BoomFlag

On Tuesday, Pepper and I drove up to Canada. We figured heck, it’s right there.

No, really we went up to attend the temple. The nearest temple to us is in Cardston, Alberta– a drive of a little more than three hours. It was built a hundred years ago, and dedicated in 1920.

After crossing into Canada, I had to switch my car to metric, so naturally I felt like I was flying along the highway when in fact I wasn’t going very fast at all.

Cardston is a small town of roughly 3,500 people. They have about half a dozen restaurants, including the iconic A&W. Apparently A&W is to Canada what Subway is to America: pretty much everywhere. We had lunch there, and I remembered why it’s been about two decades since I ate at A&W. The burger was, in a word, “meh”.

After spending some time in the temple, we stopped by to visit Grandma Claudia.

She lives across the street from the temple, and her granddaughter Cindy is a good friend of mine back in Longmont. Months ago, when Cindy heard that we were moving to Montana, she told us her grandma lived up in Cardston, so we figured we should meet her. We had a fun visit and chatted for a while. She told us she was sorry she hadn’t prepared dinner for us, but that we were welcome back any time. So now we have a new Canadian friend!

On the way home, the scenery was absolutely gorgeous.

The long line of mountains is the eastern edge of Waterton National Park in Canada, which becomes Glacier National Park when you cross the border. Now that winter is approaching, some of the high roads are closed, but we’re excited to visit both parks in the spring and summer to explore all those majestic peaks.

Today, we didn’t have anything really pressing to do around the house (for a change) so we decided to take advantage of the nice fall weather and explore the area a bit. People tell us about local landmarks, but we have no idea where they are, so we figured we need to start getting the lay of the land.

First we stopped at the house of our new friend Allen, who lives about a mile down the road. We needed to borrow a post-hole digger to install our mailbox, and he happened to have one. He was picking apples from his orchard when we arrived, and for the next forty-five minutes he took us on a tour of his orchard, houses, boathouse, and dock. Some of the houses on his property were built in 1913; the newest was in 1996. A massive tree crashed through the roof in the Great Windstorm last month, crushing one of the trusses. I guess we were fortunate to just have some damaged gutters and shingles.

Anyway, Allen took us down to the dock and the magnificent view of the lake. I snapped a few photos.

When he asked (as many people do) why we moved to Flathead Lake, I told him about our trip to the area back in 2001. At some point we found a dock alongside the road, and walked down to it. I distinctly remembered Alex and Kyra having a great time running along it:

Since that day in 2001, I’ve been thinking about living here, and now it’s happened!

After our tour, he gave us a big box full of fresh-picked apples (which were delicious) and of course the post-hole digger. We thanked him and headed up the highway. I saw a field of cattails and decided to stop.

Most of them had already “exploded”, spreading their seeds, but Pepper grabbed one that was ripe and particularly plump. It’s a lot of fun to squeeze it and blow the seeds everywhere.

We continued north, eventually reaching Echo Lake. Several people had told us about it, and we wanted to see how it compares to Flathead Lake. It’s quite picturesque:

Houses line the entire shore of the lake (which is pretty small, at least in comparison to Flathead Lake). The water was very still, which made for some pretty reflections:

After walking around for a bit, we drove through the forest and eventually turned out at a hiking trail alongside Flathead Lake. Part of the trail wound down to the shoreline, where we watched the sun drop toward the horizon.

Now we know a little more about the area, and enjoyed a gorgeous fall day. Mission accomplished.

Since it’s Halloween season, I bought a bag of Tootsie Pops at Walmart the other day. When I opened the bag, I was horrified.

Green Tootsie Pops? What the heck flavor is that? I mean, brown is bad enough (no one likes the brown Tootsie Pops) but green is terrible. What’s the world coming to?

There’s an old boat languishing alongside the highway, and Pepper and I think it has a great name: the Goll Dang it Nancy.

I’m not sure I’ll ever own a proper boat, but now that I have a jet ski, maybe I should bow to nautical tradition and name it. I’m thinking of calling it the Unsinkable II.

The Lake was looking particularly blue this evening…

Coming home from town today, I was just about to turn into our driveway when a mama black bear sauntered across the road right in front of my car. Her three little cubs followed.

My photo is terrible because I had to grab my phone and shoot through the windshield, so I only caught the last two cubs before they disappeared into the trees.

They were all headed uphill toward the national forest (and my house!) but I didn’t see them again when I pulled up to the garage. I told Pepper about them; she just shrugged. “They’re only black bears.” Yeah, I guess it’s the grizzlies we need to worry about.

