Author Archives: Ann & Ben (co-authors)

After an active few days in Hot Springs Village, it was time to begin our push toward Zion National Park, where we would be meeting the kids in a few days. But first, we had to get there!

There are approximately 1,400 miles of America between Arkansas and Utah.

Almost all of that is on one highway, good old I-40.

However, before we could reach I-40, we enjoyed one of our favorite twisty little roads that runs mostly north-south through Arkansas, highway 7. This road has long been one of our favorite roads while we are staying in HSV. It is a windy, twisty, well-paved road that leads us north from the village all the way up to I-40 (and beyond).

As an old, Arkansas biker once quipped, while we were chatting at a gas station probably 15 years ago, Arkansas can afford to make the roads smooth, they just can’t afford to make them straight. And we love the twisty roads.

Once we hit I-40, that was it for turns for the next three days, so we were going to soak ’em up!

Here is an artist’s rendering of I-40, which will be our home for the majority of the push west:

_______________________________________________________________________________

LOL! Not many turns.

In fact, here was our view for a good chunk of the day after we crossed into Oklahoma:

There were, however, plenty of tooth busting, cabinet jarring, butt-flattening bumps along the road (Please do better, Oklahoma!). We’ve submitted a good stretch of Oklahoma I-40 to the 2026 Worst Roads list, accompanied with a picture of all of our bathroom vanity items strewn on the floor of the bathroom. I did accidentally forget to tell Ben that his hairbrush and the base of the Airstream toilet have officially met now. The brush and the toilet seemed to be fast friends by the time I noticed the brush had escaped the cabinet. At least his toothbrush, the bag of flossers and his deodorant flew in the sink and they didn’t follow their friend, the brush.Nothing to be done about it but to plow ahead and possibly stop at a Walgreens or CVS and pickup a few spare toothbrushes and hair brushes, just in case .

On the positive side, we celebrated our 28th anniversary in beautiful Yukon, OK, just a few quiet steps off of I-40. We had a wonderful taco dinner and had the best company we could ask for, each other!

We are also enjoying the new(er) airstream.

Good layout, great bathroom, fantastic shower that we can actually stand all the way up in. What more could you ask for? It’s comfortable and most stuff works! We just don’t talk about all the stuff that doesn’t work or all the things we have no clue how to work. The newer Airstreams are nice, but if you get easily overwhelmed by electronics, good luck!

RV’s all are pretty much all made with the lightest, cheapest stuff you can buy and they get the absolute snot beat out of them on the road, so you need to be prepared to do some maintenance on long trips. So far, so good!

We stopped in Tucumcari, NM on the next night, which had a great roadside attraction advertisement right by our campground!

I mean, world’s largest pistachio?!?!?!? Holy Pistachio! YUM! Sign us up! This is EXACTLY the type of stuff we’ll go at least an extra 20 miles out of our way to see. We’re almost giddy!

We hurry on down the frontage road, excited to get checked into the KOA, get set up and go find this awesome attraction. As we check into this particular KOA, we happen to notice that there isn’t anything exciting to do at this campground, so “Plan Pistachio” is ON for this evening.

We get down to business and get all checked in at the desk and then we excitedly inquire about the world’s largest pistachio and in which direction we need to go.

It’s at this moment that we realize, due to the clerk’s lip twitch and eye spasm, that we aren’t going to like what she’s about to tell us. We’re completely deflated to learn that our giant nut is a FOUR HOUR drive to the south.

Who actually puts a full size billboard on a middle of nowhere frontage road for an attraction that’s like 250 miles away? UUUGGGHHHHH! That’s way more than 20 miles out of our way. Sigh. Do not sign us up!

We’ll have to find something else to entertain us in Tucumcari, for sure. Maybe we’ll see if there’s a world’s largest salt and pepper shaker collection or a world’s smallest parking spot or something nearby.

We already drove past Cadillac Ranch (Worlds dumbest bunch of Cadillacs parked on end) back in Amarillo, TX. We’ve already seen this attraction, so we left a rather large parking spot open for someone else who really wanted to see it.

Now we’re really on the hunt for the next largest, or smallest, or anything “est” attraction that’s actually along the route.

Our next stop, Flagstaff, AZ. It is a long, 500 mile haul from Tucumcari, but it’s worth it to get us one stop closer to Zion. Tomorrow, we hop back on I-40 for another 500 miles and hope to get to Flagstaff by dinnertime!

Today is the day.

I am finally going to get the extra weight off.

And this time, I’ll keep it off!

We spent a bit of time downsizing stuff from the airstream today.

Extra clothes (NOT extra at all, in my opinion. When we all freeze to death because we don’t have enough layers, Ben will FINALLY understand), doubled up cleaning supplies (he means enough cleaning supples for 60 days so I don’t have to buy Clorox wipes at Mom & Pop’s Grocery for $20 a container), extra books (8 books for a 2 month trip? Plus most are romances and fast reads. And if I might add, well worth Ben letting me read those romances. Ugh! Come on!), anything we could find that would shave a few pounds off (I won’t mention all the extra junk Ben brought. Spare tires, jacks, all these toolboxes, Yeti coolers, leveling blocks for the trailer, hoses, electrical cords, blah, blah, blah. All that heavy dirty stuff and Ben is complaining about the very useful things that I packed?). Between the pile, pictured below, plus all the items that Noni and Pop-Pop weren’t able to fit in their van when they left Florida in March, we shaved maybe 200 lbs. That should make a difference. I hope (Luckily, Ben doesn’t realize that a few things came back onboard).

