Now that
Gilbert and I are truly homeless and he finished his teaching term in April, it
was time to hit the road. We began our
journey with a brief stop in Kelowna to set the building of our house plans in
motion. Then it was on to Calgary for a
few days to visit with Dusty and Jay. I
think the timing was perfect – Calgary is booming so we had an opportunity to
check out numerous show homes for decorating ideas. The kids were also exvellent hosts – treating us to
dinner and a Calgary Roughneck Lacrosse game.
It was a quarter final game in the season playoff which they won – Yea!
(but lost in the semi-finals the following week – Boo Hoo!).
From there,
it was on to West Glacier, Montana for peace and quiet (and unfortunately, work
for Gilbert) at Jim and Sandy’s place.
My brother and his wife just bought a lovely A-Frame house located outside
the National Park so the setting is conducive to some real R&R. Driving there from Calgary should be a short
5 hour jaunt unless you experience winter white-out conditions, which we
did. I had a fleeting moment where I
thought we should just turn around and head back to Calgary but Gilbert’s
expert driving saw us to our destination safe and sound.
We spent a
week in West Glacier, waking up to cold and snow for 2 days but the weather
gradually improved daily. I mentioned
Gilbert working – he will be lecturing in India for 2 weeks so had to put his
nose to the grindstone in preparation. Fortunately,
one cannot work 24/7 so we did have a chance to enjoy a few activities –riding
bicycles to nearby Lake Macdonald, jostling along a dirt, washboard road to try
out some goodies at Polebridge, a remote summer mountain outpost, and
accompanying Gilbert while he played two 9-hole rounds of golf – right out the
back door, no less.
Of course,
delightful events happen when you least expect them. We met Gail, a nearby neighbor and local
writer and discovered that she had written the cookbook I had given to Sandy as
a housewarming gift. She is originally
from Boston and settled in West Glacier in the 1970’s with her husband when
they were one of only 3 houses in the area.
She is a wealth of information and interesting stories of the area as is
their next door neighbor. Teri.
Another
‘neighbor’ we discovered was in the adjacent empty lot. We happened, by chance to come across a bird
that appeared to have a problem with its wing and could not fly. I followed it for a bit and then left it
alone as I didn’t want to distress it.
Walking back towards the house I stumbled across a camouflaged nest in
the ground with 4 perfect eggs. Putting
2 and 2 together, it was the mother bird doing her ‘broken wing dance’ to lure
me away from the her nest. It was
effective although we did come back another time to take pictures. We were not lucky enough to to see the babies
hatch but we will visit the area again and I’m sure experience more wonders of
nature.
Our week in Glacier came to an end too quickly but we will pick up the stories from India.
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