99 Days of Epic Adventure

We went to the permit office first thing to try to secure a camping permit for our backpacking trip down into the Grand Canyon. These permits are available on a first come first served basis, and so we arrived early enough to stand in line for a next day permit, but by the time it was our turn campsites had run out for the next day, so we'd have to return each day until we were successful. Next stop was Grand Canyon Village to visit the post officewhere we were expecting a package: new hiking shoes for Meridian as she had work down the tread on her first pair.

With errands done, we hit the South Rim trail, a 9.7 mile stretch that hugs the rim of the canyon. We spent the whole day along the trail, walking some, hopping on and off the shuttle, as the mood struck. We marveled at how the colors in the canyon changed as the light changed throughout the day.

One of the things that was just wild was how different the Canyon would look at sunset if you looked toward the sun versus if you had the sun at your back. The pictures below are taken within moments of each other, and you can see how looking in one direction shows all the pinks being cast by the lowering sun, while looking toward the sun, preserves some of the oranges and greens in the canyon.

At the end of the day, we got to see some elk near the canyon's edge. It was rutting season, and so there was a male elk with a herd of females, and they went where they wanted. At one point, the bull had cross the street, and the females were lingering in the road as a shuttle came through. The shuttle drivers are on a strict schedule, so in order to get the animal out of the road, the driver gingerly inched toward the elk femal that was still in his path, and gently tapped her with the front of the shuttle. Well, she was offended. She turned her rump to the bus, and backed into it! I wish I had a better picture, but I snapped a quick blurry shot on my phone before she could dart off. One day I will be calm and methodical while photographing wildlife instead of panicking at the thought that I might miss the shot. In any event, enjoy this blurry capture of an elk's, "Oh, helllllll no!"

Today was a day of upkeep. We headed up to the Grand Canyon today, and plan to spend the next seven days exploring, so we needed to take some time to get organized. We spent the morning packing up camp. Getting out all of our backbacking gear and supplies, taking inventory, and making a shopping list. Then we did a substantial grocery trip, drove the two hours up to Tusayan, set up camp for the night off the Kaibab Forest Road 302, east oss Hwy 180. With the tent all set up, it a touch after four o'clock. We perhaps just had time to hop a shuttle to the rim to take in our first glimpse of the Canyon and our first sunset in the park.

We drove into town, parked at one of the hotels, and hopped on the shuttle. We got off at the South Rim Visitor Center, got our passport stamps, and picked up maps for the trip. Then we headed outside to walk the rim a little and take in the views. It was quite dusky by now and quite hazy, and the light had a soft pink quality to it.

This morning our moods are dampened as we learned last night that a predator attacked our chickens at home, and Narcissa was taken. Meridian is deeply sad as we set out on the day taking in more views of the red rocks, but she finds a productive way to mourn when we spot this chicken-shaped rock formation, complete with Narcissa-style cheek-puffs! It's aready named Chicken Point, but we rechristen it: Mount Narcissa. It is a very prominent and easily recognizable landmark in among the Sedona landscape, so we see it several times throughout the day, and pause to honor Narcissa. This allows us to return to joy. We're taking her along on our journey with us.

From our vantage point above the city, we took in a beautiful view of the rock formations below. We only allowed 2 days in Sedona, which isn't going to allow any hiking or climbing among those formations, so that will be something to save for another time. Instead, we drank in the views.

We bummed around downtown Sedona a bit enjoying the wind sculptures and the public musical instrument installments before heading to our next adventure.

Next up: Sliding Rock Park. This all-natural red rock waterslide is cooler than anything at a theme park. Home to spectacular desert views, cool swimming holes and natural pools, red rock beaches, and a long, champagne flute slide that was completely formed by nature. The gently sloping slide (about a seven-percent decline) is propelled by the natural current and algae to keep it slippery, and it lands in a large pool where you can swim to your heart's content. The slide itself is about 80 feet long and 2.5 to 4 feet wide.

October in Arizona is plenty warm for short sleeves or spaghetti strap dresses, but there is no way I was going to be climbing into the ice cold water of Oak Creek, but no such qualm exists for the 12 year old! She worked up her nerve, and once she went once, she was at it over and over, having the time of her life.

After enjoying the waterslide and soaking in the warmth of the sun on the red rock after swimming, we strolled through the apple orchards. Sliding Rock Park is built on an original homestead of the Pendley family. Taking advantage of the Homestead Act of 1910, the Pendley's planted an expansive orchard and vegetable homestead. Pendley was successful because of his engineering acumen, coming up with irrigation solutions that are still in use in the orchard today. We strolled and picked apples, and considered how much strength of character would be needed to come and occupy such a barren land. How lucky Pendley was to discover this lush Canyon with its creek amid such dry land, and how innovative he had to be in his thinking to succeed in a time where infrastructure was entirely self-built. We think the decision to maintain the Homestead and its orchards while opening the natural slide to the public honors the beauty and possibility of the land. Well played, Arizona.

This morning I got an early start while Meridian slept a little, took in our surroundings, and was pleased with our campsite. I gathered some downed wood and used the last of our firewood to make a breakfast fire. Meridian woke up, surprised by a morning fire, which has not been a part of our routine. We cooked the last of the eggs we had left from Sequioa's general store and made a note to get some groceries. Once we'd eaten, put out the fire, and set up the tent and camp for the evening, we climbed back into Carwin and headed toward Sedona.

The drive through Oak Creek Canyon was quite beautiful. There was a lush greenery in the area that we had been missing in the west, and which set astride the red rocks was quite striking.

On the way into Sedona, we stopped at Oak Creek Canyon Vista to take in the views, and were delighted with a Native American craft and jewelry market. The pieces were beautiful, and I might have overdone it buying souvenirs. I was especially taken with the magnetite, which I was told is a red rock in the wild, but polishes to a get black shiny stone. I indulged and bought myself a few pieces, which was out of character because I don't really wear much jewelry, but I really liked it.

We managed to pull ourselves away from the market at last, and headed into Sedona. We had fun traipsing through the artsy shope and galleries. I held my breath while a woman in a mystical shop talked to me about my energy and tried to convince me that I felt something emanating from a rock. I'm always stuck in a situation like that because I am a definite skeptic, but I never want to seem intolerant, so I get stuck in these situations where I end up feeling like my indulgence is patronizing, and I just wish I could get away. I've got to develop the gumption to just say, "This is not for me." It was interesting to watch Meridian - I couldn't tell if she was buying into it or not. I asked her when we left the shop, and she looked at me like I was nuts. "I was being polite, Mommy." Apparently, I have passed my awkwardness on to the next generation.

We decided that taking Carwin off-roading was out of the question, so we had the option to rent an offroad vehicle and adventure out on our own, or book a jeep tour. The idea of unmarked paths without good maps and the threat of flash floods always a possibility in the region made it an easy choice. Jeep tour it would be. Our driver was great, and took us through Red Rock Country to some beautiful spots.

We packed up camp early this morning and pretty easily since we'd opted to sleep in Carwin instead of pitching the tent. Then, we enjoyed our final drive through the beautiful northern forests of the Sequioa National Forest before driving through the California desert and the Mojave National Preserve to the Hoover Dam.

As we arrive in Nevada we are greeted by the ...appropriately seedy Welcome to sign. Confirming all of our sterotyped about the state, there's even a Larry Flint billboard to back up the welcome sign. What can we say? We did a quick jaunt through the Vegas Strip, but it so not us that we didn't even pause for photos. Meridian was most amused to see the streets lined with faux grass. In a 3 month vacation that focused on the natural beauty our country has to offer, Vegas was even more of a sideshow than usual in its hilarious incongruity to our mission. We treated it like a roadside attraction, and kept the pedal down on our way to grander things.

At Hoover Dam, we were able to arrange a tour of the power plant, which was pretty amazing. In the third picture below, our tour guide indicates where we came in. The museum and visitor center are above us. We took an elevator down and then followed the yellow access tunnel into the power plant. The third photo shows one of the enormous pipes taking water through the power plant. This plant generates, on average, about 4 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power each year for use in Nevada, Arizona, and California - enough to serve 1.3 million people.

Over 21,000 unemployed men found work building the Hoover Dam. So many people were needed to work on it that they also had to build an entire town (Boulder City) to house and support the workforce. The men came from all over the country at the promise of a job, uprooting their wives and families and living in tents nearby until Boulder City construction was complete. More than 5 million barrels of concrete was required for its construction. Hoover Dam was the most expensive engineering project in U.S. history at the time of its construction. The project was completed two years ahead of schedule and cost less than the original budget of $49 million, and paid for itself within 5 years with the electrical power it created and sold.

The building of Hoover Dam blocked the Colorado River and flooded the Mojave Desert creating Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir in the United States of America. Lake Mead provides 550 miles of coastline and is 110 miles long with a depth of 500 feet. The by-product of the Hoover Dam the creation of a large site for outdoor recreation, and a massive boost to tourism in the area. The Hoover Dam provides water for irrigation to farmland in three states and drinking water to over 16 million people, and electricity to three states.

We left Nevada after dinner and arrived at Oak Creek Canyon in Sedona after dark. We spent the night in Carwin instead of making camp in the dark.

We were nearly out of gas this morning, so we had to head back to the Three Rivers park entrance and find gas in the nearest town before finding our way back through the park today.

Coming back through the park, we retraced our steps from the day before, but slowed down to visit some of the other sites along the way. We stopped at Tunnel Rock for a quick snapshot. M climbed up onto it. Next we stopped at Hospital Rock to explore the remnants of native tribes in the park and take a hike.

From there, we headed up to the northern part of the park where most of the sequoias are, and where we'd be camping for the night. We spent some time in the Giant Forest Museum. In the museum we learned that southern Sierra Nevada had lost 3.3 million trees to dought by 2014. In the next 2 years, the same drought and the onset of bark beetles that resulted from the drought went on to claim another 26 million trees. That is not a typo. No wonder I was so overcome with sadness driving through the southern part of the park. It is a heart-rending loss to a treelover. We soothed our hearts in Big Trees Trail.

We made our visit to the Generals Grant and Sherman trees next and were duly blown away by their incredible sizes, but for us it was the quiet moments in the hidden parts of the park that were more majestic. Away from the crowds, communing with the trees, ...that's where my heart is. And this is also where I leave the reservation because although science doesn't support it, I am sure these trees have a sentience that we don't yet understand. So, I sit in the silence and have my heart to heart with the trees, certain I'm communicating, the same way I'm certain I'm communicating when I look into the eyes of a horse or an elephant or a dog. I don't understand it with my brain, but I understand it with my heart. Yep, hippie treehugger, and proud of it.

Oddly, I'm missing any photos from the next few days. In those two days, we drove up through Sequoia National Forest, where we were permitted to collect cones for personal use. This filled us with joy, and we went in search of samples from as many types of trees as we could. We also rode into Kings Canyon National Park for some hiking before heading out of the park to the next adventure. My favorite memory of this day was finding a copse of tree where a trunk was downed across a meadow. Meridian and I balance beamed our way across the trunk, and settled down to listen to the birdsong and watch the wildlife. A mother mule deer and her two fawns played and ate in the meadow not noticing us as we sat still as statues. I know I had pictures of that excursion, but they elude me at the moment.

Although we woke up in Sequoia National Park, we haven't seen a Sequoia yet. We're in a part of the park with altitude too low for the sequoias to thrive. The area that we are in last lost millions of trees over the last several years due to drought. We decided to set out immediately to the part of the park where we would see Sequoias. Feeling down? Hug a tree!

The size of these trees is hard to imagine! They grow an average of 250 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter! That's three 6' men lying end to end to make up the width of the tree, and as tall as the Statue of Liberty including her pedestal.

These trees are amazing. For one, they are impervious to fire with bark 3 feet thick. A fire rarely burns long enough to eat through enough of the bark to threaten the heart of the tree. Instead, fires create fire scars where fire tried to eat into the tree and failed. You can see a fire scar on the second tree from the left below. The black inverted triangle near the ground.

The oldest of these trees is over 3500 years old. Giant Sequoias are among the oldest living things on Earth. The only natural cause of their death is inability to get enough water. This is typically not an issue for them as they grow in areas of relatively high altitude and therefore benefit from snowfall and snowmelt. Their root system runs extremely shallow and covers and area of a mile per tree. Their cones are so densely spiraled, they only open from the heat of fire, and then they release 230 seeds per cone, effectively reseeding the area damaged by fire. They also self-prune: is the tree loses a branch from one side from lightening or trauma, the tree drops a branch from the other side to maintain balance. They also intentionally drop branches during times of drought to reduce the amount of water they require. They are evolved! I could go on and on. They are just amazing trees!

This tree has been down since before the civil war. Images from that time period exist showing this tree just as we see it here. The wood retains its strength a full century later. Did I mention how impressive these trees are?

Tunnel log is an old fallen sequoia that has had a hole cut in it large enough to drive a car through. We got a kick out of driving loops through it. And I even let Meridian have a shot in the driver's seat, though admittedly, I made her keep it in park while I snapped the pic.

From there, we decided to hike to the top of Moro Rock for what promised to be a stunning 360° view. The drive to this part of the park was really beautiful, and really slow this morning with a number of hairpin turns as we gained elevation. So, although we didn't feel ourselves to be at a particularly high elevation, we knew we were higher than it seemed. Moro rock sits 6,875 feet above sea level. The hike however was a short one. We just had to climb 25 flights of stone stairs to the vantage point. While we sat up there waiting for sunset, we were visited by a giant mouse. She was as big as the footbed of our shoe. If we were still as stones, she would come and visit us. We were also attacked by the mouse obnoxious little tiny gnat-flies which didn't leave us alone for an instant. We had to get pretty creative with our buffs.

We got up early and said our goodbyes to the kids before they headed off to school, then meandered over a slow breakfast while we waited our the morning traffic before getting on the road. We skipped everything in California in our hurry to get down to Kaitlynn, so we reworked our trip a bit to recover one of those locations: Sequoia National Park. Approaching the Sierra Nevadas as we neared the park was pretty.

We drove into Sequoia from the south-western entrance, and it was a bit depressing to be honest. Something was off. My mood was not right. I had been eager to get on the road and resume our trip, but as we drove through the Three Rivers entrance of the park through a graveyard of dead trees, corpses of the California drought, I wasn't sure if my mood was still lingering for having left things unresolved with Shelby at Ryan's house, or whether the park itself was bringing me down. It was a little mystifying as I drove through the park and found myself going through the motions to set up camp at Potwisha Campground. We prepped dinner and stayed close to camp, playing cards and dice, and went to bed early.

Today was another soccer day for the pig family. It was also a day with a head advisory and 100+ temps. These kids still play soccer in those conditions. I am clearly no sports enthusiast because I was complaining just sitting under my umbrella in the bleachers in the sweltering heat while those kids played hard on the field. On the plus side, we stopped at the Donut Bar on our way to the soccer field, so the suffering was mitigated by eating donuts the size of our heads and drinking fancy coffee drinks. I opted for the strawberry shortcake donut (top shelf center in the photo below): a giant glazed donut cut in half and filled with homemade whipped cream and topped with fresh sugared strawberries. All that cream and milk product in the sweltering heat was probably ill-advised, but my mouth just threw a party and ignored common sense.

