To everyone who asked (here and in personal e-mail)-- Yes, I am OK. Wait...! I am as ok as I get-- we are not counting mental health here! LOL
Saturday afternoon Joe and I decided to head over to Missoula for a Geocaching event there. It was a pizza party and many of our geocaching friends were going to be in attendance. Missoula is about a two and a half hour drive from Great Falls. Joe was driving, so I could just sit and relax and watch the scenery go by. We had plans to stay in a local motel overnight before heading to Helena on Sunday.
The event (party) was tons of fun! Joe and I met some new cachers (people who geocache), caught up with many others, we both won a gift, ate some awesome pizza, and had a very good time. If anyone takes a trip to Missoula, Mt I would suggest the buffet at Freemo's Pizza. Excellent food for a great price.
Near the end of the evening, as people were heading out into the cold and snow, we were asked by a family we are friends with where we were planning on staying the evening. We told them the name of a local hotel, but that we hadn't checked in yet. They offered up their home and their good company for the evening. We accepted, and finished off Saturday evening visiting with Peggy, Ron, and Peggy's mom, Mary. They opened a very nice bottle of Port wine, then when that was gone, Mary produced Blue Martinis for everyone. We were all tucked into bed by midnight. SO, a Saturday that started out very badly, ended very nicely.
After leaving our friends home, Joe and I headed to Helena, which is about two hours from Missoula. Since the route takes us close to Deer Lodge, MT (only 15 miles out of our way); we dropped in to see Jeff and Barb. They are friends who moved recently from Helena. Jeff had been called in to work, and his wife Barb had decided to take a trip to Missoula to go shopping. We ate a good lunch (prepared by Jeff since he is a cook at a local restaurant), visited with him for a minute or two, then, while we were there, dropped in to see "Mom", Jeff's mother.
After about an hour in Deer Lodge, we were back on the road to Helena.
Once in Helena, I had to take my couch frame over to my dad's wood shop for repairs. This is part of a whole 'nuther post (tomorrow, maybe?) that started with this post on "Diary of a Stay at Home Mom's" blog about cleaning out the couch! Stay tuned for THAT story!
A late Sunday afternoon nap, then a visit to another friends home for about an hour, followed by a salad for dinner (had to redeem myself after pigging out on pizza the evening before). I picked up my now FIXED couch at about 8pm, loved the puppy for awhile, then off to bed.
All in all, a very good weekend, once I got the body moving! I saw many friends that I had not seen for months, travelled a total of 458 miles (and didn't have to drive at all!), and got my couch repaired when I was thinking it was "done for"!
Showing posts with label Geocaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geocaching. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Last Weekend, Part 2
Lets see... where was I? Oh yeah, lunch time at Nickle Charlies.....
During our meal, we tried to contact all our contacts in the Kalispell area. Mom and Dad had gone up the day before, but they weren't answering at their motel; Heather wasn't home; and no answer from our friends Stacy and Trudy. We were really looking forward to seeing them because Stacy had been in a very serious motorcycle accident in July and we wanted to see how he was doing.
Since no one was around, and with the advent of Voice Mail so everyone knew we were in town, we decided to go find a few more of the Kalispell area geocaches. There was one in particular I really wanted to check out. It was called "Fairy Steps". Apparently the founder of the city, Charles E. Conrad, is buried in a mausoleum in the city cemetery. Yeah, that is the ordinary part. This cemetery is on a pretty big hill, and his plot is in a prominent place at the rear. Behind this, is a narrow staircase that had been carved out of the bedrock into the steepest part of the hill. Who did this, or why I don't know. My kids had been there, but I had never seen it. It was my kids who told me the place is haunted, and the fairy steps are a magical place. It seems that if you count the steps down, you will not get the same number going back up. I was trying not to fall down the steep, narrow, moss and pine needle covered steps so I did not count going down, but got 99 on the way back up (afterwards, I read on the cache page that some counted 101, 100, or even 105.. but never did get matching numbers for down and up... crazy, huh?).
At the bottom of the steps you find yourself in a whole different place. We found the cache, then explored a little. There is a trail that we followed for a bit. This is what it looked like:
Remember, this is in the middle of Kalispell! Wal Mart is nearby, Highway 2 is close (one of the busiest highways in Montana) and houses are so close, but hidden, to the left that you can hear the people. To the right is the hill with the cemetery on its top. I don't know if this is part of the original cemetery land, but it is a really neat piece of nature hidden away. It was even cooler looking about 30 seconds before I snapped the photo. The sun was shining through the trees lighting up the dust motes and making the yellow leaves almost glow. Very magical looking! The sun would not be coming out from behind the clouds again for quite a while, so I took what I could get.
