Newly Nomads

Life Goes On

2009-10-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

Well, somehow fall skipped Montana, or at least the valley, all together. We had about 4-6 inches of snow in early October. Now it's all gone and it is perfectly gray and drizzly outside but the early snow and freezes also robbed us of the usually gorgeous fall colors. I feel cheated.

Anyway, here is our new deck, under some October snow. Bruce did a gorgeous job on it. There are some lights under the first step that are on a timer and they look lovely at night.

Following are some pictures from my camping trip with the teens from my job. We had some amazingly cold weather and snow and ice blowing at us sideways for three out of the four days. It truly WAS a "Challenge Trip".

Bruce and I drove atop one of the local mountains and I got a few shots of a rain/hail storm moving through:

A happy hiker in Heron Park...

Some art work I've been working on... She is titled "Goddess of Fertility":

Glacier National Park

2009-09-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

Kuvia puistosta - vaelsin ehkä noin 6 kilometriä, eli ei niinkään pitkä matka, mutta korkeutta kertyi ja hävisi reilut 12oo metriä saman pituisella matkalla mennen ja tullen. Tänään en kyllä meinää pystyä kävelemään.

It might have been no more than 4 miles of distance, but we gained about 3200 feet in the first a mile and lost it all just as quickly on this hike. I can barely walk today.

The river-looking thing at the bottom is actually the road. That's where we started.

Up we go....

Yes, that is the Going to the Sun Road below. We were walking the Garden Wall.

Going down was so much faster - although a killer on the thighs and knees!

"Bishops Cap", in the center of the picture, is one of the peaks we climbed.

Mustaherukoita

2009-09-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

Meidän uskomaton ensimmäinen sato mustaherukoita! Ha Ha Ha!!!

OK.... so hopefully as the blackcurrant bushes grow the crop will follow suit. :-)

Mountain Biking on Big Mountain

2009-08-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what one can fit into a day off... freezing ready-to-be-eaten veggies that can delight us in the winter months, going for a 16 mile mountain bike ride, doing a 60 mile motorcycle trip, and relaxing and reading. I think I may quit my job.

On the way up to do the 8 mile ride down...

You can't see it but my bike is in the next chair lift behind me. :)

The first time around, it took me an extra 40 minutes because I kept having to stop to pick the huckleberries!! The mountain side was black with them!

Glacier National Park and Waterton Park (Canada) in the background.

This guy...

has this view...

Rafting the North Fork

2009-07-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

A week ago I was kidnapped to spend a day on the river with some of our best friends. I think they've been sensing that I have been overworked and under-relaxed as of late. It doesn't help that between my insane working-multiple-weekends-in-row and Bruce's band schedule we have had little time together.

Glacier National Park in the background

As you can see by the paddles that are not in the water, we had an interesting time! It's way more fun not to go straight or always point in the direction you're going though.... :)

Kat, our photographer extraordinaire. She took around 600 pictures during the whole trip, I think.

One of our many breaks...

Jesse and Kevin goofing off

Kevin

Jesse

Chris should definitely think about being a rafting guide! He saved us, and did it all without spilling Jen's beer.

More of the gorgeous scenery

Jen, busy with another story

Kelly and Chris, the happy newly weds

I wish summer lasted longer. Or maybe just that I didn't work so much.

Bob Marshall Wilderness

2009-07-13T11:08:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a work-related nine day back country backpacking trip. We headed into the Bob Marshall Wilderness to do some trail work. Amazing scenery, hard work, some pretty rustic "leave no trace" living, and 50 miles of hiking!

By rustic living I mean "no using toilet paper, no soap, no cleaning dishes, no dumping of left over foods or cooking water, no spitting of tooth paste, hanging the food out of reach of bears each night, sweeping camp daily to make sure the tiniest food specs or trash bits weren't left behind, no signs of fire pits or obvious camp sites" rustic. I learned a lot about what "leave no trace" really means... It was a much appreciated change to the numerous trashed camp sites Bruce and I have come across in our travels - toilet paper having been dug out by animals (or left out in the open by humans) and food trash everywhere. Being so far in the back country our lives - not to mention the lives of the animals - truly depended on our diligence in not attracting all sorts of wild life to us. Even then, we were fortunate enough to spot a Grizzly bear not too far from our camp! Thankfully he didn't want anything to do with us other than reminding us that we were on his turf. I wish I had caught a picture but honestly reaching for my camera was not the first thing on my mind...

I'll post a few pictures of the wilderness here though:

We had multiple river and creek crossings along the way.

Fields and fields of Bear Grass... We hit these spots at the peak of their the bloom! Each patch only blooms every seven years, so we also seemed to hit an abundant year!

Most of the trail was overgrown before we came through with our loppers and pulaskis.

Evidence of bears in the area...

Wolf prints...

We had our tools and food brought in by horses - thankfully. The packs were still heavy enough for the 16 mile hike each way.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Montana?....

The Latest...

2009-06-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

Our 10-year (!) anniversary was May 18th. We rented a cabin 18 miles from our house on Swan Lake. The cabin left many things to be desired (it was mouse infested, among other things) but we had a great time unwinding nonetheless... Bruce composed music, I read at least three books and made art from morning to night. Here are a few pictures:

Swan Lake as seen from our Kayak

I wish the house in the background had been our "cabin"!....

Enjoying a camp fire

"Six Mile Road" that ended up on top of a mountain. Fresh bear prints all over the place...

On our way to Big Fork to do the tourist thing... We have been tempted to get a second car and this one would have been perfect!... We could park it in our living room!

I think this was Bruce's first pick though...

Mr. Rock Star

Journaling and Touch Drawing outside...

The kids thought it was funny to play football with their food while we were gone!

Garden and renovation updates:

I planted two Black Currant bushes. The garden center ran out of Goose Berry bushes or I would have added those as well. Oh well, next year.

The Poppies are now done, but they were glorious while they bloomed!

Some tomato and pepper plants... We opted against a bigger garden this year, although I think Bruce wishes he had done it after all. He did plant some carrots as well.

Pansies bring back memories from home in Finland.

Bruce is finishing the ceiling in his office/our studio. It looks GORGEOUS! Next will be the crown molding and more art hanging rails and built-in shelves and hutches. But then there's also the deck (hopefully with a hot tub), kitchen, bathroom, french doors, wardrobe room, finishing detailing in the bedroom and the sauna... And I have new ideas... I'm lucky that he tolerates my day dreams and ideas with a smile on his face! I'm really only very good at the demolition part.

Our new, $5 patio set thanks to a former co-worker who is moving.

Some Heliotropes and Salvias by the Koi pond. We also got a Waterlily for the pond and fish seem grateful for that.

As an anniversary gift, Bruce sent me off to Florida recently to see my mom and best friend. It was a quick, four day trip (+ travel) and I was impressed he found ANY window of time in my full work schedule for me to get away. It was wonderful, and a little bittersweet, to be back but it was also wonderful to return to Montana.

My mom wanted to babysit a friend's dog to see if they might enjoy having one - I suspect they will get one soon...

One of the things I miss about Florida... I LOVE Pelicans. They must be one of my totem animals. This one seemed perfectly content to pose for me for as long as I wanted.

I had also hoped for thunderstorms and rain while I was there and I definitely got what I asked for! It was glorious! We got stuck in an impressive downpour while on our way to the beach.

My best friendTamara with one of her business partners in front of their studio. I got to spend a few days with her on the beach and playing with art supplies. I wish she lived closer!!

Tamara and Booey in her art studio

One of the many things Bruce does NOT miss about Florida! :)

I think that's it for pictures for now.

Bruce is busy with work and with his rock band. They sound better and better all the time. He is truly fabulous at it - his voice is getting better and his presence on stage more and more professional and charismatic. I can tell music is his number one passion, and he is only just getting going!

Work is keeping me on my toes. Many changes and challenges along the way but ultimately it has all been good. Besides, I do get paid to go backpacking for days on end.... how bad can that be?

Life is truly amazing and I'm filled with gratitude for the blessings we experience each day.

Sending you all much love.... Until next time.

Done! (Well, for now)...

2009-04-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

It was back breaking work but I did it. Whoever recovered the 2x6 wood with plywood and carpet was... hmmm...., never mind. I haven't counted the number of screws total, but there were spots with four screws within a four inch stretch! In addition to nails. What were they thinking??! Oh well. It was a workout. And I got to be outside.

This corner will hopefully house a hot tub sometime soon...

Not the prettiest thing, but a VAST improvement from what it was!

The future veggie garden

Tomato plants

Just in time for Easter!

Surprise, surprise... I started another project!!!

2009-04-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

By now Bruce knows it is kind of dangerous for him to be gone for gigs - usually he comes home to something having been done around the house. (I have to channel my band widow energy somewhere!)

Yesterday the back deck and I had a date... It is getting to be sunny and warm and the deck needs a new look. So off came the carpet and (yuck!) plywood. Who thought that outdoor carpeting was a great idea?!?

I need to go back out and finish what I started, but I made a good dent yesterday. Here are a couple of shots - I'll get more online today as the project moves along.

First Ride of the Season

2009-04-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

Up on the ski mountain last Sunday - gorgeous day!!!

bittersweet fairwell....

2009-04-09T10:59:00.000-07:00

I find myself somewhat shocked at my own reaction regarding winter being done... Last weekend was the last official one at our local ski resort. Although we really didn't ski at all this year (I went twice and Bruce made it up once) it was still somehow sad to see the lifts shutting down on closing day. (Of course, the locals are still going to skin up the mountain for weeks to come - but for now we don't have the gear or the stamina to be a part of that bunch!)

Here are a few shots from the second to last day - including the pond skimming contest, which drew pretty much everyone on the mountain to watch it. Great fun! The following day Bruce and I came back up on our motorcycles. It was a little chilly, but well worth it!!

I had one of my favorite runs all to myself each time I went down it. I could have done it over and over and over and.... you get the picture. It was sunny and gorgeous - not so common on this mountain that is known for the constant fog that tends to envelop it to the point where skiers can develop vertigo.

Glacier Park and the Canadian Rockies in the background....

Pond Skimming... The idea was to make it over to the other side of the 85 feet long pond filled with nearly freezing water. The participants made it look easy. The starting point kept getting moved lower and lower until no-one could make it a across and the winner got $1000. The rest of us got some good laughs, cheap beer and sun!

The next time we make it up this mountain it will be on our mountain bikes for race league sometime starting in July! We really do live smack-dap in the middle of the largest, most beautiful playground I've ever seen!

Spring is Here... (We Wish)

2009-03-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

The garden is certainly appreciating the warm-ish spring-time weather. Knowing last year though, we still have a few more months of mush to get through before we can really get our hopes up. Bruce just transplanted 75 tomato plants into larger containers and we're excitedly looking forward to doing our own vegetable garden this year. It was a balmy 58 degrees outside today so I was cleaning up some of the flower beds in preparation for planting season. I didn't get more pictures yet, but will post more later. Mind you, between the two of us we don't know much about northern climate gardening since the last several years were spent in Florida, which to be honest, made gardening a bit of a breeze. Plants wanted to be lush and green in that climate.

Life has been good. Both of us have been busy and blessed with work. My work had some layoffs and paycuts recently but I am just grateful to still be there.

We're on a Green Smoothie kick (recommended by my doctor's office) as of mid February and I am definitely feeling many health benefits within the first five weeks. You can read more on my personal blog, tia (see sidebar) - including some recipe suggestions if you are feeling curious. They are YUMMY!

The kittens are doing well. They are curious about everything and keep us entertained. Just today, we got to watch a "King of the Hill" wrestling match over the little woven basket - adorable.

New Life

2009-01-17T12:57:00.001-08:00

Even before Ptah became ill, we had been wondering if we shouldn't get some sort of a playmate for Serif, our youngest cat, who is now probably 2.5 years old. She is incredibly smart and curious, and has kept herself mostly self-entertained since she has been with us. However, watching her endlessly chase her own tale, or having to wait until one of us was available to play chase made us feel sort of bad. Ptah and Shu seemed to want little to do with her, other than an occasional swat and hiss to make sure Serif knew there was not going to be any kitten excitement around them! Well, Bruce wasn't going to let me get a hamster (probably for the best anyhow!) so around Christmas time we visited the local Humane Society. I have always steered clear of the shelters, both because I haven't thought I could handle seeing all the homeless animals without taking them all home, and because I always feared the facility would end up being inhumane and terrifying instead of humane and comforting for all the creatures living there... I was very positively surprised.

Before even going there, we had found this little face on the website:

Edward - probably all of 5 weeks old

How could we NOT bring him home?!

There was another sweet gray boy, "Lil' Blue", but it turned out he needed a "special needs"-able home due to a urinary tract/ bladder issues.... He was ADORABLE. (If you read the last entry, you can see why I was prepared to jump on board again! But - a veterinarian's assistant had already decided to adopt Lil'Blue by the time I went back to the shelter the second time. Probably best that way...) However, Lil' Blue had a lil' sister, Heidi!

After spending more than 3 hours in the room with the kittens, I was ready to bring home four of them. For some reason, Bruce didn't think that was a good idea. So I had to choose. It was heart wrenching! But in the end, on New Year's Eve, it was Edward and Heidi that entered our lives. For the first several years when we were married, we had this silly tradition of watching "When Harry Met Sally" on New Year's , right around midnight (big partiers, I know!). We were tempted to name these two after the movie, given their arrival date. We had also thought about Einie Mienie and Meinie Mo since it was so hard to pick them among all the other ones. Then we thought about Neo and Trinity from The Matrix. Then Poomba and Timon from The Lion King. Then Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Then Cow and Boy (Cow, Boy, Montana - get it?). I'm sure there are others I am forgetting. Right now we seem to be back to Einie and Mo though... I'm sure eventually they'll tell us who they are.

One cold day when our furnace was not working...

I did not think our house was short on laughter and joy - but it has exponentially increased since New Years Eve! They are hysterical!

I wish I had baby pictures of Ptah readily available - you would not believe the resemblance.

This dynamic duo doesn't seem to mind the other adult kitties (who try to exert their seniority) one bit!

It was definitely a good choice to get two kittens. (I have to remind myself of this at 2 AM and again at 4 AM...) They entered our house bravely and with curiosity, partly because they felt so comfortable around each other. Even if the other two are hissing at them (which they only did for the first few days) they could play with each other or gang up on one of the others! It has been incredibly therapeutic to come home to these two - I feel as though I am learning about life all over again, through their little paws, eyes, whiskers, and noses.

So here they all are:

"nameless 1"

"Nameless 2"

Serif

Shu

A Bit Belated.... In Memory of Ptah

2009-01-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

It was too difficult to write about at the time, but on December 9th we had to say goodbye to our handsome "boy boy" Ptah. He had been with me for the past 14 years, and because he decided that Bruce met the criteria, also accepted him as part of the family 4 years into our previously blissful bachelor/ette lifestyles. He was named after an Egyptian God charged with the task of protecting artists. Considering that I was attending an art school and lived with two other artists, I figured we could use some protection. I'd say he did his job perfectly.

His spirit was mighty, even if it turned out his body was allergic to fleas, had hay fever, and easily developed urinary tract infections and blockages. (Sounds almost as dramatic as most artists I know... He also loved lace and looked great in red, but that's probably getting a bit more personal than he would have wanted me to get here...) There was a time when he ended up in the kitty ER at 2 AM, after having peed on a leather briefcase of mine that at 16 years of age had cost me my entire summer's savings and then some. We returned home after an agonizing couple of hours of poking, needles and a catheter which he indignantly ripped out within the first 6 hours. Since that first devastating(ly expensive) night, many more times of attempting to administer medicine and collect urinary samples followed. If you have never tried either of these delightful activities with a cat, consider yourself blessed.

