Returning back to normal

And, so now back to our regular life and routine.  I am back working on humanitarian projects.  I made 16 baby hats during the two-week trip. 

 

Now that I have access to a sewing machine again, I have been sewing up lap-quilt tops.  Below are six of them.  I think my favorite is the red and green one.  It all started with the center square that someone else made.   I found it in the unending collection of quilting squares that Laura Jost always has in her garage.  It didn't seem to match anything else she had so I just decided to make it into a quilt all by itself.  I found white and matching red and green fabric in the huge bins Laura has and there you go....
The blue and yellow quilt next to it originated as a pillow sham I made several years ago.  It was eventually replaced by a different bed spread scheme and it seemed silly to just have it folded up in the linen closet so I found some coordinating blue fabric and now it and it's companion sham are lap quilts.





I have continued to make pottery.  I pay for six 2 1/2 hour sessions at a time and, in this set, I have managed to throw 16 pieces.  

Only the front two pieces are mine in the photo below



 
 all but the far right piece are mine.  The weird"bowl" in front is actually a lid to the piece on the left in the top photo.

I will glaze everything in two weeks and start a new set of sessions the end of August.  I am taking requests since I really don't need any more pottery of my own but I don't want to stop going.

Pulling weeds has been my primary yard activity.  Picking has been secondary.  The vegetable garden looks lovely but I have yet to pick many green beans and squash.  The butternut squash plant is trying to take over the yard.  I guess I expected it to grow like a yellow or zucchini squash plant.  Nope.  I am picking tomatoes but I am not overwhelmed with them.  And, we picked about 8 peaches from one of our three trees.  That was it. 

Movie report:  
Flash of Genius - the last of my Greg Kinnear movies.  The story of the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper.
Lady in the Van - Maggie Smith poignant portrayal of a homeless woman
Concussion - This surprised me how good it was.  I put it in my queue on Steven's recommendation and I was going to watch it over two days but ended up staying up late to finish it in one viewing. 
All three films were based upon true events.

Both Steve and I had dentist appointments this month.  Both of us have had to make return visits - Steve to have two of his crowns put back in (!) and me to have a filling re-anchored.

Part of this week, we have had Lucy with us.  Thursday evening, Elise and I drove to the half-way rendezvous at Jonesburg to pick her up and she will be with us until this evening. 

 

 It has been delightful to have her here.   We went swimming Friday morning. 
We picked flowers



She has played dress-up (with stuff she brought).


And, she has dressed up her little toy dog with some of Sadie's clothes. 

 This dog of hers is battery operated and is like a real dog.  Sadie was certainly fooled at first.  Fortunately, she didn't try to attack the toy but she was still really curious about it.  Having just one grandchild here has been easier on Sadie.  And, Lucy has been very sweet with her.  In fact, I think Sadie likes Lucy.  She licked her nose last night and she always wants to be on the bed when I read stories to Lucy every night.  Its pretty cute.....

And, so July 2016 comes to a close. 

Vacation 2016 - Devils Tower, Mount Rushmore, and the drive home

As mentioned in the last blog, our Thursday night was spent in Graybull, Wyoming in this cute little straight-from-the-fifties motel.....

Here is our rental car parked near our room.  Notice the beautiful hanging baskets of flowers!
 

we had a cute little table just outside our door where we ate our breakfast

 Then, on to Devil's Tower....


It is really an incredible sight!

 

 Surrounding Devil's Tower is beautiful forest

 

 And, a huge field of prairie dogs!


Mount Rushmore was about two hours later....


 Also, impressive!
 

 
 And it had a really cool tunnel on the highway leading into Keystone, the closest town to Rushmore.
 

 We ate dinner at a Culvers in Rapid City and then drove to Kadoka, South Dakota to our hotel for Friday night.


 It was really in the middle of nowhere!

In fact, most of our drive on Saturday, July 9th, was through the middle of nowhere as we angled down on state roads towards home. 


 Happily, it was FLAT - no scary mountain roads.


Just outside of Kadoka we saw landscape that was probably the tail end of of the Badlands area (never having been to the Badlands, I can't be sure but I bet it is so)

 

Even so, there a certain beauty to South Dakota and Nebraska

 In Lincoln, Nebraska, we made a short visit to Alan Williams, one of Steve's friends from high school band.  I first met Alan when I joined the Cougar Band carpool.  

Here we are with Steve holding a baritone that Alan gave to Steve!

Alan's life and Steve's, after BYU marching band, took remarkably similar routes - service in the Army, law school.  Alan stayed in reserves longer than Steve and he also practiced law both in Utah and in Nebraska.  It wasn't until a couple of months ago, however, that the two reunited after over 40 years. 

Elise's birthday was on July 9th so we stopped to celebrate her birthday dinner at a Texas Roadhouse in St. Joseph, Missouri.  We admired a terrific thunder storm from afar over southwest Kansas City.  We avoided being sideswiped by a careless semi.  And we pulled into our driveway right around midnight.

