Our daughter's Blue Ribbon Challah Bread - 4-H Project (with help from Mom...)
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| David, with our daughter and me - Family photo, May 1991 |
This was our daughter's school picture when she was 13. Long hair gone...pretty face...sweet disposition...so far, so good!
Grandma Rueber lighting our daughter's birthday cake...the Jordan girls and Katie Tveiten look on...
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In August of 1992, we rented a small motor home, and traveled across the country to Olympia, Washington, where David's brother Mark lived. Mark was getting married, and the whole family was gathering for the occasion.
On our way out there, we stopped briefly at Gilford Pinchot State Forest in Washington for lunch and a little hike in the woods.
Our daughter and David wade across a stream in Gilford Pinchot State Forest, Washington.
Here is the family photo from Mark and Jill's wedding. Standing, left to right - Betsy Rueber, Craig Timmermann, Bill Timmermann, Jill and Mark Rueber, Carol Rueber. Front row, left to right - Joel Rueber and Tabitha, Lois Timmermann, Ann Rueber, David Rueber, our daughter, and Madelyn Peregrim.
David with our daughter and me - Mark's wedding in August of 1992
After the wedding celebrations were over and everyone else was heading back home, David, our daughter, and I took the rented camper around the Olympic peninsula, rode the ferry from Port Townsend to Whidby Island, and then drove up into British Columbia, Banff, and the Icefield Parkway.
We were camped with the motor home at Driftwood Acres Campground west of Olympia, Washington - Copalis Beach. It was on this beach that I found a very cool piece of driftwood, and took it home. It became a Santa Claus wall hanging that I still hang up every Christmas. Later in my blog, I will post some of my holiday decorations, and this driftwood Santa will be in the collection.
We had our Sheltie, Lady, with us on this trip. Here our daughter, Lady and David are hiking the Bow Summit Trail in the Canadian Rockies. I am up there too, taking this photo!
Somewhere I have photos of the rain forest on the Olympic Peninsula, the receding glaciers in the Canadian Rockies, and some of our trip through other parts of the Canadian Rockies, but for now, I'll just post the photos that I've saved to gold disks for our daughter. I'll add more travel photos as I locate them.
This is beautiful Lake Louise, and there was a Tyrolean horn player performing as we hiked past on our way up the mountains to Agnes' Tea House.
On our hike up the mountains, we passed a couple of lakes, and ended up at a well-known tea house at the top of the mountain called Agnes' Tea House. This is the railing on the porch of that establishment, and here is a bird, hoping for a crumb or two. Beyond you can see the lake. Students often work up at the tea house all summer, and just live up there. I was interested to find out that the water used to make the tea comes directly out of the lake. It is still so pristine up there that there is no need to treat the water beyond boiling it for your tea. It was chilly up there, but invigorating, and I am so glad we made the effort to hike up. It was indeed a 'mountaintop experience!'
This is one of the photos I took as we hiked. I should make a watercolor of this scene...it is truly beautiful. You can almost smell the pine trees and feel the cool air as you look at it!
This is foggy Lake Agnes...with the person on the far right and those at the bottom of this photo, you can get a bit of perspective of the grandeur of this place. The railing is part of the porch on Agnes' Tea House. Fabulous experience!
On our way home, we stopped at Calgary, Alberta. David has always had visions of taking a ride on the luge, and the Olympic Park was located at Calgary, so we went there to see if he could get a ride. Well, turned out only the bottom quarter of the track is open, and with the warmer weather in the summer, it was expensive to keep even that part of the track iced, so if you wanted a ride, you had to pay 'big bucks.' He decided he didn't need to go that bad. (Later, I saw a commercial for York Peppermint Patties that showed a man reclining in his chair at his home, eating a York Peppermint Patty and imagining that he was feeling the 'cool' and experiencing the thrill of riding the luge. I told David about it, and asked him if he wanted me to buy him some York Peppermint Patties. He said, "No."
We drove through the tar sands in on the plains of lower Alberta...nasty stuff, sulfur smell was overpowering. I'm absolutely sure we don't want the Keystone Pipeline dredging up that stuff, and shipping it over the Ogalalla Aquifer (source of most of the drinking water for huge parts of the Midwest) in leaky pipes that can break and create a monstrous environmental crisis!
We drove through Saskatchewan, and found a campground on that huge prairie that was not only shady and cool, but very interesting as well. It was 'Buffalo Pound' campground, and as we approached it, there seemed to be only scrub brush around, and we couldn't see any trees, but when we got closer, we saw that the land dipped into a big depression with a lake and plenty of shade trees all around. This place got its name from First Nation people using it as a place where they could drive bison herds and drive them over a cliff into this depression, and then harvest a lot of meat and hides for their people. Now, there is a fenced in field with a small buffalo herd, and the campground was very pretty and cool. We had a nice evening there, and explored some of the place the next day.
After that, we went to Regina and visited the Science Museum there. I had a bit of a scare at one exhibit because I sat my purse down on the floor beside me, and forgot to pick it up as I moved on to the next exhibit. But, someone had found it and turned it in, and nothing was gone. Whew! (One nice thing about a self-contained camper is that you can leave the dog in it, if it's not a hot day - and even then, if you have an electric hook-up and can run the air-conditioner. Cars are not that forgiving...you have to take the dog with you most of the time...)
We drove home through Manitoba and into North Dakota, then on home. It was a great trip...and time for school to start that fall.
Here's her school photo at the age of 14. Such a great smile...and a lot of hair when it was permed. I am jealous of all of that hair, now that I'm losing mine bit by bit...
Here are our daughter and Lady (can hardly see Lady with all of that black fur...good thing she had a white chest!) Winter, 1992
Sort of caught our daughter in an odd pose, but here we are, sitting on our couch in the living room at the research farm...shot of me is not too bad.
And, here's a nice shot of our daughter and David...winter outside, warm inside!
So, that's all for this post. The 1990s were a busy decade...our daughter was in junior high and high school, and then she graduated and went to Coe College. Our lives suddenly got very quiet...and sort of sad. Hard to adjust to not having a kid around at all...
Come on back...I'll post on Facebook each time I finish a blog post so you can link to the blog that way as I go along... At this point, my mother was living in her apartment, but as the middle of the 1990s approached, she found out she had macular degeneration, and reading became impossible for her. She was never a television person, so David's mother suggested getting a tape recorder and books on tape from the Iowa Commission on the Blind, and Mother did that. I know that helped her pass the time, as her physical abilities grew less reliable. But, until she reached her 96th birthday, she was still able to cook, clean and stay alone. More on her life as we get to those years...
Later, folks...
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