The Family Gathering, July 2000

Holiday Greetings to All!

It's hard to believe that year 2000 is nearly past, we've been really busy! Time flies when you're having fun, I'll try to recount what we've done here, briefly if possible.

Brother Rob, Mom, Jenny and her entourage visited with us this July. We had a great time just kicking back and chatting a lot. You can see how much Jen's children have matured in the photo, just amazes me! Fortunately they left just before the wild fires started to really take off in the Salmon National Forest only 20 air miles from us. You may have heard something about them on the news. The fires in the Bitterroot Valley just over the hills from us started a week later. Rob saw one fire flame up as he drove over the mountain pass out of the valley on his way home. In this corner of Idaho/Montana we had more than 1,000,000 acres burn. The whole month of August was spent inside with windows closed as the smoke was so thick our window sills looked like ashtrays. We had Stage 3 air alerts for the whole month. Fortunately Mother Nature blessed us with rains in early September that dampened all the embers. I do sort of miss all those cute young Marines in their flaming yellow fire retardant shirts and fatigue greens though!

Frank and I started off the new millenium with a 3 week trip to Costa Rica that we shared with a couple of local friends in February. We rented a beautiful private modern villa in Playa del Coco, Guanacaste, along the northwestern dryland coast. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, sipping fresh fruit margaritas or Imperial beers with the locals, eating seafood as a daily diet, lounging by the pool, watching the bird and iguana life, and walking along the beach.

We hired a local fisherman with a boat one day to take us for a cruise along the coastline. The deserted beaches we found were remarkably inviting! The fishing wasn't as good as it would have been had we traveled out to sea 40 miles, but we had some great laughs. Here's Frank's catch of the day, baby Bonita!!! Actually he did catch another a few scales larger, not enough to count for much.

We spent another very full day in the Rincon de la Vieja Volcano area. We visited the Buena Vista Lodge north of Liberia where we actually got to swing through the trees on one of Costa Rica's infamous Canopy Tours. Now this is a real kick! We were safely rigged with harnesses and able to swing effortlessly along the cables between the tallest trees, from platform to platform. Definitely the way to experience the jungles. Here's Frank midway between trees and gliding in smoothly for a landing. Beats bungee jumping any day! I made a new friend back at the lodge, a baby Cabochan monkey who loved my tamarind juice, too cute. Following a hearty Tico lunch we left on a horseback ride to the mineral hot springs. We thoroughly enjoyed a therapeutic steaming hot mud pack. We caked ourselves well, baked in the sun until we started to crack, showered, swam in the warm pool, sipped Imperials and laughed loads. A body could get used to this. Too much fun in one day!!!

Frank and our friend Randy renovated the first building (shack) we lived in here this summer. They've eliminated all of the rodents, sealed it up, sheeted it with steel siding, installed an automatic heating unit (as opposed to wood heat), repaired the plumbing, new floors, new windows, and closed in the attached shed which is now my yarn room. By January 1st I should be completely moved in and set up in my new studio! Wow, that's been a lifelong dream that's finally coming along. I've spent most of this fall taking a course writing a business plan. Now that I've got a workspace for all 5 of my knitting machines, computer, and yarns, Caryll Designs might become a productive reality soon!

Winter has set in here and Christmas is right around the corner. Yesterday we had a herd of more than 100 elk come down off the hill beside us and cross the field above. It was a spectacular sight and I've never seen them do that here before! We also have a new tree trimmer that took up residence on our property this fall. She's a natural at stripping leaves from a tree, as the evidence in her moose lips proves. The fact that the tree's no more than 10 feet from the house says something for our guard dog, Forest the Friendly.

PS. We have a new "street" address, even though we're still up the creek, we haven't put the numbers on the gatepost yet, and our mailing address is still PO Box 30. So this is just in case you need a physical address or something shorter than "3 miles up Sandy Creek on the right" ;-)

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