Recapping 2009

It's been a momentous year for us, as for many. Here is a brief recap of our adventures.

We worked at a kangaroo ranch near Deadwood, South Dakota, for 4 months, ending in January. It was the most unusual and challenging job we had ever had, caring for, feeding, scooping poop, etc, for 60 some roos and about the same number of other marsupials and some more common critters.We did all that amidst sometimes blizzard conditions. We wouldn't trade that experience with those animals for anything!

  February and March 2009 found us near Gordon, Nebraska, with its own siege of cold weather and blizzards. I often thought of the song "Oh, Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie". The vistas were vast and looked all the same. I was reduced to taking photos of the cows who came to look at our RV parked next to their pasture. I'm sure we relieved the boring landscape they usually looked at, too!

 

 Good and faithful friends are not so easy to find. Here is Keith with Faisal, the friend who let us park in his backyard on the prairie.

 

 Back to the Black Hills, finally. Our first trip of the year into Custer State Park gave us another unusual experience. We were used to the 'wild' burros in the park begging food from the tourists, but we had never seen the mountain goats doing that. This one was quite persuasive!

Two or three blizzards later, we were finally able to leave Rapid City and were on the road again headed for our spring and summer job in Montana.

 

 We finally made it to Missoula, (where the Clark Fork River runs through it) the first week of April. In this photo you can see the 'M' above the University of Montana. We hiked the zigzag trail to the 'M', quite a feat for 2 old coots. Missoula is beautiful. We enjoyed our job there at the KOA.

 

 A highlight for us while in Missoula was the visit of our best friends from Washington. We headed for Glacier Nat'l Park for a couple of days. Here we are at the top of the "Going to the Sun" road.

 

 Our job at the KOA ended the middle of September and, like homing pigeons, we headed back to Wenatchee and our family there. We have a new appreciation for the beauty of the whole Wenatchee Valley where also "A River Runs Through It".

 

We finished out the year parked in a friend's orchard along the river, a truly awesome gift in a lovely setting, where we will be till we hit the road again in April 2010. We are thanking God for His many blessings over the past year, and for His continual guidance! He is good!