My six-panel panorama of the lake in the morning (when it was indeed very Tranquil) did not turn out: not only was it partly overexposed, but I'd carelessly left a gap between two frames. autopano-sift can do amazing things: but only if you give it enough data to work with!
The hike, amazingly, did not leave me very sore, so I ran five miles in the midday, before feeling tight. I didn't quite make my goal of a 30-mile week, but WTF, with 26 it was double my average.
Mary's oldest brother James, his wife Aly and their family came over; we had a massive supper of home-cooked sausage/chicken gumbo and jambalaya. Their son Alexander just had his 1st birthday the week prior, where there was much cake and presents. He's just getting to the "da-da" speech stage and taking his first steps. Crawling around the living room, he discovered a shoe box on a low shelf. Curious, he opened it up; it was filled with receipts. He started taking out receipts, one by one, and setting them aside. I sat beside him and would grab a receipt, tell him "thank you" and collect them in a pile. This went on until the box was almost empty! We were joking that he'd be a banker or an accountant when he grows up....
My other nephew is Scott, who's a sophomore in high school; he's really into golf and skiiing. But I don't really do either, so on this day we set out to hike the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park. It was cloudy and cool mid-morning starting out from Logan Pass. A mountain goat casually strolled right by us on the trail. Clouds were rolling up and over Haystack Butte, and soon we were enveloped in the mist. Visibility dropped and it got colder, but we kept hiking, knowing that Granite Park Chalet wasn't too far ahead. At about the midpoint, rain turned to sleet, and I was soaked, and cold.
The stupidest thing I had done in packing for the trip was to purposefully skip taking waterproof pants, despite the fact that it would have been only a few more ounces. So there I was, hiking in soggy blue jeans, having to keep hiking to stay warm. At one point, rounding a corner, an intense wind nearly knocked us down. Scott shouted to be heard, "Should we keep going?" "Yeah!" I responded. We reached the chalet before too long. Many other hikers were taking refuge in the small dining hall. After a 30-minute break for lunch, we were back on the trail. The rain let up, and we blazed down to the Loop, ahead of our expected arrival time.
So it was mostly a slog; I'll have to do this trail again some other time when the (supposedly spectacular) views are not fogged over....
