Images!

Well, in spite of the poor reliability and low bandwidth of most RV Campground wi-fi connections, Sara has managed to upload a generous bunch of images from the early portion of our trip to her Flickr photo sharing pages. The photos were taken with her SLR and run through the early portion of our first day at the Grand Tetons.

Sara took most of the pictures, but the boys and I snapped a few with her camera, too. Many of the images are awesome, others not so much, but they provide a pretty good record of the early part of our trip.

Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/saraleigh/

Enjoy!

The kindness of strangers starts a lucky day

More via e-mail from Sara:

We got up and had pancakes at the RV park. Pat got the name and number of the muffler shop, and we drove over to see what could be done about out LOUD camper.

Fortunately, the guys at the shop took pity on us and worked us in. Turns out our catalytic converter was broken, trashed, and had fallen apart. Since we don't live in a state with emissions testing and since the camper is an antique, the guys at the shop installed a piece of  straight exhaust pipe for $50 cash and sent us on our way. I think the cash deal was for 4th of July beer money and the lack of a paper trail likely protects their compliance with regulations of some sort.

We filled the afternoon with another trip to Chik-Fil-A and a little retail therapy. We then started quietly driving north toward Yellowstone. I called an RV park near-ish to the West entrance of the park, got very lucky and booked the last remaining spot in their park for the next 3 nights. Someone had had a medical emergency and had to vacate their camping spot, so we had a beautiful site overlooking a huge meadow five miles off the highway in a very picturesque valley in Idaho.

Gray built a relaxing campfire, we cooked hot dogs over the flames, had some roasted marshmallows and went to bed.

Craters and (broken) tubes

From Sara via e-mail:

We left the KOA after showers and breakfast and headed to Craters of the Moon National Monument.  We stopped by the visitor's center and the boys picked up their Junior Ranger kits. Pat got our caving permits and we drove straight to the cave sites for a ranger-guided tour of one of the caves. Our ranger, Emerald, had just finished her Masters in Geology and guided us through a lava field to the cave site telling us all about different kinds of lava flow, then led us into a giant lava tube called Indian Tunnel Cave. it was a pretty strenuous trek over rocky terrain, but we all made it through the lava tube and up through the tiny hole to the surface.

It was warm, no, hot and being on a big, black lava flow didn't make things cooler. After we left the lava tube/cave area we went to the cinder cone -- a big hill of fine cinder sand. I sat in the camper to sweat while the boys and Pat climbed to the top of the cinder cone. They reported that the view was amazing.

Our initial plan had been to stay 2 days near Craters of the Moon so that we woulnd't have to do so much driving, but we didn't have any good options for places to stay so we drove back to Idaho Falls. Once we reached civilization, we stopped at an Albertson's to get some essentials. When we got back in the motorhome, it started making an awful sound -- we had a huge break in our exhaust system and the muffler was just acting as decoration. Ooops.

We checked in to the closest RV park and Pat talked to the owner of the park about muffler shops in the area. We had a campfire and went to bed knowing there was nothing we could do until Monday morning.

A discovery too late

This morning's discoveries:

1. The wi-fi at Jellystone RV Park in Wye, Montana works with my phone.

2. There is now a blogger app for my phone.

3. Typing on these tiny keys is a pain.

All of this is coming a bit late in the day for me, as I am catching a flight back to Detroit tomorrow; however, I'll see what kind of fun I can have with this in the next 24 hours. I'll have to catch up on the happenings between Devil's Tower and here when I get a couple of hours with a good computer with a decent internet connection.

The Rest of the Story, Part III

I'm kind of new at this blogging thing, so please forgive the multitude of short posts, but I can't seem to save or post longer entries. I'm sure Sara will chew me out  enlighten me later, but, as she is fast asleep right now, I'd rather face the music tomorrow than wake her up right now. Thus, the saga continues.

