Junior Rangers

Yay! The last of the boys' Jr. Ranger badges finally came in the mail today! Cedar Breaks National Monument had run out of them and promised to mail theirs when more came in.  

Not long after they started collecting their badges, my mom made a banner for each one to display their hard-earned rewards. By last count, they have badges and/or patches from 57 different national park units + 2 California state parks. Oh yeah, and a sticker from Muir Woods. Woo. Hoo. Great job, boys!

Hmmm, looks like they're running out of real estate. We'll either have to stop visiting national parks or sweet-talk PoPo into making more banners...

Summing It All Up

Now that we've been home for two weeks, I thought I'd poll the family for their reviews of our vacation...

What was your favorite national park/monument/historic site?

M: Yellowstone National Park, because of all of the wildlife

R: Arches National Park, for the rock formations and hiking

J: It's too hard to pick!

Me: Yellowstone National Park, awesome thermal features and wildlife

Lost!

Looking back over my previous posts, I realized that I never told the story of getting lost in Yellowstone when I was little...

My family was checking out of Old Faithful Inn that morning, so my dad and my brother were taking some stuff out to the car to load up. I decided to follow them out, but was far enough behind that I didn't see which exit they took. I went out to the parking lot to look for them, but couldn't find them, so I went back up to our room. By this time, my mom had also left the hotel room, so no one was there.  

Signs

My collection of entrance signs, 20 National Park Service units visited in all...

June 19

What a Gas!

I thought it would be interesting to chronicle the price of gas across the country this summer...

Home, Sweet Home!

What can I say about today?! We went down for breakfast at the Garden Court Buffet (Portuguese sausage!), loaded up the Odyssey, checked out, gassed up at Costco, and hopped onto I-15 south towards LA! The boys were hungry again by the time we got to Barstow, so we stopped to get something to eat.  

The Penultimate Day

Boy, you can really tell that we're close to the end of our trip... sleeping late and moving slow! We ate breakfast in the diner and then went back to the visitor center so that the boys could collect their Jr. Ranger badges. The main requirement for this one was attending a ranger program, which we didn't finish until late last night with the astronomy talk. They had run out of Jr. Ranger patches, so they'll mail them to us when they get more in.

Hoodoos

We got up early this morning (considering that this is Day 25, I'd say that 7:00AM could still be considered "early") so that we could catch the first shuttle into the park at 8:00AM. It picks up at the stop right in front of our hotel, so it doesn't get much more convenient than that! While taking the shuttle is voluntary (unlike the mandatory shuttle in Zion NP), we wanted to take advantage of it so that we only had to hike one-way, downhill.

Flash Flood!

We only had one stop scheduled for today, so we slept a little later and took a little longer to eat breakfast and load up before we were on our way out of Moab. We backtracked north on US-191 to I-70 west. Not too far past Green River we turned south onto Utah Route 24. Spectacular scenery, though hardly any signs of civilization and no cell service -- that's usually when I start thinking about how long it would take to get help if we had car trouble...

Into the Fiery Furnace

Several weeks before we left, we made reservations for the 3-hour ranger-guided hike into the Fiery Furnace in Arches NP. Unfortunately, by the time we decided to do it (after watching the video), the only time slot available was the 10:00AM hike - yippee, just as the day is getting HOT! The description from the park website reads:

"These popular three-hour hikes must be reserved in advance, and are considered by most to be moderately strenuous. The Fiery Furnace hike is not a casual stroll and everyone attending the walk should be aware of the demanding nature of this hike and be properly equipped. During the hike, participants will be walking and climbing on irregular and broken sandstone, along narrow ledges above drop-offs and in loose, sometimes wet, sand. There are cracks which must be stepped over and narrow places in the rock that you must squeeze into and pull yourself up and through. In some of these places, you must hold yourself off the ground by pushing against the sandstone walls with your hands and feet. Due to the maze-like nature of the terrain, all participants are committed to completing the hike once they enter the Fiery Furnace."

Moderately strenuous. Demanding nature. Squeeze into narrow places. Ummm, let's see, did I really want to do this?! I told myself, if a 6 year-old is allowed on the hike, then surely I could make it through. Right?!

