Highways and Byways

Highways and Byways

“Are we there yet?”
“He’s touching me!”
“My stomach hurts…I think I’m going to throw up!”
“I’m bored.”

    Yes, we were off once again on our biennial, 1500 mile road trip to visit our Utah relatives.  We liked visiting them.  We just didn’t like riding in the car for three days to get there.
   Mom spent days organizing everything for the trip.  The house had to be left clean and the car packed perfectly.  Back then our car was a station wagon.  Over the years we had several types of station wagons.  The first had two bench seats and an open cargo area in the back.  In one half of the cargo area, Mom made a soft bed where we could play or nap as we rode along.  It was easily done then as cars didn’t have seat belts and kids didn’t have to sit in special car seats.  It’s a wonder we survived!  That is not to say car seats didn’t exist.  My brother Mark sat in one.  It had two hooks that fit over the back seat and had a little steering wheel to play with and a tiny horn that beeped.  It’s main functions were entertainment and allowing the young child to sit high enough to see out the window. Safety was not an issue.  We even had a car bed with similar hooks to fit onto the back seat.  It was about the size of a small bassinet and was a perfect place for a baby to sleep as we rode along.  Another station wagon had three seats with a place behind the third seat for a little bed.
   We always had to pack food along with us.  I don’t believe I realized that it was possible to eat at restaurants along the way until I was nearly an adult.  Eating out would have meant wasted time and wasted money.  Dad had only two weeks of vacation time, so we wanted to get to our destination as quickly as possible.  Often we picked him up at work at his quitting time on Friday afternoon on our way out of town.  Our supper, eaten in the car as we drove along, was usually cold, fried chicken.
   We could hardly wait to get to Illinois.  First, it meant we were in a different state and thus closer to our destination.  Second, it meant we were closer to our favorite road.  Interstates were not built yet, so we made our way across country on roads of varying quality.  One road in Illinois must have been poorly constructed.  Years later, it reminded me of roads in Alaska which suffered from frost heaves.  Whatever the cause, the road was rather like riding on a roller coaster with numerous dips for the unwary driver.  We called it the whoop-de-doo road because every time we went over one of those dips, we all shouted ‘whoop-de-doo’ as the car became airborne at the top of each one.
   Once we were past that road, we were ready to quit for the night, but Mom and Dad wanted to press on just a little further. When it got dark, it was time to find a motel for the night.  I don’t recall any motel chains with their uniform rooms and services.  Each little privately owned motel had its own idiosyncrasies.  Mom wanted a clean motel.  Dad wanted a cheap motel.  We didn’t care as long as we weren’t in the car anymore. When we spotted a likely place, we’d wait in the car while Dad went into the motel office.  If an acceptable price was offered, we’d see Dad go off with the motel owner or manager to view the room to make sure it seemed clean and that the toilet flushed properly.  (I’m guessing Dad or Mom had had a bad experience with a toilet somewhere, so they always checked that.)  In one town where all the motels were filled, we stayed in the last room to be found.  Perhaps some of their motel phobias were not groundless as all the sheets and towels in the motel had been mended many times.  During the night, the bed fell down.
  Mom and Dad woke us up about 6 AM because the day was a’wasting.  Motels didn’t come with breakfast back then, so Mom would get milk and hard boiled eggs out of the cooler.  If we didn’t eat fast, we had to eat our breakfast in the car.  Cereal with milk was pretty sloppy in the car, so Mom gave us each one our favorite breakfasts, Gerbers Baby Oatmeal in paper cups.  It was gluey enough to stick to the spoon.  As a special treat, before the trip started, she let each of us go to the store with her to choose our favorite baby food dessert.  I always chose the plums with tapioca.  Mark always got chocolate pudding.  There were no such things as pudding cups back then.
  Usually Mom drove because she got car sick when she wasn’t driving, but when it was lunch time, she sat in the back seat, opened the cooler and started making our lunch.  Sometimes she made sandwiches ahead of time and sometimes she made them fresh on top of the cooler.  I don’t recall her buying lunch meat.  If she wanted roast beef sandwiches, she cooked the roast at home, then sliced it nice and thin before she packed it into the cooler.  Strangely I don’t remember my favorite sandwich, but Mom loved roast beef, sharp cheese and dill pickles.
   We didn’t have individual water bottles.  Maybe they didn’t exist yet.  We had to eat all our lunch and then we could have a drink of water from the gallon jug we always took along.
   The idea of wasting valuable cooler space with ice was unthinkable for Mom.  She bought large cans of apple juice or apricot nectar and froze them before the trip.  They kept everything else in the cooler nice and cold.  She’d take one can of frozen juice out each morning to thaw so that by afternoon it was a welcome treat.  We were famous for spilling things, so we weren’t allowed to have cups for our juice.  Instead, Mom used a punch can opener to make six holes in the top of the can and inserted a straw into each hole…one for each of us.  Then we passed the can around and took turns drinking our juice until the can was empty.  Of course, that also meant we had to watch our siblings closely to make sure they weren’t drinking longer than we thought they should.
   Mom packed some sort of little treat or toy for each of us to look forward to every afternoon.  I was always happiest when I got a book because that lasted the longest.  When it was too dark to read or when we were bored, we sang.  Favorites were “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “I’ve Got Six-pence”.  Dad always sang along enthusiastically even though he was tone deaf.  We especially loved to hear one that Dad ‘sang’ to us.  I have never heard it anywhere else and I don’t know the tune, because Dad was the only one who knew the song, and as I said…he was tone deaf.  For all I know it may have been a song my Grandpa Stephens made up.  We loved it because it told a story. It went:
 
Two old maids they lived together
They were not to blame
Just because the old girls
Couldn’t change their names.

To their room their came a burglar
Not to steal, but hide.
He had a cold, he coughed out loud
And one old maid, she cried.

“Watch out, there’s a man in the room.
He’s come to get me I presume.
Don’t give me the worst,
For I saw him first
I’ll have him I will or my poor heart will burst”

He thought he had met with his doom.
Each gave him a kiss.
He said, What is this?
I must have got in the wrong room.

