kmkat and her kneedles

Vacation, part 6: fails.

Note: I wrote this last summer after we got back from vacation in an effort to gove complete and unbiased reportage. I wouldn't want you to think our life is all unicorns and pixie dust ;-)  Somehow I never managed to publish the post, but I want to get it out there before we leave again so here you go. I gave you a paraphrased version of part of it last week -- feel free to skip over that bit if you want.

In every adventure, there are bits that... fail.

Here is their story.

At 6,000 feet, the weather in June in northern Wyoming can be problematic for camping.

 

Later that same afternoon...

 

That is not snow on the picnic table. That is hail.

 

When it rained, we discovered that the seals around the roof windows had shrunk a bit in 22 years. The leaks could be fixed easily with a tube of silicone rubber... which we didn't happen to have with us.

This worked just fine, however.

 

The scenery in Glacier NP is spectacular.

 

 

The *guard rails* along the edge of the road? Rather less so.

 

That rock wall is perhaps 16" high, just tall enough to ensure that your vehicle flips as it goes over the side of the precipice.

This is actually not a particularly unnerving view out my window. Although I was always edgy when our lane was on the outside of the road rather than next to the cliff wall, it was less frightening if I could see something -- anything! -- between the so-called guard rail and the bottom of the canyon. In this case, the trees and brush on the side of the mountain were just visible over the guard rail Vehicle Tripping Device. When there was nothing but air showing? I found I could not even look out the windows. At all. I had to turn 90˚ in my seat, away from the edge, and knit.

 

EZ's famous quote ("Knit on, with confidence & hope, through all crises") had never meant as much to me as it did on that road.

Happily, Smokey kept our vehicle on the road where it belonged. On another day when we were exploring a deserted back road that had a similar drop-off next to it, he drove in the middle just so I wouldn't be so nervous. Yes, he is a sweetie.

This is what happens when one's US#5 Addi Turbo gets caught under the van seat and one is too impatient to free it carefully, instead yanking it loose with careless abandon.

 

The good news is that the needle still works just fine. I don't know if it affected my gauge, but I'm pretending that it didn't. Note: I am still using that needle, no problem, mon.

In other broken news, we brought along a back scratcher because we both find it inutterably satisfying to scratch that out-of-reach spot in the middle of the back.

 

Some white glue and this one was good to go again.

And then there was the day that a chipmunk in the woods was taunting Lucy, who was inside the screen house with me. The dog, of course, attempted to launch herself through the screen.

I managed to fix that one.

 

One day Smokey was working on the van and had to open a blister pack of something when the scissors slipped. I will spare you any pictures of the gouge he took out of his little finger. You will have to be satisfied with this.

 

That night he woke up to discover that the bandaid had slipped off and he was bleeding. In order not to bleed all over the bedding he improvised with a paper towel and some packing tape.

The finger has since healed fine, probably due to the fact that he had to wash dishes a few times during the trip. Nothing cleans out a wound better than soaking it in dishwater for ten minutes or so.

Vacation!

We are gearing up to leave in a couple weeks for another month in the mini-mini-motorhome this summer, three weeks in the Big Horns of Wyoming and a week in the Black Hills. #2 Son and GF will be joining us for a few days in the Hills. They asked if they could vacation with us -- is that awesome or what?

I did not post much about last year's vacation, so I thought I would show you something memorable. Something that very nearly gave me a heart attack in Glacier National Park.

The Going To The Sun Highway in Glacier has spectacular views. There is mountain on one side of the road... and a precipice on the other side. I was fine as long as we were on the mountain side of the road, but when the precipice was next to my window I FREAKED! It surprised Smokey as much as it surprised me; I have never had any particular fear of heights.

I found that it was easier to breathe if I didn't look out the windows. It was even easier if I turned sideways in my seat and looked at the floor. Remembering Elizabeth Zimmerman's famous aphorism, Knit on with courage through all obstacles, I pulled out my knitting and got busy/distracted.

