BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: BIG SKY EDITION

5/22/2013 Jackson Hole, WY

We had planned to start the day by shopping in Jackson Hole and then going on to our next place, but Mr. Lee changed things a little. We still went to Jackson Hole, just for a little while, but Mr. Lee wanted to go back to a couple of the places we'd been yesterday when the light wasn't just right to retake some pictures. I hate to admit that it irritated me! Steve doesn't really care much about taking pictures, and so when he gets interested in doing something while we're out here (and he had wanted to do this) I'd like for him to be able to do them.  Oh, well, Steve said it was OK, so what can you do? We figured that he and I would go after we'd finished with the stuff we'd planned for the day!

After we went to the places where Mr. Lee wanted to take his pictures, we had lunch at a little local stop in Moose, WY and hung out there until it was time for our raft trip!  Luckily it wasn't white water, but a sight seeing trip down the Snake River.  We met with our tour group, a total of six of us, and we were carted to the launch site and put into our life vests. I don't know if I didn't do something right, but I felt like my whole torso was getting a mammogram! I was squished.  We got in the raft and pushed off. 

This is his excited face.

This is his "Someone's Taking My Picture" face.

It had rained a bit when we were driving to the launch point, but the guide didn't think it would continue one we were out on the water, and for a little while it didn't. However, once it hit, it was scary! We were never in any danger of flipping or anything, but the wind blew really hard and it started to rain.  We all had to crouch down in the bottom of the raft until the wind died down. The guide had given us all thick green ponchos, and with the wind blowing so hard, putting them on was an almost impossible task. The guide said the squall was very rough, but it didn't keep us from seeing lots of pretty scenery and animals! We finally saw a moose!

Wet Moose!

We've been looking for a moose since we got here! I was so wrapped up in my coat, life jacket, and that poncho that I almost didn't get my camera out of my pocket before we left the moose behind. Luckily I did, but I don't think my pictures even remotely show that what I took a picture of was a moose. We saw three bald eagles, a sandhill crane, sandpipers, beaver activity (alas, no actual beavers) and another fox! I also found out that there are river otters out there, but we didn't see any. Probably a good thing or I would have capsized us all trying to grab one to take home. The raft ride was so much fun, even with the storm!  In fact, I think the storm might have made it more fun!  I didn't get to take many pictures, though, but we've still got a couple of days to make up for that.  Oh, and in the "interestingly coincidental" category, a young British woman was a member of our rafting group. She was from Nottingham, but had once lived in Texas, so she, her husband and baby had come to the US to visit with some friends so that they could meet her little girl. When she heard that we were from Alabama, she told us that they had just gone there because one of the friends that they'd come to visit had died suddenly, and they went to her funeral. I asked where she'd been, and she said Athens. She thought it was cool that Athens was my home town. So I met someone in Wyoming from the UK who had just visited my home town of Athens, of all places. Is a small world after all.

After we got back, we had dinner and then Steve and I went back to Jackson Hole to see the shops. Unfortunately the whole town seems to have closed at 5:00! Boo.  Oh well, we'll make Mr. Lee take us back tomorrow morning before we leave! We did a little laundry before going to bed, which was weird for me because I've never done laundry in a hotel.  I was afraid someone would come in and take our clothes out mid cycle and put their own clothes in, but that didn't happen.  Whew.  I'm glad. It turns out that a lot of the clothes I brought were neither warm enough or appropriate for what we were doing out here, so I was glad to get some stuff clean so that I could wear them again. 

From here on we're slowly making our way back towards Bozeman for our trip home on Sunday.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: BIG SKY EDITION

Whoops!  Sorry, you guys.  Life is getting in the way of things these days.

5/21/2013 Grand Teton National Park to Jackson Hole, WY

Last night after I got into bed, some movement caught my eye. A spider was crawling across the top of the sheet right above Steve. I jumped up and tried to wake Steve, but he didn't hear me and the spider crawled across his back and ran to my side of the bed. Steve did jump up, and Mr. Lee killed the thing where I had to sleep, and even though he cleaned it off, I'm pretty sure I had to lay back down on disembodied spider parts. Steve was oddly unconcerned*, but it took me a long time to get to sleep.

*EDIT:  Steve said he didn't remember any of this. Apparently he was asleep, even when he got out of bed.  It was probably better this way!

