She's baaaackk!

Hallelujah! My little love is back "home." It was a long three days without her, but she had such a good time with the family that it was all worthwhile. It was about 11:20 PM last night when she walked out of the Billings airline terminal.  We were both glad that the day was over.  Eleven o'clock is at least two hours past our bedtime. And Jill could hardly decide what time it was, since she spent time in three different time zones yesterday.

Now you would think that flying from Billings, MT to San Francisco, CA would be pretty straight forward, right? I mean it's like 1,200 miles, but in  the world of the airline mentality, it makes more sense to fly from Billings to Minneapolis (838 miles), wait three hours and then catch a plane from Minneapolis to San Francisco (1,975 miles).  Hello!  Double your pleasure, double your fun, double your miles? Son of a gun! The return trip was a little better. The waiting in Minneapolis was only about an hour and half.  Whatever! At least she is home again.

So, today was my fifth and Jill's second day in Billings.  We walked the dogs. We did laundry! Isn't that romantic. We made reservations for the next several places we will stay, since the season is heating up and schools are closing, and the places we are going are popular.  Then we went downtown to Montana Brewing to quench my craving for a big ol' hamburger. Jill had chicken enchiladas, which was probably a better choice, but I wanted that burger.  Montana Brewing did not disappoint.

While we were in the pub, the skies darkened and a light rain began to fall. By the time we finished eating and were about to leave, the thunder started, the rain came in torrents and the hail followed.  Power outage was not far behind. Fortunately, it was rather small hail, so we had no damage (again, thank you Lord).  We drove over to World Seafoods to have a look.  Jill's seat partner coming home last night from Minneapolis mentioned that her husband owns a fish market with seafoods from around the world. She gave Jill her husband's business card, so we went to check it out.

When we got there, a guy with a big scoop shovel was shoveling the accumulated hail off the sidewalk. They really got a load!  Well, the fish market is wonderful.  They have every kind of fish I have ever heard of and many I hadn't .  We settled on littleneck clams and Hood Canal oysters.  The plan is to steam the clams and grill the oysters.  Don't ask me what possesses us to have food from the ocean when we are parked on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

So, we returned to see how traumatized our dogs were because of the weather. They seemed fine. There was no sign of any hail having fallen in the park, but a LOT  of rain had fallen. Many of the sites (not ours, thank You Lord) were flooded.  But by now the sun was out, so we hiked up to the laundry and washed all the dogs' blankets and towels. WE ARE CAUGHT UP ON LAUNDRY!

The rest of the afternoon was given over to relaxing. Jill wrote some letters and I started this blog post.

LATER:

OK, so we just treated ourselves to steamed littleneck clams in melted butter, followed by barbecued oysters with mushrooms in garlic butter sauce.  Oh, my.  That was the perfect end to a perfect (well, if you discount the thunderstorm) day.  After all, She's baaaackk!