The Cabin

Sadly ... I am STILL on pictures from Thursday, but a post of the cabin needed to be made - then I shall move on to new days, new photos, new adventures ...

Let's back up a bit ... to, oh, I think January. I had called my mother asking again about dates for our 'Family Reunion' so that Gary could plan his year of vacation, and if the location was near his siblings, notify them of the dates so we could maybe get together with them also. Got the dates settled, and location, but she was frustrated on how to get lodging for all of us, and seemed rather upset that she wasn't sure how to figure it all out - with needs being different for each family.

I told her to calm down, get on her computer and type exactly what I typed on mine. We had decided on Island Park, Idaho as the location, so I Googled: "Places to stay in Island Park, Idaho" and started from there. We found a place that seemed PERFECT for what we needed. It had a hotel, individual cabins, bunkhouses and an RV park! What luck! My mom checked out the photos of the bunkhouse and decided that it would do for the majority of those going and was inexpensive - an important part of the equation. Marci and her partner would stay in the hotel, Gary and I opted for a cabin (it is easier for me to go off and get rest, OK and away from the family when needed, and, let's face it ... we are spoiled) and my other sister who was coming up in an RV, or wanted to camp, or something - I wasn't paying all that much attention, thought she would be somewhere else, but could also be in the same 'compound' as the rest of us ... like I said: PERFECT!

But there is always that 'you touched it last' ownership that left me with an inkling of fear that should things turn out to not be, well ... PERFECT! that I would get the blame. I generally toss these types of responsibilities like a hot potato, but mom needed help and was happy that we had it all figured out. And if mom was OK with the bunkhouse - hey - I assumed that meant everyone else would be.

I thought nothing more about it.


Fast forward to July and Gary and I settle into our cabin. It was really a condo - being attached to the one next to it (it was on the end, so thankfully only one set of neighbors) so how they got 'cabin' out of that I don't know. Looked around, decided that we were OK with it.

We headed over to where the bulk of the families were staying with my parents, most having just arrived, having stunned looks on their faces.


What?


Even my mom seemed to be surprised with the accommodations. She was saying (and I only have a scary morning photo to show you from the following morning - don't ASK me what my crazy brother is doing in the background - he actually has a fairly normal shaped - albiet chunky - body ...) 'The beds are all together'. I remember wondering what did she expect - it was called A BUNKHOUSE, not THE SUITES. But, still - it looked a bit ridiculous and VERY, VERY ... UM ... COZY?

Most seemed uncomfortable to be sleeping all together as a huge group and there were mutterings about the symphony of snores the next morning - my Dad being the loudest snorer that I know ...

I am assuming they got over the initial shock, some sleeping in the living room on couches to get away from the snorers, some just grinning and bearing it. I got very little harassment for it, but felt bad none the less.

It worked well as a good place that the Parents, and six families could congregate and eat - since there were two large tables and a fairly large kitchen, so there was that, it was just - all those beds! It looked like something in a gym somewhere after a natural disaster - only with matching bedspreads. If there had been no living room or kitchen where they could sit down and relax, I would have referred to them as 'refugees' (not to their faces, mind you ...) I can't remember what Gary was calling them - to their faces ... inmates? Something.

It wasn't great, but the price was right and they survived without any major fights, injuries or outbreaks of disease ...

The last day for my sides Family Reunion - when everyone from my family was heading out (if they had not left the night before) were cleaning up and called us to come and get some stuff from their fridge since we were staying for 4 more days. Went over, said goodbye and took the stuff back to our 'cabin'.

Soon, we get a phone call from my sister, Jill, saying that they forgot about the OJ, what number was our cabin and they would drop it off for us. I told her thanks and that it was 500. Soon the door knocks, and I open it. My sister walks in (for the first time) and the look on her face was ... priceless! She could barely get the words out:

Jill: "You stayed here?"

Lori: "Yes, why?"

Jill: "Did you SEE what we were staying in?"

