Two Ways To Live Your Life

One day early last week LC and I spent time in Powell - a small farming community 20 miles from Cody.

LC had business to attend to, and with time to kill I left a loudly protesting Jamie behind in the truck and took a walk through town.

I had heard about the Homesteader Museum and unexpectedly found it while wandering around.

Entrance to this small museum was free and although they are still ramping up for the summer tourist season it turned out to be a short but surprisingly fun experience.

What really struck me at first (and what also really struck me when we walked through the free museums in Meeteetse a couple of weeks ago) was how very enthusiastic and knowledgeable the museum volunteers were.

These are local people.  

People who have lived in these small towns their entire lives.  

People who both speak and smile easily.

Who know the local history and who genuinely seem to enjoy sharing their town history with visitors.

Their enthusiasm was contagious, and in each of these small town museums I happily wandered around the exhibits taking in all of the items that reflected life in the past...........

A side street scene from downtown Powell.

Powell is a very nice town.  Similar to Cody in that it has very wide and clean streets and friendly small town people.

There are no "big box" stores in Powell.

No Wal-marts or K-marts or Home Depots.  Very few chain fast food restaurants.  Lots of small business owners.

Whenever LC and I drive to Powell we speculate about living there at some point in the future - mostly to get away from the overwhelming number of tourists that we have heard invade Cody during the summer.

But whenever we drive back to Cody we inevitably decide that we like Cody better.

We'll see.

We are settled in one place for now and greatly like where we are.

For the small house we are currently renting I managed to find place for an old 10 foot wooden table.  

And 30 stoneware crocks.

And a pewter collection and quilt collection and wooden spool collection.

Don't ask how because I have no idea but we made it work.

There are multiple plastic storage containers in the shed with our names on them and LC has good naturedly asked that if I decide to start up another collection to make it a stamp collection.

I love the thousands of acres of BLM land behind the house, the scenes of the mountains that surround us and the increasingly frequent sunsets we see from the porch in the evenings...............

There is a mom and pop restaurant in Powell called Hansel and Gretals.

These whimsical characters were on the outside of the restaurant (which is actually a combination pub slash restaurant) and were what initially caught my attention.

After I met up with LC again we went for a late lunch here.

When we walked into the building the first thing I saw was a piano painted bright red and again with these two figures painted on the sides. 
It was not as goofy as it sounds.

Between the heavy dark wood, the ginger-bread decoration, more Hansel and Gretal characters and multiple big-screen TV's playing everything from Nascar to hockey to rodeo to Fox News it was an interesting and unique place.  

And always happy to support a local business.

Two big chili dogs with fries, a beer and a coke and we were on our way.............

I am not certain why but I thought a lot about Alaska today.

There were so many things that I loved about living there - the channel, the mountains, the pine trees, the rivers and streams, Eagle Beach, Skaters Cabin, Mendenhall Glacier, Mt McGinnis and Mt Roberts and the tramway, the over-the-top excitement of the tourist season, the Boy Scout Trails, the boats in the harbors, the boardwalks, the ferry, Haines, Ketchikan, Sitka, bears, eagles.  

With very few exceptions I do not miss the people.  At all.

And truthfully it is nice to be in the sun again.

I received a phone call from one of my young managers today.  

He resigned after being in Juneau for three months, is now in California and good-naturedly complained to me today about his sunburn.  He sounds happy and I am happy for him.

I liked him very much and wish that I had had the chance to work with him longer..........

Wyoming is very beautiful in a way that is very different from Alaska and I find myself still trying to wrap my brain about the differences.

It is a culture shock.  

Because of the change in landscape.  The change in weather.  The whole "cowboy thing".

I like Wyoming very much.

I like the honest and open and down-to-earth people very much.

The sheer "realness" of the people lightens my heart a little more each day.

And that it what I needed at the beginning of a new life........

More sunset pictures taken from the front porch..........

 

I clicked on a Stats tab for the first time while blogging today and found out some way-cool information about my blog.  

It told me how many had visited the site today, this week, this month, since I began blogging.

Which blog posts people visited the most.

Which countries had visited the site.

People from the US, Canada, Australia, England, Russia, India, Qatar, Ukraine to mention only a few.

I had NO IDEA who all was reading this thing (or even if anyone was really reading this thing anymore since I moved from Alaska).

That was not really the point of the blog of course.

I started it initially as a way to keep friends and family informed about what my new life in Alaska was like.

And (thanks to a shiny new digital camera that my oldest son bought for me for Christmas right before I left Tennessee) a way to show pictures of what Alaska looked like.

Other readers were not really the point initially but it is nice to know that people look and read and visit.

Thanks to all...........

 

 There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein