Catching up

Well, it's only been almost 4 months since I last posted on here, so I guess it's about time I caught you up on what we've been up to. The first two months since my last entry (May and June) were pretty much taken up, for me, by "The King and I." As I mentioned last time, I was the music director for the production, but for the first time in a while, I wasn't also cast in an on-stage role. It turned into a pretty good production. I was able to recruit the largest orchestra MTI has yet seen (28 musicians), and they sounded really good. I even got a harpist! You can see pictures of how it looked on stage here.

"King and I" finished on June 27th, and the following week I was required to take off from work because they decided to shut everything down for the 4th of July week to save money. Unfortunately, I would have rather taken the week off two weeks later when some of Liz's family was converging on Yellowstone that week -- but I wasn't given that choice. Rather than sit home all week, we were able to exchange our timeshare for a week in beautiful downtown Blanchard, Idaho, (well, there really isn't a downtown to Blanchard, but if there were this condo would be there) which you can see on the map below is in between a bunch of lakes in northern Idaho.


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Unfortunately, the condo's check-in date was on Friday, but because of the play we couldn't leave until Sunday, so we lost out on two days of the week. We went to an early ward on Sunday and then headed north, arriving around 9:30 that evening. Monday we played some racquetball at the resort, and just kind of hung around, but we did take a drive down to Spirit Lake in the evening. It was a very pretty mountain lake, but unfortunately there weren't too many places that you could drive down to the lake because the shoreline is mostly privately owned.

Tuesday we drove all the way around Priest Lake. A good portion of that trip was on mostly deserted dirt roads, and while on those dirt roads we actually saw a bear. We both saw it in a meadow off to the left maybe 100 yards away, but by the time I stopped the car and backed up to where we had seen it, it had disappeared.

Wednesday we drove across the state (which isn't very far up there) to the Montana state line where we rented some bicycles, which we then hauled to the beginning of the Trail of the Hiawatha, which is an old railroad route that has been converted to a biking trail. We rode around 15 miles through tunnels and over trestles through beautiful mountain territory. The thing that made this a great idea was that it was downhill all the way, and when we got to the end of the trail they had a shuttle bus that hauled us and our bikes back up to the beginning of the trail. It was really quite spectacular scenery, and was a very fun trip. They also had interpretive signs posted all along the trail describing various details about the history of the trail and the trains that used to travel over it. Kudos to my intrepid wife who came across information about this trail on the internet.

On the way back from the bike ride we spent some time at Coeur d'Alene Lake, and stopped off in the city of Coeur d'Alene for dinner.

Thursday was our Lake Pend Oreille day. We first went to Farragut State Park on the southern end of the lake, which used to be a US Navy training base. The lake is 1,150 feet deep in places, and they used to train submarine crews there. There was a really nice swimming area there, and Liz went swimming while I drove back to the condo to get the camera that I had forgotten when we left that morning. We did a little more driving around in that area before heading north to Sandpoint, where we had reserved a dinner cruise on the lake. They took us out to an island where some bald eagles are nesting, and we ate dinner while watching the eagles sitting around in the treetops.

Friday morning (the 3rd) we headed back to Boise. We had taken the interstate through Spokane going up, but we took the slower, more direct route down US 95 coming home. It was slower, but it was prettier. You can see pictures of our trip here. Our actual 4th of July was pretty boring. We watched the Boise fireworks on TV and saw a few neighbors lighting some stuff, but that was it.

As I mentioned, some of Liz's family got together a couple of weeks later in Yellowstone N.P. They stayed at cabins at Old Faithful Lodge. Erin and Liz spent the week over there while I slaved away here at work to pay for their adventures. I guess I'll leave it to Liz to fill in the details of that trip, if she ever gets around to it.

Anna finished up her semester at school the same week Liz and Erin were over there on that side of the state, and she returned home the day after they did (Sunday, July 19th I think). She brought with her a young man that she has been dating over there, Eric Anderson. He stayed through Thursday before flying home to his family in Texas. It remains to be seen what will come of all that. Apparently an elder from Anna's mission is also coming to spend a few days here in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, Erin has also been seen spending quite a bit of time with a young man, Joe Morton, whose family actually lives in our ward. They were in the Edinburgh ward but got moved into our ward the last time the boundaries got realigned. His dad was on the high council with me when I was first called, but he was released a couple of years ago. He goes back to school at BYU in a few weeks, so who knows what will come of that.

In between all of that, work has been pretty crazy. They have us trying to meet an absolutely insane schedule on our current project, but in the current economic situation, who can complain? Speaking of the current economic situation, who decided it was a good idea to take some of my money and use it to help some other people buy new cars? I can't afford a new car, why should I help other people buy one?

And with that, I will close this entry. Maybe I'll see if I can get around to posting again before the end of the year.