooked up to the water so that everybody could have a bath. And that’s when campers began arriving fast and furious, looking to dump holding tanks. Remember, the water pump didn’t work; the only way we could use the water in our trailer was if we were hooked up to outside water with enough pressure to send it through our pipes and taps. So, we’d back up, hook up, and somebody would take a bath. Then we’d pull forward, let a waiting camper dump, and pretend to be busy getting ready to go. As soon as that camper left, we’d back up, hook up again, and pretend to dump while the next person took a bath. Pull forward, let the next waiting camper dump, pretend to be busy preparing to leave. And on and on, ad infinitum. It takes a long time for ten people to take a bath in that manner!
Guess what we discovered around the next bend?
A campground. Complete with all the hookups. We stopped to mail some postcards, and the manager said there had been many vacancies there the previous night.
Oh, well; everybody was well fed, nice and clean, and all that for free. One must remember to look on the bright side. Besides, it was funny.
Leaving Yoho, an Indian word meaning ‘yoho’--no, really, it means ‘wow’--National Park, we proceeded on through Glacier National Park of British Columbia, and then Mt. Revelstoke National Park. At the town of Revelstoke, we stopped to repair a broken brake drum on the trailer. We parked in the lot of a little super market.
While I fixed dinner, I sent some of the children in to get some juice. They bought five small cartons, one of every kind the man had. He glumly checked them out, acting as though everyone who came in bought five cartons, every time. They came back to the trailer, giggling over this stoic individual.
So I sent them back for five more, just for the fun of it. He acted exactly the same, and one couldn’t be sure if he recognized them or not. I would have kept it up, but the little blighters cost too much. Baby food was seventy-five cents for a small jar, and there was practically no selection at all. Perhaps babies are weaned on moose meat up there?
While I was cooking, Larry was working on a trailer brake, just below my kitchen window. Nearby in the parking lot, two or three large American ravens were strutting about, uttering their raucous cries, looking for food. Larry, entertaining the children--and me, too, no doubt--suddenly yelled, “CAW!”, in precisely imitation of the big birds. The ravens held bolt still for a moment, tipping their heads in surprise at the human-looking creature who sounded so much like one of their own kind.
The nearest raven tentatively responded with a loud, “CAW!”, and again Larry answered him. The birds stepped closer, and the interchange continued. The children were all in stitches over this cacophonous conversation.
Then I noticed, from a window on the other side of the trailer, that a pedestrian was coming along the walkway beside the store, and his route would take him around the back of our camper, so that he would be walking right beside Larry. I leaned over the sink and called out the window, “Larry!”, but he was cawing loudly, and didn’t hear me. The innocent pedestrian strode on.
“Larry!” I hissed, louder this time. But the ravens were all responding at once, and he didn’t hear.
“Larry!” I cried, but it was too late. The hapless man-on-foot rounded the trailer. He was right beside Larry now, and had not yet seen him in his position halfway under the camper.
It was at that precise moment that Larry let loose with an especially loud series: “CAW! CAW! CAW!”
I tell you, if gravity had have only been a few pounds less per square foot, that man would’ve been gone, right into the stratosphere. Indeed, he tried; but, fortunately, gravity took a grip on him and brought him back to earth surprisingly quickly, considering the force with which he left the ground.
The children went into such spasms of mirth, they nearly fell to the floor. Several collapsed onto the front sofa, and one or two staggered to the rear of the trailer and dropped onto the bed, gasping with hilarity.
Larry, only slightly abashed, concluded with the repairs, and then we all ate supper.
A little farther west, we gained an hour as we entered Pacific Standard Time. This gaining of time is intriguing to the children; they wondered, if we drove fast enough, would we catch up with the sun? And what would happen if a person passed it? Would he wind up a day ahead of time? A fascinating puzzler.
We turned in a southerly direction then, heading toward the Galena Bay ferry. We crossed Lake Revelstoke on this ferry, which is part of the highway department, and therefore free to the user. The lake is one hundred miles long and five miles wide, and deeper than one can hardly imagine, making the idea of a bridge nothing more than a flight of fancy.
“Now, mind you,” I expostulated just before we got to the ferry, “if this boat looks the slightest bit rickety, or if they act the least amount dubious about whether or not we can safely traverse on this craft with our big rig, we’re turning right around and going back to find another route.”
So saying, we rounded a bend and came upon the ferry, which was being loaded with a big truck pulling two trailers, both of which were regular size trailers; two full cement trucks, and several campers and cars.
So that’s when we decided -- “that’s when you should’ve decided” interrupted my mother when I was telling this tale to her, “you certainly ought to wait until the next go-around, so as not to be on the bottom of the lake with two cement trucks!”
“Oh, Mama.”
As I was saying, that’s when we decided it was safe. Quite an adventure! I attracted more than my fair share of attention by rushing agog fore and aft, snapping pictures like a madman.
We camped beside Lake Kootenay in the small town of Balfour that night, in a pretty campground comprised of one narrow ridge about eighty feet wide. Before us, about fifteen feet down, lay Lake Kootenay. Immediately at the back of the camper, about twenty-five feet down, rushed a small mountain stream, Kookanee Creek. ’Twas a good thing nobody sleepwalked! The moon rose, full and orange, illuminating the water and the mountains all around us. During the night, the Kootenay ferry could be seen several times as it arrived, lights glowing from its windows. A few minutes after it passed, waves from its wake began lapping at the shore, practically at our doorstep.
The ferry disappeared into the cove where the cars awaited, loaded them up, reversed the props, and headed back out across the lake. Around a jutting mountain, it turned toward the north and disappeared, its fog horn drifting back mysteriously through the night.
Early the next morning, we crossed that lake, along with eight other campers and several cars and pickups, and turned south toward home. We were nearly exactly north of Washington. Traveling southeast, we went through some beautiful mountain scenery, where towns were few and far between. In some of the smallest villages, made up of snug log cabins, electrical lines were nowhere to be seen, but we noticed generators behind some of the houses. Big stacks of split wood were beside every door. Often a water pump would be at the side door, and an outhouse, in good repair, at the back. Nothing but four-wheel-drives and snowmobiles graced the driveways.
It seemed as if the days of the pioneers in their horse-drawn wagons, with their stalwart spirits, were not so long past; and we felt a bit like intruders in the quiet solitude as we came rumbling through with our Cummins turbo diesel.
As we entered Idaho, smoke from forest fires bothered Hannah and Teddy, who had asthma, and stung our eyes and hurt our throats. We crossed the Moyie River on a high bridge, looking down at a river that was wide and deep, remarkably like the Missouri, but with mountains rising sharply from the bank sides.
We ate supper later than usual, since we didn’t want to stop until we were out of the worst of the smoke. There were fires in Montana’s Kootenai National Forest, and once we actually saw flames on the side of a mountain not far away. After eating a supper of grilled cheese sandwiches, tomatoes, and plums in Whitefish, Montana, we were just leaving the pretty little park when we met...whom, but a Schwan man! Larry braked, leaped out, flagged him down, and bought us a box of English toffee bars. Mmmm. Just right on a hot summer’s evening.
Back we went to Elliston, then, where lived the nice man who had kept our guns for us. The forests were teaming with white-tailed deer that night. We saw a big buck in velvet, just ready to cross the road. There was no campground there, so we rented one room at the cheap-looking motel just across the road from his house, since it was getting rather late.
Cheap? It was forty-one dollars. Oh, well; we thought that it would be nice for the little girls, who’d been sleeping on big thick comforters on the floor of the camper, to get to sleep in a real bed for once. There were two double beds in the motel room, so Larry and I, Hester and Lydia, and Caleb, who could sleep on the floor between the beds, took the room. Hannah and Dorcas slept in our little bedroom in the trailer, which saved us the job of having to make their bed by laying the table down and folding down the couches. And we thought it would be good for Hester and Caleb, who seemed to be getting colds, to sleep in a nice, heated room for once. For, you see, neither the trailer heater nor the pop-up camper heater had worked once on this entire trip.
We discovered those heaters wouldn’t work when Larry tried to fire them up at Big Sky, Montana, where it got mighty cold at night, way up in those mountains. Lucky for us, I'd brought plenty of blankets...just in case.
Yes, we did try out the heaters before we left home.
And yes, they did work.
Guess what. The motel furnace didn’t work, either.
Anyway, the days weren’t cold. Not unless you call ninety-seven degrees in the shade cold. And no, the air conditioner in the crew cab didn’t work.
Overnight, Caleb learned to say, “Toot toot!--gug gug gug gug gug...”, no doubt because the motel was right across the road from a railroad track where coal trains rumbled loudly throughout the night, blowing their whistles with an uproarious screech, and shaking the earth.
The next morning, we went to the house of the man who was keeping our guns. As we’d trusted he would do, he had our guns, safely stored in the attic, and he also had a check for us in the exact amount of the refund he’d received for the master cylinder! So he wouldn’t take anything for his help and kindness.
With grateful hearts, we pressed on. And then the fan belt broke again--for the third time--south of Helena, right on the Interstate in the middle of a construction area. We had been driving on the shoulder, because they were tarring and feathering--or something like that--the road. Therefore, the only place to go when a person had car trouble was onto the driving lanes. Into the tar and gravel. Furthermore, the manual gauges we had purchased had worked for only a very short time, so the engine got hot again, without us knowing it, although not as badly as it had on McDonald Pass.
As stated, the water pump in the trailer didn’t work. So Larry had to get the water out of the pop-up camper’s little pump-sink. Fortunately, we’d just filled its tank. This Putting-On-The-Fan-Belt Operation took just long enough that everybody needed to use the rest room before Larry was done. So they climbed out of the pickup, walked through the tar and the gravel, and climbed into the trailer.
Actually, the gravel was deep enough that no tar was tracked into the trailer; but Keith did get tar on his new shirt when he slithered underneath the pickup to help Larry. Many of Larry’s shirts were likewise tarred or greased by the time we returned home.
Things were back together again directly, so we all got into the pickup, returned to the shoulder, and were once again in the Business of Traveling. We were glad when the construction work was over, and both lanes of the Interstate were open again, partly because of the traffic congestion, and partly because the scent of the tar was making us feel queasy.
A dune buggy went flying past us, and Hester exclaimed, “Oh, look! A June buggy!”
That being Friday, we abandoned all hope of returning home by Sunday, as we’d planned. At this point, my postcards home underwent a subtle change, wherein I quit describing everything in glowing terms while leaving out the troubles, and began describing the troubles explicitly while neglecting to say how much fun we were actually having. This is because I felt guilty about missing two Sundays in a row while nevertheless enjoying myself; and I didn’t want anybody to judge us for it and thereby spoil the fun. Also, I didn’t want to set a bad example of Vacationing, Regardless of Responsibilities.
We decided to make our return via Yellowstone National Park, since we hadn’t seen much of the Park the previous week. After all, it was paid for already! Having given up on getting home, we camped early (for once) at Gardiner, Montana, at Yellowstone’s north entrance. I cooked potato stew. Larry, outside getting everything hooked up while the kids and the dog played, said that the stew made the whole campground smell good.
So there we were, having a lovely supper, when there came a knock at the door: it was the person camped beside us. It seemed that the dog, outside on her nifty little corkscrew and cord, getting some well-deserved fresh air and exercise after being cooped up inside that pop-up camper all day, had gone over onto his lot to do what dogs do, and he, having no doubt tripped over it, was a mite bit bent out of shape over such things.