Lori: "Yes, you never came over to visit us."

Jill: "WHY WOULD I THINK TO? I HAD NO IDEA YOU HAD SOMETHING SO NICE!"

Lori: "Sorry."

Jill: "I'm getting Mark and the boys ..."

Lori: "Um ... wait ..."

She leaves to get her entire family (husband and two teenage sons) out of the car ...

Back again - most of them a bit annoyed at themselves for not looking us up sooner. Mark brought in his camera (which I thought a bit odd, why take photos of someones elses cabin?). I will follow him through our cabin with my own photos:

Kitchen - was very nice to have, very roomy:

A look at the kitchen and living room:
The living room - that we quickly turned into our offices:

They had WiFi so I was in heaven (when I was not sick and in bed):

Gary had even scoped out his own place, complete with the best line of sight to the TV (but barely watched it):

The upper deck was lovely, the view of the trees, but if you looked close enough - you would see that it was the RV park ... (this is a panorama of 7 photos - and they did not line up so well, so at least 1/3 of this photo is fake ... can you spot the fake parts?):

Downstairs was a cozy family room:

I sort of winced at the screaming of my nephews when they saw we had a hot tub ...

Into Gary's room - it was a queen size bed, and we don't sleep very comfortably in queens together, so I got the other room:

Back up to the main floor to start up to the loft ... 'Lori's Loft':

My room - with double beds - which Gary does not fit in at all, thus I had two all to myself:

As the days progressed and I became more sore and, for some reason my feet began to swell, and, well - just everything hurt much worse than usual - I cursed those stairs! Sadly, there was no bathroom in 'Lori's Loft'!

Looks lovely, no?

It was nice - though expensive and we had to do weird things to check out (strip the sheets, run the dishwasher, throw the towels in the washer and start it ... I mean for the money we paid and as little of the entire cleaning that needed to be done between guests - it seemed weird, but was no biggie ... especially for me - I was doing good to stay upright - having trouble with my balance the last two days I was in Idaho - so Gary did it all).

BUT!

It will forever be the place that I had the creepiest experience ... since I can remember - so I do not exactly think back on the place with fond memories ...

We arrived at the cabin on Thursday, everyone got settled in, Gary went to bed and I stayed up and blogged. When it was time for me to go to bed, I went up to go to bed, carefully keeping a light on since at the bottom of the stairs there is a bend with two more stairs and no handrail and twice I almost tripped and fell forgetting about them - thus the lights were left on so I would not forget about the two killer stairs and fall. Gary was in a room downstairs so the light was not bothering him.

After three trips downstairs for something I forgot, I settled in for the night, and had settled into that wonderful, dreamy, almost dozing place ....



WHEN A FREAKING MOUSE RAN OVER MY FACE!



How do I know it was a mouse? The lights were on and as my body flew about three feet in air, tossing the little guy onto the floor - he sauntered over to the stairs and was clearly a mouse.

Sure, sure, but you didn't have glasses on, maybe you are just being hysterical and it was just a bug that brushed up against your face ... hmmmm? My subconscious desperately trying to talk me down ...

I was WIDE AWAKE so I got up and surfed for the rest of the night. And, annoyingly, my new little buddy decided to hang about in the living room and scamper about while I was sitting on the couch typing on my computer. Bless him, his favorite thing to do was sit out in the middle of the room looking all cute and all, then suddenly run BETWEEN MY FEET and under the couch I was sitting on!

So - which sounds like more fun?

1) Having a mouse run across your face? Once?

2) Having a mouse charge you and run between your feet multiple times?

I went with number 2 ...


When I went in the Office the next day to tell them that we had an unexpected guest(s), they told me that they would have Hal come over and take care of it. I never saw any evidence that Hal did anything, but to be fair, I didn't see my little buddy again (although for some odd reason - I had a really tough time sleeping ... got way too little).

