Courageous Joy

FRIDAY - AUGUST 4th - DAY TWO

Can you believe we got another bright and early start out of CO? Yep - up at 4:30 a.m. and on the road by 5. Ken, Lynn and Matt even got up to see us off - though we tried really hard to be quiet. We took the time to fuel up - and take a picture and headed down the road. Our goal: Hardin, MT.

Highlights: more cows, wheat fields now, open praires, mountains, Bikers EVERYWHERE - more today than yesterday as we neared the turnoff from CO/NM to Sturgis....and lots coming FROM MT on the opposite side of the freeway.

Somwhere along the line I said "and on the left we have cows"...Zander was evidently getting a bit frustrated with the predictablity of my comments....a few minutes later he said "And on the left we have...RHINOS and a LION!"......

Jamin had expressed an interest in seeing "The Little BigHorn Battlefield" - "Custer's Last Stand". We'd studied the westward expanision and the whole resettlement issue of the Indians this year in school. Don't you love homeschooling? All of a life can be a field trip! We found ourselves arriving in Hardin at a decent hour so we stopped at the battlefield. This led to some interesting discussion of Mike and the boys for the rest of the day (and since I'm catching up I may as well say into the 3rd day of our trip).

In Hardin we toured the town. We felt like we were in a time warp. Some things simply never change much - and yet we were changed. Sort of. We left Hardin with 11, 9, 7, 5 year olds and pregnant....we were back with 12, 9, 7, 4 and baby....just different names and faces. We saw our old house (paint still holding), the community center, Dollies (where the kids would walk for candy), the church we pastored in, the park we played in, the hospital Jared was born in...and more. It was especially meaningful to Jared to visit his homestate and home town. He was two when we entered the military. "Home" is a rather fluid concept to him.

We went out to the cemetary and visited the gravesites of my Grams and my Uncle Bill. Uncle Bill and I had planted a lilac bush and a rose bush by Gram's grave and they are doing well - huge now. Mom, the rocks that the kids had given grams...that you glued to the tombstone are still there. Surprisngly, we found that walking through the cemetary was a great way for the children to remember Hardin. They had been saying they didn't remember or remembered little...but as we saw names we recognized (and we were surprised at how many we saw) we told stories of each person. This was really our frist stop and was a very positive experience. It was sad - but happy....truly bitter sweet.

We had tried to stay at Super 8 but it was booked full. We found two rooms at the American Inn before we left TX. I'd forgotten that shortly before we moved the owner had built a casino on the property too. We were so glad I'd make reservations as we watched several in the process of discovering that everything in the town was booked. YES - this weekend is the opening of the annual big event in Sturgis for bikers. It was us and the Bikers at American Inn.

Sam and Evelyn invited us over for dinner....these were friends from our years in Hardin. They had the Bullshows (more friends) over as well and we had a great time catching up. Debbi (who was in the youth group when we were youth leaders) drove down with Heidi's daughter (twin sister) and her children were there as well. It was a fun evening. We had way more people we had hoped to catch up with in Hardin....but we had to get an early start the next a.m.