At one point, we lived on the posh Palm Avenue in Sarasota, FL in a historic building, formerly a hotel that held within its walls the secrets of some famous Hollywood actors and actresses, sharing a container of yogurt each morning, overlooking the magnificent blue waters that connected to the Gulf of Mexico. Life was perfectly peachy. But I imagined he might have been a bit lonely.

Thus entered "the other cat". She actually just happened to find me while I was downtown one night - clearly not old enough to be out on her own at that hour. She followed me to my car and rolled up to sleep behind the right front tire. She was coming home with me. I did the responsible pet owner thing and separated the two while giving them a chance to "get to know one another". I had an indoor window that overlooked the sun room from my bedroom and I thought that having the new kitten in the bedroom would be a great way to allow Ptah to have the rest of the apartment while being able to see and sniff the newcomer. That is how I left it when I took off for work. I got home to an apartment that looked as if the FBI had been through in hopes of the largest drug bust in Florida's history. The window had somehow been pried open. Pillows, vases, dining room chairs, table cloths, candle holders, shoes, rugs and other miscellaneous belongings of mine were scattered about. The two cats were sound asleep, next to each other, on the couch. Ptah, meet Shu - Shu, meet Ptah. Glad they figured that one out.

After that came the many moves, a few boyfriends and even a fiance (whom Ptah NEVER liked, by the way. Why oh why didn't I listen to him and save myself 2.5 years?!)

Finally, there was Bruce. One evening, after climbing into bed while waiting for me to shower Bruce all of a sudden hollered at me and told me he felt somewhat uncomfortable. He said "my cat" was staring at him, with uncomfortable intensity, with his tail feverishly swooshing back and forth. I don't recall exactly how the two of them resolved it that evening but in the end Bruce stayed and they quickly became each others biggest fans.

For the past several years, I don't recall having dried my hair without Ptah quickly running into the bathroom at the sound of the drier, hopping on to the counter and loudly demanding a headbutt. Or Bruce being able to turn on the fan by his bedside without Ptah instantly showing up and curling up his nose practically touching the fan. Or us having a pile of fresh laundry or an empty suitcase somewhere without him crawling into it for a comfortable afternoon nap.

The endless moments of companionship and joy he brought were perhaps only paled by his final gift to me. I had never before this faced saying goodbye to a dear four-legged friend. Somehow, all the other pets in my life had come and gone without my being able to say bye and honor their significance in my life. Ptah left this earth with the same class and dignity he lived. He wasn't about to slip out while I was gone on a trip, or through some emergency situation in a fluorescent light-filled veterinarian office somewhere where I would have needed to make a decision about his life under great duress. He made it clear when it was time for him to go, and he was going to hold us to that one last agreement. He had given us a lifetime of joy. We owed him a peaceful exit. So, while he was at home, resting next to his fan and being gently stroked by us, the relief finally came in the form of a veterinarian who had the dubious honor of meeting us for the first time under these circumstances.

Thank you for everything, Ptah. I will hold you and your little habits in my heart for all time.

Christmas Merriment

2008-12-25T10:21:00.000-08:00

We didn't get to join Bruce's family in Wisconsin this Christmas as originally planned because we decided driving through all the recent winter storms through the plains wasn't such a good idea. From the sounds of some people spending up to four nights at the O'Hare airport in Chicago and all the rest of the flight delay madness, it doesn't sound like flying would have been any better. While it wasn't what we'd planned, our Christmas was wonderful and certainly full of joy and appreciation for everything with which we're blessed. My brother is with us, and this is only our third Christmas together since we've been adults. It's been wonderful to share in all the holiday preparation with him.

Bruce baking some Finnish rye loaf - breads are his specialty

Tomi helping to construct the gingerbread house

Serif and Tomi keeping a close eye on cookie decorating...

Bruce and I creating the pieces for the gingerbread house

The Holiday Spread - meatballs, rutabaga casserole, potato casserole, rosolli, ham, bread, glögi...

Serif

Opening a few gifts

Proof of the traditional roll in the snow from Sauna - that got the blood pumpin'!!!

We hope each and everyone of you has felt as blessed this Christmas. Love to you all!

Let it Snow!

2008-12-20T10:00:00.000-08:00

I think winter finally came!! We woke up to about a foot of snow on Thursday morning, and we've gotten a bit more since then! It is currently about -18 C (0 degrees Fahrenheit) out there! It's like the massive playground finally opened, and everyone seems to be as giddy as little kids!

That's our Koi pond, if you couldn't tell... I went to check on the Koi this morning... They are swimming around, and the heater is keeping the water from freezing on them.

Brrrr... I hope you are staying warm! We're loving this!!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!!!

More Visitors!

2008-11-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

(YAY FOR OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

By the time I am typing this the beautiful fall colors have actually already mostly gone and winter is hastily pushing fall out of the way. It has been a gorgeous fall - and one that I was able to enjoy far more than last year since I am so much more settled at work. We're every bit as much in love with Montana as we've ever been - or possibly even more so. This place continues to show it magnificence to us each and every day. We feel blessed beyond belief, and certainly having had family visiting and being able to settle into our own home has added to that feeling.

My mom was here for nearly three weeks. Although I wasn't able to take time off from work since I had just done so for the Sauna project we still had some nice moments and beautiful days where we were able to drive around and share Montana with her.

On the way to Missoula, in front of the Nine Pipes Museum - Mission Mountains in the background

On top of Blacktail Mountain overlooking the valley

In Glacier National Park, on the Avalanche Trail

Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park, on Going to the Sun Road stopping to enjoy the view

The other thing that we were able to do was loads of SHOPPING to get the house closer to being decorated and functioning. Yes, we definitely did our part, and then some(!), to contribute to improving the economic outlook. I don't have pictures to post for right now so you'll just have to take my word for it for now.

(YAY, YAY, YAY, YAY FOR OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Sauna is (almost) Done

2008-09-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

The wonderful vacation is over and the diligent workers have all returned to their homes... Bruce and I are sitting in an empty house, somewhat bewildered by the emotional aftermath of having to, once again, say goodbyes to family. The house is still quite a mess from all the projects, but we don't even want to clean because that would feel like erasing all evidence that we ever had our loved once here.

The sauna has already been in use quite a bit! It is not 100% completed, but close enough to where we can use it already. There are many finishing touches that need to happen, and the adjacent shower area still needs quite a bit of work. I have been put on notice about starting any more projects.... I think I'm done for a while. Thankfully fall is clearly on its way, which means we will have plenty cold and wet days to be focused on the indoors instead of feeling pulled to be outside.

Here are a few pictures to show you the latest progress.

My dad is working on securing the glass block in its place.

The heater is connected and the rocks need to be piled on.

And here is the crew, enjoying the inaugural "löylyt"...

The cats aren't quite sure what to make of all of this yet.... I think come winter time, they will find the heat a welcome addition to the house.

Before my dad and brother left, we did finally manage a day where we didn't have critical work to be done and the weather was cooperative for us to go see the Glacier National park. No matter how many times I go in there, I never fail to be awed by the beauty.

It's a bitter sweet time, we finally have the sauna but we had to let our parents and my brother go home again. The laundry piles are falling on me, the house is a mess, I'm back at work, and, in the words of Charlotte Beck, everything is simply delicious. We are blessed beyond imagination.

Another Remodeling Update

2008-09-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to write much but I'll share a few photos to let you know how the sauna is coming along...

The floor is being poured

My dad and I putting on the foil vapor barrier in order to maximize the heat and moisture retention

Tomi, enjoying a beer in the sauna (a bit prematurely)

Then comes the tiling...(will it ever end!?!)

Almost done....

Building the seating

Then it's time for another beer, or two.

Taking a break to enjoy the scenery - on top of Blacktail Mountain

Tubing on Flathead Lake

The ski lift on Big Mountain

Overlooking the Flathead Valley from Big Mountain

Missing in Action

2008-08-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

I know everyone is wondering if Montana has fallen off the map or if we got eaten by Grizzly bears. Actually, our friends here told us at the beginning of the summer that we would have time to sleep again in October - and that has proven to be fairly accurate.

We have been busy starting (me) and completing (Bruce) home improvement projects and enjoying the Montana summer. To Bruce's horror my job has proven to provide me with lots of energy to destroy things, so when he catches me walking around with the sledgehammer in hand he knows there could soon be another "DIY" project, literally just around the corner. It hasn't been ALL work though - we've gotten out and played as well.

Speaking of playing - there's the "A Street Band, with Bruce". I will let Bruce fill you in on all the fun details, but here are a few shots I got of him while they were playing out at a local car show. And yes, I'm sure he would send you an autographed photograph!

Bruce does a (killer) cover of Bon Jovi's "Dead or Alive", so naturally his "Steel Horse" had to be parked next to him.

We've also gotten out to Glazier Park. Not too long ago we did a 240 mile round trip on the bikes and a 14 mile hike all in one day. After being stopped by a stunning herd of 20+ Long Horn Sheep just a few miles before Logan Pass (the very top of the highway, at roughly 9000 feet, in Glazier Park), we showed up at the pass at 9:57 PM and, without having realized it, only missed the road being closed by 3 minutes. Apparently they use night time to do the necessary and on-going repairs on the Going to the Sun Highway. Their other option would be to close the road for 3 full years in order to work day and night to complete the whole thing. It seems that a road built on the side of eroding mountains is a losing battle....

Ptarmigan Lake

My co-worker and I on the Highland Trail

Gaining altitude...

And then there's all those DIY projects I mentioned... Bruce finished flooring, I've been painting, and we still have the trim and closet doors to go before the upstairs bedroom is fully done.

Bruce (and Shu) and the finished bamboo staircase

In the mean time, there is also the garage. Bruce started on the office/art studio wall. It's coming along, especially now that his helper is in town. Oh yeah, did I mention we have Bruce's parents form Wisconsin and my dad and brother from Finland visiting right now?......

I'm hoping that a part of the wall in the garage will turn into a training wall for climbing for me... At this point, with umphteen projects all going at once, Bruce just nods and looks at me wild-eyed.

the studio on its way

Bruce's office space, being used and constructed at all at once.

Then there is the sauna. For as long as I've lived in the States (18 years) I have wanted one. But I lived in Florida. Now that we're in Montana, it finally makes sense to have one! My dad and brother are in charge of this one... We've got two carpenter dads in town - one speaks only English and measures in inches and the other speaks only Finnish and understands only centimeters. There are no dull moments!

Eeeeks!! (What did I get started?!?)

The laundry room will soon be transformed!

The new wall going in

Anyhow.... Many of you have been wondering where we've been. We're up to our ears in saw dust, trail dust, and just plain dust. (Because who's got time to clean in all of this?!)

I'll let you know how it all turns out!

Enjoying the Summer!

2008-07-09T11:43:00.001-07:00

Summer is in full swing here! After I returned from my seven day trip with the students, we took off the next morning (at 6:30 AM!!) to go rafting down the Flathead River which hugs a portion of the western border of the Glacier National Park. We had an awesome time. Only the bravest (craziest?) of us ventured into the water... yes, that's Bruce...

Bruce and I also took turns in the kayak. This was the first time we've gotten it out on the water in Montana since moving here.

The day after our river trip our dear friends Tamara and Tony visited from Florida. It was much too short of a visit, but we did manage to squeeze in a short hike in Glacier, to Avalanche Lake. The Monument Falls are falling behind us.

A mountain goat on the Going to the Sun Road....

Glad to have only seen an inprint at an exhibit of this paw mark...... A full grown Grizzly male can weigh up to 600 pounds. They are awe and fear inspiring, and I definitely have mixed feelings about running into one on a trail, although I believe us humans have made them sound (and act) way worse than they actually are...

Next I am including a few shots from my trip with the students. Below is the view from atop Crowfeet Mountain in Eastern Glacier. You wouldn't believe it if I described the off-trail hike to you, so I won't try. It was worth every heart palpitation and swallowing of taste of blood though. If you come to visit and feel up to it, I'm glad to retrace our steps.

Same mountain, right before we screed down about 2000 feet...

Grinnell Lake with Angelwing mountain in the background.

The view atop Goat Mountain - another off-trail hike that turned out to be about as punishing as the first one with a total elevation gain of 4500 feet, with us ending up at just above 8800 feet. Once again, worth every ache. Down below is Goat Lake.

Here I am at the trail's end for Otokomi Lake (the lake just around the bend and out of view). The high peak off in the distance is Goat Mountain. The snowfield off to the right is a part of what we slid down in order to get down. From here we still had 5 miles of trail before reaching the road. After 9.5 hours of hiking, we only ran into two families in the last 20 minutes of this trail. I think trail hiking has forever been spoiled for me.... I can't wait to get back in there with Bruce, and hopefully even with some of you.

OK, the last picture is totally off topic, but if you know anything about Finland, you will know that ours is a nation of "salmiakki" and black licorice fanatics. This is a tiny store I spotted on the way to Missoula with Tamara and Tony, and we had to make a stop! Sure enough, they carried several types of finnish licorice. Still not the best kind, like "Turkish Peppers", but close enough! It will have to become a regular stop for me...

Latest and Greatest

2008-06-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since an update again, so I thought I'd post a few pictures. Last week, Bruce had some business to attend to in Missoula and I went along for the ride. We were about a block away and looked at each other wondering why we were sitting in the TRUCK when we have two beautiful motorcycles in our garage... So, we turned around and changed our clothes and off we were. This is a shot of the Flathead Lake on the South side of the valley. The lake is about 30 miles long, and we live on the northwest corner of it. You can't tell it from this picture, but you can actually see the ski resort that is 65 miles north of where I was standing. And waaaaay off in the distance is Glacier National Park. The east side of the lake is lined with cherry orchards. This place we get to call home for now is truly a magical place....

Below is "our" Flathead Valley viewed from Lone Pine State Park. Bruce is pointing at our house. Again, beyond the obvious mountains (Swan Mountain Range) in that "saddle" you can just barely make out some of the peaks in Glacier National Park.

We're still busy with the house. The latest project has been laying the bamboo hardwood floor in the upstairs room, which is going to be our master bedroom. Bruce did an amazing job with preparing and leveling the floor (I am SOOO lucky to have a husband who is willing and ABLE to do this stuff!), and I helped minimally with the last bits of the floor boards (I wish I had realized sooner how much fun nailing the boards was...). In the mean time, I've been painting, but we have yet to settle on a color that we actually like. Part of the issue is the texture and the unevenness of the walls... But we'll figure it out. The silly little half door in the background goes into an attic space that we would like to make into a bathroom.... That is project #47 though.....

After.

Before.
After.

Before.

We still need to do the finishing detail work, but we've already moved up into this space, and our first guests will be with us in two weeks. (So we freed up the downstairs for them just in time!) Then we need to remodel the downstairs bathroom, add a Sauna (with the help of my dad and brother from Finland - YAY!!!), redo both outdoor decks, add some closets, remodel the kitchen..... Oh, and build the studio in the garage! Yikes. And there are the gardens (totally overgrown), and it's SUMMER TIME so we could be skydiving, hiking, rock climbing, biking....

Speaking of playing outdoors, on Sunday, while Bruce was at band practice, I took off to play on a mountain biking trail with some good friends from work. The trail that took us 4 hours last time now took us 2.5 hours. It still kicked my butt though!! (But it was SO fun!) This weekend I am taking off on a seven day hiking trip from work and, among other things, we'll be doing some off-trail peaks in Glacier. I don't know how I'll do it physically (once again keeping up with teenage boys) but wish me luck!!

