Banff-Jasper Adventure – 2

The Howe Ridge Fire overshadows Glacier’s vast beauty

As a theologian, I believe in eschatology, the study of the end,  Today I saw that in a different way. We ended our day driving Glacier’s Inside North Fork road to see what we could see before tomorrow’s big day on the legendary Going to the Sun Highway. What we dominated our view was the Howe Ridge Fire. The last thing in our day was the news that the fire has closed the west half of Highway. This is our third close up fire in two days!

There’s no chance it will open this morning. The fire fighters can’t get to it and the water drops have been ineffective. But all is not lost. We can go around the south end of the park and see the east side of the highway and then head on to Calgary tonight.

Cyndee meets her bear!

I am a fan of uneventful travel filled with God’s beauty – and that was our day. The biggest event of the day was the ladies skipping a rest stop, thinking they could make 71 miles over the pass only to discover that the promised rest stop was closed! So we stopped at Liberty Casino, enhancing our stop with ice cream and taco socks. We traveled around Flathead Lake and up the valley, going 70 miles per hour (well maybe a little more) on two lane roads. It’s Montana! We grabbed lupper (Huckleberry Pie for me! and Cyndee’s first view of a bear) before we checked into the motel in Hungry Horse, MT and ventured into Glacier.

The ethical question of the day also involved a potty stop in the Montana wild: To pee or not to pee — That is the question. Can you offer help for our perplexity and haudralic distress?

Banff-Jasper Adventure – 1

We are off on our Banff/Jasper adventure. It’s a place I have dreamed about for 60 years and now we are on the way. The day took us alongside two active fires, one in the Hood River area of I-84. The other was just blowing up beside the 395 freeway (we got baked as we drove by) going into Kennewick. It was driven by high wind and became huge as we drove through Tri-Cities.

Lunch with Nicole and Joy was a treat in between the two fires.

The biggest adventure was getting a room after I discovered that my Pinehurst reservations were in North Carolina rather than Idaho. No Vacancy was all I heard as I called place after place from wind blown table at the Travel Plaza. Finally I found a room and made a reservation at 4:51 pm (can we spell expensive??). We arrived at 6:30 to find the reservation was in corporate database, but not in the property computer. That began a half hour investment by Gillian, my new best friend, as she worked and worked to honor the reservation even though she had no rooms. Finally she cancelled a reservation where the credit card declined payment – but only after trying repeatedly to contact that person. So we have a very comfortable room for our first night even if a lot too much stimulation for my travel anxiety disorder.

Hungry Horse Montana and Glacier National Park tomorrow.

50th Anniversary Gathering

Our whole family gathered in the last weekend of July to celebrate our anniversary. We had already celebrated with our beach trip on March 22 – no one else was invited to that event! Our Friday night dinner included Ann/Jack, Liz/Tom, John/Shilrey (our and their spouses), Donn/Susan/Elizabeth/Michael, David/Samantha/Nicole/Joy and Cyndee (our children with our last name and their families), Christopher/Jonette/Katie (our sorta son and his family), Gelayol/Brian (our Persian granddaughter and her family- Griffen and Audrey dropped by on Saturday), Bethany/Jesse/Emily, Judah/Noah (our daugher and her family). It was a fun Lebanese feast of celebration. Donn, Lizzie, Michael, Ann, Jack joined Sherry and me in going to Cannon Beach on Thursday to suprise Cyndee on her birthday and see Mo’s, walk to Haystack Rock and see Ecola park. 

The climax was Sunday evening when many friends joined us at Grace to remember our wedding and fulfill Sherry’s desire to cut the cake. Somehow in the 5 days we had to plan our wedding back in 1968, we missed that. With the help of our biological grandchildren, we did that. The video is here.

Joy looks beautiful in Sherry’s wedding dress!
Lizzie models Sherry’s wedding dress