Day 12: Home, where my thoughts escaping

Homeward bound.

We drove through the night to Chimney Rock, getting there at 6:30 a.m. as the sun was coming up. We went a little out of our way to go by this famed Oregon Trail marker, but what's an All America trip without a taste of past trips west? After Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, it wasn't as impressive as it might have been otherwise, but it was humbling to walk through the cemetery by Chimney Rock and remind ourselves of the bravery of our ancestors.

Next stop was Gothenburg, NE, pony express capital. We went to an original pony express station where the gentlemen who worked there gleefully took the opportunity of a full room to give us a little history of the pony express. It's hard to imagine that something so iconic for our culture only lasted a year and a half.

Linoma landlocked lighthouse.

We were hot and grimy and aimed for our next stop to be a place where we could jump in the water. We stopped at Linoma Beach, home of the landlocked lighthouse. Linoma Beach was directly downstream from a sand and gravel mine. Fortunately, we didn't have to go through the ethical dilemma of to swim or not to swim in clearly polluted water because the beach was closed for the weather. We couldn't figure out why hot, muggy weather would necessitate the closing of a beach, but we've never had a beach right by a sand and gravel mine either.

Swimming was on our brain and although there are no entries in swimming holes.org for Nebraska or Iowa, we found a little lake right off of 80 in Iowa called Lake Manawa. Although we nearly circumnavigated the lake, we didn't drive by the public beach which was closed due to extreme flooding of the lake. No respite from the heat or grime for us. We grabbed dinner and headed back on the road toward home, getting to see some fantastic roadside attractions without even leaving the road.

Sapp Brothers coffee pot water tower

Day 11: Goin' to Jackson

Goin' to Jackson

Got up, packed up and headed down the road to Jackson, and, more importantly, the Grand Tetons! Quiz: do you remember what the Continental Divide is? We drove over it several times and couldn't remember. Sadly, Owen, who is usually our fountain of knowledge for things like this was also in the dark.

Driving into the Grand Tetons is an astounding sight. They are the mountains that one would picture if you were coming up with the perfect mountain. They are tall, dramatic, snow covered, and stunning. We headed to Jenny Lake for the boat ride, which we took for the short trail to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. Like the rest of the Grand Tetons, they were more beautiful than one would imagine possible. We got to see a pika, a tiny alpine rabbit creature, on the way to the falls.

Although many of the guides said one day was fine for Grand Teton, it's really not, we found ourselves rushing around trying to get what we could in. We flew from Jenny Lake to the Moose Junction Visitor Center, a beautiful building with a wall of windows facing the Tetons and a giant stone fireplace, to try to get another Junior Ranger badge for the kids. Another success, we now have three Junior Rangers at three National Parks. These Junior Ranger programs were easily the kids favorite part of the trip. They loved the challenged of the activities, had fun at the programs, and the patch at the end was like icing on the cake.

Proudly badged up, we headed to Jackson to check out the town and say a quick hello to a dear college friend, which though brief, was wonderful. We then got subs from the New York City Sub Shop, which ironically is the sandwich place the locals frequent. We made our way to the town center to eat. At the town square in Jackson, there are four arches made of elk antlers. It's creepy, especially only a few miles away from the national elk refuge. It's like saying, elks, you stay there, you're safe, but you get into town and all bets are off.

Jackson Shoot Out.  

As we neared the town center, there were a bunch of people waiting as if for a parade. There was no parade, there was a "town shoot-out.". For the past 55 years during the summer every night at 6, except Sunday, the good citizens of Jackson put on a shoot out skit. If someone is performing a shoot out skit a few feet away from you, you have to watch so we did. I couldn't see too much of it, but there was drama and gun shots and the kids liked it, so why not? We settled down to business and chowed down on our sandwiches which were delicious. We then stopped at Moo's homemade ice cream and sorbet and strolled through the strange grouping of statues eating out treats. We couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason to the why of the statues, but you could sit on a bench with: Jack London, Einstein, Abe Lincoln, Mark Twain, or St. Francis. There was also a large statue of some guy on a horse with a boy on his lap. We asked an older gentleman who he thought he was and he said, "I don't know, but I have a real nice photo of him." With that, it was time to bid adieu to Wyoming and start our trip home.

