----->>> In a Home Named Destiny: July 2013

It's hard to believe that it has already been five weeks since we got here. It really started to sink in this week.. we live up here! Holy cow, we have been feeling overwhelmingly blessed. The sun has been peaking out more, the birds are chirping- it just might be summer time here! Here are some fun stories from our week.

Monday 6/24-

On Mondays, Jordan has to work and I get the night off. It is my one day a week to have some quiet and alone time and also a day where I catch up on chores. And boy does Destiny need the extra TLC once a week. Living in a 21 foot space you have to keep things neat and tidy or else you will go nuts. Since we had such a busy last week I had a lot of catching up to do. Luckily it was only partly cloudy out so I took the tarp off Destiny and drove the mounds of laundry over to the laundry mat. As I moved the clothes to the dryers I noticed some really dark clouds on the horizon. I said a quick prayer- "Please Lord, don't let it rain for a couple more hours so I can finish my chores." I hurried with the folding, dropped off recycling, went to the store, brought Jordan dinner, and stopped by the Post Office real quick before I went home. I got lost in cleaning and I forgot to put the tarp back on. That's when I heard a huge crack..... booooooommmm..... It was thunder so loud and so close that it nearly shook our house. That is also when I remember I didn't put the tarp back on. I ran outside to throw it back on and that is when the inevitable happened... RAIN! As I was trying to unfold the 24ft x 10ft tarp a huge gust of wind ripped it from my hands and into a nearby tree. I ran and got it and then our neighbor Deb saw me struggle. She said "Do you need help?" I was kind of afraid to ask for it, but just then the HUGE drops of rain came and so did the wind.... the tarp was blowing all over the place. Deb yelled to her husband, "BILL, Bill come out here we need help." So they helped me get it up and over the motor home. The wind tried to fight me on it and we were all getting soaked. But finally I had it somewhat secured and told them Thank You. I still had to put the tie downs on.. bOOOOOOOMMMMM... another thunder and bigger rain drops. I just started laughing as I finally walked inside. I was drenched from head to toe with pine needles stuck all over me. It was even more hilarious to me because before this whole thing happened I was thinking to myself as I was cleaning... "man it's so hot in here. I need to cool down!" Jordan called to make sure I was ok, as he heard the thunder and saw the rain. That night he came home from work drenched and freezing from the rain. Ha, it was the one day he forgot a jacket and I took his pants to the laundry mat, so he was in shorts and sandals! Life is always an adventure!

Tuesday 6/25-

We slept in, I went to work and Jordan had the night off. He relaxed and watched amazing documentaries all day! He always watches the craziest and weirdest ones, it fills his head with all sorts of crazy ideas! Makes me kinda wonder what the heck are we going to do next?!

Wednesday 6/26-

Again, we slept in. We are loving this night schedule- we get to stay up as late as we want and sleep in everyday! We got Destiny all road ready and headed out to Bozeman (the nearest town with real grocery stores and Walmarts). It is the most beautiful 70 mile drive you could ever take and even more so now that all the wildflowers are in bloom. With all the road construction going on it takes about two hours to get up there, but it's so worth it. (FUN FACT: I was talking to our horse guide Kate, she said up here they have four seasons but they are called Winter, Rain (spring) , Construction (summer), and Mud (fall) haha guess we are up here for Construction season!) Once we got up there we went to the grocery store and got tons of fresh produce and meat, you can't find much of that in our town. I planned out meals for two weeks to take advantage of the sales and to try and utilize everything we bought. We picked up some dry ice and threw it inside our tiny freezer box in our fridge and were actually able to freeze some of the meat. It worked amazingly well. It's the simple joy of having no working fridge or freezer! After that we enjoyed a lovely dinner at Applebees, thanks to Dad and Lynnette for the gift cards. This was only our fourth time eating out in the 5 weeks of being up here, so it was a nice treat. We picked up a few things from Walmart and headed over to the movie theater We still have four free tickets to any 3D movie at Regal theaters from the incident on Christmas in Nashville. Luckily, Bozeman had a Regal and we got there just in time to see Monster's University. We are suckers for Pixar films... yes we go see cartoons even though we don't have kids! It was was awesome, we laughed a lot and enjoyed the simple innocence. These days it seems like all movies are about the world blowing up, zombies, demons, or affairs. So it was refreshing and fun and just what we needed. (Can't wait for Despicable Me 2 to come out!) After the movie we decided to head back to Walmart and sleep there. Even though we love having full hook-ups for the summer it's kind of nice hiding out in a parking lot. Keeps us grounded, and reminds us of all the fun we had going across the south this Winter.

