Our Trip to Anaconda and Beyond

Our trip to Montana – the first since Thoryn was born in October – was 11 days of travel, smoke and friends.  The first two nights on the road were spent with Stan and Diane Blackett in Logan where we got caught up, did some shopping and had dinner together.  On Saturday morning, we left for Ririe for Ed’s 55^th high school reunion (see “The History of He”), spent the night with Blair and Jodi Grover (she was one of his classmates), and on Sunday morning we climbed back in the pick-up (with the camper on the back) and arrived at Kaytee and Josh’s home in Anaconda,  MT at about 4 p.m.  On Monday, Ed got the bathroom ready for paint while we finished our preparation for this Cuz’N Camp with two little sisters – Adyn, age 7 and Skylar, age 4 (guess we should call it Sister Camp ... maybe next year Michael and Tara will let us bring Lilly along).  

On Tuesday morning, the four of us headed north to Glacier – considered the most beautiful of America’s national parks – on the U. S. / Canadian border.  We spent the first night of our adventure outside the park.  Sadly, the smoke from two fires raging in the park and in other parts of the west, had already reached our location 20 miles away.  The second night, we ventured into the park hoping the smoke would dissipate and those famous vistas (we had hoped to see) would come into view.  Didn’t happen … so for the third night we decided to drive south out of the smoke.  As it turns out, before we drove out of the smoke, we were camping at Georgetown Lake … 20 miles from the girls home in Anaconda. 

Kaytee warned me “Skylar will eat anything … Adyn eats nothing!”  We ate hot cakes every morning (sometimes with eggs … sometimes not).  Adyn loves “cow” so we had steak and Dutch oven potatoes one night.  Skylar ate everyone’s portion of Bush’s Bourbon and Brown Sugar beans – even wanted them for her daytime snack and for breakfast.  They enjoyed roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.  Bedtime was hard … not because they didn’t want to go to bed but because it was soooooo hot in the camper even a couple of hours after the sun went down. Our final stop was the Sweet Palace in Phillipsburg – the girls favorite place in all the world!

After dropping them at home – happy and full of candy – we started for home, with an overnight stop at Michael’s where we enjoyed the chance to catch up with our youngest son.  On Sunday, the last day of our adventure, we took a detour off the I-15 to travel to Richfield where we attended Sacrament meeting to hear Kimball and Cyndi Poulson’s report on their mission in Guyana.  We also enjoyed dinner at the family home, got some good pictures, then left for the last three hours of our 2000 mile round trip!

It was a very full 11 days … we’re glad we got the chance to see friends and family and to spend time with those three precious little girls – but we’re happy to be back home, catch up on the mail and the laundry.  Can’t wait to see them all again.