Day 10: Ain't no Mountain High Enough

Ain't no Mountain High Enough.

Hike up Mt. Washburn

The biggest issue with travel for us is good coffee. We thought we got around this by getting a plug adaptor and bringing our thermal coffeemaker. No such luck. The coffeemaker takes more power than the adaptor has available, so bad to the dilemma. We have a camp percolator that we've never gotten decent coffee from it until today. It wasn't great, but it was good enough and a great way to start the day.

Coffee in hand, we went to Mt. Washburn to begin our hike. At one point, there was a road up Mt. Washburn, because of this it was a wide, cleared hike. There weren't many trees on the mountain, so almost every step was like the summit of most mountains we hike. The mountain was covered with wildflowers and volcanic rock. There was also snow on the mountain, which was fun for the kids. The top was beyond amazing but incredibly windy. There is a fire station on top of the mountain where there are bathrooms and a viewing area where you can get some respite from the wind. Hiking along with us was a family with three children about 5 years older than ours, a lovely retired woman working to make the hike (which she did!), and a large group of Japanese tourists. One of the most astonishing things to me is the number of foreign tourists at Yellowstone. I had always thought of Yellowstone as an American destination, but it's a destination for people worldwide, which is fantastic. People from around the world are getting the chance to see some of the best of our country.

After the hike we went into Canyon General Store, where they had a 50's style lunch counter. We stocked up on souvenirs and then headed over to the visitor's center to catch the junior ranger program. The visitor's center was fantastic, really wonderful exhibits and this fantastic fountain/ globe thing that you could manipulate. Kids added another National Park to their Junior Ranger status and we headed back to our campsite with a detour to the Virginia Cascades, which were beautiful.

Virginia Cascades

We had dinner and as became the kids ritual, they took a chilly dip in the water. While we were at the waters edge, a dad with his two girls told me about a place to swim that is safely fed by geysers (not scalding), and as my kids gleefully jumped into the frigid water, he noted that I might appreciate the warmer water more than the kids.


We went to another ranger talk, this time on bears and after the kids went to bed, Josh and I sat by the fire and enjoyed our last night in Yellowstone.

Day 9: We were the young Americans

Young Americans.

Is there anything more iconicity American than sitting in Yellowstone with a bald eagle soaring above your head? No, there isn't. This is the all-America trip we've landed in.

Golden Gate of Yellowstone

Our second day in Yellowstone drew us north to see more thermal sites and more exploration. We headed to Mammoth Hot Springs. Honestly, I expected a hot spring that you could hang out in, even after a day of oohing and ahhhing over crazy toxic hot springs. Mammoth was also crazy colored toxic hot springs, and was also pretty impressive.

Mechanical and natural lawn mowers.

The real thing that knocked our socks off was the town of Mammoth, where a city worker was cutting the grass on one median and on the other a bung of elk decided to help out by grazing. We slowed down and ogled the elk and then continued on our way toward the northern part of the park so we could add Montana to our list of states visited. Turns out, in Montana is the longitude that is smack in the middle between the equator and the North Pole. So we did the obligatory photo op and headed back toward Mammoth and toward the Grand Canyon of the north. On the way, right above our heads a bald eagle soared, it was spectacular. We pulled over and celebrated America.

When we arrived back in Mammoth the word got out to the elk population that the good citizens of Mammoth needed help with their lawn and there was at least double the number of elk, including one majestic male. There was a younger male elk who used the convenient car antenna to scrape the soft bits off of his horns. Rangers tried in vein to find a happy medium between the helpful elk and the droves of tourists who watched them in awe.

We gawked along with everyone else and quickly made our way out of town toward the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. We did a drive by of Fort Yellowstone on our way out of town and we hit a Wyoming traffic jam, another words a traffic jam where we were stuck behind a buffalo leisurely crossing the bridge. After he made his way of the bridge, he headed off road for a snack and we were able to drive a bit faster through the Golden Gate toward the petrified tree. The Golden Gate is a road through a canyon of yellow volcanic rock with a waterfall, breath taking!

Petrified Tree

The petrified tree is a left over from the days when Yellowstone had a more tropical climate and redwoods grew there, hundreds of thousands of years ago. A redwood tree was petrified and is still there, once again showing how much our world has evolved over the years. It's pretty amazing to see something that was a part of a different reality than the one we experience today.

