Vacation and Floods

The flooding problem, which was such an issue in the trip I had up to Montana got a little clarified today, when my brother-in-law was at a family meal. When I was coming up to the state my family was reporting that there was sever flooding in Billings; they had seen on a news program pictures of a waterfall that had developed on the Rimrocks north of the city. The problem was the waterfall only was there for a few hours; it was the result of a flash storm. While there is a lot of moisture in the area, the problem is no where near the what my family felt it was. They were adding all of the situations together to come up with a false situation totally failing to recognize that some of the events were past and getting better.

Vacation and Gardening

My sisters and I were able to get a good part of our parents garden planted today ahead of the rains. Most of the seeds they wanted planted are in the soil; the only major thing that is not planted are the tomatoes, and it may be a little too cold for them yet.

Floods While on Vacation

­Eastern Montana is not known for its abundance of water. In fact the area has been in a drought for the past 10+ years, and has been struggling. However, so far this year they have received more rain already than they would expect in the entire year, and there is another storm coming to give them a couple of more inches. This has led to a lot of flooding. The Yellowstone is at near flooding all along its course. The problem with this is that the mountain snows have yet to melt. The water causing the melting at the moment is from rain; the snows have yet to start to come down. It sounds like all this could only be adding more water to the Missouri/Mississippi river system.

(BTW I am listening to it raining quit hard as I write this.)

Vacation

I made a trip to Montana in June. I grew up in Miles City, a town in the south-east corner of the state. My parents still live there. One of my sisters asked, if the siblings could help paint their house, and I went there to do that.

The first thing I experienced was the isolation of the place. I had just picked up my Droid phone, and was learning to use it. The problem in Miles City was the connection there was awful. The 3G connection at best was weak. (I really need to find where the towers are next time.) Also the were very few WiFi hot spots. There are no coffee shops that will let one have a free connection for a latte purchase. I did find a hot spot from a truck stop in the middle of the commercial road. However, I did not think the location was great for my uploads. Needless to say the AudioBoos that I had planned to post all went to hyper-space before I could post them.

The painting went well. The house is about 75% done. The high and heavy stuff was completed. The remaining work can be completed during the rest of the summer.

The Family was its usual. I have always liked the fact that I was 500 miles away from them. I did not drive, so the situation was easy to maintain. Now I have a sister in Denver, and I need to make a visit annually. A week long visit is really too long; it should be limited to a couple of the days.

Now my mother was in her usual form. This is woman, who has never seen a magazine that does not need to be saved. Her response to people noting that the piles are getting over her head is to put some in a paper bags and placing them in the front bedroom. Now there two things that keep this from getting out of hand: 1) she is only 5'2", and the piles never get so tall to hurt someone when they fell over, and 2) bags have mysteriously disappeared from the front bedroom.

She also is a person who must date all food products. Now there is no follow through with the dating. She does not throw ANYTHING out when it is outdated. (There was a four year old turkey discovered in her freezer, when it died last winter. The elves got to it.) She tried to serve some pickles that were very soft; they were 8 years old. Garbage.

My father was a different matter. He has started to go down hill some. He was diagnosed a couple years ago with Parkinson's disease. He was over whelmed with the painting. The last time the house was painted, he did it basically by himself. He had a lot of tools that he wanted us to use. We were trying to get the job done as fast as we could, and were not really listening to him. Actually I think it is good that there are somethings left that he could help do.

Over all I am glad to be back in Denver. Next year?