NOT AGAIN!

Montana

September 2013

Maddie 13

Kier 10

Cora 7

I think some vacations are fated to fall into ruin. And if ever there was a trip where the “vacation fates” cackled and menacingly rubbed their hands together as they planned, it was our vacation to Glacier National Park in Montana.

It was intended to be an anniversary trip for Joel and I and for our friends Bret and Dawn Lowell. We had celebrated our 16^th anniversary in August and they were celebrating their 20^st anniversary that month. But, seven Year old Cora had been diagnosed with type one diabetes a mere 5 months prior to this trip, and so this added a certain degree of complication.

The plan was to leave our three kids with my parents. We spent several months beforehand preparing them for this weekend. They had learned to calculate carbs; give meal time insulin with the insulin pen; give long lasting insulin with the syringe; they had learned emergency procedures for dangerously low and dangerously high blood sugars. We had gone over the daily routine (including middle of the night blood sugar checks). I think I had even made detailed spread sheets for everything from signs of low blood sugars to the average carbohydrate content of just about everything under the sun. I'm not saying that no one felt nervous about the weekend, but they were certainly as prepared as they possibly could be.

And then, two days before the weekend, my dad got sick; head cold, nasty cough, fever-- the works. Okay, we thought, we could still do this. We had another grandma waiting in the wings. Grandma Janie had also learned the ropes. She agreed, she would be happy to take the kids for the weekend. Slightly frazzled by the hiccup, we none the less had a workable plan. Then, one day before our scheduled departure, Grandma Janie can down with the same nasty virus!

It would be a squeeze, and it certainly wasn't the trip we were planning, but maybe we could turn the couples trip into a family trip. We called the Lowells and they were amiable a family trip. We had a two bedroom vacation house near Glacier National Park in Montana. The kids would be sleeping on the floor in their parents rooms – so much for a romantic anniversary get-away.

“Alright” we thought, “we got that glitch out of the way”--

“Not so fast!” the vacation fates cackled. And then the weather reports came in. The weather over the northwestern Wyoming looked “iffy”.

It was at this point that I asked, “At what point do we call it, and say this vacation isn't meant to be?”

Joel's response was, “not yet. We still have options. We can go to the south of the Tetons. This can still work.”

By morning the weather over Colorado was somewhat “iffy” as well. Low cloud had settled over the Front Range. I'm not exactly sure how low they were but I do know it seemed like as soon as the wheels were up, all we could see was white. This was Joel's first take on into instrument conditions and he told me later that if he had realized exactly how poor the visibility was, we wouldn't have taken off.

The clouds were low, but they also were not very thick, so within 20 minutes we had popped out the other side and were skimming along the tops. The Rocky Mountains poked up though the low clouds in an ethereal “Middle Earth” sort of way. We had a strong head wind that day and both Joel and I noticed an occasional surging as the airplane moved through the sky. We figured it must be gusty as well.

Around noon, we landed in Big Piney Wyoming. This was our designated rendezvous point with the Lowells. It was also our lunch spot. We pulled out the lunch bag and headed into the FBO. After bringing in our lunch and Cora's insulin bag, I realized that we had left the waters in the plane. I ran back out to get them, and my three kids followed-- somehow locking the door to the FBO in the process! This was a problem because, not only was our lunch in there, but so was the entire bag of insulin and all the diabetes emergency supplies. Fortunately we had not yet given Cora any lunch insulin yet, so she was not a “blood- sugar time bomb” at that moment. Still, I think I may have said some not very nice things to my children at that moment about not leaving belonging unattended and how did they lock the door anyway!

There was a phone number on the door, and while my phone was locked inside, Joel's was not, so we used it to call the number. Within five minutes someone had showed up to unlock the door. Few, one crisis was averted!

After Lunch and meeting up with the Lowels, we headed, caravan style, to the west of the mountains and then north toward Montana.