Overall, life is very good. We miss our families and friends terribly - and I have to limit the time I spend thinking about that because otherwise I could just be sad all the time. But everything I talked about above helps keep us "distracted". I can't wait to see my parents, my brother, Bruce's parents, our friends... The summer will be come and gone before we know it. Bruce has often mentioned that he loves the seasons because they help him mark time. (I think Florida felt like a ten-year long summer to him...) I can definitely appreciate that...

OK, I need to get back to all that is on the to do list today... Stay in touch. We love you and miss you.

Summer... eh, not quite.

2008-06-10T12:18:00.001-07:00

ugh...

So the weather outside has been frightful, and we no longer have a fire that was so delightful... We've been expecting summer to happen any time now, any day really. We've been almost to the point of holding our breath for it. It's June according to the calendar. So where's the sun?

I think we've had less than a handful of spring-like days. Only two that resembled summer-like conditions - unfortunately on our moving day - that was a hot one. Since then, we've had periods of sun mixed in between rain clouds. But today was really over the top, really. INCHES of snow fell in the upper AND the lower elevations! For hours and hours it snowed today. We've been able to "tolerate" the cloudy and rainy days for weeks now, but this was it!

Those of you in warmer climates, which is probably the rest of he country, think of us and send warm thoughts!

So this past week, I enjoyed my first geocashing experience. A friend and now new neighbor, Jason, introduced me to the sport by taking me on an outing. Geocashing is a network of people leaving goods hidden in places all over the world. Essentially, you can register on a website called geocashing.com and look up GPS coordinates of hidden treasure. Then you take you GPS locator and go searching for it. There are stashes all over the globe. The one Jason took me on was called the "Woodland Park Multi." A multi is a series of searches with one cashe at the end. We had to locate the first cashe to get coordinates to the second and the third with the fourth one being the last in the series and holding the "treasure." Now before you go running out to buy a GPS to go dig for these, know that "treasure" usually means like, a toy, small coins or weird trinkets, rarely do people leave anything of value behind, it's just fun to go find it...

So here is Jason, Watson and Sherlock in tow.

I found the first cashe! um... Jason found the rest!

You would never know there was a secrete stash here...

The experience of finding and opening of this cashe had more excitement (and more payload) to it than Jeraldo's opening of Capone's vault back in the 80's! Those of you who can remember back that far...

Our house projects are moving right along. The current project is the upstairs which we're going to turn into our master bedroom. Right now we're putting in natural bamboo hardwood flooring that we picked up dirt cheap. I have spent mor time than I care to define on my hands and knees trying to level our 80 year old floor. Floors in old house (and walls and ceilings) are as wavy as the Gulf of Mexico in a hurricane! It's been hard work, but the result will be rewarding. This house has become a part-time job. I work in the daytime at my profession, then work at night on the house. When I'm not working, I'm practicing my keyboards and singing for the band... Did I mention I joined an 80's rock band?

Widdling It Away

2008-05-26T19:10:00.000-07:00

Finally wrapped up in the Living Room and Dining Room. Color adding warmth, crown molding adding class. Our space feeling more like home and I practiced Tai Chi in the space this morning.

We're already at the end of May, it's been a cold and wet spring, I think we saw three days of sun this month (maybe an exaggeration, maybe not) so the weather has been perfect for indoor work. With Tia away this weekend on a work trip, I had uninterrupted and un-distracted time to focus on the living room and dining room. The project list is widdling away in size, little by little. In the garage, I separated the house stuff from the office and art room items and now all of the boxes that crowded our garage are all nicely put away (even if temporary) in our basement. Our garage still isn't the cavernous space it was when we first moved in, but at least we can park the truck in it and I might be able to start construction on the office soon.

I was able to snap off a few photos of the living room and dining room coming together. The room feels like we've made a huge transformation. It's going to be a nice place to entertain in and the feeling we had in our last house is starting to grow here.

I replaced all of the switches and outlets with more modern looking counterparts. I find it's the little things that help dress up a room, like clean, white modern switches, and dimmers.

Placing the first couple of pieces of crown molding, this crowning moment took two hours, and that's not including the time it took to go to the hardware store to pick it out, the three trips BACK to the hardware store to get the RIGHT stain, the prep time, staining, cleanup and drying... Two hours was just getting the angles correct on the cut so the pieces would fit in the corner.

It was a nice sunny spring-like day. Windy and in the lower 60's, it wasn't perfect, but it was finally sunny! Our Crabapple tree out front is now in full bloom as is our Lilac bushes. I miss Lilac, I remember having them in the landscape of my childhood, mom would bring in cuttings and the smell of Lilac would fill our house! Now we have two of our own!

Our Coi pond in the afternoon sun.

Move Update

2008-05-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

OK, so we're back to living out of suitcases - again. This was our fifth move within a year and hopefully this is it for a little while! Below is picture of our nine-year wedding anniversary gift and celebration this past Sunday... So romantic, huh? We were thinking of having our dinner in the garage since that's where all the furniture and dishes, and food was.......

But here we are, on our street - 5th Avenue E. (the house farthest to the right) and we LOVE it!

The first thing we wanted to do once we had closed was to begin making some minor changes to "claim" the space... So here is what it looked like when we walked in...

We already found our favorite hangout, all of two blocks away. It's the Habitat for Humanity store. Used and brand new items for a fraction of retail prices - among them was this chandelier that we just had to have...

Then on to doing some real damage... I wanted the little extention of the countertop on the dining room side gone.

So, gone it is!........... We'll leave the kichen countertop, tile, and flooring for another time - but it's time is coming! (Somewhere along with the bathroom addition, current bathroom renovation and Sauna and deck additions....)

Then came paint............. We're using different colors and a trim to separate the dining area from the living room. I think it'll be nice once it's done.

Oh, and upstairs sported a delightfully discusting carpet that needed to leave the house ASAP. (It might not look bad, but just imagine a big, wet dog smell and stick with that for a bit......)

It had to go. And under that was speckled linoleum that left us speechless...

And here it all is, on its way out of the house. I have to say it felt awful taking all of this to the dump, but unfortunately Montana is in the dark ages when it comes to recycling...

The, for now, finished product... We were going to refinish the old floors, but then realized that we are probably dealing with at least two layers of old paint (40s and 50s) so the likelyhood of lead dust and fumes from stripping it all made us decide to leave it alone. Fortunately we found a remnant stack of gorgeous bamboo hardwood floor at Home Depot for 60% off so that is eventually going here, and the space will become our master bedroom.

We have our work cut out for us, but we also chose to take it all on, and in the midst of all the chaos, it is fun and exciting!

Now that I have helped create all this chaos, I am leaving on a four-day backpacking trip with my teens from the school. Normally facilitating ropes courses, rock climbing, camping, biking, and doing processing groups would seem like hard work, but I am looking forward to escaping "the project" for a few days so I can come back with a fresh mind and body!

Montana Musings

2008-05-11T08:03:00.000-07:00

We are less than 24 hours away from closing on our house. The rental house is just about packed up, and we can't wait to move into our new place. In the mean time, I'll share a few photos from recent motorcycle rides, my commute to work and a newfound favorite sport of mine...

Flathead Lake - the same lake we've been living on

The view as I come down the mountain from work - it's enough to take most of the stress away!

On Friday, as I was leaving work, there was a herd of 20+ elk gracing in the fields by the road

My co-worker's fearless goat, Luke - he isn't nearly this intimidating, just attention seeking...

My first ever traded piece of art work! Our neighbor is a wood carver and wanted to trade this indian elder for a mandala I had painted. I fell in love with this carving in September when we moved here, but could have never afforded to buy it. Apparently the person who comissioned it no longerwanted it (without ever having seen it) and it has been in our neighbor's yard ever since... Now it will bless our new home.

My new addiction!... I went rock climbing for the first time ever with a coworker of mine and got totally hooked! I've rapelled and climbed towers and walls before, but the rock face was awesome! We were in Stone Hill, only about seven miles from the Canadian border.

Weekend in the "BIG" city: Missoula

2008-04-28T07:48:00.000-07:00

OK, admittedly I'm not in true form these days. It was my birthday on April 18th and I'm just now posting photos of the trip. I have a valid excuse though, it was a crazy week, four 12 hour days followed by an 8 hour day on Friday, I needed to get away from the computer for the weekend.

A perfect spring day in Missoula

So we went to Missoula for the weekend of my birthday and had an absolute blast! Missoula has a population of about 64,000 people and is a college town. It's the closest thing we have to a big city. What I enjoy about it is that it still feels small. We don't go to the big city to find only big city things, our shopping does not require box stores anymore, what we go to Missoula to find is the hip local culture, the aggressive, alternative lifestyle and their earth-friendly youth culture. It's always an exciting time in Missoula, always a new restaurant to check out or a new clothing store to be discovered.

We arrived to beautiful weather and spent Friday walking around the local shops, eating and soaking up the sun.

Missoula is home to all kinds of wonderful outdoor activities and stores to support them. From little mom and pop shops to chains like REI and Sportsmann, if you want it, they have it.

I spotted a vintage Schwinn bicycle in a second-hand store.

Saturday we woke up to fair weather, some clouds, but by Saturday night, conditions quickly deteriorated and the snow began to fly.

Oh yeah, this was Spring alright!

While on our way out to do some shopping, we heard the sound of glass breaking in a park nearby. 98% of Montana does not have a glass recycling program. Glass is treated like all other refuse and put into landfills, a concept I still find it hard to imagine (for the record, we don't throw out our glass, instead we take a truckload over to Spokane to some friends and recycle it there). So the sound of breaking glass intrigued us and we walked towards the sound. We found one of the only pulverizing machines in Montana. The Pulverizer breaks glass down into very small pieces. It can break them into predetermined sizes. The aggregate is then tumbled and reused for all kinds of projects like pathways, insulation for buried tanks as well as put into cement as a decorative element. Here is the pulverizer and our glass sits at home... Oh well, I may end up pulverizing my own glass and using it in making a desk for myself down the road. Project #924 on the list when we move into our new home (By the way, we're closing on May 12th and moving that week!)

Groups of volunteers manned the collection station

beer me!

Saturday, we planned to do some shopping and go out for Indian food that night. First, we went to a silent auction & benefit for a Buddhist Center near Missoula. Neither Tia and I intended to stay that long, we just went to check it out, but then we saw the buffet of food and soon after we had a snack, the live entertainment started up. The Center's Renpoche (Literal meaning: precious one) was visiting from Tibet and brought several nuns and understudies with him. They sang traditional Buddhist prayer songs and spoke throughout the night. By the time we realized we hadn't gone out for Indian food, it was well past an appropriate dinner time. It was a beautiful evening, rich with culture and good spirits.

Sunday, we woke up to several inches of snow on the ground. Yes, snow, yes, it was April 20th? ... ugh. Even this week it was continuing to snow. We had better weather in February than in April. I had several meetings in town this week, and on each day, it snowed, almost to whiteout conditions - and I'm on a motorcycle. Thankfully the ground has been warm enough that it doesn't stick to the roads, but it was a bit treacherous to drive in. It did warm up this past Saturday and Sunday into the 50's. Tia and I went camping with some friends Saturday night and just about froze, it was down to 25F. Our sleeping bags were not rated for that, and our bodies have not yet fully adjusted!

Remember the "M" in the first picture?

This past week for me has been undeniably busy. I'm wrapping up a very large web project and it has been consuming my time to the tune of 60 hours last week! I had several meetings in town and I'm underway with my first official Montana clients. Business has been good, I have been enjoying a steady flow of work and it looks to continue that way. My work efforts lately have been involved with marketing myself and trying to push for new business here. Recently, I gave a presentation of Advertising and Marketing to a group of 25 small business owners at a program called E2 (Entrepreneur To Entrepreneur), and I have been volunteering my time for a event planning committee which I will be donating my services to help promote.

So, enjoy our photos from the weekend, I've posted more on my site at thisisbrucesblog.blogspot.com

On our way to staying put...

2008-04-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

Photo: Ptah engrossed in chives, this is like some kind of cat drug, he couldn't get enough. (More photos at the end...)

So spring has slipped into the area disguised as winter. The days are now noticeably longer, the sun a bit more intense each day and signs of spring are popping up here and there. We had a 65F and 70F degree day this weekend. All kinds of life sprang up under our noses, for now, it was noticed as packs of weeds coming in, but the perinnials in our rental's garden started to fill in - mostly chives to our cats' delight!

The warm weather also marked the time to get the motorcycles tuned up and on the road. We put on 60 miles on Saturday and 88 miles on Sunday riding around the Flathead Valley. There were more motorcycles than cars on the highways, and it was good to see that Montanans don't waste their sunny days! This weekend marked the first time since last summer I had felt any effects of the sun on my body and it felt great. Our rides Saturday and Sunday were so good, that I actually heard "someone" utter to my amazement, "That was better than skydiving!" I have to say that now that spring is here, it feels like we both survived some kind of endurance test, and now it feels like there is movement once again in our lives.

Under the helmets are smiles from ear to ear.

A cherry grove, anticipating a bountiful harvest.

I've been volunteering my time to local planning committees and starting to meet the youth of the area. I would say there is a strong population of the 20 - 40 working professionals here in the Flathead. I see them from time to time and I take note! I guess I'm so shocked to see a population of people other than retirees that I don't know what to do with myself! I look forward to the opportunities to help this area grow and it feels good to be connected to people my own age again.

Tia and I are happy and excited to announce that we have made it through our first winter together and came out the other side smiling and with good news... we're buying a house here and intend to stay a little longer. I think having made this decision has lifted our spirits and helped to add to the sensation of movement once again to our lives.

I believe we're buying at a good time. Interest rates are fairly normal, our credit is perfect, and the real estate market in Kalispell has somewhat dodged the bullet from the trend in the rest of the country. There was a slight slump, most people here call it winter. Kalispell is a growing market - albeit not the same kind of growth we saw from 2001 - 2004 in Florida so prices are not skyrocketing, but nor are they seeing a huge plummet. The house we are buying is in the best neighborhood in town, the only neighborhood we want to live in, and it's the smallest house on the block. It was also priced considerably under market value. The house had 5 showings before us, we recognized the opportunity and took it. Kalispell is very small town, possibly like Waukesha, WI 50 years ago, while it is 14,000 people, I would say under 10,000 live in the city proper. There are numerous "pockets" of good and not-so-good areas, the east side is the only consistently good side of town, older homes, well-maintained and cared-for, minimal traffic. We're 1 block from a large park with beautiful water feature areas, public pools, water slides, an outdoor ice skating rink in the winter, plenty of water foul. We're also 5 blocks from main street, we have a large garage with alleyway access, 100 year old trees line the streets, the neighborhood looks like one you see in the movies. We will be "townies." Livin' on 5th Ave! Check it yourself, here.

It feels good to finally have a direction in our lives - or at least the illusion of one disguised as "something to do..." Ask me what we're planning on doing in two years and we have no clue. But that's the way we've lived our lives up to this point, a day at a time, here in the now, day by day. Most times that's a good thing, sometimes it is a bit disconcerting and appears unstable, but mostly it's the life of freedom. And I wouldn't pass it up for the world.

Shu just can't get enough sun...

A Cat's Me'Ass Moment!

Serif enjoying a majestic landscape...

Emerging from Hibernation

2008-04-02T17:32:00.001-07:00

Foyes Lake, Kalispell MT

It's that time of the year again - the bears are emerging from their winter hibernation - so I figure I had better do the same. I know the "b" word is hardly a good enough excuse for not writing more often... Lack of inspiration is probably the more truthful reason for my absence. That, and when our downstairs flooded due to a burst pipe my camera's battery charger was one of the victims, so I haven't been able to share any of my recent expressive art stuff on my personal blog. Hopefully there is a new camera in the cards for me soon.

