I'm No Fan

The President of the United States was in my neck of the woods this past weekend.

Oh joy, rapture...

He started off his weekend having a town hall meeting, to try to smooth talk his way into the hearts of the conservative residents of the state. Trying to convince hard working, self-reliant people that it's okay to turn all their healthcare over to the government... but I digress.

While he was blowing hot air, my family and I were 1.5 hours south at my parent's cabin. Our intention was to go to the mountains where it is nice and dark -- away from the city lights -- so we could watch the annual August meteor showers.

(It ended up being too cold to sit outside and watch the stars. The night time temperatures were hovering in the low 40 degree range... coupled with howling wind chills and it was too darned chilly! Bummer!)

Saturday morning, while we were eating breakfast, we could hear the whir of helicopter rotors. Thinking it was a forest service copter, we walked outside to see if we could find it.

Lo and behold, this was NO forest service helicopter!! There were two bona-fide military copters... big behemoth machines built for speed and the safety of its occupants! They were flying low, right above the famous river that is at the bottom of the mountain where my parents are building their cabin. (The copters are not in this picture. I forgot to grab my camera and take a pic of them as they flew by -- can you believe it? I took this picture Friday morning. The fog in this is hovering right above the same river. I would say the copters were just above the bottom line of the fog.)

We figured The Obamessiah was in one of these copters, getting a tour of this famous fishing river, as well as view the area where there was a 7.5 earthquake 50 years ago (coincidentally, this weekend is the 50th anniversary of the quake).

As we were leaving, we thought we'd just drive into the town that borders the National Park that His Highness was visiting that day. We've never been to a town where a President of the United States was before and we wanted to see what it was like...

We were disappointed. No one seemed excited. There were no extra American flags. Hmmm.... We noticed a lot of extra security as we drove past the airport, but that was it.

Since it was "Visit a National Park Free Day," and we knew that B.O. was going there, we thought, "Why not?" and drove through the gates. Our intention was to just drive to the first big intersection, turn around and head home. Then the plans changed to "let's drive down past that River Drive." And then, oh... what the heck? Let's just drive on down to the most famous site in the Park!

Once we got to the road that takes us to Most Famous, we realized that O.B. must have been there because traffic was more dense than I have ever seen it. We sat on the exit for 15 - 20 minutes without moving, seriously regretting the decision to drive this far but we were trapped by cars in front and behind. We could only wait.

All of a sudden, excitement shuddered through the cars around us. Yes, I could feel/sense the occupants in the cars anticipation level rising. Weird, eh? Buttercup is more observant than I am. While I am trying to figure out if we are finally going to start moving, she pointed out a long line of black SUV's with blacked out windows driving down the off-ramp. Yup! I have to assume it was B.O, wife and two daughters leaving Most Famous.

All of a sudden all the cars HAD to move!! Park Rangers were frantically waving us up the road, away from where the SUV's were unloading their passengers. That's when we noticed the great big military helicopters were in the field on the other side of the ramp. (There were too many cars ahead of us. We couldn't see the copters before.) I was driving, so I threw my camera to Max and yelled, "TAKE PICTURES!!" I don't think we got any pictures of Him, but we're pretty sure He was there.

Why did we go? It certainly wasn't in support of this man. But it was exciting. I respect the office of the President of the United States, even though I don't respect this man. I don't know if we'll ever be in close proximity to another president, so I'm glad we played "groupie" for an afternoon. Maybe the kids will remember the day we saw the President's helicopter. Maybe they'll remember that their parents were engaged in political discussions about the president. Hopefully they'll understand how blessed we are that if we don't agree with the policies and the politics of our government, we are FREE to talk about it and oppose it openly.

WE LIVE IN A GREAT COUNTRY!!!

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I had to laugh when I read this quote by Obama-O-Thou-Great-And-Wonderful when he was looking at Most Famous. I saw it in today's newspaper:

"Oh, that's pretty good. Cool! Look at that. That's a geyser there."

Seriously? That's the best he can come up with?

That's pretty un-profound!