June-July 2016: Our National Parks Tour

For several years, we have been trying to get to Glacier National Park. We had planned trips there in 2008 and 2013, but life intervened and we didn't make it in either year. We were hopeful that we would have better luck this year, especially since 2016 marks both our 40th wedding anniversary and the 50th year since our high school graduation.

Our 2013 trip to Glacier had been planned with our friends Mike and Mary from South Carolina, and they did make it to the park that year. After we picked our Glacier dates this year, they said that they would be visiting Yosemite National Park a few days ahead of our Glacier arrival. We said, "we'll meet you there."

We also knew that after Glacier, we wanted to visit friends in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, who we had gotten to know during our summer of working in the Tetons in 2008.

Our eight-night visit to Glacier had soon expanded into a three-week "National Parks tour" that would start at Yosemite, extend south to Santa Barbara so that we would have a good excuse to ride Amtrak's Coast Starlight to Portland and the Empire Builder on to Glacier, and wrap up with one night in Yellowstone, two in Grand Teton, and a final night in Livingston, Montana.

Mike and Mary arrived at Yosemite a couple of days ahead of us, and spent those two days in the park's hub, Yosemite Valley. We suggested that for the next two days, when all four of us would be there, we should stay in Wawona, at the south end of the park. It's much less busy than the valley, and since the first time we visited Yosemite in 1990, we have been charmed by the Wawona Hotel, built in 1876, and reminiscent of 19th-century lodges in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Many of the hotel's rooms don't have private baths, none have air conditioning, and wi-fi is available only in one public room. But while it lacks certain amenities, it more than compensates with history, atmosphere, and a great setting among towering ponderosa pines. Temporarily – we hope – it's known as "Big Trees Lodge" thanks to a legal dispute between the National Park Service and the former Yosemite concessionaire, Delaware North, but we will always call it by its original name.

(Click on any photo to enlarge. All photos © 2016 Tom and Marcia Murray)

We spent the weekend with Mike and Mary visiting a nearby tourist railroad (Mike and Tom had worked together at CSX, and both are serious rail enthusiasts)...

... exploring the area within a couple of miles of Wawona, listening to pianist Tom Bopp perform in the hotel's lounge, and taking advantage of the Adirondack chairs on the lawn of the hotel.

Marcia had injured her right foot over Memorial Day weekend, and had been wearing a "moon boot" for three weeks before we arrived, so we requested a room that would be accessible without climbing stairs. We were grateful that one was available in the Annex, a separate building from the main lodge. The bathroom was only a few steps away, and the room worked well for us. The picture below shows the Annex at dusk.

Staying at Wawona turned out to be a good choice. We had made our reservations months earlier, but about a week before our arrival it was announced that President Obama and his family would be spending this weekend at Yosemite. As we expected, the presidential entourage stuck mostly to the valley, and didn't venture anywhere near Wawona. We got lucky.

From Yosemite, we drove south across the Central Valley in 103-degree heat to Santa Maria, where we had lived from 2007 to 2014 (and where it was, thankfully, much cooler, being only a few miles from the ocean). We stayed overnight with our friends Mary Lou and Jerry, who provided us not only with comfortable lodging, but with excellent food and beverages and a nice evening of conversation.

From Santa Maria, we continued south along U.S. 101 to Santa Barbara, where we stayed at a Hyatt hotel across the road from the beach. It was quite a contrast with the Wawona.

When we started planning the trip, we had contacted our friends Betsy and Viktor in Culver City, near Los Angeles, and asked if they would like to meet us in Santa Barbara. We went to high school with Betsy. She and Viktor had spent their careers in teaching and research at southern California universities. We had connected with them before we left Santa Maria, and this was only the second time we had seen Betsy since our 1966 graduation. 

After they arrived from L.A., we went to lunch at a waterfront restaurant with a view of the small boat harbor and, once the fog lifted, the Santa Ynez Mountains.

After lunch we found our way to a nearby hotel lobby where we spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on travel experiences, family news, and many other topics.

The next day, we boarded Amtrak's Los Angeles-Seattle Coast Starlight, which we would use to get to Portland. We had accumulated enough points in the Amtrak Guest Rewards program to get a bedroom for each night of our two-day rail trip from Santa Barbara to Glacier.

