On Sunday afternoon there was a picnic for family involving hot dogs, hamburgers, sausages (all grilled), lots of salads and chips – and a little bit of rain. In fact, it rained off and on quite a bit when we up that way. Apparently, they’ve had a lot more rain than usual this spring.

Mel and I were relegated to a tent in the back yard. The Boones have a large indoor cat, and Mel is allergic to cats. The tent was ok, but it rained a little at night and the sun came up very early. I don’t think we got much sleep.

On Monday we went with Mel’s cousins into NYC. Stephanie drove, since we determined that finding parking would be cheaper than taking public transit. We parked near Times Square and then got on the subway to Chinatown. Morgan wanted to go to Chinatown – the good part, not the purely tourist areas. We ended up walking around Chinatown quite a bit. It’s a little ironic how much Chinatown has “invaded” Little Italy

. Italians have a long, influential history in NYC, but the district they are commonly associated with is tiny compared to the neighboring Chinatown.

After Chinatown we got on the subway (and waited for a while) to go to Central Park. We got off on Madison Avenue and walked to FAO Schwartz. While we were in the store, the fire alarm apparently went off, though we couldn’t really tell in the store. When we got out into the plaza (where the Apple store is), it was covered in suited businessmen and women milling about. After a few minutes, some fire trucks showed up and clarified what was going on. 

We got lunch at a hot dog stand at the corner of Central Park. After lunch Mike and Cameron went to the Apple store, while Mel, Stephanie, Morgan and I walked down 5th Avenue. The girls wanted to find the American Girl store. I actually went in when we found it. It was kind of fun. It would be an awesome treat for a little girl, but it was fascinating how much time and money goes into the dolls. They had a hair salon (for the dolls), shelves and shelves of clothing options, a photo studio, and a cafe.

On Monday night, after we got back to NJ, Mel and I went to supper in White Plains with my grandparents. We went to a nice Italian restaurant and then to a park near the dam that holds back the water for NYC. Getting there and back was yet another reason to love GPS. It’s amazing how easy it is to find your way.

On Tuesday we went with Mel’s family to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The GPS didn’t do so well this time. It took us through downtown Jersey City. We got there, but it’s hard to believe that it was the fastest way.

Ellis Island was really cool. I think we got there early enough to just beat the rush, though people arrive a boatload at a time, so there tends to be large clumps milling about. The exhibits were really fascinating. After a while, some started to seem a bit redundant, but the overall effect was very nice. There was lots of detail and first-person stories about coming into the USA. It seemed like the National Park Service (who runs the island now) wanted to dispel some of the popular notions about Ellis Island. Often people think that immigrants coming through Ellis Island were treated little better than so much cattle. It’s true that they were often poor and that conditions were hard, but most of that had nothing to do with Ellis Island. Further, poor as they were, they were often much better off here than where they came from. Most people made it through immigration in less than a day (90%). Only 2% were denied admission, and often for very obvious reasons. The immigration officials seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of the people, and sometimes that meant forcing them to endure some discomfort in order to reduce their overall stay in immigration.

One of the most interesting exhibits to me was the room about mental health. Immigration officials wanted to prevent insane people and those who weren’t intelligent enough to work out of the country. It seems like a cruel policy, but they wanted to avoid having to become a giant welfare state (remember, this was the early 1900s). But often the immigrants came from very poor backgrounds, and many of them didn’t speak English. The psychologists had to devise psychometric tests (including intelligence tests) that didn’t depend on culture or language. Of course, modern psychologists debate endlessly about the cultural aspect of intelligence tests as if past Americans were benighted bigots who unjustly discriminated because of invalid tests. But what happens if the person you’re testing doesn’t speak English, can’t read, and has never held a pencil? The Ellis Island psychologists realized the impact of all these factors, and more, and seem to have done a pretty good job evaluating immigrants in spite of themselves.

Liberty Island was fun too, though there isn’t much to do. Security onto the monument is tight and access is limited. We got to go, but we spent a while in lines. On Saturday, July 4, the NPS will open the crown again to visitors. We were just a few days early.

We spent Tuesday night with Tim and Mel Taylor. They’re living in Newark now so that Tim can go to law school. We had a good time with them, and a fairly decent night of sleep before our trip home.