When, the next night we lost power and I called the front desk to see if the entire compound had lost power, they told me no, they had power. I sarcastically said that maybe the mouse that ran across my face the night before chewed through the wires - the lady decided that would be a good time to yell at me that I shouldn't leave the doors to the cabins open ... AS IF she knew somehow that we just left it ajar willy nilly with a "Critters Welcome" sign posted out front ...

That and the fact that we hit a time that they were flushing their system out or some such nonsense and told us we could not use any tap water - not even to rinse our toothbrush since the chlorine they were flushing it with was really strong - so we missed out on all that ice cold Idaho water we were looking forward to ...

I would not recommend the place to anyone in the near future. Maybe when my mind starts to go and things aren't so vivid, maybe then, but - right now - you couldn't PAY ME to go back!

Thursday Afternoon ...

You might think that would be yesterday afternoon, but you would be wrong! THAT is how far behind I am ...


But before that - WE ARE HOME!!!

On the drive to the airport:

Gary: "We need to get T-Shirts that say: "I Survived Back to Back Family Reunions" - what do you think?"

Lori: "Well, TECHNICALLY, I think you would have to have ATTENDED most of the functions to be a contender in that competition, so I will have to recuse myself."

Gary: "Oh, well, yeah - there is that."

Lori: "But we could get you one! You kicked butt at surviving the reunion, a very sick wife and all of the other things that popped up!"

Gary: "Hmmmm, we should look into it."

Lori: "For just you ..."

Gary: "For just me ..."

So - as I go through they days - you might notice that I was getting sicker and sicker and having to participate less and less - especially in the evenings.

But - WE ARE HOME!

Arrived Wednesday night, I went to bed and decided to stay there for all of Thursday to see if I would start feeling human again. I also have a newsletter that takes a huge amount of time (and brain function, and creativity - which don't seem to be around right now ...). It is due Sunday and knew I needed to be out of bed on Friday and Saturday if I had any hopes at all of making something halfway decent.

So - what am I doing?


Yes.



Blogging.



I can't come up with a single idea for the header, so I am letting my subconscious work it out while I play with photos ...




IT COULD HAPPEN!




I am also busily charging all my poor little overworked camera batteries:

Which might just make it look like I had my act together. Maybe? Yes?

Also there is this sitting in the entry:

Gary's luggage!

Oh, my goodness! Gary has not unpacked? I have at least rummaged around in my electronics bag to pull out my cameras (let's not get into the other two bags and a backpack that have not been touched ... m'kay?).

Well, it might look that way, but poor, poor guy - he has UNPACKED and PACKED AGAIN and is headed to Istanbul, Turkey even as I type.

I could not do it. I feel very sorry for him. I need a nap just writing about his dilemma - which I am sure I will take as soon as I finish this post - newsletter be damned...

*******************

So ...

Thursday Afternoon - where we left off a few posts ago - you remember, the fields of flowers, the mystery cafe I can't remember ... that Thursday.

We get back in the car and I am doing my usual while Gary is driving - taking random shots of ... whatever out the window:

When all of a sudden, my last photo (actually the one right above here) didn't seem so pretty anymore and I started snapping photos of the majestic Tetons (this is the first photo after the one above):

And kept snapping:
And kept snapping:

FINALLY, Gary decided that we would stop at a pull out and take some photos that weren't up to chance from a moving vehicle.

It was a lovely lookout:

My attempt to shoot the Tetons through the trees, but all I could find was a hole big enough for the highest peak (I am sure it has a name, but I do not know it):

Then we took a detour my dad had suggested we take. We debated just doing it another day, but after going through all we did, we would have NEVER come back - so happy we took the 'Mesa Falls Scenic Byway'.

