We’ve known Nancy and David since… May. Yes – this May, this year, on this trip. We were introduced to them by our friends Mark and Linda at our Lake Powell rendezvous and it seems like we’ve been friends for years. Or, as Nancy suggested, perhaps we knew each other in another life…
There is a certain ethereal plane of friendship where you can pick up a conversation as though you’d just left the room for a few minutes, even after a gap of several years. This is how it feels when I get back together with Dana, my roommate from college, and his wife Muffin, both of whom I’ve known for a few more than forty years.
For that reason, alone, our visit was wonderful. Food and conversation, catching up, exchanging stories, just hanging out and visiting with old friends like these were still the old times. Fantastic! I’m not going to make this post about that, though.
The smoke cleared! Mostly. For a little while. Where we happened to be. Yee-hah!
Leanne and I bonded as ski buddies at Sugarbush, a dozen-plus years back in time. About 11 years ago she and the kids up and moved, first to Spokane and then to Tacoma, where we finally caught up with each other. Leanne hasn’t changed a bit! The kids, however…
We’ve seen the Pacific! Ok, Puget Sound. It’s salt water!
Having skirted the worst of the smoke, we entered the North Cascades National Park from the west, up wind from the nearest wildfires. Although the air quality was improved – it smelled like a 24/7 campfire but it didn’t hurt to breathe – the skies were still smoky and views obscured. Oh, and add to the wildfires a record breaking epic heat wave torturing the Pacific Northwest. We’d figure out how to turn this into an adventure…
We left Glacier intending to head west toward North Cascades National Park. We meandered through western Montana, following the Clark Fork Valley through pretty pine forests, reaching Lake Pend D’Oreille in Idaho. The pine forests gave way to rolling hills and eventually those amber waves of grain (the wheat belt of eastern Washington). Cresting a hill, we got our first view of the Columbia River Valley in the form of Lake Roosevelt, behind the Grand Coulee Dam. Following the river, which retains a certain natural beauty despite having been heavily engineered for power generation and irrigation, we passed through miles of fruit orchards surrounded by green hills and more sagebrush.
Early explorers called the area around Glacier National Park The Crown of the Continent. If we’d have been here first, we’d likely call it something similar. The hiking in Glacier National Park was mind-blowing. The glaciers, and the broad, deep glacial-carved valleys and long, skinny, clear lakes, were unlike any views we’d ever seen before anywhere. And we experienced a new type of adventure – patiently queueing.
Stan and Cyndee were driving their new truck camper from Vermont to Big Sky, Montana. We were on our way from Yellowstone to Glacier National Park. The paths would cross, but the timing was off and it appeared we wouldn’t get to meet up (does this sound familiar?). Then the sun set, Jupiter aligned with Mars, schedules changed just a teeny bit, and we found ourselves a window of opportunity. We held over an extra day at a free campground overlooking the Yellowstone River, conveniently close to an air-conditioned museum on that scorching day in Columbus, Montana, then took a short detour to the south to meet our friends as they arrived at their destination.
The land which comprises Yellowstone National Park is iconic. In 1806, most people dismissed the accounts of its rugged beauty and curious boiling mud and steaming rivers by John Colter, an early explorer and former member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, thinking he was delirious. Given his reputation for exaggeration, Jim Bridger’s 1856 reports of a river flowing past yellow walls were also dismissed. Ultimately, photographs by William Henry Jackson and paintings by Thomas Moran in 1871 created a buzz and were the catalysts for the US Congress to set aside public lands for protection and public pleasure in the 19th century. Yellowstone was subsequently established as the first National Park in 1872. Great lodges, large, elegant and full service (for the day – no internet back then, though desks with letter writing supplies were scattered throughout the common areas) were soon built to attract vacationers from the populated east coast who were increasingly attracted to western adventures made easier by rail travel. Yellowstone is one of the largest National Parks in the US and more than 4 million people visit every year, which this year included these two Vermonters.