Are Those Mountains Really Real??

As we left Yellowstone and entered Grand Teton National Park, the mountains seemed to jump out at us just on the other side of Jackson Lake. They seemed closer to us than any that we had seen so far, maybe because we were such a high elevation. The campground we stayed at had some amazing views of the lake and mountains (of course our site did not) but we were lucky to get a spot there.



Look closely for the herd of elk.

We visited Jackson and had a real meal (not the same old hotdogs or chicken strips cold and a bit dusty). Collin ate his first buffalo/elk/wild boar meatball (a disgusting combo if you ask me) which he liked. Josh tried a piece and said it tasted like chicken. Jackson is a cute western town and we watched a shootout in the middle of the street. The boys didn’t know what a shootout was but they loved it.

Alex asked all through Yellowstone when we would see a herd of buffalo. We never did see a herd there but on the way back from Jackson we saw a large herd up on a ridge. Now he asks when we’ll see a herd cross the street-highly unlikely.

We decided to take a long hike around part of Jenny Lake and up into Cascade Canyon. We did not know that this was one of the highlighted areas to hike. We just picked it as a cool looking canyon as we drove by on the highway. There is a ferry shuttle that goes from the south end of the lake to the beginning of the trailhead where there is a waterfall. We did not take the ferry and instead started close to 2 miles away at the north parking area.

We followed the trail along a river until in emptied into the lake and then around the lake until we came to what we thought was our junction. The first junction we came to was the canyon horse trail. I wondered if this was correct but Josh said of course it was. So up the horse trail we went. It was quite a climb to get up away from the lake but really nice because we were shaded and by ourselves most of the time.

We then came to a junction where we met a lot of people. At this point we realized we weren’t on the trail we thought we were. We continued into the canyon until the valley opened up and gave us a great view of the mountains and creek. We had a snack and then headed down the actual canyon trail. The trail gave us some great views of the lake and then the waterfall. It was really rocky and lots of people. Will cried most of the way down because Josh made him walk.


While we were resting in the valley of Cascade Canyon and Will and Matthew were playing on rocks, a guy walking by said “You’ve got a couple of young mountain men there don’t you”. I wanted to ask him, “You mean the one that cries when you take the Nuk out of his mouth and the one that cries when you make him walk more than 20 feet?” Mountain men… maybe someday but not yet.

By the time we got back, Josh and I were really tired from hiking the elevation with a little boy on each of our backs but we had promised the boys swimming. So we went to a different campground area where Josh took the boys swimming (their only bath in 4 days). I went to do laundry and some woman commented on the amount of laundry I was folding. I told her I had 4 boys and hadn’t done laundry in over a week (we were also out of clothes). I paid $3.50 for an unlimited shower but they didn’t advertise the fact that it wasn’t hot. That didn’t matter to me; it was wonderful to feel clean even for just a few hours.

Hey Boo-Boo

Yellowstone was a bit of a disappointment (for the adults, not the kids). Maybe it was because of all the hype, maybe because it was so crowded, or maybe it was because so much of what we had seen, we had seen at other places on a grander scale.

But the geysers and boiling mud pots were unlike anything we had seen or smelled (lots of sulfur). Collin and Alex really liked the Dragon Mouth Spring which was a cave that made a lot of noise (from the gases-stinky) as it spit hot water out of it. We saw some wildlife (river otter, buffalo, elk, coyote, bald eagle) and there are some views in Yellowstone that were unlike anything we had seen anywhere else.

And Yogi did not steal our pik-a-nik basket.

Spectacular

Glacier was amazing. This was the view of lake McDonald which was very close to our campsite. We were enjoying this sunset the first night when thunder started behind us. We hurried back to our campsite and thankfully didn't get much rain.

Josh was very concerned about the bears so our campsite was in a middle loop at one of the larger campgrounds. Willy made great friends with the boy next door. We never did see a bear but lots of deer and mountain goats.

Jackson Glacier is one of the larger glaciers in the park.

At St. Mary's Lake we took a short hike along a ridge that viewed the lake. We then continued on to see a waterfall.
We traveled by shuttle throughout the park and iked some. At Logans Pass, the highest peak on Road to the Sun, we walked up a trail where parts were covered in snow and yellow glacier lily's were blooming. Josh, Collin and Matt continued on to an overlook of Hidden Lake.

We left the park and travel a small road out to the highway, Cows were in the road which was very exciting to the boys. Now off to Yellowstone!

Craters and Slides! Oh My!

On our way to Glacier National Park, we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. It didn’t so much resemble anything that would make us think of the moon. It was a volcanic lava field. We climbed what would have been the peak of the volcano which gave us a really neat view of the surrounding mountains and countryside.

We also walked through a cave created by underground lava flows. We had lunch here and then continued north on a scenic highway towards Glacier.

The boys had fun in the caves.