We hit the 'Lower Falls' first and there were wildflowers EVERYWHERE (as there had been on our drive for quite some time, but it is a wee bit harder to capture wildflowers by the side of the road at 70MPH than it is to capture a mountain in the distance). So I had a lot of photo taking to do, and Gary had to wait on me. I don't recall if we get dandelions in Texas? If we do, it never struck me as beautiful - but this guy did:

TONS of yellow flowers everywhere:

And my favorite little cuties, but when I posted these on facebook, a lady said it was the hated ragweed that so many people are allergic to its pollen. Don't know if it is really the vile ragweed that everyone hates, but THEY ARE SO CUTE:

The Mesa Lower Falls:

Even the grass with the sun hitting it looked lovely that day!

AND the leaves:

Back in the car and headed to the upper falls.

Got there and, sure enough, there were flowers everywhere. And, sure enough, Gary had to wait on me again.

The yellow beauties that were everywhere:

Not much Indian Paintbrush - this one was all by its lonesome ... and come to think about it, I can't remember seeing any more:

This trip, I became enamoured with the ordinary pine tree and its cones:

Pretty lone, pink flower:
And the Mesa Upper Falls:

I was turned right to take a photo of the falls, this is just me rotating to the left:

More (but different) yellow flowers:

BEAUTIFUL walk back up to the lodge that was located at the Upper Falls sight ... not that huffing back up was making me very happy:

The lodge - turned into a visitors center if I remember right:

And lookie, lookie what I found! THE MOST PERFECT FLOWER EVER:

A close contender for the perfect flower title:
Funky white 'exploding' flower:
And, finally - a beautiful field of the yellow flowers:

The byway didn't take all that long and would have been rather short had I not felt the need to photograph every wildflower in the area!

Got to our cabin and checked in. It was lovely ... and, well ... not. A weird place. I will post photos and 'The Creepiest Moment In My Life Since I Can Remember' - something to look forward to!

*************************

Oh! And I am making an exception (for Kristie) to my linear posts of the trip and jumping right to what Gary and I now call 'The Camera Killers' - what I was jumping out of the car to photograph in Yellowstone when I dropped my camera:

Sure, they are cute and all, but .... DANG!

Mourning the Loss ...

Mourning the loss ....



of what?



My youth?


My health?


My time on vacation with my husband?


My having more photos than I know what to do with?


My ... family?



Well, if you guessed any of these, you would be right, but not completely right.

Today, as we rounded a bend and saw what had become a fairly rare, but predictable sight: a bunch of cars and a bunch more people standing out of their cars all with cameras pointed at the exact same spot.

It does not take a genius, even the first time you encounter such a well mannered mob, to know that there was something they were taking a photo of! So as we rounded the bend and saw the group and no where to park, Gary said he would drop me off in the middle of the road, find a turn around spot and come back. I was hurrying and hadn't made sure that I was 'put together' right, grabbed my big camera, with my little camera in my pants pocket and dashed out the door ...

... to hear a sad, sad sounding 'THUNK'. I looked down, saw my little camera was not quite in my pocket as I had thought it was and had jumped to freedom. And if he was going for suicide, he botched the job something good! Still works, but every now and again it looses it's focus and jumps to a 'panicky page with the information of doom' on it (but, I mean, WHO DOESN'T? Every now and then?), I now have a little 3-step routine to actually get it to start moving when I want to zoom in or zoom out, but the kicker - the one that will make me pull the plug on my best-buddy-that-is-not-all-that-injured is that some pieces of crap were dislodged and seem to be congregating in the lower left hand corner of my lens. Looks GREAT in all my photos.

With the cleaning of a camera (this is inside the lens and not something I can get at - it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer) being expensive and the price of the camera being relatively cheap, it makes more sense to go with a new one since this one is now, apparently lazy and depressed along with learning the giant-smudge-on-every-photo trick.

I took the time to Google "Canon Powershot" and see what is out there now - assuming that my camera would have by now been usurped by the latest and greatest. Then things started going downhill ... fast. I went to the Canon site and they did, indeed, have a new Powershot with a larger number than mine - mine being an SX210 and it being an SX230 - thus I am assuming newer. But mine had 14.1 megapixels and this one has 11.something. Dudes! YOU NEVER GO DOWN ON THE SIZE OF MEMORY WHEN MAKING A LATEST-AND-GREATEST-...ANYTHING!