June 27: We return to Mount Rushmore so Liam and Gray can earn their Mount Rushmore Junior Ranger badges. I can't say enough about what a cool thing the National Park Service has done with its Junior Ranger program. It helps kids focus on the signifigance of the parks and monuments and enriches their experience immeasurably. From Mt. Rushmore, we head to Belle Fourche, South Dakota - the geographic center of the United States, then we sneak into Montana and arrive at Devil's Tower at dusk. The light was simply amazing, and I snapped some cool images like the one below. We spent the night at the Devil's Tower KOA but skipped the nightly screening of Close Encounters. Riding around in an un-air-conditioned RV takes a lot out of you, and you tend to crash early.

I'm afraid that's all for tonight. Will post again soon until I'm caught up ...

The Rest of the Story, Part II

June 25: From Mitchell we head first to the new Minuteman Missle national Monument site, then into the Badlands, where two things happen:

1. Gray discovers my fear of "The Edge" and amuses himself by spending the rest of the day walikng out onto peaks and peering over any edge he can find, and-

2. I begin to have a Clark Griswold-grade freakout when I notice the temp gauge needle climbing beyond the half-way point of its range.

Y'see, I had a Toyota pickup of the same generation as the Dolphin for 10 years, and I never, ever managed to get its temp gauge past halfway, no matter how hot the day or how hard I worked it. Mind you,the needle in the Dolphin never went above the 2/3 mark, but it was enough to have me envisioning a molten lump of engine barely three days into our trip. Ergo, off went the A/C and open went the windows and vents.

Fortunately, Wall Drug still offers free ice water to travellers, which we all found very refreshing. We made it as far as Rapid City, then called it quits for the day. Our adventures in the Black Hills would begin the next day.

June 26: Starts out cool with a visit to Wind Cave, then gets hot, hot hot, as temps soar into the low 100s. We're all drinking fluid slike crazy, and I'm making many trips to the ice-filled cooler whenever we stop for fuel (that tiny fuel tank Sara already mentioned). We also hit the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota and pay a visit to the Crazy Horse Monument. We retire to the plush surroundings of the Mount Rushmore KOA and retire after viewing the Mt. Rushmore Memorial's nightly light show.

The Rest of the Story

Spent a long day at Yellowstone. Got back to our site at Red Rocks RV Park in Island Park, Idaho, and Sara and the boys immediately crashed - giving me a perfect opportunity to post several snippetsand observations from the trip so far.

June 22 & 23: Good progress and made up for late start by driving through the night and catching a few winks at a tollway oasis outside Chicago. Packed a lot into the first day (pun intended) with visits to the U.S. Grant house in Galena, IL; the Field of Dreams filming location in Dyersville, IA; the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, MN and the Spam Museum in Austin, MN. Spent the night of the 23rd at an RV Park in Welcome, MN. Boys discovered old-school merry-go-round at park -demonstrated the essential "Wheel of Death" pushing technique.

June 24: Toured Southwest Minnesota, including the city of Luverne, my father's hometown and the site of numerous misadventures during visits when I was growing up and the Pipestone National Monument, where the boys picked up the first of many National Park Service Junior Ranger badges, then made tracks for Mitchell, South Dakota and the Corn Palace. Sadly, we missed our chance to meet the Palace's mascot, Cornelius, and get his autograph. The Dolphin is running like a champ so far.

Smoke Gets in Our Eyes on a Driving Day

After quick showers and breakfast, we started the morning with a trip the Devil's Tower visitors center. Liam and Gray picked up their Junior Ranger workbooks and we headed off for the 1.3 mile trail around the base of the tower. Several climbers were scaling the tower. One of the funnier stories involving Devil's Tower is way back when some guy decided to parachute and land on the top of the tower. He was successful BUT it took climbers six days to reach him to help him get down. Planning. It's all int eh planning.We saw red squirrels and least chipmunks (haven't seen the most chipmunk yet) and even caught part of a ranger talk about the porcupines that are indigenous to the area. We took LOTS of photos.