It was about this time that our friends called and invited us over to their lovely home.
We visited Stacy and Trudy for a few hours, catching them up on the happenings of Rockin' the Rivers and our lives, while they caught us up with Stacy's rehabilitation. When we last saw him, he was in a wheel chair after breaking his ankle (surgery to put it back together), and the opposite leg. This time he was up and about with the use of crutches and occasionally a walker while in the house. At the time of his accident they were in the middle of a remodel of their upstairs. They have been living in the ground floor, apartment style, for over a year now. I'm sure they will be glad once the house is finished, and once Stacy is back to 100% mobility. The answer to everyones question "will he ever ride again?" is "Of Course!". He already has a brand new motorcycle, and it is a beauty!
The evening concluded with my mothers 65th birthday dinner at Capers Restaurant. We all met at Heather's house, and after playing with Lucas and Talia a bit, we headed to eat. Capers is a VERY nice place, the food was excellent, and the wait staff very good. The only downfall was it is not a place to take a 6 year old, and a 1 1/2 year old. They did good, considering. Talia was a bit bored, but really enjoyed her dinner of marinara with penne pasta. She had never had fresh snap pea pods and she ate them by breaking them open and eating the peas from the shells. She thought they were the coolest food she had ever had. Lucas was, well, one and a half! Banging anything he could reach on the table, crying if said noise maker was taken out of his reach, and doing his best to show his mama what she was headed for when he reaches the "terrible twos". His best performance of the evening was reaching for, then spilling a full glass of soda and ice all over Heather not more than 10 minutes after we sat. She was cold, wet, and sticky for the rest of the evening, but hid her discomfort well.
Mom had a good time, and really enjoyed her dinner of gourmet steak and potatoes. Joe had the same, dad ordered scallops, Mike (my son in law) chose buffalo sausage lasagna, while Heather and I shared a meal of Dungoness crab stuffed trout. Dessert for mom, Heather, and me was a very rich brownie served with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream with a raspberry liquor sauce that was lit at the table. SO COOL! It was awesome! Dad had a creme brule', Talia a scoop of ice cream with caramel sauce, while Joe an Mike passed on dessert. All the adults had coffee to end the meal. It was not normal restaurant coffee, either. It was, like everything else, very good, and served with a pitcher of real cream.
I didn't realize until later that no one took a single photo of the evening.
Sunday morning broke with clear blue skies and bright sunshine. Joe and I were itching to go to Glacier Park, if even for only a little while. We met my ex-husband, Harry, for breakfast at a place "where the locals eat" named Cislo's. They have really good, but cheap, breakfasts there. My ex and I get along these days. We caught up a bit, shared some funny stories of our past with Joe and before we knew it, an hour had passed. There was only one more thing to do before we dropped Harry off at his place.... he had to help us grab a geocache! We had "found" it the afternoon before, but neither Joe or I are nimble enough to climb trees, and that is exactly where this cache was. Harry had fun pretending to be 14 instead of 41, and got some first hand knowledge of what Geocaching is all about.
Leaving Harry at his place, we crossed town to say good-bye to Heather and her family. By the time we left there, it was after 1:00pm. We were finally done with the visiting and able to do our own thing.... GLACIER! Yippie!
Before even heading into the park we took a side trip back to the Old Belton Bridge. It was sunny, so a little nicer for photos. I took this one right outside of the truck door:
Then I crossed the bridge and took this one (below). Right around the far bend of the river is the town of West Glacier and the new bridge where you enter the park.
Now, all this time we were thinking the park service had closed most of the road that goes through the park. That road is commonly known as Going To The Sun Highway. At the check-in station the ranger told us that the road was open all the way to the top of Logan Pass. Oh Joy! We hadn't expected that! This was to be the last day the road would be open that far, with the winter closings to be in affect Monday. Our original plans were to find a quiet place along Lake McDonald to relax while taking in the beautiful scenery and clean, cedar scented mountain air. With just a look at each other, plans changed and we headed to the pass. We did pass McDonald Lake on the way, so we stopped and took a few fall photos. Here is one of my favorites:
I will post other photos of this trip. They are too gorgeous not to share. The drive was beautiful, but relatively uneventful. We always enjoy any time in the park, no matter where we are. The views change with the weather and the seasons. I have taken photos of the same mountain peaks many times and each time they have a different character.