Cora asked that I ride in the back. This was our first big flight since her diagnoses of Diabetes and it turns out that the feeling of a low blood sugar was masked by the vibrating of the airplane. As a result she had been feeling funny all morning. We no longer had the Cherokee (you can read that story in the YUMA chapter). We were now flying a Piper Saratoga. The Saratoga has club seating, which meant I was riding backwards. Usually these seats are reserved for the dogs and for Kier, who isn't bothered by airsickness. I don't get airsick, but still am not a big fan of the sensation of flying backwards.

There I was, in the backseat, facing the wrong way, when I felt the plane slow down, when I heard the engine noise quiet, when I felt my stomach in my throat. I remembered exactly what that all meant. I craned my neck around in time to see Joel flick the key back to center. He turned and looked back. I don't think he even said anything to me. He didn't have to, we both knew. Magnito trouble. Again. Same problem, different plane.

The Lowels in their Moony were just ahead of us, so Joel radioed them to let them know what was going on. Then he radioed the nearest airport, Idaho Falls, to tell them we would be coming. The Lowels followed us in. Unlike our experience in the Cherokee, where we were almost still right over the airport, on this trip, we had a tense 30 minute flight to the airport.

Once we arrived, the boys went off to see the aviation mechanics. Dawn and the kids and I waited....and waited... The kids played hide and seek in the massive FBO building, wallowed on the floor in the pilot lounge, and were generally too loud and antsy after the long, stressful flight. We waited some more. Cell phone coverage was spotty and the guys were unreachable. It occurred to Dawn and I that we should start thinking about things like dinner, a car, maybe a place to stay. It turned out this was a near impossible task!

It seemed there was some sort of parents night at a near by university in Idaho and all the hotels and rental cars were booked up for the next 100 miles! Surely that is hyperbole, right. No cars or hotels for a 100 miles? Because of a collage parent's night? That's what I thought. But we called hotel after hotel, car rental after car rental-- nothing, for 100 miles. I even asked if we could spend the night at the FBO,and the heartless women said, “no”. I was beginning to envision our little family huddled up on the concrete beside a hanger, fighting over the 2 emergency sleeping bags in the plane.

Not only was this the wrong weekend to need a rental car, or a hotel room, it was also a bad week to need an airplane mechanic. Turns out that most of the mechanics were busy deer hunting that week, leaving only the youngest apprentice (who wasn't approved to do anything it seemed). After considerable begging, pleading and insisting that he knew what the problem was, Joel convinced the man to look into the magnito-- in the morning.

It was getting dark and the Lowels had to fly over mountains in order to arrive at our destination in Montana. They clearly felt bad leaving us to our unknown fate. But, what could be done. We were less likely to find lodging for two families then for one. As they were leaving, Bret commented that he had had luck once or twice renting a car from a dealership. This sparked an idea from the FBO lady (who turned out not to be so heartless after all). She knew the son of the owner of the two big car dealerships in town-- and he was a student pilot!

She gave him a call and, still in his date night duds, he picked us up from the airport, drove us to the dealership, handed us the keys to a car and told us we could “google some rates and that WE could tell HIM how much we would pay for the rental when we got back into town on Monday”. I'm not even sure we signed anything or gave him a driver's license before we drove off.

The drive from Idaho Falls to Glacier National Park is over 400 miles, and we did indeed go over 100 miles before we found a hotel for the night. It seemed like even more because, for a significant amount of it, we got stuck behind the most unbelievably huge and slow piece of equipment. We never did figure out what it was, but we can tell you it moved at about 5-10 miles per hour and took up both lanes of the two lane state highway!

In the meantime, the Lowels were having airplane troubles of there own. Their flight had gone fine but upon landing they had a spectacularly flat tire. They spent a significant amount of time dealing with their flat tire.

All in all, I think the break down of our “anniversary trip” went something like this: 10% flying; 25% dealing with logistical problems; 30% driving; 35% enjoying beautiful crystal clear rivers and lakes, fabulous scenery, and good company; and 0% romance.

