Weekly Update

Welcome to my weekly update for July 10, 2022! My husband and I spent last weekend in Helena, the state capital of Montana. We took a boat tour of the "Gates of the Mountains," a small canyon on the Missouri River that was named by Merriwether Lewis. We didn't intend to follow so heavily in Lewis & Clark's footsteps while we were in Montana; they just passed through all the places that attract us! The Gates were ruggedly beautiful. My brother-in-law and his wife are ceramic artists and they each completed a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena back in the late '90s. We went by the foundation and strolled around the grounds. It was cool to walk around the old industrial brickyard and find ceramic art tucked away in so many nooks and crannies. It was rainy on Sunday morning so we visited the state capitol building. The weather dried up in time for our planned architectural history walking tour of the downtown area, which was a lot of fun. The inside of the Cathedral of St. Helena surprised us. It's very ornate for a cathedral in such a small city! Afterwards, we decided to hike to the summit of Mount Helena on the 1906 trail. It was breathtaking up there! 360 degree views overlooking everything. We checked the radar before we started hiking and it looked clear for the foreseeable future. But while we were on the summit, we saw a pretty nasty storm in the distance. We hurried back to the car. Probably 30 minutes after we got back to our hotel, the heavens opened. Rain and small hail poured down while the wind blew everything around. It was crazy to watch! When the storm passed, we drove out to find dinner. Gravel had washed…

Welcome to my weekly update for July 3, 2022! Happy Independence Day to my fellow Americans! The current political situation makes this one feel...Bittersweet? Ironic? Fraught? but I hope you still spend time safely celebrating with your loved ones. We've had a busy week. I reported in my last update that the southern loop of Yellowstone National Park was reopening on June 22. I didn't mention that my husband's cousin and his wife had made plans at the end of April to fly up on June 23 and meet us inside the park to spend a long weekend exploring together. You see why I was so disappointed when the park was closed. But thanks to everyone's hard work, we were able to have our getaway reunion! We say they graciously adopted us and saved our sanity during California's covid shutdowns around the holidays in 2020; it really meant a lot to spend time with them again. We saw Old Faithful, the Grand Prismatic Spring, more geothermal features than I can name, Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and lots of waterfalls and wildlife. And as I write this on July 1, the north loop is scheduled to reopen on July 2! The north and northeast entrances remain closed but Yellowstone employees and volunteers really are miracle workers. Their next goals are reopening those entrances so the nearby towns can get the tourist dollars they rely on. We drove back to Billings on Sunday evening and on Monday evening my aunt and uncle arrived to spend a few days with us. They love to travel but this was their first visit to Montana. My aunt is a history nut so she was thrilled to see Pompey's Pillar and the Little Bighorn Battlefield (link to my post about both sites).…

Welcome to my weekly update for June 26, 2022! The employees and volunteers at Yellowstone National Park seem to be in the business of performing miracles. If you stopped by last week or if you've paid much attention to the news, you'll know that Yellowstone was completely closed due to devastating floods. I'm glad no one was hurt but I was feeling disappointed that we might not get to visit again while we're in Montana for the summer. I was also feeling bad for the local economies that rely so heavily on summer tourists. Well, park officials reopened the south loop of the park, accessible via the east, south, and west entrances, as of Wednesday, June 22! There are some restrictions in place about who can visit on which days (see details on the park website), but we are so grateful to everyone who has worked so hard to reopen this iconic place! Park officials have also announced that they believe they can reopen the north loop in less than two weeks! After seeing videos of all the destruction, I really will believe they're miracle workers if they can make that happen. My husband was on call at the hospital last weekend so I don't have a slideshow for this week. We have to stay within 30 minutes of the hospital when he's on call so that doesn't give us much opportunity for exploring. Check back next week! Posted: One Word Reviews of the Last Ten Books I Read Read: I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.  Links for all three books go to my reviews on GoodReads Books Lovers by Emily Henry 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Artificial Condition…

