Seattle and home...

So... we made it to seattle. We weren’t able to access the internet from Glacier (obviously) so we had to stop along the way to use a hotspot. We planned out where we would stay, a trip to church, where to drop off the car etc etc...

After the long trip (10 hours + stop for dinner at a relatively fancy diner in a fairly major town in Washington, which escapes my memory.

We arrived at our campsite... only to find that for some reason it was close... so... motel again. The town inn I think it was called. Not bad, although the screaming and arguing couple came as standard to see us off in the morning.

Our church plans fell through too since it took us forever to clear out the car. I say us, it was mostly Sam! Thanks Sam!

So, we dropped off our bag at baggage storage at the airport (nice idea hey) and drove into downtown Seattle to drop off the car and see the sights. We returned the car without any trouble then headed to the old fish market, wandered along the coast, had a MacDonalds (first of the trip) and eventually ended up at the seattle center to see the spiky tower thing and a few other sights.

We realized at that point that we were tired so decided to find the nearest movie theatre with the assistance of our Sat Nav (now in hand rather than in car). So, we saw Harry Potter... not bad we both thought.

Then, much to our delight there was a nice pub just down the road from our bus stop and we have a few drink then made our way to the airport.

What happened after that is a tired blur. We flew to Texas, then to LaGuardia. We Taxied it to JFK were we hung out until Sam took ANOTHER night flight to the UK...

Thats it... trip over... And hopefully Sam has had a good sleep since he got home!

Seattle and home...

coming soon...

Glad to go to Glacier

By this point its clear we won’t make it up to Vancouver. The question is, should we go to Glacier National Park? This would be quite a big detour from a straight trip to Seattle and would mean 6/7 hours on the road today and about 10 tomorrow. I ask that question knowing already that we decided to go... and were very glad we did.

We both agreed that the most stunning scenery we’ve seen is at Glacier. Yellowstone is definitely and freak-show of nature in some sense, Glacier is just plain old majesty.

We tried to get as far through the park on the ‘drive-to-the-sun’ road after pitching our tent in the campsite near the west entrance at around 4pm. We got a fairly long way through. We would have gotten further but we decided to stop to take in the sights of the ‘hidden lake trail’ Once again, in retrospect... a very good decision indeed.

The walk took us gradually up one side of a mountain where we experienced everything from blazing summer sun, to gentle breezes to quite a bit of trudging through snow (which felt surreal!) The walk ended with a beautiful view of a hidden lake (unsurprisingly), which sits between two of the peaks. The views were absolutely stunning! On top of this we also saw some mountain goats and a beaver-like thing (which I took a close up photo of).

By the time evening came we were glad we’d picked up some ‘pasta sides’ from the general store and headed back down the campsite via the intrepid mountain pass...

The campstove we have seemed pretty LOUD to be cooking at 11 at night in a fairly quite (bar snoring) camp site but we went for it anyway and no one complained.

Tomorrow... the big ride to seattle!

Motel in Montana

Having set out quite late from Yellowstone we had planned to find a campsite with the assistance of our Sat Nav (the previous experience had not put us off the idea).

So... we drove about 2 hours back up to the big interstate (i90- pretty much runs all the way across the country pretty) and asked TomTom to look for campsites. This time he found a big field for us behind someone’s backyard!

Nevermind!

So... we ended up staying in the rainbow motel. Not bad and a very sugary and tasty donut selection was on offer for breakfast.

Yellowstone!! Bears, Bison and Bubbling Boiling Springs

Yellowstone is the freak show of nature.

Basically it is the world’s largest active volcano - but it’s mostly covered up by the ground. Wherever there is a gap in the ground there seems to be something slightly bizarre. Each different area in the park made its unique contribution to the freak show. There were bubbling pools of boiling mud. Caves with steam billowing from them. Whole hills with steam rising from them. There were all sorts of pools - some smelt of sulphur, some were bright green, others blue, or clear, or one that was ‘prismatic’ (it had all the colours of the rainbow). There was a boiling stream. There were geysers - big ones too. Each spot seemed to have won some record at the hot springs olympics - the world’s tallest geyser, the world’s tallest acidic geyser, the world’s largest ‘predictably firing’ geyser, the world’s highest concentration of hot springs (over 10, 000). We visited Old Faithful - the geyser that fires at predictable intervals. We took our seats with 100s of others, cameras at the ready, waiting for him to fire up. And erupt he did - 30 ft in the air.