Tower Fall

Yellowstone grand canyon

Tower Fall was next on the loop and marks the beginning of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon with a waterfall. There is something magical about a large canyon with water flowing through it and we loved every stop along the way, checking out the upper and lower falls at the bottom and even got to see a precariously placed Osprey nest on the top of a jutting rock in the middle of the canyon. On the way back home for dinner and our chilly swim, we got to see a mule deer, wrapping up an exciting day.

Day 8: King of the Road

King of the Road.

Old Faithful, right on time.

Usually, driving in the night is a pretty dull narrative. It's dark and no one's around, which makes for great driving but not much else. That is unless you are roving through the wilds of Wyoming, where giant mining operations loom in the distance and where you are driving over what might be big mountain cliffs, if only you could see the other side of those S curves. We drove through Big Horn National Forest and were dive bombed by two giant owls and heard some creature when we stepped out of the car to check out the stars, so I guess I should say driving at night can be dull elsewhere, but not in Wyoming. We also got to stop in the Mavrik gas station, we joked it was Sarah Palin's gas station, but it was a Mecca of met needs in one place. Really, a gas station designed for the traveler, everything right there, the right kind of options for what you'd like. After South Dakota, which might not be known for its options, it was exciting.

We stopped at a place and slept for a few hours and woke up around 5:30 and headed to Yellowstone. It was a stunning ride to go through Shoshone Park. We got to Yellowstone right before the ranger got on duty and waited to pay and for the great maps. The ranger told us to head to one of the bigger stations to ask about the elusive Yellowstone campsite so we headed that way, spying a black bear, elk, buffalo, and Yellowstone Lake on the way in.

We stopped into Canyon to ask about campsites and the guy said to Josh, there's people leaving every day, go find a site! We both felt it would have been fantastic to have this information before stopping in Canyon, but headed to Norris campsite regardless and managed to get a campsite almost right away. I guess if you're there by 8 am, you can get a site. We set up camp and headed on our way.

Sulfer Springs aren't aromatic.  

We started at Norris Geyser Basin, a pretty impressive place to start our thermal features viewing and a great spot for the scavenger hunt. We had naturally occurring bad smells, in fact we had so many Ellie, who is usually a pretty good hiker, was not enjoying herself, we had geysers, although we didn't see any go off, and we had amazing multi-colored hot springs. From there, we continued in a souther loop to the Artist Paint pots. There was a spectacular 1930s building with amazing beams and giant boulders. If I was to design a place for us in Lake George, it would be based on one of these designs. There was also crazy colored mud and exploding mud.

Gibbons Falls

Fun fact: if there is a picnic table on the map in Yellowstone, it does not mean you will find a picnic table at the place that it's at. I think they just didn't know what else to put there on the map so they went ahead and put a picnic table the. We stopped at Gibbons Falls planning to picnic, but we just had our breath taken away by an amazing waterfall and headed down the road to the meandering river to have our lunch.

One does not go to Yellowstone without saying hello to Old Faithful and we went over to say hello. We went into Yellowstone Lodge, another one of those 1930s creations I'm obsessed with and then waited for the famed eruption. It was as expected, a giant rush of water from the ground and it didn't disappoint.

We then took the small geyser trail and saw several small geysers, the most impressive of the bunch as Anemone Geyser, which is a small geyser which erupts about every 10 minutes. It's amazing to watch because you can see it go through the whole cycle in that time. You see the geysers fill with water, watch it begin to bubble, then it shots into the air, calms down and then the geyser drains with a gurgle and it starts all over again. We watched it twice, I honestly could nave watched it all day. When we finished our stroll around it was almost time for another eruption from Old Faithful (90 minutes apart), so we asked about a good swimming hole by our campground, which is the beautiful meandering river right next to it, and headed over to wait. I'll talk more about the bizarre combination of tourist and nature in a different entry, but at both eruptions we watched, there were easily 200 people watching. After several false starts, people on the other end started a wave, which continued through the viewing area. Right on cue, Old Faithful erupted, it just needed a little wave. It was an amazing first day and we headed back to our campsite to make dinner and we hoped go for a swim. Until a ranger announced a buffalo talk that the kids were interested in, the swim was our plan. But regardless, we slept well.

