Salmon Glacier With Wade & Vlad

This is my short slide show made from screen shots taken during the time I was viewing his video. All images are by WMN.

The new video he created of his experience may be seen here.  Beautiful and grand experience.
Click on link below to view.
Actual Video

Stuart

A very small bit of background information first. My nephew, a budding student pilot, has been saving and preparing to go on a flight with his friend, an accomplished pilot in his private plane. It has been planned for a long time and this is the week to fly from NJ across the states commercially to Washington and meet his friend to then fly into Canada and then onward to ALASKA!

He has his camera and his action GoPro and will be making movies as the week goes on.  He has posted many still photos and this is the first video with both of their voices recorded. To me it is a daring, scary, exciting, amazing and wonderful adventure.  Though the video seems to be long, the landing at the end had me on pins and needles.

Enjoy the ride! If you can view on computer via YouTube it is even more spectacular!

On The Road With Missy

On the Road With Missy

My daughter called and wanted to take me to an antique shop and tea house in the general area of countryside nearby. We drove the secondary road and she suddenly saw a garage sale that she wanted to check. I was going to stay in the car and wait because it looked to me that the sale items were mostly linens and clothes. I looked around and spotted the winter preparations that were being accomplished on the side property. The woodpile had both stacked and scattered logs that had been cut and split. The long lumber awaited at the side. The old Farmall tractor was hitched to a wagon to transport the cut logs to the splitter. Someone has been very busy. She bought a new set of bed linens for $1.00 and a copper pot for $2.00. Well, she didn’t actually pay for it. The woman at the table didn’t even have change for a 10 dollar bill. Another lady who was nearby overheard and paid for Missy’s things. She said, “There! I’ve done my good deed for the day and now I don’t have to be nice to anyone for the rest of the day.”  That was our first laugh in our venture.

Further on down the road I spotted an old schoolhouse sitting high on a raised bank. The landscaped lawn was just too steep for me to climb, but it is one of the Endless Mountains Heritage architectural treasures. Further down the road I yelled, “Stop!” I saw an old car in the woods of the lofty bank to our left. It looked to be a Ford, perhaps a 1940 model like my first car. I couldn’t climb the high rise bank and there was no obvious way to get closer to see the front grill and headlights but I snapped my pictures anyway. What a huge tree there was behind and guarding it.

Further on down the road we found a nice pull off so I could take pictures of the wild blue Hickory, the yellow Birdsfoot Trefoil and the Queen Ann’s Lace flowers all at once as they were getting along so nicely. Chicory, is a perennial shrub whose root is often dried and ground with coffee. Queen's Anne Lace seems to be chicory's main cohort. Birdsfoot Trefoil aka Birdfoot Deervetch is used along roadsides to control wind and water erosion. 

We finally reached our destination and the sign in the door told that it was closed and the proprietors were on vacation until August 16. Sooooo, I took pictures of the old gasoline pumps that were lined up in front of the Old Birchardville Store and Tearoom. The pump didn’t tell me how much a gallon of gas cost when it was retired, or how many were pumped, but it did say that the cost was 18¢. We wandered through the welcome trellis to the garden and looked at the many varieties of flowers that were growing back there. 

I wanted to capture the steeple and bell of the 1812 church across the road. Wow! It hit me to realize that it was over 200 years old! if we hadn’t been getting a bit weak from hunger, I might have tried to wander through the graveyard and read some of the headstones. Well, we plan to come again and that will be another opportunity. 

As we went a little further down the road to find a turnaround, we spotted the produce stand. The pictures speak for themselves. Now I had some singles and change so we followed directions and shared a box of the little tomatoes. 

Click on image to view larger

Lunch was enjoyed at a place called “Ernies” and we sat at an old-style metal-top table with drop down sides, ate on Fiesta ware, and made use of the vintage salt and pepper and depression glass ware. Sadly, I didn’t bring the camera into the establishment because I discovered that the “powder room” was entirely hand painted, all ceilings, walls and doors, with a very nice garden scene showing trees and flowers. Next time. I’ll be back!

It was a wonderful expedition and we were both tired and ready for a nap when we returned home. Fun, escape, companionship, and LOVE! We definitely plan to be on the road together again.

Treacherous Travel

We have been making the same trip back and forth from PA to SC for 15 years in our pickup truck. For the 10 years before we retired, we traveled there in a motorhome once a year. We now come and go three times each year, adding up to 45 truck trips to date. One way is 764 miles, a total of 22,920 miles and the Mister drives it all. I’m the navigator, of course. Yesterday’s travel caused us to be on our game every minute - more so than ever. Usually we make it in 121/2 hours to 13 hours. This one took 141/2 hours, but the end result is that we are home in PA and safe. 

We got through SC and NC pretty well. We hit several rain showers and then snow in VA. Heavy, wet, slushy snow.  It was a good thing that the truck still had its winter heavy duty storm blades in place instead of the lightweight summer wiper blades. Of course the window washing fluid was filled up before we left so there was plenty of it and we sure lowered the level throughout the journey. After we hit PA  at 3pm, we started seeing cars going off of the roads into the deep gullies of the grassy medians that are all along Rt. 81. There are concrete divider barriers in several areas. At 4pm it was awful! When 18 wheelers going south passed us going north, if the concrete dividers were there, the slush was thrown over them onto our windshield with ominous messy and blinding splats! The ice was evident on all of the trees, causing them to droop heavily and the wind was coming on strong at us broadside and then changing to head winds. It was rough going.

We hit a rest area at 5pm and the temperature was 31° just before exit 80. At mile marker #112, it had dropped to 29° and we saw the first catastrophic accident, a car upside down in the median. None of the following accidents were witnessed by us but all had happened within just a few minutes of our passing. Now I’ll detail the rest. (mm=mile marker)

mm116- one totally smashed car in median, mm122- one car upside down in ditch, and everyone else crawling along the deep slushy mountainous highway at 20 mph near mm140. mm173- one car deep in median gulley, AND at mm175- another car was in deep median gulley. 

At mm176- 6:25pm- our truck was put into 4 wheel drive. At mm178- a car was in the ditch, and then at mm188- two cars crashed in the left lane (ours at the time) right into the concrete divider! At mm192- a car was in the deep median gulley and at mm193- one car was crashed into the guide rail on the right side of the highway. At mm214- in the southbound lane there were three cars in the median gulley with two of them upside down. At mm216- a car was in the median. FINALLY our exit 223 appeared through the snow and very foggy surroundings. It had not been salted, sanded or plowed and we drove down and around the curve with great caution, another car on our tail. On the highway, however, PennDOT was out everywhere, plowing, sanding, and salting. 

The arrival home was wonderful, even though the roads weren’t plowed. It was snowing and 29°. The cabin was warm and power was on and the water pipes didn’t freeze. Whew!

We know that at least 14 cars didn’t make it home last night and wonder if their occupants did. 

This morning our roads were plowed. Another area in our county had snow ten inches deep!