We offered our humblest apologies, and Larry went out to do janitorial duty.
Soon, back around the corner of the trailer he came, a small box in hand. “Do you have your address book with you?” he asked. “I thought we should send someone a souvenir.”
Aauugghh! He’s awful.
That evening I finally had time to bake Teddy’s birthday cake--and it even had decorations and candles on it! He was quite surprised.
During the night, a wild animal made off with Aleutia’s food, dish and all. The boys said they heard something snuffling around outside, and Aleutia, who slept in the pop-up camper with them each night, sat up and took notice. But she’s a quiet dog, and she never made a peep.
We spent all day Saturday in Yellowstone, and this time we really did see Old Faithful go off. The previous year when we’d been there, we were all sitting along the edge of the boardwalk, the children--all but Caleb, who wasn’t born yet--all in a line, among hundreds of people. As the geyser began to make noises as if it were getting ready to blow, the people began quieting and watching expectantly. It suddenly spewed forth a small amount of boiling water, and everybody became dead silent.
It was into this hush that Hester’s piping little voice could be plainly heard: “It’s about to sprout!”
The entire assembly burst out laughing.
We saw moose, geese, swans, ducks, antelope, whitetails, and mule deer. But no bear. The antelopes reminded me of the time my mother accidentally called one a ‘cantaloupe’. We never let her forget it.
The waterfalls were beautiful. We stopped at each one--Tower, Undine, Cascade--and enjoyed the show for a while. At Keplar Cascades, tourists were all pointing excitedly at the opposite cliff.
“It’s a wolverine!” one man said knowledgeably, frantically focusing his long lens. We saw a bushy tail flailing, so I rapidly changed lenses and got ready. The creature came into sight for one split second, and snap! I got the shot.
“Aaugh!” wailed the man beside me, still worrying his lens. “I missed him!”
It wasn’t a wolverine, anyway. It was a woodchuck. I left Knowledgeable Norman with his illusions.
Larry made the tourists nervous, causing an involuntary shortening of their fingernails, as usual, by getting altogetherly too close, as usual, to buffalo, elk, and moose. But what pictures he got!
At Undine Falls, chipmunks, ground squirrels, and a beautiful gray, black, white, and charcoal bird about the size of a blue jay were eating peanuts out of our hands. The bird would soar down from a tall pine, pull itself upright in midair in front of our hand, and take the peanut from us with a good hard jerk. As he glided back across the hollow to his pine tree, we could see that each black wing feather was interspersed with a white one. We learned from our bird book that it was a Clark’s nutcracker.
We enjoyed the little golden-mantled ground squirrels; they were only about five inches long, and quite tame.
After buying absolutely delicious fresh fruit at the Fishing Bridge, and putting fuel into the pickup, we headed south.
There were loons on Lewis Lake, looking decidedly loony as they splatted across the water gazing anxiously at the far bank and wondering if they would get enough lift before they ended up bill first in a ponderosa pine. And there on a big telephone post was a huge bald eagle’s nest! On a fence post nearby perched the eagle himself, surveying his domain with a lordly air.
We camped in the northern Tetons that night. I love the Tetons; they remind me of the verse, “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” (Isaiah 40:12, 15)
Sunday found us coming down through Jackson Hole, which was crawling with tourists. We bought the usual souvenirs: a couple of spare fan belts. Just in case. And fuel, of course.
After Pilgrim Creek, which was nearly dry, we ventured a bit west into Idaho, where we bought a few postcards and three cute little folios for the littles that said ‘Idaho’ on the front and had pictures on them. Soon we were flying grandly down through the Palisades, where we ate supper by a little park that had a double tornado slide, which is the primary criterion for a park to be considered a park, according to those same littles.
I was just finishing washing the dishes when Teddy and Joseph came rushing to the trailer with news of a big black snake. Larry went striding off to investigate.
Rocks, sticks, and broken bottles were all around him; evidently people had thrown them at him, but without any apparent results. Nothing had dented his rubbery body, because that’s just exactly what it was: rubber.
The snake was duly collected and added to the collection of souvenirs. Every now and then, we were jarred from our doldrums by an earsplitting shriek--Lydia had once again gotten herself too close to the horrible stretchy thing and touched it.
As we were coming through the Palisades, a left front air bag blew out with a resounding WHAM!, which did not alarm us in the least, since we assumed it was just Teddy popping the doritoes bag. He likes to do that, you see.
As we traveled through southern Wyoming, we saw many deer, some with fawns, several with twins. The snow on the Medicine Bow Range of the Rockies glistened in the late afternoon sun. We stayed the night in a park in a little town by the name of Hanna, which Hannah, of course, thought just the right thing. As we drove through town, hunting for the park, we saw deer everywhere we looked. Most of them were standing smack-dab in the middle of people’s gardens, calmly chewing away at the produce. During the night, coyotes set up a jamboree on the high plains to the north of us.
A few miles west of Laramie, we made use of one of our recently bought fan belts. “There!” said Larry cheerily, “That one should last us all the way home! No more trouble!”
Shortly thereafter, Larry noticed that the rear end was leaking gear grease, splattering it all over pickup, camper, and trailer alike. Now, this was not all bad, since the children were then better able to slide down out of the pop-up camper. Less friction, you see.
We started collecting gear grease at each truck stop we passed.
We entered Nebraska in the afternoon, noting the sign, “NEBRASKA! THE GOOD LIFE!”--and it was raining cats and dogs. In western Nebraska, as always, there were large numbers of antelope. And, as always, they are invariably too far away, or moving too quickly, for me to take a picture.
A small car went by, hanging low under a luggage carrier almost as big as the car itself, stuff stacked ceiling high in the back seat.
“You can sure tell they’re going on vacation!” observed Hester, “’cause they’re really crammed in!”
Three hundred eighty-five miles from home, the rear end went out entirely.
No problem. Larry coasted off onto the shoulder, climbed out, and donned his coveralls, which by now had seen many different types of soil. Then he simply removed the drive shaft, put ’er in four-wheel-drive, and kept on a-truckin’. Saved us from having to buy more gear grease, too!
Since I’d used up almost all the food, and the only thing left for supper would take a good half-hour to prepare, and we were trying really hard to make it home Monday night, we decided to splurge: in Lexington, we bought tacos and chicken fajitas for everybody.
The moon rose, red as fire, then dark orange, then lighter and lighter, until finally it was a big golden orb overhead, illuminating the Platte River and the deer with their young that were grazing in the clearings.
We stopped for fuel. Everyone went in the station, leaving Hester and Lydia’s fajitas on the table in the pop-up camper. They’re turtles when it comes to eating; and they were probably getting rather full, since they’d already downed the tacos.
And then that Siberian wolf-beast we call our pet gobbled up the fajitas.
When we returned to the pickup and the little girls found nothing but the wrappers, they both howled in unison. “The dog ate our fajitas!”
I dutifully bawled out the dog, and she dutifully looked remorseful. I then went back into the station to buy a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches to take the fajitas’ place.
Then both little girl-urchins, who had continued bemoaning greatly over their loss, looked distastefully at the sandwiches and announced, “I’m full.”
Oh, well. More Stay-Awake Fodder for the pilot.
We arrived home at 11:45 p.m. The first thing Joseph did was to count the newspapers on the counter: there were twenty-three.
The next Sunday, we were still seeing the aftereffects of our trip, as evidenced by the following:
We were exiting the sanctuary on our way to Sunday School. Dorcas slid her hand along the sliding door, causing it to make a squawk noise. Caleb, whom I was carrying, whirled around, looking for the source of the noise.
“Toot!” he said, right on the same note.
Being safely out in the vestibule by then, I snickered. On we went down the stairs to Sunday School. We seated ourselves. Our teacher prayed. Caleb sat quietly.
“Amen,” finished Frank, and there was a short spell of utter quiet, into which Caleb proclaimed brightly, “TOOT!” and looked at me expectantly, hoping I’d laugh. I poked him, only to hit his tickle spot, whereupon he squirmed and giggled.
So Sunday School began.
The crew cab was soon enough back out of the hospital, having recovered nicely. It was, forthwith, gearing up for next year, and we hadn’t the heart to tell it that we were seriously considering vacationing no farther from home than Lake Babcock, some five miles north of town.
(It’s closer to Larry’s shop than Lake Maligne.)
We sent the man in Elliston, Montana, a beautiful calendar of scenic America, by way of a thank-you; but we never heard from him again. We have often thought that, sometimes, it is God who sends along people to help us, just when we need it most!
After going through the town of Jasper, we headed east and then south to see Maligne Canyon and Maligne Lake, the largest glacier-fed lake in the Western Hemisphere. We hiked down into the Canyon, which was something like a miniature Royal Gorge. A pretty white ferry was cruising across the turquoise waters of the lake, taking tourists on an excursion out to Spirit Island, which was several miles beyond our sight.
We managed to take pictures--closeups!--of a bighorn ram. He was eating alongside the road, and wouldn’t even look up and mug for the camera, no matter how we coaxed.
Here we began to retrace our steps. We drove back through Jasper, turned south on the Icefields Parkway, and then went exploring and hiking around Athabasca and Sunwapta Falls. We climbed down into a ‘forsaken channel’, where the water used to flow, and pondered our stratagem, should the river suddenly decide to take this alternate route again.
I thought I saw bears up high on a glacier. I snatched up my “beenoclurs”, as Lydia used to say, and saw...a man walking up there! The bears turned out to be big black boulders feeding in an icy blue crevice.
Driving southward, we spotted a cow moose and her calf grazing in a valley directly below the road. They were so close, there was no controversy this time about whether it was a moose or a bird. We pulled onto the shoulder to watch them, and the cow’s bristles on the back of her neck and shoulders began to rise; and when the baby looked at his mother, his hackles rose, too, making them somewhat resemble razor- backed boars. Other vehicles were not concerning them, so we decided it must be the high-pitched whine of our turbo that was causing their vexation. The calf tried to sneak around his mother to look at us, but the cow kept herself between her offspring and us.
Stopping at the top of Sunwapta Pass at The Crossing for fuel, we decided to have supper--potato and ham chowder, and apricots.
Many nights we had a hard time finding a place to camp. Each time we thought we had at last found a campground, we saw the sign: “Comple`t!”-- full, in French. Larry spent a good deal of the time entertaining us with his imitation of the French accent. I suddenly realized why he’s so good at it: he’s part French-Canadian, himself!
The trailer’s water pump was on the fritz, so we needed a place where we could hook up to water. We drove around a pitch-black little village one night, hunting for a likely parking place. Every road we went on was either sharply uphill, or sharply downhill; no road we turned on had an outlet or a place to turn around; and if we turned too sharply, the trailer had a meeting with the pop-up camper, and the after-effects were not pretty. Especially since poor Larry had only just before we left home fixed it up snazzy.
In our quest for the elusive parking spot, we ended up on a narrow road that turned out to be the driveway to a long, modern, elaborate building which I imagined to be a hospital. However, strangely enough, there was no parking lot, and, as one could’ve guessed from former experience, no place to turn around.
We began backing.
Now, that rig of ours was approximately fifty-two feet long. It bent in the middle. The wide pop-up camper blinded the driver as to exactly what the trailer was up to as it wigwagged its way backwards. And, as previously mentioned, a Cummins turbo diesel does not sound like a Dodge Stealth.