Heading west from the tower into Wyoming one goes along a scenic route to Gillette, Wyoming. It was scenic and there were several towns along the way. One town had more junk cars than people. Seriously, population isn't a big thing out here. We drove all the way to Thermopolis for the night. As we left Worland we started seeing smoke, and as we got closer to Thermopolis, the smoke got thicker and thicker. A wildfire southwest of here in the Bridger-Teton forest combined with just the right wind pattern made for fairly low visibility. We grabbed dinner at a Taco John's in Worland and settled in the Eagle RV Park in Thermopolis for the night.

Some days are driving days. Kinda boring. Kinda long. But necessary to get from place to place.

Wednesday, or, It's Time You Learned How To Do This, Too!

And so I must learn to blog. It begins by learning how to post a new entry. Sara has ordered generously offered to let me post the entry she composed for Wednesday but has been unable to post due to the dicey nature of most RV Park wi-fi systems. So, without further ado, I give you, Wednesday
We slept in a bit and went to the pancake tent for breakfast. All you can eat pancakes for $2.50. Liam and Gray each ate 5 pancakes. Plus bacon for Gray. Plus sausage for Liam.

Pat and I did a bit of repacking while the boys went and played on the jumping pillow and worked in a game of putt-putt and some waterslide time. All here at the Mount Rushmore KOA. My guess is the boys think KOA stand for Kind Of Awesome.

Back to Mount Rushmore for some daytime activities. The boys wanted to finished their Junior Ranger badges and we still needed to walk the trail that takes you to the base of the mountain. Thankfully it was much cooler today than yesterday so we took the strenuous trail to the sculptors studio and saw some of the equipment used to carve the mountain and the model from which the mountains carved. Rushmore is so much smaller than Crazy Horse, but we enjoyed it more. "Because it is finished!" piped up voices it the back. Like those children have ever finished anything...

We needed a few provisions - razors (since both Pat and I are getting a bit wooly in face and leg and for the life of me I cannot find the razors I packed for us) and gas and ice (the two permanent items on our list) so we headed into Rapid City.

Gray thinks that fishing is the best thing ever, so we headed to Cabela's so he could check out the fishing 'stuff.' This Cabela's is much smaller than the Bass Pro normally go to, but it had a big display of flies. He wanted one of everything, so to reign him in a bit, Pat had him talk to the fishing section employee who guided Gray to a reasonable amount of gear that might possibly work in Yellowstone.

From Rapid City we headed to Belle Fouche. Why? Because it has been the Geographical center of the United States since Alaska and Hawaii were admitted into the Union in 1959, that's why. We took lots of photos on the granite marker beyond the visitors center and debated going the 20 or so miles north to the field that is the actual center, but we had someplace to go and needed to be there near sunset.

 So we took the scenic route to Devil's Tower. We went through several towns that were marked on our map and seemed like real towns with populations of oh, 50. One place seemed to have more old (read junk) cars on the side of the road than people. We first glimpsed Devil's Tower from a turnout miles away. Pat and I commented that the drive to Devil's Tower looked just like it did in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, go figure.

We got to the park long after it had closed but were still able to drive to the top. So we did. We took lots of pictures of the west side of the tower. The light was fantastic. There is a prairie dog town at the base of the hill that leads to the tower, so we stopped and checked out the prairie dogs.

"Do not feed the prairie dogs! They have fleas that carry disease and can bite. Do not reach into holes! Black Widow spiders and rattlesnakes can live in prairie dog burrows." How did we survive before such warnings? We kept our distance and listened to the chatter, took some pictures and watched them go in and out of their burrows.

At the base of the park is a KOA. The boys were psyched! Woohoo! Kind Of Awesome! Uh, yeah, not so much. As with most things, there are many quality levels in campgrounds. This campground has location, location, location. Most sites a view of the tower. We got here late, without reservations and have to walk, oh, ten feet to get a view. Sigh. I suppose we'll have to live with it. For what it's worth, they do show Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Every. Single. Night. But I didn't notice a mountain of mashed potatoes on the menu at the cafe. You can't always get what you want.