After soccer, we headed home to spend the last of our time with our pig family. The weather made any outdoor activity out of the question, so we decided to get our Catan on. If life were idyllic, we would have Cataned into the evening before saying our goodbyes and heading to bed, but life being life, and emotions running high, we ended up bickering and sniping at each other, and going to bed angry. Thankfully, family is always family, and though it doesn't feel good to say goodbye with a feeling of unresolve hanging over you, you know that i na few days time, everyone will be themselves again, and everything will go back to usual.

We'll be leaving my sister's in a couple of days, so while the kids had soccer all day, I took advantage of the opportunity to get Carwin cleaned out and organized to resume life on the road. I was also able to catch up on laundry and get some shopping done. We replaced some of our worn out hiking clothes, got Meridian new trail runners, and grabbed some other necessities that we've been reluctant to stop touring to make time for. Ryan had just done grocery shopping the day before while I had the kids in the afternoon, and had loaded Carwin up with all the replacement groceries we needed. Bittersweet day spent readying for more adventure while knowing I'm saying goodbye to my Pigs and using up a whole day that could be spent with them.

After my busy day of get-it-done, I rewarded myself with a trip to the other fast-food joint I was determined to try while in Cali: In & Out. I parked and went in, and was surprised to see a line wrapping around the inside of the restaurant. It was only 4pm. I took a deep breath and wondered whether or not standing in this line would be worth it. But as I got in line to consider this, the line was already moving forward. I studied the menu, which was surprisingly small and uncomplicated. I settled on an a burger, animal style, and fries. Some people in line behind me were chatting. They had been hiking in Mexico for weeks, and had a bucket list of back-in-California to move through, a visit to In & Out being in the top three. That sounded promising, and I continued to eavesdrop as the line moved forward quickly and steadily.

Today's adventure is Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, one of only two places in the world where the Torrey Pine tree grows. This was a beautiful park overlooking Los Peñasquitos Lagoon to the north and bordering the Pacific to the the west.

It had a charming little visitor center, complete with beautiful taxidermied specimens of the wildlife that could be found in the park, identified samples of plant-life, and the skeleton of a whale deposited when sea levels were much higher and this land was underwater. I enjoyed spending some time in here because I really like to be able to identify the flora and fauna we encounter but I don't always want to add the weight of a number of guidebooks to my hiking pack. I have a number of pretty stellar bird IDing apps, and wish I had similar apps for mammals, amphibians, reptiles, plants, and trees. We picked up I-Spy bingo cards from the visitor center, and Ryan, Meridian and I raced to spot native plants and wildlife as we hiked, which was a fun diversion and a good way to familiarize ourselves better with names. We found a woodrat's nest, loads of lizards, a variety of birds, and more.

The park was such a pleasant place to be, at the same time desert, but lush owing to its status as a Natural Reserve where locals have worked hard to preserve the native ecology of the region. The proximity to the ocean added a pleasant saltiness to the air. The views were stunning. We began our hike along board-walk through densely planted desert plantlife: scrub-brush, aloe, Torrey Pines, cacti.

With limited time, we chose the trail to the beach. The visitor center sits about 100 yards above sea level atop seaside cliffs of Torrey Sandstone. We meandered down along boardwalks and stairs cut into the cliff to an unspoiled beach of breathtaking beauty. With the sandstone cliffs at our back, we put our toes into the Pacific, and watched the sandpipers and ibises fish for their lunch.

Meridian and Shelby have been cooking up a plan to allow Meridian to attend school for a day. Shelby campaigned at school to her teachers and her principal, and Meridian for her part vowed to follow all the rules of school and to prep by doing Shelby's homework with her while waiting for word from the principal. Surprisingly, the principal allowed it, and today is Meridian's official first ever day of school. She left eager and excited.

Ryan and I decided to use our kid-free time hiking, so we headed to Mission Hills where we hiked to South Fortuna Summit. Hiking in the San Diego desert climate was altogether different from any hiking I've done thus far. It was thankfully a cloudy day, and I was still feeling raisin-like. When the sun came out on the downhill portion of our hike, I knew desert-hiking was going to be no favorite of mine. On our hike out, the Blue Angels appeared in the sky and practiced formations for the airshow happening that weekend. We finished our short hike (maybe 5 miles, or so) and I was legitimately spent, which was both amusing to me and dismaying, but mostly an education in what a big different climate makes to my enjoyment and stamina.

Yesterday's schedule for tourism worked really well, so this morning after taking Thomas to school, we headed directly to La Jolla Cove to kayak the sea caves. Meridian and I are veteran kayakers, but it was to be Ryan's first time. Excitement!

We had a great time paddling out from the shore to the sea caves. We explored those as the surf rocked in and out of them. The surf would go out, lowering the water level and revealing oceanlife clinging to the rock: lobsters, barnacles, crabs. Meridian was unintimidated by the cold of the September ocean, and hopped in to snorkel, spotting: sea lions, small sharks, and two school of fish. Ryan and I stuck with the more limited, but warmer view from within the kayaks. Pelicans sat on the sandstone cliffs sunning themselves and watching the tourists.

When our rental expired, we hadn't had our fill of the beach, so we headed to La Jolla Shores where Meridian played in the ocean, and we hiked along the Scripps Conservatory Sea Wall, rock-hopping as the tide came in. We played under the pier, and in a memorable moment, while chasing Meridian a wave knocked me flat on my face to everyone's enjoyment.

After picking up Thomas, we stopped by one of two California fast-food joints I was determined to try out. Today: Jack in the Box. I probably shouldn't have been surprised to find it not unlike any other fast-food burger join I've ever been too, but I was let down that all the hype did not deliver. Meridian was for her part triumphant since she didn't want me to have a burger in the first place. Back at the house, Thomas and I resumed our afternoon homework and play ritual. And when the girls came home, Meridian and Shelby bowed to the alter of Harry Potter while Kaitlynn teened her evening away texting.

Today, with all the kids back in school (except M of course), we decided to fit some sight-seeing into the early part of the day before picking Thomas up. So, we hit Balboa Park with my sister. We joined a tour group there who gave us the run down on everything from the architecture (Spanish Colonial Revival) to the names and ages of several of the prominent trees in the park. I tour guide who wants to identify trees for me is a kindred spirit. I learned that the trees dotting the skyline that I had been trying to identify are actually eucalyptus trees, which was not at all within my expectations. We took in the greenhouse and the pools. It is a very pretty park, and I could see myself spending time here if I lived in the city.

After our tour of the park, we picked Thomas up from school, and headed to the Donut Bar for donuts the size of our heads. Ryan told us we might not be able to get donuts because they might be sold out for the day. At only 1pm, I was pretty confident, we they couldn't be sold out already. WRONG! Luckily, Ryan has no shortage of delicious purveyors of yumminess to share with us. We walked a few blocks away to Pappalecco to get gelato and paninis. It was like stepping through a portal into Tuscany. Our mouths danced to the tune of hazelnuts, coffee, and caramel. I've never been so happy to miss out on donuts, and would be content if I never met another restaurant and had to eat here forever. We also tasted delicious guilt knowing that the girls were still in school while we shoveled outselves full. We kept that little secret to ourselves.

I love this picture of my sister, because after she moved across the country, what I missed most was being able to just sit around after the kids were finally down for the night and hang out, chat, read, gossip, or watch tv. So, this captures the sisterhood - just a couple of hours in the evening to just be us.

First stop in San Diego as tourists: La Jolla Cove Beach and the sea lions! Boy, I was not prepared for the smell!! My Facebook feed over the last several months has been full of pictures of the California coast as any number of friends have made vacations out this way, among those pictures, the sea lions. Holy moly, how did no one mention the stench! LOL. It was actually hard to enjoy the beautiful animals because it smelled so bad. Ryan took it in stride, having apparently acclimated to the smelly cost of visiting the shore. Meridian and I covered our faces with scarves and braved the rocks, aware of our high maintenance appearance. The sea lions themselves were fun and amusing to watch. The humans, on the other hand, were infuriating. Watching people get their kicks by getting close enough to the sea lion to be charged and then laughingly retreat was not fun for me. My blood pressure might have spiked, and I resolved to come back on a weekday, when there were fewer idiots afoot. But not before enjoying a bit of rock-hopping and cave exploration.

From there, we had to check out some Mexican food. I ordered a California Burrito - which has french fries in it in addition to all the regular goodies. Personally, I was underwhelmed. But Meridian made real good friends for Horchata, and I think they'll be seeing a lot more of each other. After dinner, we headed to a yummy dessert bar, Baked Bear, where we ordered our own custom homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches. Those were de.ca.dent! I wish I'd thought to take photos, but our brains could only send the kinds of signals that meant "Lift food to mouth." We drove home, sated, admiring the California architecture.

Despite the circumstances, I was very glad to see my pig-family again. Our visit in San Diego was meant to be ten days, and turned into three weeks. We joked that if Kaitlynn wanted us to stay longer she should have just asked. Our visit felt like it had three sections.

During the first week, we set ourselves to the task of trying to make Ryan and Kaitlynn's absence less noticeable. This meant getting the kids to and from school (in conjection with Daniel and Ryan's friend, Emily), getting laundry taken care of and the house orderly, getting everyone into bed on time, etc. A big part of this week was trying to create balance. We went back and forth to the hospital a lot. It was a week with a lot of feelings. A sister in the hospital creates wave one of emotion. A sister doted on and showered in gifts creates wave two. A sister who hogs literally every minute of Mama's attention creates wave three. It was a week spent mitigating. I imagine being a mom of multiples always feels like something of a balancing act, but with feelings so tenuous this week, the fragility of that balance felt like we were walking a tightrope suspended over the Grand Canyon. Even the slightest breeze sent us into gyrations as we tried to keep everyone on their feet.

I was exceedingly proud of Meridian during this time. She really rose to the occassion with grace. She did every chore she was asked to, despite the fact that they weren't her chores. She looked for things that she could do to be helpful. At one point, I'd been washing dishes and noticed her absence. With a lot to do before we picked Thomas up from school and headed to the hospital for a visit, I wanted to put her to work. I found her upstairs, cleaning the hall bathroom on her own initiative. If I encounter endless failings as a parent, I will always be grateful to have raised a girl that looks for the need and fills it. At one point, she noted that Kaitlynn had gotten any number of care packages. I had also put one together for Shelby. She thought Aunt Ryan deserved a care package of her own, noting that she had observed that Aunt Ryan had been a stellar model of parenting all week, exhibiting a lot of patience during Kaitlynn's less cooperative moments, but also knowing when to give a little tough love. She wanted Aunt Ryan to feel appreciated too, so she put together some chocolates and some other niceties and packed it all up along with Aunt Ryan's coffee pot and brought it with a very nice letter the next time we visited the hospital. And finally, she tried to be to people what they needed. Kaitlynn needed to moan about the atrocities of hospital life. Shelby needed to vent about how unfair it all was. Thomas needed a playmate who was going to be as rowdy as he was and keep on taking it. Meridian set herself to each task, as needed. I'm aware this paragraph sounds a bit braggy, so I remind myself that this blog is meant to be a journal of her life and development, and it is definitely noteworthy that at twelve she was grown up enough to set her own needs and desires aside to help others. I love that about her, and I honor it here by not omitting it.

As news came in that Kaitlynn would probably be released this week, we began trying to get things back to normal. We attended soccer games, Meridian and Shelby played at the park and engaged in all things Harry Potter, Ryan even managed to squeeze in a long-planned Carrie Underwood concert with her girls while Meridian and I took in a movie. The kids had tea parties, helped Daniel with a family puzzle, played rock band, and formed a Harry Potter cult. (No other way to describe that last one, wherein they voluntarily washed their mouths out with soap if they couldn't remember some "important" Harry Potter trivia.) Feelings were still tender, but everyone was aware of it, and tried to be mindful of it. Poor Shelby had the roughest patch. The combined frailties of middle child syndrome together with the added stress of navigating the pitfalls of middle school and the tremendous feelings of injustice to see one of your siblings so continuously doted on (paired with that tween blindness to the down sides of Kaitlynn's situation) weighed heavily on her for the duration of our visit. I spent many nights laying in bed with her after she was tucked in and listening as she unloaded the weight of all her many burdens. Feelings can be so intense at this age. I tried to listen without reasoning to heavily. I nudged a bit and hoped it sank in. I didn't seem to make much progress. Solving tween angst in a week is a tall order.

Thomas was all energy, all of the time. We spent a lot of time playing cars, dinosaurs, puzzles, lightsaber battles, etc. We read a lot. He and I developed a little homework routine, where we'd do a task, play a card game, do a task. We snuggled. Thomas is snugglebug! He is the only person in this whole family who gives me enough smooches. Kaitlynn was grossed out. Kissing is taboo now at thirteen. Thankfully, Thomas is still only six, and all playful energy. I enjoyed indulging his wild streak, though I found myself having to be careful with it: whatever is funny in one situation, he thinks is funny in all situations and that hasn't helped him out too much at school. So, I tried to be as silly as possible without creating any new habits that his teacher wouldn't appreciate. I especially enjoyed delving into the Magic Trehouse series with him. During non-reading times, we'd sometimes refer to each other as Jack and Annie. For instance, if he was reluctant to practice his letters in his homework folder, I'd implore, "But Jack, we need to write these ancient letters in your notebook. We might be the only humans who ever saw them!" "Okay Annie, you get my notebook!" Some things Meridian wants to remember about Thomas at this age:

During our final week in San Diego, with all three kids back in school, and a more regular schedule in place, we began to play tourist with my tour-guide sister. More on that in the next post. As for this one, I wish I'd remembered to stop visiting and take pictures. So many missed opportunities for snapshots. So, the ones I have are incuded here despite their horrid indoor cell-phone camera quality because they are the memories I have film of.

Our original travel plan had been to hug the coast driving much of Hwy 1, but this slow and meandering road with its 45mph speed limit and its slew of RV travellers was not going to be an expedient way to get to San Diego, so we scrapped that plan and went for the I-5 through California's Central Valley. We had a fun moment entering California. Their agricultural department is doing their darndest to keep out non-native invasive species. So, as we pulled up to a toll-booth, the ag-officer said, "I see you're from Virginia. Do you have any produce in the vehicle?" Yes, ...most definitely. Produce, do not travel without it is something of a mantra as we refuel and reload.

"What do you have?" he asked innocently. I looked at him for a beat, blinked, and then determined that he was in fact expecting a list. I put my phone call on hold. "We have bananas, peaches, a couple of plums. We have some cherry tomatoes, broccoli, zucchini. Two cucumbers. We might still have some salad. Ummm, ...we have an onion and some garlic. Lemme think. Oh, a half a canteloupe and a little piece of honeydew that hasn't been eaten yet. Oh! We also picked up some —"

Here he interrupted me. I was apparently surpassing the per car time limit. "Do you have any avocados?" Nope. "Any mangoes?" No. "Any citrus, at all?" Um, ...I have lemon juice. And there might be a few mandarin oranges still buried in the hiking bag... "Did you buy those east or west of the Rockies?" Again, I silently blinked at him. I'm used to a dry sense of humor. This seemed like a comedy bit. But nope, he wanted an answer. My eyes darted back and forth as I tried to remember which shopping trip it was when we bought mandarin oranges. East, I say.