The skies were still bright and sunny, with little popcorn clouds gathering on the peaks. After the rain the day before, the air was clear and visibility was at least 10 miles. As we neared Logan Pass, a low cloud was cresting the saddle from the East. It was pretty cool to watch as it first backed up against the mountains, then overflowed over the pass's low point. At one point, the peak of Mount Oberlin was above the clouds. Quite striking, and I had never seen it quite this way before. When we got to the top we were in this low cloud (now fog-- LOL) and it was quite obvious that this cloud was much colder than all the air surrounding it. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees from what it was only an eighth of a mile down the road. It had moved in fast, but there was no wind. In the clouds wake, it left a strange fairy land like landscape. All the trees, plants, light poles, etc were decorated with hoar frost on their eastern-facing side. Here is a flower stalk in the visitors center's garden covered with it:
All the crystals point to the east, while there are no crystals on the western facing side. Isn't mother nature neat?
During our meal, we tried to contact all our contacts in the Kalispell area. Mom and Dad had gone up the day before, but they weren't answering at their motel; Heather wasn't home; and no answer from our friends Stacy and Trudy. We were really looking forward to seeing them because Stacy had been in a very serious motorcycle accident in July and we wanted to see how he was doing.
Since no one was around, and with the advent of Voice Mail so everyone knew we were in town, we decided to go find a few more of the Kalispell area geocaches. There was one in particular I really wanted to check out. It was called "Fairy Steps". Apparently the founder of the city, Charles E. Conrad, is buried in a mausoleum in the city cemetery. Yeah, that is the ordinary part. This cemetery is on a pretty big hill, and his plot is in a prominent place at the rear. Behind this, is a narrow staircase that had been carved out of the bedrock into the steepest part of the hill. Who did this, or why I don't know. My kids had been there, but I had never seen it. It was my kids who told me the place is haunted, and the fairy steps are a magical place. It seems that if you count the steps down, you will not get the same number going back up. I was trying not to fall down the steep, narrow, moss and pine needle covered steps so I did not count going down, but got 99 on the way back up (afterwards, I read on the cache page that some counted 101, 100, or even 105.. but never did get matching numbers for down and up... crazy, huh?).
At the bottom of the steps you find yourself in a whole different place. We found the cache, then explored a little. There is a trail that we followed for a bit. This is what it looked like:
Remember, this is in the middle of Kalispell! Wal Mart is nearby, Highway 2 is close (one of the busiest highways in Montana) and houses are so close, but hidden, to the left that you can hear the people. To the right is the hill with the cemetery on its top. I don't know if this is part of the original cemetery land, but it is a really neat piece of nature hidden away. It was even cooler looking about 30 seconds before I snapped the photo. The sun was shining through the trees lighting up the dust motes and making the yellow leaves almost glow. Very magical looking! The sun would not be coming out from behind the clouds again for quite a while, so I took what I could get.
It was about this time that our friends called and invited us over to their lovely home.
We visited Stacy and Trudy for a few hours, catching them up on the happenings of Rockin' the Rivers and our lives, while they caught us up with Stacy's rehabilitation. When we last saw him, he was in a wheel chair after breaking his ankle (surgery to put it back together), and the opposite leg. This time he was up and about with the use of crutches and occasionally a walker while in the house. At the time of his accident they were in the middle of a remodel of their upstairs. They have been living in the ground floor, apartment style, for over a year now. I'm sure they will be glad once the house is finished, and once Stacy is back to 100% mobility. The answer to everyones question "will he ever ride again?" is "Of Course!". He already has a brand new motorcycle, and it is a beauty!
The evening concluded with my mothers 65th birthday dinner at Capers Restaurant. We all met at Heather's house, and after playing with Lucas and Talia a bit, we headed to eat. Capers is a VERY nice place, the food was excellent, and the wait staff very good. The only downfall was it is not a place to take a 6 year old, and a 1 1/2 year old. They did good, considering. Talia was a bit bored, but really enjoyed her dinner of marinara with penne pasta. She had never had fresh snap pea pods and she ate them by breaking them open and eating the peas from the shells. She thought they were the coolest food she had ever had. Lucas was, well, one and a half! Banging anything he could reach on the table, crying if said noise maker was taken out of his reach, and doing his best to show his mama what she was headed for when he reaches the "terrible twos". His best performance of the evening was reaching for, then spilling a full glass of soda and ice all over Heather not more than 10 minutes after we sat. She was cold, wet, and sticky for the rest of the evening, but hid her discomfort well.