School of Rock

As we drove west on I-70 from Frisco, we encountered more tunnels and steep downgrades. Beautiful scenery to drive through, although I think I prefer climbing up slowly rather than barreling downhill. When we took our California Zephyr train trip two summers ago, we missed this part (Salt Lake City to Denver via Glenwood Springs) because of track repair. We were re-routed through southern Wyoming on part of the original Transcontinental Railroad that was no longer used for passenger trains, so that still ended up being cool. But seeing all this from the observation car of the train, chugging along right beside the river, would have been even better!

Rocky Mountain High

We woke up this morning to sunny skies, so after breakfast we checked out and headed up towards Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove through Boulder, but didn't have time to stop by and say "hi!" to Mork and Mindy. Na-nu, na-nu!

We wanted to spend our day driving through the park and exploring, so we just passed through Estes Park and went straight to the Beaver Meadows entrance.

History Lessons

A thunderstorm rolled through in the middle of the night, but by the time we got up and going this morning, it was only a light rain. My aunt and uncle took us out for breakfast at a local pancake house -- J must have been hungry, because he downed 2 good-sized pancakes, an egg, bacon, *and* an order of hash browns! From there, the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site was practically around the corner.  

We're Off to See the Wizard

Mom baked muffins to send us on our way this morning – blueberry for us, chocolate chip for the kids. Oh yeah! And we got to take the leftovers with us on the road! Dad had a tee time in Pekin, so he escorted us out of town on his way to the golf course.

Last Day @ Home

Not much to say about our last day for this segment of our trip. For both R and me, even though we moved out to California almost 11 years ago, Illinois has been "home" for us even longer than that. M likes to point out to everyone that he was born in Chicago (technically, Evanston) and that his brother was the only one in our family born in CA. Maybe as long as both sets of parents are still living in the houses we grew up in, there will always be some feeling of home. Sad as it is to leave, we've been gone from our home for awhile now -- think we're ready to start heading back.

Things That We...

...miss about Illinois:

• Some of our favorite places to eat, like Lou Malnati's, Portillo's, Steak 'n Shake, and Monical's. The list could go on (but we ran out of meals before we could hit them all)...
• We say "can of pop" and everyone knows what we mean.
• Sweet corn
• People drive on the right and leave the left lane open for passing (for the most part).
• Basements... being able to send noisy kids downstairs, as well as for storing stuff
• Actually parking cars inside the garage because things are stored in the basement (see above)
• Seeing our family and friends

Independence Day

Happy Independence Day to all! Ours was pretty low-key, which was the perfect way to spend it, in my opinion. I'm sad that our mornings of not having to wake up to alarm clocks are coming to an end. But on the flip-side, that just means we're another day closer to home, right?!

Then & Now

I was talking with my mom today about our family vacation back in 1978, trying to piece together what we did then. Here are some pictures for your amusement. Compare and contrast, discuss amongst yourselves...

Our vehicle

1970 Buick Skylark (green)

2004 Honda Odyssey (silver)

You Can Always Go Home Again

Got a phone call this morning from my brother-in-law. He "missed his flight" (wink, wink) leaving Vegas (just kidding, K!) so we won't see him at all on this trip. The nephews were utterly disappointed. Good thing we'll see him next month at the family reunion in (wait for it...) Las Vegas, where he'll have to make it up to them!

Cousins

Today was even lazier than yesterday. The alarm was never turned on (finally!) so everyone slept in late. I worked on catching up on the blog and uploading pics (still have to caption all of them, though). The boys played with their sleep-over cousin in the morning, and then Auntie J and Auntie A took them over to another cousin's house nearby to swim in their pool in the afternoon.

Looks like they enjoyed themselves!

Let the Eating Begin

We haven't made any plans for our time here in Chicago, which is just fine by me. We'll just have to play it by ear (*gasp!* Yes, you read that right! LOL!) Since we got in so late last night, we told the boys that they could sleep as late as they wanted to. Somehow that message didn't get passed on to the alarm on their iTouch. Why they are setting the alarm in the first place is beyond me -- it has gone off every single morning on our trip and they never EVER wake up, even after I put it right next to their ears. Grrrrr!  

Barn Sour

We woke up on the western edge of Minnesota, but the boys were determined to make it to Chicago TONIGHT! So, today was just "go, go, go"!

