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Jul. 8th, 2019 07:53 pmWent to Montana for (a) family reunion in Big Sky and (b) in retrospect, a somewhat mad plan to also do Glacier National Park because, hey, it's also in Montana. Pro tip: Montana is a rather large state! D, who is very good at distances, didn't bat an eye when I proposed it because his family always did very long cross-continental road trips when he was a kid (he proposed DRIVING to Montana, which I immediately vetoed) and he thought I knew what I was talking about. I did not. It is a 6 hour trek. Which we did both ways because, see also, somewhat mad plan. (The kids have done 6-hour car rides, though not before both in conjunction with a plane ride and large amounts of national park driving.) Although this turned out OK because we got to spend some time with Dave's family's friends, who are super cool, and I got to meet a fandom friend, who is also super super cool. And I'm really glad we did Glacier because it is soooo beautiful!
This trip could also be called, "how many rocks/sticks/leaves can the kids throw into how many bodies of water." I suppose we are usually very limited in the number of bodies of water one can throw rocks into (there's the ocean, but because of the waves it's just not the same) and apparently both kids have been STARVING for lakes and streams and creeks and rivers and reservoirs and waterfalls to Throw Things Into.
While we were in Glacier we inadvertently did a every long hike -- we'd slept late, got into the park late, and as a result had to park far away from the trailhead, and then on top of that misunderstood the hike distance. So A, who had previously only done under-two-mile hikes, ended up doing something like 3-4 miles, and E, who had previously only done under-four-mile hikes, ended up doing something more like six or seven. This was only possible because there were lots of fun places to stop and throw rocks and sticks and leaves into water, so it wasn't so obvious there was a lot of walking. But even so, it was really pushing what they could do, and they were cranky about hiking for the rest of the week, even though we only did one more under-2-mile hike in Big Sky and a couple of half-mile walks in Yellowstone.
Family reunion was also amazingly fun. Each one keeps getting better and better, I think, as we get more comfortable with each other and figure out more things that work/don't work. Last time, we figured out that having a couple of structured planned (though always optional) activities was a Good Thing, and also having a central location was a Good Thing. Also, my parents did not stay in the same house with us, which made everything a lot easier -- we saw a lot of them at the central Big House, and went rafting with mommy, but I think not staying together was good because we missed having early morning prep time together, which is very stressful for my mom.
During the reunion we went into Yellowstone for a half day. I had never been to Yellowstone and was super surprised at how bifurcated it is -- there are these lovely rivers and forests and hills/mountains, as I have come to expect from national parks, and then you come on one of the geothermal features and it's like this stark white and orange blasted landscape. It's really interesting! Though, in retrospect predictably, the kids were way less interested in the geysers and hot pools than D and I were because you were not allowed to throw things into them :P and a half day was just about enough for them. They liked Old Faithful, though!
My opera talk was (at least in my opinion) a great success; thank you for helping :D I will probably post about that separately. The talks were almost all really good this year, even (or especially!) the kids' talks (all the other kids who attended are in high school or middle school and gave really great talks). Elena gave her first talk-she-wrote-by-herself this year and, well, kid's going into fourth grade, she needs to work on it; it was on HTML and probably D and I were the only people who followed it :)
We were very lucky that all of our flights were on time. I think every single flight we took there was another (usually earlier) one to the same place that was very much delayed.
This trip could also be called, "how many rocks/sticks/leaves can the kids throw into how many bodies of water." I suppose we are usually very limited in the number of bodies of water one can throw rocks into (there's the ocean, but because of the waves it's just not the same) and apparently both kids have been STARVING for lakes and streams and creeks and rivers and reservoirs and waterfalls to Throw Things Into.
While we were in Glacier we inadvertently did a every long hike -- we'd slept late, got into the park late, and as a result had to park far away from the trailhead, and then on top of that misunderstood the hike distance. So A, who had previously only done under-two-mile hikes, ended up doing something like 3-4 miles, and E, who had previously only done under-four-mile hikes, ended up doing something more like six or seven. This was only possible because there were lots of fun places to stop and throw rocks and sticks and leaves into water, so it wasn't so obvious there was a lot of walking. But even so, it was really pushing what they could do, and they were cranky about hiking for the rest of the week, even though we only did one more under-2-mile hike in Big Sky and a couple of half-mile walks in Yellowstone.
Family reunion was also amazingly fun. Each one keeps getting better and better, I think, as we get more comfortable with each other and figure out more things that work/don't work. Last time, we figured out that having a couple of structured planned (though always optional) activities was a Good Thing, and also having a central location was a Good Thing. Also, my parents did not stay in the same house with us, which made everything a lot easier -- we saw a lot of them at the central Big House, and went rafting with mommy, but I think not staying together was good because we missed having early morning prep time together, which is very stressful for my mom.
During the reunion we went into Yellowstone for a half day. I had never been to Yellowstone and was super surprised at how bifurcated it is -- there are these lovely rivers and forests and hills/mountains, as I have come to expect from national parks, and then you come on one of the geothermal features and it's like this stark white and orange blasted landscape. It's really interesting! Though, in retrospect predictably, the kids were way less interested in the geysers and hot pools than D and I were because you were not allowed to throw things into them :P and a half day was just about enough for them. They liked Old Faithful, though!
My opera talk was (at least in my opinion) a great success; thank you for helping :D I will probably post about that separately. The talks were almost all really good this year, even (or especially!) the kids' talks (all the other kids who attended are in high school or middle school and gave really great talks). Elena gave her first talk-she-wrote-by-herself this year and, well, kid's going into fourth grade, she needs to work on it; it was on HTML and probably D and I were the only people who followed it :)
We were very lucky that all of our flights were on time. I think every single flight we took there was another (usually earlier) one to the same place that was very much delayed.
