Good Morning from beautiful Grand Teton National Park,

It has been a busy week for me what with working and having family visitors. My niece Kimberly, her husband Dennis, great niece and nephew Melissa and Kyle were here part of the week and in Yellowstone for the balance of their time. I took my fifth trip up to the oldest national park on my days off to hike and hang out with them. We had a great time and those kids are "pistols," and very sharp in their observational skills. it made me wish my own daughter's and their families could have made it up here while I was a ranger.

This morning they will get up and head back to Littleton, CO. It makes me think about how in the coming years it may be more and more difficult for families to hit the road on driving vacations. My Subaru gets between 32 and 36 mpg while here in WY. But even at that it costs me over $50 to fill it with gas. Families who have larger vehicles to carry all that a family of four needs will not be able to afford it the way gas prices are going up. Sadly, it may put an end to these educational and bonding trips for all but the "well heeled," and as we know the upper end of our class structure does not travel by automobile. The far away national parks may become, as they started out, destinations for the wealthy.

Movie review for this week:

I was able to get to a really good "Indie" film this week, The Visitor. This is the second excellent film of the summer for me. It is a very low key character drama with a great leading performance by an actor we have only seen in character roles before. You will recognize him as one of those actors that you say, oh, I've seen him before, but do not know his name. The film is about an economics professor who is sliding through life after his wife has died a few years earlier. He is gentlely forced by his department chair to present a paper in New York City at a conference. It just so happens that he owns an apartment there that he rarely visits. When he arrives there is an illegal immigrant Muslim couple in residence. They have been duped into believing they had sublet it. The professor allows them to live with him while looking for another place. He grows close to them and then something happens involving their immigration status.

It is a very poignant and wonderfully acted film. The immigration issue in this country and our way of dealing with these folks since 9/11 comes out very personally here. It would be a travesty if it does not get some award nominations. But, it is a small film so may get overlooked.