Thursday 6/27-

I woke up early and left Jordan in bed. I found the cutest little flower on the table that he had picked for me after I went to bed. It's the small things that he constantly does to show me how much he loves and admires me. It is nice to be appreciated so much. Anyway, I drove Destiny over to Starbucks and stock up on coffee since I still have my discount. And of course I got a couple of Trentas! Nothing that 30 fluid ounces of iced tea and ice coffee can't fix... well maybe except this twitch in my right eye- that has been doing it for weeks and is currently making it very hard to write... twitch... twitch... twitch!!!! hahaha... So after I got all jacked up on caffeine, I put on my favorite driving music, let in some fresh air and just cruised. I love driving when Jordan is sleeping (no offense babe), but I get lost in this perfect zone of reality and dreams (don't worry guys, I'm still fully alert of the road! I can see my mom shaking her head right now :-)

As we pulled into town we took care of a few thing for Surgical Fibers (Jordan's online surgical fiber business). We grabbed our chairs, picked up a fishing license and a couple lures, gas and headed into the park. The amazing part of the summer up here is that it is only dark for about six hours so we get a whole lotta sunshine! If you're not an early riser, no problem we got daylight til 10pm! Jordan was so excited to go fishing, he hasn't been since this past winter in Arkansas. Yellowstone is huge and highly regulated, so we set out on a scouting adventure for the perfect fishing spot. It is quite a drive out to Yellowstone Lake. It is 136 square miles, has 110 miles of shoreline and has a maximum depth of 390 feet. It's crazy too because it is America's largest natural freshwater lake over 7000 ft. Needless to say, we had no idea where to find the perfect fishing spot. We started off near Grant Village but while we were hiking on the shoreline a Park Ranger on a boat cut us off. Apparently we had just wandered into an area where the cut throat trout were spawning and the bears were feasting! Guess, we had walked past the fallen signs that said, "Do not enter!" Haha we hightailed it out of there and headed to the Back country office. The Park Ranger told us that those guys know everything about fishing here, in fact if they weren't working they were fishing. Sure enough, Jordan came out of the office with a map with several locations highlighted!

We pulled off a seemingly random turnout along the lake, hiked down a little trail and then saw this amazing lagoon. Jordan was in fisherman's heaven! He was gone before I could even ask him what he wanted for lunch. It was such a beautiful day though, I don't blame him. I packed up a little picnic and hiked it down to him. Then I just lounged on the shore.... 75 and sunny. Besides the wind it was perfect! It wasn't long before he caught his first fish, in the exact spot where the back country guys had told him to go. They said the whole peninsula was good but if you hiked down to this little tree and went on the right side of it..... that is where you will catch the fish. Sure enough he did! We kind of panicked because we didn't actually bring anything for a fish once it was caught. No bucket, no bag, no anything. I dumped out the bag I had used to cover our picnic food and we put the fish in it and ran up to the motor home. We measured that sucker at 18 inches!!! Not a bad first catch! We put the little guy on the ice we did have in our fridge and headed back down to the water. I just continued to relax and while he kept fishing. Around 7:45pm I went inside to take a little nap and then make dinner. At 9:30pm, around sunset I went to make sure Jordan was still there and he was just fishing away. I tried to stay and watch but the mosquito were attacking in full force so I went and made dinner.

Little did I know what was going on down at the peninsula at that time.... For this I have to pass the computer over to Jordan. This is his version of our day and the rest of the story....