The Infamous Yuma Trip- June 2012 (Lindsey)

I don't know how we ended up by taking a trip to Yuma (middle-of-nowhere) Colorado. Okay, that's not really true-- I do know how we ended up in Yuma, (I just can't believe we did!) I even know why we ended up in Yuma. It's because Joel and I are awful at compromising. Now, I don't mean the we are unyielding or unkind to each other. I just mean that, somehow, when we have different ideas and we try to combine them to find middle ground, something ugly often seems to come of it.

For instance, a few years ago we redid our laundry room/ third bathroom. I wanted to paint the walls mint green and the cabinets light pink to match a painting I planned to hang in the bathroom. Joel wanted to paint the cabinets terracotta. Neither of us wanted the other person's color choice. It was time for a compromise. We went to the Lowes down the street and what we came home with was the most god-awful, 1950s, Pepto-Bismal pink paint (that we both hated). It was enough to turn ones stomach. It also stayed on those cabinets for the next two years until we moved, because,just because we know our compromise was something awful doesn't, apparently, mean that we will change it!

The trip to Yuma was a similar ugly and awful, all be it completely civil, sort of compromise. Here's how it happened: We had a dog, Zeke, that we had been fostering from the local animal shelter. He was sweet; he was playful; he was well mannered and great with kids. He was also over seven years old, a rather bland-looking black dog, and completely neurotic. We knew people would not be lining up to fight over who got to adopt this crazy, old, black dog. The thought of him languishing in the kennel slowly going stir crazy (or maybe quickly, he's kinda prewired for crazy) was too much for us. We had no choice-- we had to keep him! But first, Joel said, we must know if he was OK to fly. We bought a new kennel and Joel figured out how to bolt our “already- part-of-the-family” poodle's kennel to the “almost-part-of-the-family” Zeke's new kennel and then bolted them both into the airplane-- keeping everyone safe and out of the pilot's way during flight.

Up next, a destination. Camping seemed like a good choice, after all we would have two dogs in tow. Joel researched and found the perfect place. A cute little grass strip in Northpark, between the mountains. It had a near-by lake, we could camp right at the airport, and it was only a ½ hour flight. We headed to the airport. But when we called for a flight briefing, we learned that the winds were expected to pick up in about an hour and a half. Joel was fine with this bit of news, after all he reasoned, it was less than a 30 minute flight. Now, there is something you should know about me. It's this: I am a chicken when it comes to mountain flying. Even in the best weather, I look down at all those trees and the mountains sticking up all over and I can't help but think, if the engine quits, that's gunna hurt! 

But, at any rate, the plane was packed, the kennels were bolted down, the dogs and kids were loaded. And so we did it, we made a compromise. We did the figurative equivalent of drawing a circle on the sectional map and concluded that thirty minutes, going in the opposite direction of the mountains put us in Yuma Colorado. We'd go there, and see if there was anything to do. If there wasn't, we reasoned, “we could always leave, and go somewhere else” (I know, famous last words, right?)

The flight and landing were unremarkable, by which I mean I really don't remember them. I do however, remember that another plane landed at about the same time that we did. Joel went over and admired the other plane-- because that's what pilots do. And I'm so glad he did because in doing so, he met the man who would save us from ourselves. 

We didn't bother unloading the camping gear, after all we hadn't decided whether to stay in Yuma for the night. Instead we crated the dogs in the concrete, buggy bathroom and took a pleasant ½ mile walk into town where we had lunch at the local Subway sandwich shop (one of two places to eat in Yuma.)

By the time we returned to the airport, the wind had started to kick up; we hoped it was temporary because by now we had realized that we didn't so much want to stay in Yuma over night. In the meantime we let the dogs out and explored the various little sandhills surrounding the airport. By this time it was becoming obvious that we weren't going anywhere soon. The winds were much too strong. It was also obvious that we weren't going to be leaving that night. Even if the winds did let up, Joel was not night current. And it was also obvious that camping on the Eastern Plains of Colorado with nary a tree to block the wind was going to be a miserable experience! We walked around the various structures on the property hoping maybe one of them could block some wind. I even tried to come up with some way we might be able to erect our tent in the bathroom-- yes we really were that desperate! 