On Wednesday we headed home. It’s about 8 hours from Newark to Radford, but we took a slight detour to visit Gettysburg National Military Park. We didn’t really have that much time, so we only did part of the 24-mile driving tour. We also went the the cemetery (call us weird) where Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address. It was hot, so we didn’t want to walk that much outside, and the museum was a little too expensive to justify an hour’s visit.

We made it home around 8:30, completely exhausted. I think we’re still recovering. But it was a fun trip. We’ll have to do it again when we have more time to enjoy it.

After getting Matt, we drove to the hotel to pick up my cousin Morgan so we could go get supper. We hung around the hotel for awhile waiting for our parents to get back. Andrew and I were staying with some friends of Aunt Debbie and Uncle Dave, so we left later in the evening. Here are the funny hotel room stories.

The toilet in Morgan’s room didn’t work. She called several times asking them to fix it. Eventually the front desk asked if she needed it tonight (dumb question). She said she could send Morgan a plunger or move them to another room. I encouraged her to move to another room. (Why should the paying guest have to plunge her own toilet when it was stopped up before she got the room?) So, we helped her move. After moving everything we noticed the deadbolt in the door was out and wouldn’t close back in which kept the door from closing. We unsuccessfully tried to fix it. Then I had the bright idea of playing with my brothers’ door to see if we could figure out what happened. That resulted in their deadbolt not closing either. Andrew called the front desk and was trying to explain the problem to the girl there. Meanwhile Morgan started playing with the door again. She discovered that turning the door handle the opposite way solved the problem! Meanwhile, earlier that day when Aunt Debbie and Uncle Dave checked into the hotel they were informed that there was no room registered for David Boone. They had a Daniel Boone (my dad) and a Christine Boone (my mom). So, Uncle Dave took my parents room. Then when my parents checked in they didn’t have the right size room for them, so they were given two rooms for the same price. Meanwhile, later that night Uncle Don, Becky, and Kyle and Candace (cousins) checked in and were given Uncle Dave’s room. They walked in the room to discover Aunt Debbie’s mom sitting there. At first no one recognized the other until Kyle finally remembered. They were given another room. Then when Uncle Dave returned from the rehearsal dinner their keys didn’t work because their room had been reassigned! The next morning my parents toilet had gotten clogged as well!

The wedding was at 2:30pm. We found the church without much trouble thanks to the GPS. It was nicely attended. I have never seen so many cameras and phones taking pictures during a wedding before! The wedding went pretty smoothly. Brandon and Justine got a little choked up during their vows. My cousin Stephanie was singing a duet, and her microphone didn’t work, but she worked around that well. The funniest part was the kiss. As Brandon and Justine kissed, the groomsmen all pulled a piece of paper out with a number on it to rate the kiss. The audience roared with laughter. Only the groomsmen knew it was going to happen.

The reception was at Shady Maple, a Smorgasbord run by Mennonites. Apparently it’s a popular place, and as the teenager whose house we stayed at said, “Most of the people there need two seats.” Shady Maple was an hour away, so the reception was at 5pm. It was amazing when we pulled in. It was a gigantic building and parking lot, and the line out front was incredibly long. I was glad we were in a banquet room. According to the Shady Maple website, the buffet room can seat 1, 200 people. It has a 30,000 square foot gift shop in the basement.

We sat at the table for awhile waiting for the wedding party to arrive. When they arrived, we waited some more for the microphones to work. The reception was long. After we finished eating we waited awhile. There was going to be a slide show, but it took a long time to get set up, and then it was a 25 minute presentation! We waited awhile more and Brandon and Justine cut the cake. Brandon was nice, but Justine smeared it on his nose. Eventually Justine threw her bouquet which was caught by Stephanie! The couple finally got out around 10pm, but the night wasn’t over for them yet.

A little later, Aunt Debbie received a phone call from a frantic Justine. Her luggage wasn’t in the car. It was in Stephanie’s car which was back at the church. No one had moved it to the getaway car. They made arrangements to meet at the church, but it was a 45 min drive. Then Cameron realized that HIS luggage was in Brandon and Justine’s car! They finally met up at 11pm to switch the luggage.

The next morning we packed up and headed to New Jersey for a few days at Uncle Dave’s house.

