You know, there are a lot of sounds from my childhood that I miss. What got me thinking about this was the neighbour mowing the lawn today and then apologizing to me since he noticed I was on the deck, reading. He thought it might be annoying to me. It wasn't, not really, because I have always liked the summer sound of a lawn being mowed. Then, I thought to myself: "Well, not THIS sound, not this roar and rumble of gas mowers. What I liked was the chittering sound of those old push mowers, that tinny sort of musical sound. THAT'S what I like." And I liked the tingley jingle of the Ice Cream Truck, and the rythmic murmer, "swish-shoosh, swish-swoosh" of the old wringer washer that my Mom used ("Don't get any closer...you'll get your arm caught in the wringers and it will get torn right off!") Every Mom had a horror story about someones child/neighbour/relation who had that arm torn right off. And the sound of my Dad making popcorn...not microwave popcorn, not even the hot air poppers, and certainly not Jiffy-pop (that was for camping only...the other two types were unthought of at that time.) but the tinny scrape of the heavy cast pot that Dad used for "real" popcorn. He'd put oil in the pot and then drop in three kernels. As soon as one popped, you knew the oil was hot enough and you had to quickly dump in the rest of the kernels and then put the lid on and shake and shake and shake until all the popping was done. Then it was quickly dumped in a large brown paper bag, salt & melted butter added and shaken until all the kernels were coated with melty goodness. Everyone had a cupboard that was filled with folded paper bags, we got them with our groceries, no plastic back then.

I wonder what sounds today's kids will remember? The chime of a computer starting up? The beeps of their favorite Playstation game? How about the "ding" of the microwave announcing that dinner is ready...or the chime/buzz/humm/Dixie Chick song/ of their infernal cell phone?

Have I told you about Riley, our neighbour's dog? He used to be just terrified of Gypsy (don't know why, it's not like they ever had any sort of confrontation) He wouldn't even walk on the same side of the road as she was on. Anyhow, since she left to go and live the big city life, he has been feeling much more comfortable around our house. The last few weeks he even comes to visit, has a little sleep sometimes and then wanders off home. This morning Steven went to check the mail, and there he was, just waiting to be invited in for a biscuit!

Do you recall a few months ago, well, probably last September, I wrote about a small doe we had seen a few times who had no tail and claw marks on her side? Steven said she had been attacked by a coyote, possibly a cougar. We wondered if she would be ok. Well, we saw her today (still tailess!) with her wounds all healed and a baby by her side. Mother Nature is indeed wonderful.

WHO LIVED HERE?

We went for a ride in the bush the other evening, ostensibly to look for deer trails for the upcoming hunting season, however I like to just go to see what we can see. You know, like the bear who climbed over the mountain. "Just to see what he could see."

Driving along a road that was not more than a slight indentation in the long grass, we came to this leftover bit of a house. Steven had been here before and said that there was a water-hole just up the hill, and he wanted to look for tracks. It nearly did me in to walk up this hill, I think it was almost 90 degrees straight up and it was so muggy out, but at the top there was this little green pond, and I instantly fell into "fantasy mode." I wondered who had lived here, and when, and if they climbed this hill to fill their bucket with water. They must have, we were nowhere near a river or lake. Who would live so far from water? The pond was tiny and smelled of sulphur and it was covered with algae, but it looked like the kind of place where wood sprites and faeries would frolic. Maybe the person who lived here was a witch?

I could imagine someone living here, a small smokey fire burning all the time and dried herbs and mushrooms hanging from the rafters. There would be a black pot over the fire and something would be bubbling in it all the time.

It was nice the way the sun shone through the trees and you couldn't see any path or trail at all. It was a very peaceful spot.

The beginning of the show. It was 45 minutes of intricate dance and music, watching the horses and riders perform was pretty amazing. The choreography was spectacular. There are 36 riders and their horses, but only 32 perform. The first recorded musical ride was 1887, so we have over 100 years of RCMP tradition happening here. Now they do routines to all sorts of music, James Bond, Hockey Night in Canada, Riverdance, Ghost Riders in the Sky and more. It certainly had the audience clapping and "yahoo-ing."

The riders are first and foremost policemen/women, and after 2 years of active police work they can volunteer for the Musical Ride. Their duration is 3 years, I'm not sure why, to give others a chance I suppose.

Rain or no rain?

Hopefully this little clip will turn out, you may have to enlarge it. At the end of The Musical Ride, with only minutes to go, the clouds blew in and it started to rain, one of those real torrential downpours, but you can see as I pan my camera across the arena that it only rained on half the arena. Funny!

A few pictures of the Musical Ride. I have been trying to download a little video clip, but it just won't work.

Notice the maple leaf on the flank of this horse. Each horse has the same thing, they use a stencil and wet the hair and then brush it the wrong way so that it dries like this.

