Days 8, 9, and 10: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

First, the good. My cousin Beverly arrived from Tucson! Bev laughs more easily and more fully than anyone I’ve known. She loves God passionately and sees Him in everything. She’s a bad ass who faces the most frightening things with courage and resolve.

Sometimes she wears pants while doing these things. At other times, she wears long johns, so it’s not like she’s naked but I don’t know how she hasn’t frozen to death.

Next, the bad. My inability to back up the trailer has created two issues today.

Bev and I drove down some road in Glacier National Park only to find it was closed and there was no place to do a u-turn. I know you all think I used this opportunity to learn backing skills. Nope.

We disconnected the trailer, spun it around by hand (with kind help from one of the Japanese refugees), reconnected the trailer, and got back on the road. Take that, backing gods!

The helpful tourist is on the right. The girls are traveling wth him. The ranger was trying to find nice ways to say, “Stop being stupid.”

But those backing gods got their revenge. We drove on the east side of Glacier, the side that got pummeled by the blizzard, and saw a husky lying on the side of the road. We circled back to see if she needed help (she was fine) and had to do another u-turn. No bueno.

I slid off the road into a snow bank. The trailer, which was now at about a 45 degree angle to my stuck car, was blocking the road.

And here’s why my premise that Montanans are super kind proves true. A nice guy immediately stopped to haul us out. We again disconnected Babel, spun her around, and reconnected, this time under the watchful eye of a very nice local sheriff. He didn’t give me a ticket, which is amazing, but did have questions about why the trailer’s license plate was in the glove compartment.

I’m so embarrassed all the way around. There’s a great picture of this that I’ll share with you all when Bev gets back from taking photos and dodging bears.

Which brings us to the ugly. There’s a blizzard, or there was. We missed the worst of it by staying in the west side of the park but today we drove into the storm’s aftermath. Here’s the kind of stuff we saw.

But we saw incredible stuff, too.

Now, if you’ve read this far, a reward. Picture this. We drove into the only open campground on the east side of Glacier but have no way to dig out the snow so we can park. So we’re instead camping illegally on the side of a park road, praying a ranger won’t kick us out, and pretending the forecast really didn’t say a low of 3 degrees tonight. Thank God for my little T@b and it’s reliable furnace! I plan to drink some bourbon and go to bed around 8 in hopes this day will be behind me more quickly.

One more reward: this bookshelf in Walmart. Zoom away.