Since his retirement as a psychiatric social worker, (at age 79), it has been the goal of Harlan Dalluge (’58) to visit all 59 national parks. To date, Harlan and his wife, Jeannine, have visited and toured 29 of those 59 parks. He says his philosophy is : “Tour those parks with agility, while I still have the ability…before I reach senility”. Their favorites to date include Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Sequoia/Redwoods, and several parks in Utah. In August, Harlan and Jeannine visited and toured Crater Lake in Oregon–“very impressive”. The adventuring pair have 30 more to go. The attached photo is from Yosemite:
We can’t wait to see where you two go next! Good luck, Harlan!
We visited Glacier National Park this summer before fires closed the west end. There are 26 glaciers left; down from 150 at its establishment. If some of the supporters of our so-called President are successful, there will be fewer National Parks to enjoy and you can finish your task more quickly. We wanted to see Glacier National Park while it still had some glaciers. Of course there is no such thing as “global warming”.
You can see several National Parks on one long trip to Alaska, where we lived for 33 years. Sadly, we didn’t make it to all of them while we lived there, but we enjoyed living close to one of the smallest ones in Sitka, Alaska. Not to brag, but I visited Denali National Park 5 times and had the privilege of seeing Mt. Denali every time. Less than 20% of the visitors to the park get to see it up close and personal. I also participated in building a church at Chugiak (north of Anchorage) designed to provide a glimpse of Mt. Denali behind the altar setting. When “the big one” was out, folks paid more attention to the view than they did to my sermons. Once I just turned around in the pulpit and looked myself. I realized no one was listening to me. Fortunately it didn’t happen every Sunday. It was at least one hundred miles away. A highlight of my Alaskan time was flying with my brother to the top of Ruth Glacier and getting a close-up view of “the big one”. Awesome! As some like to say.
1
John: It’s been a long time since I saw the name “John Shaffer”. Good to see your response to Harlan Dalluge’s comments about his goal of visiting all National Parks. Rather ambitious goal! I’m still “plugging away”. Just celebrated by 65 year of being under appointment in the United Methodist Church. 52 of those years were in the Illinois Great Rivers Conference and after my retirement from First Church Rock Island, then nine years in the Iowa Conference and the past four year in the Indiana Conference. We came to Indiana since my youngest daughter is a doctoral student at Purdue. She should graduate in two years and then I’ll be looking for a new job! 🙂 Where are you living now and what are you currently doing to keep yourself busy?