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!