Welcome to my weekly update for June 19, 2022! Well. I assume all of you have seen the catastrophic flooding in Yellowstone National Park and the communities just north of it. Yellowstone is the biggest reason we chose to spend the summer in Montana with my husband's job. As I write this on Thursday, park officials aren't sure when or if any sections of the park will reopen this summer. It's disappointing, but we're just glad that the flooding here in Billings was at manageable levels. My thoughts are with the residents of Gardiner, where the flooding was devastating, and the small business owners in the surrounding communities who rely heavily on tourism dollars. I'm also glad that no injuries have been reported thus far. We spent last weekend in Bozeman, MT. It was a nice little town. On Saturday, we did an easy hike to Palisade Falls and then took a longer hike up to the "College M" on the hillside above town. The rain started Saturday afternoon (as we were hiking, of course) so we spent Sunday morning at the Museum of the Rockies. Montana has a lot of fossils so we really had a good time in the museum's dinosaur hall. When we got back home, looking askance at the high rivers in the distance along the way, we had to re-watch the original Jurassic Park for the umpteenth time. It's always a fun movie! Slideshow: Wildflowers and stormy skies on the "College M" trailLooking over Bozeman from the "College M." It kind of looks like there's a lake on the right, but there isn't; that's just the rain falling on the town.Palisade Falls. We've seen a lot of waterfalls in our hikes but I don't think we've ever seen one flowing over basalt rock. A T.…

Welcome to my weekly update for June 12, 2022! Two weeks in a row--I'm on a roll! Last week, our adventures took a historical turn. We visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, which you might know better as the site of Custer's Last Stand. I thought the park service did a great job of honoring the dead from both sides while acknowledging that the Native Americans in the battle were fighting to preserve their way of life against white settler encroachment and broken treaties. I liked that the Crow nation has a presence in the visitor's center and that the Crow people offer narrated bus tours of the battlefield. We missed the bus tour (a ranger talk ran long) but I hope to visit again in a couple of weeks and catch it then. We also went to Pompey's Pillar, a sandstone outcropping famous because William Clark, of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, carved his name into the rock on his way back home in 1806. It was pretty cool to see his signature preserved in the rock, even if it is behind glass for protection now (sandstone erodes pretty easily). Slideshow: This stone marks the location where Lieutenant George Custer died in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. His body was removed and buried at West Point Cemetery in New York.The picture is probably too small to read. It says "Mato Heton / Bear with Horns / A Minnikojou Lakota Warrior Fell Here on June 25, 1876 While Defending the Lakota Way of Life" There aren't as many markers for Native Americans as there should be simply because the nearby villagers immediately removed their bodies and took care of them in accordance with their own customs. Historians simply aren't sure who died and where. They've done the best…

Welcome to my weekly update for June 5, 2022! Well, I thought I was getting back into the swing of blogging a couple of weeks ago but I was obviously wrong. Maybe this will be my week! We visited Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area and were surprised by how beautiful it is! Seeveral wild horses and one bighorn sheep wandered into our path. We drove down to Cody, Wyoming for Memorial Day weekend to visit Yellowstone National Park. Saturday was wet and cold in the park but we still loved seeing this iconic place for the first time! We have plans to go again later in June, so we weren't in a hurry to see everything. Late in the afternoon, we noticed a few snowflakes mixing in with the rain. We went inside a visitor center and 30 minutes later the snow was pouring down! We decided to head out shortly after that and it's a good thing we did; the roads were getting slushy. The road from the entrance we were using closed an hour after we exited the park. I think we would have been begging for an expensive hotel room inside the park if we had dawdled much longer! Our entrance was closed again all of Sunday morning so we went to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, which is a pretty cool complex. There are five museums inside the center and we made our way through four of them. We wouldn't have been interested in the Cody Firearms Museum at any time, but especially not in the wake of all the recent mass shootings. Are we ever going to change or are we going to keep sacrificing our children to guns? I'm afraid I know the answer. We did enjoy the Plains Indian Museum, Draper…