When I got up this morning  and got in the shower, another spider decided to get in with me! I'm about sick of this nature crap!  Luckily I didn't run screaming and nude out of the cabin. You're welcome, fellow Jackson Lake Lodge visitors!  Heehee, don't worry, two little spiders were the absolute worst that happened.

After we had breakfast, we left the lodge and headed off for another stop-and-shoot. I suppose I should explain that what that means to those of you who may not know how vacations with Mr. Lee usually work.  He is a stereo photographer, meaning he shoots 3D photos for presentations and contests. Our Pratt Family Vacations usually consist of flying out west to one of the national parks, staying in a different place every night, and spending the days driving in between destinations and frequently stopping to take pictures of scenery. It's so much fun!  Today we drove through Grand Teton National Park, winding through the valley and taking pictures of the mountains. I'm absolutely sure that the Grand Tetons are my favorite mountains. They are punch your face in beautiful. We took so many pictures, and every view was just like a postcard.  We also saw a lot of wildlife! Mr. Lee got a bit too close with some bison. I was close, but he was closer.

 I swear, he couldn't have been closer if he had been riding them.  

We also saw some little critters that might have been ground squirrels! They were so cute!

 There were dozens of them and they made this cute whistling sound. I thought they were just "talking" to each other, but I found out later that they were only making that sound because they didn't want me on their turf. It was basically critter language for "Get off my lawn!"  We saw elk, a fox, a muskrat, and an unidentified scurrying furry thing.  We really hope to see a moose!  We shot pictures for several hours, getting cold, hot and sunburned all in the same day. The weather is very weird out here. 

We finally gave up for the day and went on to Jackson, WY, where we'll be for two nights in a row! Woo-hoo!

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: BIG SKY EDITION

5/20/2013: Yellowstone National Park to Grand Teton National Park.

Today we got up, packed, and went to breakfast.  Nothing of note happened until we walked out in the lobby, and we saw Al Roker!  I don't really know much about the man, as I'm usually at work when the show is on, but I thought it was neat. Don't worry, I didn't do anything weird in front of him, I promise. I wanted to get a picture of my foot with him, but that really would have been weird, and I'm trying to be on my best behavior.  Mr. Lee took a few pictures in the lobby, and we left.  It was very cold, rainy, and icy outside, which sucked. I never mind the cold, but the rain and ice was nasty. Plus, it was screwing up my pictures! You need a lot of sun for the colors of the geysers to come out, so gray skies and rain just don't help.  We decided to back track a bit since the rain messed up our plans yesterday. We went to one of the geyser areas, thinking that the worst of the rain had gone, but no. We got halfway down the walkway and the rain turned sideways. By the time we got back to the car, we were dripping wet and freezing cold.  We stopped at one other geyser area while the wind and rain were going on, and we almost decided to give up, but the sun decided to show its face and so we finally had some light to work with! You wouldn't believe the change a little bit of sun made in the scenery! We decided again to backtrack a little more to see if we couldn't improve on our other pictures. You may not be able to tell much by the two pictures side by side, but I blame my camera because it was a huge difference.

 No Sun

Sun!

After that, we headed on with our plans, and had an epic Stop-and-Shoot (TM) for several hours. As we drove through the mountains, we stopped at the Continental Divide:

We saw some waterfalls:

 

and a lot more beautiful scenery.  It was still cold, but the sun had come out in force, so at least we weren't in the rain anymore.  The higher we went in the mountains, the more snow we saw, and that just made everything more beautiful to me.  It was kind of bizarre, because I'm used to snow disappearing when the sun hits it, but we were up so high that bright sunlight shine on it and it didn't budge. I came to the realization that, though breathtakingly gorgeous, Montana and Wyoming had yet to just knock me over in awe the same way our other trips out west had.  Don't misunderstand me! It was still amazing and I was loving every minute of what I was seeing, but even the alien-like geysers were more interesting and fun than awe inspiring.

We were hungry by the time we'd been doing this for a while, and decided to stop at the next town we came to for something to eat. Unfortunately, there were no towns in between Yellowstone and Grand Tetons! There was a whole lot of absolutely no civilization! Even the camping villages we saw were still closed for the season, so we couldn't even go to the general stores and grab something.  Since we couldn't find anything, we really had no choice but to go on to our next hotel, which was the Jackson Lake Lodge. On our way, we saw two bears! Mr. Lee said it was rare to see bears, but we managed to see two relatively close together.  Granted, they were far away from us, so my photo of it looks like a black dot in the middle of a field, but still...bears!

The correct distance to take a picture of a bear is "Very Far Away."

There is a bear in there, though, I promise.

The lodge is one of those places that you'd imagine retired couples or families might come and stay for a couple of weeks during the summer. There is a main lodge house and hotel-like cabin rooms all around it.  It made me think of that lodge in Dirty Dancing for some reason. It turned out that we were there on their opening day, which I thought was neato!  I offered to give the new employees a training scenario to see how they would deal with a guest wreaking havoc on place, but they declined.  Boo.  We put our bags away and went to the lodge house for dinner, and when I walked into the lounge area I looked to of the giant floor to ceiling windows. You know what I said in the above paragraph about none of the scenery being awe inspiring? I was so wrong.  I'd never seen anything like the view from those windows. I didn't think you could see so much from one window, but the Tetons spread out behind the lodge and it was gorgeous. Snow streaked the mountains, and a field of colorful grasses spread out in front of it. It didn't even look real, it was so beautiful.  It was more like someone's ideal of what the mountains might look like. It punched me in the gut. Oy.

Gut-Punch

We had dinner in the diner, and I'm pretty sure our waiter thought I was flirting with him.  I didn't mean to if I was.  Eh, that's fine, even though he was probably around 19 years old and I'm an old lady, you have got to give the young whipper snappers a thrill now and again, right?  We also had another waiter who found out where we were from and asked us if we "were all Roll Tide."  What does that even mean?  We said yes, thereby lying and perpetuating the stereotype of people of Alabama (sorry guys), but it was easier than trying to explain why we are more or less unaffiliated and very liquid in our collegiate football loyalties.

We were going to go do more picture taking, but by then the light was going and we were tired. I took a few pictures of the gorgeous mountains, and we came back to our room. So much fun! It's still so hard to believe the world can be this beautiful.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY - BIG SKY EDITION

5/19/2013: Bozeman, MT to West Yellowstone, MT to Somewhere in Idaho to the Old Faithful Inn

We left Bozeman this morning in a drizzly, cold rain.  I didn't mind the cold, but the rain was unfortunate. The place we stayed in Bozeman seemed unusual, in that it looks like a very rural farming area that is slowly being civilized. All of the new stuff looked brand new, even smelled brand new, but it was interspersed with old, dilapidated buildings and barns. I really liked the place, though.  It's a relatively small town*, and it looks like a nice palace to live! We drove through some beautiful country: lots of hills and low mountains covered with dark pines. Even in the rain, you could tell it was a beautiful place.  It reminded me a lot of driving to Nederlands , the place Josh took me into the mountains in Colorado. Our drive took us through the Gallatin National Forest, where we saw some snow, and the Gallatin River. The mountains out here look like they're melting into the ground. Mr. Lee says that these mountains are very old, so that's probably why.  I wish we could have stopped to take more picture, but the weather was kind of yuck, and we didn't have very good light. We did stop a couple of times, but it was so freaking cold and rainy that we didn't stay out long.

We finally made it to west Yellowstone to get a bite of lunch at around 11:30. West Yellowstone is a sort of skeezy little tourist town just across the border of Wyoming. Don't worry, I say skeezy with love. It was one of those places for tourists with rows of souvenir shops, restaurants with clever names and museums of local interest, and I actually love places like that. It was small and cute. I forgot to get a foot picture there.  :(  We didn't stay long, though, because our next stop was in Idaho!

Mr. Lee took us to Idaho at my request, because I'd never been there before.  Despite my fondest dreams and wishes, it did not smell like freshly cooked French fries.  He also said he wanted to show us an interesting place, which turned out to be Big Springs, which was a small place where a natural spring bubbled up. It was really, very beautiful. The water was so clear, and if you stood in the right place, you could see where it came out of the ground.  I don't think I'd ever seen the actual source of a spring before!

It had started to spit snow, and rain a bit, so we got back into the car and went back to West Yellowstone.  We had to get a couple of things at the market, and we stopped in one of the souvenir shops (because I'm a gift shop junkie!), and then we were off to our next destination.

We made it to Yellowstone National Parker not long after, and we almost immediately saw some elk! We went a little further, and found a nice place to take some pictures. It was just COVERED with wildlife feces. Ick. I haven't had to tiptoe through a field like that since dad raised cows in our back pasture. Bison, elk, deer, moose, you name it, it had pooped there. Seriously, I think the new motto of Yellowstone National Park should be:  "Yellowstone: Seriously, Watch Your Step."  I got tired of dodging turds, so we got back into the car and drove till we saw some bison eating near a parking spot, and we were able to get pretty close.

 They weren't scared of us, but I think it was because they knew they could stomp us to death. I tried to talk to him, but he ignored me. I decided at that point to eat one of his brethren in revenge.

(Is it weird that I now want to taste pretty much every animal that lives in this park?  I've never had the urge to eat wildlife before, but now it's a goal of mine!)

We stopped at one of the geyser areas to see some little geysers and mud pits. It was neato, but it smelled so very bad.

As lovely as this is...it smelled so bad!

It had gotten so cold that I wound up standing in the stream of sulfur smoke just to keep warm, so I'm sue I smelled nice after we left.  We decided to just go on to our next hotel. We were lucky enough to get a room for the night at The Old Faithful Inn! It's usually booked up a year or more in advance, but someone must've cancelled because Mr. Lee got a room! It's 109 years old, and it's made of twisty wood and beams. We didn't stay in the oldest part of the hotel, but our room was still attached to the building. The rooms are kind of spartan, but it was ok. This is the kind of place where you don't spend much time in the rooms.  The hotel put a stuffed bison on the bed, which I thought we got to keep - like the little bars of soap - but alas you had to buy them.  Since I'd already named it, Mr. Lee got said he'd add it to our bill. :)  We put out stuff down and explored until our dinner reservation.  We found out that on Tuesday, May 21, the cast of the Today Show was going to be broadcasting from this hotel. Camera guys and a director were busy planning shots and putting together equipment, and we stopped and talked to one guy for a minute.  Too bad we won't be here. I could have streaked during the broadcast!

We went into dinner and ordered our food. I got a really delicious bowl of pea soup and some bison pot roast! Unfortunately, there was some kind of oil or spice in the food that I must be allergic to. I only got a couple of bites into my pot roast, when something inside of me went terribly wrong. It wasn't a sick feeling, it was more like I got stabbed in the gut. I thought it would pass, but it didn't. I had to go back to the room, curl into a ball and lie down. I got briefly, but awfully ill, and it finally passed, but not for a while. After I felt a bit better, we walked outside to watch Old Faithful erupt.

It's weird waiting for a geyser to go. It steams a lot, and there are brief moments where you think it's about to happen, but it quiets down again. It's like waiting on a sneeze! It was still freezing and raining outside, and a whole bunch of people gathered around on the sidewalks to watch. The time came...and went. I was convinced we had somehow broken it.  There is actually a 10 minute window both ways where the geyser can go, but it passed that window. I had fashioned a burka out of my scarf, because my ears were freezing, but I didn't give up!  It finally blew up, or whatever it does, and I was suitably impressed.

Thar she blows!!

 Of course, I did have a moment of clarity in which I realized how insane it seemed for a bunch of people, mostly adults, standing around in the freezing rain, waiting on the earth to sneeze.

After that we called it a day. I still wasn't feeling so hot, Mr. lee and Steve were ready to go back, so now we're in our room, chilling out (literally.  It's freaking cold and all we have is a steam radiator in here) and planning our day tomorrow!

*EDIT - Apparently I only saw a very small edge of Bozeman.

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY - BIG SKY EDITION

May 18, 2013: Huntsville, AL to Atlanta, GA to Salt Lake City, UT to Bozeman, MT

It's time again for one of my great western adventures with Mr. Lee and Steve! Only this time we didn't head out to the Wild, Wild West.  Instead, we decided to visit the underground super volcano known as Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons! 

We got up early this morning and headed to the airport. I had to go through one of those full body scanners at the Huntsville airport, so I started off the trip by ruining someone's morning because they had to see me naked-ish.  Sorry, random security person!  We boarded fairy quickly and headed to Atlanta.  Blerg.  I do not like the Atlanta airport!  It's too big and too crowded.  Our layover ended up being a couple of hours long, but it wasn't too terrible. We got some breakfast and hung around until our next flight boarded. 

Our next flight was took us to Salt Lake City, UT.  The plane was completely packed, but the passengers were really calm.  Much better than our last flight out west to Las Vegas. Of course, that flight was full of gamblers and party people. For all I know this plane was full of Mormons heading home!  It got a bit bumpy at times, and I was seated right next to the wing, so I couldn't really see any scenery, but it wasn't too bad. 

THERE WAS NOTHING ON THE WING OF THE PLANE!

We landed and found our way to our next gate.  It was the smallest little airport gate I'd ever seen, which would have been fine if the strange Asian family hadn't been in such close quarters with us! That probably sounds rude, but I'm being 100% honest. The little boy ran around and around, paying no attention to his mother, who was slapping him around the whole time, and he kept running into Mr. Lee.  The grandmother kept making this disgusting sound with her face.  It was like she kept hawking a loogie without spitting. It was so gross. Steve called her The Hacker.  It seemed like forever before we finally boarded our last plane to Bozeman, Montana.

Bozeman, MT! I already see a mountain!

The plane was tiny! It was like being crammed into a tube sock.  There were two seats on each side, and I was seated across the aisle from Steve and Mr. Lee.  Since the plane was full, I knew I would be sitting with a stranger, but I wasn't bothered until I saw that The Hacker would be my seat mate! Ugh! Luckily, her grandson asked if I would mind trading seats with his grandfather so that they could sit together, and I gladly moved further back into the plane. 

I'm actually glad I did, because I wound up sitting next to two very interesting people.  The woman I shared a seat with was from Bozeman, and she was very nice. It also turned out that her daughter in law is the actress that played Juliette on Lost! Neato!  Well, at least she said she was.  Who knows really.  The guy on the other side of me was also from Bozeman, and he was so funny. We spent the whole flight making each other laugh and talking. We just talked about dumb stuff, but I enjoyed it.  I felt like I knew him from somewhere, but I know I didn't.  He just reminded me of someone, I think.  It wasn't until we got off the plane that I realized we'd talked so much that I'd forgotten to get his name! Oh, well, I just refer to him as Airplane Guy.  He was nice!  I liked him.  Of course, he could have been a serial killer for all I know.  Oh well, who cares.  I think I made Tyler Durden's fabled "Single Serving Friend."

After that, we got our rental car, and found our hotel.  We are staying in a place called Homewood Suites. It's a really nice place, with rooms more like small apartments than regular hotel rooms. The only thing I don't like is that the carpets remind me of the floors in The Shining. Eeesh. We got dinner and now we're back at the hotel. I'm so tired, but Steve and Mr. Lee want to watch some movie called Spencer's Mountain.  It has something to do with The Waltons or something.  I don't know, I'm just trying to stay awake.  Hopefully I can go to bed soon, because our adventures have just started!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I'm a terrible judge of character.  I think I've always kind of known this about myself, but it never really seemed to matter much until recently.  If someone is nice to me, I tend to think "Oh, this person is awesome!" and I ignore the bigger picture.  I mean, I'm not completely daft.  I think there is a part of me that can know some things about people really well, and I can see things about them that they don't realize I can see, but even then, as a whole, I don't always judge them correctly.  I'm sure I'm not the only one, of course.  I'm sure we've all known people like the friend you thought you could confide your problems to, who might listen to you talk, but turns out not to really care all that much about your actual problems. Then there is the person you think is so nice and fun to be around, but they are only that way to those they think need to see that part of them, and secretly they are kind of awful to other people.  I'm sure you can add your own experiences with people to this list ad nauseum, and you'd never get to the end of it. People are multi-faceted and honestly, we only see the parts that they let the light shine on when we're with them.  I'm sure I've badly disappointed people who thought I was better than I really am, so I shouldn't be too shocked about finding out that someone I considered a friend and all around awesome person turned out to be a black hole of absolute suckage, but I am.  I think what bothers me most is that I was so convinced that this person was great that I wasn't seeing what should have been completely obvious.