Part Eight

Enlarge the top picture (just click on it) and you can see how close we were to the water, this was a really nice place to stay. It had lovely grounds, lots of shade trees and some great little garden areas with ponds and lily pads. I took a nice picture of this pink lily (below) in bloom, thankful that there were no more horror movie omens. Or were there? Enlarge the lily and look closely at the top left petal, the one with a little bit of decay on the tip.....a sign?

Part Seven

Eventually the storm subsided, we boarded the boat and found that we were quite hungry. The buffet was excellent; roast beef, salmon, potatos, pasta, salads, lots of veggies and other appies and wonderful huckleberry cheesecake for desert. The weather cleared right up, and we even had a rainbow to assure us that all was well. The cruise was great, we had done it once before but not with the dinner. It takes about and hour and half, maybe two hours to circle the lake and see the sights, the worlds only floating and moveable golf green, and phenomenal homes of millionaires.

It was dark by the time we headed back to the docks, and we headed back to our campground, happy that all the signs of the Apocalypse were over and done with, and we were still here. Home in the morning and back to the old routine.

PART SIX

Well. We arrived in C'oeur d'Alene and to make a long story short, we could NOT find a campsite. Steven thought he saw a turn-off, off the Interstate and I said "No". Ummm...big mistake and I shall not delve any further into THAT episode, albeit to say that it was indeed the turn-off and we never could find it again. Then we looked for one that we had seen on prior trips, it always looked good then, but on closer examination, it was creepier than the Symes Hotel...toothless owners who looked like they were spawn of the devil. They gave us directions on how to find another place (we pretended we wanted to stay near the water so that they wouldn't be offended and perhaps hurt us) and we followed their directions to a "T" (they had even written/printed them on a scrap of paper, but they led us to dead -end. We finally decided that this was the end of the trip and we would just head to Bonner's Ferry, near the border, a place we know well.

We headed out of town and stopped at McDonalds to grab a coffee and just mentioned to the cashier the trouble we were having finding a nice place to stay and she told us about a gorgeous place, right on the lake, and how easy it was to get there. We looked at each other, eyes full of fear and trepidation and decided: "What the hell." and drove off. Well, it was SO easy to find, and what a great spot...nice lots right near the water, huge private shower/bathrooms with heaters, chairs, just like a fancy hotel. (we do have a bathroom & shower in our motor home, but it's so much easier to use a nice public one, saves on our water and having to turn on our gas to heat it. We use ours only when we camp where there is not full service) Anyhow, we paid and decided that we wouls end this trip with the dinner cruise on Lake C'oeur d'Alene, which is actually the biggest fresh water lake west of the Great Lakes (or something like that, it's massive at any rate)

We walked down to the docks where the boat is and it was HOT, not a cloud in the sky. We were waiting for the boat and a bit of a wind came up. Then more wind. And then more. I recalled that one of the plagues was some sort of hail & storm. Sure enough....tornado time!

As I was trying to not blow off the dock (and seriously, when I lifted one foot to walk, I had a hard time balancing myself) I lurched over to the ticket booth and asked the girl how we got our money back, since the boat would surely flip if it tried to sail. The meal would spill, that's for sure. Or come "up", if you get my drift.

She looked at me like I was a 5 year old and said: "As soon as she docks, and they load the food, it'll sail. They just tried a few minutes ago, but the wind snapped the cable, so the Captain is making another try." And she pointed, and I looked, and sure enough the crazy bastard was out there trying to come into the docks, but the boat kept going sideways. SIDEWAYS for God's Sakes. And small planes were flipping over. A fellow beside me laughed and :"It's not like we're Flatlanders!" I turned to Steven and said in a small voice: "But I AM a Flatlander..."

PART FIVE

The next morning we showered in the pink bathrooms and headed away from Mosquitoe Hell. We decided to go to C'oeur d'Alene and camp near the water and maybe even take the dinner cruise around the lake. On the way there we stopped at this odd little bar/casino/restaurant/gift shop that not only had tables with artificial people sitting at them, for no disernable reason that I could see, but it also had silver dollars all over the walls, as of this date it had $53,127! That's a lotta moola! Click on the picture to enlarge it.

PART FOUR

Perhaps you have been wondering if some of the biblical plagues have gotten to me? No, I have just been busy with work and watching the installation of a new furnace, heat pump, central air and hot water-heater, and the cleaning of closets that haven't seen the light of day for many a year. But that is all nearly done now, so here is some more of our mini-break.

After leaving the Symes Hotel and it's creepy aura, we decided to spend the night in a small place called St. Regis. It was a lovely campground with immaculate bathrooms that were the shade of Pepto Bismal. Quite unusual. The camping spots were all marked with carved animals; bears, birds, fish and so on. I would have taken more pictures of them except for the newest plague...Mosquitoes From Hell. We couldn't sit outside at all, thank goodness I had brought lots of reading material, the evening was spent curled up inside with a coffee and a good book. Can't say that I minded at all. It was a "mini-plague" I guess.