Pepper and I went to see Ad Astra last night. That’s Latin for “to the stars”, and the plot synopsis sounds really cool:

Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos.

Wow, the survival of our planet! The nature of human existence! And our place in the cosmos! That seems really interesting and, dare I say, epic.

But, alas, the movie was awful. It was boring, plodding, didn’t uncover any secrets, and ended on a slightly positive but completely nonsensical note. If I had to rewrite the synopsis, it might sound something like this (warning, spoilers):

Astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) travels to the outer edges of the solar system to talk some sense into his insane, murderous father. His journey will involve sabotage, killing innocent people, crazy baboons, and eventually a pointless conversation with his long-lost dad, who promptly commits suicide.

What a waste of two hours and fifteen bucks. I think even Brad Pitt is still looking around to see if he can find something meaningful in this movie.

One thing I’ve been working on at the new house is replacing all of the old incandescent light bulbs with LEDs. It feels like a herculean task because there are so many lights here… the party room alone has 42 floods! But I love the satisfaction of removing these gigantic heavy bulbs and replacing them with smaller, lighter, far more energy-efficient ones:

The old one on the left draws 90 watts of power. The new LED one on the right gives off just as much light for 8.5 watts. That’s an order of magnitude less power. Multiply by 42, and our parties won’t break the bank on the electric bill any more!

Of course, there’s an up-front cost as I buy a couple hundred LED bulbs, but theoretically they should last the entire time we live here (and then some), so I won’t have to change another bulb, ever. Definitely worth it.

When I sit back and reflect on this whole move to Montana, I can’t help but realize everything about it is crazy. We didn’t really have a compelling reason to move at all. We left behind friends, a place we loved, activities we loved, a nice house, and basically our entire lives. Not only that, we moved to a remote area, miles from a town and thousands of miles from family. We bought a house that’s far too big for the two of us (everyone assumes we “downsized” now that we don’t have kids living with us). And along the way we bought a car, a pair of jet skis, and gave away almost all of our furniture. Oh, and I quit my job.

Crazy.

I figure it’s a weird mid-life crisis or something. At least, as Laralee pointed out, I didn’t leave her for a younger woman. Or buy a super-expensive sports car. In fact, as far as mid-life crises go, it’s been a darn good time. She and I are going through all this craziness together, and she’s arguably doing the majority of the planning for it.

As long as we’re hitting the big red “reset” button on our lives, we decided to assume new identities along the way. Now that we’re in Montana, we’re no longer Jeff and Laralee. We’re Cosmo and Pepper.

Yeah.

It all came about a few weeks ago, when she and I were sitting on the couch in our family room (the couch is the only piece of furniture we actually kept, unless you count a piano as furniture). Most of our house was packed up, so we didn’t have much to do as we waited for Moving Day. She turned to me and said, “What if we come up with new names for ourselves in Montana?” I was a little taken aback, but it sounded like a fun idea. Perhaps more surprisingly, it was an idea coming from her. Most of the time I’m the one who thinks up the strange things we say or do. So I nodded, and she followed up with, “I think I’ll be Pepper. What will your name be?”

I wasn’t really ready for that, so I thought on it and eventually came up with Cosmo. We laughed about it, not sure how serious we were, but I think both of us were toying with it in our minds, wondering if we could pull it off. I mean, those are some fairly weird names, and unlike pretty much every nickname in the world, there’s not a story behind them or a long history or some reason we can say “Oh yeah, everyone calls me Cosmo.”

Fast forward a few weeks, and we arrived in Montana. The first time we’d meet people in the area would be at church, the day after we moved into the house. As we were driving to church that Sunday morning, I asked “Are you sure we’re doing this? Because once we introduce ourselves, we’re committed.” She agreed, and we walked in the doors and officially became Cosmo and Pepper. Sure enough, we introduced ourselves that way and a few people raised an eyebrow, but we went with it. When I called contractors to come to the house for some projects, or set up an order at Home Depot, I was Cosmo. And so on.

So here we are. We’re committed. Thom asked how “serious” we were, like whether we’d use those names on our bank accounts or legal documents. Nope, these are just nicknames. For financial and legal and “official” stuff, we’ll still be Jeff and Laralee because we’re not going to actually change our names. But to everyone else, I just smile and say “Oh yeah, everyone calls me Cosmo.”

With some help and advice from Thom last week, I made progress on a few house projects. I’ve learned that I’m pretty much an idiot when it comes to electrical wiring. After two failed attempts to wire a sensor switch, I finally gave up and walked away.

Of course that leaves things like this…

Ahh, there’s nothing like some live wires hanging out of the wall where a switch used to be…