Dogs were SO happy to see us!

(Bones is in the photo because Sarah stayed at the house to take care of the dogs and, of course, brought her dogs with her.)

So, our journey was now over.  What a trip!

Vacation 2016 - Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks

 

 Well.....this is a long one.  I just couldn't stop taking photos.   These are just a fraction of what I took and I have not even gone into Elise's collection!

We left in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to get Beckie to the airport by 4:30 and then make our way up to Grand Teton National Park.  I did manage to snap out of my half-asleep stupor as we traveled and take a couple of pictures along the way.

 
 Northern Utah sunrise


 rest stop along the Snake River in Idaho


Downtown park in Jackson, Wyoming.  Almost there.....

And......


Ta Da!  What a majestic sight!  These peaks dominate every view in the Tetons.  Incredible.

Campsites in the Tetons cannot be reserved and I was afraid we would not get up there in time to snag a spot so I reserved a campsite outside the park about five miles from the east entrance at the Fireside "Resort".  Resort can hardly describe the average, run-of-the-mill RV park we found with postage-stamp sized tent sites.   And the fetid, mosquito-ridden "pond" not more than 10 feet away from us.  The wind was blowing so hard when we arrived we dared not set up the tents and leave them.  But, when we returned for the evening, we wished for the wind because it kept the mosquitoes at bay.  Here is what the site looked like:


Ours are the two tents closest to Steve.  You can see how close our neighbors were on either side!
And you can see the water behind Steve in the picture below. 

 

After dropping off our tent and other camp equipment, we drove into Tetons. This would have been around 2:00 in the afternoon.  We were completely exhausted so our first stop was to park next to String Lake, roll down the windows and take a nap.  Then, we explored.....

 

 

 
This is String Lake.  People were actually swimming in what looked to be frigid water.  Outside temperatures were cool so it could not have been a refreshing dip.


We took a small hike....


Keeping our eyes peeled for bears (we DID have our bear spray)

 But found pretty evergreens, instead.






We visited nearby Jenny Lake...





On our way back to our campsite, we saw our only bear of the whole trip.  He was across the Snake River at the Oxbow Bend area.  You can bet he drew quite a crowd!



By nightfall, the mosquitoes AND the wind had died down and we retired early and got a decent night's sleep (thankfully, our neighbors were quiet).  But, we awoke to a light drizzle. 


 The Tetons that morning....

No way were we going to try to fix a hot breakfast in those conditions.  We knew were were going to be setting up our tents again that night (Yellowstone DOES allow reservations and we had one for the Madison Campground) so we just hurriedly packed up everything and said farewell to the "Fireside Resort".  We drove up to Coulter Bay on Jackson Lake and had breakfast at a nice restaurant in that area.

You can see that the sun had come out by then....

After eating, we continued driving north and bid our goodbyes to beautiful Grand Teton National Park....    (this is the north end of Jackson Lake)


And hello to Yellowstone National Park....



We spent all of our day on Wednesday visiting various thermal aspects of the park

First to Yellowstone Lake that has an area of hot springs...






and even one out in the lake itself!


 And then on to the Old Faithful area.....



  In addition to Old Faithful, we also got to see the Beehive Geyser erupt which only erupts twice a day.

 And we walked around geyser row viewing MANY geysers and hot springs of all types and sizes.

 

 









 

 and, right next to these barren, hot spots are beautiful forests and streams!



 We had a much better campsite Wednesday night.  (although, for some crazy reason, they had run out of firewood to buy! We were actually allowed to scavenge for wood and we even found a huge buffalo chip to burn).  We found enough to cook both dinner and breakfast, thankfully.

 
  It got down to 34 degrees that night!

 Thursday, we drove up to Mammoth Hot Springs
 
 


and saw our only elk.  I think they were actually domesticated ones raised to sit in this median for all the tourists....



The rest of our day on Thursday was spent looking at amazing waterfalls.....


Yikes, Elise.  That is a bit too close to the edge!


This is Tower Falls...

And this is Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone



Between Tower and Canyon, we had to drive up over a mountain (big surprise) where we had to share the road with people on bicycles.  CRAZY!  First of all, to ride a bike straight uphill. Second, to ride on a road with no shoulder nor bike lane.  Third, to require cars to veer into the oncoming lane to pass.  I am surprised there aren't more accidents from bicyclists. 

As we prepared to leave the park, we made one more stop to see the Dragon's Lair Geyser...



 And, we saw a bison.  We saw one earlier near Canyon.  And we saw a herd off in the distance just before Tower.
'
We were rewarded with one last bison as we drove out of the park.  He was just cruising down the road!



Even after we left Yellowstone, the views on our way to Cody, Wyoming were just stunning (and the road continued to be windy and scary)



We ate dinner in Cody and then drove on about another hour and a half to our motel in Greybull.