I'm aware this seems like I'm changing my answer to avoid the inspection, but I am, in all actuality, just confused by the concept that "East to the beach" is no longer a truth. He hard blinked at me this time, and I tried to explain the association of the direction with the beach in a rambling sort of way. "I got them in Montana as we left Yellowstone," I clarify.

Driving through central California was educational. We on the east coast know that California is in a drought that has stretched on for a few years now. We imagine this means the California grass has died and that lawns cannot be watered as this would be a misappropriation of the limited water. We know from the news that there is some controversy over how much water can be used by the farms that produce so much of the country's food versus resorts and golf courses catering to the state's wealthy and the tourism industry. Signs pepper the highways. "No water for farms means no food for you."

What we don't know, is JUST HOW DRY the land is. The ground is so dry from years drought that the weight of the soil particulate is not enough to hold it down. The air is literally filled with particulate. I don't even know how to describe it. There is a visible tan layer in the air. Visibility is hampered. Breathing leaves a taste of dirt in your mouth. John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath comes to mind. The dust bowl is not metaphorical. And though it's not as bad as described in the 30s, if the drought doesn't end, there's little doubt that it will get there.

I tried to capture a photo of the dust in the air, but in the image, everything just flattened out.

Our drive was mostly uneventful. I put on the cruise control, eager not to let my eagerness to arrive result in a ticket. I did get stopped in a speed trap at one point, at the bottom of a hill right after the speed limit changed from 70 to 65. I was going 78, which was mostly due to picking up speed on the hill. My cruise control was set for 74. The cop approached on the passenger side, and I had my license ready. "Where are you coming from?" he asked. "The Columbia River Gorge," I answered. "And where are you headed?" I pass him my glossy covered, spiral bound itinerary complete with its fun, quirky title detailing our mother/daughter adventure. "We were supposed to be heading to the Redwoods on the coast," I say, "but my niece's appendix has ruptured, so we are foregoing three weeks of adventure and hurrying down to San Diego." Crap, did I jusr say hurrying, while stopped for speeding?! Luckily, he is charmed by our adventure or moved by our emergency and lets us go telling us to "Just slow it down a little." We had smooth sailing from there until L.A., where we hit the promised L.A. traffic.

We arrived as planned to Naval Medical Center San Diego and were admitted right away to see Kaitlynn. Poor thing was so slight, but with a big ol' distended belly. It was a shock to see, even knowing all the details from talking to the adults in the last two days. My sweet tenderheart had tubes every which way from Sunday. I crawled into her bed with her and snuggled as best I could, glad at least that she was awake and not as lethargic as Ryan had reported yesterday. Ryan and I spent the night at the airport that night, as Kaitlynn wasn't ready to let me go yet, and Daniel went home to Shelby and Thomas who had been staying with friends since Friday. One thing I love about the military community is that they waste no time in becoming your family. I have been awed time and time again as friendships that in other circumstances would be young friendships or acquaintances blossom quickly into the kind of friendships where people show up when they're needed. Ryan and Daniel were very lucky in that regard, owing I'm sure largely to my sister's warm and generous demeanor. Their friends turned out in droves to help make meals,get the kids to and from school, take the kids overnight, bring goodies and company to the hospital, make care packages for Kaitlynn, and much more. It was a Little House on the Prairie showing of generosity and sharing of the burden.

Yesterday, throughout the day, I was on the phone with my sister as a medical emergency unfolded with my niece. Early in the day, she was thought to have a stomach bug, and Ryan was venting because the school was requiring a note. That developed into the doctor's office wanting Kaitlynn to be seen by the ER. Which developed into Kaitlynn being admitted with a severe bowel infection. And by the end of the day, the picture sharpened into focus: Kaitlynn's appendix had ruptured, by all apprearances six days prior. She had miraculously fought the infection that ensued in her bowel, and was now being admitted so that her bowel could be drained of infection and she could have surgery. Doctors estimated her being in in-patient care for four weeks. As I went to sleep last night, I hadn't quite let that settle in. Throughout the night, my dreams were evidence that I was still working through it, and when I awoke, it was with the clear idea that Kaitlynn was in a life threatening situation. She was hospitalized, but she was not in the clear. How close she'd come to the unspeakable was something I pushed out of my mind.

What started to take root instead was the idea that I should go to my family. I'll be honest, this wasn't a decision that I woke up and immdiately, decisively made. It was an idea that toyed with me as we began our morning. Let's head south, I said. We were meant to hook up with my friend Julie in the gorge, or maybe outside Portland, but I felt better heading south, ...in case my mind became made up. I think somewhere in the recesses of my brain, my mind was made up, but the part of me who planned this trip for a year wasn't ready to let go yet, so my brain was smart enough to trick me into it.

Two things convinced me: 1) My Aunt Jeanie called me to discuss the situation. She didn't mince words. "Your sister needs you. You need to go to her." Hearing something your conscience is already whispering spoken as an almost-command by the woman who raised you causes very decisive action. 2) As I began to talk to Meridian about it, knowing that she'd also be sacrificing something she'd long looked forward to, she expressed some of the same hesitance a part of me was still whispering. And I knew in that moment that a life lesson was on the line. Family isn't just something. Family is everything. Family most definitely trumps vacation. And so, we pressed south with more urgency. I didn't call my sister. I didn't ask if she wanted me to come. I knew doing so would just be looking for forgiveness for the act of not coming. I had to go. I would want her to come to me. So, somewere into Northern California, I called my brother-in-law, Daniel, who I knew wouldn't try to talk me out of it, and said that we'd be there tomorrow. (We were on the same coast, but we were still nearly 1200 miles away.) Ryan was asleep, which was for the best, ...we'd be several hours closer and there'd be less sense in talking us out of it. Kaitlynn, he told us, perked up for the first time all day when he relayed the news to her.

Hearing that made Meridian come fully on board. I think she had a sense of "what could we even do to help", so hearing that her cousin wanted her there was helpful. The other factor that pushed her into Camp Helpful was being reminded that her younger cousin Thomas' birthday was only days away. If we were on hand, we could help manage some sort of birthday party, or man Kaitlynn's bed while Ryan and Danny attended his birthday. With those two ideas in mind, she let go of any bitterness in her disappointment and resolved herself to the job ahead.

We made it just south of Sacramento today. We should arrive in the late afternoon tomorrow.

We woke up to a rainy day. So, we decided to give it time to pass by visiting the Bonneville Lock and Dam. You remember how I said that the river was unnavigable? Well, that couldn't be left to stand, ...not for a river so close to providing western passage to the Pacific Ocean! And so, Bonneville Lock and Dam were created. They were a part of FDR's New Deal, and not only generated jobs for the region, but gave it a permanment way to provide it's own clean electricity and made its river navigable. In doing so, it was also mindful of the mighty salmon which swims up this river to lay its eggs, and used creative solutions including a fish ladder to ensure their path would be unimpeded.

Meanwhile, the ships, barges, and recreational boats also have to make their way east and west along this river with its 60 foot drop, so a lock (or a boat elevator, as it would more logically be called) was built. As we sat admiring the dam that holds the water back on the eastern side of the river, I commented how pretty it was that they made it rounded, and how much more attention they had to style during that time. Meridian looked at me for a moment to determine that I was in earnest, and then kindly explained to me that the circular shape of the dam was for structural stability, and that water would press against the dam doors, but the circle shape would make it impossible that the weight of the water could ever break them open. Looking more closely, I saw, of course, that she was right. And I was very proud of her. An older gentleman listening in, who happened to be an engineer with the Army Corp of Engineers, asked her if she'd read that somewhere, and she said no, it was just clear to her by looking at it. He then said, "You must have a really good teacher," wherein I had to admit with embarrassment that I was her teacher, and that her engineering prowess clearly must have come from her father. Some people have that kind of brain; I clearly don't!

When our tour of the lock and dam were over, several hours had passed, and we were hopeful that the weather would turn, but it was still raining. Not to be deterred, we donned our rain gear and went waterfall hunting.

Today was another full day. We got up early planning to hit the trails, but the smell of sulphur was pouring through the air vents on the car. We'd been jumping the battery with our handy device now a fair bimore often than felt comfortable, and planned to replace the battery at the end of the week when we would be passing a Sam's Club en route. But this smell was off-putting. I thought I'd better just stop in at a service station and see if they couldn't replace my battery for me first thing this morning. So, I pulled into the only service station in town, and the attendant is sitting right outside, so I pull up and ask him if he can change the battery, and he tells me that they are no longer a service station, just a gas station. So, I ask if he thinks it would be safe for me to drive on the battery for a few more days and get a new one as we're leaving town. He tells me that he smells the sulphur even from where he's sitting and that a leaking battery could explode without warning at any time. He recommends I leave his driveway and go immediately to the next service station, an hour east. o.O We waste no time in following those instructions. While we're at it, we give Carwin an oil change, a fuel injection service, and a carwash. She's earned her day at the spa.

After all that, we managed to get back to the gorge by about 1 and still fit in loads of hiking. I bought a book called Curious Gorge, which has over 200 hikes with ratings for how popular off off-the-beaten track they are. So, we started this morning with a hike that we suspected we'd have mostly to ourselves, and were rewarded by having it entirely to ourselves, except at one point for a banditry of Mountain Chickadees that filled the trees at eye level and spent a good while people-watching. And yes, a group of chickadees is a banditry! How fun is that!

As we finished one hike, we saw people exiting the Oneonta Gorge hike in wet clothes. This was a hike we BADLY wanted to do, but had decided to forego because it just wasn't that hot out, and the trail calls for submerging yourself breast-high in glacial melt to reach the hidden waterfall in the slot canyon at the end of the trek. So, we did the only rational thing: we accosted the wet hikers for full details and allowed ourselves to be convinced that we should absolutely do this hike. Meridian would like it noted that my we is editorial and at no point was she ever opposed to tackling this beast.

A shot snagged from the way back where you can see my shirt is wet clear up to my breasts.

What follows in the images below would be deeply satisfying as a flipbook. Meridian attempts to rock climb her way to the rock at the far end of another deep section, falls in, and proceeds to swim in the icy water. Me, ...not so much.

Today, we decided to drive the scenic byway which is Old Hwy 30. At one time it was the means of travel along this section of the Columbia River, as the river itself was unpassable due to a 60 foot fall line. This road was part of the original Oregon Trail, as well as a stopping place of Lewis and Clark on their exploration west. For transportation purposes in modern times, it has been replaced by the paralell-running interstate 84, which lacks all of its beauty and charm, for Old Hwy 30 is a meandering winding road, along the gorge wall. Everything, and I mean everything, is lined in moss and lichens, from the gorge walls themselves, to the protective gaurd rails on the curvier bits of road to the the overhanging tree branches. When you recover from the lushness of the moss, the road is dense with foliage and peppered with waterfalls that can either be seen from the road or from a 30 second walk away. Multnomah Falls is perhaps the most famous of these, and some say, the prettiest, which its eye catching bridge adding to its beauty. It was a photo of Multnomah Falls I saw in a travel book, which first put Columbia River Gorge on my radar. She was every bit as beautiful in person as in photos.

At one time, this land was held privately, and the bridge was built by that landowner. Imagine owning such a lovely falls! To his credit, he recognized that this beauty was too much to be limited to only a select few and when he died, he willed his land to the state of Oregon, who saw fit to make it a part of the Oregon State Park system. I am always moved and inspired when people see beyond themselves in such huge ways. We hiked the trails leading up and behind Multnomah Falls, and were grateful for the generosity of others.

At the end of the scenic byway sits Vista House, a crownign architectural jewel, a beautiful vantage point from which to take in the sweeping vista of the Columbia River and the lands that hug her shores. The building is an octagonal art deco structure of marble and stain glass that manages to be at once opulent and understated. Alas, a UPS truck parked itself right in my photo and didn't move the whole time I was there, so to see her for yourself, tune your Google to Vista House.In the meantime, here is a view from her crown.

I am so very excited to wake up in the Columbia River Gorge this morning. In planning our trip, I looked forward to this site almost as much as the Grand Canyon. Actually, maybe about equal with the Grand Canyon. We arrived late last night and went straight to our campground, so when morning came, I was eager to be up and out. We had to backtrack across the Bridge of the Gods to get our tiny little Welcome to Oregon sign since it was dark when we rolled in last night.

It was a day filled with moss, waterfalls, canyon walls, and moist earth. That last one is something that I've learned I take for granted. All of my east coast hiking takes me through deciduous and mixed conifer forests with a good canopy and a rich soil trail. Out here in the west, kicking up dust as you hike is the way of the land. Hiking here in Columbia River Gorge, the moist ground was immediately noteworthy. Our first stop was an easy one, because it is literally right along the historic road. One need not even exit the car to appreciate the beauty of Horsetail Falls - though there can be no question that we got out and basked in the sheer magic of the spot!

From the parking lot, we had easy access to lots of hiking, and chose the trail that promised to bring us to six water falls. Well, five more, with Horsetail being the first. You'll have to forgive me for not being able to remember all of the names - this is what happens when the blogging is put off for a month after the hike. I will likely go look them up and post their names in here at some point, but for now, here are some lovely sites we saw along our hike.

Mt. Rainer wasn't originally on our stop list, but as we were driving right by it, and had admired it to much from a distance, we decided to deviate a little and add one more National Park to our "passport". The mountain was beautiful and felt very alpine with it's glacial peak and fields of wildflowers. There was really a good variety in trail here and it's a very good park for being able to choose your own adventure. As we only had the day, we chose a few short hikes that brought us to wildflowers, a waterfall, a creek, and always in mountain view. We were not disappointed.

From there, we continued on forest roads we had all to ourselves for the remainder of the drive. Unless you count wood sprites, tree spirits, and fairies, as those we definite present in the magical Gifford-Pinchot National Forest as well. Along the drive, we passed Mount Saint Helens, which we could see from a distance, though the light was dimming. We could see the crater and the blast zone, and roadside exhibits helped us identify what we were looking at.

Kathy and Christians are friends of ours from way back when we were learning how to adult. I look back on those times nearly two decades ago, when I was all shiny and new, with fond memories. Of course, life carries our friends and family in all different directions, and we keep up in bits and pieces as we can. When they heard we were coming through Seattle, they warmly welcomed us to be their houseguests, and in three delightful days, I got to reconnect with old friends while Meridian made new ones in Kayce and Mia. Kathy and Christian were superb hosts, and in fact, acted as our tour guide throughout our visit to Seattle: driving us into the city, taking us to all the cool sites, letting us in on the local food secret spots, and much more.

I enjoyed Seattle, and could easily get used to the market, the wide variety of cuisine, the public art and the parks. Meridian, as previously established, is not a city girl. At one point at Pike Place Market, I whispered to her, "How's it going?" knowing that the crowds and the shared personal space would be tough for her. She whispered back, "I'm enduring it. For you." No snark, just an admission. I'm keeping it together, but this is not my jam. Alright, so she's no Seattle fan-girl. The city was saved, however, in her estimation by a two story Target. Yes, you read that right. Specifically, it was the escalator for shopping carts that won her over. Personally, I'll stick with the many vendors in Pike Place Market.

When we weren't in the city, we were at Snoqualmie Falls, taking in the breathtaking waterfall, watching Meridian and Kayce pick their way along the rocks at river's edge, and arranging a hike for us through a Hemlock and Cedar forest (where I'm sure Tom Bombadil must live).