As we began backing, I noticed several quizzical faces in the windows of the aforementioned building. That’s when I noticed the sign: QUIET. RAILWAY ENGINEERS AT SLEEP. The disconcerting thing was that I was not anonymously inside the big blue behemoth; I was outside, rushing feverishly to and fro, directing traffic. Horrors.
Escaping that village, we proceeded on our weary way, running into a raging thunderstorm, through which raced hundreds of fearless eighteen-wheelers, passing us as if we were standing still. A thousand screaming trucks, 220 kilometers per hour on the straight-aways, and faster on the hairpin curves and inclines, or so it seemed.
We finally parked way back in the forest in a pretty little spot behind, conveniently, a trailer dumping station. The nearby rest area was closed, on account of...too many bears. Disappointingly, we saw none.
In the morning, we hooked up to the water so that everybody could have a bath. And that’s when campers began arriving fast and furious, looking to dump holding tanks. Remember, the water pump didn’t work; the only way we could use the water in our trailer was if we were hooked up to outside water with enough pressure to send it through our pipes and taps. So, we’d back up, hook up, and somebody would take a bath. Then we’d pull forward, let a waiting camper dump, and pretend to be busy getting ready to go. As soon as that camper left, we’d back up, hook up again, and pretend to dump while the next person took a bath. Pull forward, let the next waiting camper dump, pretend to be busy preparing to leave. And on and on, ad infinitum. It takes a long time for ten people to take a bath in that manner!
Guess what we discovered around the next bend?
A campground. Complete with all the hookups. We stopped to mail some postcards, and the manager said there had been many vacancies there the previous night.
Oh, well; everybody was well fed, nice and clean, and all that for free. One must remember to look on the bright side. Besides, it was funny.
Leaving Yoho, an Indian word meaning ‘yoho’--no, really, it means ‘wow’--National Park, we proceeded on through Glacier National Park of British Columbia, and then Mt. Revelstoke National Park. At the town of Revelstoke, we stopped to repair a broken brake drum on the trailer. We parked in the lot of a little super market.
While I fixed dinner, I sent some of the children in to get some juice. They bought five small cartons, one of every kind the man had. He glumly checked them out, acting as though everyone who came in bought five cartons, every time. They came back to the trailer, giggling over this stoic individual.
So I sent them back for five more, just for the fun of it. He acted exactly the same, and one couldn’t be sure if he recognized them or not. I would have kept it up, but the little blighters cost too much. Baby food was seventy-five cents for a small jar, and there was practically no selection at all. Perhaps babies are weaned on moose meat up there?
While I was cooking, Larry was working on a trailer brake, just below my kitchen window. Nearby in the parking lot, two or three large American ravens were strutting about, uttering their raucous cries, looking for food. Larry, entertaining the children--and me, too, no doubt--suddenly yelled, “CAW!”, in precisely imitation of the big birds. The ravens held bolt still for a moment, tipping their heads in surprise at the human-looking creature who sounded so much like one of their own kind.
The nearest raven tentatively responded with a loud, “CAW!”, and again Larry answered him. The birds stepped closer, and the interchange continued. The children were all in stitches over this cacophonous conversation.
Then I noticed, from a window on the other side of the trailer, that a pedestrian was coming along the walkway beside the store, and his route would take him around the back of our camper, so that he would be walking right beside Larry. I leaned over the sink and called out the window, “Larry!”, but he was cawing loudly, and didn’t hear me. The innocent pedestrian strode on.
“Larry!” I hissed, louder this time. But the ravens were all responding at once, and he didn’t hear.
“Larry!” I cried, but it was too late. The hapless man-on-foot rounded the trailer. He was right beside Larry now, and had not yet seen him in his position halfway under the camper.
It was at that precise moment that Larry let loose with an especially loud series: “CAW! CAW! CAW!”
I tell you, if gravity had have only been a few pounds less per square foot, that man would’ve been gone, right into the stratosphere. Indeed, he tried; but, fortunately, gravity took a grip on him and brought him back to earth surprisingly quickly, considering the force with which he left the ground.
The children went into such spasms of mirth, they nearly fell to the floor. Several collapsed onto the front sofa, and one or two staggered to the rear of the trailer and dropped onto the bed, gasping with hilarity.
Larry, only slightly abashed, concluded with the repairs, and then we all ate supper.
A little farther west, we gained an hour as we entered Pacific Standard Time. This gaining of time is intriguing to the children; they wondered, if we drove fast enough, would we catch up with the sun? And what would happen if a person passed it? Would he wind up a day ahead of time? A fascinating puzzler.
We turned in a southerly direction then, heading toward the Galena Bay ferry. We crossed Lake Revelstoke on this ferry, which is part of the highway department, and therefore free to the user. The lake is one hundred miles long and five miles wide, and deeper than one can hardly imagine, making the idea of a bridge nothing more than a flight of fancy.
“Now, mind you,” I expostulated just before we got to the ferry, “if this boat looks the slightest bit rickety, or if they act the least amount dubious about whether or not we can safely traverse on this craft with our big rig, we’re turning right around and going back to find another route.”
So saying, we rounded a bend and came upon the ferry, which was being loaded with a big truck pulling two trailers, both of which were regular size trailers; two full cement trucks, and several campers and cars.
So that’s when we decided -- “that’s when you should’ve decided” interrupted my mother when I was telling this tale to her, “you certainly ought to wait until the next go-around, so as not to be on the bottom of the lake with two cement trucks!”
“Oh, Mama.”
As I was saying, that’s when we decided it was safe. Quite an adventure! I attracted more than my fair share of attention by rushing agog fore and aft, snapping pictures like a madman.
We camped beside Lake Kootenay in the small town of Balfour that night, in a pretty campground comprised of one narrow ridge about eighty feet wide. Before us, about fifteen feet down, lay Lake Kootenay. Immediately at the back of the camper, about twenty-five feet down, rushed a small mountain stream, Kookanee Creek. ’Twas a good thing nobody sleepwalked! The moon rose, full and orange, illuminating the water and the mountains all around us. During the night, the Kootenay ferry could be seen several times as it arrived, lights glowing from its windows. A few minutes after it passed, waves from its wake began lapping at the shore, practically at our doorstep.The ferry disappeared into the cove where the cars awaited, loaded them up, reversed the props, and headed back out across the lake. Around a jutting mountain, it turned toward the north and disappeared, its fog horn drifting back mysteriously through the night.
Early the next morning, we crossed that lake, along with eight other campers and several cars and pickups, and turned south toward home. We were nearly exactly north of Washington. Traveling southeast, we went through some beautiful mountain scenery, where towns were few and far between. In some of the smallest villages, made up of snug log cabins, electrical lines were nowhere to be seen, but we noticed generators behind some of the houses. Big stacks of split wood were beside every door. Often a water pump would be at the side door, and an outhouse, in good repair, at the back. Nothing but four-wheel-drives and snowmobiles graced the driveways.
It seemed as if the days of the pioneers in their horse-drawn wagons, with their stalwart spirits, were not so long past; and we felt a bit like intruders in the quiet solitude as we came rumbling through with our Cummins turbo diesel.
As we entered Idaho, smoke from forest fires bothered Hannah and Teddy, who had asthma, and stung our eyes and hurt our throats. We crossed the Moyie River on a high bridge, looking down at a river that was wide and deep, remarkably like the Missouri, but with mountains rising sharply from the bank sides.
We ate supper later than usual, since we didn’t want to stop until we were out of the worst of the smoke. There were fires in Montana’s Kootenai National Forest, and once we actually saw flames on the side of a mountain not far away. After eating a supper of grilled cheese sandwiches, tomatoes, and plums in Whitefish, Montana, we were just leaving the pretty little park when we met...whom, but a Schwan man! Larry braked, leaped out, flagged him down, and bought us a box of English toffee bars. Mmmm. Just right on a hot summer’s evening.
Back we went to Elliston, then, where lived the nice man who had kept our guns for us. The forests were teaming with white-tailed deer that night. We saw a big buck in velvet, just ready to cross the road. There was no campground there, so we rented one room at the cheap-looking motel just across the road from his house, since it was getting rather late.
Cheap? It was forty-one dollars. Oh, well; we thought that it would be nice for the little girls, who’d been sleeping on big thick comforters on the floor of the camper, to get to sleep in a real bed for once. There were two double beds in the motel room, so Larry and I, Hester and Lydia, and Caleb, who could sleep on the floor between the beds, took the room. Hannah and Dorcas slept in our little bedroom in the trailer, which saved us the job of having to make their bed by laying the table down and folding down the couches. And we thought it would be good for Hester and Caleb, who seemed to be getting colds, to sleep in a nice, heated room for once. For, you see, neither the trailer heater nor the pop-up camper heater had worked once on this entire trip.
We discovered those heaters wouldn’t work when Larry tried to fire them up at Big Sky, Montana, where it got mighty cold at night, way up in those mountains. Lucky for us, I'd brought plenty of blankets...just in case.
Yes, we did try out the heaters before we left home.
And yes, they did work.
Guess what. The motel furnace didn’t work, either.
Anyway, the days weren’t cold. Not unless you call ninety-seven degrees in the shade cold. And no, the air conditioner in the crew cab didn’t work.
Overnight, Caleb learned to say, “Toot toot!--gug gug gug gug gug...”, no doubt because the motel was right across the road from a railroad track where coal trains rumbled loudly throughout the night, blowing their whistles with an uproarious screech, and shaking the earth.
The next morning, we went to the house of the man who was keeping our guns. As we’d trusted he would do, he had our guns, safely stored in the attic, and he also had a check for us in the exact amount of the refund he’d received for the master cylinder! So he wouldn’t take anything for his help and kindness.
With grateful hearts, we pressed on. And then the fan belt broke again--for the third time--south of Helena, right on the Interstate in the middle of a construction area. We had been driving on the shoulder, because they were tarring and feathering--or something like that--the road. Therefore, the only place to go when a person had car trouble was onto the driving lanes. Into the tar and gravel. Furthermore, the manual gauges we had purchased had worked for only a very short time, so the engine got hot again, without us knowing it, although not as badly as it had on McDonald Pass.
As stated, the water pump in the trailer didn’t work. So Larry had to get the water out of the pop-up camper’s little pump-sink. Fortunately, we’d just filled its tank. This Putting-On-The-Fan-Belt Operation took just long enough that everybody needed to use the rest room before Larry was done. So they climbed out of the pickup, walked through the tar and the gravel, and climbed into the trailer.
Actually, the gravel was deep enough that no tar was tracked into the trailer; but Keith did get tar on his new shirt when he slithered underneath the pickup to help Larry. Many of Larry’s shirts were likewise tarred or greased by the time we returned home.
Things were back together again directly, so we all got into the pickup, returned to the shoulder, and were once again in the Business of Traveling. We were glad when the construction work was over, and both lanes of the Interstate were open again, partly because of the traffic congestion, and partly because the scent of the tar was making us feel queasy.
A dune buggy went flying past us, and Hester exclaimed, “Oh, look! A June buggy!”
That being Friday, we abandoned all hope of returning home by Sunday, as we’d planned. At this point, my postcards home underwent a subtle change, wherein I quit describing everything in glowing terms while leaving out the troubles, and began describing the troubles explicitly while neglecting to say how much fun we were actually having. This is because I felt guilty about missing two Sundays in a row while nevertheless enjoying myself; and I didn’t want anybody to judge us for it and thereby spoil the fun. Also, I didn’t want to set a bad example of Vacationing, Regardless of Responsibilities.