My view was this:

instead of this:

   

because if I looked at that, I would also see this:

 

Yikes.

More photos.

Where: The Lounge, Glacier Park Lodge.
When: Late June, 2010.
What: Lunch; a bacon cheeseburger, salad, and a Fat Tire beer. 

In spite of just having eaten dinner, I have succeeded in making myself hungry again.

Dogs on vacation.

Dogs don't talk much, so this post is mostly pictures. And smells.

"That is one funny-lookin' dog, guys."

There were dogs everywhere in Buffalo, Wyoming, mostly in the backs of pickup trucks. We spotted these two in the parking lot of the diner where we had breakfast one day.

They spotted us, too.

And then they spotted our dogs in our van.

"Hey, you two dogs in the van there? This is our parking lot!
You can stay, though... for a price."

* * * * *

We met a couple of sweetheart dogs at the private campground where we stayed near Glacier. They belonged to the campground owner, who was a sweetheart of the human kind.

The dogs; meet Pork Chop (white) and Mattie (brown).

I think one was a bull mastiff (perhaps; this is all very hazy in my memory b/c it was (omg!) three months ago). The other was a breed I don't remember. Both of them were big softies, the following photos notwithstanding.

If you ever want to camp near Glacier NP, I cannot recommend this campground highly enough. Unlike nearly every other private campground on the planet, it has sufficient wooded space between and among the sites to afford a bit of privacy and nature. The owner seems to have created that impossibly tiny sweet spot between chaos and a place so highly regulated one feels as though it is 1984. There was an almost complete absence of signs telling the guests what they Could.Not.Do, yet when we complained about the people across the road from us who left their dog inside their RV ALL DAY WHILE THEY WERE GONE and it yapped for 12 HOURS STRAIGHT, the situation was remedied forthwith. If you follow the link to the website you can see the photo that convinced Smokey this was the place where he would be totally comfortable. (Yes, I mean the  photo of the dogs on the couch.)

* * * * *

Now, some more portraits of our dogs on vacation.

"You aren't going to eat all that yourself, are you?"

"I am sure there is a critter out there somewhere..."

All quiet on the Lucy front.

It's a dog's life.

"Look, my job is to worry about you. Don't bother me right now, I'm busy."

(at the rodeo) "Why do those big dogs have men on their back? What are they chasing?
Are those dogs gonna be okay? Can I help? Pleeeeaaassse?"

"You go ahead and nap, Dad. I'll keep watch..."

"...for a little while."

Not a whistling swan, not an elk, but a...

Columbian ground squirrel. Despite the ringed tail, the resemblance (and the fact that two different commenters told me it was a CGS) is conclusive.

My guy on the left, a photo from the web on the right.

 

Thanks to Erika and that other reader who also identified my rodent as a Columbian ground squirrel. (I can't remember her name and her comment seems to have disappeared, but she is a former MT resident so knows whereof she spoke wrote)

Vacation, part 1: wildlife.

We saw moose.

 

Yeah, you have already seen that one, but it is too good not to use again.

We saw antelope.

That is suburban Buffalo, WY in the far background.

Hey, lady, whatchew lookin' at?

We saw mule deer.

 

This one was grazing in the Big Horn mountains a couple miles above our campground. They are hilarious when they run -- their legs turn into springs and they bounce, stiff-legged, over the ground.

We saw buffalo.

 

Oops. That one was in the Many Glacier lodge.

We saw live buffalo:

 

This was just a small part -- around 500 - 600 -- of the entire herd of 2,500. The rest were in another valley not accessible to us.

See this guy?

 

He was headed toward us. He -- or his identical twin brother -- was shortly thereafter was observed approaching the little road we were on. After we reached the end of the road a few minutes later, turned around, and were driving back, we looked for him again. This time, he was so close we could have reached out of the car and touched him.

But we didn't.

We kept driving and I didn't even get a photo. He was so close we didn't want to alarm him -- he could have done major damage to us if he so chose.