It was along about this time that the doctor/pilot that Joel had met earlier in the day took pity on us. I picture him sitting in his quaint, little, small-town home, drinking a quaint cup of tea while looking out his window at the less than quaint scene of hurricane force winds whipping the trees about and pelting the windows with dirt. I, of course, have no real idea of what he was doing when the thought occurred to him that that foolish young couple with the three adorable kids and two dogs were in for a hell of a night, but I do know that shortly after this realization occurred to us, this saint showed up at the airport and offered to let us pitch our tent in his backyard. Without stopping to consider, we loaded up our kids, dogs, camping gear and our selves into the back of this strangers pick up truck. This is not the only time we have had a trip that left us with little choice but a ride in the back of a strangers pick up truck on middle-of-nowhere back roads, and every time I left with the feeling that I should say something to the kids. The lecture always comes out something ridiculous like, “Now kids, you shouldn't get in the car with a stranger, and riding in the back of a truck is not safe, but.... well, it's our only choice...” yeah never my finest parenting moment!

Fortunately, we were not kidnapped this time, nor where there any fatal car accidents that day. Instead we set up our tent in the back of a stranger's back yard, used our camp stove (again, in the backyard) to cook our dinner and breakfast, and the kind couple even left the back door unlocked that night so we could use their bathroom! The night was windy, and loud and more then once I was sure the huge cottonwood would fall and crush us in the night! But, the houses and fence blocked much of the wind and we may have even got a few hours of sleep that night. Had we stayed at the airport I'm pretty sure we would have woken up in Kansas-- or maybe OZ.

So that is how (and why) we ended up camping in the back yard of a stranger's house in Yuma Colorado. How we came to have a MOST extraordinary trip in a most ordinary of places. How we learned about kindness and compassion and the danger of compromise. It's also how we learned that our new lab/ border collie liked flying-- but HATED swimming (he nearly drown in two feet of water in the tiny city park-- a now favorite family story). Oh irony, you have much to teach us.

That last paragraph sounds so mature and noble, doesn't it? That's because I'm writing this three years after the fact. At the time, I could not yet appreciate the divine absurdity of this story. And that is why, less then a month later, when a massive hail storm smashed two windows and dimpled the entire surface of the plane, the very first words out of my month were, “NO, that trip to YUMA, CAN NOT be our last airplane trip!” But, now I see that all's well the ends well. The fates smiled on us and we were able to join an airplane owner's club that has a beautiful six seat Saratoga. Fate smiled on the other airplane, too. She is now christened “Dimples” and belongs to Joel's Uncle. Dimples even gets to continue carrying babies around (something I am convinced she enjoys) and we frequently enjoy pictures of Joel's cousin and her little one flying in “our” airplane.

Yellowstone August 2015 (Lindsey)

The propeller roared to life, the wheels sped down the runway and the small plane was lifted into the air.  We were headed for home a mere four days into what was intended to be a seven day vacation in Yellowstone, my favorite place on earth. You see, we were almost six years into this “single engine airplane adventure” and we had finally learned to respect the truth of the axiom “whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”. On this day we had seen on the horizon signs of what “could go wrong”, so we decided to cut our losses and head for home before it “did go wrong”.

We had been planning this trip to Yellowstone for months. Which isn't enough, by the way.  It turns out that a trip to Yellowstone really requires at least a year of planning if you want to stay in a lodge or cabin. But, no matter, our family is the rugged outdoorsy type, so we were happy to switch gears and make it a tenting type excursion. We did, however, think better of our original time frame and changed from a mid-September trip to a mid-August trip. Years earlier, we had taken a 4 year old Maddie and an 18 month old Kier to Yellowstone and been surprised and coat-less when it snowed on us (fortunately that year we'd made our arrangements in time to get a room in a lodge). 