My work is going much better these days. I switched to doing four longer days (actually, I joke that I went from five 12 hour days to four 10 hour days - and that is pretty close to the truth), so for now I am taking Wednesdays off. It has been a life saver. Initially, I spent the days off catching up on sleep, but lately I've been able to exercise, do some art, and generally enjoy life a bit more. There is a bit more balance to my life now.

Bruce has started getting more involved in the community. He has been attending events to meet people and to shake hands. That is producing some good contacts and will likely bring business his way in the not too distant future. It is good to see him out and about. I think one more month sitting in the "bunker" with only his computer monitors and the lap cat and I seriously think he might have cracked.

I have made it out to a few fun events too. Last Saturday I attended an Ipu making workshop with a co-worker of mine. Ipu is the Hawai'ian word for Gourd. Dried and hollowed gourds are used as musical instruments in Hula. My co-worker takes Hula lessons and their school had visiting teachers from California for a weekend workshop of dancing and Ipu making. I had a wonderful time and now I have my very own Ipu! I also got to observe the younger girls' dance lesson. It was very beautiful and quite disciplined. It struck me that Hula has every bit as much protocol as the Martial Arts except Hula has a far more feminine energy to it. My next goal is to make my own Native American-type hand drum. There are many places around here that sell them, but fewer places that teach you how to make them.

Winter still seems to have a stronghold on us. February was warmer and less snowy than what is going on right now. It is still gorgeous - I'm just ready to stop seeing fresh snow falling. It is April, for goodness sake! All in all though, I cannot believe how mild the winters are here. There hasn't been any snow on the ground for two months (it all melts right away), other than up in the mountains. The scenery is just breath-taking. I love my commute from work. As soon as I leave the campus and start down the mountain, the Swan Mountain range stretches out in front of me. A little bit further in the distance are the Glacier peaks. It is a sight that just hits me square in the chest each time I see it! I love the natural beauty of this area And soon it will be motorcycle weather!...

Six Months In...

2008-03-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

©Bruce Anttila van Hoover; "More sunlight than Snow"
March 24, 2008

It’s been a while since our last post and I’m sorry its taken so long to get out the news. I’ve been trying to write this blog now for a week, trying to be realistic and positive, maybe the two just don’t go together these days. Or, maybe it’s the distance in our lives from where we were, or the distance we are from our friends, or our sometimes relative distance from what we feel is our true happiness.

I write this from my perspective, I let Tia speak for herself when she wants.

I can’t say this transition has come with much ease. As many of you know, this has been rather tough on us.

Most days I wake up feeling like I was anticipating a change in location over night, like waking up from a bad dream. Instead I wake up to a cold, dark bedroom and waiting. Waiting for a change to happen, for us to feel happy. I fight to try to stay present and in the moment every day, and thankful for what we have, but something is missing. Our lives are definitely out of balance.

With Tia working lengthy days, early mornings and late nights away from home has caused us to live separate lives under one roof. At night she comes home exhausted, weekends are her recovery time. My job has me working from home in an isolated little community with absolutely no interaction with people other than through an occasional phone call and email. We’re a one-car family, proud to NOT be contributing to the growing oil crisis, but it isolates me and leaves me with little opportunity to get out of the house and social options in Somers are limited to a bar/casino and a hardware store. An extrovert defined by the four walls of my cell. I now know what being a stay-at-home role does to a person, I crave being in the presence of people. I feel slightly stir crazy.

Spring is on it's way, lately we've seen more sunlight than snowfall. I had my motorcycle out for a spin a week ago and froze my ass off. Cold was not the word for it. My Florida blood was not accustomed to it, I see motorcyclists out with no helmet and sweatshirts on, no gloves at all and jeans. I had on every piece of warm winter motorcycle gear I could find AND ski gloves and I was still freezing! Felt good to get the bike on the road, I'm looking forward to getting out more often, AND getting into the sky eventually, the weather is definitely "jumpable" - just leave hot chocolate and a nuclear-powered heating unit at the landing zone and we'll be fine!

Life here for us can be defined by the times we have felt good. The times we have gathered with new friends and of course, skiing or in any way getting out of the house. Being up on the mountain, fresh powder below my skis, wind in my face, looking out over the vast valley of the Flathead area, I feel we are happy and blessed. This is a beautiful area. One can see for miles across the mountain ranges. Almost from any point you can see into Glacier National Park from the valley or the surrounding mountains.

My latest endeavor has been spending time trying to assemble a small amount of people interested in learning T’ai Chi here. Tia and I discovered a place up the road that has open office space available for lease by the hour as part of a wellness community. The rate is amazingly inexpensive, so we both thought adding T’ai Chi and Tia’s Expressive Arts and Hypnotherapy to their community. If I get enough students, I will teach a basic T’ai Chi class starting April 9th.

One absolutely wonderful thing has been my job. Even with the isolation, I thoroughly enjoy working from home. I have found a good routine in my work, have some wonderful and supportive (above all patient) clients who are willing to work with me from 3,000 miles away. I’m definitely calling my own shots now, producing some amazing work. Business is mostly good, I could use to add more always, but I can’t complain, those who know my work in Florida have really come through for me here and I couldn’t be happier about that. If you’re on that list, I thank you for the faith and trust to do the job. The internet has been a wonderful place to do business.

Looks like we’re anticipating a move again this summer. Our landlord is selling the house we’re currently renting. We’re thinking that if Tia can enforce change for herself at her job and gain more balance out of it, that staying here would not be so bad after all. We would move either into Kalispell or Whitefish, both up the road. Either option would open doors for me to explore being a part of a larger social network. Whitefish is the vacation destination here. If you want good nightlife, great restaurants and a diverse set of people, you go to Whitefish - coincidentally, that’s where our wellness community is too. Living in Whitefish is a tad more expensive than Kalispell, but the benefits are so much better! Well, let’s remember to keep things in perspective here, Whitefish is about the size of two square blocks of Chicago! But there is a different energy to that place, it seems more hip and in touch with itself. Nothing against Kalispell, but I find that there’s a swifter energy flowing through Whitefish, maybe it’s the mountains. Whitefish sits at the base of Whitefish Mountain, home to Big Mountain Ski Resort.

Things will turn around for us eventually. Progress takes time. For now, we have a roof over our heads and food in our pantry. We do miss all of our friends and would like to have more opportunity to get together for a Skype chat or video call. Drop us an email.

Love to you all…
bruce

(Too Much?) Time to Think

2008-02-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

I'm home, recuperating after having had what the doctor suspects was pneumonia. I'm on antibiotics. Yuck. The last time remember taking those was when I was 18 years old. I hated to do it now, but with bronchitis, pneumonia, Influenca A, Strep and the like floating about at work for the past few weeks I figured I had better follow what the doctor says. I know most of that stuff is caused by viruses and antibiotics don't touch those, but I felt too tired to do my research about natural remedies.

I am now feeling much better, but I decided to take one more day off, just to rest some more. I've pretty much slept for three days straight. It feels good to do so, and there is a part of me that dreads going back to work. I think now that I've stopped for a moment I can see just how fast I had been going and how hard I'd been pushing. The days on the job are still way longer than normal, and lunch is either spent with the clients or quickly getting some food down while catching up on e-mails. It's not that I entirely dislike what I do. It's just the pace that seems a bit unrealistic in the long haul.

Now that I've had some time to just sit, things that I don't usually focus on too much come to my mind and swirl about. Like missing Florida. Our home, our friends, our lives - all of it. Everything was so settled there. Maybe to the point of stagnation at times - but things had their place there. Now I just feel so adrift. We left the comfort of all that we loved and were familiar with, only to replace it with something totally foreign and new. That sounded so exciting while doing it - but then there are the less exciting logistics of it.... hunting for rentals, toying with buying a place, finding the best grocery store, locating a trusty car mechanic, still looking for misplaced items that are packed away "somewhere in here", endlessly changing our addresses and banking and e-mail and...

But none of that is quite as hard as feeling, every now and then, as if we were living on the moon. Totally removed, and remote, both from friends and family. Living in this strange, quirky house that doesn't have the same energy as our house did (I wonder if any house ever will again...). Every now and then I catch myself feeling like I'm living in some weird bubble and my real life is really going on somewhere else. Maybe it is all just a part of the natural adjustment period that goes with a major move. Maybe my astral body still hasn't quite caught on. Maybe I've had too much time to sit and think.

Maybe it's the damn antibiotics.

Winning-most Losers.

2008-02-03T19:12:00.000-08:00

This year in the NFL, the winning-most team is the biggest losers! All I can say is that I have absolutely no respect for teams that are caught cheating and karma caught up with Bill Belichick, or as my brother coined it, "Beli-cheater."

I wished there could have been more focus as Beli-cheater was running down the tunnel BEFORE the game was officially over, yes, one second remained on the clock as the cameras caught Beli-acher leaving the playing field. um... FOUL, unsportsman-like conduct...

My friends know us as die-hard Packer fans, but my hat goes off to the NY Giants, who pulled off a David and Goliath victory.

All In The Timing

2008-02-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

Image: Gary S. Miller of Kalispell holds up his catch, a 38" Pike pulled from Flathead Lake. Photo © 2008 Bruce Anttila van Hoover

It was an overcast Friday morning. Warmer today than the last week or so, about in the lower thirties. The coffee had been brewing, I had spent the first early morning hour at my desk, working on the day's emergencies. On my second trip back into the house for coffee, I spotted three lights on the lake. Ice fishermen had staked out a spot. Do I leave work behind and join them in the hunt - their hunt for fish and my hunt for photos to submit to the stock agencies.

I dash around the house, throwing almost every layer of outdoor clothing on I had, ran back to the bunker to grab my camera gear and high-stepped out the door.

It was a much longer walk than I imagined, they seemed like they were just right there, right out on the lake. I think I muscled and hoofed a mile and still hadn't approached the lake access.

I walked out to the fishermen, slowly, methodically. I realized this was the first time I had been out on a frozen lake in more than a decade. How thick is the ice here? I was comforted by the footprints in the snow that led out before me.

As I approached, I heard a hardy "HI" from the group, they seemed a bit more active than I imagined for a group of cold ice-fishermen. Then he held up the 38" Pike he pulled from the lake. HUGE FISH! He JUST landed it just before I stepped out on the water.

Amazing.

Talk about finding a photographer when you need one.

I sent the image to the local paper.

Good to Be Back!

2008-01-19T16:47:00.001-08:00

We finally headed up to Black Tail Ski Resort again and strapped on some skis today. It was AWESOME!!! We had SO much fun! I can't believe how quickly it all came back - just like riding a bike. We did a few calmer blue diamond runs initially, but by the third hour we felt brave enough to hit a black diamond and some moguls, and finally off groomed! Neither of us had ever done off groomed before - I LLOVED it! I am so addicted now. We stayed for 4.5 hours and by that time my thighs were screaming for mercy. Skiing is more of a workout than I remember - of course, 20 years (aack!) ago I was also in much better shape. (Oh, just be nice with your comments!!)

The snow kept coming down the whole time we were there - but that didn't cramp our style much. One break in the lodge with some hot chocolate and we were good to go again.

It's a far cry from Florida - and we're loving it!

There goes Bruce....

Some of my co-workers would prefer it if it was winter 12 months out of the year, and I can see why. Actually though, it is the variety of things we can do year round that makes this place so awesome. We do love it here.

A Lovely Visit with Lovely Friends!

2008-01-06T20:10:00.001-08:00

John, Mary, Chip, Dahla, and Tamara (and faaaar in the background one ear that belongs to Tigger)

We had the good fortune of spending a few days with our dearest friend, (soul sister, really) Tamara, right before New Year's. When we moved from Florida we had to leave her behind, but the good news is that her parents live in Spokane, which is roughly 4.5 hours from us. We drove over on Friday and back home again late Sunday. We had last seen Mary and John on our "grand tour" right after we had left Montana and were heading for British Columbia, and it was nice to be back so soon again.

We had a wonderful time making and drinking Glögi (mulled wine Finnish style), playing Balderdash, eating, knitting, making art, and just plain enjoying good company. It was over way too soon and it was the closest to having a real Christmas that we got this time around. With no family around, having just moved and me working through all the holidays we were both pretty homesick (for three different locations depending on the time of the day..Florida, Finland and Wisconsin) so it was wonderful to see some friendly, familiar faces.

Tamara and I also took some time to plan an expressive arts workshop that we will propose to co-facilitate at a conference in Boulder, CO in September, so hopefully that will be another time for a reunion coming up! But Bruce and I are hoping she will get homesick for her parents again way before that!

Winter Fun!

2007-12-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

Today we strapped on some skis for the first time since moving here!! Not downhill, but crosscountry. It was great fun! It has been easily over 20 years since I did crosscountry and for Bruce it may have been a little less than that. We went to the nearby ski area, Blacktail Mountain, that has some groomed trails and enjoyed a few hours of skiing. My technique definitely leaves something to be desired, but I really didn't care. It was nice to BE out IN the mountains.

My memories of crosscountry skiing are not wonderful. All throughout elementary school we had mandatory ski competitions and I still vividly remember the agony as I was desperately trying to reach the finish line. After I no longer had to do it, I never skied again. In fact, instead, I moved to Florida! (OK, so maybe that wasn't *only* due to the bad memories related to skiing...) But here we were today, on a beautiful trail in the mountains that surround our house.

It wasn't a particularly beautiful or sunny day, so we didn't bring our camera. Instead, the picture here is taken by a fellow Montanian from atop Blacktail Mountain. We live in the valley that you can see in the distance, and we can see the Swan Mountain Range from our house.

We feel pretty fortunate to be here!

Hikes and Cookies and... Serif

2007-12-09T19:15:00.001-08:00

It was a gorgeous weekend! Yesterday, we decided to hit the trails. Since we don't yet own the appropriate winter gear for hiking (or snowshoeing) we thought we'd start small, by going to the Lone Pine State Park near our house. Little did we know that the trails there are all straight up and down! So, in two hours of walking we got thoroughly spanked. I am, as I discovered, hopelessly(!) out of shape at this point! We called the afternoon "the Adventures of Shaky Knee and Sweaty Toe". I'll let you guess who was who... The pictures below are from our older digital camera - not the greatest quality. Bruce has some nice ones on his camera from the same hike - we'll make sure to post those soon as well. (Right now he is in bed and I want to post this before it is yesterday's news..... ooops... too late!) Ha ha!

Our beautiful valley, with the Swan Mountain Range in the distance

Downtown Kalispell and, in the distance, the peaks of Glacier National Park

Later in the afternoon it was cookie baking time. Calories burned, calories consumed.......

It's cookie baking time...

Here is our latest addition to the household. She is spending her days with Bruce in the "bunker", but lately we've been bringing her into the house for a hew hours here and there. She seems to enjoy it, and so far there haven't been any fights - just lots of hissing and growling. She is adorable though. Curious and playful, and very grateful to have a warm place to be, it seems.

Serif under the Christmas trees, happy to be inside

Paws Meet Snow and Other Montana News

2007-11-30T20:29:00.000-08:00

We couldn't resist. When the first significant snow fell, we had to take our "Florida kitties" outside to experience the white fluffy stuff for the first time. The result was two very curious (albeit shivering) felines. Lots of sniffing and exploring (Ptah - the black one) and lifting of paws (Shu - the calico) here and there and everywhere. We were impressed. Instead of looking for the fastest way to get back inside, they (especially Ptah) acted as if they were ready for the great outdoors - just give them a backpack and some tuna for the road!