Here is where we saw the buffalo:
 

Can't read the sign? Try this:

 

The buffalo are on Ted Turner's gazillion-acre ranch. We were spending the day with my cousin and wife, who retired near Bozeman, MT. Their property abuts the ranch.

 

But we were not trespassing; we were on the public road that leads to a public campground. Because the latter is on the ranch, Ted has to let the public use the road.

Ted Turner anecdote related to us by my cousin: TT has a lovely house on the ranch but was unhappy with the view; he couldn't see the mountains well enough. So he had the top of a low ridge removed. All better now.

We saw ground animals.

 

Four or five of these were grazing on the lawn at Many Glacier lodge. Anybody want to educate me as to what they were? Prairie dogs*? Whistler swans? Elk?

We saw more unidentified animals outside Many Glacier lodge.

 

Well, upon closer inspection we can probably agree the lower part of the left one is a bear and the right one is a raptor. But in person I was too blown away by the visual even to attempt identification.

* None of the prairie dogs in Wikipedia have stripes on their tails like these.

No pictures. Let's talk books.

Still on vacation. Weather beautiful. Drove through Glacier NP yesterday; glaciers not impressive. Global warming triumphing.

The laptop that might allow me to post photos is working again (yay, Smokey!) but refuses to accept photos from my camera (boo, Microsoft!) or to go online (boo, generally!). I'm typing this two-fingered on Smokey's netbook, sitting at a table on the patio of the campground office and taking advantage of their wi-fi. If you are really, really good I'll post a photo someday of how picturesque this spot is.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about the books I brought along. A couple of you asked about them; I deliver :)

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux. I was reading this before I left but was not finding it terribly interesting. It's not a bad book, and it is well-written; no idea why I was so lukewarm. Once I gave up on it, the pace of my reading picked up.
Nemesis by Jo Nesbo. Police procedural translated from the Norwegian. Coincidentally, the NYTimes book review mentioned this author in its recent article about publishers' mad scramble to find more Scandinavian mysteries to follow up on Steig Larsson's three best-sellers. This one was okay, a bit depressing, 2-1/2 stars out of 5.
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke. Another ho-hum murder mystery, 2-1/2 stars. I tend to agree with the Washington Post review at the linked Amazon page.
The Last Child by John Hart. Another 2-1/2 stars; I had to read the Amazon synopsis to remember it, even though I read it last week. The 13-yo protagonist was not believable to me.
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. Started it, decided I didn't want to read a novel whose narrator is such a loser. But it did seem entertaining; I may try this one again.

Those are the ones I read, or at least tried to read. Still TBR:
Just Kids by Patti Smith. Memoir.
The Innocent by Harlan Coben. Coben's books are always good.
Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA by Maryn McKenna.
Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn. Murder mystery set in South Africa in the 1950s.
The Odds by Kathleen George.
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman
Muse and Reverie by Charles de Lint  I am just starting this author's books. (Thanks, Chris!) I like his writing  -- urban fantasy at its best.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher.

A couple books to help out the vacation knitting:
Knit One Below by Elise Duvekot.
Knitting from the Top by Barbara Walker.

And finally, just for fun -- not. I am the chair of the governing committee for the county-owned nursing home, and I felt the need to learn as much as I can.
Planning for Long-Term Care by United Seniors Health Council
The Complete Legal Guide to Senior Care: A Plain English Guide to Making Sense of the Residential, Financial, and Medical Maze by Brett McWhorter Sember
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Long-Term Care Planning by Merilee Driscoll

There you have it. Now it is time to stop writing about books and go read them*. TTFN!

* For those of you at home keeping score, we have been on vacation for ~3 weeks and have 1 week left. I brought along 18 books and have read 5. What is wrong with this picture?

Drive-by posting.

We have left Wyoming and the Big Horns behind and are now camped just outside Glacier National Park in Montana. When Smokey fixes the computer that shot sparks (of course he has  all the parts he needs with him) I'll be able to catch you all up with photos. TTFN!