Our first stop was at the Black Rabbit RV Park in Hamilton, Montana. We managed to get away from the house about 10:50 this morning. The last task, hooking the Tracker onto the motor home, took quite a while as the safety chains hookup had become quite corroded over the winter.

Our route of travel has been mostly on normal roads other than the drive from Pocatello to Blackfoot on the freeway. We drove through the Idaho National Laboratory and past EBR-1, the first nuclear reactor to generate electricity and Atomic City, the first town to be lit up by nuclear energy. The we turned north in Arco and drove past Mt. Borah, the highest point in Idaho and onto Challis, Idaho. Another turn north took us through Salmon, Idaho, over Lost Trail Pass (and the interesting ski resort there), the Continental Divide, and down the other side into Hamilton, Montana. Much of the drive from Challis northward was along the Salmon River as far as the Divide, and then along the Bitterroot River. Our campground is on the banks of the Bitterroot about three miles north of town.

Our map index says that the population of Hamilton, Montana was about 3,000 souls. Wikipedia says 3,705 in the 2000 census. It cannot be true. This must be a much larger town. There are three grocery stores, just about every fast food restaurant, and a couple of movie theaters. It seems to be a very vibrant place.

With gasoline prices around $4 a gallon, we’ve decided to slow down to 55 mph as we’ve got more time available to us now. Today that resulted in a 20% increase in gas mileage, even though we’ve been going up and down mountains much of the day. We’ve pretty much decided to drive the motor home out east in October for The Wedding and take some time around that to do some vacationing. It looks like by slowing down we can dramatically reduce the cost of the trip.

The vacation has begun!

Tomorrow morning we’re headed out in the motorhome on our way to Heron, Montana. Kirk, Dawnmarie, and family are there visiting with Kirk’s family. We’ve had their oldest daughter Madison here for the past week making sure that she’s thoroughly spoiled and will deliver her back to her family on Saturday afternoon.

The plan is to stay in Heron for about a week, visiting and playing. Dawnmarie and Kirk are leaving at the end of next week to drive back to Pennsylvania. We’ll leave about the same time for another week of playing. We’re going to drive around the International Selkirk Loop. We’ll start in Sandpoint, Idaho and go counter-clockwise around the loop … through Bonners Ferry, cross into Canada, through Creston, Crawford Bay, and Nelson, back into the US at Metaline, Washington, south through Cusick and Priest River. The main route is about 280 miles but we’ll take several side trips. We’ve not spent any time in that part of the country and we’re quite ready to take a short vacation.

We’ll avoid freeways on our way up and around the loop. We’ll probably come home on the freeway just because there’s not much other option. By keeping the speed down I’m hoping to get around 10 mpg in the motorhome. So the route: We’ll go to Blackfoot, then east to Challis, north through Salmon, Idaho and Hamilton, Montana to Missoula, Montana. Then we’ll head northwest to Heron. A week later we’ll head to Sandpoint and do the loop. Then we’ll probably come home on I-90 to I-15 to Pocatello. We’re planning to be home on Saturday, July 5th. This should be a lot of fun! Pictures and blog posts coming, as well as the occasional twitter.

A fairly rare event occurred over this Fathers Day weekend in Soda Springs. My parents and all of their children were in the same place at the same time. I can’t remember the last time this occurred.

For a few weeks, my favorite brother Perry and I had been talking about getting together in Soda Springs on Saturday, June 14th to help put the house back together after the inside had been painted. My brother was planning to stay Saturday night and leave after Church on Sunday to drive back home to Wyoming.

Meanwhile, Nina had been emailing my sister Eileen, who thought she and her husband might come up for a bit on Saturday. Mother told us that my sister Terry and her husband would probably come up from Ogden, Utah on Sunday afternoon. So we decided to make two trips to Soda Springs … one on Saturday morning and one on Sunday afternoon. That way we would see everyone.

The paint job on the inside of the house is very well done and has really freshened up the inside. By the time Nina and I got there on Saturday, most of the furniture moving-back-into-place was done, so Perry and I worked with Dad to help him finish up the gate to the back yard he’s been working on for several weeks. While we were doing that, my sister Eileen and husband Phil arrived on their motorcycle. They had ridden up on a beautiful Saturday morning from Sandy, Utah.

My sister has been hard at work taking old family photographs, reworking them, printing them, and framing them. She spent the rest of Saturday and some of Sunday putting these pictures up on the walls. She has done a fabulous job and I’m really quite impressed. She’s got a good eye and a great talent.

We had to leave mid-afternoon after installing the swamp cooler to be back in Pocatello to pick up our granddaughter Madison. Dawnmarie’s family is vacationing in northwest Montana and Kirk’s parents dropped Madison off in Pocatello on their way south to Las Vegas. We like to have the grandkids stay with us for a week when they turn 12 … just the grandchild and us to do a little bonding and this was Madison’s week. We’ll take her back to Montana at the end of this week when we go up there for a visit.

Sunday afternoon we went back over to Soda Springs. My brother and my sister Eileen were still there and my sister Terry with her husband Allan had arrived. We had a delightful dinner (expertly crafted by my wife Nina) and lots of fun conversation. At the end of the afternoon we assembled on the front porch and a neighbor came over to snap the shutter on some pictures. The rare event has been captured digitally. And a good time was had by all!

