My favorite place, @glaciernps with my hubby, an adventurer and my co-pilgrim in this spiritual journey on earth.
I love how he competently drives and plans on the best scenic drives. I get inspired to develop new recipes while on the road.
We travelled 3, 677 miles and went from California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming.
We visited Capitol Reef National Park, man-made Idaho Falls, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Grand Tetons National Park and Great Basin National Park. It was one of our best trips, staying in hotels, cabins, private campgrounds, and national park campgrounds.
Thank you @enriquedlz for your diligence, endurance and fortitude!
I am so grateful to my friend Sylvia Oh who made such an effort to renew friendship with me. She drove 4 hours plus one way, and another 4 hours, back to her home. I truly enjoyed reconnecting, renewing and refreshing our connections, after 29 years.
I am so grateful also to our longtime friends of over four decades, Greg Castilla and Lynn Castilla and their daughter Mutya O’Boyle and Kevin O’Boyle and their two grandchildren for welcoming us to their beautiful home and feeding us so well. The last physical visit we did was in 2005, when they lived in Renton, Washington when we just came from Crater Lake, in Oregon.
You know you have precious friendships with folks when you can share all, hold back none, and reconnect like there were no gaps or years in distance.
Maraming Maraming Salamat, Thank you very much to all of you!!
And to our new friends, Patty Bakke and Byron Bakke and Ilene Garland and Dave Garland, we enjoyed meeting you, your generosity of spirits, as if we are longtime friends, and may we see each other again in one of the national parks!
Our 3 weeks on the road took us 3,677 miles through California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and to these national parks: Capitol Reef National Park Glacier National Park Yellowstone National Park Grand Teton National Park Great Basin National Park.
Thank you for my dear hubby, Enrique de la Cruz an adventurous man who loves the wild and whose best self is nurtured by nature.
Thank you for welcoming us to Yellowstone, Your Friend in Yellowstone – if you ever find yourself in Los Angeles, you have a friend in us and I promise to give you a warm bed and a home cooked meal.
Thank you Lord and Mama Mary for guiding us each day and for your unsolicited grace: two nights at Many Glaciers Hotel in Montana, an unexpected rain to clear the heat and grime, the powerful display of Grand Fountain Geyser from beginning to the end of its explosive process in synchrony with White Dome geyser, the unexpected find of the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, the last cabin in Yellowstone, showers daily in all campsites, cabins and hotels and our safety even as the bears were eating huckleberries next to our campsite in St. Mary’s campground in Glacier National Park.
On the way to Great Basin, we had scattered showers. That favored us since the van got a natural wash plus the national park was temperate, though chilly at 10,000 feet.
Crackling wind sounds, chilly, swaying green, yellow and red aspen tree leaves, cloud-crowned mountain ranges – these are all a surprise for me at 10,000 feet elevation, called Wheeler’s peak.
11 miles uphill drive to two peaks, Mather and Wheeler. Mather peak is named after Stephen Tyng Mather, one of the Park’s founders. Metamorphic boulders exist near Wheeler Peak, whose campground was closed this season.
“Great Basin NP covers >77,000 acres of the Southern Snake Range and offers a particular fine sample of the region’s character. It …features a row of wind-raked summits, jagged alpine cirque, a rock glacier, groves of ancient bristlecone pines, flower-spangled meadows, a richly ornamented limestone cave, and the full range of life zones…from nearly 8,000 feet of elevation change between valley floor and mountain peak. The sounds are natural. The air is clear. The night skies, glittering with stars, are among the darkest in the country. Continents cruising around, smashing into each other, piling up mountains and opening new seas. The Great Basin is one of the Earth’s more recent remodeling projects.-Western National Parks Association
The next morning, a sighting of two does, two young deers with a beautiful light brown skin, galloping so fast that only hubby got the photo, as I was making coffee and oatmeal. What a gift plus this early dawn, a very dark night sky full of shining stars. God is with us!
“Nature, and the love of it, is a major theme in others of that generation. It is there in Thoreau, Emerson, Muir, Burroughs, Whitman, and it continues into the present as an unbroken double song of love and lamentation. Lamentation is the conscience speaking. Below the energy, enthusiasm, and optimism of our early years–below the Whitman strain — there is always the dark bass of warning, nostalgia, loss, and somewhat bewildered guilt.” Wallace Stegner, 1948, a mentor to deceased NVM Gonzalez [National Artist of the Philippines]
Imagine listening to NVM describe the writings of Wallace Stegner and his generosity of Spirit. He encouraged NVM Gonzalez to seek writing fellowships in the USA and NVM followed suit.
Here I am finding Stegner’s book, purchased for me by my husband, at the Grand Teton Bookstore.
Why of all places? I am reaching for the insight of convergence – am I able to access perhaps the collective unconscious body of knowledge available to us in the Universe if we assume a receptacle attitude that miracles are daily manifested?
Would you believe that we found a Sacred Heart Chapel in the Summit Mountain drive? It felt so serene inside, it opens only from June to September. It was constructed in 1937, many years before WWII. Fr. Rodel G.Balagtas is this not a miracle to find this?
Then, a few more miles drive, we walked to Jackson Lake overlook by 200 feet, and the magnificence of the blue Jackson lake framed by the growing Grand Tetons’ mountain ranges make you say, “Lord, how overwhelming Your blessings are!”
Here we are, as a nation, as America, just now realizing the value of reusing, repurposing and recycling to care for Mother Earth.
May we, Lord, collectively live up to you, as Your creations, and wake up to become better versions of ourselves such that we might leave this earth better than we found it.
May our practices conserve this beautiful America’s Grand Teton National Park as all the other 63 national parks for our children, 64 total now in America.
These 64 national parks are America’s best inventions resulting from the struggles of the environmentalists against the loggers, miners, speculating developers, and winning towards a consensus to preserve these multimillions of acreages for our children, grandchildren, and seven generations to come! Thank you Lord, #thankyouAmerica #thankyouhubby for this dreamlike, magical place!-@Prosy Delacruz
P.S. This is where we met Patti and Byron Bakke who are from Kent, Washington and whose lakeside house also has Mt. Rainier’s view. What a dream house. They were camping with Dave and Arleen Garland. Dave made an awesome fire with 2 reflector panels resulting in 3 fires as nd radiating heat to all gathered around. Arleen was a great teacher of geologic evolutions of the calderas in Yellowstone National Park.
While we thought we gave them a gift of sharing our campsite resulting in three vehicles and a cad, we were so blessed to be treated to blueberry pancakes, bacon and taco dinner thr prior night. I made mushroom mozzarella cheese quesadillas as appetizers.
Walking the trail towards Josephine Lake with the boat dock, near Many Glaciers Hotel in East Glacier National Park in Montana. #ThankyouGod#thankyouhubby#Iamsohappy to have lakes besides mountain ranges. What a gift! # Canadian restrictions got us here.
Moose encountered by hubby, both of us saw 2 bald eagles and leaving Glacier, saw 4 deer crossing Highway 89 and cattle crossing. Truly God’s given trip to us for unexpected grace: last room at the inn available, clouds appearing after rains last night, making travelscapes so beautiful.