Mom had a good time, and really enjoyed her dinner of gourmet steak and potatoes. Joe had the same, dad ordered scallops, Mike (my son in law) chose buffalo sausage lasagna, while Heather and I shared a meal of Dungoness crab stuffed trout. Dessert for mom, Heather, and me was a very rich brownie served with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream with a raspberry liquor sauce that was lit at the table. SO COOL! It was awesome! Dad had a creme brule', Talia a scoop of ice cream with caramel sauce, while Joe an Mike passed on dessert. All the adults had coffee to end the meal. It was not normal restaurant coffee, either. It was, like everything else, very good, and served with a pitcher of real cream.
I didn't realize until later that no one took a single photo of the evening.
Sunday morning broke with clear blue skies and bright sunshine. Joe and I were itching to go to Glacier Park, if even for only a little while. We met my ex-husband, Harry, for breakfast at a place "where the locals eat" named Cislo's. They have really good, but cheap, breakfasts there. My ex and I get along these days. We caught up a bit, shared some funny stories of our past with Joe and before we knew it, an hour had passed. There was only one more thing to do before we dropped Harry off at his place.... he had to help us grab a geocache! We had "found" it the afternoon before, but neither Joe or I are nimble enough to climb trees, and that is exactly where this cache was. Harry had fun pretending to be 14 instead of 41, and got some first hand knowledge of what Geocaching is all about.
Leaving Harry at his place, we crossed town to say good-bye to Heather and her family. By the time we left there, it was after 1:00pm. We were finally done with the visiting and able to do our own thing.... GLACIER! Yippie!
Before even heading into the park we took a side trip back to the Old Belton Bridge. It was sunny, so a little nicer for photos. I took this one right outside of the truck door:
Then I crossed the bridge and took this one (below). Right around the far bend of the river is the town of West Glacier and the new bridge where you enter the park.
Now, all this time we were thinking the park service had closed most of the road that goes through the park. That road is commonly known as Going To The Sun Highway. At the check-in station the ranger told us that the road was open all the way to the top of Logan Pass. Oh Joy! We hadn't expected that! This was to be the last day the road would be open that far, with the winter closings to be in affect Monday. Our original plans were to find a quiet place along Lake McDonald to relax while taking in the beautiful scenery and clean, cedar scented mountain air. With just a look at each other, plans changed and we headed to the pass. We did pass McDonald Lake on the way, so we stopped and took a few fall photos. Here is one of my favorites:
I will post other photos of this trip. They are too gorgeous not to share. The drive was beautiful, but relatively uneventful. We always enjoy any time in the park, no matter where we are. The views change with the weather and the seasons. I have taken photos of the same mountain peaks many times and each time they have a different character.The skies were still bright and sunny, with little popcorn clouds gathering on the peaks. After the rain the day before, the air was clear and visibility was at least 10 miles. As we neared Logan Pass, a low cloud was cresting the saddle from the East. It was pretty cool to watch as it first backed up against the mountains, then overflowed over the pass's low point. At one point, the peak of Mount Oberlin was above the clouds. Quite striking, and I had never seen it quite this way before. When we got to the top we were in this low cloud (now fog-- LOL) and it was quite obvious that this cloud was much colder than all the air surrounding it. The temperature dropped about 10 degrees from what it was only an eighth of a mile down the road. It had moved in fast, but there was no wind. In the clouds wake, it left a strange fairy land like landscape. All the trees, plants, light poles, etc were decorated with hoar frost on their eastern-facing side. Here is a flower stalk in the visitors center's garden covered with it:
All the crystals point to the east, while there are no crystals on the western facing side. Isn't mother nature neat?