   Driving through Nebraska was horrible.  One of the highlights of driving was coming to a new state line.  Nebraska was so long that it took the whole day just to get through it.  Cars didn’t come with air conditioning then, so summer driving was hot and miserable.  A couple of times we borrowed a little window air conditioner that was attached to the outside of the car window by pinching it in the window when it was rolled up.  One time it was 110ºF.  It was so hot that no one wanted to eat.  Finally we stopped at a gas station and filled the cooler with ice.  We spent the rest of that day just sucking on ice chips.  We entertained ourselves by reading Burma Shave signs such as, “The Queen of Hearts now loves the knave.  The King ran out of Burma Shave.”  or “I proposed to Ida.  Ida refused.  I’da won my Ida if I’da used Burma Shave. 
   I thought the highways went right through the middle of every town along the way.  Some of those towns seemed so anxious to be seen that the road wrapped around two or three sides of the town square before continuing on out of town.
   At last we got to Wyoming.  At least Wyoming had entertainment.  We watched for antelope.  Grandpa Freeman always gave each kid a dollar so treat the family to ice cream cones each day, so we always stopped at Little America for 10¢ cones.  Once we pulled over to the side of the road and just went running in the desert where we found bits of gypsum to collect.  At one place we stopped at a bluff above a town where we found petrified shark teeth. (shark teeth were actually in western South Dakota...but similar terrain)
   The end of Wyoming was a time of celebration because it meant we were in Utah at last and would soon be free of the car.  Usually we watched for Devil’s Slide as that meant we were getting close. Once in a while we were able to talk Dad into going down Logan Canyon instead where we always had to stop by Rick’s Spring to get a drink of cold water.
  Now with the interstate system the small towns are rarely even seen.  Finding a Dairy Queen for an afternoon ice cream cone is difficult.  Driving across country is faster and easier, but we now pass by small town America.  Sometimes I miss it.

Je me souviens - Meeting Annabelle

   After breakfast at the motel and a quick ‘merci’ to the breakfast attendant, it was time to brave the journey to Old Quebec where we had an appointment to meet our guide, Annabelle, at a hotel with a convenient parking garage.  The first challenge was to reconcile the instruction from our GPS, Lia (short for Liahona), and the street signs.  Roger was tasked with safely driving us while my role as navigator and co-driver, meant watching the street signs ahead and directing the driver.  The highway signs were directing us to “sortie” to the “ouest” and if the traffic slowed so there was no ‘circulation fluide’ or if there was a ‘risque de collision’ we had best be prepared for a quick ‘arret’.
   After a couple of inadvertent trips around the block, we found the parking garage and made our way to the lobby of the hotel where we were to meet Annabelle.  Knowing we had a 2 hour walking tour ahead of us, we made a quick stop at the doors marked ‘femme’ and ‘homme’.

    A few minutes later, Annabelle breezed in the door and greeted us enthusiastically.  She was definitely a proud Québecoise.  She took us first to the parliament building of Quebec. 

The exterior of the building featured numerous statues of famous French-Canadian historical figures and explorers.  “Sadly”, she told us, “they ran out of money to finish the building so were forced to go to the queen and beg for funds to complete the place.  Begging for anything from the hated English was like a dagger to the heart, but it had to be done.  The queen agreed to provide the necessary funds…with stipulations, namely, that the English royal crown be placed atop the building.  Quel dommage.  Nonetheless, they had to swallow their pride and agree.  Once the funds were given and the building completed, great care was taken to place a very large Quebec flag atop the royal crown.

   Annabelle was a fountain of information about the history of Quebec, dwelling often on the hated ‘Conquest’ of the French by the British.  It was clear that the Conquest was ever present in the minds of every citizen of Quebec, even though it happened in 1759.  Today their license  plates say, ‘je me souviens:— I remember.  There is no doubt in my mind what it is they are busy remembering.
   The narrow streets were full of tourists from the cruise ships that docked on the nearby St. Lawrence River. 
   It was clear from some remarks she made, that Annabelle’s family was very traditional Catholic, but that she herself was not religious.  At some point she caught herself making a negative remark about her religious roots and then worried that we might be offended by her remarks, so she asked, “are you religious people?”  We answered that we are religious but not of her family’s faith and that we were not offended. 
     “Oh…then you must be Protestant,” she said.
     “No, we are not that either.”
     “Well what religion are you then?”
     “We belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints…sometimes called Mormons.”
      We were dressed for a cool, rainy day walking around the city, in jeans, sweaters, hooded jackets, and sneakers.  Puzzled she asked, “but you are not dressed in long dresses and old-fashioned clothing!”  I think she had us confused with someone else!
    As we got to know each other we discovered that her father is the same age as Roger…yet thinking of her father she said, “You both seem so young…your faces just glow!”  So we gave her a nice tip.  Au revoir, Annabelle
   After our walking tour, we had a short time to wait before our afternoon bus tour, so we stopped at Le Chic Shack for a quick dish of poutine.  Since it appeared to be rather a yuppie restaurant, it served yuppie poutine.

    Shortly after lunch we were on the road to see the countryside around Quebec City.  First we stopped at Montmorency Falls, where we spent just an hour, which was fine with me since some idiot had the idea of   building a narrow walkway across the top of the falls as well as a rickety stairway that climbed up to that walkway.  I was glad not to have time to climb it because I would have had to turn down the ‘opportunity’.

We then visited the  Ile d'Orleans which is in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. The island used to grow much of the food for the city, and even now grows lots of strawberries. It also grows VERY expensive summer homes. We traveled all the way around the island, stopping to give the bus passengers the chance to buy lots of chocolate at the chocolate shop. Then we went to a copper art place and had a demonstration of how that is done before heading out to Ste Anne basilica to finish up the trip. After returning to Quebec, we ate dinner in the old city before coming home. Fitbit says we walked 5 miles that day.

Into the Woods - Fredericton, New Brunswick

  We arrived in Fredericton, New Brunswick, in the afternoon, tired from riding in the car.  A short distance from our motel we noticed a sign for a  botanical garden.  In late October, it seemed like a nice place to take a walk.  It was part of a small park, with a baseball field, the garden and a small wooded area. 
   After parking, we decided to go into the woods first.  There was no map, but it appeared that the trail through the woods would end up in the botanical garden near our car, so off we went.

   The woods were beautiful with tall spruce trees interspersed with the last colored leaves of the season.  The ground was bright with leaves that had already fallen.  As we walked, the sounds of city life quieted.  We heard squirrels scolding us as we walked along and birds chirping.  It was so peaceful, so beguiling.