My commute seems to be getting more and more gorgeous each day. This morning it was bright and sunny - and minus 9 with the wind chill. The horses, which I didn't manage to capture (I'll save that for the true photographer in the family), out in the pasture with their winter coats, steaming breath and the snow capped mountains as their backdrop - I could have forgotten to show up at work.

Foys Lake, my favorite swimming hole this summer, looking pretty chilly right about now...

As much as my job is stressing me out right now, I keep coming back to the fact that this place is truly beautiful..... The scenery and the fresh air can make it all worth it. As long as I get to be out in this. Tomorrow we are planning on a hike in Glacier National Park. I hope it is as sunny as it was today.

Tonight we ventured out for the Kalispell monthly Art Walk. With plenty of layers to wear and multiple gallery stops where hot cider and red wine was served, we made it comfortably through the whole thing. The artist community in this area is thriving and vibrant. The little main street boutiques and galleries were bustling with people, good food (real, home-made cookies!) and plenty of hot drinks. It was a delightful, chilly evening complete with Christmas Carolers and lots of wonderful (and not overpriced) art. It was only the second time in my life I actually began to cry in front of a painting. I wish I could share the piece with you here (or find the artist or his website, if he has one) - it was of a cowboy on his horse (not the type of thing I would go for at all if you know my taste in art!!) but there was something so tender and intimate about the rider and his horse and their connection, and it just got to me.... There was also Kelly Apgar, a local artist, whose show was called "1 artist and 100 horses". Soulful pieces done with using cattle markers. (I'll have to try it!) Maybe it'just horses that get to me.... whether they are alive and breathing right in front of me or on a canvas with their spirit captured so perfectly... Thankfully I am in Montana where it appears we have an abundance of both! I love it here.

Christmas Lights

2007-11-25T16:46:00.000-08:00

Hard to imagine that just a few weeks ago, I was taking pictures of the beautiful fall colors and now we're looking at Christmas lights. I'm so used to the seasons taking six months to change!

The lights are the only real productive thing that happened this weekend, our Thanksgiving was nice... quiet. I cooked a 13lb bird and all the fixings. Now we have enough left overs to satisfy my Turkey cravings until Christmas!

Anyway, my back is killing me, my arms are tired, there's a roaring fire in the fireplace and I'm thinking about taking a shower.

Hope all is well, warm and rested!

First Snow of the Season!

2007-11-19T19:23:00.001-08:00

Our new houseguest... She's been living in the "Bunker." (The name I gave the building where I work behind the house, it's partially built into a hill, hence the name.) One day this little baby showed up at our door, it was getting nasty outside so I took her in. She curls up nicely on my lap while I work and has been a nice companion, when she isn't walking across my laptop keys, or sitting in front of my monitor. She follows me outside when I'm going to the house, then when I go back to the studio, she forgets to follow me. I open the door minutes later and she comes running, remembering where her warm bed and food is! I'm guessing she was dropped on the side of the road because there aren't really any cats in the neighborhood. It's a shame, she's cute and probably only 6 months old, no tags. I'm not entirely sure if she is healthy so we need to take her to a vet.

We got our first snow of the season today! It was exciting to see the fresh dusting of the wispy white stuff and it stayed on the ground longer than I thought it would.

Snow seems to put a magical touch on to late autumn, turning everything brown into a powdery white world. We've been seeing it snow up on the mountain top since moving here in late September, but it never seemed to reach the lower elevations. So tonight I have a fire burning in our hearth, warm tea, ginger cookies and Monday Night Football on mute. Decidedly close to heaven...

Having ventured out into the general public last week to watch a movie with some friends, sold out theater, people coughing, you get the idea, I caught a cold. So I spent my weekend between the sofa and bed. Better today, but really tired. I didn't miss out on any work, thankfully, and it was a cloudy weekend, but... still would have been nice to have the option available to me to go out, or at least, to be productive.

Speaking of being productive, I posted a new blog on my own blog tonight too... You'll see.

So here are the pics of today's new snow. Enjoy, I am!

Readership Is Down, Time to Get Controvercial!

2007-11-07T14:45:00.000-08:00

(Image credit: I found this in a Google search but I don't want to credit the site I found it at - and the site itself did not have a credit for the artist...)

(And by no ways is this a political blog, nor is it going to turn into one...)

Seems my blog partner is consumed with work these days, leaving me to post on this blog alone. Not sure how I feel about that actually. I know since the trip ended, we've lost some readership. I'd like to continue to update on this blog, to let everyone know how life is panning out, but I also need to get on with my other blog.

I will try to maintain a presence here on a weekly basis, maybe dedicate Tuesdays to blogging here. But my primary blog is where I will be spending most of my time. Just think, two-for-one eh?

Well, I'm making a solid college effort to learn Finnish these days. I can't say (excuse the pun) that it's all well and good, I think it will take some time and a herculean effort to make this happen, and all I want to do is learn how to get around in Finland without English. Yeah. Right. OK, so maybe I need to just learn a few handy lines, maybe you can add to this list:
"Where is the bathroom."
"Where do I catch the bus?"
"What time is it?"

Oh, I already know:
"Beer please!"
"The sauna is ready"
"Thank you"
"Good morning/evening"
"Merry Christmas"

and the ever so important:
"Very good potato salad."

Working from home is having it's advantages. I was watching the news on my lunch and heard that oil prices are still climbing and now have reach the $95/barrel mark, which surpasses the prices of the 70's fuel crisis (prices adjusted to match the times, the $95 mark was the magic number). Gas prices will continue to rise and oil prices are expected to reach $100 a barrel and are not expected to come down. Yes, working from home is a good thing today, now I need to see if I can get Tia to commute to work more often, at least until we can afford a greener vehicle. I would like to say goodbye to Exxon, Mobile, BP and the myriad of other big oil companies permanently. But how do you do that when the entire transportation system of this country is addicted to oil, did the big oil companies actually believe we would all just hop on a bus when oil skyrocked in the first place? They have us over a barrel, sorry for the pun, but I'm sorry, most American cities, minus the MEGA-metro areas, have weak public transportation, the American public gave up on public transportation years ago for the individualism of owning their own form of transportation. It's now almost a birth-right to own your own car. I got news for the rest of the world. Public transportation WAS the way to go. Every time I visit Helsinki, I am amazed at how efficient and well-traveled their system is. The modes or transportation are usually packed too, people using them. I know, I know, if you don't like the system here, go live in Finland! Sorry, I can't do that yet. The dollar is so weak right now we would certainly lose all of our savings moving there. Trust me, the move IS coming though.

Wow, where did all of that come from? Didn't realize I needed to get that off my chest! No, I'm not an Ex-pat. Not yet...

Anyway, enough about that. Our place is coming together and we're meeting new people. We have plans for Friday and Saturday night. I think we're adjusting just fine...

I'm working on legitimizing my business to be more of an "adult." You can read more about that on my blog.

Johnny Cash is singing over my speaker, sorry, have to take a quick break....

"I'd get it one piece at a time, and it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town..."

"uh yeah Red Rider this is the Cottonmouth with the psycho-billy Cadillac..."

Dad, you have no idea how much I appreciate that you listen to old Cash. He's the greatest!

"... what model is it? Well it's a forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three
fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight
fifty-nine automobile..."

ah man... how cool.

Anyway, I'm back to updating my business website , Rome wasn't built in a day and the 4GB of photos I took over the summer aren't going to magically post themselves!

Thanks for checking in...

Adventures in Montana...

2007-10-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well, it's going on 7pm now and Tia just called to inform me she won't be home again until late. Another night of her working late, I sometimes expect her to call and say she's staying over night at the office. It wouldn't surprise me actually.

It's been hard to keep on top of the blog now that I'm working, but I've decided to work late and play around with my iTunes and try to figure out some new software. I had to buy an external 1TB drive to back up my things and I've been pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to network my PC and my Mac as well as wirelessly network Tia's PC in two separate buildings so we can share files. You'd think by now it would be almost intuitive, but with the lack of information included with the network components and the lack of support on their respective websites, I've spent two weeks trying to figure it all out! BUT, alas, it's done. Made a much needed hour long phone call to network support and whammo! it's solved!

So I've been spending my evening time building a temporary partition in my office. The space is 28' long and 15' wide and I need half of it for my office and the rest for my tools and storage, thus prompting the new wall and subsequent work spaces. It's been exciting. I'll have plenty of room for my tools, a work bench my office AND some photo studio space! I'm also trying to do this as cheaply as possible, so I found 20 used 8' cedar planks in the dump that I will be putting to good use as a vintage wall covering. The bottom three feet will be modern drywall with a 5" pine shelf. The upper part covered in cedar planking at a 45 degree angle. I know, little thrills, but cedar planking is very expensive and I like the look, modern meets old world. I LOOOVE that the cedar was FREE! My computer desk is a picnic table which I will eventually surround with a half-wall similar to the partition wall. I'm a junkie!

Work has been keeping me busy, as well as chopping wood for winter warmth. Not much varies in my day-to-day happenings, work during the day, occasionally talking with my clients on phone meetings, chatting with my brother-in-law in Finland (I'm working on my Finnish!), work out at night or work in the studio. I need to get on top of my photography and get those 4 GB of images processed for my website and any competitions I want to enter. I have three ideas I need to also explore. I guess everything has it's priority, work first, play later. I want to complete what I started before I go on to other things. I'll learn to change that someday. I will also be switching over eventually to my other blog, but I know this blog hasn't been updated in a while.

For now, there it is... For some reason this feels laborious and tedious. I'm missing the adventure posts of the past, plus I'm now an extrovert confined to a single room and no social interaction except for weekends (and a daily visit to the neighbor's dog - but I'm not sure that counts...). Every day I wish I would run into someone when I walk down to the post office to get the mail. I live for Fridays!

Pathetic I know.

Email to a friend...

2007-10-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

I spent a good deal of time writing an email to a good friend this morning and realized after I was done, that it would make a great blog update - with a few edits and additions. I've been a little overwhelmed with so much to do and take care of lately and have neglected to keep everyone posted. One of these days I'll get caught up! I also plan on getting back to my original blog at some point. I'm dizzy with "To Do" lists, but this email spells out what's been happening to date, so...

******

We were really just in time to watch the fall colors change. It's a bit past peak right now, but it's snowing up on the mountains, so the ever changing landscape is not disappointing, it's what I've been hoping for to see. Driving around, I gasp looking at the landscape, it's like out of a dream, Tia and I look at each other and exclaim, "WE LIVE HERE??!?!!??!"

I'm looking forward to winter now. They say that they are due for a cold, hard winter. I know the farmers are hoping for it for the sake of next year's crops. I hope it's every bit as hard as they say, I can't wait! People here say the winters aren't nearly as bad as the midwest. The temperatures here are notably colder, but there is no humidity so 32F feels warmer than 32F in Wisconsin. It's been in the 50's during the day and 30's at night. When it's cloudy the temps stay in the 40s and 50's. Perfect fall weather, but the locals say it's been unseasonably warm and any day now they expect some good freezes. The cats are doing well. Ptah is L_O_V_I_N_G the change and has been the most affectionate he has ever been. Wants to go outside whenever he can. Shu is resisting the change with every ounce. She's huddled in a blanket every day, I think it's been a tad cold for her.

Been chopping my own firewood, a wood-burning stove is our main source of heat in the house. We have electric heat when we really need it, but clearing dead trees from the local forest is really cheap and helps protect the forest from fires, so for now, we heat with wood. That may change as it gets colder and I can see it being a combination of both. I went out with my neighbor twice now to cut our own trees for firewood. SOOOOO COOOOL! I never thought I'd love it so much. I have found a beautiful meditation in chopping our firewood, it's every bit as powerful as sitting meditation. I feel like a provider, living from the land, or something like that!

We have a good amount of space, the house isn't all that big, but it's nicely laid-out - could use more closets though. I have a studio to myself - separate building so I can close and lock the door when I want to get away from it all, Tia has a huge creative space and we finally have a guest bedroom for friends to come out and stay, hint, hint! I have an indoor (unheated) dojo in a huge attic space, and an outdoor dojo - now I just need to get out and meditate! The acreage here is about a 5th the size of the place we had in Florida, but it's laid out to be more useful. Tiered garden spaces separated by boulders.

Our neighbors have been very welcoming, the guy across the street from me is a trip! He's a true Montana mountain man. He's over here quite often helping out and has been the one to show me the ropes in tree clearing. He's lived here all his life. The other neighbors have also been here decades There are some rentals down the street and some younger families here and there. People in Montana are absolutely wonderful, perfect strangers on the street here say HI. Very unassuming and I feel like I belong here.

No agencies for me to work with within a three hours drive so all of what I get will have to be current clients from Florida and I'll have to create some kind of presence here. I don't have much work yet, but have been informed that work is on the way, so I'm not all that worried. It will give me a chance to upgrade my website, process all of the images from this trip and archive my drive (buying a TERABYTE external drive this weekend). My office desk right now is a 25 year-old picnic table with the seats sawed off! I'm considering keeping it as my desk, it has great chi - it was my neighbors, their picnic table, and sometimes their kitchen table for their family, so it has been around. I'm finding old barn wood to work up into shelves, book cases and a partition wall. I'll post pics when it's in the works. You'd be amazed to see what people will toss out!

Anyway, I better get going, I have to get back to revising my business plan and drumming up some work!

Fall is Here

2007-10-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

We are beginning to feel a bit more settled in. The boxes are slowly disappearing and we've gone into the woods to get some firewood so we can make it through the winter. There is still plenty more to do, but today we escaped the long list and took a drive in the country side. The fall colors are at their peak and the show is truly spectacular! Enjoy!

Feeling more and more like real Montanians every day... Out with our neighbors.

Catching Our Breath

2007-10-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

Colter Coffee Cafe

I'm so sorry friends, I know we've been away for far too long without an update or an email, but we don't yet have internet at the house and the only way to update or check email is to go into town to the Colter Coffee Cafe (Pictured above). Ironically, the same cafe we were blogging from while we were at the Lost Prairie skydive boogie.

We made it safely to our new home. Tired, road weary with two cranky cats in tow. I swear, I think Ptah was ready to rent his own car and drive back to my brother's shop, where there was AT LEAST some stability in his life!!!

We rented a truck in Florida, to take us to Kalispell and were allotted 3,130 miles and 10 days to make the trip with. Not only did we have to go from Florida to Montana, but Wisconsin in the same mileage. I added it up before we rented the truck and knew it would be close. We dropped off the truck, 9am on the 10th day with only 80 miles to spare! I pride myself on my calculations! HA!!!

Anyway, our new Somers home is more amazing than we had remembered from seeing it weeks earlier, or maybe it just felt good to know we were "somewhere." A place where we've been able to take a shower barefoot, sleep in our own bed, access all of our clothing and no longer refer to the expression "camp clean," and it feels sooooooo gooooooooooood!

We will be getting internet service on October 9th and will be back up and running with blogs about our new Montana life. I think we will keep the Newly Nomads blog and keep regular updates of our new life here, adjustments we had to make from our lives in Florida and observations about life here.