We decided to make our return via Yellowstone National Park, since we hadn’t seen much of the Park the previous week. After all, it was paid for already! Having given up on getting home, we camped early (for once) at Gardiner, Montana, at Yellowstone’s north entrance. I cooked potato stew. Larry, outside getting everything hooked up while the kids and the dog played, said that the stew made the whole campground smell good.
So there we were, having a lovely supper, when there came a knock at the door: it was the person camped beside us. It seemed that the dog, outside on her nifty little corkscrew and cord, getting some well-deserved fresh air and exercise after being cooped up inside that pop-up camper all day, had gone over onto his lot to do what dogs do, and he, having no doubt tripped over it, was a mite bit bent out of shape over such things.
We offered our humblest apologies, and Larry went out to do janitorial duty.
Soon, back around the corner of the trailer he came, a small box in hand. “Do you have your address book with you?” he asked. “I thought we should send someone a souvenir.”
Aauugghh! He’s awful.
That evening I finally had time to bake Teddy’s birthday cake--and it even had decorations and candles on it! He was quite surprised.
During the night, a wild animal made off with Aleutia’s food, dish and all. The boys said they heard something snuffling around outside, and Aleutia, who slept in the pop-up camper with them each night, sat up and took notice. But she’s a quiet dog, and she never made a peep.
We spent all day Saturday in Yellowstone, and this time we really did see Old Faithful go off. The previous year when we’d been there, we were all sitting along the edge of the boardwalk, the children--all but Caleb, who wasn’t born yet--all in a line, among hundreds of people. As the geyser began to make noises as if it were getting ready to blow, the people began quieting and watching expectantly. It suddenly spewed forth a small amount of boiling water, and everybody became dead silent.
It was into this hush that Hester’s piping little voice could be plainly heard: “It’s about to sprout!”
The entire assembly burst out laughing.
We saw moose, geese, swans, ducks, antelope, whitetails, and mule deer. But no bear. The antelopes reminded me of the time my mother accidentally called one a ‘cantaloupe’. We never let her forget it.
The waterfalls were beautiful. We stopped at each one--Tower, Undine, Cascade--and enjoyed the show for a while. At Keplar Cascades, tourists were all pointing excitedly at the opposite cliff.
“It’s a wolverine!” one man said knowledgeably, frantically focusing his long lens. We saw a bushy tail flailing, so I rapidly changed lenses and got ready. The creature came into sight for one split second, and snap! I got the shot.
“Aaugh!” wailed the man beside me, still worrying his lens. “I missed him!”
It wasn’t a wolverine, anyway. It was a woodchuck. I left Knowledgeable Norman with his illusions.
Larry made the tourists nervous, causing an involuntary shortening of their fingernails, as usual, by getting altogetherly too close, as usual, to buffalo, elk, and moose. But what pictures he got!
At Undine Falls, chipmunks, ground squirrels, and a beautiful gray, black, white, and charcoal bird about the size of a blue jay were eating peanuts out of our hands. The bird would soar down from a tall pine, pull itself upright in midair in front of our hand, and take the peanut from us with a good hard jerk. As he glided back across the hollow to his pine tree, we could see that each black wing feather was interspersed with a white one. We learned from our bird book that it was a Clark’s nutcracker.
We enjoyed the little golden-mantled ground squirrels; they were only about five inches long, and quite tame.
After buying absolutely delicious fresh fruit at the Fishing Bridge, and putting fuel into the pickup, we headed south.
There were loons on Lewis Lake, looking decidedly loony as they splatted across the water gazing anxiously at the far bank and wondering if they would get enough lift before they ended up bill first in a ponderosa pine. And there on a big telephone post was a huge bald eagle’s nest! On a fence post nearby perched the eagle himself, surveying his domain with a lordly air.
We camped in the northern Tetons that night. I love the Tetons; they remind me of the verse, “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance; behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” (Isaiah 40:12, 15)
Sunday found us coming down through Jackson Hole, which was crawling with tourists. We bought the usual souvenirs: a couple of spare fan belts. Just in case. And fuel, of course.
After Pilgrim Creek, which was nearly dry, we ventured a bit west into Idaho, where we bought a few postcards and three cute little folios for the littles that said ‘Idaho’ on the front and had pictures on them. Soon we were flying grandly down through the Palisades, where we ate supper by a little park that had a double tornado slide, which is the primary criterion for a park to be considered a park, according to those same littles.
I was just finishing washing the dishes when Teddy and Joseph came rushing to the trailer with news of a big black snake. Larry went striding off to investigate.
Rocks, sticks, and broken bottles were all around him; evidently people had thrown them at him, but without any apparent results. Nothing had dented his rubbery body, because that’s just exactly what it was: rubber.
The snake was duly collected and added to the collection of souvenirs. Every now and then, we were jarred from our doldrums by an earsplitting shriek--Lydia had once again gotten herself too close to the horrible stretchy thing and touched it.
As we were coming through the Palisades, a left front air bag blew out with a resounding WHAM!, which did not alarm us in the least, since we assumed it was just Teddy popping the doritoes bag. He likes to do that, you see.
As we traveled through southern Wyoming, we saw many deer, some with fawns, several with twins. The snow on the Medicine Bow Range of the Rockies glistened in the late afternoon sun. We stayed the night in a park in a little town by the name of Hanna, which Hannah, of course, thought just the right thing. As we drove through town, hunting for the park, we saw deer everywhere we looked. Most of them were standing smack-dab in the middle of people’s gardens, calmly chewing away at the produce. During the night, coyotes set up a jamboree on the high plains to the north of us.
A few miles west of Laramie, we made use of one of our recently bought fan belts. “There!” said Larry cheerily, “That one should last us all the way home! No more trouble!”
Shortly thereafter, Larry noticed that the rear end was leaking gear grease, splattering it all over pickup, camper, and trailer alike. Now, this was not all bad, since the children were then better able to slide down out of the pop-up camper. Less friction, you see.
We started collecting gear grease at each truck stop we passed.
We entered Nebraska in the afternoon, noting the sign, “NEBRASKA! THE GOOD LIFE!”--and it was raining cats and dogs. In western Nebraska, as always, there were large numbers of antelope. And, as always, they are invariably too far away, or moving too quickly, for me to take a picture.
A small car went by, hanging low under a luggage carrier almost as big as the car itself, stuff stacked ceiling high in the back seat.
“You can sure tell they’re going on vacation!” observed Hester, “’cause they’re really crammed in!”
Three hundred eighty-five miles from home, the rear end went out entirely.
No problem. Larry coasted off onto the shoulder, climbed out, and donned his coveralls, which by now had seen many different types of soil. Then he simply removed the drive shaft, put ’er in four-wheel-drive, and kept on a-truckin’. Saved us from having to buy more gear grease, too!
Since I’d used up almost all the food, and the only thing left for supper would take a good half-hour to prepare, and we were trying really hard to make it home Monday night, we decided to splurge: in Lexington, we bought tacos and chicken fajitas for everybody.
The moon rose, red as fire, then dark orange, then lighter and lighter, until finally it was a big golden orb overhead, illuminating the Platte River and the deer with their young that were grazing in the clearings.
We stopped for fuel. Everyone went in the station, leaving Hester and Lydia’s fajitas on the table in the pop-up camper. They’re turtles when it comes to eating; and they were probably getting rather full, since they’d already downed the tacos.
And then that Siberian wolf-beast we call our pet gobbled up the fajitas.
When we returned to the pickup and the little girls found nothing but the wrappers, they both howled in unison. “The dog ate our fajitas!”
I dutifully bawled out the dog, and she dutifully looked remorseful. I then went back into the station to buy a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches to take the fajitas’ place.
Then both little girl-urchins, who had continued bemoaning greatly over their loss, looked distastefully at the sandwiches and announced, “I’m full.”
Oh, well. More Stay-Awake Fodder for the pilot.
We arrived home at 11:45 p.m. The first thing Joseph did was to count the newspapers on the counter: there were twenty-three.
The next Sunday, we were still seeing the aftereffects of our trip, as evidenced by the following:
We were exiting the sanctuary on our way to Sunday School. Dorcas slid her hand along the sliding door, causing it to make a squawk noise. Caleb, whom I was carrying, whirled around, looking for the source of the noise.
“Toot!” he said, right on the same note.
Being safely out in the vestibule by then, I snickered. On we went down the stairs to Sunday School. We seated ourselves. Our teacher prayed. Caleb sat quietly.
“Amen,” finished Frank, and there was a short spell of utter quiet, into which Caleb proclaimed brightly, “TOOT!” and looked at me expectantly, hoping I’d laugh. I poked him, only to hit his tickle spot, whereupon he squirmed and giggled.
So Sunday School began.
The crew cab was soon enough back out of the hospital, having recovered nicely. It was, forthwith, gearing up for next year, and we hadn’t the heart to tell it that we were seriously considering vacationing no farther from home than Lake Babcock, some five miles north of town.
(It’s closer to Larry’s shop than Lake Maligne.)
We sent the man in Elliston, Montana, a beautiful calendar of scenic America, by way of a thank-you; but we never heard from him again. We have often thought that, sometimes, it is God who sends along people to help us, just when we need it most!
Tuesday, August 30, 1994
Canada Bound, 1994
The long-dreamed-of vacation was almost in order. Final preparations were under way. ’Twas a jolly good thing that Larry got a new Cummins turbo diesel engine for his crew cab, because I don’t think the old diesel engine that used to be my father’s would’ve made it to Grand Island. That poor old camper was hunkered down low, struggling valiantly beneath the tons and tons of canned food, along with the monkey wrenches, piano benches, and house finches, I had stowed away inside.
As it was, we didn’t make it to Grand Island before a vacuum hose for the turbo blew off. But that was minor, and that part of the story came later.
Two days before we departed, Teddy’s birthday presents came in the mail. I had been worried! We were planning to be gone on his birthday, and I wanted his presents wrapped and stowed away secretly somewhere in the trailer.
The kids were all helping me haul things out to the camper. “Just a minute,” I called to Lydia, who was three, “I need to tuck in your blouse!”
She came to a stop. “Yes!” She nodded in emphatic agreement. “’Cuz it doesn’t look so very pretty tucked out!”
We had a pop-up pickup camper in which the boys, Keith, Teddy, and Joseph, ages fourteen, eleven (almost), and nine, were planning to sleep. Behind the pickup we were pulling a very well kept ’66 Holiday Rambler. As I was putting the boys’ clothes in the pop-up camper a couple of days before we left, I suddenly noticed: there were no curtains on the windows! I rushed in to my handy material closet, pulled out some old curtains which I’d saved, just in case, and with a few snips and stitches, Voilá! Curtains! They were even insulated!
Next, I rushed off to a garage sale--and if I didn’t hit the jackpot: an entire rack of nice shirts, in Larry’s exact size. I bought the whole works. So that solved the problem of what Larry would wear.
After that, a friend of ours brought fifteen (!) shirts that used to be her husband's--and they just fit Keith. And I’d just made him four new ones. One was navy with white Japanese or Chinese or Vietnamese or Philippinese or Singaporeanese or Somethingese splashed all over it. He thought perhaps he should not wear it at the National Parks, since there were so many foreigners there, and one of them might be able to read this scribble-scrabble, and we didn’t know what in the world it said. And they might.