   I kept looking for a path that went off to the left toward the botanical garden area, but our path just went straight ahead, so we kept walking.  A voice in my ear (okay…it was Roger) started to question where we were. “Maybe we should turn back.”  I looked back to see where we had come from and noticed that we had been walking slightly downhill.  I really did NOT want to walk back up that hill through places we had already seen, so we continued forward.   After half an hour or so we finally found a path to the left, but it certainly seemed like it was further than a path to the garden should have been.  Still, it WAS headed left, so off we went.  The voice to my side kept urging that we turn back, but I was determined, so we went forward, though the path was angling more and more sharply downhill. 
   The woods were still, very, very still.  I could hear no traffic sounds at all.  That seemed odd since the parking lot to the small botanical garden was near the corner of a busy intersection.  This path should NOT be this long!  The woods should NOT be this large!  Where was the city that surrounded the small botanical garden?  We had no choice but to go forward though the path veered more and more steeply downhill.
    Then I had a thought.  My cell phone would tell me where we were!   That is when we realized that the small botanical garden, went on for blocks, with buildings only on the edges of it. 
    Resolutely, we listened to directions from the phone and eventually found our way out to a busy road.   There we tried to figure out how to get back to the parking lot.  I didn’t like what I was seeing.  I didn’t like it one bit.  The route back on that sidewalk of the busy road was about 2 miles long and it was up a very steep hill.
   We had no choice but to climb the hill, of course.  The downhill course through the woods that had seemed so easy was less appealing.  Now we had to pay the price.
   Eventually we made it back to our car, exhausted and sweaty.
   Later, resting in our lovely air-conditioned room I started to think that this experience was so like our daily lives.  Sometimes we stubbornly insist on doing things our own way rather than listening to  the guidance of the Spirit.
   I remembered a scripture from Proverbs, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.” 
   When we listen and pay attention, our paths through life are easier and clearer to follow.  We are less likely to get lost along the way.  It was a good reminder.

(20 October 2018)

Meeting Nordet

   I knew it was a mistake the minute I saw her, but it was too late for second thoughts.  She was a tiny thing, currently from France, but of Turkish origin, elegantly dressed in the French colors of red, white and blue.  Her name was Nordet.  The nearby children laughed merrily at her antics, but I didn’t trust her….not for even a minute.  At first she was on her best behavior, but soon she couldn’t keep up pretenses any longer.
   I sat down, waiting for her to make her move, my palms sweaty with anticipation and my stomach churning.  What was she going to do with us?  How did I let myself get talked into meeting her?
   It started many months earlier when Roger announced he had a bucket list item.  He wanted to drive to France.  I laughed.  “You can’t drive to France,” I told him. Then he showed me the map.  There, just off the southeast coast of Newfoundland, was a tiny island group, called Saint Pierre et Miquelon, still a part of France.
  I ignored him, hoping this idea would somehow pass, but it did not.  He was wrong, actually, he could not drive to France, but he could WALK and drive to get there, so plans were made and off we went.
   We drove across the US and crossed into Canada near Detroit, Michigan.  It was an adventure.  I didn’t give Nordet a thought.  
     After days of driving through Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia I didn’t give Nordet a thought.  It was at Sydney, Nova Scotia, that we boarded the Blue Puttees, a huge ferry, named for  the 1st Newfoundland regiment, called the Blue Putteeswhich were decimated during World War I at the Battle of the Somme. We watched for an hour or so, as they loaded semi-trailers onto the ferry and wondered if there would be any room left for cars, but eventually we were waved aboard.  We parked on deck three.  I think the trucks were mostly on other decks.  It turns out that the ferry has over 1 3/4 miles of parking.  A few trucks were also on deck three with us.

   We were instructed to take everything we needed with us as the vehicle decks were locked while underway.  Huge chains hung down from the walls, waiting to chain down the vehicles…an ominous sign if you think about it.
   Deck seven had a lovely dining room where nice dinners were served.  Deck eight had berths, popular with people doing a night crossing, as well as a seating area.  Our seats were on deck nine.  Comfort all the way for us, with reclining chairs with a view out of the large windows.  We left Nova Scotia at 11:45 AM and arrived at Channel Port aux Basques about 6:30 that evening.  It was a pleasant journey.
    While there are a goodly number of roads in Newfoundland, only one, the Trans Canada Highway, goes all the way from Port aux Basques to the provincial capitol, St. Johns, on the other side.  Generally, the road is shaped like the letter C, tipped over onto its open side.  You get off the ship at one end of the C and travel mostly around the C, getting off a bit before the other end.  We liked the Newfie landscapes.  The first part reminded us so much of the area around Glennallen, Alaska.  The northern part of the route resembled the Kenai Peninsula and the final side was very much like the Denali Highway.
   We soon discovered Newfie food.  French fries drenched with gravy, hash browns and potato chips were served at every meal.  At grocery stores it was not unusual to see people with cart loads of potato chips.*  Of course, there was also abundant seafood…chowders, fish cakes, lobsters, salmon and others.  Hearty breakfasts everywhere always included a choice of breakfast meats…ham, sausage, bacon or bologna.

   Our last stop was at the little fishing village of Fortune.  Our hotel was beautiful inside with hardwood floors and a bed so tall that they provided a stool to help me get into bed.  The hotel had only eight rooms and no on site manager, so once they showed us to our room, they left us to our own devices.  As it turned out, because it was the end of the season,  we were the only customers there that night.  We had the entire place to ourselves.  At 10 PM, figuring that no other guests would be coming that night, I went out and locked the exterior doors.  I might add that the exterior of the Fortune Hotel did not match the luxury features of the interior.  It looked like a double wide trailer had been hauled onto the lot and skirted.  In fact, we both felt a bit off center when walking around inside…as if maybe the hotel was not quite level.

   The next morning when we awoke, there was a stiff breeze, but the Fortune Harbor was well protected from the elements.  Since we didn’t have to catch our ferry to Saint Pierre et Miquelon until 4:30 that afternoon, we had a leisurely lunch at Doc’s Diner.

Roger had delicious lasagna and I had their homemade chili.  We still had time to spare, so we went for a ride along the coast where we saw a sign that said, “Al Capone was here.”  Apparently during prohibition times, this was a hot spot for transporting liquor to smuggle into the US.
    At last it was time to go to the ferry terminal.  Since we were going to France, we had to have our passports with us.  I felt calm and at peace as we waited for the ferry to dock from the other side.  Many of the folks waiting to board were native French speakers.  One couple, of Basque heritage had their Labrador dog with them.  A French family with three small children and two strollers was also waiting.  Life was good.
     And then I saw her.  Nordet.  She was not at all like the Blue Puttees.  She looked like half a small, very small, ship.  In the front was an area with passenger seats.  The back of the ship, meant to hold maybe 15 cars, had only low sides.  Sadly, no cars could board the ship.  When the French government ordered Nordet and fixed up their dock to accommodate her, they did not talk to the Canadian government about it, so the Canadian side did not match the loading area which made it impossible to load any vehicles onto the ferry.