Part Three

As we were leaving the Symes Hotel we peeked into the dining room and saw a waitress, a bartender and one lone customer sitting at the bar. They looked up at us, and then looked away again, no smiles, no hello. We decided it was time to get out of Dodge and we drove through what must be the "downtown" area, which was just an intersection. Itt had an apartment building that must have also been built in the 1800's. It was 2 stories high and about 4 or 5 units long. Each front door had a small roof and each unit had an overstuffed old armchair sitting outside. I knew exactly how it would smell, that musty, cabbage-y old dog sort of smell. Each chair was occupied by a person, and I use the term lightly because other than the toothless old man with rheumy eyes and hands that trembled as he waved to us, there was no movement. That was one corner, the other had an old video store with a Help Wanted sign in the window, hard to see what it was like on the inside with all the dirt that was encrusted on the glass and the old movie posters. The third corner was an empty lot, filled with old rusted cars and a shiny new motorcycle, with a shiny looking driver sitting on it. The fourth corner had what appeared to be an old garage and a sign that said "garage sale." I don't think the building was for sale, but everything else was. I have never seen such a jumble, and yes, there was even a kitchen sink. It was HUGE! There was clothes, furniture, tools, pictures, dishes, lamps, everything you could imagine. Now, this is true, hard as it is to believe. Steven was looking at tires (go figure) and I wandered to the back where there was a jumble of jewellery, and I'm always looking for vintage brooches so I was scrounging through a table of old things when I spotted a silver ring, just plain, with something engraved on one side. I looked closer, and I swear to God, it said "Shannon". I was really excited for a moment and I slipped it on to see if it would fit, and it slid right on my ring finger. And then. I couldn't. Get It Off. And I recalled all the horror books/movies that I had read, as well as Stephen King's short story: " Rock and Roll Heaven" and I panicked (ok, yes, my imagination is probably too vivid, even for a grown woman such as myself) and I wrenched it off and said to Steven: "Lets' GO." (he saw the ring too, it honestly happened.) I think I was "supposed" to wear that ring and apply for work in that video store. And you all know how Steven adores pawn shops and garage sales.....Oh Stephen King, you are the master of horror.

Part Two

We were going to go to Missoula, but seriously, when you see a sign like this, which way would you go? There was simply no other choice, of course we were going to head to Paradise, I mean, who wouldn't? We headed down the small back road, off the Interstate, off the beaten path and tuned the radio to a Paradise channel to see what was happening in that neck o' the woods. Well, ok, there was no channel, the radio actually went off the air. Oh well, we were in a sort of a desert that lay tucked in between two mountain ranges so it was to be expected. Instead we just sat back and enjoyed the scenery as it flashed by, no houses or animals, just a serene view of distant, hazy mountains and lots of small bushes and shrubbery, it looked and smelled like sage ("the sage in bloom, smells like perfume, deep in the heart of Texas..." You know that song? We weren't in Texas, but it was reminisent of that type of land, odd to find it here.)

We rolled along, listening to the thump, thump thump of the tires and then the tick, tick, tick, of bugs hitting the windshield. What? More than one tick? How many bugs are there? Is it hail? Oh, it's grasshoppers....wait, LOTS of them, a hoard, a pestilance, a plague? They smacked into the windshield, grasshopper innards smearing all over, some were getting caught in the wiper blades and struggling to free themselves before the rushing wind blew them away, little legs kicking, and in some cases, kicking without a body attatched. It was hard to see, and using the wipers only smeared it worse. I was recalling one of the biblical plagues and wondered if it were the beginning of the end. I didn't want to pull over and clean the window with all these creatures flying around, bugs with kicking feet and beady eyes and yellow guts getting caught in my hair? No thanks! Then...whew, we saw a sign that said Hot Springs and we sighted a gas station. We pulled in and heaved a sigh as the bugs had vanished and it was silent again.

We stopped and Steven got out to clean the windshield and I gazed around in semi-disbelief. There was a few lawnchairs by the building with some folks sitting and watching. Odd folks, a large lady with no teeth dressed in Fortrel pants and a dirty sweatshirt was sitting by a table with a handwritten sign that said "Peruviuan jewellery" and a display of beaded earrings, the dangly kind that a kid might make from a bead-kit. A skinny man with a straggly wispy beard was laughing with a big ole fat man who looked like he hadn't washed in a long time and their table had, maybe, suncatchers or some home-made sparkly things hanging. Over on the other side of the parking lot was a collection of about 60 blue porta-potties. No sign, no "for rent", just this odd collection. Do these people drive around and steal them? Is that what they use for their toilet? Steal a porta-pottie, use it until it's full and then go steal another?

