ROAD TRIP!

As I alluded in my narrative of our trip to Washington DC, my dear friend Cristy got married! She is now Cristy Moreira. The big day was June 28 in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, and was definitely worth the road trip to be there. Eddie was so kind to join me so I wouldn't have to do all that driving on my own, but since he doesn't like to drive more than 6 hours at a time, we built many stops into our trip. We stayed the night with his Aunt Marilyn in Rigby, ID on the way up. We arrived Saturday with perfect timing and totally enjoyed the reception at a cute little park. Coeur D'Alene is BEAUTIFUL!! Eddie kept insisting that we weren't really in Idaho at all, but in Northern California. Actually, being 30 minutes from Spokane, we were much closer to being in Washington than California, but whatever. ;) There is an amazing lake there, complete with resort and boat rentals. I couldn't get enough of it, and have a new idea for a great family vacation spot.


After spending the night in Missoula, Montana, we were off to Yellowstone -- teachers on summer vacation can turn any road trip into a real vacation! That area of the country is amazingly beautiful!!! Mountain streams, cattle ranches, cool rock formations, etc. Yellowstone is great too. We didn't see the whole park by a long shot, but focused on Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser area. THAT is something everyone has to see once in their life! The Visitor's Center displays what time the geyser will go off and tell you to plan + or - 10 minutes. Old Faithful was just that, faithful, for us, though, bursting 100+ feet into the air right on time! Kind of crazy to think you are standing INSIDE an active volcano, but pretty much the whole park is just that. I also learned that you can fish inside a National Park ... who knew?? A couple of the pictures you'll see are of the sides of the caldera where you can see the remnants of the forest fire that burned much of the park in the 1980's. A ranger said that it sometimes takes 20+ years for the burned trees to fall over, and 80 or more years for them to decay. It was weird to see what looked like a bunch of match sticks laying all over the mountainside.



Another night at Marilyn's and then it was back to work. I've been working to get all of the library books at our school cataloged into the computer before we move everything to our new building ... which is next week.