    Then we cast off.  The harbor was relatively calm and all was well, but we chewed a couple of ginger-based sea sickness candies just in case it got rough.  There was a large flat screen TV bolted to the wall where the crew showed us a movie about where to find life jackets and how to safely evacuate the ship.   When we were out in the open sea, the ship began to rock and roll.  As long as we were going frontwards through the swells it was doable, but we couldn’t go on that way.  Things were getting ominous.  Soon we had to change direction to get to Saint Pierre.  Now Nordet was running parallel to the swells which tossed us wildly around.  The crew members were able to catch the TV as it fell off the wall.  The little coffee bar fell apart and bottles of water skittered across the floor.  It was hot in there.  So very hot.   I grabbed the safety instruction card and began to wildly fan myself.  I must have caught the eye of one of the crew members, who came over to stand in front of me.  “Ere, Madame” he said as he handed me a paper towel doused in ice water, as he indicated I should use it to cool my face.  “It will ‘elp.”  It did help…but not for long.  That fickle Nordet was busy fighting with the waves.  Sometimes it seemed like the middle of the ship was trying to go one direction and the ends the opposite way.  She came clear up out of the water sometimes and then landed with a thump, but that wasn’t as bad as when she rolled from side to side.  The little French kids who were laughing merrily earlier were silent.  Sounds of retching surrounded us….and I joined them.  That chili was not so tasty the second time around.
   One crew member tried to tell us that this was normal weather, but later we heard they had been advised not to take the ferry out that day at all.  At last we reached Saint Pierre after an hour and a half of misery and terror.  By the time we left Nordet behind we were a bedraggled lot as we walked through the wind and rain. 
    We were so happy to see the car for l’Auberge Saint Pierre waiting for us there.  The driver shepherded us into the hotel as he mentioned that the ferry had been late.  Not surprising given the ride we had just endured. 
Our bed was soft and inviting.  We were safe
at last…..until we remembered that in just two days, we’d have to return to Fortune.

 *Note on the potato chips.  As we later  told our friends in Halifax about the cartloads of chips being sold in Newfoundland grocery stores, they nodded knowingly.  “Storm chips”, they said.  The weather reports were saying that high winds were predicted as the tail of Hurricane Michael traveled up the coast of Nova Scotia and over to Newfoundland.  People were stocking up on foods that didn’t require cooking in case the power went out.  Hence  “storm chips”.

   As it happened, we were to leave Saint Pierre on the Sunday afternoon ferry.  I was not looking forward to it.  Saturday evening we got a text, telling us the ferry would sail early Sunday morning instead of Sunday afternoon to get it to the mainland and back before the wind became too strong again.  If it meant avoiding another ride like we had getting there, we were more than happy to be ready early!  Fortunately the ride back was much less adventurous.
  
   

Dealing with Wyoming...Since 1856

   It was mid-afternoon when we pulled into Little America, Wyoming, for a quick bathroom break.  After all, they have the nicest restrooms around, with individual marble stalls.  A spot was open right next to the curb near the doors of the little gift shop and cafe.  Numerous children were thronging the playground, overseen by a huge statue of a bison.  Their parents were probably glad to let them stretch their legs and play before continuing their journey.
   We passed a man standing near the door of the gift shop as we headed directly to the back of the store to utilize those fine restrooms.  The entry to the store is a bit congested, with the cash register area to the right and a half wall, hung with numerous tourist trinkets to the left.  On the other side of the half wall were tables and chairs where folks could sit down to eat the food they purchased, but it is not visible from the entry because of the wall.  A number of people were standing there near the line to buy soft ice cream.
   The ladies room is lovely, with a small lounge area before the actual restrooms.  As I walked in, I smiled and said hello to an older lady sitting there with her cane.  The acoustics of the room were such that there was no such thing as a private conversation.  I heard a mother telling her child to wash her hands and another woman complaining that places like Little America should have emergency responders there at all times.  I thought it a strange comment since no one really lives there. When I went back through the lounge area, the lady with the cane was gone.  As we walked to the front of the store, I could see her sitting in the cafe area looking at the floor.  That is when I realized the people in the ice cream line were not really in line and the man by the door was watching intently for something.  I looked down at the floor and saw him..an older man with a beard, wearing shorts and sneakers.  His t-shirt was partially pulled up, exposing his belly.  A young woman in her twenties or maybe thirties was vigorously performing CPR on the man.  Suddenly the comment in the restroom made more sense.  Where DO you get emergency help in Little America, Wyoming. 
    After a few minutes we heard sirens in the distance.  As they pulled up in front of the building, the man waiting at the door waved them in to our location.  He mentioned it had been 18 minutes since they were called from the closest town of Green River.
    We didn’t stay to see how things came out but from what I saw, a positive outcome seemed unlikely.  We decided we’d help best by getting out of the way.
    Wyoming can take its toll on people and vehicles.  As a child, I never considered that as we drove through every other year when we went to visit our grandparents in Utah.  After the long drive through Nebraska, Wyoming was just another long, long time in the car.  I can think of only four positive highlights.  Whenever we got to Little America, we went in so everyone could get a 10¢ ice cream cone.  (Now they cost 75¢.)  It was before the interstate system, so at some point, out in the middle of nowhere, my  parents would pull over to the side of the road, open the doors and tells us to run and play out in the desert for 15 or 20 minutes before traveling on.  We enjoyed looking at sagebrush, which was foreign to us, as well as picking up bits of shiny mica.  We also watched for antelope and Burma Shave signs.  That was about it. Crossing the border into Utah was our biggest joy.
   I didn’t really pay much attention to Wyoming until some of our children moved to Colorado, which meant numerous trips through Wyoming to go visit in Colorado.  Suddenly the road became much more familiar.  Previously trips over that road had pretty much been in summer, but special occasions in Colorado meant driving it in other seasons, and some of those are not kind. 
    It should have been a warning…seeing the barricades along the side of the road with a sign saying to immediately exit the highway if the barricade was down.  Of course, we never saw them down in summer.  They just seemed like a some sort of useless road decoration.  I was pretty much in denial until that day when we checked the weather report to see the road conditions before leaving Colorado for Utah.  Conditions seemed doable, so off we went.  Shortly after leaving Cheyenne, the wind started to howl, causing near whiteout conditions from blowing snow.  We debated whether we should stop or not, but decided we were committed to continuing our journey.  We noticed that some large trucks had pulled off the road to wait out the gusts.  Maybe they knew something we didn’t know?  After Cheyenne there is really nowhere to stop until you get to Laramie, so we motored slowly and cautiously onward.  We were amazed that in spite of the road conditions, some trucks went speeding right past us.  Even a truck pulling a long horse trailer went whizzing past.  We decided to stop in Laramie to get gas before going on, but as we got to the exit to get gas, we discovered we had no choice but to exit there as the barricade was down.  They had pretty much shut the road right in front of us.  While getting gas, we chatted with the truckers at the truck stop who told us the road to the west was horrible, so we looked around and discovered a motel right there at that exit and went and checked in for the night.
   What is there to do in Laramie for most of a day while waiting for the road to open?  We went to the grocery store and got food for lunch and dinner.  Then we noticed an ad for a movie we had been wanting to see, so decided to do that.  On the way to the theater we toured the campus of the University of Wyoming and then went in to one of the most forlorn theaters I have ever seen.  I think we were the only customers, so we had our choice of seats.  We sat in the middle about two-thirds of the way back.  The row of seats about four rows down from us sagged badly in the middle.  I don’t know if the problem was the seats or the floor.
   When we returned to our motel we noticed the trucks lined up for about a mile along the road leading to the freeway exit with their engines running.  Clearly the truckers were planning a night in their trucks, ready to roll as soon as the barricade was lifted.
    By morning when we were ready to leave, the road was open again and the line of trucks had moved on.  Shortly after leaving Laramie, we saw some of the trucks and the horse trailer that had passed us the day before, blown off the road and on their sides.
    Another time the weather was okay, but shortly after leaving Cheyenne, the traffic was terribly backed up.  A check of the local radio station revealed that the pass leading to Laramie was closed by a horrible accident.  They had no idea how long the road would be closed.  A quick check of the map showed an alternate back road, so rather than sitting there for hours we decided to take the scenic route.  We were glad to have our lunch with us for the two hour journey to cover what usually takes about 45 minutes.
   If it isn’t one thing, it’s another in Wyoming.  Last October as we traveled through, the freeway was lined with emergency vehicles for about 50 miles.  Smoke was billowing across the road, causing reduced visibility.  We never saw the actual wildfire they were waiting to fight, but we were glad  to get past all the smoke.
   Of course there is more to Wyoming than traveling along I-80.  Sometimes we went to Yellowstone National Park and the Tetons.  As a child, Yellowstone seemed a magical place where mud bubbled, geysers spewed and bears mooched marshmallows from passing cars.  As an adult, it is still a place of wonder, but with a dark side.  Who would imagine that the whole area was really part of a vast,  ancient volcanic caldera that could threaten to blow up at any time?  It began to remind me of a scene from a Jonathan Edwards sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. 
   A few years ago we decided to do a bit of hiking in Yellowstone, so we first watched Old Faithful erupt and then set off through the geyser basin toward another geyser area where our ride was to pick us up.  As we walked we saw a wolf eyeing us from the other side of a small geyser and hoped that he was more scared of us than we were of him.  We made it a point to stop at Morning Glory Pool, a beautiful childhood memory, only to find it a dingy brown rather than the beautiful blue I remembered.