We spent more time in Glacier Park than we intended, and ended up driving to Helena in the dark along the Seeley-Swan highway. At least the deer weren't out in force that evening. We got to my house at about 11:30pm. Quickly crashed and left the house early to be back to the daily grind of employment in Great Falls.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
It's WHERE?! (Busy weekend pt.1)
The Old Belton Bridge; West Glacier, MT
This past weekend, I got to do just about all my favorite things. I went geocaching, went to Glacier Park, visited with our friends Stacy and Trudy, saw my daughter and her family, and had a wonderful dinner with my parents, Heather, her husband Mike, my grandson Lucas, step-granddaughter Talia, and my best friend Joe. All this was packed into just a normal two-day weekend! *whew!*
I normally get to take Saturdays off, but Joe has to work 10-3. Usually our fun part of the weekend starts after he drives from Great Falls to Helena to my house. I use Saturday mornings to 1) sleep in, and 2) laundry. Anyone who knows me, knows I DO NOT do mornings very well at all. Some would say that is an understatement...! Keep that in mind for later.
My mother's 65th birthday was on Friday. One of the things she wanted was for the family to get together for a nice dinner at a nice restaurant. She knows Heather, Mike, and their young family cannot afford to travel to Helena so she and dad took a road trip to Kalispell. Mom also asked if Joe and I could head north, too. Krystle was the only one who couldn't take the time off from work (she is a manager at a local pizza place). Joe received clearance to close the shop for a day, so the plans were finalized.
I stayed in Great Falls on Friday night so Joe and I could get an early start. Too Early! 6AM early! The only consolation to me was we had plans to try and find some of the newer geocaches that had been placed along our way. The small town of Valier seems to always have at least one cache hidden, but we have always been on such a time schedule that we have not been able to stop. On Saturday we arrived in Valier just as the sun was rising. The cache was an easy find and we were back on the road not more than 10 minutes later. The day broke with quite a few clouds, but not much wind and the temps were awesome for mid-October. Our next stop was in East Glacier. This was another easy cache to find, but we were distracted by this cute little friendly dog who came to play in the park with us. He was SO adorable! I was petting and talking to him while Joe found the cache... signed the log, re-hid it, and moved on about a mile down the road. Right outside of East Glacier is a sculpture of two Indians sitting on their horses made out of automobile parts. Yeah, sounds tacky and trashy, but it is actually pretty cool. This particular geocache has just been placed, but had not been found yet. Joe was looking in one area while I looked in another. I ran my hand into a hidden area and there it was! In goecaching "speak" I was the "FTF" of this cache. That means First to Find. Some cachers strive to be the FTF-ers of all the new hides in an area while others don't really care but get a smile if it happens. I fall into the later group, said "Yeah! First to Find!" and then we went on our way to the next.
The next two were at the top of Marias Pass. One was really easy, and only a few feet from the truck door. The other one was at the top of a mountain. We had to hike up, huffing and puffing, along a pretty steep trail that was made worse by being very muddy. It had snowed the previous weekend, then warmed up just enough to melt. Some places the mud was thick and sticky enough to suck at the shoes--- YUCK! The joy of adding another cache find to our list kept us going. Joe made the find on that one. We sat on a nearby log, caught our breath and enjoyed the cool mountain air while sifting through the cache contents and signing the log. Nothing I couldn't live without (meaning no rubber duckies) so we put everything back, re-hid the cache, and headed back down the mountain to continue on to Kalispell.
Our next stop was in West Glacier. It was there that we looked for, but did not find, our only bum-cache of the weekend. I have to say that searching through wet, prickly juniper bushes is not my idea of a good time, so we only half-heartedly looked.
Since we were already off the highway, I asked Joe if he would mind taking a slight detour to the old Belton Bridge for a few photos. He likes scenic areas as much as I do, so off we went. I had only a few photos left on my film 35mm SLR camera, so decided to finish those off. As soon as we got out of the truck, it began to sprinkle. While we were snapping photos of the river, the old bridge, and fall foliage the rain really began to come down. I clicked off my last two photos and we headed back on our way.
We picked up a couple more geocaches along the Flathead river between Columbia Falls and Kalispell along the Columbia Falls Stage road. It had been quite a number of years since I had been on this particular road. I really enjoyed the change of scenery!
Once in Kalispell, we claimed our hotel room and headed to lunch. Yep, over 200 miles, and caching along the way...still made it to town at 12:30. Maybe there is something good to getting up early! Notice I said "Maybe".... LOL
Lunch was at Nickle Charlies. Very good sandwiches! While we were there, we caught part of the Montana Griz whooping the pants off of Sacramento State. All in all, a very good morning. Stay tuned... the afternoon and evening in my next post.
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