Glacier National Park

We only got to spend one day here, but wish it could have been more. There is a road through the park called Going to the Sun road, very scary driving on the side of a mountain. I got to drive it both ways, it was fun! The smoke from the fires obscured lots of the good scenery, unfortunately. I'm writing this entry 6 days later, and they are still fighting the fires.



Waterfall along Going to the Sun road


Smoky mountains.


We had stopped to get a geocache. It meant walking back along the narrow road and taking a picture. Richard did the walking. I took the picture, and to distract my mind from him getting killed on the way back, I took pictures of the scenery.


Mountain goat got in our way. We backed off.


All of us at a lookout.


Jackson Glacier, one of the only ones you can see from the road. We did a lot of hiking, but the hikes to the glaciers were too long for us!


A hike led us down to this waterfall. There was a geocache at the bottom. It was one of those where the GPS said it was a tenth of a mile as the crow flies, but turned out to be a half mile climb down a hill and back up.


Sunset over the lake.

Sunday update

I changed some settings this morning, like enabling pings, for those of you reading this via a reader. I also changed the time zone from Sydney to Central Time, even though we're really in Mountain Time.

Montana

There is a bear in the creek, between the tree that looks like an aspen and the two short spruces. At least, it's a rock that moves. There were many fishermen in this river as well.


A moose. There were two females in the bushes behind him.


The stream outside the sapphire hunting place. We found 5.58 carats of cuttable sapphires. The largest was 2 carats.

There are wildfires in these mountains. The smoke looks like clouds from far away, and like fog from close up. There are "incident bases" all along the route we took to get to Missoula for the night. They launch helicopters and trucks from them. The helicopters deliver both water to the fire, and firemen in parachutes -- smoke jumpers. This fire has been raging for a week.

Hill AFB Air Museum

The boys under a B-1.




Commanders Andrew and Connor prepare for rescue operation.






They had a paper airplane contest. If it had been for distance, Andrew would have walked (flown) away with the win. As it was, the contest was for duration, so he didn't.






Commander Connor prepares for take off.





The other simulator they enjoyed was the jet fighter. Sorry the picture is rotated. I can't figure out how to change it just now.



Andrew in front of a stealthed B-2.


This is a C-47, based on a DC-3, my favorite plane.


The B-1 again. Can't get it entirely in the shot.

Great Salt Lake

Going out to there shoreline. There are three earthcaches on Antelope Island, and we logged all three!

The shoreline.

This bay reminds me of Kinka Beach, complete with little rock island, which isn't in this shot.

These are buffalo, walking across the salt flats.

In the visitor center, learning about buffalo, brine shrimp, sea monkeys, and geology.

Andrew in the rocks.

He made a friend.

The tooth fairy finds you everywhere...

Albuquerque zoo

Flamingoes



Which are the monkeys?



Starfish were the boys' favorite animals, voted on at the end of the day.



Polar bears are Janice's favorites.



Connor makes a new friend!



We took a train ride around the park.



They had the coolest random fountain.


Both boys were completely soaked. Luckily, it didn't take long to dry in the Albuquerque non-humidity.


At the end of a long, hot day of fun.

All across Texas

It was raining when we left Austin.

Stopped for a leg stretch in Brady and found a big gun what was uncaged.

The kids love big guns they can climb on.

Wind farms abound in West Texas.

Really.

The road goes on forever and the party never ends!

Pictures!

Ok, I've got the camera hooked up. Here are some long-overdue pictures...

UT-ID-MT

Yay, my conference is over! I was a discussant in a session on the last morning. It was weird...the exhibit booths were all torn down, about a quarter of the people that had been there the previous afternoon were there, but the session was pretty well attended. It was a nice series of talks on things like remote consulting and automating reports.

The plan had been to leave right away (10:30) and reach Butte, Montana by nightfall. Like most of our plans, this one immediately went differently. We didn't leave SLC until just before noon. We stopped at the Hill AFB Air Museum on our way out of town, since we missed it the day before by spending too much time on Antelope Island, in the Great Salt Lake. More on that later. We ended up spending 3 hours at the air museum. It was awesome. Besides a B52, B29, C47, and SR71, they had tons of other planes and lots of fun stuff for the kids, including 4 simulators. We spent most of our time in the simulators!

We got on the road about 3:30. And we almost made it to Butte. We're in Dillon, Montana and will head to sapphire country tomorrow. Pictures when I can...as usual...