                                                                      Old Faithful

   All along the way, signs reminded us to stay on the designated paths due to the dangers of the thin crust in the geyser basins.  We were almost to our pick up point when the narrow path was blocked by two massive bison.  They were enjoying their place there and seemed in no hurry to leave.  We couldn’t walk out around them because of the danger signs.  We couldn’t walk near them because they didn’t seem all that happy to see us.  Eventually we had to do our entire hike in reverse and call our ride to get us at our starting point.  We didn’t see a single bear.
   Many years ago, my grandparents, Grant and Myrtle Stephens, homesteaded in a lovely mountain valley with deep, rich soil near Alpine, Wyoming.  They were married in November of 1908 and settled into their homestead the next Spring   The homestead was on the banks of the Snake River and included  land on each side of the river. The nearest post office was about 14 miles away and the nearest store about 20 miles either way, at Freedom, Wyoming, or at Irwin, Idaho.
   Grant says, "Before summer was through we had moved into our new house which we thought pretty nice. We lined it with lumber and covered it with shingles. I got the logs out and took them to the mill and had them sawed for $9 a thousand for the lumber and $5 for the shingles. We put in about 20 acres of oats. On our place there was many springs and several acres of high quaking aspens and of course along the springs were willows and the ground along the bottom was a heavy dark soil covered with big thick brush and was very fertile."
   By 1910 enough people had moved nearby that the Alpine area got a post office. Grant got the contract for carrying the mail for the first 5 years. He got $20.22 per month for making the 16 mile trip twice a week. In summer he rode a horse and buggy and sleigh or skis in winter. Grants says, "I had a lot of tough times while carrying the mail. Nearly every winter I would have to carry it on skis for several months. I remember one time I started out on the 2nd of January with a team and bob-sleigh. The snow was over 4 feet deep and snowing and blowing until I could hardly see the team so they could hardly follow the road at all." He eventually had to leave behind his sleigh and start off with just the horses. "I tied one horse to the other one's tail and started them for home. I was holding to the last horse's tail. It took me all that day to get home."
    Eventually their homestead was swallowed up in the Palisades Reservoir, never to be seen again, except in a painting Grandpa made from memory many years later.

                                                                Palisades Reservoir

                                                       Stephens Homestead Painting

   It should be no surprise to anyone in the family that Wyoming could be so treacherous.  It was in 1856 that our family first encountered difficulties there.  James Mellor was just 37 years old when he traveled through Wyoming with his wife, Mary Ann, and their seven living children as part of the Martin Handcart Company.  Their food supply was short and Mary Ann was still recovering from the birth of stillborn, conjoined twins during their journey.  They had no money for a team and wagon, so they  had only two handcarts to bring food and supplies for the journey.  Due to Mary Ann’s poor health, James and a ten year old, daughter, also named Mary Ann, pulled one handcart together.  Sixteen year old Louisa and 14 year old Charlotte Elizabeth pulled the other.  The rest of the children were too small to help.  At one point along the way, the mother became so weak and discouraged that she could no longer struggle along.  She sat down by the side of the trail and begged her family to go on without her.  When they couldn’t convince her to keep trying, Louisa stayed behind with her while the rest of the family trudged off along the trail.  Not knowing what to do, Louisa knelt and begged Heavenly Father for help.  As she walked back to where her mother was sitting she found a pie in the middle of the road.  She took it to her mother and fed a bit of it to her.  After a time, her mother felt enough strength to arise and try again.
   Their handcart company had left late in the season and was still on the high plains of Wyoming when winter weather came early, making the handcarts even harder to pull.  Their food supplies were almost gone. At night they slept huddled together for warmth.  One morning, Louisa found herself unable to rise because her long braids had frozen to the ground.  In their hurry to be on their way, there was no time to thaw the ground to release her braids, so someone just cut them off.  I suppose they are still part of the Wyoming landscape somewhere.  A rescue party eventually got them to their destination, but it was noted that 37 year old James, who started the journey with dark hair, arrived at his destination with hair as white as snow.

                                                             Louisa Mellor Clark


Seems like our family has been dealing with Wyoming…since 1856.