When we weren't out exploring something, we were back at their house, the kids playing minecraft or playing with the Toph the cat or Monty the Python, while Jack and Grace, both college students, prepared to head back to school. Meanwhile, the (older) adults enjoyed long philosophical conversations on any number of topics, often keeping us up past bedtime, which is what I suppose is to be expected when you are catching up after too long a time.

P.S. - I promise that the picture of Toph the very beautiful cat was only deleted accidentally and not because I coincidentally hate cats. I promise. Really. No, I really mean it.

As seems to be the case in all of our stops, we were both sad to go, and eager for the next adventure; though this time, it was harder to go, knowing we hadn't exhausted all possible avenues of conversation. I am a sucker for a good conversation.

More driving today. I feel a little guilty any time I drive through a state without stopping to take in its many splendors, but this country is just so big that even 99 days feels small, and sacrifices had to be made. Our delay in Yellowstone meant we had to lose the touring we had planned in Idaho (the Minidoka Internment Camp for Japanese Americans during WWII, which I'd thought was apropos given the recent tone of political campaigning), so sadly, this "Welcome to Idaho" sign and a few pics of the landscape is all I have to leave you with.

We made it to out campsite in Liberty, Washington just as the sun was setting. We had to tracel a good distance of backroad into the mountains without cell reception, and for the first time on our trip, I felt a little weirded out by our remote location. Arriving as the sun was going down may have contributed, but in any case, we decided to forego the tent for the night and rely on Carwin for another good night's sleep. She has locks, after all. My paranoia proved completely unwarranted, but a mom is entitled to an occasional burst of paranoia.

The folks over at Tarptent called me this morning to let me know that their tracking said our tent replacement had been delivered to an agent of Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner, MT. So, I called the lodge manager back (we're on a first name basis now) and asked how we could retrieve it. Well, ...that was a little tricker than anticipated. You see, USPS does not deliver within YNP. All mail goes to the main post office in Gardiner, and then an agent of YNP picks up all the mail going into Yellowstone National Park, and they have an internal privatized mail delivery system. So, we spent the morning driving around to all the spots our package might be before Mike was finally able to get the mail manager on the phone, locate our package for sure and have it held for us to come pick up. I'm going to put this down as more than mildly annoying and let that be that. Life is not without annoyances now and then.

Tent in hand, we headed north through Montana which was a pretty drive. We were a little giddy to encounter galloping horses as we drove through Montana. Not wild horses, mind you, but at least playful galloping ones, which is so much a part of our imaginings of what Montana would hold. We stopped in Missoula to see the big M and then drove a bit more before stealth camping for the night.

We took advantage of the fact that we were out of the Yellowstone Park system to buy groceries. In the park, a box of cereal sells for $7.69, for perspective. We had pretty well exhausted our grocery supply, so this was a fortuitious outcome of our impromptu trip into Montana. With chores behind us, we set out to drive the Beartooth Highway back into the park. It had taken us two hours last night, traveling downhill from the mountain's glacial crest to its base. We did not kid ourselves - we knew we'd be the in the car for hours today, as we'd be doing that drive uphill with an elevation gain of 5720 feet, an average grade of 3.6%, and in some places much more. We were completely upbeat though because the drive is totally breathtaking, and there's not a moment to be bored because you are too absorbed in the beauty playing out before you.

Our selfie stick broke and a very nice man volunteered to stand on his tippy toes
and try to get the highway behind us.

Looking back at the parking pad that we had seen the glacier from in our "close encounter" with it last night.

Our plan was to make it to Yellowstone, hopefully pick up our package, and then head into Idaho for camping for the night. I had a sneaking suspicion that the package would not be waiting for us, and made up my mind not to rush this experience. We stopped at every turnout that inspired us. We walked amongst the glaciers, which was really such a neat thing to do, being so far outside our field of life experiences. We spotted "a something", and pulled over to wait for a second spotting. This is the part where I claim to have seen a wolverine, a real wolverine!!! But, Meridian didn't catch it, and given the rarity of wolverine spottings, only gives me credit for a woodchuck or perhaps a marmot. Alas, he slipped off while I was parking, and we could only last about twenty minutes in the alpine temperatures before calling it quits. So, when I tell you this story, you'll hear all about my rare wolverine. The more Meridian cynically calls my wolverine a marmot, the more harrowing my wolverine experience is likely to grow. If you hear tell of a wolverine attacking me in the alpine stretches of the Beartooth Highway, you might say a word to Meridian about letting me have this one...

Our package was, in fact, not waiting for us, so we rushed around the park trying to secure another night's camping and got one of the last 4 spots in Indian Creek Campground for the night. Mindful to keep our perspective focused not on what was going wrong but on what opportunity it afforded, we headed back to Mammoth for ice cream in the cafe, and had a plugged in few hours where we charged electronics and I caught up on this blog. And while that is not so slick as much of the touring we've done, it did wonders to set my mind at rest, as I'd been growing a bit concerned about ever catching up here, not having had much chance to work on the blog since I last posted an update. I did my best to work from memory here along with my journal; some things may have been shuffled accidentally onto a wrong day, but the basic fabric of our experiences is told here as truly and as accurately as possible. If you look at the rest of my travelogue section of this blog, you'll see what happens when I put the traveloguing off for too long, so I'm taking this mail snafu as a blessing in disguise. Life is much happier if we can turn lemons into lemonade.

We leave the park today. Or that was the plan, at least. The problem is that the tent that Henry shipped has still not arrived. So, we spent some time this morning exploring Mud Volcano while waiting for the mail to be delivered to Roosevelt Lodge. When mail time came and went, we drove up to the lodge to get the package. We had checked in with Henry yesterday, asking him to check the tracking info on the package, and he told us that is was listed as "out for delivery" within the park zipcode. A call in the late afternoon yesterday indicated it had not arrived yet, so we were confident it would be waiting on us after mail delivery today. Only it wasn't.

We drove to the nearest campground to try to secure a spot for the night. Everything was full. We were on the Lamar Valley Road in the northeast corner of the park, so we decided to head towards that park exit and camp on National Forest Service land just outside the park. Along the way, we encountered more people looking up into the mountains with binoculars and pulled over to find out if they'd spotted the other wolfpack, but they had mountain goats in their sights! We spent some time trying to train our binoculars on them, looked at them through the other folk's scope, and then decided to head down the trail for a closer look. This is where distances in wide open spaces can be deceiving. No amount of hiking in was going to get us a better view of those goats, who were in all likelyhood many miles away. Still our lungs were full of cold, fresh air, and we were high on having added a new animal to our list of wildlife spotted in the park! With a bit of daylight to burn, we decided to drive the Beartooth Highway into Red Lodge, Montana. We had no idea what a treat we were in for! Of course, with the hairpin turns we were taking, we were limited to iPhone photos take by my trusty passenger seat photographer. Sadly, the iPhone doesn't do so well with low-light photos. But the memory will last forever.

The Beartooth Highway is 65 miles of mountain views as you go through one switchback after another in hairpin turns at the edge of a cliff. This is easily the most stunning drive I've ever been on. To add to our good fortune, the sun was setting. The sky was filled with smoke from the wildfires nearby, which made for beautifully diffused light at every turn.

We arrived in Red Lodge, the quaintest little town, and had a pizza dinner at a local pizzeria. We then drove to the Comfort Inn and stealth camped in the van, our thinking being, no one will bat an eyelash at a car in a hotel parking lot, which turned out to be perfectly true. Our black window shades are perfection. No one knew a soul was in the car.

On the agenda for today: Norris Geyser Basin and Artist's Paint Pots. Paint Pots came first, but as we pulled into the lot, we got stuck in quite a traffic jam as no spots were available and cars where twisting themselves every which way to create improvised spots or blocking thoroughfares to wait out the person who might just (maybe! hopefully!) be approaching their car to leave. We got the heck out of dodge as quickly as possible! Hopefully we'll be over this way again and can try again.

Norris was less crowded, and we enjoyed the short two mile walk around the boardwalks.

Steamboat Geyser is the most powerful in the world, blasting over 300 feet high. His eruptions are supremely unpredictable though, averaging somewhere between 4 and 50 years! He was not in the mood to play with us.

Mudpots are the most acidic features in the park with the pH so sign that it burns through
the bedrock turning it to clay. This pot would burn right through your hiking boot and skin.

With most of the major attractions of the park under our belts and camping the next few days being the type with less amenities, we decided we'd better use some time for showers and laundry, and spent a good chunk of time doing that day before heading back to the Hayden Valley for more wolf puppy watching. We got to see all four puppies!! And then someone gave us the 411 on a grizzly bear right up the road, right now! So, we jumped in the car, lightening quick and darted to the new location, across from Mud Volcano. There we did, in fact, spot the bear warming himself near a geyser. He was across the river from us, maybe 300 yards or so. With no tripod at hand and light fading very quickly, I had to open the aperture, pump the ISO all the way up, and hope like mad that I could take a steady shot at 1/13th of a second. I managed to get a fuzzy black got photo that resembles a bear, but I'm so excited that I'm posting it anyway.

There was a frost last night. We are very grateful for our warm sleeping bags and our super-dooper Carwin. We weren't a bit cold until it came time to get dressed in the morning and we had to emerge from out cozy spot. We made quick work of morning chores, which included using an old fashioned hand pump well to fill our water tank, and set out for another day exploring this massive park.

Horrible photo quality, but I needed this snapshot
to remember Meridian's eagerness to pump water.

The drive west was a fun one, chock full of wildlife. Meridian finally got the bison moment she'd been waiting for, where the bison cross the road in front of our car. I wasn't too sure about this guy. He got started crossing and I slowed down, but hadn't yet come to a stop. He squared off and faced the car, and I decided a jerking stop beat the pants off being charged by a bison. Meridian quite disagrees, of course.

A little further up the road, we saw some people pulled over excited gesturing and using binoculars. There's a wolfpack in the Lamar Valley, so we thought that might be what they were seeing. However, it was a coyote who'd been sunning himself on a rock and who had just disappeared into the sagebrush. The other people pulled away. We decided to stake out this spot for a spell and see if he'd re-emerge. That one didn't, but just a few minutes later, across the street, we spotted this guy.

There was a pronghorn nearby too, so we weren't sure if he had his eyes on lunch, or if his continual eyeing of the road was him wanting to cross over and rejoin the other coyote on the opposite side of the street. We think the second far more likely.

We stopped in at Tower Falls to take in the magnificent massive beast of a waterfall. None of my photos did it justice, so I'll have to content myself with these lovely pictures of the river that were taken from the trail down to the the river's edge.

From Tower Falls, we made our way to the Canyon area where we would see "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". She is a very lovely Canyon with two very large waterfalls, and walls made of the stone that gives the park its name.

Having failed to spot wolves in Lamar Valley, we checked in with a ranger station and learned that the Lamar pack had retreated into the forest, but that another pack could be readily observed in the Hayden Valley. So, off we went when we left Canyon. We arrived just around dusk, which is perfect timing. We found quite a crowd and lots of excitement, and lots of recitation of the same directions, "Use binoculars, between the dead tree and the live tree, across the river, in the patch of yellow grass behind the sagebrush." We trained out sights on that, and there we were rewarded with a single black wolf! We'd heard tell from the ranger that a single male had separated from his pack and was trying to recruit members to form a new pack. We wondered if this was that lone wolf! We unpacked our chairs and settled in. We'd be watching this wolf until the sun went down, for sure! Several people had scopes set up, and in a little time, it became clear who the wolf expert was. A teenaged boy, Jeremy, comes to the park for two weeks every year with his mom, Kim, where they participate in a Citizen Science program wherein they help track the various wolfpacks in the park. When he saw that we were settling in, and not merely the type to spot it, mark it found and move on, he opened up quite a bit, and was only too happy to educate us. He let us look through his scope (which had a two mile close-up range!), and he shared photos and videos he'd taken. He was so knowledgable; it was clear this was a passion of his. He could distinguish the nine wolves he'd seen in this pack on sight. He knew their numbers, their personalities, and their patterns. It turns out, we were looking at a black/gray wolf puppy, one of four back there, but the only one active at the moment. I voiced skepticism, wondering that the mother would leave her pups unattended, and he told me this was normal wolf behavior and that the adults were in the hills beyond. He assured me that if I waited until after dusk, I'd hear the adults call for the pups, and the pups would run to meet them in the forest. Jeremy showed up video from that morning of the four of them playing with a yearling while he alpha female looked on. The yearling was so tender, letting the puppies tackle her and "pin her to the ground" over and over again. I was in awe and will definitely have to look into scope rental for some wildlife viewing later in this trip! Sadly, having packed only a 300mm lens, I got no wolf puppy picture to remember him by, so my mind's eye will have to rise to the challenge.

One of the tips Jeremy gave us was a nearby spot (still in viewing distance of the wolf pup, where we would find some quite nice animal tracks. We were only too happy to go investigate.

We drove to camp, tonight in Madison. On the way home, one of the many forest fires that have been ignited by lightening in the park in the last few weeks, showed herself.

Today is the only day in the park that we didn't have a solid sleeping plan for. We knew we wanted to sleep in the northern portion of the park to cut down on driving, but those campgrounds cannot be reserved in advance. We woke to the alarm this morning, and jumped into the van, and raced (at 35mph) up to Tower Falls campground, only to find that it was already full at 9:15am. So, we turned east on the Lamar Valley Rd, and tried for the next closest. Slough Creek was also full. Yih! At this point, we became competitors with ever other car on the road. They'd slow down to enjoy the bison or the pronghorns, and we'd zip around them, confident we were stealing the last camping spot in the park away from them. We arrived at Pebble Creek campground and secured camping in lucky #11. Ahhhh. Now we could breathe. Three hours were gone from under us, and it had seemed criminal to bypass so many pull offs and attractions on the drive to secure camping. Now we could slow down, and do some touring.

We decided to go check out the Mammoth Springs section of the park, with its enormous travertine sculptures. The Albright Visitor Center was also on our to do list so that I could put their stamp in my itinerary. They had an impressive display of taxidermied animals, none of which I photographed, so here are my few shots of the travertine springs.

On the way back to the Lamar Valley, we took a leisurely pace, stopping to enjoy the wildlife, and even driving the gravel Blacktail Plateau at an absolute crawl (7mph) hoping to spot bears. No such luck. When we made it back to Lamar Valley, we were rewarded with a patiently posing pronghorn though, so we consoled ourselves with that.

It was frezing by the time we got back to camp at 7pm. We quickly got into PJs and crawled into our sleeping bags for an early night.

As a people watcher and a person in constant reflection, this roadtrip has provided an interesting opportunity for observation. Meridian has piped up with some observations of her own as well. I'll try to catalogue some of them here without going too far afield.

Meridian notes almost right off the bat, "Camping people and hiking people are friendly." She has obviously noted how often perfect strangers have invited her into conversation, asking where she's from, where she's been, where she's headed, and what she's learned. I think it's not so much that camping and hiking people are friendly as it is that people like to find others like themselves. Here you are camping/hiking, here I am camping/hiking; this unites us.