We made plans. We wanted to take a boat out on the Yellowstone Lake. We wanted to see some wolves in Lamar Valley. We bought a viewing scope. We dug out the camping gear, the coats, the hats. We were ready.

Two days before we left on this Yellowstone trip, Cora (age 8) was complaining of a sore throat and running a 100 degree fever. As a type-one diabetic even a slight cold can be cause for concern as it disrupts blood sugars and requires changes in insulin dosing. But, by the morning of the first day of vacation, Cora was chipper and fever free. It looked like we were good to go.

We crammed the car and then the airplane to the gills with camping gear (and a few extra blankets, again remembering the September snow!). The flight to Yellowstone was beautiful. There were clouds on the horizon but they seemed be burning off as we approached.

Shortly before we reached Jackson, Wyoming, we saw an impressively large Golden Eagle in the air. The sight was beautiful, and more then a little unnerving. He was less than 100 feet from the right wing and at the same exact altitude that we were, close enough we could see his bright yellow feet and beak. As we passed, he seemed to realize his precarious position, he tipped his golden wings, banked to the right and peeled away.

Upon nearing Jackson, the air traffic controller routed us far closer to the Grand Tetons than we would have gone otherwise. We skirted the intimidating, craggy edifices just a few miles from their naked peaks, the airplane's terrain warning glowing bright red and yellow, telling us that those mountains reach up into the sky much higher than the altitude at which we were cruising.

 

Flying over Yellowstone Park itself is one of the greatest treasures that general aviation has to offer. From the air you can see how truly immense Lake Yellowstone is, how remote and uninhibited most of the park really is, and if you are really lucky (as we were on this day) you'll be treated to seeing a geyser erupting. We circled the park pointing out to the kids the spectacular colors of the Grand Prismatic Pool, which once you've seen from the air is really not worth seeing from the ground. From the air you can see the full splendor of the vibrant ultramarine center that fades to a translucent turquoise and the stark contrast of the unearthly amber colored bacteria mats that snake off in all directions. From the ground, you can see one side of the pool that looks like a stinky turquoises mist.

After our aerial tour of Yellowstone we landed in Montana's little town of West Yellowstone just outside of the National Park. We snacked on PB and J, picked up our rental car, grabbed some camping food at the local grocery and headed into the park. As we neared our campground we were slightly surprised to find caution tape strewn across the trail-heads nearest our intended sleeping space. Our worst suspicions were confirmed when I checked into the campground and the “you're in bear country” lecture was delivered with rather a bit more fervor then normal. It turns out a man had been mauled and partly eaten by a Mama Grizzly (and her cub?) a mile from the campground a few days earlier. Actually, by this time they had already caught the Mama Grizzly (and her cub?) and euthanized her (and her cub?-- very little was reported about the end result for the baby bear, gee I wonder).

Bear lectures and closed trails aside, our first night was beautiful. After enjoying the requisite camping S'Mores, Cora snuggled into her sleeping bag, and Joel, Maddie, Kier and I spent an hour plus sitting around the campfire staring at the crystal clear night skying and calling out satellites and even a few shooting stars that we saw streak across the sky. The night was surprisingly warm and we slept well that night.

By morning, the sky had taken on a light gray overcast and the air smelled of rain. Drizzle fell off and on throughout the morning. But, anyone who has frequented Yellowstone knows that a rainy day here or there is a given and it's best not to let it hold you back. ( Eighteen years earlier--almost to the day-- Joel and I had spent a soggy honeymoon in the Yellowstone back-country). Despite a few raindrops, we spent the morning enjoying the mud pots, the steaming and hissing “Dragon's Mouth Cave”, Mammoth Hot Springs and its odd little structures built of minerals and bacteria. In the afternoon, we even indulged in a dip in the Gardner River where the freezing cold river water meets the steaming hot run off from the hot springs making for a perfect spectrum of water temperatures. But, while Cora seemed to have made a full recovery from her cold, three of the remaining four of us (Joel, Maddie, and Kier) were now requiring Advil, throat lozenges and large quantities of tissues.

