Musings from Late Summer

Summer is essentially over so I thought I would add some thoughts from the past few weeks.

While we had a good time in Florida during our annual visit, it was different in one regard. About the second day there we were all anxious to get back to Oregon rather than wishing the beach vacation would not end. Anyway, there were some highlights in Florida. The first was meeting up with Nancy and Amy in the Orlando airport; they flew from Albany and I flew from Portland. We ran into a really good hotwire deal (more than $100 off the going rate) and stayed at the hotel right in the airport, which turned out to be a 4-Star hotel. The photo is of Amy on our balcony above the main area of the airport; notice the fashionable hat.


A second memory from Florida concerns the ocean. The surf was pretty rambunctious, as shown in the pictures in the post below. Hurricane Bill was hundreds of miles away, but ol' Bill raised a ruckus on the beaches. On the last day, one of the larger waves got us all, but especially Amy. It battered her to the point where she thought she was going to drown and left her with a really sore arm for a couple days. Otherwise it was really fun getting blasted by the waves.

This is an aside, but one of the news items I read this summer was that "global warming" had raised the temperature of the ocean to the low 80's as far north as New Jersey. What the anthropogenic global warming believers fail to mention, however, is that the ocean in Florida is unusually chilly this year. Whereas we normally look forward to water temperatures of 80-82 degrees in Florida in August, this year it was only 74.

The third memory from Florida: On our last Sunday we stayed in Orlando while waiting for our flight home. We decided to take advantage of proximity to St Andrews Church, where Dr RC Sproul is the teaching pastor. It was like a little bit of heaven. The parking lots are a couple blocks from the church building, which looked to me like stereotypical Scottish architecture. The walkways to the church wound around ponds with fountains, and it was almost magical to walk along with others on the way to worship while listening to bell chimes play familiar sacred music. During the first 15 minutes of the service, the well dressed congregation sat in reverence while the church orchestra played familiar classical music written by Bach. RC Sproul spoke on the miracle of feeding the 5000 and somewhere in the middle of his sermon he quoted from a Nobel prize winning scientist who had written something to the effect that science has progressed to the point that it can now be concluded that spontaneous evolution of life took a miracle. I think he said that it might be called the greatest miracle, where a miracle is something that is rare and does not obey the natural scientific laws. It was really enjoyable listening to a man who is well read with a great mind talk about the real truth of things. Anyway, the service concluded with a piece from Handel's Water Music, one of my favorites.

On a lighter note, we went to Crater Lake National Park on Tuesday of this week. This year, there was hardly any snow left, which is a little surprising given that the average snowfall each year is 45 feet. It is a spectacular place with the bluest water I have ever seen. Amy delights in scaring the petunias out of her parents by perching on rocks. In the photo below, she was feeling her oats after being cooped up in the car for 2 hours. This particular location was not too scary,

but the one in the picture below really gave me the heebie jeebies. It is a long way down, straight down!