Summer

It seems that when you live in Idaho, you live for the summer and fall. The weather in the spring is sometimes nice, but more often than not is disappointing. The problem with summer is that we try to cram so many activities into the few nice weeks. All winter we talk about what we want to do the next summer.

Of course, this year, the Alaska trip was the biggest event we were planning for. But we also had a lot of local hiking that we wanted to do.

For a long time, we've talked about hiking back up to the Bench Lakes near Redfish Lake. But, it never seemed like we were able to make the time to go there and do it. This summer part of the family went to Redfish earlier than we are going, and we wanted to see them, so we went over this weekend. Thankfully Angie let us put our tent in her camping spot. It was fun to visit with family and take the beautiful hike.

Greg and I have so much fun together on these outings. I'm not a very fast hiker, and he is very patient. So, it makes for a nice combination. We both love solitude and beautiful scenery. It's something we've really enjoyed since becoming empty nesters....(well most of the year empty nesters).



It doesn't hurt when you have destinations like these.

Looking down on the beach area of Redfish Lake



The view from the trail


The two lakes we visited

A Most Unusual Store

Yesterday Greg and I were in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and stopped at the Haagen Dazs shop for an ice cream cone. It was kind of chilly so we sat on the window ledge of a store next door that had the sun shining on the front of the building.



Greg finished his ice cream and stood up to look in the window of the store that we were sitting in front of. He told me to look. It was a tyrannosaurus skull. On the card next to the skull it said, "Yes, it is real". So we stepped inside the store.





I saw a beautiful purple geode. I said, "Greg, come look at this, it costs $10,000."



Then I saw a neat stone that was full of ancient turtle fossils.



I was shocked to see that the price tag said $97,000.



Then we saw another geode that was very cool, but I can't remember how much it cost.....I'm sure it was a lot.



By it was a fossil of a fish from the Jurassic Period that cost $130,000.



By this time I was getting really amazed at the value of these items.

Around the corner was a beautifully presented flower fossil.



I'll let you see the price tag of it for yourself.



Well when we left the store we decided to see the price of the dinosaur skull. It wasn't easily visible when we first saw it.

It was a shocking $375,000. Don't think I will be making any purchases in that store soon. But the items sure were fun to look at.