But there is more to Yellowstone than the freak shows of nature. Most of the park is forest. A guide told us (or at least a group of people where we were earwigging) that the seeds inside the cones of the trees do not come out until they are burnt in fire. The life-cycle of the tree from seed to full grown to being dead to falling over to rotting is the same as the interval between major forest fires. ‘Funny that’ our guide commented. Just when the trees need to have new ones grow a fire comes along. The last major fire wiped out one third of the trees and twenty years on there are lots of new little trees taking the place of the old - and no replanting was done by man.

There are plenty of animals too. We had to slow down a few times because a bison was walking in the road. There were deer and elk in the area too. The best bit though was when we’d taken a detour to the nearby Tetons National Park. A brown bear jumped out into the road and walked along in front of us for a minute. We got a clear view from 12 feet away (safely inside the car). Our trip in the parks now felt complete.

We had travelled along every mile of road possible in the park and then left and made our way out to the wilds of Montana.

Christian Hospitality and Wyoming

Our entry on our trip to Minneapolis was brief... this was due to a a slight technical difficulty which meant I couldn’t complete it... if I had, what I would have said is this:

At the service at Bethlehem a series of Church picnics were announced. The aim of these is to bring a large church family into closer fellowship. Sam and I saw a slightly different possibility- the possibility of free lunch and some good Christian fellowship. Of course, the fellowship matter more than the food (?) So, we took directions and ended up in a park with a number of families, many of whom were just leaving to put their kids to bed- yet a few people remained and we got chatting. They were really excited to have two road trippers on board.

Anyway, there turned out to be a few signs of providence in the fact we went to that picnic. For a start, Sam had commented about how he knew only 3 people who had ever been to visit that church - they’d been to a kids work conference. It turned out that one of the people at the picnic had been involved in running this conference and knew them. The next providential link is why I am writing this post now and not then...

One of the guys there, Eric, said he had an aunt who lived in Buffalo WY which was very much on our route and very much a place we could stop given the mileage etc. So... he took my number and arranged for her to put us up for the night.

So, Tuesday evening... after we’d driven for a while and seen the likes of Mount Rushmore, the Devils Tower (famous from such films as ‘close encounters’) and a few other sights... we spent the night at Eric’s Aunt Linda’s. Not only that but she prepared a very tasty breakfast for us. Since we had not showered for a couple of days this was a real treat- a real bed, a real shower, real food... ahhhh!

It is also an awesome illustration of the kind of hospitality Jesus called for when he said, ‘whatever you do for the least of these my brothers you did for me.’ i.e. the hospitality extended to us simply because of our common allegiance to Christ (we are his brothers) is kindness done for Christ himself.

It was also great to chat with a real Westerner about what life and the church scene is like over there.

Wyoming is a beautiful state, though largely uninhabited (400,000ish I think). Tomorrow hold more of its delights... Yellowstone National Park.

Storm in the Badlands

Why does no one speak of The Badlands? Its scenery is beautiful with Grand Canyon-like rock formations and wide open praries in between. The sky there is very big. As I looked out across one of the planes in the bright, hot, sunshine, with cloudless skies, I commented to Mark, ‘wouldn’t it be amazing to see a big storm come rolling across these planes?’

It was.

As the sun was setting dark clouds gathered across the skies and nature’s light show began. The forks of lightening shattered the skies and lit up the dark clouds whilst the sun looked blood red on the horizon. The thunder rumbled and clapped loudly. We watched it from by our tent - in a lovely open campsite in the centre of the Badlands. Then the heavens opened above us with proper rain. The wind blew strong. The tent had to be anchored firmly to stop it from leaving the site and heading across the wasteland. The car gave us the shelter we needed.

As the rain stopped we went to bed - but the light show continued for hours as the storm made its way to the horizon.

It all made me think of Revelation. Revelation chapter 4 has a vision of the throne room of God with imagery used to capture the awesome majesty of God. It says there that thunder and lightning came from the throne. The Badlands storm has now given me a greater appreciation of the weight of that imagery. Our Creator is powerful and his creation is beautiful.