We promised my mother that we wouldn’t leave before we test-drove the pickup for at least a week... So Larry worked on the pickup all night Sunday night, all day Monday (we’d planned to leave Sunday night), then he slept for about five hours, and worked on the pickup again Tuesday morning. And then, at noon, we were off!--in a pouring rain.
So much for the test-drive.
The pop-up camper with its little table and seating all around proved to be stornry useful (that’s Tigger’s word for ‘extraordinary’); within half an hour of departure time, the children who were seated back there around the table were already lavishly spreading bread with peanut butter and jelly, and passing them through the sliding window to the passengers in the forepart of the rig. They ate the last of the popovers I had made the previous night, although the chocolate-pudding filling was long gone.
On the outskirts of Grand Island, there was a sudden, loud, BANG!, and smoke--or something that looked mighty like smoke--billowed out from under the hood. Larry, calm as ever, coasted gently into the parking lot of the nearest station. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, and the sun had come out.
It was nothing serious; just the vacuum hose on the turbo popping off. Larry bought a better clamp in the station, recoupled hose with hose, and off we went again, new Cummins turbo diesel running like a sewing machine. Well, a bit louder.
Ten miles past Grand Island, the right rear wheel on the trailer broke off. Luckily, the low skirts on those old-fashioned trailers kept the wheel from flying off to the moon. So there it was, stuck between pavement and trailer, churning up billows of black smoke. We plowed our way onto the shoulder, leaving a deep furrow in the road.
Now, that took several hours to repair. We unhitched from the trailer, took the wheel off, and headed into town to find somebody to help us. The studs had to be bored out and replaced, and the man whom we finally found to do the job was in no rush.
The children found an entire family of baby mice to play with, while a red-tailed hawk perched high on an electrical pole kept a close watch, occasionally uttering a high-pitched, keening complaint, because he couldn’t get to his dinner without coming uncomfortably close to the children. We happened to be near the airport, so incoming and outgoing planes added further to the entertainment. The children were unconcerned at the loss of time. After all!--we were on vacation!--and theirs had already begun.
Eventually Slowpoke R. Deadbeat completed his tedious job, and we drove back to the Interstate, where we’d left the trailer. It had to be jacked up on the low side and the wheel put back on. Eighteen-wheelers kept sailing past, rocking the boat.
And then the jack began slipping, the trailer began rolling. . . . .and I was inside it, warming up soup for our supper.
Larry calmly (did I mention that he was calm?) got everything back under control, put the wheel on, and let down the jack.
BOOM!
It went down faster than he expected. Understand, my heart was already pounding.
“Oh!” I cried. “Are you all right?!!”
He stuck his head in the door and looked at me. I considered putting the pot of soup over his head, just to show him how relieved I was.
As we drove off a few minutes later, he said to the kids wonderingly, “Mama really cares about me!”
We found a tiny campground northwest of Lake McConaughy later that night-- and the price per night was only six dollars. We showered and tumbled wearily into bed. Hoping that the following day would be the beginning of a No-More-Problems Vacation, we started by putting a new hitch on. Now, with the trailer no longer aimed at the moon, perhaps the wheels would stay nicely attached like they were supposed to.
We drove past Courthouse, Jail, and Chimney Rocks, finding ourselves especially underwhelmed with those first two. Chimney Rock was striking, but it was ninety degrees, and the humidity was running it a close match--too hot and muggy to care.
Shortly thereafter, we stopped so that Larry could fix the ceiling lights inside the pop-up camper. Next, as we were once more traveling gaily along, the fuel tank in use at the moment went dry. Larry pushed the switch to change it to the other fuel tank--and it failed to make connection.
We coasted to a stop on a small cow-path of somebody’s private drive, which, fortunately, they didn’t need to use at the moment. Then, while Larry made fuel fountains under the hood, I cranked the starter and considered starting the cranking. But after about forty-five minutes of doing this in one-hundred-ten-degree weather, the most amazing thing happened: the engine started before the battery wore down!
On we went. Aleutia entertained herself by coming through the window from the camper into the pickup, looking both sheepish and friendly at the same time.
As we were traveling through the lovely Wind River Valley in eastern Wyoming, a beautiful rainbow appeared, stretching from horizon to horizon. Rainbows, as it turned out, are not promises for Trouble-Free Travels.
But it didn’t flood.
After camping at Fort Caspar Campground in Casper, Wyoming, we passed through the middle of Wyoming on a route that took us through the High Country, part of which is barren and desert-like; and part of which has lovely forests on all sides. Antelope were everywhere we looked. We could see the Rockies to the south, the Bighorn Mountains to the north.
Suddenly, up ahead, we saw a sight that made us forget all about any troubles, present or future: the Tetons! The Grand Tetons, towering majestically over us. They were absolutely beautiful. We drove along parallel to them, Jackson Lake glittering between, scarcely saying a word for awe at the majesty surrounding us. We stopped and ate a supper of split peas and ham, and grapefruit.
Some time later, we entered Yellowstone National Park. Unfortunately, we were arriving late in the afternoon. By the time we got to Old Faithful Geyser and the Visitor’s Center, the sun was on a rapid descent toward the horizon.
Larry needed to fix a problem with the park lights and running lights, and Caleb, who was nine months old, was asleep in his little car seat, so the older children and I went to Hamilton Store, leaving Larry working on the lights and trying not to waken the baby.
In the gift shop, several of the children purchased small cedar boxes with mountain scenes or wild animals etched into the lids. Dorcas got a little cedar grand piano that played It’s a Small World. I bought my favorite souvenir: postcards. I also found a cedar “bald man’s brush” which I thought I absolutely had to get for Larry’s Uncle Clyde, who had lost a good quantity of his head fleece. The ‘brush’ had no bristles.
Leaving the general store, we walked on the boardwalk all the way around Old Faithful. I began worrying about Caleb asleep in his car seat, and Larry slaving away under the dash, and it was fifteen minutes past the predicted time for the eruption. The geyser was showing no signs of any forthcoming spouting, so we finally gave up waiting for it to blow, and headed back to the parking lot.
We were only half a block away when it erupted.
Rats. Bother. Humbug. And Caleb was still asleep anyway. But at least Larry didn’t miss something we’d had too much fun viewing.
Well, time was a-wastin’, and we wanted badly to see Jasper National Park, and since we’d been to Yellowstone just the previous year, we reluctantly decided to head on north to a campground in Montana. The brakes on the pickup weren’t working right, and the right rear trailer brake smoked up the mountains nearly as well as a nearby forest fire. Larry said unconcernedly that the brakes were computerized ‘smart’ brakes: they were programmed to veer madly to the left in case of sudden stops, thereby avoiding the right-incoming moose we were probably braking for anyway, and sending us quickly away from the edge of the cliff. He did not explain how this would prevent us from smacking headlong into any oncoming traffic.
The children took turns sitting in the pop-up camper, and, when night fell, they made the beds and whoever was sleepy crawled right into the feathers and went to sleep.
We stayed at a combination ranch and campground near Big Sky, Montana, and the whinnying of the horses, anxious to start their morning trail rides, awoke the children the next morning. They were delighted to discover themselves right next to the stables. The sky was blue as a sapphire, and the fragrance of the pines was fresh and invigorating.
We ate a filling breakfast of cooked cereal and fruit, and were soon headed north. It was easy to see why they called that area “Big Sky Country”; the scenery stretched on forever. Wheat fields glowed golden on incredibly high plateaus.
And what a day we had that day.
The gauges--heat, alternator, and so forth--were not yet set up to work with the new engine, so we didn’t know it was heating up. Now, the reason it was heating up was this: that Cummins engine is big. Too big. So, Larry had to raise the cab, in order that when he slammed the hood, the engine wouldn’t make strange humps in it. This, of course, made the engine closer to the frame at the bottom of the cab. Too close. So the fan belt rubbed on a sharp edge of the frame, and, eventually, it went the way of all shredded fan belts. So the fan was no longer able to cool the engine. This, you understand, is not good for the temperature of the engine.
At the top of McDonald Pass, north of Helena, the engine got so hot it quit.
Larry thought his brand-new Cummins turbo was totally ruined. He quickly put a little cold water into the radiator and started the engine, in order to circulate the water through it. He turned it back off, added more water, and started it again. He kept this up, adding more water little by little, so as not to crack the head by cooling it too fast, until he got it cooled down. He put a new fan belt on, and we continued--rather quietly, I must say--on our way.
While there on the pass, a man from a nearby village stopped by and offered to help. Learning where we were headed, he showed us on our map a good route to Glacier National Park in Montana. Then he went on down the mountain to his home--and came back with some good hand cleaner and store-bought hand cloths! By this time, we had come to the conclusion that he was a trustworthy individual, so we took him up on his offer to leave our guns at his house, for, although we had known we couldn’t take guns into Canada, and we’d planned to leave them at home, we had forgotten to get them off the gun rack behind the rear seat.
We left the man a master brake cylinder that we’d bought in Helena which had proven to be the wrong one, telling him he could return it and keep the money as payment for keeping our guns, and also to pay for boxing and mailing them to us in case we didn’t happen back that way.
As we continued our journey, and kept checking the oil and other integral components, we finally came to the conclusion that overheating the motor had not hurt it. It had just as much power as ever; no water in the oil; and it was running fine. And!--the remarkable thing--it quit using oil!
Larry stuck out his chest and made a pompous face. “Well,” said he, flexing his biceps, “I fixed that!” Everybody laughed except Lydia, who looked quite serious throughout this entire ordeal.
Fifteen minutes later, as we were traveling along, Lydia said sincerely, “My Daddy can fix anything.”
Saturday, the thirteenth, Teddy’s birthday, started with Teddy looking in amazement at a big pile of wrapped birthday presents on the table of the camper. We were camped in a lovely campground beside Swan Lake, just east of huge Flathead Lake, and a little southwest of Glacier National Park. Ponderosas, bristlecones, evergreens, yews, and aspens surrounded us. Chickadees flitted about, filling the air with their cheery “deedeedeedee.” Nuthatches spiraled headfirst down the trees, uttering their nasal “ank ank ank.”
Mama had taught me to tell the difference between these two little mountain birds when I was only three: “The chickadees are little motorcyclists! See their little helmets and chin straps? And those nuthatches! They’re little bandits! Just look at their little black masks.”
We gave Teddy a waist bag with the National Parks logo on it, a watch with a picture of a horse on it and a horseshoe that revolved around the dial once each minute, and several books we’d purchased at Hamilton General Store in Yellowstone National Park.
Before leaving to tour Glacier National Park, we skipped a few rocks across Swan Lake. Lydia liked this new game. She drew back, heaved the stone with all her might and main, and then cried, “I skipped it!” while the rock was still in midair.
Since trailers are not allowed to cross Going-to-the-Sun Road in the Park, we unhitched, put the day’s food supplies into the pop-up camper, and then were off to Glacier National Park, stopping first to see Hungry Horse Dam, the biggest dam, except Hoover, I’d ever seen. At a small gas station, Joseph and Hester bought themselves small souvenirs--plastic pencil sharpeners and rulers with the words Glacier National Park printed on them, and pictures on all sides; and a couple of sparkly pens with Montana etched on the side.