I won't bore you with all the details of our adventures of unpacking. Except I made an observation last night. (Mind you, this is only MY observation, not to offend anyone...) It's one of those, "You never truly know someone until..." kind of observations. Tia and I have "slightly" different ideas about unpacking... I like to get a box, open it, empty it and put it all away right away, leaving no mess, less clean up and a cleaner visual place. My sanity is safe, I can move on to the next box. I figure I can rearrange the items later if they ended up in the wrong spot. Well, wouldn't you know it, but... Tia is EXACTLY the opposite. Empty every box to whatever surface she can find, set it all out all over the place whever it lands is where it lands all so she can "be" with them. Then she moves on to the next room, and does the same. And through a several day process of all of our things all over the house, she defines what she wants in the room and what she would like to put away for another time. Nothing wrong with this, offering no criticism here OK? It's driving the neatnik in me absolutely NUTS! I had to declare a space in the living room yesterday MINE and arrange our two chairs, clear a table and arrange a rug so I could have some "space." WHEW... that took alot. I'm breathing through it, thankfully I married a therapist so I can arrange for some help, now where did I put my appointment book?

Our place is great, small lot, but the buildings make the most of it. The house is a two bedroom, two bathroom Arts & Crafts style, 110 year old house overlooking a portion of Flathead Lake. The out structure, all of 4 feet from the back of the house, is split into two long sections. One side is a covered car port structure that could be enclosed easily and made into a garage and loft. The other side is a 30 foot by 15 foot enclosed, insulated and heated space that will be big enough for me to have my design studio on one half and house my tools and wood workshop on the other half. Above it is a spacious loft for us to store our things and have a place to put an exercise room. The lot is partially landscaped, room for many gardens, tiered for the slope, partitioned by large boulders, small patch of lawn for Tai Chi and more parking than the local post office. I've already made fast friends with our neighbors, some resident fixtures i the community of more than 30 years. They're really great and have been wonderful resources for all kinds of information.

Anyway, we're off to go shopping in town and pick up our new sofa. The pictures reflect the stages of unpacking, we're a little further along than the photos reflect.

Enjoy...

Our new Montana home.

The building to the right is the garage/studio... Dirt patch for future garden.

View from the back of the property, access to the garage and the loft. A road runs in front of our house as well as behind.

The living room from the front door. Take off your shoes please. Access to the basement to the left, kitchen to the right. Notice the small wood-burning stove in the living room and the floor to ceiling windows to admire the mountains beyond... Cheesy isn't it???

Master bedroom, full-length closets...

One of my favorite things, a bear-claw tub!Tia's creative room in the basement. It will also function as our guest room when we have visitors, hint, hint.

Bruce's office/garage space. To be subdivided with a partition wall.

Lighter Notes Light as Air

2007-09-23T18:58:00.000-07:00

We're wrapping up our lives now in Wisconsin and I wanted to leave the last few updates on a lighter note.

While in Florida, a friend of ours hosted an intimate gathering of friends to see us off.

Tony holding little Jonah, our friend Laura's baby boy. I think SOMEOONE has baby fever...

Jane making faces at those big brown eyes!

Jonah.

Motherhood embracing Laura.

In the very brief time we were in Wisconsin, besides running all over Cheddarland, Tia and I took my niece Stephanie for her first tandem skydive. Steph took the brunt of the Pookie hardship. We are so thankful for her assistance in helping us and doing the right thing for our cats while we were gone, if I had to do it all over again, Steph, you would still be the person I would turn to. Thank you so much, you've been great!

Getting instructions...

Corruptors and corruptee!

Do you think she enjoyed herself??? Blue skies!

Minus One

2007-09-22T05:21:00.001-07:00

Its been eleven days since we last blogged, we seemed to have dropped off the earth these days.

A few things have changed since our last entry and email. The place we were staying at out by the airport in Lost Prairie did not pan out to be a long term rental like we hoped it would be. Instead, and probably much to Tia's advantage, we found a home to rent in the little peninsula town of Somers on Flathead Lake. The house is a quaint 100+ year old Arts & Crafts style two-story overlooking a portion of the lake. It will be a great place for us to live as it is closer to town when I need to get out of the house, in a more populated area so the roads will be plowed frequently in the wintertime and a commute that will be much safer and shorter for Tia. We're all of ten minutes from Kalispell. The total population of Somers is no more than 150, but within walking distance of our new place we have a post office, a hardware store, a cafe, and a pub complete with "Adult Mini-Golf". We're both very excited, Somers to us is really very unlike any of the towns we've seen in Montana and I look forward to taking up residence there. I also look forward to writing more about it. I'm sure I'll have a few stories to tell!

We left Montana from the Glacier International Airport to Florida, via Seattle and Phoenix airports respectively. We planned on a week to wrap up our Florida lives, get caught up with a few friends and pack up our truck. We accomplished our task, but unfortunately (as some of you have seen on Tia's blog) we lost one of our own while we were away. Within an hour of landing, we got word that our youngest cat, Pookie, passed away from cancer in Wisconsin.

We both felt like we had the wind knocked out of us. Seriously.

We packed up in Florida, said tearful goodbyes and left Florida to come to Wisconsin to pick up our other two four-legged family members.

If we haven't been overly chatty in the last week, it's bee due to excessive to-do's and traveling.

We're spending some time visiting my family here in Wisconsin and Monday morning, at the break of dawn, we plan to leave for Montana, all our things and our cats in one place. Finally.

Sorry Pookie. Wished you had seen Montana. Wished you had waited to say goodbye in person. You will be missed.

Canyon or Bust (or something like that)

2007-09-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

We're stationary right now, with wi-fi, so we've caught up on our blogging and there are several new posts... just so ya know...

Feeling comforted by clean clothes, hot showers, clean sheets on an actual bed, some modern amenities and a great visit with our good friend Dan, we decided the trip was nearing it's end. Or maybe it was over. After our three lovely nights of rest, we gained some strength to do one more, one last adventure.

Grand Canyon.
(Well, ...maybe)

We set out after breakfast, which in Vegas happens anytime, for us it was more like 2pm. We weren't, at first, certain we were actually going to go to the Grand Canyon. I have to say we were still reeling from such a long trip and spoiled by our experience in Vegas, no tent to set up, a roof over our heads, going out to eat, showering barefoot in a clean, private bathroom, lounging around in shorts and barefoot! You know, the little amenities of living in the modern world, you might say we're easy to please! We were spoiled.

So we headed up Hwy 15, northbound. At the last possible exit, last possible moment, we deviated from our 75mph habit to detour 120 miles (one way), to see the canyon, after all, our friend Tamara pointed out that ,"You can't NOT see the Grand Canyon [when you're so close]." We had to pass through Zion National Park on the way there. We were informed by the park ranger at Zion that we would JUST make sunset driving to the North Rim, so we didn't want to linger with stopping to take photos. Ironically, as soon as we entered the park, it started to pour, so that worked out in our favor I guess. Zion was beautiful and it might have been nice to stop and look around, perhaps another trip.

We hightailed our way to the North Rim, some amazing distances to cover, everything out west is so much more spread out than we are used to. Our visibility stretched to the horizon miles and miles away with nothing in sight but some distant mountains. 70 miles between any kind of civilization is rather common.

Now on this trip, in the rare times Tia has driven, she has had some amazing energy that has attracted animals jumping RIGHT in front of the truck with some kind of deathwish. It's uncanny, within an hour of her getting behind the wheel, a cow will jump in front of us, or a squirrel, or a bison, or fox or deer. It's been unreal! This time, we saw it at the same time, this huge lumbering undertaking moving through the air, a huge struggle in the act of lifting off, massive wings. A great Golden Eagle. It was close enough that we thought we were going to collide, it moved with such grace and poise, it knew there wasn't a chance of us hitting it. I've seen one in captivity once, it was healing a broken wing and flew over the audience in a performance, this was twice the size of the bird I saw. The wingspan must have been close to seven feet. Absolutely amazing.

The drive to the Grand Canyon seemed to take us forever, then we realized that we crossed a timezone border and we lost an hour as well as our opportunity to view the sunset. By the time I realized this, we were already on the road to the park. Do we turn back, go find a comfy hotel instead of setting up the ever-loving tent in the dark? Or do we press on and get up for sunrise the next morning. We both agreed that we could tough out one more night of "roughing" it. It was late when we arrived, the drive took us an hour longer than the park ranger predicted, we wouldn't have seen sunset if we had wanted to anyway. Besides all of that, as soon as we entered the park, it started to rain again. I seemed to attract rain in parks like Tia attracts animals in front of our truck! We arrived after hours at the park. It was Labor Day, the end of the day as well as the end of the holiday weekend, I was expecting to have the park to ourselves. The sign on the ranger station said the campground was full. That's odd, maybe they just forgot to change it from the packed weekend. We drove on further into the park and reached the lodge, certainly there must be room here, booked solid, no mistakes, everything within a 140 mile radius was booked solid. We pulled into the campground and talked to a park employee, begged, pleaded, explained our case and they simply told us, if you find an open site, take it and sort it all out in the morning. PHEW...

We didn't sleep a wink the entire night. We had decided to instead of setting up the tent in the rain, we would move all of our things from the back of the truck and sleep there. Not a wink of sleep happened. I think I passed out sometime after 2am, but it was not restful, certainly could not be classified as anything like sleep. Our alarm went off at 6am and I could have convinced it was still 2am. Begrudgingly, we moved our aching bodies, packed up the truck and set out for the canyon. We hiked the short and brief Bright Angel Point trail, a paved path to a guardrailed lookout. Amazing... stunning, inspiring, breathtaking sunrise. An absolutely amazing place to see the dawn of a new day. Poets write passages about it, we lived it. Worth the drive. Worth the gas. Worth the lack of sleep.

Predawn at Bright Angel Point

We left Grand Canyon National Park, fulfilled with our last adventure, ready for our trip to end. I think we visited enough National Parks to pay off our National Parks pass twice over. Tired, we have miles of mountains to cross, cats to pick up in Wisconsin, our things to move from Florida and a job offer waiting for Tia in Montana. The job offer Tia had while we were at the Lost Prairie Skydive Boogie, she accepted.

We're Montana's newest residents. And couldn't be happier.

Studies In Contrasts... Death Valley and Las Vegas in One Day

2007-09-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

Our first real glimpse of Death Valley, having just crossed the Sierra Nevada - for the fourth time...

The drive from our camp site in Mineral King in Sequoia to Las Vegas was probably the most demanding of them all on this trip. Now, Mapquest will tell you that from the park to Las Vegas is 6 hrs. 54 min... BUT, they also tell you to stick to the main roads. We, however, were 1.5 hrs. from a main road to begin with. And the small back roads on the map looked like such a great idea at the time. Fourteen hours later, we finally got to our destination...

I wish we had kept track of all the lost and gained altitude through the whole trip...

It was quite an experience to drive through Death Valley. Particularly in contrast to what awaited over the mountains. The vastness and severity of the place alone invited an inner stillness unlike any we had experienced on this trip. This seemed like the natural time to finally enjoy a book on CD, "Silence Speaks", that our friend Steve had given us. The landscape in front of us seemed to echo the message on the CD. Becoming still, silent, aware. Being the observer, unattached to the dramas unfolding in our lives. Death Valley seemed like a place that could contain and still, and ultimately dissolve, those dramas. It certainly had a way of putting things in perspective.

A summer storm gave us quite the light show as we drove on.

Badwater Basin... Don't drink the water - if there is any...

Our Kayak, 282 feet below sea livel - and still no water for it to float in.

I am still in awe of the differences in landscapes that we experienced just in CA alone. From the coast to the Mojave Desert, the diversity is just unbelievable! Throughout this trip I have experienced, over and over again, uncanny similarities with New Zealand - for one reason or another. It is as if I have had the opportunity to show NZ to Bruce without him ever going there. But that is a whole different blog for another time....

Given our schedule of wanting to make it to our friend's place by the evening we didn't stop and explore the Valley much. I doubt the intense heat - the record for the summer having been set that very day - would have allowed us to do much hiking or other exploration anyhow. And frankly, toward the end of the drive I just felt grateful to be making it out of the Valley alive. I can fully appreciate its name now that I have experienced it for myself! What an experience! This whole trip has been such a gift, a true privilege.

111 Fahrenheit, and climbing.

The next leg of the trip was perhaps my greatest challenge of all. I had always prided myself on not ever having been to Las Vegas. A very vain thing to be proud of, I realize that - but I truly have never had any desire to see it. In fact, I have always had a strong aversion to the mere idea of it. But, since our friend Dan happens to live there and we were so close, it seemed silly not to stop by just based on my silly principle of it. So I kept repeating my newly acquired teachings about stillness and 'acceptance for what is' as we approached Las Vegas. I really did try to give it a go. I still have to admit, I hated the place. Knowing that all things are our teachers, particularly those things with which we struggle, I was trying to gain some insight into myself by observing my aversion to all the loud noises, bright lights, and masses of people acting like brainwashed robots being fed a steady numbing flow of advertising, booze and sex. I know at one point in my life, had I been honest, I might have identified the feeling as envy toward those who have so much money to waste, but today I recognized a feeling that I can perhaps best describe as sadness over the sheer waste of natural resources and human potential. What could we accomplish if all that energy was being directed at making this world a better place for all of us? And is any of that really for me to judge anyhow...?

I'm sure Bruce's perspective on Vegas would be different. Perhaps I am less in touch with that part of myself that could possibly relate to Vegas than he is. Who knows...

Bruce, Tia and Dan, and Bloody Marys for breakfast. We were in Vegas - it had to be done.

Below are some other shots by Bruce from Downtown Vegas.

Sequioa National Park

2007-09-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

Tia inside a giant Sequoia - we could live inside this thing!!

The vastness of the High Sierra

We had an amazing time in Yosemite and hated to leave.... but if there is anywhere you can go to console yourself, I'd say Sequoia National Park would be a pretty good choice!

General Sherman - the largest above ground living organism on earth

Considering that we arrived on the eve of Labor Day weekend, we were nervous about finding a camp site. As it turned out though, we found out that both King's Canyon and Sequoia get far less traffic than their more famous northern neighbor, so we were just fine. Having never been to Sequoia, we had a hard time deciding what to do with our limited time there. On one hand, we wanted to spend time hiking among the majestic trees, and on the other, we wanted to escape what little crowds there were. The secluded camp site won our vote and that meant setting off on a three hour drive (it was already 5 PM) - first to descend more than 6000 feet out of the forest only to re-enter at another point and to gain it all back, and then some.

The drive was amazing. The last leg of it was 25 miles of mountain road that took an hour and a half to drive. Outside of the waning moon it was dark. Occasionally the car lights would shed just enough light for us to know that there was a steep drop-off on one side and a cliff hanging above us. The most we could do was 15 mph. By the time we set up camp and crawled into bed it was closer to 10 PM.

And, of course, due to all the altitude changes we went through my HUCKLEBERRY scented body lotion exploded ALL OVER the passenger side of the car - in BEAR COUNTRY. Need I say more? I slept with one eye open....

Our camp site in moon light

In the early morning we set out on a hike in the High Sierra. For two Floridians, starting out at an altitude of 7800 ft, climbing another 2,200 feet in 3.4 miles was a workout, to say the least. We chose to hike to Eagle Lake, one of several glacial lakes in the area. The final leg of the hike had us climbing among a field of boulders and following a creek with numerous water falls. It was drizzling with rain, on and off, and the view on top was magnificent. I could have slept on a boulder by the lake for hours! The hike down took us twice as long as the ascent since we stopped to admire the view and to take pictures almost every switchback. At one point, we had a humming bird attracted by our brightly colored rain coats almost land on us.

Can you find Bruce?

Eagle Lake

Despite the warnings (and some voiced wishes on my part) we didn't run into much wildlife, just some unconcerned deer. (Some of us would say they are happy about that...) Bruce actually improvised an "anti-bear" song to the tune of Village People's "YMCA". I think it went something like, "Hey Bear, On the trail today... I said, No Bear! on the trail today, I don't care bear, if you like the scenery, I don't want. to. be. eaten...Boom Boom Boom Boom... NO BEAR TODAY.... NO BEAR TODAY..... !" However, on our drive down the mountain we did get to meet a black bear that was in search of some food and a less treacherous trail. Fortunately he didn't seem to catch a whiff of the huckleberry in our car...

