Visitors

When you live closer to British Columbia than you do to the nearest Sam's Club it should probably come as no great suprise that a lot of out of town friends and family don't just casually stop by. Nevertheless, Montana has its charms and we have had a few visitors this spring.

As mentionned earlier, Laura's brother spent spring break here and enjoyed a typical April week full of blizzards and close encounters with wildlife.

Laura's good friend Liz came from Atlanta in June. We learned a valuable less on her arrival--Northwest makes just one flight a day to Missoula, and if you miss it, you're going to spend 24 hours in Minneapolis. Well, at least the mall was close by.

We took Liz up Pattee Canyon, around downtown, to Maclay Flat



and later up into the Swan Mountains to Holland Lake.



The next week my parents came from Houston. We went to the farmer's market and bought beef from the rancher, did some shopping



worked in the yard, saw some of the countryside, and reveled in the Montana days which, as Norman Maclean described in A River Runs Through It, "are almost Arctic in length". Indeed, it's interesting to walk the dog to the park at 9:30 p.m.--in broad daylight.

We took an afternoon and hopped over the border into Idaho, visiting the bridge to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs



and this giant western redcedar forest, where we ate lunch.



They also enjoyed the weather--when they weren't shivering. I told them to bring jackets and sweaters; falling on ears in Houston it may as well have been a message from outerspace. But they indeed wore jackets most of the time.

The next weekend we all went to Schweitzer, the ski resort in far northern Idaho where Laura and I spent part of our honeymoon. Though it was mid June there was still plenty of snow, so I sneaked in a couple of runs before everyone woke up. That was not hard to do as the sun came up bright and blinding at 3:45 a.m.

Schweitzer overlooks Lake Pend O'reille--an impressive sight.



On the way back we swung through Couer d'Alene and walked along the lake there on a sparkling 65-degree afternoon.



With the parents on their way to Yellowstone, we hosted a second batch of visitors--my Spanish class. I've taken a year of Spanish at continuing ed and we end each quarter with a small party.



And we've got one final visitor to mention--Laura's having a boy on October 22. As an early gift, I guess, my mom handed back many of my baby clothes: here's a sweater knitted for me by her mom!