Day 8 – Last Day in Kamiah

Friday, August 19, 2016

After breakfast, someone will typically share a devotion before we go to the job site. We have had inspiring devotions this week by Carl on Tuesday, Mark on Wednesday, Spencer on Thursday and Braeden today. Each one of the devotions led to interesting conversations, fellowship and sharing.

Before we went to the job sites, we took a group photo in front of the church.

From left to right: Myself, Barbara Johnson , Mark Shibukawa, Richard Kropf, Carl Westphal,Clyde Hockman, Braeden Miller, Cletus Yoder, Spencer Miller.

We said our goodbyes to Clyde and Richard who left to go back home to Oregon and then headed to the job site to finish as much as we could before we left. When we got there, I went on the roof and finished attaching the ridge cap on the metal roof before it got to hot and then I finished the last piece of the porch deck before helping Cletus, Mark and Spencer with the rest of the drywall work. Braeden worked with Carl attaching the last of the small pieces of siding and then Braeden helped us inside with the drywall. At lunch Cletus took Carl back to camp so that he could make his way back to his home in Washington.

Just before 2 pm, Cletus returned to the house to show it to the new site director, Harold Miller, in order to familiarize him with the 3 different jobs at the Kamiah site.

We started to clean up the job site at 2 pm and by 3 pm we were headed back to camp, where we washed and vacuumed the 3 vehicles, cleaned our bunk area and washroom, took showers and then had a wonderful supper before we said our goodbyes and started the long road home. Cletus was planning to head to Kelowna, BC on Saturday morning before heading back home to Ohio. Barbara was planning to transition to working on the job site since another cook was coming to Kamiah next week. She was planning to stay a few more weeks before returning to Pennsylvania. Mark was planning to work another week before returning to Los Angeles.

We left the site at 6:45 pm and traveled down the long and winding road from Kamiah to Missoula.

On the way, we had to stop to take a picture of the beautiful view of the river, winding through the mountains.

When the sun had set, we suddenly had a beautiful vision of the full moon, framed by the mountains and trees with a slight orange glow around it. It seemed to be larger and closer than normal to us and we were all surprised by its sudden appearance. We were listening to the song ” Dark Side of the Moon ” by Pink Floyd when we stopped to take pictures, none of which turned out because all it showed was a white spot in the dark. It was a ‘ Kodak moment ‘ but, unfortunately, we could not capture it the way our eyes saw it. The skies were so clear that we admired the stars and the constellations for a while before continuing on.

When we got close to Missoula, we finally got cell reception and we started to look for a place to stay. The KOA campsite was full so we opted to go to a hotel. We went to the Super8 recommended by TripAdvisor but when we got there, they had no room in the inn but they contacted a different Super8 ( one that TripAdvisor hadn’t mentioned ), which was 5 miles away and they had a room for us and it was almost $30 cheaper. When we got there it was a very nice hotel and we were happy to get a room and a good night’s sleep before continuing on the next leg of our journey home.