My Dear Natalie,
Well, this is the mountains. So even if it’s really hot during the day, it still gets very chilly after the sun goes down.
Last night, Dad and I hauled the bedding from the Teardrop into our overheated Rolling Hut and spread the top sheet over our futon mattress, though we didn’t think we’d need it. A few hours later, the temperature dropped into the 40s and we spent the night shivering under the thin layer. Tonight we will be prepared.
This morning, after a quick instant-oatmeal breakfast, we backtracked 25 minutes into the national park to the Blue Lake trailhead and hiked 2.2 miles up through a cool pine forest to a beautiful, clear alpine lake. Dad and Charlie changed into their swimsuits, and Dad took a quick dip, but Charlie only waded in. The lake is fed by melting snow and glaciers, so it’s cold!
Of course, where there’s water, there are bugs. The flies and mosquitoes were starting to get to us, we didn’t linger. (You, with your sensitive skin, My Dear, would have been one giant, itchy welt by the end of this hike.) Before we left to to go back down the mountain, though, I followed a trail up to an overlook above the lake. I poked around until the path ended near a glacial moraine that tumbles down to the water’s edge.
Clare came after me and hounded me to hurry up. It was about noon by this time, and we had promised her that we’d stop for lunch at a charming-looking gourmet grocery just outside the park. She was hungry, and she was cranky. “If we get there and they’re not serving lunch anymore, it’ll be all your fault,” she whined. Fine. I couldn’t argue with that. So we turned around to retrace our steps back to the main trail, when we saw a magnificent mountain goat in our path, casually munching and stepping across the trail, clearly aware of us but not seeming too concerned. Clare’s mood instantly lifted.
When I say “mountain goat,” I really mean the offspring of a mountain goat and a polar bear. Or a minotaur and a unicorn. It was so huge that at first I thought it was a cow — a gorgeous, perfectly ripped cow with a glowing white coat. He crossed the path about 8 feet in front of us. Clare and I were flabbergasted.
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| The mythical beast |
Meanwhile, Dad was changing back into his shorts behind some trees, further down the trail, when he felt like he was being watched. He turned around to see another mountain goat (a real, actual mountain goat, with shaggy blonde hair covering its mountain goat-sized body) watching him.
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| Dad's stalker |
And later, as we were descending the mountain, Charlie was way ahead of us (of course), and encountered a bellicose mama mountain goat standing her ground in the middle of the path, along with her baby and a rather nonchalant and indifferent daddy goat.
We had planned to stop for lunch in the tiny town of Mazama, just outside the park, about a half-mile off the main highway. As best as we can tell, the town consists only of an improbably fancy market — a cross between a Whole Foods, a Williams-Sonoma and an art gallery. It’s stocked with all kinds of high-end glamping gear, like cast iron pans and enamelware pots and as artisan-woven table cloths. And there is a fine selection of gourmet packaged food, organic produce, fresh-baked goods, cheese, wine and beer. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but it was packed with shoppers, and diners, and folks just hanging out at tables with their computers. Where on earth did these people come from?
As we were driving from the parking lot at the trailhead toward Mazama, I was thinking ahead to the next leg of our trip. I’ve been looking forward to driving straight north crossing over into Canada tomorrow. It’ll take two days to drive from British Columbia into Alberta, where we’ll wind up at Waterton Lakes National Park, on the Canadian side of Glacier N.P. in Montana. I’ve been looking forward to staying at the Prince of Wales Hotel there for years. I wondered if it’s any cooler in Canada right now. I wondered what the drive will be like. I wondered if it will be mountainous, or relatively fla——
Wait a minute. My thoughts ground to a halt. Why, in all my days of thinking about this, had it just occurred to me today that we. don’t. Have. Our. PASSPORTS?
As I was unpacking and repacking before this trip, the idea that I should throw our passports into a bag briefly crossed my mind. But was so preoccupied with other packing that the thought never materialized on my to-do list(s). And I never gave it a second thought. Until today.
Dad says I’m losing my touch, and maybe I am. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I must have figured we’d just need to smile nicely, speak in complete sentences and, you know, wear a clean shirt to get into Canada. I thought it would be easier to cross the northern U.S. border than it would be to get a Tippecanoe County library card.
Over lunch, we found a snippet of cell signal and I googled “required documents for entry from the U.S. into Canada.” Dad and I would be fine with our driver’s licenses. But even as minors traveling with their parents, Charlie and Clare need proof of U.S. citizenship, too. We can’t get to the Prince of Wales hotel without their passports, or at least their birth certificates.
We considered four options:
1.) I call My Canadian Boyfriend, Justin Trudeau, and he smoothes this over.
2.) We park Charlie and Clare at a KOA on the U.S. side, and Dad and I spend two nights at the Prince of Wales Hotel alone.
4.) Instead of driving up into British Columbia tomorrow, we make our way toward Alberta from the U.S. side, over the next two days. In the meantime, Dad asks Tommy Decker to break into our house and steal our passports, and Mechele, from Dad’s office, Fed-Exes them to a motel in Coeur d’Alane, Idaho, where we stay tomorrow. If all goes right, we receive the package the next morning and easily drive six hours to the Canadian park to make our reservation at the Prince of Wales hotel.
We chose option 4.
Whew! Crisis averted. With that settled, we spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of business. Charlie is almost done with his Stephen King novel, and he’d like a new one. So we hit up a bookstore in the town of Winthrop, then continued on to the town of Twisp (Isn’t that a great name? It sounds like a candy bar. Or a breakfast cereal) to do laundry.
The Laundromat was stifling, with no good WiFi, and it look me a long time to get through five loads of laundry, but Dad, Charlie and Clare passed the time by planing Bananagrams and reading their books. They eventually moved outside to try to catch a whiff of breeze — until some guy staggered through the parking lot, retching and vomiting. So, good times!
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| Check out this crazy grocery store, next to the Laundromat! |
Tomorrow we’ll be back in civilization — in Coeur d’Alane, Idaho. We’ll probably have decent WiFi there, so we’ll be in touch, and upload to the blog. I hope you’re doing well! We love you and miss you!
Love, Mom
xoxoxoxo
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