Day 7: In a Big Country

In a Big Country.

Devil's Tower

Our last day in South Dakota. We started the day spending as much time in the bathroom as we could, everyone showering and getting ready to begin the next leg squeaky clean. We packed up, purchased a few more Badlands souvenirs, we headed on our way.

In the Black Hills there is one destination that calls people like no other. The parking lot for this place is filled with license plates from all over the country. Mt. Rushmore? The Needles? No, I'm talking about Reptile Gardens, home of Maniac the enormous crocodile. Andrew was chomping at the bit to see this place, we needed to do laundry, so we figured we'd brave the attraction for some time to wash.

Reptile Gardens

Honestly, it was pretty good. Really good even. I'm not sure if it was because I had the lowest possible expectations or if it was just really that good, but we had a blast. We went to three performances: bird, alligator, and snake. They were fantastic. Corny jokes that were funny because they were delivered with a South Dakota sheepishness that made the jokes endearing. There was an indoor jungle that was impressive, with birds and lizards running around rare plants and fossils. If you are into snakes, it's the place to go, I've never seen so many. Fantastic alligators and crocs, plus giant tortoises that you could pet. It was well worth the trip.

At Homesteak Mine.  

We were now clean and reptiled out, ready to begin the next leg of our adventure, Wyoming, with a quick detour to Deadwood. Imagine every cheesy tourist destination in America and make it Western with gambling and you have Deadwood. It was worth a drive by, but we weren't sad that it wasn't more than that. The next town over, Lead (as in going in front, not as in the stuff in a pencil) we stopped at a gold mine, Homesteak Mine. It was pretty amazing. Instead of going underground, they just dug out the mountain, so you looked down this giant terraced hillside. They mined gold from this mine from the 1800's to 2001. Pretty amazing, plus they had the mining locomotives and tools for the kids to climb on which was pretty cool, and, even better they were across the street from a Subway and a pizza place. South Dakota is not known for their pizza for good reason, but the people there were really nice and it happened to be next to a place where we could buy something for Owen to eat, perfect!

Devil's Tower was our next stop. We got there just as the sunset and hiked the base. It's an astonishing volcanic formation rising to enormous height. The amazing part of our trip is how things are so intertwined from one place to another. When we were in the Badlands, the rangers told a Native American story about a race between the buffalo and four legged creatures with man and the other two legged creatures (really just birds, which was a key creature to have on your team, it turns out). The race was from Devils Tower to the Badlands. Two leggeds won, if you are curious, thanks to the magpie on the buffalos back who flew ahead. We had decided to drive through the night from Devils Tower to Yellowstone, but the ride was supposed to be amazing so we planned to drive most of the way and leave the last hour and a half for our viewing pleasure the next day.

Day 6: Combination of words to put on the back of a post card.

Combination of words to put on the back of a postcard.

On top of Harney.

Sometimes parenting calls for talents you didn't know you had. Like bed surgery. Anderw's Pokemon cards fell behind the bed, trapped in the beds innards. Before anything could be done, Josh preformed bed surgery and extracted them from the inside of the bed. Saving the day before 8am.

The goal today was climbing Harney Peak, the highest mountain between the Pyrenees and the Rockies. Instead of traveling 90, we decided to take a different route south through all of the Badlands and the Pine Ridge Reservation. Not only would we be able to see more of South Dakota, but we'd also be able to stop by the Buffalo Grasslands and gather rocks that we could actually take home with us. With our rock crazy kids, this place was a hit. It was also pretty crazy, it looked like the beach, the rocks tumbled and smooth and the ground white sand. We filled our pockets with neat rocks and headed on through the Badlands.

Want to purchase almost a whole town?  

Our trail led us through Scenic, SD. A town nearly abandoned with a sign that said, "nearly the whole town for sale.". The Badlands are still a tough place to live, I guess. Afterwards, we entered the Reserevation and went to the southern visitor center, run by the Reserevation. It was a nice center, but the bars on the windows told of a harsh world in the Reservation. Our neighbors went to Wounded Knee and spoke about the difficulty of life on the Resevation. They told us about the paltry memorial of Wounded Knee, something paid for by the people on the Reservation, not our government, which was the cause of the massacre. Sometimes it's hard to look at the past and accept the decisions of our ancestors.

Top of Harney.

