So What Happened Wednesday?

Wednesday started like every day has, breakfast on the deck, leisure cups of coffee and high level planning for the day's adventure.  But first Janine had to brief me on the "The Case of the Polite Crickets."  She insisted I include in this blog that Montana crickets are far more polite than their brothers and sisters in Florida. It seems Florida crickets either hate her personally, or they hate the world in general,  In any event when evening comes and thoughts turn toward sleep, Florida crickets increase their level of noise and invite their cousins the cicadas, and other insects as well as different frogs to join in a chorus of annoying noises that make sleep impossible.  Contrast this with Montana crickets who chirp quietly and pleasantly during the day, and at evening grow even quiter and notify the other insects that it is time for bed and they retire until morning when they gently wake you from sleep.  Hmm, polite crickets, Ok, moving on.

There are lots of animals around the lake,  daily we see dozens of deer, lots of wild turkeys and have seen two bears, or maybe one bear on two different days.  There are buffalo, elk, pronghorn antelope, eagles and of course, the herd of yaks. One oddity is the preponderance of cherry trees. Almost every house, and these are very high end houses, has a cherry orchard on the property.  Maybe this accounts for all the deer, they seem to be always munching on the cherries.  Janine has been disappointed by not being able to buy the cherries for canning, it seems we are a couple of weeks too soon for the harvest.

After breakfast, we headed for Glacier National Park.  Janine was the driver, David the naviagtor, Jeannie the designated animal spotter and me, well I was a passenger.  The entrance to the park is about an hour from the house.  A portion of the trip runs along mountain streams and everywhere are the moutains. Suprisingly there is still a great deal of snow on the peaks. After entering the park we stopped and bought ice cream, three huckleberry cones and one chocolate.  If we were in Tibet, I think Jeannie would be eating chocolate. With bathroom breaks and ice cream out of the way, we went further into the park.  The road steadily gains altitude, it is rightly called "the Road to the Sun."   People such as Dave's parents that have visited all of the national parks, proclaim Glacier the most beautiful.  From the more than two dozen I have seen, I would not argue. It is breathtaking.

We have lots of pictures.  Dave has a new camera, it records everything in a panoramic 180 degree sweep, both still shots and high def video complete with sound.  He MIGHT  have spent one or two waking hours not playing with that damned camera and is obsessed with trying to figure it out.  Thus far the video is great, BUT... it is all upside down, every single frame.  We are working on the editing process.  I am going to try and add some pictures to the blog as soon as I can download them. Mine will the ones that are right side up.

The park is a series of sweeping vistas encompassing waterfalls, glaciers, snowfields and rushing rivers.  there are fields of wildflowers everywhere.  The waterfalls begin as glaciers, then morph into snow, finally into rushing streams that continue for miles until they plunge hundreds of feet into rivers.  In a word, they are spectacular. We entered thru the west gate and exited thru the norteast gate.  We then drove along the park perimeter back to the gate we had orignally entered.  It was about a two hour trip but was never boring just too much too see and absorb.

Two years ago when I was up here, my friend Earl Vaughn told me about a place called the "Spiral Spoon."  It is a souvernir shop selling what? Wooden spoons. I did not find the shop on my previous trip but we did this time. We stopped in and visited with the owners, one of their relatives had a truck break down and my friend Earl, who is arguably crazier than me, drove up from Dublin, Georgia to bring the guy home.  They remembered the incident and Earl well, they asked me to say hello, so hello podner from the folks at the Spiral Spoon.

We ate near there at a joint called "The Whistle Stop," , Jeannie and Dave had bison, I had  BBQ pork, (not the best choice I ever made) I don't remember what Janine ordered but she had two side dishes, that cost so much Dave had an attack, then he over tipped, and Janine said,,,,ah hell never mind, I forgot exactly what transpired but it was funny,  All in good fun, like this whole trip, laugh and enjoy, times like this don't come along everyday.

We got home relatively early in the evening, grilled steaks on the deck, swapped stories watched the colors on the water change and blend and turned in. We had another rainstorm late in the night, but somehow it just added to the ambience of a magical place.