Oh, yeah.  Somewhere beyond Tuscumbia the network connections got very iffy and I couldn’t upload any photos, either.  Hard to remember now what state comes after Alabama and Mississippi and the atlas is in the car and I am sitting here in the cozy great room of my younger sister, Lisa, who refuses to age properly like the rest of us.  It’s my first time in her lovely new home.  Pure heaven on the Missouri River, is all I have to say.  Lovely, peaceful and surrounded by beautiful scenery.

Just prior to arriving in my home town of Townsend, Montana, I spent time with my dear cousins Peggy and George Tate and their daughter, Robin.  Peggy and George were the kind of people only a few of us are lucky enough to have in our lives – just enough older than I was while I was growing up that they could be adored – and they were, by each of us.  All my sisters and I have wonderful memories of being sent to stay with Peggy and George for a few days while growing up.  Peggy tells me that in 1962, while she was in labor with one of her children, she was anxiously awaiting my arrival on the bus to help care for her four older children.  I can’t imagine that I was much help, but am sure it was better than nothing.  It is so much fun to relive some of those old memories and be reintroduced to memories that have been somehow forgotten.

Just before coming to Bozeman, I spent a few days with my oldest sister.  Now, all of you who are reading this know that sometimes my mouth opens up and the most unintended words come tumbling out.  Well, magnify that twice, and you have me and my oldest sister, Marietta.  She is unintentionally hilarious, and we caused much groaning by her husband, Terry.   Our minds work in scarily similar ways that to outsiders must seem perhaps just a little “not all there”.  Yes, Walter, there are two of us on this planet.  It is hard to imagine.

Well, I’ve gotten a tad off the subject.  I’ve seen so much beautiful country, and will have to do some backtracking.   After crossing Oklahoma, which was surprisingly (to me) beautiful, and trekking across Texas, I arrived in that most magical of states, New Mexico.  The landscape is simply stunning!  There are no words for it.  Rugged terrain with mountains in the distance; long stretches of utter desolation broken by mesas in the distance.  But wait, I forgot to tell you about Route 66!  I’ll do that later.

And here I am in Conrad, MT, and see that this post never got published, so here it is.