Interestingly, that same search for similar people also sometimes separates us and prevents connections that be otherwise meaningful. One of the campsites we stayed at was Wrinkled Rock Climbing Area just a stone's throw from Mt. Rushmore. We were there three nights. All three nights, there was a single woman with her dog, Sadie. This woman would get lost in long conversations with people, and almost seemed like the camp host for her friendliness, but while her dog would come and visit us for ear scratches and new faces, the woman was always silent when she passed us by. I surmised that she didn't want to invade the space of a mother travelling along with a child and made nothing more of it.

On the morning after our last night camping there, we were off to a late start and the parking lot had cleared, all but her and us. So, when she happened past, I asked her if she'd done any good climbing since being there, which kicked off a rather long meandering discussion. She is a high school teacher and wrinkled her nose a bit when she learned we were homeschoolers, which launched us into a lengthy conversation on the topic, including out trip and our approach to learning. She was surprised by us, and it was clear we didn't fit into the mold she'd built for homeschoolers. I didn't change her mind, but I think I opened it. As we were saying goodbye, she said, "Man, I wish I would have talked to you earlier. You guys are so cool! I had you down as the run-of-the-mill soccer mom, so I didn't go out of my way to chat since I'm mostly looking to connect with other climbers." In talking we managed to carve out our similarities: our deep and abiding love of learning and a sense of adventure, a desire to find our boundaries and stretch them.

It was such a forthright summary that I was struck by it. I can't say I'm not guilty of my own such sterotyping. When we learned that we'd be driving through Sturgis, SD right as their annual motorcycle rally (where people come from around the world, I kid you not kicked off, I admit to being less than enthusiastic about sharing the road with a ton of bikes. I was anxious about motocyclists zipping in and out of lanes and showboating. But I learned a lesson from the very kind bikers I met along the way. They were among the most considerate motorists, and everyone I spoke to always had a kind word or a bit of road advice. In the end, I started to feel a kind of kinship with the packs of bikers, and can't properly capture that piece of our trip without remembering them fondly. I found our sameness: our shared love of the joy of setting out at your own pace and discovering this beautiful country as it unfolds along with the road before you.

Most of the people we've met have been super enthusuastic about our trip when it comes out what we're up to. However, we met one mom at Old Faithful who Meridian and I instantly knew was "not our people". When she asked where we were travelling from and to (a common question in the national parks), and we told her that we were on "an epic 99 day mother/daughter roadtrip around the country," her face filled with horror (I kid you not -- horror!) and she said, "99 days? No offense, but are you out of your mind? I want a 99 day vacation FROM my children, not stuck in a car and tent with them!" I put out of my mind the idea of finding similarities, and placated her a bit; there was going to be no getting her to see the joy on our endeavor. She seemed like a genuinely unhappy person who was more content to gripe about her misery than open to sharing anyone's joy, so I gave her a sounding board for a while without trying to convince her that we're having an absolute blast. This woman preferred to think we'd be eaten by grizzly bears. I guess there's no happiness in encountering joyful people when you're miserable. So, I stared dutifully wide-eyed as though a bear encounter had never occured to me, and this seemed to give her great satisfaction. I guess when similarity can't be carved out, there is always grace under fire. Meridian, meanwhile, watched the geyser intently and refrained from engaging the woman until she was put on the spot directly.

When she learned that we were homeschoolers, she was equally unimpressed. She demanded to know what Meridian had learned so far. Demanded is not an exaggeration. Meridian briefly responded, "We spent the day learning about geology." We were at Old Faithful. It was a pretty obvious response. Later, Meridian commented that she was going to explain how geysers work and the differences between the different geothermal features in the park, but she could see that the woman wasn't really interested in what she'd learned, so she decided not to. I admit I was a little proud that while being perfectly polite, she did not feel the need to prove herself to some random stranger who questioned the validity or breadth of her education. Grace doesn't have to mean submission.

Though she was clearly bitter and unhappy, her moodiness didn't mark us. We are having too great a time, frankly. We're feeling a little unsinkable. Our bouyancy is mostly contagious , but apparently, not fool proof. Mostly, we chose to be bemused to think that our awesome adventure would be someone else's worst nightmare. On the other end of the spectrum, we've met some delightful people along the way who were happy to share their adventures and to hear about ours in exchange. We've traded emails with a few folks, received travel recommendations for different spots we're going to, looked through people's travel photos, and had lots of people along the way write their well-wishes into my spiral-bound itinerary which is becoming a trip scrapbook (and likely my most treasured souvenir as I stamp it at passport locations and paste in ticket stubs and tidbits.)

People, individially or in small groups, I just really enjoy. While hiking, I had a pair of Chines students teach me to say "The sky is beautiful" which sounds like "tien kong han may." A little while later, a Vietnamese family tried to teach me the same phrase in their language, but my pronunciation was so abyssmal that they decided I should just learn "beautiful", which incidentally sounds a whole lot like Johnny Depp's last name. Then we sat in the shade waiting for a geyser to erupt and I chatted with a family from Seattle. As we left the third group, I commented happily, "I like people." To which Meridian responded, "I know. That's part of your personality. I like that about you. I like everything about you." I felt sufficiently loved. How can I not be bouyant?

People, in crowds, are a different matter. I have a few times felt like I was starring in one of those Snickers bar commercials where the person is really gnarly until a Snickers bar returns them to their usual docile self. Meridian is my Snicker's bar.As we shuffle along at a snails pace in the cold wind waiting for a glimpse of Grand Prismatic Spring, I grumble, "Ugh! I love nature, but not people!" Meridian was quick to remind me that, "That's not true. You love people. Plus, many of these people came from as far away as we did for their turn to see this." She told me earlier in the week that she's a cup-half-empty, but I don't think I believe her. When we sat at Mystic Falls a while later and a couple crowded my shot of the falls with a 20 minute selfie session, I willed myself to stare into the white crests of the waterfall's foam, get my heart right, and remind myself that they'd too come a long way for those selfies. My girl schools me. We're good for each other.

The good news this morning is that we have camping reservations within the park so we will not have to make that long drive back to Flagg Ranch any more. We drove into the park one more time from the south this morning, passing through a new growth forest, which we learned a few days ago replaced nearly a third of the park after a fire in 1988 burned through 880,000 acres! The skeleton trunks of many of those old trees which burned in the forest still stand (creating a falling wood hazard). Many more have already fallen, leaving mountainsides littered with deadwood and ripe for a new fire. Fully 80% of the trees in the park are Lodgepole Pines. A fascinating thing about this tree is that it creates two kinds of cone: a normal cone that dropped seeds as any other conifer does, but also a tightly closed wax encased cone that can only open after fire has burned off the wax coating. So, this tree has literally evolved to withstand forest destroying fires and to reseed that forest (with 50 million seeds per acre) in the event of a destructive fire. I am simply in awe of that.

Lodgepole Pine - 30 years old, but only maybe 7 feet tall because they put an enormous amount of energy into their root system before growing in height. A 5 year old tree looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

Seriously, without being corny, that literally brings tears to my eyes. There is so much we can learn from nature. Here we learn acceptance, perserverance, and preparation. Destruction will happen. It will come for all of us in some way, at some time. Knowing it, accepting it, and bravely standing to face it when it arrives trusting that we can withstand what comes if we prepared for it or if we can adapt quickly enough, ...well, it's a beautiful thought. Another lesson I pull from it is: the forest is more important than the tree. The trees will burn. Even now, as these thirty year old baby trees stand in their relative youth, the fodder for fire collects beneath them, and they too will eventually burn. But the forest will revive. So it is with Earth if we can do our part in preservation and conservation, which is the building of our own wax covered seed pods. We can pass on this earth to future generations and future species even if we just learn not to consume more than out share.

Okay, if you send me to the wilderness, I'm going to get philosophical. Back to our regularly scheduled trip reports. Today, we decided we needed to take in more of the Geyser Basins in the Old Faithful chunk of the park, so we headed to the Lower Geyser Basin, Biscuit Basin, and another I can't quite remember and am too lazy to look up at the moment. We visited all of them, eventually. One of our favorites in this area were Sapphire Spring in Biscuit, which was a stunning shade of blue with crystal clear water and steam rising off of her.

Grand Prismatic Spring was further down the road and took my breath away. I was prepared for her splendor of color, having seen photographs, but I was not at all prepared for her immensity! We could not even see her complete perimeter. It was like standing at a lake's edge. Apparently, there is no viewing from elevation in the park as of yet, though they are in the process of building an overlook on the mountain above. I will simply host a quiet envy in my heart for those future viewers.

One of the most beautiful things about the geothermal features are the unexpectedly brilliant microbial mats that grow and feed on the mineral rich waters. I would have sworn that photos I've seen of Grand Prismatic Spring in travel guides were over-saturated in some photo editing software. Amazingly, those colors are spot on. It is so seemingly unnatural from such a natural source!

From Biscuit Geyser Basin, we also fit in the short hike out to Mystic Falls and back, which was a beautiful spot in the park. I fought frustration for having to share it with so many others who interrupted my own private communion with nature. But in the end, I made peace, and sat on a rock with my girl with our feet hanging over to wait everyone else out. As has become customary on this trip, my phone chirpy chorus of text alerts let me know that we had entered a rare 3G area, and all the texts that were pending came through in a rush, so I sat there waiting as the water rushed by and texting with my friend Mialee. We found another hike from another basin, though this one wasn't marked. We don't have trail maps for this park because so much driving is required and there are so many off the road attractions that I'm not sure how much real real hiking we'll get in. Here in Yellowstone, we seem to regularly come across trails from overlooks that aren't marked, and so we assume that they lead a little further on to another vantage point, only to discover that they are full fledged trails. We've chased a few of those rabbit holes because, well, no excuse needed. As a bonus, it gets us away from the crowds. Interestingly, (or sadly, predictably?) when hiking off the boardwalks, we only even encounter international visitors to the park. Americans are more inclined to be drive-by tourists. Or maybe this is more a reflection of the incredibly long holidays international guests seem to be able to take, so that they can go at a pace that allows both drive-through tourism and getting off the beaten path. Perhaps the truth is found in a marriage of those two probablilities.

We camped at Madison Campground tonight, and were thankfully making camp by 6pm, able to cook dinner, wash up after hiking, and attend a campfire ranger program. Tonight's program was aptly themed around the full moon: the wolves of Yellowstone. Meridian was delighted to hear the ranger explore the mythologies that shaped the differing views of wolves across cultures, with the agrarian European cultures more likely to view the wolf as a predator, a nuisance, and a symbol of greed (with its need of 20+ pounds of meat each meal), while the Native American hunting culture was more likely to look to the wolf as a role model and a spirit animal, symbolic of strength, intellect, and balance (as his hunts fed not only his own pack, but having fed his entire pack left 60% of the kill for other scavenger animals to feed off. She was crazy thrilled to be so familiar with the norse and greek mythology that the ranger spoke of, along with the German and French fairy tales that kept the fear of wolves alive throughout Europe into modern times.

We did indeed sleep in today. I awoke at 9am, feeling very well rested. The window shades I created for the van are like magic, and it is nighttime in the van until we pull them down. With no alarm set, my body woke up on its own time. No internet at camp means I go to bed when Meridian does, which my body is ever thankful for. This trip has done wonders for resetting my circadian rythyms. I lay still in bed, writing in my journal, while Meridian slept on. She finally stirred around 11am. Not wanting to waste any more day, we dressed quickly, and headed into the park. Along our drive we passed the Continental Divide (a total of four times).

Rain that falls east of this point flows to the Atlantic.
Rain that falls west of this point flows to the Pacific.

We drove to the Old Faithful Visitor Education Center, where we knew they offered a Young Scientists program, where in you check out a backpack full of equipment and get a book similar in style to the Jr. Ranger. This time, though, you use the equipment to conduct field research. Meridian felt this was a definite step up, and asked if she could have the teen book. The ranger was happy to oblige her, and so, they went through the backpack together: an infrared thermometer laser gun (for taking the temperature of thermal features she encounters), a magnifying glass, a rock sample kit (to discourage collecting your own samples), a micro-organism identification wheel, a stop watch, a clipboard, and a bag of colored pencils. This kit was so engaging, we spent literally the entire day with it in the Upper Geyser Basin. We returned it minutes before the Vistor Center closed at 8pm.

We spent the day taking temperatures, timing eruptions, making hypotheses and then testing them, marvelling at the micro-organism rainbow present in the geothermal features. Meridian was tasked (by her book) with creating a scientific question, forming a hypothesis, and then using experimentation and observation to prove or disprove her hypothesis. Her main question was "Will certain micro-organisms be limited to certain types of features? For example, will aquafilicates reside only in hot springs, but not in geysers, mudpots, fumaroles, or springs?" Her hypothesis was "Yes, certain micro-organism types will "belong" to certain features." Throughout the day, she proved her hypothesis wrong again and again, most notably when we arrived at pools like Morning Glory Spring, where a rainbow of life fanned out around the spring, those loving hotter water closer to the center, and those favoring cooler waters towards the edges. I can't say enough about how engaging this program was, and I hope we'll encounter more like it in other parks (something I'll look into when I have access to reliable internet).

We saw Old Faithful erupt many times throughout the day, sometimes while seated in her viewing area, other times while taking on another geyser elsewhere in the basin. For our first viewing, I remembered that Old Faithful has a live webcam, so I called David and had him describe the crowd to me until I could figure out where to position ourselves so that he could see us. He spotted us, and we got a kick out of having a live viewing experience together. David was on a three-second time delay, but for all intents and purposes, we watched the eruption as together as we could be 2121 miles away.

Old Faithful was impressive and we are quite fond of her, but our favorites were:

After Meridian was awarded her Young Scientists patch, we took in Old Faithful one more time as the Visitor Center closed. Then around 8:30pm, we started back to camp (45 minutes away). We realized we were failing at our endeavor to get an earlier bedtime. We also failed to realize that dinnertime had come and go, so it was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the drive home to avoid having to cook over a propane stove at 9:30 at night while other campers were likely settling in for the night. A very satisfying day. Yellowstone has won our hearts.

We came into the park one day ahead of schedule because we had alotted ourselves a day to break the drive into two days, but found we didn't need to. Especially given that most of our days in the park were to be eaten up by a multi-day hike away from the other park attractions, we were glad to have the extra day. However, with that hike nixxed, we would that we really had exhausted all we could do in the park. The thing about Grand Tetons is that there are not a lot of mid-mileage hikes. You've got a handful of 6-8 mile hikes, most of which we did, and most of which involve circling a water feature. And then you've got long hikes in the 18+ mile range, generally with at least 2,000 ft elevation gains. These just seem fool-hardy to us, not being used to alpine hiking, and without a tent if we found ourselves not able to keep pace. We thought better than attempting them. So, that left us with little more to do in the park. Additionally, we had scheduled ourself too few days in Yellowstone, thinking we'd be tired after the lond hike and wanting to drive Yellowstone rather than hike it. So, today, we decided to pack up camp, and get some housekeeping done before heading to Yellowstone. Laundry, showers, and groceries were in order.

We drove up to Flagg Ranch, which is technically the norther border of Grand Teton, but may as well be Yellowstone for its distance. We'll be making camp here for two nights before we're back on schedule with our Yellowstone camping reservations. We arrived about mid-day, staked out our spot. Still tentless, we'd be sleeping in the van. But as these were free camping spots, they'd go quickly, so we set up some of our personal belongings and a note marking our spot "occupied". That accomplished, we drove the 2 miles up to Yellowstone, and said hello to a brand new park.