Lydia was sleeping and did not go into the station, so I decided I’d better buy her a souvenir. But since it was just a small gas station, the inventory was somewhat lacking, and it seemed that Joseph and Hester must’ve bought up the last of the gifts. I was about to give up when I spotted a pretty pink-speckled coffee mug, the lidded type that is especially for traveling. On each side was a picture of an elk, and under the picture it said, “Montana.” I bought it, thinking that perhaps it would do until we were able to find the child something better.
We never needed to find anything better.
It was Lydia’s favorite souvenir of all time, and, furthermore, it has outlasted all the other souvenirs. It is still used with fondness to this day.
Just before we entered the Park, we slowed to let a wild turkey hen with a flock of fluffy chicks cross the road. They kept looking worriedly back toward us, uttering small “peep peep peep peep peep”s. Lydia crooned, “It’s okay, little chickies; we wouldn’t run you over!”
In Glacier National Park we observed the most amazing scenery I’d ever seen in my entire life. Those Rockies were awesome. No picture can do it justice. The hanging gardens were alive with all colors of blossoms. Mountain goats browsed amongst the rocks, and the babies were every bit as sure-footed as their parents were.
Bright red old-fashioned tour buses were driven by young drivers who raced furiously over Going-to-the-Sun Road, evidently in 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. We walked around the visitor’s center at the top of the pass, taking pictures of the children with Mount Clements in the background. Mount Clements, right at the top of Logan Pass, is called The Crown of the Continent.
“Bwight! Bwight!” exclaimed Caleb, squinting in the mountain sunlight. He was ten months old, that very day. After crossing Logan Pass at the top of Going-to-the-Sun Road heading east, and arriving at St. Mary’s Lake, we turned north and headed to Waterton National Park. These two national parks abut each other, and they are jointly christened Waterton-Glacier Peace Park, referring to the peaceful coexistence of these two great countries, Canada and the United States. As we stood viewing Chief Mountain, a unique square-shaped mountain with a flat top, a Rufous hummingbird came whizzing out of the trees, whirred around my head, hovered near Teddy’s red-clad arm for several seconds, and then darted right through the triangle his arm made as he stood there, hand on hip. Teddy was enthralled. Soon we headed back the way we’d come, slowing to allow a herd of cattle to cross the road.
We ate supper in a picnic area by McDonald Lake. The moon and evening star were reflected in the river beside us. Warnings about bears were posted at each nearby trailhead. Teddy and Joseph headed for the rest rooms. It was getting dark. Just then, a lady unexpectedly popped around from the other side, and they both jumped out of their hides and yelped a small duet, whereupon the lady obligingly growled ferociously, after which the boys jumped even higher and yelped even louder. Their siblings didn’t get over their mirth for a long, long time.
As I was gingerly stepping out of the pop-up camper, arms full of dishes and food, Lydia, watching me, said anxiously, “Don’t try to hurt yourself, Mama!”
Hester, who was five, pointed at a small yew bush. “Is this poisoned Ivan?” she inquired innocently.
This brought another moment of hilarity, since we all knew a person by that very name who could quite properly be characterized as ‘poisoned’.
Returning to our trailer, everybody showered in the delightful little log-cabin shower rooms. We tucked everybody into bed. . . Then, listen. . . wolves! We were exhilarated to be able to hear real, live, honest-to-goodness wolves!
I opened the windows in our bedroom, the better to hear them.
But we were wrong.
It wasn’t wolves.
It was ‘music’ from a bar a mile down the road. Bother. I closed the window.
The following day, which was Sunday, we washed clothes. Yes, yes; I knew it was the Lord’s Day, a day during which we were supposed to rest; but I didn’t think we shouldn’t run around bare, either; and that’s what we would’ve been doing shortly, had we not washed some clothes. We foolishly chose a little mountain laundry with only four washers and four dryers. That is not a timesaving agendum when there are nine loads of clothes to be washed. So everybody wound up having a bit of a Sunday rest beside a pretty little pond, after all, while the ancient machines chugged away with our clothes inside them.
And then we went to Canada! We told the children that now they could say they’d been to Canada twice--once to Chief Mountain in Alberta, and now as we passed into British Columbia. When we went through Customs, the man asked our nationality. I, trying to look intelligent, said knowledgeably, “American.”
He nodded and smiled indulgently, and I realized he was every bit as American as I was. So I ended up looking sheepish instead.
Immediately across the border, we stopped to take pictures of the funniest-looking black and white llama.
At a quaint little country general store, we overheard the proprietor talking with the only other customer. Hearing the phrase “Going-to-the-Sun Road”, we stepped closer to listen in. We learned that the day after we had gone over the pass, a pickup had driven over the edge of the road and tumbled down the mountainside! There were three people in the cab, and one in the box. It seems they’d met up with a large motorhome on a tight, narrow curve, mountain wall on one side, deep chasm on the other; and the driver of the motorhome, in an attempt to keep from scraping his vehicle on the rocks to his right, had veered into the other lane.
The pickup driver, endeavoring to avoid a collision, swerved to his right.....too far. Over it went. The man in the back jumped out. The pickup somersaulted and rolled sickeningly. One hundred fifty feet down, the pickup hit a tree, and the people in the front, who luckily were not strapped in, fell out. The pickup went on down the steep, rocky slope another 1200 feet, winding up nothing more than a wadded ball of metal. And the worst injuries were a broken wrist, and a broken rib!
After camping beside the ninety-mile-long Lake Koocanusa, whose name comes from its location--partly in Kootenay National Park, partly in Canada, and partly in the USA, we proceeded on to Kootenay National Park. The air smelled strongly of smoke, and we knew that somewhere nearby were forest fires. We had been driving through forest on relatively flat land when we came to the entrance of the Park. A large, beautiful brick gateway welcomed. We rounded a corner--and suddenly, there we were, traveling along in a dark, narrow crevice of a canyon with rock walls on either side. The temperature abruptly dropped ten degrees. The trees went up...and up...and up. A Dall sheep stood beside the road, chewing its cud placidly. On a small pond, we snapped photos of ducks that were a cross between a mallard and a black.
Traveling through Kootenay, we went on into Banff National Park, then over to Yoho National Park. This trek was comprised of a twisting course that took us from British Columbia over the mountains to Alberta, and then back again to British Columbia on a narrow, scenic road that crossed the Great Divide several times and had a pretty picnic area up on top, right between the two provinces.
We’d seen absolutely no cars on this little out-of-the-way road, having gotten on it entirely by accident while looking for a nice place to eat. This Search For A Picnic Table had its beginning at the beautiful Lake Louise Hotel, where we had unintentionally turned onto the curved drive that led right up to the ornate front doors of the enormous, graceful old hotel. The grounds of the inn were lovely and picturesque, and refined gentlemen and aristocratic ladies were strolling the promenade, several of the women even sporting Battenburg-lace parasols.
On a grassy incline in the middle of an attractive courtyard, a Scottish man in a red-plaid kilt stood playing a long wooden horn. It was approximately twenty feet in length, shaped like an elongated smoker’s pipe. The man was very skilled, for when he played the instrument, the sweetest, most dulcet tones one could ever imagine issued from the wooden bowl. The song he was playing sounded like our hymn, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling.....but I am not sure, for, you see, we were driving.....
A Cummins turbo diesel.
And pulling a ’66 Holiday Rambler. We sounded mighty similar to an old John Deere tractor, circa 1933.
So there we went, rumbling loudly up the circle drive, heading straight for the low awning--and the Cadilacs, Porsches, and Mercedes parked under it.
People stopped strolling and stared at us in amazement and, no doubt, with ire, because of the drowning out of the melodious strain, and probably also with a good deal of apprehension as to just whether or not we would actually be able to fit through the passageway we were making toward with steady resolution, without sideswiping their high-priced carriages or bringing the awning down upon them.
I slid down low in my seat and donned sunglasses, so that if I met up with any of these people in another, more distinguished life, they shouldn’t possibly recognize me. The children had no such compunctions; they remained at the windows, noses pressed to the glass.
We made it through the corridor, causing great anxiety among the scant quantity of air molecules between those gleaming vehicles and us, and between awning and us.
Escaping that embarrassment, we somehow wound up on a narrow, blacktop road along which, we hoped, we would find a place to eat. When we came to the picnic area on the province boundary lines, we assumed we’d found the perfect, secluded hideaway for supper.....until the tour buses started coming through. And stopping.
They came at the rate of one every three minutes, I think. All the people piled out and rushed madly about, exclaiming frenetically in French, peering hungrily into our dishes, taking pictures of anything and everything, including us. I suppose they figured, by our attire and our transportation, that we’d been planted and paid to stage an old-fashioned family, picnicking and traveling “the way it was done back then”. We continued eating with a little more decorum than usual.
Finally getting back on our route, we went back to Banff, then on up to Jasper National Park. Glaciers hung over every peak. The lakes were turquoise green from glacier silt, sometimes called ‘flour’. It was still twilight at 10:30 p.m., and we often saw elk at the side of the road. Larry thought he caught a glimpse of a moose in the Athabasca River; I thought it was a large bird. “I think I can tell the difference between a moose and bird!” he exclaimed.
“And I think I can tell the difference between a bird and a moose!” I retorted.
The debate was never resolved.
At River Crossing, a big truck stop and gift shop, the children all bought souvenirs. They thought I’d really pulled the right lever when I handed the clerk a one hundred dollar bill to pay for our purchases, and, as change, was given one hundred twenty-eight dollars and forty cents. Imagine how deflated they were when it worked the other way around when we re-entered the States.
We camped in a remote park just a little south of the town of Jasper. The river’s torrent, only a hundred feet from our campsite, sang an untamed melody throughout the night, and, at the first light of the dawn, myriad varieties of birds warbled cheery choruses.
Later in that morning, as we were pulling out of a gas station, Larry suddenly asked, “Where’s Aleutia?”
I looked up and got a strange start: there was a big black and white Husky watching us with interest from the other side of the road! We came to a stop and were starting to open our door to load the dog back up again, when we realized Aleutia herself was sticking her head through the back pickup window from the pop-up camper where she rode, ears up, wondering what we wanted.
In the middle of Jasper, right in the business district, a couple of elk were sauntering down the sidewalk as if they were ordinary tourists heading for the next gift shop. While we were there, we decided to improve our image by running both trailer and pickup through a truck wash. But what a nasty trick to pull on all the tourists there!--of course it always rains after we wash our vehicles. And that day was no exception. If fact, it poured. But the unique phenomenon during this squall was this: the sun shone on. What a rainbow that spawned! And, as noted before, it didn’t flood.
To be continued...
As it was, we didn’t make it to Grand Island before a vacuum hose for the turbo blew off. But that was minor, and that part of the story came later.
Two days before we departed, Teddy’s birthday presents came in the mail. I had been worried! We were planning to be gone on his birthday, and I wanted his presents wrapped and stowed away secretly somewhere in the trailer.
The kids were all helping me haul things out to the camper. “Just a minute,” I called to Lydia, who was three, “I need to tuck in your blouse!”
She came to a stop. “Yes!” She nodded in emphatic agreement. “’Cuz it doesn’t look so very pretty tucked out!”