Forty-four years ago this evening Nina and I were married. Eight children later we’re still going strong … if a bit forgetful. This morning Nina was writing in her journal and suddenly realized this was the Twelfth of June and our anniversary. I was afflicted with the same malady and had also completely forgotten. Forgiveness came quickly, fortunately.

I was a young Airman in the United States Air Force living in New Haven, Connecticut attending Chinese Language School at Yale University. Nina was a Senior at Hamden High School. We met on a blind date and within a couple of weeks my heart was hers. And it still is!

Since then we’ve had a great ride which is still going. I’m quite ready for it to continue well into eternity!

I did and I still do!

Today was an enormously busy day. We are currently in North Salt Lake at our daughter Heather’s house where we’ll be staying for a couple of days. That meant a lot of things needed to get finished at home before we could leave. I did get the lawn tractor started and running, although very roughly. It needs some additional tuning as well as another oil change. The engine was completely full of water and it’ll take a couple of oil changes to get everything cleaned out of the engine. The grass is in serious need of being mowed, and I’m not excited about walking behind the mower. That’s plenty of motivation to get the tractor running well!

The other Very Important Task was to get the tomato plants set in buckets and hung up. The picture is evidence that this VIT got completed (click twice on the picture for a full-sized view). Six tomato plants, probably all different varieties, are in buckets (hanging down), and hung from the new trellis. I’m very much looking forward to the fruits of this labor!

We’ll be in North Salt Lake until Thursday morning sometime. Heather and Ty are going out of town for a wedding and we’re staying here to kind of keep track of things, particularly making food on occasion for the grandkids who might be around every once in a while. Stephanie is working and busy with her social life. Christopher is also working. Danielle is off to Girls Camp in the morning. So we’ll be hanging out with Michael … a delightful use of time. I may even get some time to work on the new website (see techmatters.rnsmith.com for details).

The Phoenix Mars Lander is on Twitter … and late yesterday a tweet came through saying:

Tonight, go outside and look up at the crescent moon. That “star” just above the moon isn’t a star, it’s Mars. I’ll be waving 🙂

I went out to the hot tub around 9:30 and the sky was quite cloudy. About 10 p.m. the clouds blew away and a beautiful clear sky appeared. The crescent moon was in the western sky and a little red dot was visible to the upper right. So, I had to try out my night sky photographic capability. The image to the upper left is the best of the bunch. The moon is quite bright and getting the red dot of Mars to show causes the moon to be way overexposed. What I ended up doing is taking a picture that makes the moon come out OK and another picture making Mars kind of appear and then photoshopping the two images together. Clicking on the picture will show a full-sized image.

The other space event going on is the Space Shuttle delivering the Japanese module to the International Space Station. Someone at NASA is also on Twitter providing updates on what’s going on with that shuttle mission. Today as the astronauts were doing the 197th spacewalk, their progress was being tweeted. I find this communication very cool and very interesting! This is information coming to me that I would never get otherwise. While Twitter is going through some serious growing pains, they are truly plowing virgin and fertile ground. In a year or so this capability will be more ubiquitous than email.

For what it’s worth, I did wave back….

Nina wanted to have a kind of a trellis built so she could hang her tomato plants upside-down and save space in the garden. Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about raised garden beds for a couple of years and decided that I’d make one and see how it would work out. So, when I went to buy the materials for Nina’s tomato hangers, I also bought most of the material I’d need to make my concept of a raised garden bed. Tonight I’ve finished everything except for staining the wood to protect it. Then it’s ready for dirt and planting.

The top of the main box is 40 inches off the ground, just about the right height to be able to work at the garden box while standing. The box itself is two feet wide, six feet long, and ten inches deep. The bottom of the box is a stiff wire mesh, which will be covered by gardening fabric so excess water can drain out.

The top part is intended for hanging plants, including hanging upside-down tomato plants. The back cross-member is offset from the garden box about a foot, so anything hanging there has a long way to grow down, and if the box is set in the right orientation, the hanging planters will not shade the rest of the garden.

The shelf on the bottom is for storage. All in all, I’m quite happy with the result. This is the “beta” version of the garden beds. There are a few things I’ll do differently for the “production” version. For instance, I’ll put the legs inside the box rather than on the outside. That results in a much more efficient use of lumber for the shelf underneath. As currently constructed, a 1″x 4″x 8′ piece of pine only gives me 3 slats for the shelf and about 22″ of throw-away at the end of the piece. With the legs inside, I’ll be able to get 4 slats out of each 1″x 4″x 8′ board.

Nina also suggested making just the box / shelf without the top part for hanging plants. These things would work nicely on an apartment veranda and would probably sell well.

Now that I’ve made one, I could probably build the next one in about four hours (or 3 1/2 hours without the top). It’s been a fun project and it’ll be completely done by Saturday and ready for planting. I think I’ll price out material to build about seven with no top part and three with a top part. That could be a winter project and I could use the proceeds to finance a cruise next year! Stay tuned for pictures when it’s finally set in place and planted.

As I was working out in the garage this morning I heard a noise sounding like a horse running up the sidewalk. I looked outside in time to see a big (huge, actually) female moose go running up the sidewalk in front of our house. She was being tailed by a woman in a car, and every time the moose saw the car, she got spooked and went in another direction. She came running right at the garage and veered off to the south when she saw me standing there.

I ran into the house, told Nina, and got my little point-and-shoot digital camera. By then, the moose had run back down the street and was where I took the picture (click twice on the picture to see the full-sized version). She spotted open field to the right and disappeared a few minutes later. I would not have thought we would have a moose in our front yard!