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When we picked up our new ride in Spokane, everything was clean and shiny. When we immediately drove 250 miles back home, everything was covered in dust and bugs. Of course climbing up and down our driveway doesn’t help either– we end up with a thick coat of dust. But today I decided to wash the car, and I must say it looks good.

This is probably the cleanest it’ll ever be, because as soon as I pull off the concrete into the gravel, there will be dust everywhere again. At some point it just doesn’t make sense to keep washing.

Incidentally, we had to name our cars. We haven’t done that in the 25 years we’ve been together, although most people I know seem to name their vehicles. Well, Teslas have a place in the main menu to give the car a name. Since it’s blue, I suggested Max Rebo.

He’s everyone’s favorite blue elephant from Return of the Jedi. Alas, Pepper was not interested in the least. After some discussion, we settled on Nebula.

She’s sort of a tragic hero, and of course she’s also blue. Then we had to name the CR-V, and since that car is red, we came up with Ruby Roundhouse (or just “Ruby” for short).

The Civic is grey, so naturally it became Gandalf the Grey.

But the Civic will be changing hands in a few months, so Zaque has a car in college. That’ll just leave us with Nebula and Ruby.

(For those who are paying close attention, it’s worth noting that Karen Gillan plays both characters. A fun coincidence.)

In today’s edition of Science is Cool, I learned that researchers at Cornell have improved imaging techniques used to view atoms in a crystalline structure. Here’s an example of the output of their experiment:

That’s a crystal of praseodymium orthoscandate, and the glowing balls are individual atoms. They’re “fuzzy” because the imaging is so precise you can actually see them vibrating with thermal energy (atoms are only still at absolute zero, and there’s some disagreement about whether they’re absolutely still even then).

Twelve years ago I noted that IBM researchers had been able to view a single molecule, which was astounding. This is just as amazing, and definitely fits into my “science is cool” category…

‘Tis the season to head to Glacier National Park! The Merrills are our first visitors of the summer, and of course they wanted to head up there. I’m not one to complain about it, so we packed into their van and drove north on a hot day. There were heat advisories in the park, with temperatures expected to hit 100 degrees. And it’s only June! Fortunately it didn’t get nearly that hot; I feel like it might’ve touched 90 at worst.

As always, the views of the valley were amazing. I can see why they call this Big Sky Country.

Our friends kept remarking about how green everything is. We’ve had some recent rain, and this area of the state isn’t experiencing drought like other areas in Montana and the West in general.

We snapped some pictures up at Logan Pass.

A family of bighorn sheep pranced by while we were eating.

Their kids really dislike hiking, so sadly we didn’t go on any hikes during our visit. We stopped at several waterfalls, and I was able to practice my long-exposure technique.

We even discovered a secret waterfall behind a massive wall of ice!

The highlight of the day was a stop at Redrock, where we walked down to the water. Two of the kids and I donned swimsuits and dove in. WOW. The water was ice-cold, and I mean that literally because it’s draining right off the glaciers this time of year. It was the kind that almost takes your breath away when you first jump in. Of course, on a hot summer day with the sun beating down, it was fabulous.

I don’t think there’s ever a bad day in Glacier.

Although we attempted to find some local hikes that aren’t Holland Lake, when our friends the Merrills showed up on our doorstep, we decided to go to Holland anyway. It was a scorching hot day (in the midst of a Pacific Northwest heat wave) and the sunny parts of the trail were a little rough. While Matt and the kids played on the lake, Pepper, Heather, and I headed up the mountain.

We were rewarded with a refreshing reward at Holland Falls. The air temperature was probably 20 degrees cooler, with a fine mist from the water. It was exhilarating after a hot hike.

It was fun to edge closer to the falls and get drenched in ice-cold spray.

After cooling off, we had a snack. The chipmunks in the area must be well-fed by tourists, because they have no fear. This little guy climbed right into my backpack.

(No, we didn’t feed him anything.)

The view from the top was, as always, spectacular.