We had a pop-up pickup camper in which the boys, Keith, Teddy, and Joseph, ages fourteen, eleven (almost), and nine, were planning to sleep. Behind the pickup we were pulling a very well kept ’66 Holiday Rambler. As I was putting the boys’ clothes in the pop-up camper a couple of days before we left, I suddenly noticed: there were no curtains on the windows! I rushed in to my handy material closet, pulled out some old curtains which I’d saved, just in case, and with a few snips and stitches, Voilá! Curtains! They were even insulated!
Next, I rushed off to a garage sale--and if I didn’t hit the jackpot: an entire rack of nice shirts, in Larry’s exact size. I bought the whole works. So that solved the problem of what Larry would wear.
After that, a friend of ours brought fifteen (!) shirts that used to be her husband's--and they just fit Keith. And I’d just made him four new ones. One was navy with white Japanese or Chinese or Vietnamese or Philippinese or Singaporeanese or Somethingese splashed all over it. He thought perhaps he should not wear it at the National Parks, since there were so many foreigners there, and one of them might be able to read this scribble-scrabble, and we didn’t know what in the world it said. And they might.
We promised my mother that we wouldn’t leave before we test-drove the pickup for at least a week... So Larry worked on the pickup all night Sunday night, all day Monday (we’d planned to leave Sunday night), then he slept for about five hours, and worked on the pickup again Tuesday morning. And then, at noon, we were off!--in a pouring rain.
So much for the test-drive.
The pop-up camper with its little table and seating all around proved to be stornry useful (that’s Tigger’s word for ‘extraordinary’); within half an hour of departure time, the children who were seated back there around the table were already lavishly spreading bread with peanut butter and jelly, and passing them through the sliding window to the passengers in the forepart of the rig. They ate the last of the popovers I had made the previous night, although the chocolate-pudding filling was long gone.
On the outskirts of Grand Island, there was a sudden, loud, BANG!, and smoke--or something that looked mighty like smoke--billowed out from under the hood. Larry, calm as ever, coasted gently into the parking lot of the nearest station. Fortunately, the rain had stopped, and the sun had come out.
It was nothing serious; just the vacuum hose on the turbo popping off. Larry bought a better clamp in the station, recoupled hose with hose, and off we went again, new Cummins turbo diesel running like a sewing machine. Well, a bit louder.
Ten miles past Grand Island, the right rear wheel on the trailer broke off. Luckily, the low skirts on those old-fashioned trailers kept the wheel from flying off to the moon. So there it was, stuck between pavement and trailer, churning up billows of black smoke. We plowed our way onto the shoulder, leaving a deep furrow in the road.
Now, that took several hours to repair. We unhitched from the trailer, took the wheel off, and headed into town to find somebody to help us. The studs had to be bored out and replaced, and the man whom we finally found to do the job was in no rush.
The children found an entire family of baby mice to play with, while a red-tailed hawk perched high on an electrical pole kept a close watch, occasionally uttering a high-pitched, keening complaint, because he couldn’t get to his dinner without coming uncomfortably close to the children. We happened to be near the airport, so incoming and outgoing planes added further to the entertainment. The children were unconcerned at the loss of time. After all!--we were on vacation!--and theirs had already begun.
Eventually Slowpoke R. Deadbeat completed his tedious job, and we drove back to the Interstate, where we’d left the trailer. It had to be jacked up on the low side and the wheel put back on. Eighteen-wheelers kept sailing past, rocking the boat.
And then the jack began slipping, the trailer began rolling. . . . .and I was inside it, warming up soup for our supper.
Larry calmly (did I mention that he was calm?) got everything back under control, put the wheel on, and let down the jack.
BOOM!
It went down faster than he expected. Understand, my heart was already pounding.
“Oh!” I cried. “Are you all right?!!”
He stuck his head in the door and looked at me. I considered putting the pot of soup over his head, just to show him how relieved I was.
As we drove off a few minutes later, he said to the kids wonderingly, “Mama really cares about me!”
We found a tiny campground northwest of Lake McConaughy later that night-- and the price per night was only six dollars. We showered and tumbled wearily into bed. Hoping that the following day would be the beginning of a No-More-Problems Vacation, we started by putting a new hitch on. Now, with the trailer no longer aimed at the moon, perhaps the wheels would stay nicely attached like they were supposed to.
We drove past Courthouse, Jail, and Chimney Rocks, finding ourselves especially underwhelmed with those first two. Chimney Rock was striking, but it was ninety degrees, and the humidity was running it a close match--too hot and muggy to care.
Shortly thereafter, we stopped so that Larry could fix the ceiling lights inside the pop-up camper. Next, as we were once more traveling gaily along, the fuel tank in use at the moment went dry. Larry pushed the switch to change it to the other fuel tank--and it failed to make connection.
We coasted to a stop on a small cow-path of somebody’s private drive, which, fortunately, they didn’t need to use at the moment. Then, while Larry made fuel fountains under the hood, I cranked the starter and considered starting the cranking. But after about forty-five minutes of doing this in one-hundred-ten-degree weather, the most amazing thing happened: the engine started before the battery wore down!
On we went. Aleutia entertained herself by coming through the window from the camper into the pickup, looking both sheepish and friendly at the same time.
As we were traveling through the lovely Wind River Valley in eastern Wyoming, a beautiful rainbow appeared, stretching from horizon to horizon. Rainbows, as it turned out, are not promises for Trouble-Free Travels.
But it didn’t flood.
After camping at Fort Caspar Campground in Casper, Wyoming, we passed through the middle of Wyoming on a route that took us through the High Country, part of which is barren and desert-like; and part of which has lovely forests on all sides. Antelope were everywhere we looked. We could see the Rockies to the south, the Bighorn Mountains to the north.
Suddenly, up ahead, we saw a sight that made us forget all about any troubles, present or future: the Tetons! The Grand Tetons, towering majestically over us. They were absolutely beautiful. We drove along parallel to them, Jackson Lake glittering between, scarcely saying a word for awe at the majesty surrounding us. We stopped and ate a supper of split peas and ham, and grapefruit.
Some time later, we entered Yellowstone National Park. Unfortunately, we were arriving late in the afternoon. By the time we got to Old Faithful Geyser and the Visitor’s Center, the sun was on a rapid descent toward the horizon.
Larry needed to fix a problem with the park lights and running lights, and Caleb, who was nine months old, was asleep in his little car seat, so the older children and I went to Hamilton Store, leaving Larry working on the lights and trying not to waken the baby.
In the gift shop, several of the children purchased small cedar boxes with mountain scenes or wild animals etched into the lids. Dorcas got a little cedar grand piano that played It’s a Small World. I bought my favorite souvenir: postcards. I also found a cedar “bald man’s brush” which I thought I absolutely had to get for Larry’s Uncle Clyde, who had lost a good quantity of his head fleece. The ‘brush’ had no bristles.
Leaving the general store, we walked on the boardwalk all the way around Old Faithful. I began worrying about Caleb asleep in his car seat, and Larry slaving away under the dash, and it was fifteen minutes past the predicted time for the eruption. The geyser was showing no signs of any forthcoming spouting, so we finally gave up waiting for it to blow, and headed back to the parking lot.
We were only half a block away when it erupted.
Rats. Bother. Humbug. And Caleb was still asleep anyway. But at least Larry didn’t miss something we’d had too much fun viewing.
Well, time was a-wastin’, and we wanted badly to see Jasper National Park, and since we’d been to Yellowstone just the previous year, we reluctantly decided to head on north to a campground in Montana. The brakes on the pickup weren’t working right, and the right rear trailer brake smoked up the mountains nearly as well as a nearby forest fire. Larry said unconcernedly that the brakes were computerized ‘smart’ brakes: they were programmed to veer madly to the left in case of sudden stops, thereby avoiding the right-incoming moose we were probably braking for anyway, and sending us quickly away from the edge of the cliff. He did not explain how this would prevent us from smacking headlong into any oncoming traffic.
The children took turns sitting in the pop-up camper, and, when night fell, they made the beds and whoever was sleepy crawled right into the feathers and went to sleep.
We stayed at a combination ranch and campground near Big Sky, Montana, and the whinnying of the horses, anxious to start their morning trail rides, awoke the children the next morning. They were delighted to discover themselves right next to the stables. The sky was blue as a sapphire, and the fragrance of the pines was fresh and invigorating.
We ate a filling breakfast of cooked cereal and fruit, and were soon headed north. It was easy to see why they called that area “Big Sky Country”; the scenery stretched on forever. Wheat fields glowed golden on incredibly high plateaus.
And what a day we had that day.
The gauges--heat, alternator, and so forth--were not yet set up to work with the new engine, so we didn’t know it was heating up. Now, the reason it was heating up was this: that Cummins engine is big. Too big. So, Larry had to raise the cab, in order that when he slammed the hood, the engine wouldn’t make strange humps in it. This, of course, made the engine closer to the frame at the bottom of the cab. Too close. So the fan belt rubbed on a sharp edge of the frame, and, eventually, it went the way of all shredded fan belts. So the fan was no longer able to cool the engine. This, you understand, is not good for the temperature of the engine.
At the top of McDonald Pass, north of Helena, the engine got so hot it quit.
Larry thought his brand-new Cummins turbo was totally ruined. He quickly put a little cold water into the radiator and started the engine, in order to circulate the water through it. He turned it back off, added more water, and started it again. He kept this up, adding more water little by little, so as not to crack the head by cooling it too fast, until he got it cooled down. He put a new fan belt on, and we continued--rather quietly, I must say--on our way.
While there on the pass, a man from a nearby village stopped by and offered to help. Learning where we were headed, he showed us on our map a good route to Glacier National Park in Montana. Then he went on down the mountain to his home--and came back with some good hand cleaner and store-bought hand cloths! By this time, we had come to the conclusion that he was a trustworthy individual, so we took him up on his offer to leave our guns at his house, for, although we had known we couldn’t take guns into Canada, and we’d planned to leave them at home, we had forgotten to get them off the gun rack behind the rear seat.
We left the man a master brake cylinder that we’d bought in Helena which had proven to be the wrong one, telling him he could return it and keep the money as payment for keeping our guns, and also to pay for boxing and mailing them to us in case we didn’t happen back that way.
As we continued our journey, and kept checking the oil and other integral components, we finally came to the conclusion that overheating the motor had not hurt it. It had just as much power as ever; no water in the oil; and it was running fine. And!--the remarkable thing--it quit using oil!
Larry stuck out his chest and made a pompous face. “Well,” said he, flexing his biceps, “I fixed that!” Everybody laughed except Lydia, who looked quite serious throughout this entire ordeal.
Fifteen minutes later, as we were traveling along, Lydia said sincerely, “My Daddy can fix anything.”
Saturday, the thirteenth, Teddy’s birthday, started with Teddy looking in amazement at a big pile of wrapped birthday presents on the table of the camper. We were camped in a lovely campground beside Swan Lake, just east of huge Flathead Lake, and a little southwest of Glacier National Park. Ponderosas, bristlecones, evergreens, yews, and aspens surrounded us. Chickadees flitted about, filling the air with their cheery “deedeedeedee.” Nuthatches spiraled headfirst down the trees, uttering their nasal “ank ank ank.”
Mama had taught me to tell the difference between these two little mountain birds when I was only three: “The chickadees are little motorcyclists! See their little helmets and chin straps? And those nuthatches! They’re little bandits! Just look at their little black masks.”
We gave Teddy a waist bag with the National Parks logo on it, a watch with a picture of a horse on it and a horseshoe that revolved around the dial once each minute, and several books we’d purchased at Hamilton General Store in Yellowstone National Park.
