Westward Ho V

We have our National Parks passport book that we like to fill. Another stop we made was at Grant Kohrs Ranch in central Montana. Rain was threatening and we still had a long ways to go, but it was a nice place to get out, stretch, and have yet another ham sandwich!

The ranch has a ranch house and out buildings, cattle, teepees, and a railroad running through it. It is a working ranch.

We peeked in here.

The blacksmith lady made us nail puzzles which kept the kids occupied for a while. Then we piled back in the truck and continued on our way to Idaho where we'd rented a cabin for the Yellowstone portion of our trip.

Westward Ho IV

As we headed south out of Glacier toward Yellowstone (an 8 hour trip!) we stopped at this Indian built Mission. There's not much else to the town. We listened to Clive Cussler's "the Chase". Flathead Lake is featured in the novel and we got to drive right past it!

We love our little off the beaten path guide books!

The murals were gorgeous!

Westward Ho III

In Glacier we spent a night each in two of the historic park lodges. (They were the only 2 of 5 that were open). The Lake McDonald Lodge was smaller - more like a private hunting lodge. It had animal trophies and really cool chandliers. The room we had was teeny tiny. The bathroom was miniscule. The location, however, was great!

The first lodge we stayed at was the massive Glacier Park Lodge.

This is one of the Jammers that you can take on a park tour. It was WAY to expensive for the four of us especially since the Going to the Sun Road wasn't open all the way yet. We later learned the road was 100% open until June 30th!

Nick is reading in the lobby. These logs are 40' tall! You can see the marks from the chains that strapped them to the trains that brought them to the building site.

Catch up and Arts on Main

Marnie and Ryan were up a couple of weekends ago. Marn caught this "whopper:.

Ryan was really good when we were visiting Big Grandpa in the hospital. He and I hung out on the floor and marveled at Grandpa's hospital gown.

Kurt and the kids with the Flying Car from Harry Potter. The rest of the exhibit was cool, too. They're both wearing Tshirts we got on Westward HO. They wear them constantly!

The flower is on my desk.

The painting is above my desk. We got them both at Arts on Main last weekend.

Julie and Julia

Kurt and I went and saw this movie Friday night. I liked it a lot. Julie was a little whiny but she was that way in the book, too. Meryl Streep really nailed Julia Child. I loved Julia's book "My life in France". It was fantastic.

Eat. Pray. Love. is another book I loved. It's being made into a movie starring Julia Roberts. I'm not real excited about her being the lead. She's never a character in movies anymore. She's just Julia Roberts. Tara asked who I'd rather see playing the part. I've been thinking about that and I just don't know. Maybe Michelle Pfeiffer? Have anyone read the book? And again...I read it before Oprah recommended. That's important to me for some reason.

I think I would blog more I if I had images saved to the laptop. Instead they're saved on the desktop. When I'm in the mood to blog it's in the evening and I'm in the bedroom on my laptop.

We had a busy weekend. We went to the movie Friday night. Saturday, we went fishing with Dad, Marnie and Ryan. It only lasted about half an hour but it was fun! We had lunch at the farm then stopped at Grandpa's and watered the trees we'd planted. Too short naps were had and then we went to CR to see the Orchestra Iowa perform Orff's Carmina Burana (look the title up on youtube)(you know the music). It was awesome. It was outdoors on the lawn at Brucemore. It was a perfect Iowa summer night made even better by Brie, french bread, grapes and Moscato d'Asti.

Sunday we went to Jakway Park for their "day". We had homemade chicken and noodles (kinda short on the chicken and the noodles but still yummy) and then we beat it CR (again) for a Kernels game. I hate baseball but friends asked us to go. It was perfect blue sky puffy cloud day to be at the ballpark eating peanuts and hot dogs and cotton candy and beer. I entertained myself by taking pictures (and drinking beer). We came home exhausted. I've had a head ache ever since. I hope we have zero plans next weekend!