Christmas morning we ate breakfast with my parents and then headed over to the Garland’s to open presents. Grandma Q. came over as well and brought her carload of gifts. Anthony is known for his creative wrapping. One present for Dad G. was about 6 feet tall and in the shape of a “T”. Dad unwrapped the top part and found an empty wrapping paper tube filled with paper towel rolls. He unwrapped the rest of the present and found an umbrella hiding inside. It was pretty funny. We went to lunch at BJU with both of our families. After lunch we opened presents with my family. We got a lot of nice gifts. Andrew’s favorite gifts were a George Forman grill, ESV study Bible, and several books from his Amazon list. My favorite gifts were two snowmen cross stitch books, a hot water bath (for canning), and a pressure canner and cooker.

Friday was a busy day. My family was busy packing for our annual trip to Michigan. Andrew and I attended the funeral for Mrs. Hadley, the mother of one of my good friends. We spent the evening with Andrew’s family.
Saturday was a long day that began at 4:30am. We followed my family for the 12 hour trip to Grandma and Grandpa Erickson’s farm. That area of Michigan had been getting a lot of snow, but Friday and Saturday were a little warmer and it rained so most of the snow melted. We did get a few more inches of snow halfway through the week.

Sunday was our only busy day of the vacation in Michigan. Grandma wanted her whole family at church so she could show us off. We took up 3 pews (most of the rest of the family lives in the same area, but they go to different churches). After church we headed over to Uncle Brian’s and Aunt Annette’s where we had our big dinner and then opened our gifts. Since there are so many of us we draw names for gifts. Some of the women like to do small things for everyone. This year my mom made caramel corn for all the guys and cookies in a jar for the women. Tricia made a small loaf of friendship bread for all the guys and Bath and Body Works handsoap or lotion for the women.

On New Year’s Eve we all went back to Uncle Brian’s for supper. Then some of us younger adults went into town to go bowling. We had a good time and enjoyed watching some of my cousin’s friends come up with creative ways to bowl. The funniest one was when the two girls (who were terrible bowlers) decided to roll the ball together. They got a strike. We got back to Uncle Brian’s about 9:30. Half of the group went downstairs to Uncle Brian’s home movie theater to watch an action movie and eventually everyone else went home.

The other days were pretty slow although there was always a house full of people, especially at meal time. All of us from out of town headed home Saturday morning. It is wonderful to have family we both get along with and enjoy spending time together.

We went to Richmond to visit my aunt and uncle for the last weekend in October. My cousin Jessica is living with them, and we’ve been wanting to visit for awhile. Friday was her birthday, so we went down to surprise her. Tricia had her open the door thinking it was trick-or-treaters (it was Oct 31). We yelled “trick or treat” when she opened the door. It took a few seconds for her to realize just who was on the door step. It was a great surprise.

We relaxed Friday night. Saturday we went to Maymont park for half the day. It was a beautiful day in the upper 60s. The park is quite large with various paths. Throughout the park are various animals (goats, bears, elk, deer, birds), a Japanese Garden, and a mansion. Since it was so warm most of the animals were out. The mansion has several buildings around it. You can take a tour of the mansion. We visited the basement since it was free.

We celebrated Jessica’s birthday Saturday night. On Sunday we went to church and visited until it was time to head back to Radford late afternoon. We enjoyed the visit and are glad we were able to suprise Jessica for her birthday.

I’ll give the highlights of each day below, but there were some regular activites each day. A different crew cooked or cleaned up for every meal. Andrew and I cooked two meals and cleaned up three. It was great to not be in the kitchen for every meal. I know everyone else felt the same way. Another regular event was family devotions in the evening, just as we have done on every family vacation. This summer we sang some songs, had testimonies, and the “young” guys (Michael, Andrew, Nathan, and Brandon) gave a challenge. Each night was such a blessing.

Saturday
Uncle Dave and family took I-81 down from New Jersey, so we invited them to our apartment for lunch. After lunch Stephanie rode with us. We ended up taking NC-197 instead of the interstate. The road still got us there, but it took MUCH longer. We went up and down a mountain and ended up in a valley with several houses and a church or two. Then went up and down another mountain past some more houses and a church or two. This continued for several hours. We finally made it to the house. The driveway was almost worse than the road we had been on. It was steep and narrow, and the last section was all gravel. Brandon got his family’s van stuck on the first attempt. They had to unload some people to shift the weight to the front wheels. We were the last ones to arrive. One of the first things said to us was, “Don’t drink the water. It smells like sulfur!” Sure enough, the water had a strong stench of sulfur.