Welcome to my weekly update for May 22, 2022! Whew! It's been a busy six weeks. Since my last update on April 3, we had some repair work done on our RV (we stay in it while my husband is working at different hospitals around the country). We had to move into an Extended Stay hotel for a couple of weeks during that time. Then we wrapped up my husband's work assignment in Charleston, SC and went home to Asheville, NC for about a week. After that, we hit the road in our RV and drove almost 2000 miles (about 3000 km) to our summer location--Billings, Montana! We've been trying to get to Montana or Wyoming for the summer since we started traveling with my husband's job in 2019. We love national parks and we've never visited Yellowstone or any of the other gorgeous parks in this area. Billings isn't necessarily the best basecamp for any of them, but that's what road trips are for, right? We're certainly a lot closer than we've ever been before! Slideshow: I don't even know where to start with my pictures. We've covered a lot of ground since my last update! Botany Bay near Edisto Beach in South Carolina. Driftwood beaches are rare (in my experience) in the southeast so this was a sight we haven't seen since leaving the Pacific Northwest in 2020! Looking Glass Falls in North Carolina. This beautiful waterfall is beside a busy road that leads to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway runs through Asheville but it's been a while since we drove on it. It was nice to get up there while we were home. I took plenty of pictures out the RV windows while we were driving to Billings. This red farm house and the field of…

Welcome to my weekly update for April 3, 2022! We had a nice visit with my husband's parents last weekend and then my sister came down to visit this weekend. As I write this on Friday afternoon, she's working from our RV so we haven't gone out to explore yet. I have some ideas for things to do but the Cooper River Bridge Run is tomorrow, so we'll probably mostly try to avoid the crowds. Posted: Nothing. I love having so many visitors but I'm really off my blogging game. Read: I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.  Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach  The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones Currently Reading: When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, read by Frankie Corzo Toward a Better Life: America's New Immigrants in Their Own Words—From Ellis Island to the Present by Peter Morton Coan The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry, edited by Jay Parini Up Next: We have a lot of stuff to juggle over the next five weeks so my reading and blogging is going to get even more sporadic. I'll do what I can though. I miss checking in with all of you! What did your week look like? Deb Nance at Readerbuzz hosts The Sunday Salon and Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer hosts Sunday Post. Kathryn at Book Date hosts It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Welcome to my weekly update for March 27, 2022! I didn't think I would read much this week since I was getting ready for my in-laws to visit but all that cleaning left me plenty of time to rip through audiobooks. Add in a couple of books that I was almost finished with last week, an unfinished novel, and a play, and I had a surprisingly impressive reading week. My in-laws arrived Thursday evening and they're leaving early Monday morning. They've never been to Charleston before so we've kept them busy with a food tour, a harbor cruise, and a horse-drawn carriage ride. I haven't taken many pictures since my husband and I have seen a lot of this before, but I do have some pictures from our visit to Angel Oak. It's a huge live oak tree that's estimated to be about 400 years old. It shades about 17,200 square feet (1,600 m2). Slideshow: 1-3: Angel Oak4: Grits from Another Broken Egg Cafe Posted: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë--Book Review Ten Books with an Adjective in the Title Read: I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.  Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune 🌟🌟🌟🌟 The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré, read by Adjoa Andoh 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Sanditon by Jane Austen 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey, read by Romy Nordlinger 🌟🌟🌟🌟 The River of Silver (Daevabad #3.5) by S. A. Chakraborty, read by Soneela Nankani 🌟🌟🌟🌟 A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Currently Reading: Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach  The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, created by Nikole Hannah-Jones The Columbia Anthology of American…

Welcome to my weekly update for March 20, 2022! We decided to spend last weekend in Columbia, SC. It's the capital of the state, but--most appealing to me--it's also next door to Congaree National Park. We've visited national parks in Alaska and Hawaii but we've never visited this park, located only about three hours away from our home base in Asheville, NC. It wasn't my favorite park but it was still a nice place to hike. I'm glad we went in March; I can't imagine the heat and mosquitoes in this swampy area in the summer! Columbia is legendary in the Carolinas for its intense heat and humidity. We also went to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, the State House grounds, and Sesquicentennial State Park while we were in the area. Slideshow: Congaree National Park. I think I took this picture at Wise Lake.The mosquito meter at the Congaree visitor center. I don't know if they actually change the meter with the weather, but it gives a taste of what this hot, wet, humid area can be like.The South Carolina State House Posted: Nothing posted this week but I'm getting back on track in the upcoming week. Read: I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.  Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman 🌟🌟🌟🌟 The Princess Beard (The Tales of Pell #3) by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne, read by Luke Daniels 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Brilliant Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the World by Ian Wright 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction by Grady Hendrix 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Currently Reading: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune The Girl with…