After leaving Santa Barbara, our train cruised along the California coast for two hours, and by late afternoon we were headed inland, climbing Cuesta Grade in the hills north of San Luis Obispo.

Overnight, our train progressed from Oakland to Sacramento and north through the Sacramento River Valley. By breakfast time, we were in Oregon, and between Klamath Falls and Eugene we crossed the Cascade Range. Around 3:30 pm, we arrived in Portland.

About an hour later, we departed on the Portland section of the Empire Builder. Overnight, at Spokane, our four cars would be attached to the main section of the train, which runs from Seattle to Chicago. Traveling on that train were Mike and Mary, homeward bound via Chicago and New Orleans, after a drive up the coast of Oregon and Washington. As we were boarding the train in Portland, they were doing likewise 185 miles to the north in Seattle.

It was cloudy leaving Portland, but as we progressed along the Washington side of the Columbia River, the sky cleared, and about 90 minutes after our departure we got a nice view of cloud-shrouded Mount Hood across the river in Oregon.

At one point we saw some kiteboarders taking advantage of the winds in the river gorge.

Around 7:30 the next morning, while the train was stopped for servicing in Whitefish, Montana, we met Mike and Mary on the station platform and walked to the dining car for breakfast. We spent the next couple of hours enjoying the scenery, as our train wound around the southern edge of Glacier National Park. At about 10:00 am, we said goodbye to them as we left the train at the Glacier Park station, in the town of East Glacier Park.

We were picked up by a bellman driving this 1967 Checker Aerobus for the one-minute trip from the Amtrak station...

... to Glacier Park Lodge, which lies just outside the park, on the Blackfeet Reservation. The land occupied by the park had at one time been home to various tribes, of which the Blackfeet was the largest.

The lodge would be our base for our first two days at Glacier. Staying at this historic property made for a good introduction to the park and its history. 

Glacier became the country's tenth national park in 1910. The Great Northern Railway had been completed from St. Paul to Seattle in 1893, and the company's management saw the new park as a business opportunity, which it cultivated by building several lodges within and around the park. Glacier Park Lodge (originally Glacier Park Hotel) opened in 1913, and served as the main entry point to the park for the thousands of tourists who arrived each summer from the east via the Great Northern.

The lodge has a dramatic lobby featuring the trunks of 60 Douglas fir trees, each of them at least three feet in diameter.

Glacier National Park’s road network is different from those of other major parks we've visited. Most of them have roads that can be used to travel between major points, without ever leaving the park. Glacier has only one route that crosses the park: Going-to-the-Sun Road, between St. Mary in the east and Lake McDonald in the west. However, its value as a through route is limited by its many twists and turns, and by the congestion around many of its most popular viewpoints.

So, to get from point to point within Glacier, we often had to leave the park. Some of the roads we used provided good opportunities to see Glacier's major features from its perimeter, but aside from hiking (which was not an option for Marcia) how else could we see the park's scenery?

One answer was: by boat. Fortunately, Glacier has many alpine lakes, and a long-time concessionaire, Glacier Park Boat Company, operates cruises on several of them. Taking these boat trips proved to be a good way to see the mountain scenery without having to watch out for distracted drivers in the opposite lane. The mountains are so close from the boats that you can see much more detail in the rock formations and plant life than you can from the roads. They also give hikers a way of reaching trails that are not directly accessed by park roads.

On our first full day in the park, we made the short drive from the lodge to the Two Medicine Lake boat dock and bought tickets for the 45-minute cruise on the 49-passenger Sinopah, built in 1926. 

Leaving Glacier Park Lodge, we drove north to St. Mary, a major gateway on the east side of the park, and the east end of Going-to-the Sun Road. Along the way, we stopped on U.S. Highway 89 for this view of several peaks along the park's eastern edge.

We re-entered the park on Going-to-the-Sun Road, and drove a few miles to Rising Sun. There, we took another boat trip, on St. Mary Lake. In this view, the Lewis Range can be seen on the southwest side of the lake from the Rising Sun boat dock.

The trip provided great views of several major peaks on the east side of the park, including Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, which rises more than 5,000 feet above the 4,484-foot elevation of the lake. The mountain was named by an early hunting guide in the 1880s, who claimed that the name was derived from a Blackfeet legend.