Sunday
My dad spoke for family devotions in the morning. He spoke longer than the rest of the guys (more like a church service). There was nothing planned for the rest of the day, but in the afternoon some people were going to the town of Green Mountain. I wanted to go along. Green Mountain was not very big. It consisted of a general store (which was closed), a post office, and a Presbyterian church. A few people drove by, but no one was around. My car then went into Burnsville to get more bottled water.

We celebrated Grandpa and Grandma’s 60th wedding anniversary after supper (the reason we all got together in the first place). Grandpa and Grandma, Sharon and Nathan, and Andrew and I played the newlywed game. Uncle Dave had collected questions from everyone to ask Grandpa and Grandma about their marriage. Then we watched a picture slide show and ate pound cake with mashed strawberries.

Monday
We left in the morning to go to Mt. Mitchell. First we had to go to the store to get some bread. Some of the cars needed gas. Through miscommunication, Nathan’s and my dad’s cars headed off to Mt. Mitchell while Uncle Dave’s car waited for us in the store parking lot. They finally realized we had already left and headed out…only they turned the wrong direction out of the parking lot. Cell phone reception was hit and miss, so it was difficult figuring out what was going on. We finally waited for them at an overlook of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We were amazed that Uncle Dave could have such trouble when he was the one with the GPS!

We got to Mt. Mitchell and had a picnic lunch. Uncle Dave’s family, my family, and Morgan went on a hike. We had those who didn’t hike drop our cars off at the end of the trail. It was a beautiful hike through the woods. There were a lot of raspberry bushes along the way. Most of the berries weren’t ripe, but we managed to find a few we could eat. Halfway down the trail came to a restaurant along the road. We went to see the view and took some family pictures. Morgan said, “I don’t have a family.” There was another guy standing there and he pipes up, “I’ll be your family.” Then he walked over, put his arm around Morgan, and they took a picture together. It was really funny.

On the way back we went to The Soap Shed where this guy makes soap. He had over 120 varieties. Some of the boys walked in and walked back out because the smell was so strong. We ended up in there a long time because the man talked a lot.

Andrew and I were making pizza for lunch on Tuesday, and we needed a count of what kinds people would eat. After devotions I made the mistake of starting this topic by saying, “Andrew and I have an announcement.” As soon as I started saying, “Andrew and I are making pizza tomorrow” Aunt Debbie had this big reaction. She (as well as most of the other women there) thought we were going to say we were having a baby (which is not true). It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. It became one of the jokes for the rest of the week–”We’re going to have a little pizza.”

Tuesday
We were supposed to go tubing today, but the river was really low and we were told we would have to walk some of the way. We found a public pool in Burnsville, so in the afternoon we all went there. We were some of the oldest people at the pool. At first there were a lot of people in the water, but we got some of the shallow end cleared out by doing some synchronized swimming. We swam about an hour until it got cloudy (and time for a life guard break), and we stayed another hour just relaxing by the pool.

My dad had talked to the owner of the house about the sulfur water. The owner felt really bad and came to bring us some Shock (chlorine). We needed to pour it down the well, let it sit for 10-12 hours, and then let the water run until we didn’t smell the chlorine anymore. They put it down late in the evening.

Wednesday
The water treatment didn’t work. We ran the water, but we didn’t really smell any chlorine. The sulfur smell never really went away either. My dad and Nathan thought that since the chlorine was in a powder and the well is 900 ft deep that maybe it didn’t get down there. There was nothing on the schedule, so we went to Burnsville in the afternoon to go shopping. We spent a few hours going to some of the various shops.

Thursday
We took another picnic lunch and left late in the morning for Linville Falls and Caverns. My dad had gotten directions from Google, and he was leading. We were doing fine until the road ended with a locked gate. We all had to turn around and find someone to give us directions. As best as we can tell, the road became private or something and was blocked off. We got to the caverns without too much trouble. We took the tour first. The cave isn’t very big and our tour guide had a southern accent, didn’t enunciate very well, and gave a very memorized-sounding speech, but it was a neat tour. We had a picnic lunch and then took some trails to view Linville Falls. In the evening we had a campfire with S’mores.

Friday
We had some skits in the morning. Michael began with a group song. Stephanie and Brandon did a sound effects skit. I split everyone up into 4 groups and had everyone act out a past vacation memory. There was another sound effects skit and then a slide show with pictures of the week. Then was the grand finale. Back by popular demand was Matthew as the really tall person. I was a squatty body. Matthew made jokes from the week and then we acted out Brandon and Justine getting engaged. Matthew wrote a song for it. Everyone seemed to enjoy the skits.

