Vacation Preparation

If you don't hear from me next week, it is because we have gone on vacation to Montana. Please remember if you are thinking of coming to rob my house, there is nothing good here.  The only thing of any real value is my wedding ring, and I will be wearing that.  If you want the old non-HD televisions, well . . . I feel sorry for you.

So anyway, we are going to Great Falls to see if the great falls are really that great or just great to two guys and a native woman in a canoe.  When I say this out loud I've noticed that some people laugh a genuine laugh and some people laugh a sort of hysterical "What is she babbling about now?!" laugh.  I'm babbling about Lewis and Clark, of course.  Their big museum is in Great Falls, so we're going to that too.  Then we're going to Glacier National Park and some other pretty places in western Montana.

In preparation for our trip, I am reading "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose which is a biography of Lewis and Clark.  Okay, I'll be honest, I skipped the first part about their childhoods because I'm really only interested in their vacation to Montana.  

When I think about them starting out, I think about frontiersmen forging their adventuresome way across the country in name of exploration, which is the American way.  Truthfully, President Jefferson urgently needed them to find a waterway across the country to the West coast because -- now think of this -- nothing traveled faster than a horse or maybe a raft downriver. We cannot wrap our little 21st century brains around this.  Right?  They could not wrap their brains around the fact that something could move faster -- because even thought they had light years of information on science, geography, medicine, topography, navigation, etc., etc., etc. that exceeded even the learned Greeks, they did not move any faster than the brothers in togas.

In just a few more years time, messages would travel by telegraph and people would travel by railroad, but most people could not even imagine such a thing.  What do you think it is that is right around the corner that we can not imagine today?  Do you ever think back to a time when you got lost or stranded and think, "Why didn't I just call someone?"  Right! Because you didn't have a phone with you.

In other news, "Dad" called from the Alaskan cruise ship today.  They are on board and everyone is doing just fine.