Dappled Sunlight & Blue Skies

I don't know if it was because of the rain on Thursday, but the smoke from the forest fires lifted yesterday and the sky was a marvelous blue. It's the same today, but the forecast for tomorrow is more haze.

Does anyone know.  Are these chokecherries?

Bob & I met at Norm's News before heading off for lunch.  Norm's is an ice cream/candy shop with a wall of magazines.

The window has ice cream cone bunting.

Inside an archway leads into a western shop.

There were racks of plaid western shirts where the plaids didn't match at the seams.

 

There were walls of cowboy boots.

Here's the little girls' section.  I wonder which Riley would choose.

Perhaps the glittery ones.  I'm glad Grandma & Grandpa Jonescu are the ones who will keep my grandchildren in cowboy boots!

We ate supper at Sykes Diner which has been around forever.  The place is bright and airy, the food is delicious and reasonably priced and the wait staff is pleasant and informative.  Win.  Win.  Win.  Sykes is not only a diner, but also a pharmacy, a fitness center, a deli, and a coffee shop.  I think there's an art gallery part too although we missed it.  Upstairs there are apartments.

Vanessa, I hope you bought peaches to can.  Look at the price of the ones they sell.  They also had homemade cherry pie filler for $14.95.  It was probably made of $2 worth of Flathead cherries.  This is the last weekend of the Flathead cherry season so I'm bringing some home to make jam.

Last night the Bigfork Summer Theater's production was Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Their interpretation was impressive and confirmed why this musical is on my list of top five favorite musicals of all time.  

I wish you could all meet the couple we chatted with before the show ... and at intermission ... and at the end of the show as they ended up seated directly behind us.  We chatted with them outside the theater, starting up the conversation simply because they were so incredibly dressed.  Lots of people dress well for this theater ... ladies in sweet summer dresses and men in golf shirts and pressed shorts. 

However this women was dressed in a very flowy manner with so many delicate scarves and rhinestone brooches that I couldn't really interpret where the scarves and jewelry ended and the rest of the outfit began.  Most of it was of the brightest teal, but here was also pink and blue.

Her hair (wig) was the brightest orange-red and she had on blue eye shadow and false eyelashes.  Her nail polish had sparkles in it.  Her husband had on what I would call yachting clothes ... a blue blazer and white pants.  The blazer had a poofy thing (what are they called?) in the pocket and it matched his tie.

The lady revealed she is 76 ... and a well preserved 76, I must say.  She grew up in Manhattan and had a theater-loving mom which helped evolve her into a fanatic for Broadway musicals.  She lived around the world with her first husband who was in the oil industry and, with him, actually saw a production in London on the same night that Prince Charles and Princess Diana were in the audience..  This present husband is an opera lover and they seem the perfect complement for each other.  

They told us lots of stories and seemed equally interested in the ones we had to tell.  It's a meeting with strangers which I enjoyed and won't likely forget.  At the show Bob was sitting beside a man who owns one of the Flathead cherry orchards so there were interesting conversations there too.  He told us that Canadians can each legally bring back 551 pounds of fruit and vegetables.  It's a good thing we brought the truck!  (We went to the Kalispell Farmers' Market this morning and won't quite meet that quota, but we did buy dill, garlic, and Flathead cherries.)

It's time to enjoy our last day in the valley and then tonight's production of Mamma Mia.