When I Go to Church

    One of our greatest joys in traveling around is when we are able to visit a local church congregation on Sundays.  The various congregations have the same beliefs and yet each congregation seems to have its own memorable differences. 
   According to local folks, I apparently spent most of my life in what they call ‘the mission field”.  I don’t understand this term since I have definitely seen missionaries here as well.  Maybe they just mean ‘far from here.’
   In addition to my home congregation growing up, which I have already written about, we frequently attended other Indiana groups as well whenever my father had to travel to them to speak.  Things in the outlying towns were definitely smaller and a bit more primitive.  In Martinsville, Indiana, where there was no local church building the local members met on Sunday mornings in the annex of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, because, after all, they didn’t use it on Sundays anyway.
    In Kokomo, Indiana, we met in a 2nd floor room owned by the Red Man’s Lodge which had no air-conditioning.  In the hot, humid Indiana summers that could be a problem!  It was just an empty hall which could be rented with wooden folding chairs.  A piano was also in the room but was not used unless we came  Then someone would meet Mom at the door to ask if she would mind playing.  For this purpose Mom kept a scrap of paper in her purse with numbers of the three hymns she knew how to play and that is what we sang.  The first floor was a pool parlor, so everything said and done in our meetings was to the clicking sound of pool balls hitting one another.  One day it was very hot.  That was apparently a problem for those wooden folding chairs.  It was about 110F and humid in that room which was enough to make the varnish on the chairs a little tacky which was entertaining when everyone tried to stand at the end of the meeting, only to find a wooden chair somewhat glued to their backs.
    One little branch met in a similar 2nd floor room, but instead of a pool parlor downstairs, it was the town’s volunteer fire department.  It was always exciting when the fire siren when off during a meeting.  There was no continuing when that happened.  We just had to stop whatever we were doing until the siren stopped sounding.
   As children we sometimes didn’t have any idea where we might wake up on Sunday morning.  Dad often had to travel to other areas for speaking assignments.  His areas could cover anywhere in central Indiana, parts of western Ohio and sometimes a town or two in eastern Illinois.  Mom would pack up our Sunday clothes and some breakfast food the night before and make up a big bed area in the back of our station wagon.  Sometimes we had to leave as early as 2 AM to arrive on time wherever we were going that day, so they’d just carry us kids to the car in our pajamas and tuck us in.  (Seatbelts were unknown in cars then.)  When it got light, Mom would feed us breakfast while Dad drove.  On arriving at our destination, she’d get us dressed and ready for church.  After the morning meetings we were often invited to eat dinner with one of the local families before returning for another meeting in the afternoon.  By early evening we would be headed home again.  After sandwiches, it would soon be dark, so Mom would tuck us in to bed again.  In the middle of the night we’d arrive back home and be carried into the house and put into our beds.  I never thought of it then, but now as an adult I wonder about my parents on these trips. They had to be leaving home about 2 AM and sometimes returning home 24 hours later at 2 AM again. Staying up and alert for 24 hours had to be hard on them….not to mention the fact that after returning home at 2 AM, Dad had to get up to go to work at 5 AM.  What dedication!
   When I lived in Germany I was not near any military bases, so I always attended one of the local congregations.  The first was in Krefeld in the Rhineland.  The family I lived with went to a different church, but were happy to drop me off for church on their way.  The father would take the children off to church while the mother stayed home to prepare their Sunday meal.  They dropped me off in front of a multistory apartment building downtown.  Only a small metal plaque near the door identified it as a church.  To get to church, I had to ring the bell.  Then whoever had gotten to church first, would release the lock from the church on the third floor for each person who entered.  That meant one church calling was listening for that bell and letting people into the building for church.  The meetings were actually held in a 3rd floor walkup apartment.  The main meeting was held in the living room area.  Then the various groups separated out to meet in the kitchen or bedrooms.  Probably 20 or 30 people attended.
   When I lived in Kiel, there was an actual church building, which was nice.  Conference Sunday was the only time church was in English if we wanted.  Most of the congregation preferred the German translation.  We were only able to hear one session of conference via some sort of radio setup.  The missionaries would listen carefully to see who was speaking, then sort through a stack of slides to find the picture of the speaker, and then project that picture onto the wall.  A rather scary Sunday was the one when another American friend and I were invited to speak…..in German.  It took me some time to craft my speech.  Then I had my German roommate go through it to correct it for grammar.  As a side note, I listened once to a speaker try to explain the difference between faith and belief.  It is a fine difference in English, but quite excruciating in German, since in German, faith and belief are the same word:  Glaube(n).
    One Sunday a group of Americans were visiting Copenhagen, Denmark.  We were all decent German speakers and one fellow also spoke Norwegian, but no one spoke Danish.  There was also another visitor who only spoke English and another who could do Danish and Norwegian but no English or German.  We all ended up on the back row and eventually arranged ourselves according to translation needs.  The Danish/Norwegian speaker interpreted to the Norwegian/German speaker who then interpreted to the German/English speakers who then interpreted for the English speaker.  What an adventure that was!
   After I was married we moved to Alaska.  As long as we stayed in the more populated areas, things were fairly normal.  There were a few quirks though.  I remember the puzzlement on the faces of the Primary children as they sang the song

“Oh What Do You Do In the Summertime”

Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?
Do you fish in a stream, or lazily dream on the banks as the clouds go by?
Is that what you do? So do I!

Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?
Do you swim in a pool, to keep yourself cool, or swing in a tree up high?
Is that what you do? So do I!

Oh, what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?
Do you march in parades, or drink lemonades, or count all the stars in the sky?
Is that what you do? So do I!

