Recovered from Vacation

I'm sure the 2 or 3 people that read this blog have been wondering what happened to me.  Well I had a great 10 day trip to Montana, Wyoming & Idaho.  We returned home last Monday evening. After playing pickleball each morning since then I have finally gotten unpacked, the house cleaned up, geocaches logged, & visited with the neighbors.

Now I can write on my blog and not feel guilty about other things not being done.
It may take several days to get it all posted. I like to do it in chronological order.

On the previous post I was telling you about going to the Farmer's Market with Marilyn.  This is a continuation of Saturday.

Well there wasn't just one market there were three.  The first was produce and flowers.  Marilyn knew several of the vendors.  The second market was an arts and crafts market.  Jewelry, knitting, & other crafts.  Then the third market was produce and plants again. 

Our walking lead us along the rushing Clark Fork River and on to the famous town carousel that was hand carved  in 1995.

The river was very wide and open. Perfect for fly fishing. The movie "A River Runs Through It" was a true story that took place near here. We also found a few geocaches along our walk. We introduced Marilyn to geocaching.

Marilyn headed towards the University of Montana campus. School wasn't in session so the grounds were pretty deserted but the campus was pretty. As we went by the football stadium you could see the big M on the mountain side where lots of hikers were headed up to say they had made the trek. We decided it wasn't worth it in the sun.

We headed back to the car and went back to Marilyn's house for homemade pimento cheese sandwiches for lunch. Yum!!

That afternoon we drove in and around Missoula and she showed us some of her favorite hiking spots and we hunted a few more geocaches. Then back to her house for drinks and dinner.

She was the perfect hostess with a lot of planning and preparation before we got there.  Snacks, fruit and meals were delicious.  She is very much into organic everything.  It was fun to hear her views on food, Montana and politics.  I was sure that she and Don had complete opposite view points on politics but the fact was they agreed on more things than I thought possible.  He would dig her and she did it right back.  We had a fun time.

After a fun day in Missoula we made plans to head up towards Glacier Park on Sunday.

Sunday 8/8/10

After a great breakfast of homemade banana bread, huckleberry muffins, eggs, cantaloupe and pressed coffee we were on the mountain road north of Missoula.  We had decided it wouldn't be possible to drive all the way to Glacier Park and look around in one day.  So instead we drove up to Big Fork, a resort community, by Flathead Lake.  They were having an art festival, which I enjoyed. We walked through the festival and found a nice little restaurant to eat lunch.

On the way back to the car Marilyn bought us some kettlecorn that we ate on the rest of the week.

On the road back to Missoula we passed through tons of flathead cherry orchards. They tasted a lot like the ones we use to get in High Rolls. Good thing we don't live close I could die from eating too many & you could pick your own. I could just taste them in a good old cherry cobbler. This country was packed with orchards, lakes, mountains, trees, streams and rivers. Beautiful country not found in Oklahoma.

I drove on this excursion so that Marilyn could act as our tour guide. She has explored Montana to a large extent and loves it and wanted to show us all of its beauty. She made us feel very welcome.

I reconnected with Marilyn when she live in Santa Fe. When she moved to Missoula about two years ago she invited us to come see her. I bet she didn't think we really would but we fooled her didn't we. LOL

We reminisced about family, growing up & kids. We had pizza for dinner, downloaded pictures and planned for the trip to Yellowstone on Monday.

Marilyn's House

Monday 8/9/10  Heading to Yellowstone
Marilyn had to head to work on Monday so we were heading out at the same time.  We left about 8:30, east on I-90, south 287 into West Yellowstone.

After grocery shopping, lots of restroom stops, geocaching, a cave tour, stop at Quake Lake and a late lunch we pulled into Worldmark West Yellowstone about 5:30.

Don spotted the Lewis and Clark Caverns on the way so we stopped and took a cave tour. This one was not as developed as most that we do and had some tight places to squeeze through. Nice formations.

We stayed in room 119 close to the lobby with a murphy bed for Marilyn when she comes on Thursday. I unpacked and planned to head out to YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK on Tuesday.

Continued tomorrow I hope!!