We noticed that the water was smelling less like sulfur and more like chlorine. We weren’t sure what was going on.

That afternoon Uncle Dave’s family, Andrew, my brothers, and I went to Little Switzerland (which consisted of a used bookstore) and Emerald Village (which was an old mine and a museum of sorts). The way back was interesting. A tractor trailer truck had gotten stuck and was blocking both lanes. We followed some other cars around the truck into some back roads. We ended up getting a little bit lost. Of course Uncle Dave had the GPS, but it just sent us around in a circle. We eventually made it back to the main road. We also stopped in Spruce Pine and went to some shops.

On the way home my mom called and asked us to stop at the store for more bottled water. When we got back home the excitement began. We didn’t have any water. We don’t know why. My dad called the owner again who felt really bad and offered to pay for our hotel that night if we decided to leave. Sharon and Nathan went ahead and left, but the rest of us stayed. The hot tub had a few inches of water left in it, so we filled up our empty jugs to flush the toilets (thankfully we had saved all the filtered water jugs we had used). We used that up and then Uncle John, Uncle Dave, and Aunt Debbie went to a nearby house and asked to fill up jugs with water. We used these the rest of vacation to fill up the toilets. Grandpa spoke for devotions. He had some great things to say. We also watched some of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

Saturday
Everyone headed out at various times in the morning. Andrew and I stayed until my family left about 10am (the time we had to be out of the house). We decided to take our time going home, so we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway for about two hours. We stopped in Blowing Rock at an Outlet Mall and then had lunch in Boone. We got home about 4:30pm. We are very tired, but happy to have had a wonderful vacation.

We headed to Michigan on Thursday and enjoyed a week visiting all my extended family on my mom’s side except for one cousin. We had Christmas together that weekend. The rest of the week was spent eating and visiting. Sunday night (I think) we got about 4 inches of snow. Monday night (New Years Eve) we got more snow. The snow was supposed to end by midmorning Tuesday. Well, Tuesday morning the sun came out a tiny bit, and then it started snowing around lunchtime and didn’t stop until sometime in the night. We took a walk Tuesday night in the snow. We were supposed to head back to Greenville on Wednesday, but because of our snow and the snow being called for most of the way back to Greenville we decided to stay an extra day. Wednesday was beautiful. The sky was clear and the snow was so pretty. We had over 8 inches of snow. Unfortunately it was very dry and wouldn’t pack at all. When we left Thursday morning it was 4 degrees.

We went back to Greenville, but only for the night. My cousin Kyle Bowman (on my dad’s side of the family) was getting married that weekend. We did lots of laundry and repacked Thursday night so we could leave Friday. We took my grandparents with us, so we had seven packed in the van. Thankfully the wedding was only five hours away in Lynchburg, VA. Andrew drove over to Lynchburg that night, so we were able to be together again after a little more than a week apart. That night Grandpa took 17 of us out to dinner. We were quite a group.

The wedding was at 1pm Saturday. It was a nice wedding. That night for supper we were invited over to the Bowman’s house. We had thirty people there. We don’t get to see the Bowman’s much, so we enjoyed our time there. All of the extended family came to the wedding except for one cousin.

We all left Sunday. Andrew and I only had 1 ½ hours to travel, so we were in no hurry. We drove through the historic downtown and then went to a historic cemetery that had confederate graves, a pest house, and a display with a horse-drawn hearse and information on making tombstones. It was a neat place.

It has struck me lately how unusual my family is. We are close to my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on both sides of the family. When we get together after being apart for 6 months to a year, it feels like we were never apart. Everyone professes to be a Christian, and we all get along well with each other. I don’t think many people can say that about both sides of their family. I’m very thankful that God has allowed us to be so close and spend so much time together.

See the new pictures in the gallery.

Staff training began with 9 inches of snow on the ground. The melting snow made the ground soggy and hindered travel – even across the grounds. It’s very pretty, especially on Gypsum (the mountain visible from the lodge), but it forced some changes of plan.

Training includes things like camp policies and procedures, camp history, orientation with various activities, and preparation for counseling. The camp history is very interesting. I’m not sure that much of it is published anywhere. There is a lot of information, but it would be nice to see it all written down sometime. Policies and procedures are rarely interesting, but the unique location of the camp requires some different twists on typical camp practices.

Orientation included acclimatization. The camp is at 8600 feet above sea level. The cliffs for which it is named are just less than 9000 feet. Most of the staff has needed a week and a half to get used to the thin air. We played lots of outside games that helped get us used to less oxygen. When you’re not used to the air, even a walk from the pavilion (at the bottom of the hill) to the lodge (at the top of the hill – about 70 feet of change in elevation) can be a struggle.

We were scheduled to hike to the cliffs on the first day. The snow made the trail treacherous, so we played ultimate Frisbee in the meadow. We finally made the hike later during training. On Saturday (June 8th) we drove to the Green River Lakes near the headwaters of the Green River. The lakes are nestled between several mountains. The scenery is spectacular. On the second Friday of training, we hiked Little Sheep, a “hill” near the camp. The elevation at the top is about 10,000 feet. It was a brutal hike for anyone, especially those of us who were a little out of shape and not fully acclimated to the altitude. At the top there were beautiful views in every direction. The Teton Range was easily visible (about 50 miles away) and we could see nearly to Pinedale (30 miles away). It was quite windy at the top. Some of the grass and trees were growing sideways because of the constant gale. On the north slope there are snow banks. A popular activity for staff is to sled down the snow on plastic bags. Melanie did it once and sort of hurt herself. I didn’t do it at all. I didn’t want to wet and didn’t want to hike back up. A few people didn’t mind; they slid down several times.

The cliffs at Red Cliff provide more than a nice vista. During camp, we use them for rappelling. There is a 40-foot cliff and a 150-foot cliff. Melanie and I are both on the rappelling team, since Daniel York, the program team leader, wants to run as many lines as possible. Melanie will suit up rappellers with harnesses and I will supervise and man the fireman belay at the bottom of the cliff. The climbers are double-belayed, which means that there are two ropes on them for safety. My crew at the bottom can stop someone from falling simply by pulling on our rope.

One of the other events during training was the first God-Focused Whetstone conference at Red Cliff. The Whetstone conference is a two-day series of sessions and workshops for pastors and laymen. It attempts to provide them with useful ministry tools and needed spiritual refreshment. Many pastors in the inter-mountain west have small works in difficult areas. Mormonism is widespread and there are few people to begin with. The keynote speaker for the conference was Dr. Frank Hammrick, president of Positive Action for Christ ministries. Pastor Aaron Young of Elko, Nevada, and Pastor Jason Ehmann of Rexburg, Idaho, also spoke for some of the session. The guys on staff attended the evening sessions. Todd Wood, a pastor in Idaho Falls, organized and spearheaded the conference.

It looks like Melanie and I will be taking the SALT counselors to a church in Lander, WY sometime fairly soon. The church there has no pastor at the moment. Its former pastor and his family have moved to Greenville to take care of his in-laws. Mr. Dean says that we’ll probably have the whole service, so I’ll be preaching – possibly twice.

Next week is Junior Camp I. Pray that it goes well. I think the counselors are well-prepared, but I’m not sure that they think so.

We scheduled Thursday and Friday in Yellowstone. We started early on Thursday morning. Right after going into the East Entrance, we hit road construction. The road perched on the side of the mountain was being rebuilt for about 10 miles. We had to wait 30 minutes before we could proceed into the park.

Thursday we traveled along the northern part of the park. We drove from the East Entrance to Mammoth Hot Springs and back around. We hit Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Tower-Roosevelt, and Mammoth Hot Springs. On the way back we stopped at Norris Geyser Basin as well.

As would be expected, the scenery was beautiful. There was still a lot of snow on the higher peaks and there were almost no tourists to block the views. The only large collections of people were around rare wildlife.

We did see a lot of wildlife. My family likes to look at them, and we had plenty of opportunity. We saw dozens of buffalo, many elk and deer, two wolves, some coyotes, a bighorn sheep, a black bear, and a grizzly bear. Back near our lodge we also saw some moose.

Of course, Yellowstone is also known for its unusual geologic features. The canyon is pretty, but the springs and geysers are more interesting. The Mammoth Hot Springs were almost entirely turned off when we visited. There were a few trickles of water on a few springs, but most of the larger, more famous springs were dry.

Friday was the day to look at the geysers and hot springs on the western and southern parts of the park. The geyser basins were neat. Most of them were pretty active. We saw Old Faithful (the other place with lots of tourists), and while it was erupting, my camera battery died.