Before leaving Pipestone, we headed back to the monument visitor center so that the boys could get their Jr. Ranger badges (and I could get my picture of the sign!)

As for the Rest of South Dakota...

We spent the night at the Sunshine Inn, a small motel in Wall, SD. Normally I'd pick a chain place, but this one was half the rate and even still, had excellent reviews on TripAdvisor. I'd definitely agree with the other reviewers - the room was clean, the couple who own the motel were nice and gladly filled up our ice chest, and it was only a block away from Wall Drug! I'm also going to take some space here to give the TripAdvisor website two big thumbs up! It has been invaluable in choosing places to stay, as well as finding things to do -- not only for this trip, but also for others that we've taken. The forums are also a great place to get advice from local experts.

All done with the public service announcements, now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Black Hills in a Day

I knew when I started planning this trip that we were not going to have time to see everything. The hardest part was deciding what things were going to make the cut. There is so much to do in the Black Hills area of South Dakota -- we would need at least a couple more days to cover what we missed. Hopefully we'll make it back someday...

Hey, Isn't This the Place...

So, today was the big pay-off for having the boys watch all of those movies (see my first-ever post). After breakfast at the "best hotel ever" (waffles & hot chocolate as usual for son #2), it took us about an hour to get to Devils Tower...

"Mom, isn't this where all of the dead cows and sheep are supposed to be?"

Go East, Young Man!

We had a lot of ground to cover today, so we loaded up and got ready to head out of the park after having breakfast at the diner. Our traveling buddies and her brother (our DC host last fall flew out for a few days to visit Yellowstone as well) were going to hike to the brink of the falls, before heading off on their own separate ways. We took the easier way and drove back to Artist Point to view the Lower Falls with the morning sun behind us.

Tatanka

We've seen a *LOT* of bison so far, but I'll never get tired of taking pics of them. Of all the wildlife, they're probably my favorite (even though the bears and wolves are rarer to spot = a more prized photo).

Saturday in the Park

Do you think the stagecoaches have been upgraded since 1978?

Originally we had reservations for a stagecoach tour out of Roosevelt Lodge today, but when we checked in on Wednesday, we found out that the activity had been cancelled due to poor trail conditions from all of the recent rain and melting snow. Bummer!

Hunting for Animals

This morning we got up early to do the hike out to Mystic Falls, which starts out in Biscuit Basin.

Sapphire Pool

Little Firehole River

Mystic Falls



Hot Stuff

I wasn’t with the boys yesterday the two times that they saw Old Faithful go off, so I was determined to catch it this morning. True to its name, within five minutes of the predicted time…

Thar' she blows!

Goodbye, Tetons! Hello, Yellowstone!

Both R and I woke up early this morning – he went to Oxbow Bend to catch the sunrise hitting the Tetons…


…and I went to the main lounge area of the lodge to use their wi-fi to upload pics and update the blog. Clearly, only one of us had any measure of success. For some reason, I couldn’t insert pictures into the body of the text, and it was taking forever to upload photos to Picasa. So frustrating!

Water, Rocks, & Snow

The nice thing about booking the early raft trip was that we still had nearly a whole day to continue exploring. So, we packed lunches and headed to String Lake for a picnic.

"Wild & Scenic" Raft Trip

I’m so thankful that we had another day of gorgeous weather – especially today, since we had reserved a float trip down the Snake River quite far in advance. I booked the 6:45AM trip for the views of the mountains in the early morning light and with the hope of glimpsing some wildlife along the river. All 4 kids were troopers about getting up so early, and were even quite chatty. Luckily the couple who had to share a raft with our two families didn’t seem to mind.

Les Trois Tetons

We had a beautiful morning driving up through Logan Canyon. The Logan River was running pretty fast – I think it was near flood stage, but I'm not sure if it has crested yet or not. When we came over the summit, we stopped at a rest area with a scenic overlook of Bear Lake.

Bear Lake

Rain, Railroads, & Relatives

After having breakfast at the hotel (any place that has a "make your own waffle" station gets a big thumbs up from the boys), we spent most of the morning driving north on I-15 in the rain. My husband's sense of humor was evident from the playlist he queued up on the iPhone:

• Have You Ever Seen the Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Can You Stand the Rain - New Edition
• Who'll Stop the Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Over Me - Whiteheart
• Let It Rain - Newsboys

Random Awesomeness

Ever seen the world's largest ball of twine? Or visited the Mystery Spot, where the rules of physics are turned upside down? Carhenge? Roadside America catalogs all of this random awesomeness that is just waiting to be seen! 

