Meg's Musings

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Michael Buble is running through my head this morning. I'm answering a plethora of email and wishing I was more motivated to do the Meijer thing.
Idaho was more than nice. Pretty great kick around time. Here, let me just quote my father:
"GreetingsThe K-Bar crew is back from a week in the Mountains. I and Herb Larsen left last Thursday to set up a three night camp just outside Salmon Idaho. Friday, we welcomed the Corps of Discovery II of the Lewis and Clark Expedition into Idaho on the 200th anniversary of Captain Lewis crossing the Lemhi pass and the Continental divide from Montana. There were about 400 people for the ceremony at the 7,500 ft pass including several assistant federal Department heads and representatives of the Indians for whom this moment 200 years ago was the beginning of the end of sovereignty. It took longer to set up this one day event than the whole 1803-1806 original expedition.I knew some of the reenactors who were portraying the men and woman of the expedition and had a little fun with the guy who was talking about the firearms of the expedition by pretending to be a very ignorant tourist. I started out with very simple questions and progressed to questions like what is the difference in the barrel bands between the 1777 Musket and the 1795 Musket the expedition carried. At this point a guy from Lansing who who was one of the reenactors and knew me stepped in and told the poor guy I was playing that I was ringer. We all had a good laugh.Friday night , Tonna , Meg , the Stones and Barb Larsen arrived at our Camp. Saturday we took them back to pass to see the sights, stopped in hot spring for a bath and attended a very well staged outdoor pageant-according to Meg the drama teacher- about the events of the Corps of Discovery coming into Idaho and returning Sacajawea to her people. Sunday we went over the Lost Trail pass into Montana and after gassing up at Sula proceeded to the primary objective of our expedition. Crossing the 101 mile Primitive Margruder Road from the vicinity of Darby Montana to Elk City Idaho. I stopped at the West Fork ranger station and was told the road was open but there was forest fire burning beside it about 30 miles in and not to tarry in that area. We did see the low intensity fire at that point and camped beside the Selaway River that night about 40 miles in. We did not have any problems with bears. The next day we crossed the Selway at Margruder bridge. The Forest Service closed the road about 15 minutes after went over it due another fire moving in from the west. This part of the road sounds like the roads you were on in Afghanistan Tom. The elevation went up to 8900 feet on my altimeter and the rocks were big and plentiful. It was 5 hours of second gear and occasional 4 wheel drive to get beyond the fire and into the vicinity of Red River Hot Springs where we camped. We did not have any problems with bears. In the morning we all went to the hot springs. It was not opened yet so I started to lead the senior citizens in the Army daily dozen calisthenics. The sight of us exercising in the parking lot convinced the owner to open early so not as to scare off other trade.We then checked out an old mining town named Dixie and proceeded on to Riggins Idaho.Uncle Greg, the Old House restaurant has new owners and the cobblers are not worth stopping for now.We proceeded on and camped at the Seven Devils Moutain. We were at 7,500 ft again and did have some critter in camp about 2:30 AM. I think it was cow or deer but the Larsens whose tent got sniffed think it was a bear. At any rate I did not shoot whatever it was. Again we had a forest fire to the west of us a few miles and Dr. Stone reported seeing flames about 4:00AM.We proceeded on to home Wednesday and tubed the same stretch of the Payette River with Meg that we had done with Sam, Mary and Barb.Thursday we tearfully put Meg on the plane to go back to Michigan."
Yeah, they actually weren't tearful, but it will be sad not to see them for another however many months. It was a good trip. It was fun to be with three couples who loved each other and the group in general so much. It was kinda odd to be hanging out with AARP members--my dad being the youngest at 57 and the very spry doctor Stone running up and down hills at the age of 72. But hey, it was a good time.
I'm usually not a car camping kind of girl, but this was really the only way to do it. We were going up and down between 2,000 and 8,000 feet every day. Gorgeous stuff. I have great pics that perhaps I'll manage to get up sometime soon.
It's weird, I'm used to being pretty completely wired and I was pretty completely unplugged for nearly two weeks. Heck, I didn't even see newspapers much less get near the internet or a cell phone. It felt fine until I came home to all five email accounts full of messages needing responses...
I finally finished Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. I saw her speak twice last year and caught her lecture on Alice in Wonderland on NPR recently. Great stuff. Perhaps I'll pull some of my favorite passages later. Anyway, I also started reading Longitudes & Attitudes by....um...Thomas Freidline/Friedman. He's a Times columnist who basically gets to write whatever he wants (I suppose you get to do that when you have three Pulitzers under your belt) and this particular book is of his columns just before September 11, 2001 and then afterward. I think I need to go visit the library and get it to finish.
Current Mood:
sleepy

posted by Me @ 12:31