Back down the trail.

From the visitor's center, we took the road west, which turned out to be a dirt road. This leads to an important lesson we learned about travel in SD, always make sure the road is paved. It is also reason #1 on why everyone has a truck in SD, not all the roads are paved. Needless to say, minivans and unpaved roads don't mix. It was a nerve wracking 20 miles with Jack Johnson blasting and beautiful country bumping by. It added time to our trip, but we finally made it to Harney Peak. We began the hike up later than we intended, but we still were able to hike up and back with time to jump in to Sylvan Lake, where we parked. Along the way, we made cairns as a hello to friends who were planning on climbing the moutains several days larder. Hopefully, the cairns will still be there to say hello!

Jackolope at Wall Drug.  

Sylvan Lake was beautiful, but our favorite swim was still Center Lake. We spent a bit of time in Keystone, grabbed dinner and headed back toward our cabin. The day was not over yet, our tiny bladdered daughter implored us to stop by Wall Drug. So, we took the plunge. It was a spectacle, which I guess should be expected from a business based on hundreds of billboards. The took the old west, made it cheesy and made a business of it. I guess this is as much of America as Mt. Rushmore or the Rockies. Afterwards, we headed back to the cabin and collapsed into bed.

Day 5: I can see for miles and miles.

I can see for miles and miles...

The Badlands, as beautiful as they are difficult. 

This was below ground level.  

Ranger Larry!

In our first full day in the Badlands, we said a big yes to the Ranger programs. We went to 4 of them and they were fantastic,although I think Ranger Larry, who presented most of them was getting annoyed with the children shouting out the answers they learned from him earlier by the end. There is this program called the teacher ranger
teacher program and participants in this program present information about the park throughout the day, it was fantastic.

Hanging out on the Buttes, the ravine there is where the other photo was taken. 

We started off at the Door hike and the geology program. The amazing thing about the Badlands is the buttes look like giant drip castles, and its almost what they are. Millions of years ago, the Badlands were under water, much of the landscape and geology was shaped at this time. Because of the composition of the Badlands, they erode at a very fast rate, revealing many fossils and other neat things as the buttes wash away. From the geology hike, we brought the kids to the junior ranger program, where they learned about the tribes that lived around the area and the landscape then collected patches and junior ranger pins. After that program, we ate lunch on the road and drove around the park until we came back to the fossil program, which gave each of us a desire to find a fossil and fill out the official form.

Climbing a ladder up buttes in the Notch trail.

Hiking is a big activity for our family and we had selected the Notch hike. Most of the hikes in the Badlands were well under a mile round trip, which seemed easy to us, so we felt confident picking this mile and a half "moderate to strenuous" hike. A mile and a half is something we would normally think nothing of, but we've never hiked the Badlands slippery surface in 100+ degree weather, no trees anywhere. We made it most of the way, up a tall trecheous ladder, but even we find some situations dangerous and right near the end a slippery ledge with a 20 foot drop turned us back.

Sod house.

Prairie dog at the sod house.

Stage coach at Cowboy Corner.  

Although the hiking was not as long as we are used to, we were still exhausted and fried and headed to check out the Praire House, a sod house exhibit toward the highway. The stories of the settlers who came here is pretty amazing and it was neat to see the kind of house they had lived in. I can't imagine dealing with the summers or winters in those primative dwellings. The kids got to chase after prarie dogs and feed goats and sheep grass.

Billy goats on the buttes, close up of other photo.

We journeyed back to Interior in the hopes of catching the grocery open to find something to make for dinner. While the grocery was open, I can't imagine finding much for dinner there. We did find popsicles for the kids and beer at Cowboy Corner for us. We wearily went back to the visitor center to the praise ranger program. As we learned about prarie grasses and chromobiotic soil, in the distance we watched lightening, thunder, and rain hit. Amazing. Rangers Larry cut the talk short to be on the safe side, but not before we found a fossilized bone! We hurried back to the center to proudly fill out our fossil report form and then went back to dinner at the restaurant.

Upper right corner.

After dinner, we climbed the buttes to watch the sunset, with the boys scrambling up and down in terrifying ways, Josh and Ellie trying to keep up and me just holding my breath. The Fat Tire beer was delicious after the kids went to bed and the sleep was too.

Sunset on the buttes.