Grand Tetons

After we left Old Faithful we drove down through Grand Teton National Park. We didn’t see wildlife, but the scenery more than compensated. We basically drove straight to Jenny Lake in the southern section of the park. There was a boat to go across the lake, but we decided that we didn’t have enough time (we were driving all the way to Pinedale). They also had canoes and kayaks for rent, but wouldn’t start renting them for a couple of days until the water warmed up a little more.

Jackson is at the southern edge of the Tetons, We had supper there and drove on to Pinedale to stay with at the Loftus house for the night.

Saturday

On Saturday we went to Dan Kimball and Mary Maes’ wedding in Rock Springs. The wedding was nice, though we were trying not to laugh during it; Dan and Mary were trying not to laugh too. It was quite different from a Greenville wedding – people didn’t seem to know what to do all the time.

After the wedding we drove back up to Jackson to meet my family. We had supper at the Bar J Chuckwagon. The Bar J serves a western meal and performs a live western music show after supper. The meal was incredible and the show was hilarious and a lot of fun.

After church on Sunday we drove up to camp with my family. The road was pretty good by all accounts. We hiked to the cliffs and then settled into one of the cabins.

In the morning my family headed back down the mountain to drive toward Chicago. Our vacation was essentially over and we were starting camp.

The computer is still down. We looked a little bit today for a new hard drive but the picking was slim. Mel’s brother Matt is flying to Denver today, and he’s bringing his laptop, so we’ll be able to post throughout the summer at camp.

Here’s what happened on our trip.

Monday, May 28

This was another traveling day for us. We drove across South Dakota. It was beautiful out, but kind of windy. We decided to go through the Badlands on the way to Rapid City to help save time on Tuesday. We got to the Badlands around supper time. It is such weird country. You kind of have to be there to understand what it’s like. As we got to the end of the Badlands loop, there was a thunderstorm brewing in the distance. This happened to be the direction of Rapid City, which is where we were going to stay for the night. We ended up staying in Wall, SD because the thunderstorm looked really bad.

Tuesday, May 29
We drove through Custer State Park to view the animals. We were able to see buffalo and other such animals. The funniest stop was the burros. As you came around the corner there were several vehicles stopped and over a dozen burros in the road. When a vehicle would stop, several burros would step up to the car. Andrew’s family had the forsight to close their windows, so the burro only steamed up the glass. But we had our window down to take pictures. We ended up with a burro sticking his head in the car. He sniffed around and wouldn’t get his head out. I was laughing very hard, and Andrew was taking pictures. In order to get him to pull his head out we had to start driving off.

We went to Mount Rushmore toward evening. It was raining, so we staying inside most of the time. The monument was a lot smaller and farther away than I thought it would be.

Wednesday, May 30
We decided to take a detour in Wyoming to go to Devil’s Tower, another national monument. After entering the area we were looking at a prairie dog colony when some people Anthony knew from BJ showed up! What a small world.

Devil’s Tower was pretty neat. We walked up to the base of it (which is still quite a ways below it) and watched kids climbing on the rocks. We saw two people headed to climb up the tower, but we didn’t see anyone actually on the way up.

From Devil’s Tower we headed to Elephant’s Head Lodge between Cody and Yellowstone. In order to get there, we had to drive over a mountain range. At the bottom was a really cool canyon with some nice scenery and a waterfall. At the top we ran into snow. It started as rain, but in the higher elevations was fairly heavy snow. We got to Cody around dark. The cabin at the lodge was really tiny, but we never spent much time there so it wasn’t too bad.

Sadly, our pictures from Monday and Tuesday are on the laptop that isn’t working. We are hoping to be able to recover them when we get back to Greenville. We’ll post more pictures once we get a computer to download them off the camera. If you want to see pictures check out Abby’s posts.

Pray we get it fixed somehow, because otherwise we’re going to have a rough summer. A lot of stuff we need to be able to use is on that computer — basically we were planning to use it to keep our life back East still running while we’re in the West.

Also, the hard drive has our pictures — several hundred of them — on it. For some of the files, we have no other copy.

If there are any computer gurus out there with suggestions, the error message appears before Windows finishes booting up, even in Safe Mode. Error Code 0F00:0244 Msg: Block 656414: Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected. I’m reading that it’s a bad hard drive sector, but if someone has another idea or a suggestion about how to get our data off the drive, I would be very interested.