The park's mountains and the valleys between them were shaped by enormous glaciers during the Ice Age that ended roughly 12,000 years ago. The glaciers that exist today are much smaller, sometimes appearing much like snow fields. Most of them can't be seen from the park's roads.

One writer described the park's glacial heritage this way: "It should have been called 'Glaciated Park,' because this is a poor place to see modern glaciers, and an excellent place to see mountains sculpted by the great ice-age glaciers." In fact, the Park Service estimates that given the rapid shrinkage of the park's remaining glaciers, Glacier will be glacier-free by 2030.

From Rising Sun we turned north again, toward the Many Glacier area of the park. As we approached our destination, Lake Sherburne came into view, showing the beautiful blue water that is typical of lakes in the park. The aqua color is a result of glacial flour, which is created by the grinding of glaciers on bedrock.

As we got closer to Many Glacier we stopped to enjoy the wildflowers along the side of the road near Swiftcurrent Ridge.

Soon, we arrived at Many Glacier Hotel, another of the properties constructed by the Great Northern Railway. Opened in 1915, it hugs the shoreline of Swiftcurrent Lake. In this view, Allen Mountain (9376 feet) rises behind the hotel.

We had a lakeside room, and in the morning, before the water had been disturbed by wind or boats, we saw this mirror image of Swiftcurrent Mountain and Mount Wilbur on the lake's surface.

It's hard to imagine a more beautiful setting for a lodge, and we're very glad to have spent a couple of nights at Many Glacier. Unfortunately, the 214-room hotel – the largest in the park – was undergoing a major renovation and seismic retrofit while we were there, so about half of its guest rooms and several of its public spaces, including a lobby whose scale equals or exceeds that of Glacier Park Lodge, were closed. We'll just have to go back again to see the rest of the property.

One of the park's boat trips starts from a dock behind the Many Glacier Hotel. The Chief Two Guns operates to the west side of Swiftcurrent Lake, where passengers can hike a short trail to Lake Josephine, which has its own boat.

On our first morning at Many Glacier, Tom took a walk on Swiftcurrent Lake Trail, which provided some great views of the surrounding mountains and other features. In this photo, the Chief Two Guns is making its first trip of the day, and the morning sun is falling on the Ptarmigan Wall beyond the lake.

From the same spot, a slight change of angle provides a view of Mount Gould (9531 ft), at left in this image. To the right of Gould (directly above the stern of the boat) is Gem Glacier – the park's smallest named glacier. 

Tom's walk along Swiftcurrent Lake Trail also provided the opportunity to see beargrass in several locations. This plant, which goes by different names in other parts of the Pacific Northwest, features hundreds of tiny white flowers in a cluster two or more inches in diameter. They can grow to be five feet tall. Apparently it blossoms only in years when climate and other conditions are right. Even though most of the beargrass plants we saw were past their peak, they were still beautiful.

While we were at Many Glacier, we got to experience some of the camaraderie of seasonal park workers, in the form of an evening hootenanny featuring workers from the lodge and the boat company, and even one park ranger. There was a range of musical abilities from fair to quite good, but everyone treated each other with respect and appreciation. It was great fun.

The beauty of the Glacier region doesn't stop at the border between the United States and Canada. In fact, Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta became Canada's fourth national park in 1895, 15 years before Glacier achieved that status.

In 1932, the two parks were brought together as Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park; the combined entity is also designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Of our eight nights in Waterton-Glacier, we spent six in Glacier and two in Waterton Lakes, crossing the border at the Chief Mountain border station.

Our destination was the Prince of Wales Hotel, opened in 1927 by the Great Northern Railway. Driving toward the town of Waterton, the hotel is dwarfed by Bertha Peak and the surrounding mountains.

Close up, it seems much larger. Its guest rooms are located on floors two through six, however the manually-operated elevator goes only to the fourth (the rooms on the fifth and sixth floors were originally set aside for employees). In order to summon the elevator, the guest rings the buzzer one, two, three or four times to let the operator know which floor needs service. One bellman told us that the elevator is the second oldest one in Canada.

Apparently it's almost always windy here, so much so that the hotel's top floors vibrate on many days out of the year, but we were there during a period of mild weather so we didn't get to enjoy that phenomenon.