There was also a little settlement of about 7 trailers, not mobile homes but the camping kind, each with tattered awnings, ratty mats and tinfoil covered windows, each with a selection of goods for sale, from tires and rims, to old buckets and tin things, a sign may have said "antiques", but believe me, this was worse than junk. The owners all glared at us as if we were interlopers, and I certainly had no desire to make eye contact with anyone. Can you say "Deliverance"?

We hastily hopped in our vehicle (which was mansion-like compared to theirs, which made me nervous also, I mean, no one knew where we were, we could vanish like those people that you see on Dateline...just gone. Maybe stuffed into an old porta-pottie.)

As we drove down the road, we saw another sign directing us to Hot Springs, and we felt ready for a nice soak, maybe this was Paradise? We drove off the already back road we were on, to an even "backer" one and came to the Symes Hotel. I tried to convince myself that it was quaint and "fun", but it was just old and somewhat creepy. The sign outside it said that it was built in the late 1800's when hotsprings were considered a novel way to regain your health, everyone who had any money travelled to "take the waters" and Montana apparently has quite a few of these spots, and Symes was one of the best. In the 1800's. Not now.

Inside, the tubs looked the same as I think they did in the 1800's, with clanky pipes that moaned and groaned and spit out a trickle of rusty, sulphurous, smelly water. Good God, who could sit in one of these things? Not me!

We stood at one end of the hallway (the little rooms with the ancient tubs are on either side) and there wasn't a sound to be heard, other than, and I kid you not, some faint laughter in the distance. As I mentioned, I have a vivid imagination and I have probably read one too many horror story and watched one too many creepy move so I know what happens to folks who split up and go for a bath and then plan to meet up later. We ski-daddled right out of there.

Locusts and water turning sulphurous are 2 of the biblical plagues you know. I'm just sayin'....

Part One

This will be a rambling sort of a story, I know that a properly written one is supposed to have a definitive beginning, middle and end and if you are going to jump back and forth, then there are literary procedures to follow. All of which I am a little unsure of, so this will just be a bit of a blathering tale. As some of you know, I have a vivid imagination and it tends to colour my stories, but that's what an adventure is all about; seeing things in a new light and wondering what if....? So, I think I will call this tale: A Drive with Stephen King or Apocalypse Now!


We started out towards Kalispell, the weather was sunny, the traffic was sparse, an excellent day for travelling. We arrived in Kalispell just after lunch and found a pretty little campground to spend the night in. You can see in the first picture what our cozy home-away-from-home looks like, and we had a wonderful sleep. The next morning we had a little outdoor breakfast and decided to head South towards Missoula, but on the way out of town we spotted a craft fair that just begged us to stop and visit. It was the most spectacular craft fair that I have ever seen, every vendor was in a white tent under the trees, with one or two being a different colour, just to throw in a bit of brightness. All the handicrafts were amazing, everything from glorious hummingbird feeders to a whimsical lady who made hats. It was almost like a Renaissance fair. My-oh-my, what a sweet little holiday we were having.....

Going to the Chapel

We went to a wonderful wedding yesterday, at a tiny little church at Moyie. The wedding was old fashioned with a modern (but not modernistic) twist. The church was over 100 years old and beautiful in it's simplicity. There was not an organist, but instead, a fiddler.

The bride wore a phenomenal vintage 1930's dress, the beadwork was amazing and she looked so beautiful,

You know who you are!

I can remember times in the past when some people poked fun at the very idea of online friendships being real. They gave as reasons that you never knew who was really behind the other screen, which does have merit. But only sometimes and only with certain dishonest people. I have learned that face-to-face relationships can be "iffy" in the same way. Who really knows these people, either, except with the passing of time and behavior? The internet is not the only place where people might put on an act, be dishonest, or mean ill intent to others.



For me, my online friends are every bit as real, every bit as much a blessing, as my offline and in-person friends. Some of he benefits and pleasures I have gained from this wonderful experience:
1. Exchange of knowledge, culture, and experience from people all over the world
2. The give and take of moral support and encouragement
3. The availability of kindredness for those who have disabilities and find it hard to get out to socialize
4. An easing of feeling alone in the world
5. A more bold and open attitude about communicating
6. No judgments based on pre-conceived notions and "looks alone"

This is Iceball (what an awful name for such a gorgeous dog!) and she was chosen to be the model today, and had to stand there and patiently be loaded and unloaded, harnessed and unharnessed as we learned how the dogs are taken care of. She was quite annoyed at watching her fellow teamates being picked to go for a run. Thus, the mournful howl.

A bunch o' babies

Look how sweet these pups are, I nearly tried to steal one. Or two. Or all. It's that puppy smell.