The Long Trip to CA

For those of you who don't know, twice a year, we deliver grass fed/ grass finished bison (and this time beef and Icelandic lamb too) to wonderful people in Southern CA and then stay in our old stomping grounds of San Diego for couple of weeks.  This June, we left Kalispell in a downpour that had already lasted all night and most of the previous day.  We (well, not all of we, actually) loaded the rental truck, our trailer, and the Dunham fun bus with beef, bison and three weeks worth of our stuff in the pouring rain.  Super fun trip already, huh?  We headed out in the rain, got snowed on in Marias Pass, about blew over near Browning, and finally hit sun (and wind) in Valier. Welcome to MT.
After loading up the other 10 ½ beef still at the butcher's (cut and wrapped, of course) we blew into Butte, MT (pronounced byooooooot, but everyone affectionately calls it butt - who could resist?) for the night.  The drive between Valier and Helena is beautiful.  Josiah took these photos of Wolf Creek pass (I think that's where it is). Beautiful.  You probably can't tell in the photo above, but there are little white specks...that's snow blowing sideways.  Then, below, look how sunny it is. Crazy? Yes.

Day 2 we drove from Butte to Cedar City, UT, and then after day three on the road (there are no good photos between southern Utah and our destination unless you like cactus, shrubs, and billboards that I won't let my boys look at) we arrived at "the resort" - the home of our good friends the B's.  More on that later. 

Carlsbad Flower Fields

We went to watch the Curles' Girls play in a Sonata festival on Saturday. It was a great afternoon of music and just happened to be across the street from the Carlsbad flower fields.

$1 Taco Tuesday

Have I mentioned that the thing we miss the most about San Diego is the Mexican food (well, other than our friends, of course!)? Shallow, aren't we? We lived there for many years and we miss the food (and Trader Joe's and Henry's, but those are food related as well. Hm.). We went to $1 Taco Tuesday at On the Border....the whole lot of us, except Wayne who always seems to be out of town the majority of the time that we are in SD. My husband is certain that Mr. Curles does it on purpose just to leave Brad with 11 children and the almost equivalent of 2 wives.....poor guy. Now, I know that On The Border isn't real REAL Mexican food, but we take what we can get - remember, we live in Montana. Anyone out there that is looking for a great investment ought to open a taco stand here in Montana. You know, a Roberto's/Aliberto's/Jaliberto's because almost everyone who lives in Montana is from California and we all miss the Mexican food - and the salsa.

Beach, glorious beach

We Dunhams LOVE the beach. I know you think that sounds crazy since we now live in MT, but that's just how it is. We LOVE the beach and we used to spend a lot of time there when we lived in San Diego. Since the great outdoors here in Montana is spectacular and there are so many things to do in each season, we haven't really had a chance to miss it - until now. On Memorial Day, we were planning on a full day at Torrey Pines. We go there with the Curles on holidays. Before we started joining them on these holidays, we thought they were out of their minds (because they went on Saturdays and holidays). We LIVED in SD and didn't need to experience the beach on days when 300,000 other people would be joining us. We were smart; we went on weekdays instead. One 4th of July we decided to join them (against our better judgement). We had to eat humble pie; down at that far, south end of Torrey Pines there is nowhere to park except for the pay parking lot and when it is full - you are out of luck: no streets to park on and walk from, no nearby neighborhood, nothing - just big, tall cliffs. Limited parking changes things. The crowd was like a regular weekday at the beach. We were amazed. Hence began our holiday beach days with the Curles. Just as a side note - the Curles, one day, tried out La Jolla Shores on a Saturday and disgustingly left after a very short stay because it was so overwhelmingly crowded. They then realized why we thought they were nuts all those years - we thought that's what they were doing every weekend!!!! Anyway, I am sooo off track.

Back to the beach on Memorial Day THIS year. We woke up to a cloudy and awful day. We decided that regardless of the weather, this was our one beach day and at around 1pm we were heading out with swimsuits on to freeze, take a quick walk on the beach and head home. As we neared the coast we became so thankful that we had come. It never did clear up inland, but it was the most sunny, beautiful beach day we had seen in a long time. It was so clear, that both La Jolla to the south and Carlsbad to the north were perfectly visible. The water was lovely and there was NO crowd probably because everyone, like us, thought it was surely cloudy on the coast. It was even a great shell collecting day which is rarely the case. What a day. Days like that make me wonder how we will ever live without it - the waves, the sand, the unmistakable smell of the ocean - deliciously lovely. I felt like God made that glorious day just for us - now that is terribly self centered and I know that He had many reasons (non-ME related) for unravelling that day as He did. I was just glad that He chose to bless us so thoroughly with it.