When we arrived at the Prince of Wales, we were greeted by a bellman in a Royal Stewart kilt; we were told the Queen had to give her permission for the tartan to be worn by the staff. As we unloaded our luggage we could hear the pianist at the hotel's afternoon tea service playing the theme from "Downton Abbey." It seemed appropriate.

We got one of the former employee rooms on the fifth floor. We were fine with the fact that it was tiny, but we were a little less happy that it seemed to take several minutes for warm water to reach the shower head. And, when we checked in, there was a sign at the front desk saying that due to "technical problems" (rumored to be a refrigerator failure in the kitchen), the dining room would be closed that evening. But those are the risks of staying in historic hotels.

Whatever issues there may have been, they were offset by the hotel's great location, on a bluff overlooking the Waterton Lakes and the town. The view below is from the top of a popular trail called the "Bear's Hump" that provides a sweeping view of the Waterton area. The hotel is at center left.

Upper Waterton Lake is the largest of the area's three major lakes, and it extends southward from the town of Waterton into Montana.

Since we wouldn't be eating dinner at the hotel, we decided to explore the area to see what other options were available.

Entering the town of Waterton, we were surprised to see a family of bighorn sheep walking along the side of the road...

... seemingly unfazed by the vehicles (and people) all around them.

Waterton is a resort community with an official population figure of 88 that attracts thousands of summertime visitors. There's a very nicely-equipped playground in the center of town to serve the needs of visiting families, but they have to compete for space with the local mule deer.

One of the town's biggest tourist attractions is the 165-passenger M.V. International, a 1927 cruise vessel that makes several trips each day to the south end of Upper Waterton Lake, at Goat Haunt, Montana.

We took the cruise on our one full day in Waterton and were fortunate to have a great day for the trip. Soon after leaving Waterton, we passed the international boundary, which is cleared of new growth each summer...

... and is marked by two pylons on each side of the lake.

One of the most interesting features that we viewed during the trip was the Citadel Peaks, part of a much larger formation known as Porcupine Ridge.

At Goat Haunt, the International docked for about half an hour to allow passengers to walk the few hundred feet to the U.S. entrance station, manned by agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. A National Park Service ranger was also there to provide a guided hike for those passengers who chose to do so.

Some people brought their passports so that they could pass the entrance station and go on hikes in the area, but we reboarded the boat to return to Waterton.

As we approached Waterton we had this view of the Prince of Wales, with Mount Crandell to the left.

After we returned, Tom took his hike on the Bear's Hump trail on Mount Crandell, and we finished the afternoon with a drive from Waterton to Red Rock Canyon, where people were splashing around in the water coming down through the colorful rocks. We were surprised by the absence of fences, warning signs, etc., but then we figured, "hey, we're in Canada, where the people are always well-behaved." Well, maybe not always, but most of time.

We had decided that, when we got back to Glacier after visiting the Waterton area, we would take a Red Bus Tour to see the Going-to-the-Sun Road – actually, two of them, one to cover the east side of the park (from St. Mary to Logan Pass) and a second one the next day to see the west side from Lake McDonald to the pass.

The red buses are an iconic feature of the park, dating to their introduction in 1936. Today there are 33 of them in service. Each one holds up to 17 people. The canvas roof can be rolled back, as shown in the image below, to allow passengers to get a better view of the scenery...

 

...and to pop up for photos when the bus is stopped.

The Red Bus Tours provide a great way to see and learn about the park's major geological and other features. One of the first stops on our east side tour was at a viewpoint where we could view Jackson and Blackfoot glaciers. An interpretive sign noted that of the estimated 150 glaciers present in the park in 1850, only about 25 remain.

When we got to Logan Pass (elevation 6,646 feet) we could look to the east, in the direction of Going-to-the-Sun Mountain, and see how the earlier glaciers in this region – the massive ones that actually shaped the park – had formed a U-shaped valley between the mountains.

We were at Logan Pass on July 1. Portions of Going-to-the-Sun Road can receive upwards of 80 feet of winter snowfall, and road-clearing operations normally begin by early April. This year, the road had fully opened two weeks before our arrival. The Park Service has posted photos of the 2016 spring plowing operation in this album. In one recent year (2011) the road didn't open until July 13.

Although the roadway was clear, there was still plenty of snow around the base of Mount Clements, just west of the pass.

We took our second red bus tour the next day, from Lake McDonald Lodge on the west side of the park.

