January 28, 2010 West Yellowstone, MT

After getting off the truck 9 weeks and 3 days ago (whose counting?), we're back. During that long extended 'vacation', we did take a trip to Kansas from December 3 - 15, getting to visit family and friends. After Christmas, Jim's daughter and family came to Idaho for a few days,. We also unloaded the food from the truck (so it wouldn't freeze during the winter), we inventoried all the books, Jim has done days and days and days of paper work, I ordered more books from Review and Herald and from Pacific Press and Jim ordered the food for our next run. Then we also processed the books as we received them, checking inventory, labeling them and trying to find the correct places to display them. All of that doesn't include housework, shopping for Christmas and just adjusting to home life after living on the truck for three months. And we did our yearly doctor appointments, teeth, eyes, body, etc., etc., etc.

So, today we're on our first road trip, a delivery run to Mt Ellis Academy in Montana. We rented a cargo van. The truck was too big for this trip. By the time we got the van, went to Boise ABC to get it loaded, it was noon before we left town. After 6 hours of driving time, we got to West Yellowstone, MT. The trip was quite interesting.

It was around 50 degrees when we left Boise. It's about 5 degrees here. We drove through sunshine, fog, sunshine and fog all in a 5 minute period. Sometimes we would be able to see over the fog and sometimes it was so thick that we could barely see the white line on the road. In a couple places the fog was frozen on the trees. That's always so pretty. It looks like an ice storm has gone through. There's a full moon tonight, so driving after sundown wasn't very dark. After the first couple hours of driving, there was snow on the ground most of the way, so it made a 'bright night'. The roads were clear though. We did pass a snowplow once, but the road was clear, even thought there were drifts by the road.

Once we even saw a falling star. It was so bright and it was in our view out the front window for quite awhile. It must be a good omen for our journeys this year. About half way between Idaho Falls, ID and West Yellowstone, we could see the Grand Tetons. The tallest mountains, the Three Sisters were very visible and so neat to see.

It was really interesting when we drove into West Yellowstone. The streets are all snow packed with some piles of snow almost as tall as the buildings. It's almost unreal, the difference in the roads here and the highway. This is totally a tourist town. There are snowmobiles parked all over the place, restaurants, motels, just everywhere.

We're having a family reunion here this summer after we complete our tour of duty. So tomorrow after our delivery in Bozeman, we'll check out the town a little closer. We already have our house checked out and rented before we got here. There's nothing better than having fun while you're working. If you can't enjoy life, friends, family and stuff - you've got a problem.