We had determined that our next stop would be - gasp - Las Vegas. I have to admit I would have died completely fulfilled had I never set foot to the place, but we have a dear friend who lives there so it seemed silly not to stop by and say hi... So we set out on what we thought would be a short drive through the Death Valley...

Yosemite National Park, CA

2007-09-03T09:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, Yosemite is in California, the title of the last blog "Wrapping up California," should have been "Wrapping up the Second Leg - the west coast drive." But I was too tired to think clearly. Not that I am any clearer of mind right now, but hind sight ya know...

Yosemite was great, unfortunately it was only a brief visit, two nights and a day. The day we did spend there was enchanted (minus the extraordinary gathering of women at 4am in the bathroom next to our site). The hikes were well traveled and we had plenty of company as we walked up the rumored 700 large and irregular granite steps along the Mist trail. The trail follows the Merced River and highlights several falls, culminating with a breathtaking view at the top of the Nevada Falls. We had amazing views of the back side of Half Dome, and we would have liked to have hiked to the top, but found along the way that we were slightly unprepared for it. One group we encountered set out on the trail at midnight.

The hike up certainly pushed my comfort levels. It was a 2,800' climb in a little over 2 miles, really a good climb, less hike. My Florida legs gasping at the added task of climbing feeling "over-dressed" with our gear plus my camera and tripod. I'm sweating profusely then a pregnant woman and her 4 year old girl passed me, walking like they were strolling the beach. grrrrrr. We made it to the top of our trail for the day and broke for lunch.

Then it thundered.

Then it poured.

Feeling "over-dressed" at that point came in handy as Tia an I donned our rain gear while everyone else scurried under trees and rocks. Ummm, we're on an open area in the saddle of two mountains, with a thunderstorm trying to climb the mountain with us, I thought it wasn't a good idea to hide under a tree... but what did they care, they probably thought they were fine, there was this guy carrying a metal tripod...

This trip has been interesting in that I feel we were mostly unprepared for the amount of driving necessary to do all we wanted to do, hence the two night, one day stays. I think we both had hoped to be biking, hiking and kayaking every day, but the truth is that there has been so much ground to cover, that we had to keep pressing on from place to place. Most of the parks only allow mountain bikes on their roads (boring) and the kayak was so cumbersome and time consuming to unload off the truck and get into the water that it has become a glorified hood ornament. I've dubbed the trip the "National Parks Samplers Platter." We've had a few days here and there, the only park we spent a whack of time at was Yellowstone - and even that could have bee spread out over several campsites in the park instead at Grant (Grand Central) Village.

I know that the camera condenses the drama of the landscape, but this was a huge falls! This is the Vernal Falls, the first we encountered in the hike. At least 150' in all from top to the pool below. I also have to disclaimer that these - and all - of my shots are unrefined. I am without my Adobe software to be able to improve the color and contrast and clean up any blemishes or spots, plus I am proofing these on a PC laptop, so judging the correct exposure has been very difficult... I really miss my Mac!

Tia below Nevada FallsThe top of our hike, at the top of Nevada Falls some 2,800' above the valley floor. If you follow the slopes of the two closest hills beyond the rock cliff, that's the area of the OTHER falls. Some hairy climbing along the face of a mountain, and HUGE boulders...Tia and Bruce, Half Dome to the left!

Later that night, I walked out into the open areas of the valley to observe the full moon rising. It was spectacular, bright enough to read a book by. Having my camera and tripod joined with me at the hip, I experimented with night photography. These were all :30 second exposures. I know I can get brighter color with longer exposures, but I like the feeling these give being darker, gives a solemn impression.

El Capitan.

El Capitan. Click on the image and take a look at the larger version. Look in the lower right area of the wall and you will see two white dots, those are climbers camping on the side of the cliff! I doubt they were looking down at us with the same expressions we were using while looking up at them!

Wrapping up the Second Leg...

2007-09-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

Some places need no introduction...

California has been wonderful. We loved San Francisco. We arrived in the afternoon at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area with no reservation and no idea if we would even find a place to sleep that night besides on a roadside in the back of our truck (or hotel which has been our default on this trip). We knew we wanted to stay in the park, knew which site we wanted, but had no clue if that would even be possible on the weekend night. I approached the clerk at the visitor center with the line, "Stupid question but..." The cool thing was, they had a cancellation that night. The COOLER thing was, it was for the campground we wanted, the COOLEST thing of all was that the campground had only three campsites TOTAL! We scored! The campground overlooked the Golden Gate Bridge, the bay and the city in the distance.

Our campsite...

My meditation space.

After setting up camp, I climbed up a small bluff and practiced Tai Chi and meditated with a spectacular view. My meditation that evening was blissfully deep and astonishingly connected. I asked God, the Great Mystery one simple request, show me inner peace. To my surprise, I heard laughter. Then, "Ok, you want inner peace, remove self-doubt, self-destructive thoughts, bad habits, have patience, practice forgiveness and compassion and sit with me every day." I guess this all made sense. I never heard of having a prayer answered THAT quickly. What was astounding to note that I found out later on was that my meditation area was on top of the San Andreas fault.

My Darling Bride...

Blustery day overlooking the bay.

Our poor "Goat" seems to have climbed more mountains and steep inclines that it had ever imagined!

We spent so little time in San Francisco that it's a shame we couldn't get the whole experience. We missed out on the great food and the great nightlife of the area. But we did manage to walk through Chinatown.

We spent only 24 hours in San Francisco, but I can honestly see how people say they fall in love with it. It was smaller in size than we thought. Thinking on it, it had more to do with the size of the structures than the population. Most of the buildings were only three stories high. Even the roads weren't intolerable for traffic. Seems like housing isn't overly impossible like we had heard either. Graphic design jobs are everywhere. Still something to keep in mind...

Packing parachutes in Byron.

Anyway. From there, we went out east to find a drop zone in Byron. Neither Tia nor I made the connection at first, but when we walked in, we found a number of friends there that we had made recently at the Lost Prairie skydive boogie.

The end of our west coast leg...

We spent a day and a night there, then set out east to find lodging, thus ending our second leg of the trip, the west coast drive. It's been an amazing time discovering the west coast for ourselves. Beautiful sunsets, expansive vistas, towering trees, miles and miles of winding coast roads and great little ocean-side towns. Truly a place that has landed a spot in our hearts, and left some great memories. I'm finding that the most beautiful places on this trip cannot be contained in a photo. The Northern California coast is one of those places.

Enjoy!

Hey Tomi! The curviest road in the world!

California Highway 1

2007-08-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

Redwoods and the Avenue of the Giants

Tia inside a fallen redwood giant. By all estimations, I imagine this tree to be anywhere from 750 to 1,000 years old. Keep in mind the scale of these trees as you view the next series of shots...

California Highway 1

We reached California Highway 1 yesterday afternoon. The first 22 miles was what we have come to know as "active" driving! My friend Tony would appreciate it, if you can't reach the posted speed limit, you know it's a winding road! Amazing! Cliffs up on one side, down on the other.

Today we're in Healdsburg, CA looking for a replacement mountain bike for Tia before we set out for San Francisco.

We stopped along the Avenue of the Giants, a 34 mile stretch of road that shadows US 101, and, you can smell it coming, we are falling in love with California! OK. Before you go getting your undies in a bundle, we still have Montana to consider. This is Montana with beaches and mountains within a half mile. Gorgeous. Expensive, but still nothing short of amazing. I know I could have stopped in each little seaside village and had a hey-day with my camera in each one. We found a small road even more winding than CA 1 that crossed the mountains into Sonoma Valley and miles and miles of vineyards. 47 miles of mountain road, it was dizzying, mesmerizing and at times, nauseating!

Crossing the mountains into Sonoma Valley.

Montana and California are true gems of this country. Get out and start driving, you don't know what you're missing!

Reaching the California Sunshine.

2007-08-22T22:12:00.000-07:00

We’re wet.

Our tent is wet, our sleeping bags are wet, our pillows are wet, our clothes are wet, our fingers and toes are pruned, our waking and sleeping moments contain copious amounts of water.

We’re WET!

We’ve now endured five nights, count em, F-I-V-E nights of rain and the West coast has not been kind to us at all. It’s been unseasonably wet for this time of the year, granted we were at first glad to be out of the dry heat, but five days of constant rain and mud has made us both cranky and wanting for something we can call home! Each time we take down the tent, we gain more mud. We have mud from several different campgrounds and parks collected as caked smears on the sides of our tent. To top it all off, Sunday, I got a $113 speeding ticket from an officer McNasty in Washington (mind you our little truck can‘t do 50mph uphill), then yesterday, Tanjariitta’s $350 mountain bike was stolen from our truck in Eugene, Oregon. They left us the Buddhist prayer flags as they pilfered the bike. Nice. Have to say Eugene isn't making our top list of places to visit on this trip. Actually, aside from that event, Eugene seemed like a dumpy little place, not at all the progressive, hip west coast town we thought it would be.

So we hightailed it to California in search of bluer skies and found it on Gold Bluff Beach, part of the Redwood National and State Park system. We set out our things on every conceivable surface to catch the warm sun and dry out a bit. It worked,we had a relatively dry afternoon on the beach and a damp evening.

We're splurging tonight, we stopped off at a Comfort Inn in Northern California so we could get caught up on laundry and blogging! Warm dry bed, clean clothes and continental breakfast in Fortuna CA... As close to heaven as we can reach on this limited budget unlimited vacation! Next, San Fransisco, then Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Arches N.P., Colorado and points beyond. We've almost reached 8,000 miles!

Enjoy!

I posted some photos in the previous blog, don't forget to check them out!

A Field full of Elk, Tia counted more than 70!

The California coast is dotted with rock islands.

Gold Bluffs Beach

Photos from our walk today along the Redwood Forests of Northern California...

Cortes Island - Hollyhock Visual Post

2007-08-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

Images from the Hollyhock Retreat gardens caught between the raindrops.

Washington and Oregon Coast... so far...

2007-08-19T16:54:00.001-07:00

When it rains, it pours. Literally. We're soaked. Washington State was one soggy mess from the time we entered it from Victoria until we entered Oregon - where it supposedly rains more! No wonder this is called the Evergreen State! The rain does make everything just beautiful and lush though (except for perhaps our sleeping bags...). We got to see some of the "best of the best" in the Olympic National Park as we camped and hiked in the rain forest area by Hoh River. It rains 12 feet a year there!!! That's A LOT of water!!! We figured that cake jobs in this area would definitely include being a fire fighter - you could catch up on a lot of reading waiting for the forest fire calls...

The water is a gorgeous slate blue color from all the sediment.

There are a bazillion types of moss that grow here....

This morning we headed down the Oregon Coast. We had to make a stop at Cannon Beach, since we had visited it before about 5 years ago in the winter time and just loved it! It looks quite different in the summer time though. LOTS more people this time.

Cannon Beach

A bit further down the road... Hideous, I know...

Visiting Friends and Having a Good Ol' Time, Eh!

2007-08-12T14:08:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit overwhelmed at the prospect of catching up here... It seems silly to say that "I haven't had time" to write but somehow between skydiving, driving, visiting with old friends & making new ones and spotty internet access updating our blog seems to have dropped on the back burner for a little while.... But as always, we are so grateful that you are following along on our journey.

After leaving Montana and the Lost Prairie we spent four great days in Spokane visiting our very dear friend Tamara's mom and dad.

Our wonderful hosts, Mary and John (and on Mary's shoulder, Rainbows)

We arrived with our beyond filthy truck, a bag of even filthier clothes, and our dusty selves from the bone dry prairies of Montana. When we left we had a clean truck, clean clothes, great memories and some fabulous Washington State Cheddar cheese to take along. Frankly we thought it was brave of Mary and John to allow us to sleep indoors on a real bed and take real showers (without having to wear our shoes) given that we hadn't done that sort of a thing since July 1st. It was heavenly. AND their adorable kitty, Lilly (sp?) even came to sleep with me for a while in the exact spot where one of our calicoes usually parks herself. AND I got to go horseback riding... Like I said, heavenly!

Dalla and Tia

Chip showed me his version of "going for a ride", and frankly I was quite OK with it... I was sitting on a horse, what did I care!

Tigger

John and his sax - I wish I could add the sound for your enjoyment

From Spokane, we took some lovely backroads toward British Columbia. I must have been clueless(!), but I never knew there were so many wineries in Northern WA and Southern BC. We made a stop at one tasting room and sampled ice wine (among others). We had never heard of it. Apparently the grapes are left on the wine until the first freeze and when the grapes are squeezed the juice that comes out is highly concentrated. The result is a sweeter than sweet dessert wine that tasted just lovely.

Okanagan Winery's tasting room

In BC, we bypassed Vancouver (other than standing in enormously long ferry lines!) and headed for Cortes Island. My fellow expressive artist and friend Kathleen and her husband spend their summers there, and while we were at Lost Prairie we made friends with a skydiver from Hawai'i who also knows someone on Cortes Island, so we just had to go (and yes, we looked up the friend of a friend and had a cup of coffee with them). What a gem of an island! It takes three ferries to get there, which makes it just inconvenient enough that most Vancouver residents don't ever make it out there. The island inhabits roughly 900 year-round residents and probably double that during the summer season. This is also the home of Hollyhock, an educational retreat center much like the Omega Center. (Look for a future visual post by Bruce from their garden!)

Hollyhock meditation garden

Our lovely hosts on Cortes Island, Kathleen and Greg

Crime and Cortes don't mix - I love this place!

Just another cheesy sunset...

Squirrel Cove

Kayaking around Manson's Landing

More from our kayak trip

We finally had some cooler weather, and rain... Welcome change from the scorching temperatures!

On our way back to the US we couldn't resist a few nights' stay on the west coast of Vancouver Island first. We camped at Mussel Beach Campground - if you are ever in the area you simply MUST stay there. It is a more remote site (8 KM of very rough dirt road) right on the beach with breath taking views of the Pacific!

Our camp

The old growth forest on Vancouver Island filled with Douglas Fir, Red Cedar, and Western Hemlock.

I was hoping that climbing "inside* the tree is even more healing than hugging one!

We're now in the vicinity of the Olympic National Park and plan to make our way down the coast... eventually. Until we find another internet cafe, be well my friends!

Lost Prairie, Lang Creek Brewery

2007-08-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

The burning mountains.

Not sure where to begin, Lost Prairie is over, the canopies are packed away, the sky removed of the aircraft and the hills now quiet and recovering from the onslaught of people, rather, skydivers and late nights, locals and hollering at the moon, fires burning just over the hill, waiting for a rain storm, cool nights at the Lost Prairie Lounge, hot days under the cover of tents and tarps, "Almost Sober" loads, morning hangovers, dusty rides to the bottom of the hill, hours spent at McGregor Lake, Lang Creek Brewery tours, cases of Skydiver Blonde, laughter, playing and singing.

Over.

Done...

Until next year.

The following are the compilation of photos from the week. We're staying in Spokane, WA, recovering, cleaning our trashed truck, doing laundry and laughing with friends here...

Tia was offered a job in Kalispell. An amazing opportunity actually. Not yet sure if it's something we're going to take yet, we have this week to consider it. We will keep you posted.

"Lang Creek Brewery Tour"
There are roughly only 60 - 70 skydivers in the entire state of Montana, yet they have a beer named JUST for them. One of the smoothest microbrews I have ever had. I traded my photo services to them for a case of beer, absolutely amazing beer!