The west side is very different in character from the east side. On the east side, there are trees and other vegetation, but the overwhelming impression is of exposed rock. The west side receives more moisture, so it is greener, and its creeks and waterfalls seemed much fuller. Here, for example, is McDonald Creek, rushing toward Lake McDonald. Like the east side lakes and streams, it gets its distinctive color from the presence of glacial flour.

For our west side red bus tour, we had a much less experienced driver (about two weeks of experience, versus 10-plus years for the east side tour) and a cloudy day, giving way to rain on our return trip, unlike the bright sun of the previous day. But it was still worth the time, providing vistas like this one of (from left right) Mount Oberlin, Clements Mountain and Birdwoman Falls, and Mount Cannon.

We were both surprised at the topography on this side: the road seem steeper than on the east side, with tighter clearances ("fold in your mirrors, you RV drivers!"), and steep drop-offs with 18-inch stone walls as guardrails.

Although Lake McDonald Lodge was constructed during the same period as Glacier Park Lodge and Many Glacier Hotel, it was not built by Great Northern. Instead, it was the project of a local businessman and his wife who owned an earlier hotel on the same site. After the creation of Glacier National Park in 1910, they decided to build a lodge that could compete with the railway's hotels. Lake McDonald Lodge opened in June 1914. Great Northern bought the hotel in 1930.

Today, guests arrive at the Lodge via Going-to-the-Sun Road. However, in 1914 the road didn't exist and until 1922, guests arrived by boat. That's why the view from the lake shore shown below – of what is considered the rear of the building today – was the side that visitors first saw when they arrived during those early years. 

The public areas of Lake McDonald Lodge are illuminated with hanging lanterns decorated with Native American pictographs. We asked the concierge about their history, and all she was able to tell us was that they had previously hung in the Prince of Wales Hotel. Whatever their origin, they gave the interior of the lodge a unique and appealing look.

Before leaving the Glacier area, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention one other place where we stayed: Glacier Guides Lodge in West Glacier.

We had tried to book a night at nearby Belton Chalet, a historic railroad-built property, but it wasn't available on the night we needed. Glacier Guides Lodge (part of a local ecotourism company) had good online reviews. It was a very warm day when we arrived at West Glacier, so we were very grateful for the lodge's air conditioning and other amenities, including the excellent locally-made breakfast breads.

Our next stop was Roosevelt, on the northeast side of Yellowstone National Park. For the past five years, we've spent a month in Yellowstone each winter, volunteering at the National Park Service Heritage and Research Center in Gardiner, Montana.

When we went through the entrance station at Gardiner on this trip, we were expecting big crowds but we only had one vehicle ahead of us. By the time we had traveled another ten minutes to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, we had a more realistic idea of how different Yellowstone is in the summertime. There were people and cars everywhere. On the way from Mammoth to Roosevelt, we got caught in a bear jam. There was a cinnamon-colored black bear that kept wandering around on a hillside within sight of the road; people just stopped their cars and watched for as long as they wanted, oblivious to those behind them. From now on, we'll be even more appreciative of how quiet the park is during the winter.

Roosevelt Lodge is a historic property, but very different from the grand lodges we had stayed in at Glacier. Teddy Roosevelt had camped near here during a trip to Yellowstone in 1903. Three years later an early park concessionaire established a tent camp here to serve the budget-oriented tourist market. 

Today, Roosevelt consists of a main lodge building with a dining room, which opened in 1920...

... as well as 80 cabins, some with private baths, and some without. We had one of the latter, which are marketed as Roughrider Cabins. Here's Marcia sitting outside our small, wood-stove-heated cabin.

Much of Roosevelt's appeal lies in its location, near park attractions such as the Lamar Valley (a beautiful area popular with tourists hoping to see wolves and other wildlife), Tower Falls, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. And, as Xanterra, the current concessionaire, notes on its Yellowstone web site, Roosevelt's "large corral operation offers horseback trail rides, stagecoach adventures and our popular Old West Dinner Cookout, where the steaks are tender, the wranglers are friendly, and the scenery is breathtaking."

We had an excellent dinner in the lodge dining room, but since we arrived late and left early the following morning, we didn't have an opportunity to take advantage of all Roosevelt has to offer. The scenery was certainly pleasant enough just sitting on our porch...

