2025, August 4-10

So begins the next chapter where Mike lives up north and the rest of us live down south (relatively). 

On Monday morning, the parents awoke to find Landon in a goofy mood. We went with it. 

Well, mostly. 

What a character!

Eliza went out to deliver a package to Diamond and Caleb and ran over a rock. After delivering the goods to the post office, she decided to go to City Hall to see to her injuries. Hallie got a message from Springville PD that the EMS were working on her. Fortunately, it only amounted to some scrapes and bruises. 

Because he could, Mike made a digital snowflake of his kamon emblem. 

Hallie went around getting pics with former coworkers at Smith's. So many fun people!

 

Eliza had an early morning trail ride with Leslie on Thursday, after which she took Kai to get groomed. While Kai was getting groomed, Hallie and Landon helped Gpa M pack up the truck with (most of) Mike's earthly goods. Well, some of them anyway. 

Landon drove and got goodies. 

They also stopped by Eliza's new school to get her schedule worked out. 

Meanwhile, Mike had his last day of work at PACE. This job has been equal parts rewarding and sobering. He feels it was a genuine blessing to work there these last several months and will miss his amazing students with all their compelling stories. 

Kai got to hang out with Enzo, who is growing really fast. Kohar gave him a bit of a new 'do. 

After work, Mike got to say farewell to the Melos. Such a fun family! They're looking after Kai while we are traveling this week. 

We took off early Friday morning and made our way up I-15 through to Dillon, Montana, for lunch. 

Some of us sleep some en route. 

We took turns driving, including Landon, who did well on the highways and dealing with construction pylons. 

While in Dillon, we took in the sights and had lunch at The Gyros Wagon. We enjoyed our meal! 

Upon arriving later in the afternoon in Missoula, everyone helped with the unloading and then Mike went on campus to do some paperwork with his landlady. Eliza is never shy about expressing her disdain for Landon's antics. 

We had dinner at the Double K Ranch Deli. 

Landon and Mike agreed that the steak frites (complete with chimichurri) were excellent!

Unfortunately, Hallie had started feeling unwell after Dillon, and it got worse while at Double K. She soldiered through as we ran errands to Costco, Target, and WinCo, but by nighttime, she was not doing well. 

So, in Springville, the deer are pretty friendly and abundant. In Missoula, they show up in the yard. 

Mike's landlady let the kids stay in the other unit in the house where he's renting. This allowed the kids to avoid Mom's stomach bug. 

Hallie had more fever and nausea in the morning, so she stayed in bed convalescing while Mike, Eliza, and Gma and Gpa M walked around UM campus.  

Most of these utility boxes around town are painted, and Missoula has murals all over. 

Here's Mike's one-bedroom unit. It is so convenient to everywhere! Plus, the house overall inside has touches that remind us of our old house on Maryland Street. 

Later in the day, Mike and Eliza went down to the Western Montana Fair. Mike wanted to test out the (free) local bus system, so they rode down the couple of miles to the fairgrounds. They also spied more deer on UM campus.

While at the fair, they watched some equine training demonstrations and looked at the livestock. 

They also caught some of the 4-H displays. Really beautiful work here! 

Walking part-way back to the apartment, they caught sight of yet more friendly deer. 

Later in the day, Hallie was feeling much better (24-hour stomach bug, we hope?). We ran some more errands and stopped in at Big Dipper Ice Cream. Everyone got something different (Landon got banana slices with his scoop), and everything tasted sweet. 

Big Dipper, Mt. Sentinel, and this lovely lady. 

There's a vegan donut shop next door that was closed that Mike will have to go to on another day. 

After getting ice cream, Eliza decided she needed to take a walk. That walk ended up being more than around the block, and she didn't like how we reacted to her walking around alone in a new place where she could get lost. Things continued to escalate on the ride home and after. She wanted to walk back to the fair by herself at night, and we said no. Much as she had done a couple of weeks back when she decided to take a long walk, she got it into her head that we were restraining her from doing what she thought was totally reasonable, and she ended up using her new phone to text 911. In this way, we got to meet both the UM campus police and the Missoula PD. Hello and welcome to town!

After things calmed down some, Mike sort of stayed up to make sure E didn't leave while everyone else settled down so they could be alert for the drive back to Springville the next day. 

So long! See you in September! Lots of "I love you"s and shed tears. 

While everyone else trekked southward, Mike ventured around town. This little bit of encouragement next to the play yard near on-campus family housing.

He hiked up some of the Mt. Sentinel M Trail and took in the view of campus.  

After coming home for a little rest, he went to the library and (as is tradition) got himself a library card from the Missoula Public Library (dig that simple-yet-effective logo!). Moving becomes official once you have a library card. 

After several hours on the road (including a stop at Jack in the Box where they lunched with Gma and Gpa M), Hallie took Eliza to the Huntsman Mental Health Institute in Salt Lake. It kills Mike not to be able to be there and for Hallie to have to take this on in person by herself. He's grateful Landon was there. It breaks our heart to see Eliza struggling as she is and to not have the tools to ease her pain. Hopefully the mental health professionals there will give us all some new tools to use. 

In the meantime, Mike had to get out of the house again. Fortunately, UM has a big beautiful shady Oval with views of Mt. Sentinel and Main Hall. Interestingly, Missoula, Springville, and Simi all had the same temperature while he was out. 

After several hours, the people at HMHI opted to keep Eliza in for 23 hours for evaluation. This means she'll miss her first day of school at ALA, but we hope we can find out what to do next. 

Mike went for another walk and saw Bambi and his family among other sights (such as the Clark Fork River, which runs nearby). 

Hallie and Landon finally got home later than expected. Fergus didn't really want a picture, but if not, he wouldn't have appeared in the blog this week. Strange times all around.