One of their beers is called "Skydiver Blonde", so this is a Blonde rolling in the hay...

Yes, nakedness ensued, as skydivers will often do.

A staff member from the brewery did a tandem into the brewery.

Said employee getting his beer serving!

Glacier National Park and Lost Prairie

2007-07-31T11:07:00.000-07:00

My view from our kayak on McDonald Lake in Glacier National Park.

As we're bopping around the upper right-hand corner of our country... we spent a couple of days in the amazing and stunning Glacier National Park. In an attempt to stay away from the RV madness sweeping this nation, we have been planning each stay to be in as small and remote of a campground as we possibly can. Our first night in Glacier was McDonald Lake. A dusty, dirt road that takes us two hours to get to, plenty of wildlife passing through camp. Didn't see any bears though, too many people.

In the center of the lake, the only sound is the noise within your ears. Perfect stillness.

While we were passing through Logan Pass at 6,500' ASL, I remarked that our litle white Toyota truck was climbing so many mountains that we should call her "The Goat." At the very istant I said it, she saw this lone goat standing above this waterfall, scouting out the area.

We watched her for about fifteen minutes, mouths agape. Then she moved from where she was and her little calf followed her, we almost fell over backwards, what an amazing treat. Click on the image to enlarge, it was truly amazing!

So! I’m having a bit of a revolution of sorts. I don’t entirely know how I will feel once we are back in civilization again, what kinds of habits I’ll pick back up again, what kinds of activities I’ll be a part of, but for right now, being so detached from everything has allowed much introspection and readjustment of life - as you can imagine camping for 30 days straight.

Tia picked up a book at the Crazy Horse Monument called “The Wisdom of the Native Americans” and I’ve been devouring it - it's been the source of my inner conflicts. I am one-eighth Native American from my Great Grandmother, she was Algonquin I think, what tribe I don‘t yet know and I‘m trying to find out. All throughout my life that part of my geneology hasn’t entirely interested me, I was never really drawn to it, but it was always an interesting topic in conversation. Actually, I never really knew what to do about it.

Studying this book I am finding just how beautiful and blissful these people were. They were filled with love, great stories, and amazing adventures. They were devoted to their religion, had wonderful views of society, child-raising, elder care, justice and freedom. They completely harmonized with their environment and were the true “Naturalists.” Reading this book has not only altered my whole view of them and saddened me horribly, but completely disrupted my belief system and want for being a part of the modern world. The lifestyle Tia and I have been searching for was actually how they lived! I can’t even get into the depth of how I feel about civilization and organized religion as a whole now knowing how horribly "civilized" people treated the Indians. Tricks, lies and deceit. The book has also shaken my faith that western civilization will survive the coming global crisis and all I feel like doing is shedding myself of worldly possessions and disappearing into the landscape. I wish I had been born 300 years ago. (As I write this on my laptop computer, can I take it along? Will there be wireless there?) So, I’ve been feeling a little lost. While in Glacier, I hit my wall with it. I felt bad for Tia because I was hopelessly lost and felt completely adrift. I didn’t want to be anywhere and didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. It was not a good scene. It’s so strange to feel that way. Disorienting. The thought of working felt foreign. The thought of being a tourist in this great National Park that was once home to the Blackfoot Indians was horrible. I reflected back to the Lakota people of South Dakota and how much they loved the Black Hills. The white man comes in, which they greeted and welcomed with warm fires and love, then they chase and cheat and force them all out of their sacred areas then deface their mountain with the carving at Mount Rushmore. What a slap in the face that must have been, white man‘s leaders carved out of the sacred, natural landscape. Just feels like we should give them back every inch, take every national park and let them live there, protected, reviving the old ways, but I know that will never happen.

There was a quote from an Indian elder in a modern art museum.

“Ah, such is the strange philosophy of the white man. He hews down the forest that has stood for centuries in its pride and grandeur, tears up the bosom of Mother Earth, and causes the silvery watercourses to waste and vanish away. He ruthlessly disfigures God’s own pictures and monuments, then daubs a flat surface with many colors, and praises his work as a masterpiece!”

Anyway... We’re at Skydive Lost Prairie now, and I’m a bit more grounded and reconnected, you should have seen the post I was going to write!

So, I know that I can’t disappear into nothingness right now, and I also know that I need to contribute to society, but it has awaken me to new ideas and I feel changes coming. To try to predict what changes are coming, I can’t entirely say right now, but it will be interesting.

The Lost Prairie, where we have been skydiving. The sunsets here are long and late. It doesn't get dark until after 11PM!

I know this looks like a serene meadow shot, possibly morning lower elevation fog, but the reality is, that it is actually dust lingering in the air. This area has been hit with a record 20 out of 29 days of intense heat and no rain. Very dusty.

So we’re at the Skydive Lost Prairie boogie (a skydiver meet for those not in the know). We’re so close to Canada here that I dubbed this land, “Montanada.“ In fact, Charles, the other Canadian is here, he can’t seem to find the $6. He also left Canada unattended and there are fires north of here, what would you like me to do? Anyway, it’s hot, and very dry. Relative humidity is 11% and yesterday I saw the signs in town display a whopping 108F. It seems, because it’s been so hot and so dry for so long, everything is covered in a fine chalk. You can’t move without raising all kinds of dust.

Tia and I got on a load the first day of the boogie. Without getting into technical skydiver jargon, because we’re at 4,000 feet above sea level, things are different. You land faster than normal. A lot faster. There are things you can do to prevent yourself from landing fast, and neither I nor Tia did those things on our first jump. There were quite a few things we also took for granted, such as… a cleared out landing area for one. One would think that if you plan to have thousands of skydivers land in a predetermined area, that you might clear said landing area of debris. We found dead trees, HUGE holes and barbed wire laying on the ground. There were also numerous stumps sticking up and a few errant fence posts NONE of which you can see until you‘re 20 feet off the ground!! YIKES!

I came in around 25mph, 20mph faster than I am used to. At about 10 feet above ground, all I could think was… “Oh shit, this is going to hurt.” Then I biffed it in, landed sideways on my ankle, spraining it, skidding sideways on my hip and hands through a dead tree (again, couldn’t see it until I was on top of it), cowpies and holes. My first thought, “Did anybody see that?” I started wrapping up my gear, hands trembling, then I heard this noise. WHHOOOOOSSSSSSHHHH. Tia flies right over my head, BOOKING! KERSPLATTTTTTARUMMBLETUMBLE. Her landing just as graceful as mine, except she found the barbed wire fence laying in the field. She gets up bleeding, I’m limping, we’re a sight.

So, I’m done jumping for the entire boogie, my ankle is purple and swollen and I’ve taken enough Aleve to choke an elephant. So now I sit and watch the others. It’s ok. I get to watch the rest of them biff their landings and tell the story of how I landed. The one about the bear… jumping out from behind that tree in the prairie… Bit my leg and threw me to the ground… Yeah… then I kicked the bear with my other leg, wrestled it to the ground and gave it a nuggie on it’s head. Yeah… That’s just how it happened…

We will probably hang out here for a while, maybe until the end of the boogie, hey, why not, the camping is free and the area is beautiful. Don’t know where we’re going from here, not sure that it matters right now. Canada is close by. Spokane not far either.

I’m ready to not be dusty and dirty all the time. I’m ready to take a shower without wearing shower shoes, sleep in my own bed, put on clothing that isn’t wrinkled and have a NORMAL routine, but then I guess I’d get bored with that too soon. Most places we have camped in have had an incline. It's been interesting staying on our Therma Rests, our sleeping bags slide down hill in the night. Around the middle of the night, from tossing and turning we find ourselves in the fetal position at the foot of our tent. If it wasn't so disruptive to our sleep it would be comical!

I know Tia has some perspectives she would like to share, but from my dusty chair at the Lost Prairie Lounge, hope all is well with everyone! Thank you for all of the very supportive comments, keep them coming, we love to hear from you, whether comments here or emails, it does get a little lonely out here. Sorry we haven't been around to everyone else's blogs, thanks for being patient with us!

…and thus is life on the Lost Prairie.

Rural Montana, Visual Post

2007-07-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

©2007 Bruce Anttila van Hoover ~ thisisbruce.com
"I don't know what happened, I told her to go jump in a lake and she did..."

We found this amazing emerald lake just outside of Kalispell, Montana. It was a public swimming hole,packed with kids, but ya can't tell fro this now can ya...

The absolutely pristine Tally Lake.

Some aqua-foul crossing lake Tally this morning on our walk. We camped by the lake in a remote campground for a night of respite from the maddening KOA crowds. Tally Lake is also the deepest lake in Montana, over 475' deep, 3.5 miles long with 9 miles of pristine shoreline, see further below!

OK, remember the point I made about this lake being deep? This was the viewpoint from a 50' bluff overlooking the lake. Note the color change in the rock face, this is a giant underwater cliff below us. Um... wow...

Our truck seems to be wearing Montana well!

Some babies in a field. A bit shy...

New leaves for an old tree...

Missoula and Bob the Sage

2007-07-24T09:20:00.000-07:00

070724-BRUCE

If everything else is as grand as it appears to be in the city of Missoula, then we truly have been blinded by our passion for getting into this city.

We met Bob the Sage (names changed) yesterday whose words flowed like an intuit. I walked in on the conversation Tia and the said sage were having and I wondered if he was channeling insights from above. He spoke to us as though he knew us for all our lives. The points he made were striking and shocking to say the least, but not for the sake of being such, rather the words were poignant and uncovered buried truth inside ourselves.

Bob the Sage is a 40-something property appraiser in Missoula, but may as well have been a old sage, wrapped in decades old robes stroking a long beard. His point was that we need to move on with our journey, that Missoula was a great place 5 years ago when the gap between wages and the cost of living wasn’t so large. Seems all of America, Missoula included, is pricing itself right out of it's homes.

Speaking directly to me, he said that I am in need of professional challenges, to be a smaller fish in a huge pond, to get roughed up a few times by my own kind and really find my way professionally in a bigger venue. To grow in a field where I will be allowed to grow unbounded. My secret buried truth about the matter was a thought I had while driving to the café, when is this town going to get too small? How long do I really want to give this, how long will be before I feel isolated from the rest of the design world? I was prepared to stay two years. Bob the Sage remarked that two years is not long enough to have any kind of a plan. If I were to outgrow the city in two years, which felt like the case in Sarasota, then I would be suffering and making do with a less than ideal situation, stressing out my own life and the life of the marriage - which was what he went through with his ex-wife, and what I fear may have been happening for years in Sarasota.

We also talked about the housing industry, that we should wait to buy a home until the new political administration is in place in Washington in a couple of years. His thoughts were that the housing slump will actually worsen IMMEDIATELY AFTER the new administration is in charge and renting until then would be the way to go. “Get lean.” was his advice. Rent, get lean, pocket away savings and let it earn money for us. When the market falls back, buy something, but for now, rent and watch the market and wait and grow. Imagine how confusing that message was, after falling in love with this place, and this house! A good friend of ours, Mary Wheatly, once told me about rocks we have collected from trips. “There will always be rocks.” I can apply that to this house and to this city. It’s beautiful and we want to make it ours, but there will always be more pretty houses and perfect cities, there will always be more rocks. Thanks Mary!

“If you’re going to buy, spend more than what you are currently comfortable with but be in a better professional environment.” Montana has the lowest pay scales in the United States, it seems, like Florida, the pay is partially made up for in environment. We both know that cities west of here are just as environmentally and politically active as Missoula, but offer better paying jobs.

Makes complete sense on one hand, utter confusion on the other.

So I think we’re going to move on from here, possibly up to Glacier NP and see some mountains, gain some clarity and perspective. Possibly move on to Spokane, then Portland and Eugene.

As Promised, More About Missoula...

2007-07-22T17:47:00.001-07:00

A view of Missoula from the nearby hills.

Farmers' Market

Farmers' Market

We have extended our stay in Missoula for two more days. I'm hoping that by staying here long enough we'll just somehow become Missoulians through osmosis. Yesterday we visited the local farmer's market (I devoured a bag of gooseberries practically in one sitting - and learned that Bruce had never had one!) and the people's market. The people's market is a gathering of local artists - mostly jewelry makers and and photographers as we quickly found out. The jewelry is explained by the fact that Montana's nickname is "The Treasure State" with precious and semiprecious stones everywhere, and the photography is explained by the Rocky Mountain School of Photography, right here in Missoula, MT. After the market we got back to camp and got on our bikes. We stayed out from noon until 8:30 PM, give or take a stop at a cafe, just riding around neighborhoods. Among other things, we got to watch a hang glider soar for several minutes and then land right in front of us. Apparently the hills behind the university are a prime spot for hang gliding and parasailing - and naturally there is a club for it. (Oh, and there is a 7-days a week skydiving operation within 30 miles from here. Finding bad things about Missoula is not working out too well so far.)

Shortly after that leisurely experience I got my butt SERIOUSLY kicked by a mountain as we attempted to go all the way to the top. First I had to keep swallowing my heart back down. Then I had to start walking my bike. Then I do believe I started to curse just a little. Then I told Bruce he could find me right in that spot on his way down. Then we both decided to turn around. These altitudes and my distinct flatlander out-of-shapeness are seriously inhibiting my adventurous spirit and my pride isn't having any of it! I will bike up a mountain - at some point...

But I need to back up here a little bit. Our first night in town we went down to the river to join the locals in Caras Park for the "Best of Missoula Party". There was food, drinks and live music, and even a kayaking competition going on. Apparently this is a weekly event during the summer months and the kayakers decided to join forces with this great weekly event to draw more of an audience. From the park, we found a great seafood restaurant called White Water. It was here that we had our first taste of Missoula hospitality as several staff members gladly took the time to talk to us about their great city and state. (I watched one waitress talking to customers throughout the majority of our meal without service suffering or anyone getting upset with her.) This is also where I had the most incredible halibut I have ever eaten.

Best of Missoula Party at Caras Park - where people come to eat, drink and rock every Thursday during the summer.

Excuse Me While I Fall Head Over Heels

2007-07-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

I am totally verklempt. I really did not think this sort of a thing could happen to someone twice in one life time, but I do believe I am falling in love, fast and hard. (Don't worry, my husband completely approves...) Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you Missoula MT.

There is so much to write about regarding this gem of a city known as the Hub of Five Valleys I am completely overwhelmed. I often see it's name written as MisSOULa, and for a very good reason. Everyone seems to Lllove the place. You'll have to hang on while I (we) continue this passionate fling a bit longer.... We promise to post many pictures and all the juicy details, but for now I'll leave you with a mental image of a place with a river running through it (a movie which you MUST see if you haven't already - filmed in MT), mountains on all sides, politically and environmentally conscientious people who are fit and passionate about their outdoor sports (they have a women's HOCKEY team!!!!!!), a university with a 12,000 student enrollment (with a nice size art department), bike lanes, funky/hip/cool shops, parks, farmers' market that ROCKS, live music, hiking, kayaking, mountainbiking, two national parks within a day's drive and plenty of other less known state parks and national forests, horses, winters that are apparently less harsh than most of Montana..... I could go on.......

We're trying to find out what the deep, dark secret of this place is but so far no one is talking. The best answer they can give to the guestion "what do you hate most about it?" is "the people are too friendly." Now you know they have got to be hiding something..... We'll report back to you as soon as we can.

I hate to cut this short, but I've got another hot date tonight. I think it involves bicycling around looking at neighborhoods and then hiking on top of one of the hills to see the sun setting over the object of our new affections.... We'll let you know how it goes.