THE GRAND TETONS

Welcome to the Colter Bay Tent Cabins! And not just any tent cabin, but our own #148. When I asked the young attendant in the office as we were checking in if the bike lock was still on the poles, he said, "I can tell you've been here before. That's my favorite kind of customer." and then he just handed over the stacks of Bear warnings, Fire warnings, and How To Burn Your Wood Stove Without Burning Down the Tent warnings without having to explain. He did feel it necessary to give us a map just in case we had forgotton where #148 was and as we were leaving, he also mentioned that #150 (where Allison's family was staying) had a bear in it two nights ago. Allison and I decided not to share that with Chris.

We got right into the swing of things by deciding we were too lazy to cook dinner, so about 9:00pm when we were building up a big bonfire to cook down for marshmallows, Allison and I decided that we would at least wrap the corn up in foil and throw that in the fire. Delicious! But that ended the laziness. Allison rustled up some terrific Dutch oven meals the next breakfast and dinner. In fact, the breakfast was so good we kept munching on it all morning, so we were too fat and lazy to make lunch. Speaking of marshmallows, it turned out that everybody liked to roast them, but nobody wanted to eat them. But this was a Grandma camping trip -so what's a little waste if it makes them happy? We put out a sheet of foil next to the fire pit and opened the whole $1.19 bag and let them roast and discard to their hearts' content. When you see the occasional marshmallow fall into the fire and billow up like a Fourth of July snake it makes you wonder if the kids don't have the right idea after all.



We played lots of games, with and without the kids. Sometimes they played without us. As I watched Zoe play Sorry with her Grizzly bear family I asked if she was moving for them because they were bears. She glared at me very sternly and said, "They choose not to because I picked the game." Later, she game over to me and in a whisper, hissed, "Don't call them toys in front of them. They don't like it!" Bytheway, Zoe won the game.
During my laying-flat times in the tent cabin I played Mother-May-I with the kids and taught them an old favorite from my youth on Simondi Ave: Here Comes a Jolly Butcher Boy. Somehow, typing it out it seems a little less innocent than it really is. Zoe was great, Jimmy was easy - he was always a motorcycle.




For the most part we sat around enjoying the scenery and letting the kids play. Zoe, who remembers last summer, kept saying over and over, "I wish my cousins were here."
We stopped on our way south to let them float their boats in String Lake. Zoe wanted to wade like she did in Jenny Lake last August, but the occasional floating icebergs made her think twice about it.







We had our final meal at the Cheese Factory in Thayne, Wyoming, enjoying once again the cherubic face of a four year old who thinks if he scowls hard enough and yells authoritatively enough, using language unbecoming such a tender youth, he will immediately receive anything he wants. It never happens and yet he never learns.





We had a great time on this vacation and learned several things:

• A four year old with a bladder the size of a walnut should not take long car trips.
• That same child does not do well watching lots of little geysers while waiting for the big one
• Chris can be very pleasant, in spite of great pain, when he is feeling guilty.
• There are few buffalo in the Hayden valley in June.
• Grandpa has checked off a major item on his bucket list.
  

YELLOWSTONE

Well, we've been home a week and I'm finally recovered enough to post! Our trip was really a lot of fun. We've never been to Yellowstone in June and it was a delightful time to go. It wasn't very crowded and not too hot -- although we had been planning on temps in the 50's and 60's and were slightly annoyed at the low 70's. But we were never rained out anywhere and the blackout during our stay at Lake came conveniently after dinner and ended before we woke up. It made playing Sorry and Go Fish all the more exciting as the light faded. The double rainbow the second night was beautiful!.
It was a little early in the year for the buffalo herds to have come south from the Lamar Valley and we didn't see many of the big elk herds, but we saw a huge daddy moose, the up-close and personal grizzly and her cub, baby coyotes, a big coyote who lived in our cabin complex and many snowshoe hares who hid under our cabins to avoid the coyote. We really didn't need the snowshoe hares because we brought the Energizer Bunny with us. He was 4 years old and didn't seem to be equipped with an off switch. Ever. According to his parents, he even talked in his sleep. But, luckily for us old folks we had separate accomodations. One thing that was really fun was seeing the geysers with little kids who were really tickled by them. I know we were there last summer with the grandkids too, but what made this different was that it was cool enough that I could actually get out on the boardwalks and I had my heavy duty scooter with me. Plus there were only two kids, so when they got they got tired on the longest oart of the boardwalks they could both ride. Robert and I never visit geysers or mudpots when we go alone, but we had a lot of fun. And being there when Beehive geyser went off was really cool. It is so tall and incredibly powerful and goes full strength for about 5 full minutes. It is very unpredictable and only goes off once or twice a day. The sound and pressure difference between Old Faithful and Beehive is kind of like your garden hose and a firehose. We stayed the first night at The Old Faithful Inn. We were on the third floor and there was no way to get the scooter up to any floor, so that was a little tricky. But the kids and I sat at the table on the mezzanine and worked hard on their Junior Ranger paperwork. By the end of three days in Yellowstone those two kids were so well prepared for their ranger interview - and so proud of their patches!
I'll write about Tetons tomorrow!

The Alien in my Brain

So far all of my tests have come back unchanged - the MS ones and the seizure ones - all the same as they have ever been. Except for one surprising result -- my spinal fluid has strep in it! My neurologist called me back in immediately to go over this because, as she said, "you're not supposed to have strep in your spinal fluid". I had to have another spinal tap to confirm it, but she said the lab techs would have had to lick the petri dish to contaminate it. So she's thinking I might have had chronic meningitis since May of 2006! (I told you I wasn't feeling well.)

Because she wants to recheck the results, plus check to see if the strep has damaged my heart, she doesn't want to actually treat the disease for another few weeks -- in spite of everything I've read on the Internet that says chronic meningitis needs immediate hospitalization and IV antibiotics. So I just wait. But every time I get a headache, or slurred speech or other symptom, I can't get it out of my mind that there is a foreign substance surrounding my brain, swirling around it, trying to take it over. Some alien out of Star Trek. It is a freaky feeling and I can't make it go away. Maybe it will come out my ears...