Was not impressed. AND I did not see my camera, thus assuming that they no longer make it. This set me all a flutter and with chills running up and down my spine, I quickly got on to Amazon and searched for it. This model comes in 3 colors. Black, Purple (like the color of a car that is flashy) and ...


wait for it ...



wait for it ....



GOLD!


Yes, you can bling up your camera - maybe I could even bedazzle it!

So - black it is and it is $130.00 more. Which made me THINK ABOUT owning a shiny GOLD camera, a very low spot in the day, indeed. I mean, WHO would take a person seriously as a photographer out there doing their business with a GOLD camera? We then realized that everything we were looking at was refurbished. Nah! If I wanted refurbished, I would refurbish my little buddy ... it feels as if I am loosing a family member. I told Gary that the new one would only feel like a step child.

When we looked again, at new, the price difference wasn't that pronounced, so with a sigh of relief, I ordered it in black and it will be here on Friday.

Why? You ask?

Why go for the same exact camera? If it was my DSLR, I would argue that I know where every button and dial are and can operate it in the dark and didn't want a new ginormous learning curve. But since this is a point-and-shoot which they 'dumb down' enormously to having, at most, four or five buttons or dials - with the rest still there, just as a menu option that you will NEVER learn, thus never use the more complicated and powerful features of a point-and-shoot. Hmmmm - I have gone off course somehow ...


Oh, yeah - the WHY!

Especially since I was so ANGRY with it when I got it since they TOOK AWAY MY SUNSET option and added stupid stuff like 'Fisheye' and 'Miniature' - idiots ... But! It kept a function that I have learned to LOVE since I now, I don't always have it set on Sunset. It is now (most) always set on 'Foliage' which you are supposed to use around ... well ... foliage! It is supposed to bring out the greens and make them more vivid, but I have noticed that it brings out the blues also.

For example:


Here is a shot of a deer in a lovely meadow of flowers as shot - NO TOUCH UPS AT ALL with my Canon DSLR giant, very, very expensive camera:

And here is the shot of the same deer and same meadow (yes, yes, I do actually take photos of the same spot with two different cameras since they turn out so different). Again NO TOUCH UPS - JUST STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA:

Now, THAT, is why I don't go out and shop for another camera. I LIKE this! I LOVE this! I is such a nice feature that Canon got 'right'. So, someday, I will probably drop my new one and have to go find another and might jump ship - but for now, I just can't wean myself off the Canon Powershot's!


And just because I looked down while walking into a grocery store today and fell in LOVE with these little guys and their shadows ... I am sharing it tonight also:

Well, off to the airport WAAAAAY early tomorrow morning.

Us: In Idaho - near Yellowstone, which is in Wyoming ... the top of Wyoming.

Our Airline Tickets: Leaving out of Salt Lake City, Utah - below (OK, and to the side) of Wyoming - therefore we need to drive Wyoming from top to bottom, but we just so happen to be doing it in Idaho and Utah.


Some day, when I want to live again ... I will get my photos put together and post some gigantic posts. Or just dribble it out a day at a time - EITHER WAY the 'when I want to live again' is the important part of that sentence.


Night all ...

No, I am NOT Dead ...

Contrary to the facts that I ate a bug, then Gary cursed me by singing the: "Their was an old lady who swallowed a fly - I guess she'll die ..." song a million times, then you NEVER HEAR FROM ME AGAIN ... I am, indeed still among the living ...

It's, um, complicated, so I will go into details in another post.

LOTS, and LOTS of photos have been taken. I sorted some out that I really wanted to share in my "Thursday Post" but, among other things, I was apparently delusional since there were 45 freaking photos! And I was going to get the time to upload them, when?

So I broke this post down and it SHOULD be titled:

"Thursday Until Noon"

A half day of photos, and a very SLOW half day for photo taking ... and it becomes something I felt that I could handle.