... especially as the sun set around eight thirty.

While we were at Roosevelt, we caught up with our friend Mike, who is in his second season of managing this site for Xanterra. Tom had worked with Mike during our 2008 summer of seasonal employment at Grand Teton National Park. One of the enjoyable things about seasonal work is that you never know where your friends are going to turn up from one summer to the next.

During our summer at Grand Teton we had spent many of our weekends (which luckily fell midweek, when there were fewer tourists around) exploring Yellowstone. From Roosevelt we drove south along the east side of the park, stopping at a few of the spots that we remembered from that summer, including the Calcite Springs overlook above the Yellowstone River, with a view northeast toward Lamar Valley...

... the basalt columns along the cliffs lining the river just south of Calcite Springs...

... and, just opposite the view above, the Overhanging Cliff, where the only way of building the road was to undercut this gigantic mass of basalt.

We also stopped to enjoy the wildflowers at Dunraven Pass (8873 feet above sea level)...

... and at the Mud Volcano geothermal area, where the Churning Caldron feature provided plenty of visual and sonic entertainment.

We stopped for lunch at one of our favorite places in the park, the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, which happened to have one of Yellowstone's historic yellow buses out front. These are of similar vintage to Glacier's red buses.

One thing that surprised us about our visit to Yellowstone was how few bison we saw – about a dozen over parts of three days. We know that there were thousands of bison in the park – they just didn't happen to be in the same places that we were. We've been fortunate to see plenty of bison both during the summer of 2008 and on our winter volunteer trips to the park over the past five years, but we did feel badly for any tourist who might be making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the park and had an experience similar to ours.

We spent the next two nights in Grand Teton National Park, in a roomy, well-lit, private-bath cabin with three chairs and a desk at Colter Bay Village. According to the information posted inside, this cabin had been built around 1922 on the present site of Jackson Lake Lodge, about five miles to the south.

When the lodge was built in the 1950s, this and other cabins were trucked to Colter Bay, on the shores of Jackson Lake, where they continue to meet the needs of park visitors.

 

Our first priority was to reconnect with our friends Rosanna (who Tom had worked with at Jenny Lake Lodge) and Pat (a colleague of Marcia's from Jackson Lake Lodge). We had dinner with each of them on separate nights and enjoyed catching up on people and events of this and past summers.

During our one full day in Grand Teton we revisited our old stomping grounds, including the lobby of Jackson Lake Lodge, with its jaw-dropping view of the Tetons...

... Jenny Lake Lodge, where Tom was careful to note the condition of the hanging flower baskets outside the main lodge building (which had been one of his responsibilities during the summer of 2008)...

... as well as the Chapel of the Transfiguration, built in 1925, which continues to provide regular Sunday services for its Episcopal congregation.

We really enjoyed seeing the Tetons again. In our experience, there is no mountain range anything like them. They rise thousands of feet from the floor of Jackson Hole, with no foothills or other intervening features. They come as close to being magical as any mountains we can think of, and this was a great way to wrap up our national parks tour.

Our last night was in Livingston, where Tom was eager to see an exhibit, "Rails Across the Rockies" at the Livingston Depot Center. For the past five years, we've spent a lot of time in Livingston during our Yellowstone trips, but the Depot Center is closed (except for special events) during the winter season. So, he was finally able to get inside and see this exhibit, focused on the history, operations and people of Northern Pacific Railway in the Livingston area.

If you look closely at the photo below, you may notice that the Depot Center just happens to be located across the street from Livingston's Murray Hotel.

The next day, we dropped off our rental car at the airport in Bozeman, less than an hour west of Livingston, and boarded an Alaska Airlines flight for Seattle, connecting to another Alaska flight into Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa. We knew we were back in wine country when we saw the shadow of our plane in the vineyards just north of the airport.

We weren't quite sure how we would get home – taxi or Uber? – until we got into the terminal and found our son Ricky waiting for us. We flew home two days before the date of our 40th anniversary, and to help us celebrate, Ricky had flown in that morning from Washington, D.C., where he lives. Two days later, on our anniversary, he and his sister Lindy would take us on a chauffeured tour of four of Sonoma County's best wineries. But in the meantime, the emotion of coming home to find him waiting for us at the airport was a great way to end a wonderful trip.

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