Late in the evening as we drove home from dinner, what had been a light drizzle all day turned into a frighteningly loud thunderstorm and a downpour of rain. Lightening Flashed across the sky in all directions in a storm that must have covered most of the park. It took us almost two hours to get back to the campground. All the way we wondered if we would find a soaked wet tent and sleeping bags (or maybe no tent at all-- the wind was blowing mighty hard!). And what would we do then? We already knew that there wasn't a room to be found ANYWHERE near the park and it was after 10:00 at night! Still neither Joel nor I said a word of this fear and in unspoken solidarity we ignored the questions to that end which arose from the backseat. By some divine providence, we arrived to a tent that, while soaked on the outside, was completely dry on the inside! Sometime after one AM, the mighty storm quieted and we (mostly) slept, despite the sniffing and the coughing, and the nose blowing that went on throughout the rest of the night.

In the morning we decided to head down to old Faithful and see some geysers. On the way, we stopped to do a two mile hike to see an “off the beaten path” geyser called “Lone Star”. We missed the geysers eruption, and while we were there I lost my phone, but not before I used it to take a picture of a perfect black bear footprint that we found right in the middle of the mud (urr, umm, dirt) path!

We did eventually make it down to see Old Faithful spew hot water hundreds of feet into the air before the cold germs won out and most of the group felt a nap was the best agenda for the evening. That night it was cold. Like, really cold. When we crawled out of the tent after a night of sniffing and shivering we found everything covered with a layer of frost and ice. Rather then wait for someone's cold to turn into an ear infection or a sinus infection, we admitted that it was time to throw in the towel. If you've never flown in an unpressurized airplane with an ear infection or even driven down from the high mountains with one, I recommend you try to keep it that way-- it's an absolutely excruciating experience.

Still, it's hard to drive by the steaming mud and road side signs without stopping to see what is there. So we maybe took a little longer then we meant to arrive back at the airport that day. By the time Joel retracted the wheels and the airplane climbed into the sky, it was well past noon and the afternoon thermals and turbulence quickly showed up.

Turbulence is a beast with many personalities. Sometimes it's the hit your head of the ceiling kind, sometimes it's the make you vomit kind, and sometimes it's the “I hope we don't do a barrel roll” kind. This time it was the suck you up into the clouds and spit you back out, make your ear drums burst kind of turbulence-- yep the very worst possibility for our three head cold sufferers. The good thing about this flight was we had already planned it to be short. It was a one hour flight to the little town of Thermopolis (actually it took a little longer because we spent so much time going up and down instead of forward).

Thermopolis boasts the largest hot springs in the word dumping thousands of gallons of 135+ degree water a day. They have several pools, vapor caves and slides and caked in mineral deposits from the

spring waters. But on this trip, as was befitting our present state of health, we instead stayed in a hotel that had formally been the “convalescence home”, enjoyed their small hot spring fed spa and took an early nights sleep. In the morning, refreshed and with the turbulence calmed, we headed back to Colorado.

Like most of our trips, this vacation had little in common with the vacation we thought we were planning. We planned to watch wolves at a distance and through a viewing scope, instead this vacation provided a once in a lifetime (we hope) chance to see a Golden Eagle up close and in the air. We planned to explore the waters of Lake Yellowstone, instead we examined the vastness of the sky. We planned to see the eruption of a more remote and lonely geyser, instead we found a black bear footprint in the mud. And there lies the greatest lesson to be learned from life in a small plane-- live in the moment, be flexible and always willing to give up what you planned for what is.

Cora age 8

Kier age 11

Maddie age 14