Ehlana and Ethan:
Happy 3rd Anniversary, Anna Marie and Calvin Jennings!
We are not missing out on any major adventures back at home today as they get a mix of sun and showers, but it was definitely warmer there compared to Glacier National Park – especially up in the mountains! Our adventures were more-extreme too – though Cassie wouldn’t let us use time phasing for a climb to any of the mountain summits; so we had to settle for the more-normal day-trip tours and sightseeing. We would have enjoyed the warmer weather in Revelstoke today, since we know that it reached the mid-eighties there while we were admiring the glaciers and mountains in the much-cooler park, but our experiences in the Rockies continue to amaze and impress us.
After Tai Chi and breakfast, we drove up to the park valley, and that sounds funny, but that was up from a lower valley to a higher one – by around eighteen-hundred feet from Revelstoke. The tallest mountain in the park rises to over eleven-thousand feet; so the park valley at around thirty-three hundred feet feels low by comparison when there!
There isn’t really any way for us to write about the awesomeness of experiencing the majesty of the natural wonders we saw and walked around today, and the best part of everything was getting to share it all with Cassie, Michael, and our four best friends. It is so much more than sight when you can touch the rocks and ice; feel the little changes in the weather that happen because of the interactions with the extreme terrain from valleys to mountain tops. While we missed the warmer weather in Revelstoke, the much cooler highs in the park that only reached the sixties was balmy compared to the higher altitudes. Yes, that is obvious, since glaciers – and snowmen – don’t do well very far above freezing, but we also got to see amazing icy-water flows from the summer melt cycle. We stayed and explored the park until late-afternoon; and then we headed out for our next stop – the small city of Salmon Arm in the Columbia-Shuswap district.
Let’s not make fun of any names we write about on this trip; and we’ll try to get the story behind that name while in Salmon Arm – though we’ll be very surprised if that story is as good as the one for our home town! We’re still on the way there; and this update is early because we have the time during the nearly two-hour drive from the park to our cabin rental. We don’t have any specific plans beyond dinner once there, but we’re okay with playing that by ear – and maybe even going with an early bedtime. We’ll let you know how that goes for us with the next update, but that’s enough for our own news of the day; so let’s cover a bit of world news and then wrap this up.
The western leaders and media pundits continue to yap about peace deals or destructive consequences if their ‘enemies’ don’t surrender; life on the ground in the Middle East and Ukraine continues to be horrific; and nobody can predict from hour-to-hour what President Trump will say next. While ‘we’ waste resources on war and the drive for power; China, India, and other emerging countries are generally more-focused on building their own countries, people, and partnerships – which is why the news from China includes a lot of tech milestones ranging from space programs to nano-tech leadership. There are only bad comparisons to our policies that are all about restricting trade and fear of competition. One of the recent stories for our efforts to restrict trade was related to optical tech in data centers, and our leaders are now apparently terrified that China might use optical devices to spy on our data centers if we buy them from Chinese companies! We’re not sure what exactly they are afraid of; since the zeros and ones inside storage drives are not visible to cameras! ;^)
On that silly note, we are going to end this; enjoy the rest of the drive to Salmon Arm that includes another drop in elevation of around two-thousand feet; and we’ll be back with our next update sometime tomorrow.
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