Verse one worked fine.  Alaskan kids certainly do fish in the summer.  At verse two things started to fall apart.  Keeping cool was not a problem.  In our town there was no pool at the time, so the kids had to learn to swim in a lake.  The lake was so cold that a bonfire was kept burning on the shore for the kids to warm up a bit.  Then came verse three where it got to counting all the stars in the sky.  With the long hours of summer daylight, stars were just not seen in the summertime!
   One Sunday I was asked to speak in another congregation which was about three hours away, so we got up bright and early and headed out to Glennallen, Alaska.  It was a small congregation, so they were happy to have outsiders come to speak once a month.  The other person on the program was coming from the town of Valdez in the other direction.  He never arrived at all since the pass between Valdez and Glennallen was closed due to weather, so one of the locals asked me what our topic was to have been then quickly prepared some remarks on the same subject.  When it was time to sing, the pianist hadn’t arrived, so I ended up doing that as well.  Since they knew there would be visitors that one Sunday a month, the whole congregation would meet after services for a potluck before they sent the visitors on their way.
   One Sunday we were on a family camping trip so decided to attend the nearest little church congregation.  We had directions to the place and a time, so off we went.  We were pulling our trailer which made getting ready a bit easier.  Once we were ready, we all hopped into our vehicle and took off.  Our directions soon took us off the paved highway and down a dusty, unpaved side road to Petersville, Alaska, an hour or so away.  Eventually we arrived, only to find that someone had forgotten to shut the screen window in the trailer, which meant the trailer was now full of dust!   Our directions led us to a small log building that was perhaps some sort of roadhouse.  The area is a winter playground, but we were there in summer, so things were pretty slow.  When we knocked on the door, we were greeted by a couple who ran the business.  They agreed that church was indeed held there and seemed happy to have us.  It seems that there were really only two families that belonged to this little congregation, and the other family was sick that day, so with our family of seven, and the Fishbacks, there were 9 of us there that day.   Since the Bible says, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”  I guess we were okay. Once again we became the featured speakers.  The kids all liked the part where refreshments were served after meeting.
   The church building in Chugiak, Alaska, was interesting.  It had been built on to….several times.  I think it was originally an old railroad building, now repurposed as a church.  Whenever they added on, the level was not quite the same.  They never added on to the sides, but just made the building longer and longer, like a long, wide hallway with many levels.  It was very important to watch your feet to avoid tripping!
   In Willow, Alaska, they met for a time in the old community hall.  We visited there a few times to help with a children’s program.  The most noteworthy thing about that building was the restroom.  Remember, this was Alaska, complete with winter snow and freezing temperatures.  If you needed to go to the restroom during your time at church, you really wanted to think carefully how necessary that trip was, because to get there you had to go get your coat, boots, hat and mittens on before going outside to access the bathroom, which was not particularly well heated.  Later they built a beautiful log church there which apparently was the talk of some of the locals.  One man assured Roger that there was an Olympic size swimming pool in there…and he knew it because he helped build it!  Having been in the building a number of times, I am pretty sure he was trying to describe the baptismal font, which was nowhere near the size of a swimming pool of any kind.
   In our travels between Alaska and the Lower 48, we have visited churches in several Canadian towns as well….Whitehorse, Edmonton, Calgary and an interesting meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  Saturday night we looked for where we might attend church in Winnipeg and found a couple of locations.  We set out in the morning to find one and noticed we were no longer on the outskirts of town.  We soon arrived at a lovely building and went in.  There were several notable events there.  The congregation had recently been divided into two congregations.  The one we were meeting in was abnormally diverse I think.  When I went to the women’s group, I found six languages represented there, so the women were busy translating back and forth so everyone would understand the message being given.  Since the leader seemed a bit frazzled in dealing with the music, I asked if she needed help.  She answered, ‘only if you can play the piano.’  Done.  I was the piano player for the group that day!  Our daughter also had an interesting experience, because it was Canada Day.  In the youth group she attended she got to learn the Canadian National Anthem that day.  One of our experiences there was not religious but certainly opened our eyes regarding the efficacy of the Canadian health care system.  One of the men came in excited to announce he would soon be having surgery.  When we asked about it, he said he’d started having severe heart problems about six months previously.  After medical testing it was confirmed that he needed bypass surgery.  A person needing bypass surgery in the US is pretty much set up for surgery within a week or less.  They are rarely allowed to leave hospital care until they have had the life-saving surgery.  This man, with the Canadian health care system, was told his surgery would be free, but they would schedule his surgery and let him know when they could do it.  Now, six months later, they had finally called back to let him know he was scheduled for surgery in just six more weeks!  I guess Canadian health care is free, but sometimes you get what you pay for!
   It is not uncommon when visiting another area, to find connections with local people.  At the time our daughter, Kristin, lived in Logan, Utah.  Our son, Blaine,  lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  We visited Kristin’s congregation a number of times and were acquainted with some of the members there.  One time when we were visiting our son in Massachusetts, we met some of our daughter’s friends from Logan, who happened to be visiting the same congregation we were also visiting in Massachusetts.
   It was dark on a Saturday night when we arrived in Marianna, Florida.  It is not a huge town and the church building was a bit off the beaten path, but we found it.  When we walked in we were asked how on earth we found them.  I told them we
looked them up on the internet.  One lady immediately said, “Well you must have googled for the friendliest people!”  The soft southern drawl was fun to listen to and let me tell you, that was a congregation that could sing!  They could easily put many larger congregations to shame!  Later, on learning where we lived, a sweet lady told us to be on the lookout for her grandson who was serving as a missionary in nearby Preston, Idaho.
   A week later we attended church in Sherman, Texas.  It was a missionary farewell for a young woman in the congregation, leaving to spend 18 months serving her Heavenly Father.  Where was she to be assigned?  Logan, Utah, of course.
   Like many congregations, the one we attended in West Virginia seemed almost as if there were assigned seats.  We knew right where to look for everyone on a Sunday morning.  This was a group that could compete with the one in Marianna, Florida, for being friendly. When we went back to visit 8 years after we left there, it was as though we’d never been away.
   Mostly we found that church is not a building.  Though we may have different cultural practices, in the end it is a group of people believing together and helping one another in their quest to live according to God’s plan. 
   

Christmas 2017

Christmas 2017

Dear Family and Friends,

  As we come to this season of particularly remembering the birth of our Savior, we hope each of you has had a year of learning, loving and growing as you make your way through life.  As we grow older, and hopefully wiser, we see more and more the truth behind the admonition  “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”  We have many opportunities for service in our family, community and church.
   We didn’t really intend this to be a year of travels, but it turned out that way.  In summer we went north to Alberta and British Columbia where we drove through the Canadian Rockies and over to Vancouver Island.  The scenery was wonderful, but could have been better without the smoke from the forest fires causing so much havoc in the area.  Everywhere people were stepping up to help those who had to be evacuated from their homes.  Even with the terrible things happening in our world today, there is much good to be grateful for.
   In late October we had some deliveries to make in Colorado and Kansas, so decided to just go ahead and make a trip of it.  We were fortunate to enjoy good weather while we traveled.  Since we are historical interpreters here, we made it rather a busman’s holiday by visiting living history sites in Indiana, (Connor Prairie), Virginia (Jamestown and Williamsburg) and Florida (Barberville Pioneer Settlement).  In Indianapolis we also visited various houses I grew up in and churches I attended.
   After Indianapolis we headed for West Virginia where we served as missionaries some years ago and were happy to see old friends there.  Next we visited family in Arlington, VA.  By then it was November, so we headed south to avoid potential bad weather.  We spent a delightful weekend with a childhood friend and her family in North Carolina as well as visiting the area of North Carolina where the Stephens family is known to have lived in the 1700s.
   We enjoyed a few days on the east coast of Florida with Roger’s sister.  Damage from the hurricanes earlier in the year was still evident.  While there we visited Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center where we got a surprise glimpse of the Orion Spacecraft being moved down a road.
    By then it was time to head back west, so we stayed in the south where the weather was nice and spent a few days in the New Orleans area.  I think the highlights there were going through the swamps looking for alligators and riding a paddle wheeler on the Mississippi.  We even saw cotton and sugar cane fields for the first time.
   By Thanksgiving we were back in Colorado to spend the holiday with three of our children and their families before heading back home.
   We met many wonderful folks along the way and enjoyed our time together.
   Most recently we experienced another milestone when our first grandchild was married, with another grandchild to do the same in just a few months.
   Now we wish each of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and look forward to hearing from you!


 

Hill Aerospace Museum

Today we went to to visit the Hill Aerospace Museum near Hill Air Force Base.  We had driven past the outdoor display a few times, but I have never been inside before.

