I must admit that I’ve been getting kind of burned out lately.  Burned out from living out of a car, cooking with limited supplies, sleeping on the ground, and having little or no time to myself.  Yes, I know, first world problems of the highest degree.  But, I thought I’d mention this to portray a more accurate picture of our travels (it’s not all sunshine and rainbows) and to let you know why the blog posts have been and may continue to be a little slow in coming.  I love writing about our travels and sharing our stories and photos with y’all, but I’ve started spending more time in the evenings staring at the sky and talking with Alan and less time on the blog, which is why we’re in Oregon and the blog is still trying to catch up.  I expect that will change in the future, but for now, I’m making sure to devote more time to enjoying the moment and less time to capturing it.  I suppose I could make this discussion its own blog post, but I know you are all hanging on the edge of your seats to see where we went after Glacier National Park, so without further ado…the panhandle of Idaho!

We spent a brief few days in the panhandle, devoting most of our time to exploration of Moscow, the home of the University of Idaho, and to Heyburn State Park, the wonderful park that we called home for a few nights.   The highlight of visiting Moscow, and frankly one of my highlights of our whole trip, was a brief hour we spent watching Van play with a little girl named Olivia on a playground in the center of town.  We frequent playgrounds all over, and he’s played with dozens of children, but I’ve never seen him play so well or so in sync with another child.  They were close to the same age and had a very similar temperament.  It was magical to watch them giggle, share, say please and thank you to one another, and run around with eyes bright with expectation, neither one serving as the leader or follower for longer than a couple of minutes.  It was true synchronicity.  No photos captured the moment, but I think I’m better for it.  A camera would have stood in my way of appreciating that I was witness to such joy.

Another highlight of our time in the panhandle was our exploration of Heyburn State Park.  We took walks along the waters’ edge right from our campsite, watched the sun set through the trees, and saw birds aplenty.  It was a beautiful and relaxing place to stay and a great “welcome home to camping” after six nights in Montana Motel 6s.