We stopped at the Grant Village Visitor Center, where Meridian picked up her new Junior Ranger book, listened to a ranger talk, and watched the introduction to the park movie. Then we set off to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which boasts every kind of thermal feature found in the park.

It was early evening by now, just about dinner time, so we packed a picnic to bring out on the boardwalk and eat. As we sat, eating our meal, Meridian and a passing family got very excited. I turned around to find a female elk crossing the boardwalk not 20 feet away from me. I froze as still as a statue, careful to do nothing to startle her, and soaked in the experience, fully enjoying it. She was followed by two fawns and two other does, and for the next hour, they grazed right there in the geyser basin amid gurgling hot springs and geysers for the next hour as the sun sank lower in the sky. Seeing how unbothered they were by us, we took up our tour of the geyser basin, which only rarely didn't have an elk or more in sight. It was truly a magical introduction to the park. The geysers in this section of the park were underwhelming, being not terribly active, but we were so enchanted by proximity of the elk that we didn't mind at all.

This fawn was as interested in me as I was in her. I imagine later she told her Dad, "And then the human passed RIGHT BY ME!"

We stayed for the campfire ranger program about the history of Yellowstone and the US Army's role in helping to shape the early park and set preservation rules in place during a time when the place was run wild with concessionnaires stripping the park of its natural resources for their own profit. Think people chipping off hunks of travertine from the hot springs to sell for souvenirs, and the like. One business even ran a laundry service where they washed your clothes in the hot springs and thermal pools. The effects of these consumerist practices can still be witnessed in the park, where certain geysers had become clogged, petrified trees have been dismantled, and more. We were made grateful for the work of early conservationists, many of them young low-ranking army officials, who stationed here to ward off hunters, fell in love with the park and went on to positions of leadership within the park once it was established.

Another long day complete, we drove back to camp and fell into our pillows much later than advisable. Poor Meridian's sleep schedule it hard to maintain on this trip. She generally gets 11-12 hours of sleep each night. I'm doing really well on the days I get her 9 hours out here. Tomorrow might need to be a sleep in day.

Today started with yet another visit from our fox friend who I've come to suspect understands very well that if campers are around, he might just get lucky. We ran off when he spotted us looking at him. You'll get no food from our crumb-free camp, Mr. Fox.

The view of our camp. Our tent is a little dot on the right, and Carwin is parked about 100 yards away (since we cook there and we're practicing bear-safe camping).

We spent some time identifying tracks near camp this morning. Definitely fox, a small ungulate of some kind (white-tailed deer or mule deer most likely), and something in the weasel family. We've also become fairly adept at identifying animal scat, at least for larger beasts. The smaller guys are much harder to differentiate. We've spotted and identified scat from bison, elk, horse, moose, and deer. We think we've found evidence of a badger not far from camp in the form of dug up burrows of ground squirrels.

Trying to capture the amazing feeling of seeing that mountain view as we move through the park, a constant gift.

After tracking, we set off to the Teton Village section of the park, where you could take a sky tram up to the mountain and then hike down. We spent too lazy a morning at camp to manage the would-be 19 miles, plus the heat of day without any real sun coverage. This one was not tempting for us. Instead, we headed back to our moose's haunt and tried to hike back to where they were (with every intention of keeping a good distance). We came across loads of moose scat, so we knew we one the right track, and it was rather neat to be tracking them old school. However, we reached a point at which fording the river would have been unwise. We'd managed one such crossing in a better spot, but this being a winding river, with lots of diversions, we'd have needed to cross three or four more times, and this one looked dangerous. A white-tailed deer stared at us from about 15 yards away, seemingly shocked by our presence in this isolated spot.

Meridian and I decided to sit in the pleasant solitude of this pebbly river and pracice skipping stones, and hope that moose ventured into our space since we couldn't do to them. No moose, but we both surprised ourselves by picking up the knack for skipping stones. I managed to make one bounce three times on a few occasions, and Meridian managed one bounce more than once. After a time, we came across a talc rock. M did a streak test and was delighted to see it stripe itself across the piece of volcanic rhyolite she was holding. She decided to make face paint by wetting her flat stone and scraping her talc rock against it until a thin paste formed, which she watered down even further and applied to her face.

I had a mini crisis of conscience here. On the one hand, leave no trace. On the other hand, here was a student of nature and geology actively experiementing on the natural world using both her own knowledge and her own imagination. I opted to kick leave no trace to the curb on this one. I comforted myself with the fact that we were technically out of the national park where we were. I'll admit, I even let her keep the talc. A failing, I know, but one I'm not really terribly ashamed of.

After a time, having had no moose come to visit, we decided to back track while there was still light, and hop in the car to our moose-watching destination before heading back to camp for dinner, a glorious sunset, and bed.

There were a couple of active fires in the park, none of which had yet called for any suppression measures, and all of which were being closely monitored by the National Park Service. We never noticed smoke or anything until tonight, when the wind shifted and the sunlight highlighted this fire to the Northwest of our camp location by several miles.

This morning got off to an alarming start that really got my heart pumping. I was awakened to a very loud pop, and thought perhaps a bear had taken a swipe at the tent. Involuntarily, I cried out, and then heart thundering, peeked out the netting at the bottom of our tent, bear spray in hand. No bear, but I saw a timber wolf sauntering away from our tent!! Wait a second. That timber wolf is wearing a collar, a blinking collar. That is someone's white dog. Phew! Breathe, woman, breathe! Okay, so what was that noise? Investigation revealed that the anchor that is sewn to the back of the tent to help create tension had ripped off about 14 inches of the seam line. Not good, but leagues better than a bear or wolf intruder.

I immediately emailed the manufacturer of my tent to see what could be done. Our tent is an ultra-light backpacking* tent intended to be carried along on multi-day hikes. I researched tents into oblivion before choosing this one, in part because it is a small business with impeccable customer service and incredibly high customer loyalty. I explained that going through the normal channels of shipping the tent in for repairs and waiting for it to arrived fixed in our mailbox would leave us tentless right in the middle of our trip and very disappointed. The owner, Henry, wrote me back within the hour to say that he'd ship a loaner to me, general delivery, and I'd have it in 2-3 days. Meanwhile, I should ship mine in for repair, and eventually, we'd swap. He was ready to ship it as soon as I sent an address. It should be waiting for us in Yellowstone when we arrive. Refreshingly great service! Should out to Henry and his crew at Tarptents for standing behind their products! Crisis averted!

Well, partly. Remember when I mentioned that our tent was a backpacking tent? As it turns out, Meridian and I were due to leave this morning for a four day / three night thirty mile hike through a canyon between the mountains, into elevation, along the crest a bit, and back down again. The tent was the final straw which made us have to throw in the towel on this much-awaited hike. In the end, we chose to look at it as a blessing in disguise. I had been nursing two badly ingrown toenails since the Badlands, and they were very nearly healed. Butting 30 extra pounds of weight on my back and hiking 30 miles with elevation gain was not likely to be good for them at all. Additionally, we had been warned when we went in for our permit that the forecast looked wet in the mountains for three of our four days out. Stubbornly, I was planning to do it anyway. I'd looked forward to it for months on end. So, in the end, the tent kind of forced the issue, and we had to abandon the plan, which was the decision I knew in the back of my mind was the wiser one.

That left us without a plan though, so we quickly inventoried our priorities: see more wildlife, get in more hiking (maybe without the elevation), and see the parts of the park we hadn't been to yet. We decided to spend the morning in the Colter Bay section of the park, where we hiked Two Ocean Lake, a figure eight around twin lakes. Meridian met her match when this insect showed up.

It was the most docile, helpless creature, and could barely move to get itself out of the way. They sunned themselves on the trail, and my daughter, who picks up snakes and spiders with enthusiasm, was completely paralyzed by their presence! I thought she must be being theatrical in her refusal to move forward, so I went on without her, certain she'd grow bored with the trope and move on, to no avail. There she stood planted on the trail, stick straight like the rigid lodgepole pines along the path. I had to go back and literally form a human barricade between her and the mystery bug each time we encountered one.

From there, she was ready to abandon the Colter Bay portion of the park, and we headed back south where we hoped to encounter elk, but only found bison. We hiked a trail in the southern part of the park and happily found no more mystery bugs, but delightedly, did encounter mule deer along the trail!

A lovely pasteleque view of the mountains, sadly caused by smoke in the air from a wildfire elsewhere in the park.

This evening, we were determined to find moose, having failed last night. We went to Gros Ventre River, a spot recommended to us by a ranger, and were elated to find three moose, which we christened "Meese Moose", "Ted Moose", and "Sarah Mooose". Of the three, Ted earned favorite status by being the moose who took the best photographic direction as I tried to get him to model for my shot. As it goes, I did not pack a lens capable of getting me really gorgeous wildlife photographs, so I content myself with this one, which I entitle, "Proof I Saw a Moose".

Addendum: We managed to really salvage this day. We started by getting advice from one of the rangers on the best spots to view wildlife. Then we set out directly to fit a hike in before the prime wildlife viewing in the early evening. We squeezed in a quick three and a half mile hike which filled out lungs with fresh air and got our hearts pumping after all day indoors; as a bonus, we started our wildlife viewing early when we spotted a meadow vole on the trail. Then we hopped in the car to head to where were told we'd find moose. Along the way, we spotted elk, mule deer and bison. Sadly, no moose, but we will persevere. Then on the drive back, as we pulled into camp, we spotted a red fox. We'd seen one (maybe even the same one) as we left camp that morning, so we thought he was the perfect bookends to our day.

Correction: The chipmunks that ran across Meridian's feet were, indeed, chipmunks. However, the photos I showed you of "chipmunks" from our hike were, in fact, Golden Mantle Ground Squirrels. The ranger pointed out the missing eyelines for chipmunks. So, accuracy, and all.

Today was a day of hard choices and principle. We left camp this morning and forgot my purse in the tent, so since we're camped only a quarter mile from one of the locations her Jr. Ranger book suggests a visit to, I decided to drop Meridian off at Cunningham Cabin to take the self-guided tour while I ran up the mountain in the car to the tent to grab my purse. From Meridian this elicited a deep sigh and an eye roll. I gave her my standard "cost of admission" line and told her to get her body language in order. To which, she gave me the fakest plastered-on smile and a look that said "Fine, I'll fake it if you insist." My eye-brow twitched, which David will tell you means nothing good will follow. I told her through gritted teeth to get back in the car, and she knew something was up. We sat in silence as I drove up the mountain, and she was wise enough to know that this was not the time to press her perspective. I grabbed my purse, and the lecture began as we headed back down the mountain.

Not satisfied with her much-too-late compliant silence, I asked her to write a character journal about the incident and what went wrong, and how it could have gone better. She did, without argument. I think it's safe to say she'd read the room. But I was still not feeling like what I was saying was really sinking in. It was clear that she was doing what was asked of her now, but I felt it came less from a place of realization about her good fortune, and more from a place of having woken the sleeping beast. I sat, thinking as she wrote, and asking myself how I could help her realize how good she had it. And the answer dawned on me, though I knew I'd be punished by it as well: show her. Give her an ordinary school day. Make her request the very work she thought was too much to ask earlier.

And so, we headed to one of the Visitor Centers, where I unpacked her algebra book, her Ancient Civilizations book, a poetry notebook, America: The Story of Us (which I'd packed for her to read to me as we drove), and her pencil box. I explained that today, she hadn't earned the right to participate in this trip, and so, she would sit at the Visitor Center and do school. The old-fashioned way. Or as old-fashioned as she's ever known it to be. She could sit in the picture window with the Tetons beyond her and be reminded of what the potential for school had been today.

I sat nearby and caught up on photos and the blog. After a time, she finished the typical amount of daily schoolwork, she announced, "Okay, I'm done." And it began to sink in when I explained that there were still an hour in a typical school day and started brainstorming other schoolwork she could do, and asking her preference. Her look told me she finally got it. I asked, "Would you rather be doing the school day I had planned for you? Explore an old cabin, take a hike, identify flora and fauna, look for animal tracks, learn about the geology of the park from rangers and interpretive signs, etc?" She wistfully nodded, with a look of hope. I told her that I wanted her to complete the entire Jr Ranger booklet (all pages, as opposed to those required) and that I wanted it done to the best of her ability. I told her to think of someone she really respects and admires (Miss Penny, if you're reading this, that was you) and to pretend that she was going to be turning it in to that person. No more scribbled quick answers. No more sarcastic, tween responses to any of the questions. I explained that it is not my wish that she put on a fake smile and pretend her way through it. It is my expectation that she CHANGE her perspective. Body language doesn't lie, I explained. When your body language shows me gratitide and appreciation for how good you have it, I'll know you understand.

She's been diligently working away as I've typed this, and will be sworn in soon as a Jr. Ranger here in the Tetons. It's 4:30pm. We left camp this morning around 10am. It took most of the day for the gratitude to seep in, but I'm thankful that it has. And I'm feeling super fortunate that there's still time for a hike today!

This morning, we woke up and fixed breakfast, and then I fixed the tent to be leavable while Meridian washed up the breakfast dishes. While I was in the tent, an honest to god baby chipmunk ran up to the net lining of the tent and put it's paws onto the tent and peered in at me. Then he raced back and forth along the tent trying to find an entrance. When I came out to tell Meridian, she was having her own chipmunk experience. With glee, she told me, "Two baby chipmunks are taking it in turns to run over my bare feet!" and she held up her hand to stop my advance lest I break the spell and scare them off. What a greeting to the day! I had no access to the camera at that point, so couldn't capture the magic, but later I was to learn that these little guys have absolutely no fear of people and have become prolific beggars. A few shots from a hike later in the day to set the scene.

We drove through the park taking in the scenery before stopping at the Jenny Lake Visitor Center for a ranger program and to collect Meridian's Junior Ranger booklet. She's not so hot to trot to do these little booklets as they are largely aimed at younger children, but I call it her cost of admission on this trip. Mostly, I want the patches for her scout blanket, but also, what does it hurt to do a few easy activities and maybe learn something in the process?! While there we met a family from North Carolina and had a terific conversation with them. They gave us a site in Idaho worth visiting (the historic site of some Japanese Internment Camps from WWII.) From there, we decided on an easy hike for the day. Parking had been a bear due to construction, so we didn't want to give up our spot. We decided to hike the Jenny Lake Loop around the lake and add in Inspiration Point, a 1.7 mile side trip that climbed up to a lovely overlook.

After a leisurely morning in the park, and a quick trip into town to replenish groceries, we were on the road again for a driving day. Six hours in the car today as we made tracks for Grand Teton National Park. We loaded the crockpot full of potatoes, carrots, and onions, and when it started to smell yummy added some broccoli and bell pepper. It was perfect when we arrived, and we added some cherry tomatoes to steam while we set up camp. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Some Wyoming countryside:

Sagebrush and cattle ranches seemed to make up the entirety of eastern Wyoming, with the occasional outcropping of rock.

Then we encountered this sign that told us many of the fields we were seeing were oil fields, which made sense of the oil rigs we'd seen and couldn't identify in their out-of-context location.

We made camp at a free boondocking site right outside the park with an EXCELLENT view of the mountains. The sun was as of yet too bright to take in the view, so after making camp, Meridian got some pages in on that required reading, anxious to get to the two books she's dying to read.