Got up, left the hotel at a reasonable time and headed straight for a Wal-Mart for a GPS device. While there, we bought a cooler, drinks and all sorts of munchies which we are still snacking on!

Hit Brigham City and I was doing what I do while being a passenger in a car and bored - I roll down the window and snap photos, of course! Some turn out, some don't, but hey - it gives me something to do! While reviewing my photos that evening which is a bizarre ritual I have - I download all my photos for the day to a folder marked that day, delete the photos off of the camera(s) cards so they are fresh and clean to start a new day in the morning, go through all my photos - deleting the blurry, bad and just plain ugly ones and turn the photos that need to be rotated. The last step before I can go to sleep is to back the folder up to my external hard drive.

So ... anyway as I was reviewing my photos (very late that night) I came across this one and noticed the big, bright, white building on the right'ish side of the photo and was confused - Brigham City being a city we once lived in.

Lori: "Gary, does Brigham City have a temple now?"

Gary: "No, I don't think so ..."

Lori: "Well, then, they have upgraded the tabernacle in a VERY BIG way ... come look at this photo."

Gary: "Oh, I think Brigham City has a temple now!"

Slipped on by us without us even noticing. I had no idea - or I am wrong ... but I am not - I blew the photo up very large - there is nothing as distinctive as an LDS Temple ...

Stopped at the PRETTIEST rest stop in Idaho that you will ever see!

Flowers abound:

And walking back to the car I turned my head and spotted this quaint little scene (don't know where the bridges take you ...):

I have to admit, this next series of photos COULD be from after we had lunch, thus violating the fake post title, but I liked them and have PLENTY for a "Thursday After Noon" post so I threw them in.

We were toodling along, turned the corner after admiring field, and field, of the prettiest green you ever did see, when suddenly it wasn't all green anymore! Got out of the car and took a ton of photos. Don't know what the yellow is in the background - never walked out to see.

Here is my attempt at 'artsy' (sad, isn't it?):

And here is a series with my camera taking in the whole scene:
Twist the lens and move the shot in closer:
And a little closer:

And, finally, the pretty little guys that make up the first stripe in this beautiful scene! It just so happens to be photo number IMG_9998, which means that I took one more photo (probably of the EXACT same thing) which was photo number IMG_9999 and then one after that (probably STILL of little blue flowers) which was photo number IMG_0001 which means ... my blinking photos are out of order - not chronological for the day and it is AMAZING how much that annoys me!

As we were leaving we spied a little shack hiding down the hill a bit:

We stopped in the CUTEST little town called St. Anthony for lunch. We had gone there previously with Gary's sister and our brother in law (of the javelin throwing fame) who live in Rexburg and decided to go with a sure thing, so got the name from Cherri and off we headed.

This is the cutest little drug store, sitting on main street ... ADORABLE:

And here is the interior of this quaint little cafe. Scary thing? I don't remember going there before. Everyone INSISTS I went with, and I thought when I got there it would jog my memory, but ... nope! I have somehow wiped the memory completely off the hard drive in my head ... and the food it good! WHY CAN'T I REMEMBER BEING HERE BEFORE?

Right next to the cafe is a lot that has the beautiful and the ugly all jutted up against one another. This shack has seen better days, and while I LOVE to photograph old buildings, I am sure it is an eyesore being right next to Chiz's Cafe:

And on that lot, just to the right of the shack is the most beautiful, most green, most perfect leafed bush growing ... very large. I loved the color, how it just reached the bottom of the concrete ... what? ... mini retaining wall? And how it paints the sidewalk with its shadow:

So there you have it! Our day Thursday up until we ate, which if we are getting nit-picky, wasn't right at noon - it was one-something.

I have SO MANY PHOTOS! It will literally take days to go through them all, process them and get them on my blog - but by golly, I am GOING TO MAKE YOU LOOK AT THEM!




Later ...