Now, before you start to wonder who has done what to me, I need to let you know that what brought on this realization has nothing at all to do with me.  This person has never been anything other than decent and helpful towards me, personally.  This is pretty much why I'm being intentionally vague.  Since it isn't my problem, I can't (with good conscience) lay it all out here for you fine folks.  Trust me, I'd love to do it, though.  Oh, and also, this person is litigious and has no scruples about suing someone over them publicly talking about what they did.  Glad I found that out before saying anything.  While I don't think they read my blog, I have certainly learned my lesson about posting certain things online.  I don't know if I've ever known anyone to be morally reprehensible before, but this person is.  It makes me kind of sad, too, though.  I actually really liked them, but after being fooled by them for so long, I couldn't ever feel the same way.   I hate when people suck.

2)  Steve got a solo for his spring/summer concert series!  Woot!  I'm very proud.  It isn't a long solo, but he's tickled, so I also have sympathy tickles.  Hopefully, I'll have a video of him playing it at some point. He's doing really great in the MCB and I'm glad he's found something that he likes to do and is a stress reliever from his work.  It's his thing, and I'm glad he's enjoying it.  If you saw the video of Butler "singing" while Steve played the trumpet, don't worry.  He really plays much better than that!



3) I wish I could find a "thing."  I haven't really enjoyed doing anything in a long time.  That sounds weird, but it's true. I feel kind of stuck.  I have dozens of hobbies, but I haven't liked doing any of them lately.  It's really strange, because it's like I'm in a holding pattern, waiting for something, but I have no idea what I'm waiting on.  I don't even have any idea what kind of thing I'd like to do.  You know how sometimes you are talking, and you get stuck while trying to think of a word?  That's how my whole life feels right now.  I hope whatever I'm waiting on is a good thing.

Is that odd?  It seems like it might be odd.  I dunno.  Maybe I'll take up tightrope walking or something.  I just wish I didn't feel so stuck. I NEED A THING!

4) Have you ever heard that smell is the sense closest tied to memory?  I find that to be very true, but it may be because I can smell things better than most people.  Honestly, have you seen my nose?  :)  Well, I bought a tube of lip gloss the other day, and the smell of it reminds me of something, but I can't remember what it is.  All I get is a feeling of uneasiness, like whatever the smell reminds me of might not be such a nice thing, but for the life of me, I have no idea what it is!  It's a very particular smelling lip gloss, and it isn't something I have used often, so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to remember what it reminds me of!  It's a mystery!  I kind of think it might remind me of a date I went on when I was 15 or so and the guy tried to kiss me and I was REALLY not wanting him to (we didn't date long, obvs), so I had to dodge him a lot, but I'm not sure that's it. 

5) I'm afraid that almost my whole blog post has seemed a bit negative. To alleviate this I present to you:

A QUICKY

I love my mother so very much!  No offense to any other amazing moms out there I might know, but in my humble opinion, my own mom is the best. :)  She's so funny.  She probably doesn't mean to be funny sometimes, but she is.  People who make me laugh are awesome. Laughing is my favorite.

Since I moved to Huntsville, trying to explain my family's accent is kind of hard, because I think people might think I'm exaggerating them a bit.  I'm really not. Huntsville isn't far removed from my hometown, of course, and plenty of rednecks live out here, but it does have more than its fair share of northern and international transplants, and the southern dialect is still a bit new for them. Since I did public speaking in high school (and because of a cute boy I knew who told me he thought southern accents didn't sound very smart), I beat my accent into submission, and because of that I've met quite a few people who don't realize I'm from the south. At least not until I've talked to them for a while.  At any rate, they seem surprised when I mimic my mother or sister's accent, because they don't understand why my own is so different.

I tell you all of that because I wanted to show you an automatic email I got from our voice-mail provider.  It sends us an email letting us know that we've gotten a voice mail so that we know to check it.  It used to just have the "You've Got Voicemail" message on it, but they've upgraded to having a computer actually transcribing the messages people leave so that you can read them without having to go through the hassle of signing in to the website to listen to them.  Usually, with the exception of some names and places, the computer transcribed messages are very accurate.  When my mom calls, her accent confuses it.  Here is the message I got:

"Hi Kayleen. Hey we made the dog-show-or(?) were sick or out on the balcony looking out at white-riley(?) hey I just thought I'd let you know I would not it okay alright(?) love you all. Bye bye."

I was all...what?  Did she have a stroke?  Then I listened to the message, and what you see above was not even close.  I'm not going to tell you what she actually said, because I want to see if any of you know your "Country" enough to decipher it.  Personally, though, you may need to get in touch with a Navajo Windtalker to see what they think. :)