And then we experienced our first Grand Teton sunset. We are truly so lucky and so grateful.

When we tucked outselves in, we set the alarm for 1am, so that we could lay out in the wide open and watch the Perids Meteor Shower. We counted 85 shooting stars in about 45 minutes before we crawled back into our warm sleeping bags and drifted off into a deep sleep. A very full day.

We arrived at Ayres Natural Bridge Park in Douglas, Wyoming yesterday just before they closed the park gates at 8pm and camped last night and again tonight. It is a beautiful little park with a natural stone bridge carved by the creek that runs beneath it. We couldn't have gotten luckier on our campsite. There were four left when we arrived, so we took the one with river access, and discovered that we'd lucking into the best spot in the whole park. We literally hung our hammocks in the spot you'd stand to take the postcard photo. The river was a mere few feet away, and we could have thrown a stone and hit the bridge. This is perhaps the best free campsite we've come across so far, with each site equipped with a barbeque grill, a picnic table, a fire pit, and covered trash can. There were also well-maintained bathrooms, and a camp host family that lives on site.

A shot of us at our campsite, Meridian playing in the creek while I relax in the hammock.

We loved this little park with its many wonders. We took the trail up to the top of the bridge, found a cave full of crystals, and enjoyed the birding. Oooh, ooh, I almost forgot to say that a belted kingfisher joined me in the branch right above my hammock on the second morning, and sat there quietly for a while before making some noise and then flying off. I stayed as still as stone as I layed in my hammock for the next 90 minutes trying to identify as many birds as I could. My kingfisher came back one more time. My birding list for this park: Belted Kingfisher, Rock Pigeon, Cedar Waxwing, Bank Swallow, American Goldfinch, Northern Flicker, and the ubiquitous American Robin and Common Grackle. There were a few more I couldn't identify. Oh, and I took a two hour nap in the hammock in the middle of the afternoon, just because I could! I love this trip!

A few semesters ago, we studied Native American history from prehistory until first contact in conjuction with the Virginia Historical Society. Among the many things we learned about were the mammoth herds that tribes tracked which many think is what initially brought humans across the Bering Strait. So, when I learned in the course of researching this trip that there is an active mammoth dig taking place just south of Mt. Rushmore, I knew that was something we wanted in on!

The site itself is a serendipitous natural incident which allowed a great number of mammoths skeletons to be collected and studied by scientists. As underwater springs slowly ate away at shale and limestone and softer layers of rock, a sinkhole was created and the heavier rock on top collapsed. Over time, those same natural springs, together with rainwater filled the sinkhole creating an appealing lake. Young, male mammoths either expelled by the group or showing off for potential mates would venture into the water, only to find that the shale banks of the sinkhole were too steep to climb out of. This is the prevailing speculation as to how so many mammoths came to meet their end here. No human remains or evidence of human hunting have been recovered to date, so scientists believe this was all a natural incidence over thousands of years. To date, sixty-one mammoths have been recovered from the sinkhole, and they've not even dug to half the depth of the hole. Three of the sixty-one were Wooly Mammoths, the other 58 were the larger Columbian Mammoths. Just a week before our visit, excavators uncovered the skull of a Giant Short-faced Bear, a mammoth unto himself, who stood man-height on all four legs and would have been able to peer through the windows of a second story building while standing on his hind legs. A carnivore, this guy needed 35 pounds of flesh each day to survive! A working theory is that the bear saw a struggling mammoth and thought he'd found an easy meal, only to find himself in the same predicament as his prey. Scientists on site were quite excited at this find!

The mammoth excavation. The skulls of two Columbian Mammoths are clearly visible here along with various other bones and tusks. Scientists have found only two complete skeletons. They speculate that the reason so many are no in tact is that over the years (remember this took 1000 years) as more mammoths became trapped, they would trample the existing skeletons in their desperate attampt to free themselves.

A sideview of Beauty, as the staff call this mammoth. The staff work within the sinkhole, excavating the surrounding soil and rock, leaving as much of the scene as possible "in situ", which is latin for "in place" and is used in the field to describe a dig where the goal is to uncover events as they occured without disturbing the scene to the extent possible.

The Mammoth Site staff have done a tremendous job of making an active dig site accessible to the public. We were able to take a guided tour through the dig, where the staff have constructed catwalks over the remains so that you can view the skeletons and bone fragments from their best vantage points. The tour itself was very informative, and we were then invited to remain in the dig area as long as we liked, watching geologists, paleontologists, and other scientists excavate the site. After that we walked through an interpretive site with lots of hands on exhibits and got to actually hold a mammoth bone! Meridian was excited to think she was holding something five million years old, but as this sinkhole developed during the Pleistocene era, the remains were likely 26,000 years old or younger. Still, that is no small span of time!

A long shot of one side of the excavation from the catwalk above. You see the rose colored shale to at the edges, which very nicely marks the borders of the sinkhole for scientists.

We ate up most of a day onsite, watching scientists at work, taking our time through the exhibits, watching the on-site viedeo, and just wondering at a very different time from the one we live in. When we sated our curiosity on the work site, we were invited downstairs to the laboratory where paleontologists and geologists continue to work on bones which have been removed from the sinkhole. They also comb through all of the removed soil searching for remnant bones from smaller animals, and had displays of everything from fish, clams, and sea snails to rabbits, chipmunks, and other small mammals. The lab was in a humiditiy controlled enviroment, and we watched through glass windows and spoke to the scientists through microphones mounted on the ceiling.

A geology intern working on his PhD works away on a mammoth skull that had to be removed from the pit because it had become unstable and was in danger of falling.

We left the Mammoth Site and headed for Wyoming. We stopped along the way in Casper, Wyoming for a mail call. We are using GENERAL DELIVERY along our route to collect mail and packages. Meridian thought it was just fabulous that she could waltz into a post office that had nothing in the world to do with her and request mail! Waiting for her here was a long-sleeve rashgaurd she left behind at LuAnn's house (Thanks, Lu!) and the long-awaited Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a birthday present from her friend, Alex. (Thanks, Alex!)

No "Welcome to Wyoming sign. :( Have this shot of Carwin amidst the Wyoming countryside as a consolation prize.

She might be excited! This look of sheer joy was replaced by one of horror when I relayed that she couldn't read it until she finished the assigned reading she's been dragging her feet on. The third book in the Hunger Games trilogy is being held in similar captivity. "Evil Mom" has since been a theme on her outgoing postcards!

Today we drove north to anout 90 minutes to meet my oldest nephew, Austin. Inexplicably, we completely forgot to take any photographs, which I will kick my self for well into the future. We had a wonderful visit, and spent the day playing board games, and getting to know each other.

After saying goodbye to Austin, we drove 90 minutes south to Hot Springs, SD so that we'd wake up ready to take on our last adventure in the state before heading west into Wyoming. We also needed a maintenance day: showers (we'd been dry camping the last few nights), laundry, reorganizing. We were wary of this evening. A truck stop was our chosen location for sleeping and all of the before-mentioned functions, and we weren't sure how that would shape up exactly. I can already see some of my friends and family aghast at the idea of showering and washing laundry in a truck stop, but I have to say, the experience was really very pleasant! The showers were large, private, and very clean. Nicer, in fact, than many hotel bathrooms I've been in. The laundry was a single washer and dryer, and I worried both that there would be a bottleneck and that it would take three runs of the dryer to dry our stuff and we'd end up spending a half day on the task. Wrong on both accounts. The washer was $1.25, the dryer $1, and once through left everything perfectly dry.

Sleeping was not quite as pleasant. We've had really good luck this far finding free campspots when out of the park system, but there was nothing nearby so we decided to brave the truckstop, sleeping in Carwin with her window blackening inserts. The biggest problem was light. Noise wasn't bad, and I wasn't afraid at all, but light streamed in the little cracks because the truck stop was so well lit. Every time I shifted in my sleep in the night, I'd see the light and jolt myself awake to check the time. So, not the most restful night's sleep. Laundry and showers, we'll repeat, but we'll avoid truckstops for sleeping in the future.

Today started out with some driving as we headed to the Black Hills. So a little bit about our car time.

Today's drive took us to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, through some really pretty winding-road, hairpin turn country. The Black Hills are full of cedar and Ponderosa Pine and wildlife. It was a beautiful smelling drive, and with 30mph speed limits, we could have the windows down and drink it all in.

We really enjoyed Mt. Rushmore. We'd heard from people who thought it was splendid and people who thought it was underwhelming, so we weren't sure what we'd make of it, but we found it impressive. We spent several hours there, listening to the audio tour, exploring the museum and the sculptor's studio, and just enjoying being in the presence of such an iconic piece of Americana. From there, we went to Crazy Horse, which is as of yet incomplete. It's been in progress for 68 years, and is funded entirely by admissions, gift sales, and donations. The hired sculptor died in the process, and his family has taken on the project. For scale, Mt. Rushmore in its entirety would fit inside the head of Crazy Horse.

We woke up bright and early this morning to the report of bison at camp. Sadly, we lolled in bed after waking instead of getting right up. Now we know! First thing in the morning: Wildlife Check! We drove the Badlands Loop Road east from the Sage Creek Wilderness area to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center, stopping at pull-offs to explore. We secured a campground for that night and got Meridian's Junior Ranger booklet. Then, in a counter-intuitive move, we headed out of the park and back east because we were eager to check out 1880-Town and because hiking in the Badlands in the midday sun is just asking for punishment..

1880-Town is two brothers' tribute to the history of the area and the homesteading period. They have collected historic homes and buildings from the area and reassembled them in Murdo to resemble an authentic town of the time. There's everything you could imagine a thriving town to have: a doctor's office, a bank, a mercantile, a land claims office, a firehouse, a schoolhouse, a post office, a church, and of course, a saloon. The selling point for Meridian when we were talking about going is that they have a whole costume room of period clothes from which to choose, so we simply had to dress up. She must have told me anecdotally at least six times how superior this method of costuming was to that of Colonial Williamsburg, where everyone rents the same style shift. She took her time picking out her dress, and opted for something Laura Ingalls would have worn. I went the Scarlett O'Hara way of it. We joked the whole time that she was Laura and I was Nellie, so I kept it real by pestering her with tales of all the things my Pa has bought me. We had a great time wandering around, and even had a sasparilla at the saloon.

From within the museum at 1880-Town. The doll on the left was the stuff of nightmares and arrested our attention as we walked through. We thought, surely, we'd seen the most terrifying doll a child could love. Then we walked further and encountered the doll on the right. Enough said.

We made it back to the Badlands in time for some more butte exploration. Go ahead, yuck it up! Goodness knows we have. It's been nothing but potty jokes in the Badlands. "Butt exploration! Let's go climb a butt! Ewww! We're sleeping in Butt Loop! And of course, the quote of the week comes from Finding Nemo, "That's a biiiiig butt!"

The day felt full and rich as we took in another sunset over the formations. We then attended the night ranger program. The highlight of Meridian's lifetime of night-sky viewing happened tonight when she got to see an asteroid flame across the sky. She was captivated by it and could not stop thinking of it. A few of the descriptions she came up with while trying to capture its essence:

We set an alarm for 5:30am today. Holy crap, who am I and where is the Dawn you all know and love?! But, we were on a mission. We wanted to tour the Minuteman Missile Launch Facility, and we'd been told that the gates open at 7am, and only about 60 tickets are given out each day. The ranger told us that typically those 60 tickets went to people already in line by 7am. Yih! So, we packed up camp in record speed and raced over to the site, and were very relieved to find ourselves 3rd in line. Tasty worm for this imposter early bird.

We took our time going through the Cold War Museum before our appointed tour time. Meridian learned a great deal as we have not yet studied the cold war at all. When it came time to tour the launch facility, the reason for the great ticket rush became clear! Only six people and a ranger could fit into the elevator! We learned a lot on this tour: 1) America's heartland is essentially a missile field, with buried missiles under seemingly innocuous ranch land. 2) Two Missileers (the men and women who receive the President's order to launch and then do so) work in the room at a time while eight military guards police the perimeter with shoot-to-kill orders if the perimeter if breached. 3) The two Missileers work 24 hour shifts, so one usually naps and then trade off. But this is serious business. The napper does so right in the room they are in. 4) That room is protected by 8 foot concrete and steel reinforced walls and a 14 inch thick steel vault door. 5) The Missileers had a sense of humor as you'll see when you check out the Domino's sign they painted on the door to the launch control.

After touring the launch facility, we headed down the road to the site of Delta-09, a missile that had been part of the Minutemen series of missiles, and is now inactive, and turned into a part of the Minutemen National Monument system. It was really kind of surreal to realize that there are literally nuclear powered inter-continental ballistic missiles buried beneath the fields of seemingly innocuous ranchland all along the highway. Wowsers!

When we completed our history lesson for the day, we headed back to the Badlands for further hiking, but discovered the brutality of the middle of the day in the park. Meridian was feeling overheated and wrapped her head in our cooling towel. At which point, we decided showers and ice cream were a good diversion from the heat for a while, and we'd go set up camp and hike more when sun dipped down in the sky.

Meridian absolutely loves that this park has no off limits zones. You are encouraged to explore the entirety of the park (as if you could!) We both remarked on how illicit it felt to be climbing the buttes, as they crumbled away beneath your feet. In any other park, we'd be asked not to climb on the formations so as not to assist in their erosion. But here in the Badlands, their erosion is constant and inevitable, and the park service has taken the view that we should explore this unique environment while we can. The hiking is a little dicey; you literally feel the ground giving way beneath your feet as layers of rock detach themselves from the butte you're climbing. It's a little unnerving, and for me, a little alarming. Meridian, with all the seeming immortality of youth is fearless on them, and when the butte gives her a rockslide, she takes it in stride and goes for the ride, while my forty year old body starts coursing with adrenaline and cortisol. I've definitely seen the value of trekking poles in this park! My first hike was without them, and I felt confident I was going to fall. Broke those bad boys out for all subsequent hikes and was much surer on my feet.

At one point, we encountered a search and rescue team in the process of rescuing a pair of hikers who managed to get down into a rutt between two buttes with no way out beyond wandering aimlessly into the formations behind them and hoping for the best. They rightly chose to call 9-11 and be rescued instead. Getting lost out here is a very real possibility because the formations are so unpredictable and look so much alike in every direction. I took the opportunity to review "sound judgment and hiking protocols" with Meridian. Every case gone wrong from this one to the woman who was charged by an elk in Yellowstone to the man who died in a Yellowstone geyser to the various bear encounters that have been in the news in the last year have been turned into object lessons. I want her to know that the dangers of the wild are not just being conjured by an over-reactive mom, but are real and deserve/require respect. She listened carefully, but her smile told me that she secretly would like to be in a situation that requires rescue. #TheDangerofReading #WannabeBookProtagonist I asked her if that's what her smile meant, and she grinned.

I love a day with nothing on the agenda today but hiking and exploring. Who am I kidding? I love the field trips and the visiting friends and family too. I love it all! But this morning, I was glad there was nothing to steal out attentions from feet on soil all day long. South Dakota gave us a beautifully cool day for it too. South Dakota might just love us as much as we love her because just wait until you see what she showed us today!