It began with an exhibit about the Wright brothers and looked like a collection of double-winged kites really. A docent came to tell us all about what we were seeing.  Mike and Roger nodded knowingly whenever he started calling the planes by letters and numbers.  I said things like, "Oh!  look at that silver plane over there with the cool paint job."  I don't speak letters and numbers.

It's hard to know which pictures to take, but some of the choices were obvious.  We had to have a picture of "Jolley Roger" in honor of my jolly Roger, but really I think the plane was named for a famous fellow surnamed Jolley.

Then we even found a plane clearly named for his sister!

Some of the planes had rather ferocious paint jobs, like the grim reaper, or whatever that toothed thing with the red nose is supposed to be.

When I was about 7th grade I remember that our class was taken on a field trip to  a factory in Indianapolis that made Allison engines....and here was an Allison engine, made right there in Indianapolis.

Some of the displays portrayed life on the homefront during times of war.  The blue star banners were displayed in homes who had family members serving in the war.  Multiple stars meant multiple people serving.   I still have the banner made by my grandmother to honor her future husband during World War I.  Sadly, sometimes the blue stars were replaced by stars of gold, which indicated that a service member in that home had given his life for his country.

Some of the displays showed ways that women also served.  Here are shown women working to repair a plane.

The planes filled the hall, from ceiling to floor, practically stacked on top of each other sometimes.

Planes and displays were from many time periods.  We stopped to look at a display from the Vietnam era.  The picture shows Viet Cong gear and a certificate honoring a Viet Cong fellow for killing an American.

Roger remembered his time serving near Da Nang.  He didn't realize that that service would impact him for the rest of his life.

We also watched a short video presentation about the war in the Aleutians and the difficulties of flying under the severe weather conditions there.

One area had portraits  of a number of famous aviators.  I even recognized some of their names, such as Jake Garn  and  candy bomber, Gail Halvorsen

It is a well done museum and worth checking out if you are in the area.

Yellowstone Getaway

Pretty much on the spur of the moment, we had a chance to take a short vacation to Yellowstone Park and environs, so we took it!  Because of the make up of our group, we required 5 bedrooms, so this cabin in Island Park fit the bill nicely.  We could easily have fit a few more.  The loft area had a bedroom with queen size bed plus 2 more queen size beds in the more open loft area and also a bathroom.  The main floor had 2 more bedrooms, each with a queen size bed.  The basement had a large family room, 1 bedroom with a queen size bed and 2 additional bedrooms, each with 2 additional queen size beds for a total of 10 beds...as well as a total of 3 full bathrooms, 2 washers and 2 dryers....not to mention the hot tub out in the yard.   Plenty of room for the 7 of us!  Our group included the two of us, my sister and her husband, their son, a former exchange student of theirs from Japan and my mother.

Once we were settled into our cabin, we were ready for a day of seeing the sites in the park.  I remembered the park from my childhood, but the park of today seemed quite a bit different.  The bears are gone.  We saw not a one.  I am sure the bear policies of my childhood were far different as everyone then openly fed the bears and it was not unusual to see them hanging around the roads begging for handouts.  Those days are gone.

We got to the park entrance about the same time as a bajillion cyclists on their way to Old Faithful, so driving the narrow roads was an adventure all by itself.  Once we got past the entrance the most common site was the bison.  They were everywhere, so we had to be alert for cars stopping to view them as well as an elk herd.

Eventually we got to to one of the geyser basins and set out on a hike to see a variety of little geysers, hot springs and bubbling mud pots.  There were probably more foreign tourists there than Americans.  For certain there were a couple of tour groups....one Chinese and one German.

The sounds of bubbling mud, boiling water, and small spouting geysers sputtered along with the excited chatter of Chinese and German tourists.

Warnings were everywhere that we were to stay on the boardwalks and not venture closer to the various features as the crust is sometimes very thin and could easily break under the weight of a person, plunging them into boiling water, and yet, at one area we visited a group of bison trotted right across the dangerous area.  It made me wonder how often it resulted in boiled bison.  They are difficult to see in this picture, but are brown spots right at the center of the picture.

Eventually we made our way to Old Faithful where we first visited the Old Faithful Lodge.  I thought the interior would make a wonderful movie set for a Lord of the Rings movie.  I can't imagine the hours of work it would take to make such a large and fanciful building.

Soon it was close to time for the predicted eruption of the Old Faithful geyser so we made our way to the viewing area to await the show.  Soon the steam coming from the geyser started to increase and then little jets of water burst out, eventually followed by the tall bursts of steaming water that this geyser is famous for.  We actually saw it from two different areas as we went back later in the day and say it again from the other side.

After watching it a second time, we decided to split up.  The more mobile members of the group set off on a 2-3 mile hike up through the geyser basin while the more mobility impaired members of the group did some shopping and then headed to a different geyser area to pick up the hikers.  As we were skirting one of the upper areas of the geyser basin, a man pointed over to the nearby hillside and to our astonishment we saw a large gray wolf trot by.  I had never seen a wolf in the wild before.  As the trail started to wind through the trees, we came upon this big bison near the trail, but he seemed to be busy eating, so we ignored him and just kept on walking.

By the time we reached Morning Glory Pool, my feet were getting a little tired, so I was looking forward to getting to the car.  At the pool, the boardwalk trail ended and continued as a dirt trail through the woods to get to the other parking lot.  We were almost there when we came to two more bison right on the trail.  They seemed in no hurry to move on and we couldn't really got around them because of the uncertain nature of the ground if we left the trail.  At last, we had to give up and go back the way we came.  We were tired and hungry by the time we finally reunited with the vehicles.

Throughout the park was ample evidence of the devastating fires that burned so much of the park years ago.  I was happy to see that so many new trees have grown up to take the place of the burned ones.  We saw many trees like this one with the new trees growing up around them.  It's no wonder they fell down with such a shallow root system.

I was interested to read this sign.






I remember this event well.  I was in Utah at the time with my grandparents.  My grandmother said she felt the quake even from that distance.  Of course it was devastating because of the mountainside that came down and buried a campground full of people, eventually forming a new lake, called Earthquake Lake.

The last thing we decided to check out before heading home was Grand Prismatic Pool. From the surface it was not all that spectacular, so along with a number of others, we started hiking up the side of a nearby mountain until we came to an outcropping of rock which was not obstructed by trees so we could see what it looked like from above.

The bluest water is the hottest.  As it cools various types of algae are able to survive, causing the color variations.

On our way out of the park, we stopped at Lewis Lake to have a quick lunch before heading for home.

No ordinary cold lunch for us!  My sister quickly heated up the broth for french dip sandwiches which we enjoyed along with freshly sliced tomatoes.

On our way south out of the park we also passed the majestic Tetons before seriously heading for home.