After driving through farm land that looked like northern Michigan, we drove through a narrow hundred mile river valley surrounded by mountains. It rained hard ahead of us but only sprinkled on us. We had to keep our eyes on the road because of all the possible hazards such as free range cows, game crossings and rock slides. Shortly after we passed a sign warning us of possible rock slides, we went around a bend and were surprised to see our whole lane blocked by big rocks. We went around it and after another mile we came to where there was a back up of about 30 cars. It was another slide of mostly rocks and hard mud which we were able to get over in our 4-wheel drive Durango. After crossing a couple more mud slides like this, we came to one that was a little bigger. We watched another 4-wheel vehicle almost get stuck in the soft mud, big rock soup. People were guessing the soup was at least four feet deep.

After a couple of hours, a bulldozer came and dumped it all in the river while a hundred people watched. We then continued on our way.

Rain in the Desert

Today we spent the day traveling through Nevada. It was desert. We saw lots of salt flats with some yucky looking water. We thought we smelled humidity which seemed strange because we were in the desert in the summer. Then it looked like rain ahead and it turned out that it was not a mirage. We got rained on in the desert. We even saw some lightening.

After the rain, things looked a little greener than you would expect, but what was most noticeable was the smell. It smelled like a mix between Pine Sol (something we need to pick up for our bear repellant) and B.O. We couldn’t decide if we liked the smell or not. At first we thought it was some factory in the town where we stopped to eat, but when we smelled it way outside of town, we decided it must be some smell that the desert bushes let off after rain.

As we headed north to go from Nevada to Idaho, we drove past the northern part of the Ruby Mountains. They were really pretty. See pictures below.

We're Off!!

We are leaving sunny California today. We are headed to Glacier National Park where we will spend 3 days, then off to Yellowstone. Please pray that we have a safe trip home and no suprises!

DRAMA/MUSIC CAMP

Josh as Uncle Mordecai

Alex's class rehearsal

Collin running the sound system

Everyone doing the Boogaloo

Josh is a Dork!

So I thought I'd let you all know what Josh is doing at this moment. He's playing with a little toy cash register. He's speaking into the microphone playing "store manager".

"Shoppers it's ten minutes til closing time please complete your shopping."
"We need a price check for register 3, price check for aisle 3"
"I'm sorry sir we can't accept this coupon, it's for Trader Joe and this is Walmart"

and the list goes on.

So anyway this is my entertainment for a Saturday night, sad but true.

Let Me See YOU Boogaloo!

Pastor Doug, the pastor of congregational life at church, has the job of filling time at the end of music and drama camp. Doug worked at a kids camp when he was younger, so he has some funny camp games and stories. His rendition of the “Herman the Worm” story was excellent.

The hands down favorite of everyone in camp, though, is “the Boogaloo”. We had never heard of it before. It starts with everyone getting in a circle and holding hands. The leader leads a chant that goes like this:

Leader: left . . . left . . . left, right, left
Let me see you Boogaloo!

Everyone else: What’s that you said?

Leader: I said let me see you Boogaloo!

Everyone else: What’s that you said?

Leader: I said let me see you Boogaloo!

Everyone else: What’s that you said?

Then the leader does a silly dance saying “oh, ah ah ah, oh, ah ah ah” and everyone else mimicks him. Doug led us through more and more rounds of the game where the thing he asked us to do changed, and the noise we made while we did what he told us changed. We did “let me see you play dead”, “let me see you shoot the moon” and “let me see you do the Schwarzenegger”.

Our favorite, though was “let me see you do the preacher”. The dance for that one was accompanied by “bla, bla, bla, bla . . . bla, bla, bla, bla”.

The guy who was hired to preach at the church said it, not me.

Real Life or Art?

Some of you will appreciate this more than others but I have to share it with you, it's just too funny. Today started our Drama/Music camp at Granite Springs. I am a coach for the 3rd graders (yup...some of you know how much I love to teach other kids). The musical that we are doing is based on Mark 5 with 3 stories-the demon possessed man, the bleeding woman and the dead girl, all of whom Jesus heals.

During our small group time, Arianna (the other coach) was reading part of the bleeding woman story, in our scene her problem isn't bleeding but farting. Arianna gets to the part where no one wants to be by this woman because of her smells and noise, when one of our students lets out a very loud fart. The kids all burst out laughing and started to move away from this poor girl. It's just like the skit unfolding in front of us. We could not have planned it better. It was all I could do to not laugh too. We just moved along to the song about how she makes us sick with her smells. Don't worry it all works out in the end. Hopefully Sunday's performance will go as well as this one:)

Yosemite National Park

We had a great time in Yosemite. Collin stands in front of the Bachelor and 3 Graces. Look for tree hugging Alex and Willy's attitude in the tree tunnel. There was smoke in the air, that's why the pictures are hazy. The red sun is what we see every night with the smoke in the air. Oh and it was 102 degrees:)

Sailing on the Bay

On Thursday, Josh and I spent the day sailing on the SF Bay. This was an opportunity for us, Kristin (the other intern) and Doug (the pastor at Granite Springs) to talk with Ron (one of the other church planters in the area) about church planting. What a nice way to hear Ron's story and ask questions about church planting. I've still been looking for the cross-cultural link in this internship and I wonder if sailing on the Bay might be it.