I had been fishing all day on this beautiful peninsula on Yellowstone Lake and was pulling in beautiful fish. Earlier in the day we visited the Back Country Ranger Station and asked the Ranger if he had any spots that he loved to fish. He told me about this particular spot and even circled on the map of the area where he would fish. I figured he would know what he was talking about considering this park is his life. Turns out he did. I started the day catching a beautiful 18 inch Yellowstone Lake Trout which by law you can keep and eat. He hit my line within like 5 casts. I was ecstatic. I continued on that day and ended up pulling in 3 more Cutthroat Trout that are a federally protected species that you have to throw back. There was one of these fish that had to be 24 inches and had the most beautiful blush cheeks and a silver and pink sheen over the entire fish. Its black spots progressively multiply as you continue down its plump round body till you reach the black tail. The most identifying and unique markings are two red slits under the jaw giving it it’s name. When I pulled that huge thing in I was cheering and jumping like a kid with the biggest smile possible on my face. One of the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. Right as I unhooked the fish and was letting him back into his home the reflection caught my eye and I looked up. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The clouds the the right of me started with a burst of fiery reddish orange with accents of a burnt and darker more aggressive orange. As I continued looking over the lake to my left the clouds continued blending into a more pastel pink getting softer and softer as my head turned. About three quarters of the way through my 180 degree silent awe inspiring pan my eyes reached the massive, snow covered mountains on the other side of the lake. These majestic castles, shooting out of their own glowing reflection on the lake, shined gold and the sky above them faded from a pastel pink into a beautiful calming light blue. The amount of colors that were represented in one beautiful three dimensional art piece was incredible. I could hardly focus on fishing though in auto-pilot I had been casting this whole time. About a half hour to an hour after the last blip of sunlight had sunk under the horizon I had a terrible wind knot. I had been cutting lines all day and so when I had finished re-tying my Lil’ Jake and cast it ran out of line with a good little jerk. I still had about 20 feet or so of line so I figured I would be ok for a couple more casts on my way back to the motorhome. As I was looking down assessing the situation I saw a figure move to my right out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly everything inside of me dropped and a cold tingly feeling was creeping over me. Ten feet from me was a full sized bull moose. This moose had somehow silently swam about 250 or 300 feet across the lagoon that stretched behind me that I had my back to when I was fishing the lake. Right as my body had gone into shock my line hit hard. I instinctually tugged back and sunk the hook. I looked back to the moose and he had seen me and started walking towards me. I screamed and yelled at the top of my lungs and at first he stopped and held his head straight up. I backed up step by step flood of thoughts going through my head. I was racking my brain trying to remember what to do in this situation. Yelling the whole time, I reached down and grabbed a half buried, large tree branch with about 5 thinner but longer branches shooting from its two inch main trunk. With one hand continuing to drag the fish down the bank as I backed down it, I shook the branch in the air towards the moose. As my thoughts were racing through my head I remembered how territorial these creatures were. The only memory that came up that had a moose in it was an episode of “Alaska State Troopers” I had seen where a moose had cornered a resident in their house. The trooper had attempted to scare off the moose with different tactics including firing off warning shots from his pump action shotgun. The trooper had to shoot and kill the moose because he would not stop charging the trooper over and over. This did not encourage me. I then looked at the branch and realized how much they resembled the rack of a deer or elk and decided to throw the branch towards the beast. My hand naturally went back to reeling and fighting the fish. I had pulled the fish within 15 feet of shore by this point and could see it thrashing around surfacing from time to time to whip its tail in desperation. I had backed down the bank about forty yards at this point. I then heard the distant voices and clicking of cameras in the distance across the lagoon where the highway runs. I looked over and saw 2 cars in a turn out capturing the whole thing. I was shocked. Had they not heard me yelling this whole time? Do they not know how deadly these things are? I thought about the picture they that must have sprawled out in front of them. Silhouettes of a massive moose and his magnificent antlers slowly moving towards a crazy ape like creature that was frantically waving and screaming like a crazed chimpanzee. The creatures all black surrounded by the reflections of pink and blue that lingered from sunset. They were loving it. I was very confused as to why help was not arriving. This continued on down this bank for another hundred yards, me slowly pulling the fish in until I was dragging it down the shore flopping in only an inch or two of water. At this point I noticed the moose had picked up his pace and was now flanking me threatening to cut off my path to the only defense I could come up with, the motorhome. Right as he was about parallel with me on this 30 foot wide peninsula type of finger of land, a door shut. The most glorious sound ever. Apparently my camera crew had grown bored of this spectacle and were moving on down the road. The moose was startled and stopped and lifted his head and I could feel the warmth returning to my limbs. I took that opportunity to reach down and bare hand that fish and run. I had peeked a couple times at the fish and was pretty sure it wasn’t a Cutthroat but at this point I didn’t really care. I turned my back on the moose for the first time in this whole encounter and ran. I really didn’t want to turn my back on this thing. I have heard of these things running about 40 miles per hour and with those long legs if could have covered the ten foot spacial barrier I maintained this whole time in like 3 or 4 steps. As soon as I turned the cold tingles came back. Was it chasing me?! I ran about 4 strides and looked back the moose was staring straight at me. I took that as motivation to run harder. 50 feet away now I looked back one more time to make sure I wasn’t going to suddenly feel antlers in my back and then take flight. He was not following me. It seemed the distraction had startled the moose and he was heading back down the peninsula. I yelled for Juli, who had no idea what was going on, and after two or three yells she came running out. I could only imagine what she saw. Her husband running as fast as he could, pale white, covered in fish blood and a fish trying its hardest to loose itself from a now death-like grip. She immediately asked, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Gasping for breath I tried to tell her the whole story and she looked down the hill and saw the thing slowly getting back into the lagoon. The lure was still in the fishes mouth when I got up there. I yanked that out of his mouth and we hurried to rinse it off and threw it on some ice. Juli poured out the water she had been boiling for dinner and we were gone within the minute. I was thinking about it when I was finishing off the last bit of my “Moose Fish”, that that fish may have kept me from turning my back on that thing and running. It would have been a short foot race.

After this traumatizing event we were heading home, this day was enough adventure for the both of us. We kept our eyes on the road to watch out for animals. Apparently, they love running in front of cars. Destiny doesn't have the greatest lights so we were focusing intentsely. About 14 miles from the Park exit Jordan saw some glowing eyes on his side of the road. As he was trying to call out which animal it was a baby deer ran diagonally across the road right in front of us. I tried not to panic and pulled Des into the other lane trying to avoid an accident. The deer came within a foot of our front bumper. My heart was beating so fast. Not only is Destiny our car but our house too, any kind of accident would be devastating. We finally made it to the exit gate and headed into town. We could finally relax. We went to our local bar to have a beer and try to relax. It was only for a few minutes and then when I went outside to grab my wallet, I found a parking ticket on our window. Ha- this day is dead for us! Time to go home......