T-Minus One Month

Today marks the one month till departure from Colorado date. For me anyway.

Crow Reservation Trip [Day 4-5: Thursday & Friday]

Thursday, the final day, we ran the kids program, and there was a community barbeque (which my group was responsible for preparing for) at night. Not much to say, another tiring day.

Friday we woke up early, took final pictures, and departed from Montana.

the staff on site

We headed towards Heart Mountain, the location of a WWII Japanese American internment camp, and arrived in the late afternoon. We did the walking tour, found our way through cracked concrete, underground tunnels into barred up buildings, saw geckos, mice, spiders.

the big rock on the top supposedly comes from a volcanic eruption, thrown through the air, many many years ago

That night we spent the evening in Cody, and some of us (myself included) went to see War of the Worlds. I had my expectations too high. We then went back to sleep at the huge house of a kind woman. Well… before sleep, some of us found the hot tub, so sleep was put off quite some time.

Crow Reservation Trip [Day 3: Wednesday]

The groups switched task assignments on this day. Now my group would be with others to run a children’s day program. All the parts were listen, and volunteers were called for. I was holding out to be a later thing, but instead got drafted to join the skits group. I’m really not the most drama oriented person, so needless to say, the skit turned out pretty… interesting.

Anyway, the kids were wild. They all wanted ‘piggy-bank’ rides, all the time. Then running, running, running. It was pretty tiresome, but I think everyone had a good time.

That night there were rumors going around that we were all going to go on a hike. I was all for it, but some people were groaning about it. It ends up that we all just got a lot of free time. We filled it by just doing quite random stuff, including going down to the IGA and browsing around.

left to right: Janna, Daniel, Emily

This whole trip, we had been on the look for fireworks, but really never got the opportunity to buy any, due to the company that we were keeping, and even with this free time, we couldn’t find a vendor.

iThink so too

iPod Flea. Fancy town!

Crow Reservation Trip [Day 2: Tuesday]

Similar to the day before, we went out to paint. This time it was a trailer type thing, with aluminum siding, as well as a home-made particleboard deck. Unlike the one from yesterday, we had to start from the complete beginning, washing, wiping, scraping; the works.

It was a bit hotter, so it was tiring working out in the sun, but since we finished the place, it was well worth it. During our work there, the boy of the owner of the house, named Robert, was “helping” us. He got quite a bit of paint on himself, got us into playing tag with him, and after he resorted to kicking, punching, hitting with broomsticks, and spitting, we carried him indoors.

That night, we all went to the battlefield where we saw the memorial to Custer’s Last Stand. Someone mentioned it would be fun driving an ATV around in there. I don’t disagree.

Interesting story though, Custer was very idiotic, either that or suicidal, which could have justified quite a lot. Solid theories historians have, both. Lots of gravestones. We will miss you Unknown Soldier 14th Regiment.

Crow Reservation Trip [Day 1: Monday]

Actually, during our stay and work, I took pictures on a disposable camera, so I don’t have that many to show. I still need to get them from other people and maybe scan some in.

We were split up into groups, and each group had a different job cycle. Our group was to do house painting for the first two days.

On the first day, my group got all our supplies and went to a two story house, and painted it gray with brown trim. The ladders were a little rickety, and the water tap kept spraying out before the actual spout, but it was all manageable.

There were some kids playing in the yard. They were playing with fireworks. I guess this was the 4th, so it’s not totally random. They’d be lighting firecrackers in their hands, priming them like grenades, and then throwing them so that they popped in midair. (I learned how to do this from them by watching, and tried it out myself later.) They had a few bottle rockets too, and were trying the same thing, lighting them, holding them, and then throwing them. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out as well.

It’s sort of interesting, the American Indians celebrating Independence Day, when they lost theirs to another people who gained it from another. Oh well. Party on.

That night we went to a Pow-Wow on the Reservation, and saw another homebrew fireworks show as well. It was pretty interesting. Seemed like the Pow-Wow was just a community gathering; there were announcements of individuals from each family, and they would go dance around the center circle. At one point, the announcer said anyone could go in, so some people and I went in for a short time.

On the Road to Crow Reservation, Montana [Day 0: Sunday]

One of the parts of the trip which I cannot fail to mention is simply the time in the car, riding to, from, and around. There was some argument over who rode in which vehicle, but we found seats one way or another.

We each got care packages for the ride, including knickknacks, candy, disposable cameras, and more of the like. Among them were tongue tattoo fruit roll-ups. Those were a bit novel.

left to right: Dionette, Melissa, Steffani

Larva! I need to find a picture of this raccoon, I failed to take a picture with my digital camera. It was a plastic toy I found in my bag, which became a semi-mascot for the trip.

I hastily had made a few mixed CDs the night before, so that helped to pass the time. Everything from Metal to Emo. We also wrote some ‘continue the stories.’ Some of them turned out minorly amusing, but more made for the creation of yet more inside jokes.

not whole lot of amazing scenery this trip.. ehh, expansive majestic?

After we arrived after a 9 hour drive, we unloaded our stuff into the church at which we would be staying and sleeping. We had some free time, so we went to the gym and just messed around with games and talking. I learned how to play ‘lightsabres.’ It’s a rather novel idea.

There was a gathering, going over ground rules (red+blue=purple!) as well as some other things, pretty straightforward, all the social awareness bits about the community. (Don’t touch any animals, might give you mange.)

We unrolled our sleeping bags, and went to sleep on the floor.

And that's how the bird died

Sorry, I've been busy lately. Enjoyed a semi-annual trip with some of my best friends. This year it was a couple days worth of dirtbiking (In the mud, too, risky business), and then on to Bailey where we explored a few valleys and four-wheel drive trails, roasted marshmallows, and slept under the stars. One of the two legal drivers had to go home to work sunday evening, so the ride home on monday was interesting. An erratic woman was left to drive five kids and a dog plus coolers, clothes, two guitars, and a random assortment of other goods home in an Isuzu which was meant to seat four people and a driver. The pile of stuff in back kept falling over in heaps on top of the dog, but we made it home mostly fine otherwise. Time well spent, in my opinion. I'll have pictures sometime. Maybe I'll wait until Shigeki gets back and bombard you all with retellings of summer-time adventures. Fun, ne?