And then we came upon this magical fairyland, a real life children's book illustration come to life. I felt like I'd stepped onto the set of What Dreams May Come with splashes of an artists brush leaving the canvas and spilling into the real world.

My brother Jed moved to South Dakota nearly 20 years ago, and has been on me to visit ever since. His patience has been tried as we galavanted through Europe, Northern Africa, Canada, and Hawaii. "When are you coming to South Dakota?" was always the mildly indignant question on his mind. Well, ...I took my darned time, didn't I, Jed? But it was great to finally meet your family, see your hometown, and spend some time together. Can I just say, ...I don't know how your every facebook post isn't a photo of the countryside that is your backyard! What a gorgeous place to live.

My mom followed my brother out west, so I got to catch up with her too. She made a great local tour guide, walking us through the Louis and Clark locations in Fort Pierre, and narrating throughout the local cultural museum. Meridian met her maternal grandmother for the first time (if you don't count infancy) on this trip, and Mom got to see what a lovely young lady her grand-daughter is becoming.

On Wednesday, Jed and Joni and their boys piled into the car and Meridian and I followed in ours as we headed to Bear Country with a pit-stop at the famed Wall Drug. You can't drive through SD without seeing billboards for Wall Drug for miles, so we knew we had to check it out for ourselves. It was a fun diversion, ...a South of the Border for the wild west. The boys had an absolute blast posing with all of the wild west figurines. Meridian pasted on her best phony camera smile and endured the photo op because she could see how much her cousins were enjoying it.

From there, we caravaned to Bear Country, USA, a roadside zoo that houses some of the wildlife that roams the countryside and black hills nearby, some of which we hope very much NOT to encounter in the wild. Think grizzly bears, timber woves, and the like. It was a drive through zoo, and the event itself was somewhat hilarious. Poor Jed had a radiator issue on the way up, so we had to run the heat to cool the engine every time we got stuck behind someone taking their time enjoying the wildlife. We jokes that we were ourselves turning to leather as we all drank gatorade in record quantities. In National Lampoon's Vacation style, we were of course required to keep our doors closed and windows rolled up since we were driving through a wild bear enclosure. So, if you're a careful reader, you're probably thinking, "Wait, I thought you were caravaning? Didn't you and Meridian have AC?" Yeah, well, before we knew about the radiator, we'd decided to park our car and all pile into one to save some money on admission. LOL. That saved $30 laughed at me the whole way through the park. It must be said though, we were all terrific troopers. None of the 5 kids in the car had a melt-down (har-har), and all of the adults managed to keep cracking jokes despite our sweat-dampened clothes. I may have been reprimanded once or twice by Policewoman Meridian when I flirted with danger by opening my door for a quick breeze now and then. LOL. The misadventures make the best memories, and this is definitely one for the books.

We said goodbye to Jed and his family as they headed home, and we made tracks for the Badlands. We arrived just before sunset and all of the animals came out to greet us. Meridian was positively giddy as we encountered species after species, from the pronghorns at the gate to the prairie dogs in Prairie Dog Town to the bison we saw at a distance and the bunnies that hopped across out path. We had just enough time to take in a few views in the dimming light. Then we drove to the Sage Creek Wilderness portion of the park where the park gave us a lovely welcoming sunset.

A quick two hour drive this morning put us in Sioux Falls where we met up with my friend Joleen, who was so sweet and acted as our tour guide at Falls Park, which was an absolutely stunning natural water fall forging it's multiple paths through pink quartzite. It was an amazing sight! I'm so glad Joleen suggested we stop!

After saying goodbye to Joleen, Meridian and I were back on the road west. The beautiful golden and green hills caught me quite by surprise and I could not stop exclaiming over their beauty and calling for more and more pictures from my passenger seat photographer! Really, what a beautiful pastoral drive!

And though the drive was no chore at all, we were glad to finally reach my brother Jed's adopted hometown of Pierre, South Dakota. After 18 years, I finally made it out here, Jed! Meridian and her cousins went for a swim in the Missouri River. Can there be any finer introduction?

Today we're on the road again, through Illinois, Wisconsin, and into southern Minnesota, where we'll make camp for a night, and then get right back into the car tomorrow morning.

LuAnn is one of my oldest friends. She was the mom next door when I was growing up. She gave me my first jobs, first as a babysitter for her three wonderful children, Byan, Greg, and Rachel, and then as her assistant for her home business Home Interiors. We have many wonderful memories, setting up parties in people's homes and the conversations we'd have on the way home! She was one of my early role models for the kind of mom I wanted to be, always gentle with her kids, always loving and respectful. I'm so glad that I'm getting the opportunity to see them on this trip.

We spent two days catching up on our lives and relaxing. Poor Lu didn't feel so good, so we tried to take care of her some and let her rest. Poor thing ended up in the urgent care, but I won't post more on that because who wants their medical dilemmas posted on the internet. So, we caught up on laundry, caught up on the blog, and caught our breath. I was lucky to get to see both Rachel and Greg, who stopped in to spend a day with us. They have grown up to be delightful people! It's so crazy to think I have a kid that is as old as I was when I started caring for them! I was filled with nostalgia and a strange, different sort of nostalgia about Meridian's future and our parallel lives. I really enjoyed getting to know Rachel and Greg as adults. I also got to do a quick FaceTime visit with Bryan who was on a vacation of his own. So sweet that he made a minute to catch up with me!

Rachel and Meridian got on like gangbusters. Meridian exclaimed, "I liked her instantly!" - a phrase she first used with Mialee, then LuAnn, and then Rachel. I took it to mean, "You have good taste in people, Mom!" But she followed it up this time with, "I think I'm attracted to people who are shorter than me!" LOL. Anyway, Rachel and Meridian talked Harry Potter and Hunger Games, and everything else, and Meridian later told me that Rachel was the first grown up that she could talk to exactly like she talks to her friends and not like she was talking to a grown-up. I don't think it hurts that Rachel at several times exclaimed, "OMG, you're more gown-up than I am!" Since Meridian mostly thinks her growing up is in the past tense, this was music to her wannabe-adult ears.

We headed into Chicago today to take in the sights. It was a beautiful morning, and we went straight for Millenium Park and Navy Pier, figuring we could ride to the top of Willis Tower later in the day. We had plans to take the architectural boat tour along the river, ride the ferris wheel on Navy Pier, and see the city from Willis Tower. Little did we know that by mid-afternoon a storm would blow into the city making many of our plans moot. That said, we had a lovely half day in the city, enjoyed its pretty architecture, and enjoyed hamming it up as tourists. Sneaky cards we divested ourselves of:

Meridian and I (and every other tourist in Chicago) had fun playing with Cloud Gate. Really what a FUN piece of interactive art!

Oh, and what first time visit to Chicago would be complete without sampling Chicago pizza?

Today was a driving day. We said goodbye to our friends in Ohio, and headed to the suburbs of Chicago to reconnect with my friend, LuAnn, whose children I babysat when I was Meridian's age!

We arrived right at dinner time, and LuAnn was ready with a meal waiting! What a sweet hostess she is! I'm not too proud to admit that I kinda like being mothered a little bit. :) I felt horrible because only this morning in a phone call did I remember to tell her that we're vegetarian! She was a trooper, and adapted with skill. It was so great to see her and Julio again after all these years. It's so strange to think that they were my age when we first met and now I have a daughter as old as I was!

I cannot tell you how excited I was that I was able to plan the drive in such a way that I'd be able to reconnect with Mialee, one of my closest friends from college. I have never yet gotten to meet her wonderful family, and I was so excited that Meridian didn't recognize me in the car as I got giddier and giddier as we approached.

I love relationships where when you finally see each other after years and years and life and more life, everything is exactly the same as ever. Mialee and I fell in together as if a day had never passed. Meanwhile, Meridian was great with Luke, Kate, Caroline, Ava, and Isaac. We had a little competition going over Isaac's affecion because who doesn't want the toddler to adore them?! Kate was my instant friend and ran into my arms as soon as she saw me. Caroline and Luke were eager to be friends but needed a moment to warm up, but let me hug them all the same. And sweet Ava reminded me of Meridian at her age and gave me a look that clearly let me know that she was not yet ready to be hugged. :) Isaac-dumpling let me scoop him right out of his mommy's arms, and we were all instant friends! I finally got to meet Mi's hubby Matt after all these years, and he was very welcoming and a great host. Truly, they just folded us into their family for a few days, which is exactly what I would have wanted.

Meridian spent hours playing games with the kids, and they were delighted to have someone big to impress. :) We brought the game pie-face and created a sensation.

The adventure I've been planning for over a year finally kicks off! Carwin was loaded and ready to go. We said our goodbyes to Papi and Max* and pulled out of the driveway just 15 minutes later than planned. The four hour drive to the New River Gorge was a pretty one, driving through familiar views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and then into the Shenandoah Valley on our way to West Virginia. It was such a lovely drive that we didn't mind being in the car at all.

We arrived at the New River Gorge National Park Visitor Center, and took in this breath-taking view.

After exploring the visitor center and consulting with the rangers, we decided to make camp for the night and pore over our hiking options for tomorrow. When we arrived at camp, I started pitching the tent, and Meridian started building the fire. She then asked if she could make dinner (a question I will never answer with a no!) I'd forgotten marshmallows, so I left her tending the fire and preparing the meal, while I walked the 1/4 mile to a little general store we'd passed on the way in. She was so happy to be trusted at camp by herself, and I think it really made her feel like my partner on this trip.

*Max: Poor Max. Either we were pumping out some serious we're-leaving-town pheremones, or as long suspected, Max speaks English. We had some loadding to do about a half hour before pulling out, so we thought it'd be considerate to let Max hang out around the car. He does love the car! Well, when it came time to pull away, he refused to get out of the car. So, David reached in to take hold of his collar, and Max bit him. Not a gentle, leave-me-alone bite either, an attack bite. So, then I reached in, and I got the same treatment! He was NOT leaving the car! I swear, he knew we were leaving for more than a grocery trip, and he was GOING along! Finally, he slinked out, shame-faced. It was a sad way to say good-bye to him. Poor guy! So, if any of you are feeling left out and want to lash out at me for leaving your behind, ...well, Max took care of that for ya.

We wasted no time this morning getting up and getting on to the wonderful hiking the gorge has to offer. We drove the historic coal road on the way to our hiking destinations and got to see the abandoned company towns that are just being consumed by the mountains. Crazy to think that entire towns went to waste when a coal seam dried up and the population just left.

The scenic drive took about 45 minutes (if we don't count our stops) and used to be the ONLY way to cross the gorge. The New River Gorge Bridge was built in the 70s and turned a 45 minute drive into a 30 second commute. The bridge is the second longest single arch bridge in the world, and is made from 44 million tons of cor-ten steel.

We met some climbers while stopped to take pictures of the bridge, and they gave us a great tip on a hike we hadn't planned on. The trail included chains and rope pulls, which was instantly Meridian's favorite part. The more technical the hike, the better pleased my girl is. When we got to the top, Meridian laid on her belly and looked over at where we'd seen the climbers on the way up. We're told the gorge is a premier climbing location, and the number of climbers we saw on our few days out seem to bear that up.

That was our first of three hikes today. It was short, steep, and had a nice payoff. The third shot of the bridge above came from that cliff. Our other two hikes were not as dramatic, but both quite lovely: one through rhododendron and sassafrass forest, and one along the river at the bottom of the gorge.

The river separated two towns: North and South Fayette. One was a coal-mining company town, and the other was a railroad company town. The building of the railroad came in conjunction with a logging boom in the area, which wiped the forest pretty thoroughly clean. Steam engines were then responsible for a string of perpetual forest fires that prevented regrowth for some time, but those same fires altered the land in such a way that helped a second growth forest take root, with an incredible diversity of trees (over 120 species according to our river guide). The original bridge that crossed the river was replaced a few decades ago with one of the same style, but which included pedestrian walkways. Crazy to think that once upon a time people had to travel 45 minutes through the gorge to reach the river level to cross what amounts to a quarter mile span. But oh what a pretty drive! I wonder if road rage of the 1800's and early 1900's was curbed by the intensely beautiful view, the sound of the river, and the smell of nature.

The early to bed, early to rise is agreeing with me. So far I've been awake before Meridian three out of three mornings! On this particular morning, we needed to get camp packed up quickly so that we could meet our river guides for a full day of rafting the rapids! We made quick work of it, and were on our way in no time. We arrived at West Virginia Adventures, the outfitter we chose with the help of groupon ;), got suited up, and loaded into the bus to the river. ;)

Meridian and I were the boat leaders, which means we sat in the splash zone, made a lot of eye contact with each other, and setting the pace for the rest of our awesome crew. We loved it! Meridian secretly hoped to be "violently ejected from the raft" and I not so secretly prayed that wouldn't happen. Glad to be the victor in that case!

We had a fantastic whitewater rafting trip on the New River through Class 4 and 5 rapids with Monroe, aka, "Special Ed". Monroe grew up on the New River, so he knows the river lore and are history as well as anyone. To top it off, this guy could seriously have a 2nd career as a stand-up comic! He kept us laughing from the time we stepped for on the bus, the whole time in the water, and all the back back to base camp. My daughter was sharing tidbits about the river that she learned on this trip days later while telling people about the trip. He encouraged team camaraderie by calling for "attitude checks". He'd yell out "attitude check" and we'd all rise our paddles to the center and whoop and holler. Because he was so fun and so funny, the two times he told us that we needed to contain our enthusiasm and listen hard for his commands, we knew to be serious and pay attention. As a result, no one was bumped from our boat. And because no one was bumped from the boat, but everyone wants to be wet, Special Ed would give us some time in the eddies to hop out and swim.

Lunch was quite a spread: sandwich fixin's, pasta salad, potato salad, carrots, salad, chips, cookies, and PB&J for anyone who didn't get enough. Sure it took a few minutes to set up (as another reviewer complained about), but I'd take that over pre-packed sandwiches any day of the week. Oh, and as a person who hates water, that ice-cold water was so refreshingly perfect!

We really enjoyed the company of our crew, and so Meridian felt comfortable initiating the crosscountry game of Sneaky Cards that we will be playing. It's a deck of cards that gives you secret missions to pull off for, to, or with strangers you encounter. So, our goal is to try to get ris of our entire deck along our travels. When you are given a sneaky card, you log the card on the Sneaky Cards website, and the mission then becomes your mission to carry out with a new stranger. We're hoping our deck becomes super active, and Anna from our boat trip promised to get us off to a good start!

We would highly recommend a raft trip to anyone who comes to the gorge. It was the perfect inaugural adventure for our epic trip!

Gearing up for out 99 Days of Adventure cross country trip meant getting the van conversion done. My hubby was so fantastically amazing. First, when I said I was doing this, he assumed this meant HE was doing this. That alone makes him awesome. But then on top of that, he put up with my very mechanically challenged self and all the physically impossible demands I made. He dealt with it that I needed him to prove in the 3D realm that these things were not possible, and though proven right time and time again, he endured it when the next scenario found me again asking him to prove it. He found creative solutions to give me what I wanted, but didn't know how to articulate. He indulged my need to sand every side of every piece of wood, even the sides that would be out of sight and out of reach. We still have to make decisions about how my back hatch kitchen will look/work, but we've taken her out for an inaugural stealth camping trip to complete success. The road awaits us! Thank you, David!