They even have an app for that, which I happily and unashamedly paid money to download. Based on your location, it will give you a list of nearby attractions and oddities. How great is that?! That's how we found out about Beaver's native son, Philo T. Farnsworth, the father of television. Can't wait to see what else we will run across on this trip!

Are We There Yet?

And away we go...

Not much to report for our first day on the road. We got off to a later start than I had hoped, but we needed to figure out how to fit all of our clothes, snacks, and the "just in case we might need this" stuff into the back of our minivan. I'm not sure why we (i.e. my dear husband) brought so much food along with us -- after all, people do live in the places we're going to and they have to buy their food from somewhere, right?!

Traveling Buddies

Many of our adventures have been shared with another family. We first met 6 years ago when our older boys were just in kindergarten and they were placed on the same U6 soccer team. We came to find out that our families had many things in common, including enjoying visiting our national parks. The kids earned their first Jr. Ranger badges together at the Santa Monica Mountains NRA and have been hooked ever since. The moms love getting their passport stamps. And the dads... well, they're great about humoring the rest of us in our obsessions!

I calculated how far we've traveled in our trips together and the number I came up with was....

Alphabet Soup

In case anyone is curious, the designations for the 394 units within the national park system are listed below. National parks can only be established by an act of Congress. However, the president may designate and protect areas as national monuments by executive order under the Antiquities Act of 1906.

The Objects of Our Affection

As you can see from the sidebar and my blog moniker, I'm a *big* fan of our national park system -- the spectacular scenery, the wildlife, the historical significance. If you haven't seen it, I would highly recommend Ken Burns' excellent documentary, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea" for an in-depth look at the history of the national parks and the stories of the people involved, not to mention the gorgeous images of the parks themselves.

In the documentary, they describe how, early on, park visitors would receive a stamp showing that their entry fee had been paid. People started collecting the cancellations as a means to show which parks they had visited and when. The "Passport to Your National Parks" program has been around since 1986, but I caught the disease in 2005 when we took our first real road trip to Seattle and back. Our family tradition began when we bought our first passport at Crater Lake NP in Oregon, stamping it there and at Lava Beds NM in northern CA, too.

The Sun Always Shines on TV

Have you ever had the dream in which you're late to a final exam, running around trying to find the classroom where it's being given, only to realize that you've never gone to class even once all semester and it's too late to drop? I guess that can be interpreted to mean there's anxiety (real or imagined) over not being prepared for something.

Whenever we are getting ready to travel, I start having variations of the same nightmare -- we've missed our flight or forgotten to pack something important, like passports, tickets, or a camera. Or something unforseen happens to throw a wrench in things. Oh wait, that wasn't a dream... a few years ago we really were hit by an uninsured driver the day before a trip and had to rent a van so that we could still go.

Or even worse, like Clark Griswold, we finally arrive at our destination only to find out that the place we drove all this way to get to is CLOSED FOR REPAIRS...

What Do You Remember...?

...about things that happened when you were a kid?  I don't mean things like, for me and my '80s kin, "where were you when you heard about President Reagan getting shot?" or "what were you doing when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded moments after launch?" Those kinds of big, dramatic events somehow must end up deeply embedded in our brain. I was thinking more along the lines of stuff that happened at school or while hanging out with friends, or on family vacations.

Vacation on the Brain

We're just a few weeks away from embarking on our summer vacation -- travelling more than halfway across the country and back again over a period of nearly 4 weeks! I've really enjoyed reading various friends' blogs and am inspired to chronicle our family adventures in more detail than just sharing posts and pics with friends on Facebook. So, internet access permitting, you are invited to journey along with us as we go on our crazy, Saiki-delic road trip!

But since I'm too obssessive-compulsive to wait until we're actually "on vacation", I'm sure I'll be putting up posts in the meantime. For me, researching and planning are almost as much fun as going. And this trip has been in the works for more than a year, so you can imagine how hard it is to contain my excitement now that it's almost here!!!