We did it!!

I don't know whether to blame it on a delayed reaction to a mid-life crisis, or the fact that Lee has recently been forced to face his own mortality, but this last year he has started giving priority to things on his Bucket List that he has been putting off for years...
Last February he came home from work one day with tickets to the Calgary Stampede & Rodeo in July and told me to get busy planning an adventure...and so I did! We flew to Canada, rented a car, and spent 10 wonderful days going in every direction. After we enjoyed the stampede and rodeo in Calgary, we drove south along the east side of the Rocky Mountains into Montana, then through Glacier National Park. At Kalispell we turned back north and drove up the west side of the Rockies back to Banff, where we enjoyed day trips to Lake Louise, the ice fields, and other natural wonders. It truly was an amazing vacation that we had been dreaming of and talking about for years.

The first little town we drove through about 15 miles north of Kalispell was Whitefish, Montana, a fun little ski town on Whitefish Lake. As we continued north on Highway 93 towards the Canadian border, about 10 miles out of town, off the road abit we passed a beautiful "cabin" with a big For Sale sign on it. After talking and imagining for awhile, we decided to turn back and take a look. What a fateful decision!! Lee contacted the realtor (who turned out to be a University of Utah graduate who had attended the U on a ski scholarship), and the rest is history.
The decision was so easy, and the process so smooth, that we couldn't talk ourselves out of it! We made another trip back to Whitefish in October to seal the deal, and are so excited about what we have named our "Sigh-Bar" getaway. We are already planning another trip back up to check out some winter fun there in December, and are anxious to have our family join us there sometime in the near future.

Since we moved from the farm 20 years ago, Lee has been yearning to get out of the city -- not just back to a rural setting, but out in the "wilderness." He had, in fact, targeted Montana as the place he wanted to be, so another check on his Bucket List !