Before leaving to tour Glacier National Park, we skipped a few rocks across Swan Lake. Lydia liked this new game. She drew back, heaved the stone with all her might and main, and then cried, “I skipped it!” while the rock was still in midair.
Since trailers are not allowed to cross Going-to-the-Sun Road in the Park, we unhitched, put the day’s food supplies into the pop-up camper, and then were off to Glacier National Park, stopping first to see Hungry Horse Dam, the biggest dam, except Hoover, I’d ever seen. At a small gas station, Joseph and Hester bought themselves small souvenirs--plastic pencil sharpeners and rulers with the words Glacier National Park printed on them, and pictures on all sides; and a couple of sparkly pens with Montana etched on the side.
Lydia was sleeping and did not go into the station, so I decided I’d better buy her a souvenir. But since it was just a small gas station, the inventory was somewhat lacking, and it seemed that Joseph and Hester must’ve bought up the last of the gifts. I was about to give up when I spotted a pretty pink-speckled coffee mug, the lidded type that is especially for traveling. On each side was a picture of an elk, and under the picture it said, “Montana.” I bought it, thinking that perhaps it would do until we were able to find the child something better.
We never needed to find anything better.
It was Lydia’s favorite souvenir of all time, and, furthermore, it has outlasted all the other souvenirs. It is still used with fondness to this day.
Just before we entered the Park, we slowed to let a wild turkey hen with a flock of fluffy chicks cross the road. They kept looking worriedly back toward us, uttering small “peep peep peep peep peep”s. Lydia crooned, “It’s okay, little chickies; we wouldn’t run you over!”
In Glacier National Park we observed the most amazing scenery I’d ever seen in my entire life. Those Rockies were awesome. No picture can do it justice. The hanging gardens were alive with all colors of blossoms. Mountain goats browsed amongst the rocks, and the babies were every bit as sure-footed as their parents were.
Bright red old-fashioned tour buses were driven by young drivers who raced furiously over Going-to-the-Sun Road, evidently in 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. We walked around the visitor’s center at the top of the pass, taking pictures of the children with Mount Clements in the background. Mount Clements, right at the top of Logan Pass, is called The Crown of the Continent.
“Bwight! Bwight!” exclaimed Caleb, squinting in the mountain sunlight. He was ten months old, that very day. After crossing Logan Pass at the top of Going-to-the-Sun Road heading east, and arriving at St. Mary’s Lake, we turned north and headed to Waterton National Park. These two national parks abut each other, and they are jointly christened Waterton-Glacier Peace Park, referring to the peaceful coexistence of these two great countries, Canada and the United States. As we stood viewing Chief Mountain, a unique square-shaped mountain with a flat top, a Rufous hummingbird came whizzing out of the trees, whirred around my head, hovered near Teddy’s red-clad arm for several seconds, and then darted right through the triangle his arm made as he stood there, hand on hip. Teddy was enthralled. Soon we headed back the way we’d come, slowing to allow a herd of cattle to cross the road.
We ate supper in a picnic area by McDonald Lake. The moon and evening star were reflected in the river beside us. Warnings about bears were posted at each nearby trailhead. Teddy and Joseph headed for the rest rooms. It was getting dark. Just then, a lady unexpectedly popped around from the other side, and they both jumped out of their hides and yelped a small duet, whereupon the lady obligingly growled ferociously, after which the boys jumped even higher and yelped even louder. Their siblings didn’t get over their mirth for a long, long time.
As I was gingerly stepping out of the pop-up camper, arms full of dishes and food, Lydia, watching me, said anxiously, “Don’t try to hurt yourself, Mama!”
Hester, who was five, pointed at a small yew bush. “Is this poisoned Ivan?” she inquired innocently.
This brought another moment of hilarity, since we all knew a person by that very name who could quite properly be characterized as ‘poisoned’.
Returning to our trailer, everybody showered in the delightful little log-cabin shower rooms. We tucked everybody into bed. . . Then, listen. . . wolves! We were exhilarated to be able to hear real, live, honest-to-goodness wolves!
I opened the windows in our bedroom, the better to hear them.
But we were wrong.
It wasn’t wolves.
It was ‘music’ from a bar a mile down the road. Bother. I closed the window.
The following day, which was Sunday, we washed clothes. Yes, yes; I knew it was the Lord’s Day, a day during which we were supposed to rest; but I didn’t think we shouldn’t run around bare, either; and that’s what we would’ve been doing shortly, had we not washed some clothes. We foolishly chose a little mountain laundry with only four washers and four dryers. That is not a timesaving agendum when there are nine loads of clothes to be washed. So everybody wound up having a bit of a Sunday rest beside a pretty little pond, after all, while the ancient machines chugged away with our clothes inside them.
And then we went to Canada! We told the children that now they could say they’d been to Canada twice--once to Chief Mountain in Alberta, and now as we passed into British Columbia. When we went through Customs, the man asked our nationality. I, trying to look intelligent, said knowledgeably, “American.”
He nodded and smiled indulgently, and I realized he was every bit as American as I was. So I ended up looking sheepish instead.
Immediately across the border, we stopped to take pictures of the funniest-looking black and white llama.
At a quaint little country general store, we overheard the proprietor talking with the only other customer. Hearing the phrase “Going-to-the-Sun Road”, we stepped closer to listen in. We learned that the day after we had gone over the pass, a pickup had driven over the edge of the road and tumbled down the mountainside! There were three people in the cab, and one in the box. It seems they’d met up with a large motorhome on a tight, narrow curve, mountain wall on one side, deep chasm on the other; and the driver of the motorhome, in an attempt to keep from scraping his vehicle on the rocks to his right, had veered into the other lane.
The pickup driver, endeavoring to avoid a collision, swerved to his right.....too far. Over it went. The man in the back jumped out. The pickup somersaulted and rolled sickeningly. One hundred fifty feet down, the pickup hit a tree, and the people in the front, who luckily were not strapped in, fell out. The pickup went on down the steep, rocky slope another 1200 feet, winding up nothing more than a wadded ball of metal. And the worst injuries were a broken wrist, and a broken rib!
After camping beside the ninety-mile-long Lake Koocanusa, whose name comes from its location--partly in Kootenay National Park, partly in Canada, and partly in the USA, we proceeded on to Kootenay National Park. The air smelled strongly of smoke, and we knew that somewhere nearby were forest fires. We had been driving through forest on relatively flat land when we came to the entrance of the Park. A large, beautiful brick gateway welcomed. We rounded a corner--and suddenly, there we were, traveling along in a dark, narrow crevice of a canyon with rock walls on either side. The temperature abruptly dropped ten degrees. The trees went up...and up...and up. A Dall sheep stood beside the road, chewing its cud placidly. On a small pond, we snapped photos of ducks that were a cross between a mallard and a black.
Traveling through Kootenay, we went on into Banff National Park, then over to Yoho National Park. This trek was comprised of a twisting course that took us from British Columbia over the mountains to Alberta, and then back again to British Columbia on a narrow, scenic road that crossed the Great Divide several times and had a pretty picnic area up on top, right between the two provinces.
We’d seen absolutely no cars on this little out-of-the-way road, having gotten on it entirely by accident while looking for a nice place to eat. This Search For A Picnic Table had its beginning at the beautiful Lake Louise Hotel, where we had unintentionally turned onto the curved drive that led right up to the ornate front doors of the enormous, graceful old hotel. The grounds of the inn were lovely and picturesque, and refined gentlemen and aristocratic ladies were strolling the promenade, several of the women even sporting Battenburg-lace parasols.
On a grassy incline in the middle of an attractive courtyard, a Scottish man in a red-plaid kilt stood playing a long wooden horn. It was approximately twenty feet in length, shaped like an elongated smoker’s pipe. The man was very skilled, for when he played the instrument, the sweetest, most dulcet tones one could ever imagine issued from the wooden bowl. The song he was playing sounded like our hymn, Hark the Voice of Jesus Calling.....but I am not sure, for, you see, we were driving.....
A Cummins turbo diesel.
And pulling a ’66 Holiday Rambler. We sounded mighty similar to an old John Deere tractor, circa 1933.
So there we went, rumbling loudly up the circle drive, heading straight for the low awning--and the Cadilacs, Porsches, and Mercedes parked under it.
People stopped strolling and stared at us in amazement and, no doubt, with ire, because of the drowning out of the melodious strain, and probably also with a good deal of apprehension as to just whether or not we would actually be able to fit through the passageway we were making toward with steady resolution, without sideswiping their high-priced carriages or bringing the awning down upon them.
I slid down low in my seat and donned sunglasses, so that if I met up with any of these people in another, more distinguished life, they shouldn’t possibly recognize me. The children had no such compunctions; they remained at the windows, noses pressed to the glass.
We made it through the corridor, causing great anxiety among the scant quantity of air molecules between those gleaming vehicles and us, and between awning and us.
Escaping that embarrassment, we somehow wound up on a narrow, blacktop road along which, we hoped, we would find a place to eat. When we came to the picnic area on the province boundary lines, we assumed we’d found the perfect, secluded hideaway for supper.....until the tour buses started coming through. And stopping.
They came at the rate of one every three minutes, I think. All the people piled out and rushed madly about, exclaiming frenetically in French, peering hungrily into our dishes, taking pictures of anything and everything, including us. I suppose they figured, by our attire and our transportation, that we’d been planted and paid to stage an old-fashioned family, picnicking and traveling “the way it was done back then”. We continued eating with a little more decorum than usual.
Finally getting back on our route, we went back to Banff, then on up to Jasper National Park. Glaciers hung over every peak. The lakes were turquoise green from glacier silt, sometimes called ‘flour’. It was still twilight at 10:30 p.m., and we often saw elk at the side of the road. Larry thought he caught a glimpse of a moose in the Athabasca River; I thought it was a large bird. “I think I can tell the difference between a moose and bird!” he exclaimed.
“And I think I can tell the difference between a bird and a moose!” I retorted.
The debate was never resolved.
At River Crossing, a big truck stop and gift shop, the children all bought souvenirs. They thought I’d really pulled the right lever when I handed the clerk a one hundred dollar bill to pay for our purchases, and, as change, was given one hundred twenty-eight dollars and forty cents. Imagine how deflated they were when it worked the other way around when we re-entered the States.
We camped in a remote park just a little south of the town of Jasper. The river’s torrent, only a hundred feet from our campsite, sang an untamed melody throughout the night, and, at the first light of the dawn, myriad varieties of birds warbled cheery choruses.
Later in that morning, as we were pulling out of a gas station, Larry suddenly asked, “Where’s Aleutia?”
I looked up and got a strange start: there was a big black and white Husky watching us with interest from the other side of the road! We came to a stop and were starting to open our door to load the dog back up again, when we realized Aleutia herself was sticking her head through the back pickup window from the pop-up camper where she rode, ears up, wondering what we wanted.
In the middle of Jasper, right in the business district, a couple of elk were sauntering down the sidewalk as if they were ordinary tourists heading for the next gift shop. While we were there, we decided to improve our image by running both trailer and pickup through a truck wash. But what a nasty trick to pull on all the tourists there!--of course it always rains after we wash our vehicles. And that day was no exception. If fact, it poured. But the unique phenomenon during this squall was this: the sun shone on. What a rainbow that spawned! And, as noted before, it didn’t flood.
To be continued...
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