After hiking back down, we joined the others on the water and spent the rest of the day swimming and boarding. Gotta love lakes on these hot summer days!

Some friends asked if we’d like to “do something”, which in Montana-ese means “something outside”. We suggested kayaking, and decided to head over to Loon Lake. It’s a (relatively) small lake near us that’s really quiet and still. As we got on the water, we had to navigate through a maze of lilypads:

But once out on the water, it was like gliding across glass. A few gentle nudges with the paddles, and we’d coast ahead. It was wonderful.

As we explored the lake, we spotted some turtles sunning themselves on a log. (There were quite a few, but when I edged closer to get a picture, a bunch of them slipped silently into the water and swam off.)

With such a peaceful lake, we were able to paddle around and chat. After a couple hours on the water, we packed up and headed over to Burgertown for some dinner. A great summer day.

Today I learned about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a psychological phenomenon wherein people overestimate their competence at tasks where they have very little experience. This helpful graph sums it up well:

I particularly love the names of the different areas of the graph. And although it would be easy for me to say “Hah, that never happens to me”, I’d be lying. It happens to everyone. I’ve climbed Mount Stupid, claiming with confidence that I could do something when in fact I’m completely inept at it. When it comes to house projects, I feel like I live in the Valley of Despair. I have a bit of experience with things like electrical wiring, so I think I can take care of a “simple” project, and an hour later I’m throwing tools in frustration. Luckily there are times I’ve climbed the Slope of Enlightenment, recognizing my growing ability at something and increasing in confidence. And there are, I admit, only a very few things in my life where I rest on the Plateau of Sustainability…

Pepper and I have been going on some short hikes lately. We’re doing it for a couple of reasons: first, we just want to explore the area a bit, so we can seem knowledgeable about local hikes. And second, with a series of visitors coming this summer, we want to have some options in our back pocket, and know some different “levels” of hiking to suggest. We picked a lesser-known hike in the Swan Valley, and headed out.

It was so green. Grass, ferns, flowers, trees… everything was a brilliant green and damp from recent rain.

The trail wound through this tall grass. Kind of cool!

But things kind of went downhill from there. As we continued, the trail became much harder to follow. The underbrush grew thicker, the trail became narrower, and after a bit we were picking our way through huge plants.

And with all the water came the mosquitos. They were swarming around, and if we’d stop for even a few seconds, there would be a dozen of them on our arms and legs. We’d sprayed ourselves with mosquito repellant, but it didn’t seem to do anything at all. Even as we walked, we were slapping our arms and swatting at the little buggers flying around us. It was really bad.

Eventually we reached what you might call a “lake”, but I’d probably describe as a “muddy pond”.

It wasn’t exactly picturesque. As I stood there taking this picture, I was probably bitten four times by mosquitos. We agreed to hoof it back out, and made good time back to the car. I’m sure the little blood bandits were sad there was no one left for them to bite.

Oh, and we’re not going to recommend this hike to people who visit.

For a few days now, I’ve been wanting to take some sunset photos at the lake shore. Although I love the view from our house, there are always trees in the way. I was hoping to snap something on the solstice, but the sky was completely cloudless, and sunset photos tend to be better with clouds. Tonight was the night. I drove a couple miles north and hiked down to the shoreline, where I waited as the sun sank.

My timing was pretty good; when I arrived the sun was almost on the horizon.

I experimented a bit with lenses, and I like this shot of an old gnarled tree root at the water’s edge:

I managed to get a shot just as the last bit of the sun touched the distant hills.

And then it was gone. But the fiery orange light continued for a while, illuminating the clouds from beneath. A couple of boats passed slowly by as people headed home for the night. It was almost 10pm when this last boat cruised north:

It’s 10pm and the sun just sank below the horizon.

I love these lazy long Montana summer nights…

On our trip yesterday, we stopped at a rest area that had an honest-to-goodness pay phone. I thought there were only like three left in the United States, and apparently we found one of them!

Before we left, Pepper checked the coin change slot at the bottom to see if there was a quarter. Because that’s what you do with a pay phone.