August 26, 2008

• Back from vacation

  And it was a great vacation. The Bar Mitzvah party was awesome! With a DJ who kept the kids thoroughly occupied for about 4 hours and had us adults up and dancing, too. My knee and hip seem better than they were at the end of March 'cause I did more dancing than I was able to do then. Matthew did an excellent job with his prayers and torah & haftorah readings. They even had a nice program for the Bar Mitzvah service.

  Dan, Karen, the grandkids and Tom & I toured ?Lava Lands ? Anyway, a park with lots of old lava flows including one with lots of obsidian and plenty of interpretation of when the flows happened and how they overlaid one another. There was a lava tube cave (I skipped hiking through that) and a walk through the lava fields, which I did participate in. The next day we just hung around the condo reading and playing games, and the following day went to the High Desert Museum where we looked at a number of exhibits, a couple of lectures and demos, and walked around trails to various points of interest. They have a great display of birds of prey and also otters. Then it was off to Great Falls for the reunion.

  We met relatives we'd never known from as far away as Norway and Hawaii. It turns out that the ranch right next to the Stone House is owned by descendants of the uncle who sponsored the patriarch of the family when he first immigrated from Norway to be a sheep herder. Tom never knew that. So we met lots of really nice people, got a tour of the "Best of the West" cereal factory in Harlowton, ate at the "World Famous" Twodot bar in Twodot, Montana, and went on a scavenger hunt for special locations around the Stone House and it's ranch (the scavenger hunt involved finding the location, signing names in a logbook at the location, and taking pictures).

  Can't seem to download my photos right now, so they'll show up at some later time.

  • 8:32 am
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