Does Josh have hidden Musical Talent?

I have not done any preaching while we have been here, but I have had small parts in worship leading. Since the church has a lot of old people, and since the one good quality of my voice is that it is usually loud and clear when I speak in public, I have had more people than usual tell me they like listening to me speak. (Apparently when older people have a choice between a monotone voice they can hear and a voice with vocal variety that they can’t hear, they prefer the monotone.)

Last Sunday, a few minutes after I briefly spoke during the service, the guy sitting in front of me turned around and said I had a nice voice. He is an older guy, and I assumed he was making the same type of comment others had made to me.

At lunch that day, Amy (who had heard the comment) brought it up and said I should enjoy it because I will probably never hear it again. I told her that a lot of people have said they enjoy my speaking voice. She said: he wasn’t talking about your speaking voice, he was talking about your singing voice.

Anyone who has ever heard me sing (or heard my dad sing) would understand why I have a hard time believing he could possibly have been talking about my singing voice. When the other intern here with me asked a couple weeks ago whether I was tone deaf and I told her that I did not know what that means, she said “if you don’t know what that means then you probably are.”

The most curious thing about all of this is that this was not just some musically illiterate guy like me; he is a guy in his 60s who has played in a band his whole life and now leads one of the praise bands at the church.

So, there you have it: Amy is convinced that a guy who she thinks has a lot of musical talent complimented me on my singing voice.

Maybe instead of this whole preaching thing I need to find a producer and cut an album.

P.S. The reason I believe Gene was talking about Josh's singing voice is because he invited both of us to sing with the praise band in August; thank goodness we'll be on our way home by then. I also have to wonder if Gene was actually hearing some other guy singing near us and assumed it was Josh as that would explain a lot.

4th of July

We were busy most of the week building this float. Have any of you ever had the experience of making and decorating a float? It's a lot more work than you would think. I don't think I'll be building any floats in the near future.

Will and Alex had fun riding in the float for the 4th of July parade through downtown.

This parade was a much bigger deal for the size of the town than I would have thought, but I guess I have to remember I'm in "the All American Town" of Lincoln.

San Francisco

Does this bush look at all out of place next to the garbage can?

It's the BUSH MAN!! I highly, highly recommend looking for him if you're ever in San Francisco. Of all the street performers I've seen (which isn't saying much), he must be the funniest one yet. After seeing him in action the first time, we over heard some people ask "How does a guy wake up one day and decide to spend his life sitting behind a few branches scaring people." Hmm...Maybe it's the big wad of cash I saw him counting later in the day. Whatever his motivation, it's absolutely hilarious to watch him scare people and the reaction he gets from them.

Throughout the day, we walked by several people holding signs asking for money, the best of which were:

• Cash Needed for Alcohol Research
• Cash for Weed
• Spaire Change Pleese

They almost convinced me to give them money...Almost:)

The boys' excitement of the day came from the jelly fish, pirate ship, and porcupine fruit we saw. Josh's excitement came from marching everyone straight up hill 15 blocks(Check out the pics where the bay is way down the street..we didn't get up there by trolly). My excitement came from Chinatown and watching all the people. It sure felt like we just stepped into China.

Enjoy our pictures.

North Highlands

Yesterday we went to a neighborhood on the north side of Sacramento. Part of Josh's internship is to write a proposal for how and where we would plant a church. We picked North Highlands (double the average poverty levels of the US) as our neighborhood. We went there yesterday just to get a sense for the community. We visited a few parks and drove some of the residential streets.

While at one of the parks where Josh, Will and Alex were playing on the toys and I was in the car because Matt was sleeping, this car pulls up with this young guy whose talking really loud on his cell phone. I over hear part of the conversation and I must say I don't think he sees me in the car because what I hear makes me think that some sort of exchange is going to happen. Then Matt wakes up so we go over to the toys too. I keep a watch over at the car and this other car pull up a few minutes later. The young guy gets out, chats with the the new dude, gets in the car for a few minutes and then gets out and they both leave. Now I'm not entirely sure what took place but I can make a guess. I'm sold on the neighborhood as this makes me feel just like I'm home. Boy do I miss my neighborhood. Can't wait to be home.

MondayNightFeast

Last night we went to a free community dinner which I was surprised to see was put on by Granite Springs. This was a simple meal where people all around Lincoln were invited to come out and build some community. It was held at the historic Ladies Club which was right downtown. The church hosts this dinner on the last Monday of the month with the intention of helping those who might need a little help towards the end of the month with food, building community and getting those from the church across the tracks. It got me thinking what a blessing this was for everyone involved and how easy it was to do. It could work almost anywhere (hint, hint:).