We also shimmed up a few loose shelves, tightened down a few hatches, and even buttoned up a few other things. We should be road ready for the any surprise rough Oklahoma highways and whatever else comes at us as we head west.

While in HSV, we had a great time helping Noni and Poppop with getting their garden setup for the season. We will see how their tomatoes progress over the 4 weeks we are on the road before we get back ahead of the 4th of July.

Since we were so close to where our favorite daughter lives (she lives and works up in Fayetteville, AR), she decided to come down for a night to visit! She is joining us in Utah via Las Vegas and a rental camper in a few days.

Did you know you can send secret messages with a banana? Maybe it’s just our family that sends banana messages.

Well, now you know!

Fixed it…

We are off tomorrow for our big push to meet the kids in Zion National Park! We will be on I-40 for about 1,200 miles over the next few days. It will be a steady climb from about 1,100 feet above sea level in Hot Springs Village to about 7,000 feet in Flagstaff, where we will turn north for SW Utah.

Hope we have enough warm clothes!

Man, the good old U.S.A. is a HUGE freaking place. Unless someone has made the big “buns of steel,” cross country drive, it’s hard to truly understand how much open land we have in this big ole country and how brilliant and efficient our highway and interstate systems really are. There isn’t someplace we’ve wanted to go and haven’t been able to due to lack of roads. We’re definitely not saying that all our U.S.A. roads are good. We’ve absolutely found some truly rotten roads. So rotten, we think that maybe someone laid the road and then just forgot it was there after that. There’s no need to remind our friends about the couple of times we ended up on roads so crappy we thought we might die. If you’d like a list of those particular death roads, we haven’t exactly created the list yet, but you can read about those experiences in prior blogs. A few examples can be found by searching the old blogs for “ghost town” and “Shipwreck Rock.”

So, here’s what we have to look forward to over the next two days. Easy Peasy!

Despite knowing that we’ll just be staring out the windshield at boring interstate roads for the next two days, we’re still so excited to keep this roadtrip going. Time to hop in the truck and leave Madison, FL, head to Hattiesburg, MS and eventually on to Hot Springs Village, AR. On paper, (ok, that sounds old fashioned. On google maps) it looks like an easy cruise. Plus we’ve made this drive several times to see Ben’s folks, aka Noni and Pop-Pop. Just under 800 miles. One right turn. As long as traffic behaves and the weather holds, this should be a straightforward drive.

We always have to keep in mind that we’re driving a decent size truck and more importantly, we are pulling a 33 foot long, eight foot wide, pleasantly rotund, silver tube weighing in at 13,000+ lbs, with a tendency towards being pushed around a little when big trucks pass (LOL Ben is “weight” shaming the Airstream again. Ugh! He just can’t let these few extra pounds GO).

There is a lot to pay attention to, as it takes a lot longer to react to fast changing conditions or to traffic patterns or poorly marked exits. So, we’ve learned to work well together in the front seat of truck. Ben focuses, no blinking, white knuckled on the steering wheel, while Ann carefully watches the routes on both Waze and Google to make sure we don’t end up in a situation that includes sitting at a complete stop on the interstate for hours. That is zero fun and we’ll avoid that situation if it means taking the backroads for a bit to avoid whatever tragedy has occurred on our regularly scheduled route. Ann also has a very important role as “drive attendant,” delivering waters and adult style lunchables, one cracker at a time. That’s right! I’m no passenger princess and no naps for me, unless I’m truck-sick, which does happen on the really bad roads.

Since we have a 60 gallon fuel tank on our truck, it is never low fuel that causes us to stop at a gas station. (Yeah, that’s Ben referring to me having to stop about every hour because I have nervous tummy when we travel. Very nervous! I’m much happier, now that we carry a bathroom behind us!).

The point is that these days are looooong days. You can hammer along at 70 mph for hours non stop (GI tract willing, of course) and barely feel like you are getting there. Our little spot on the map doesn’t seem to move very quickly, and the little WAZE app countdown moves very slowly.

Ben’s grandfather always used to say “Don’t wish your life away”, and he was right.

So, rather than wishing we were “there” already, we instead focused on the neat little towns we blew through or by, enjoyed seeing primarily rural America life, southern crop progress, slowly growing junk collections in familiar small town yards (oh, that dude with nineteen rotted out school busses and six old station wagons got a new junk truck! Good for him! I bet his wife was pissed!), and we also enjoyed the green early summer scenery.

All while quietly side-eyeing the waze countdown and calling out milestones indicating that we were getting closer to the end of the daily drive.

We slowly drove out of the rain in the panhandle and made our main turn for the trip, headed N/NW up into MS. The dogs were thrilled to be out of the rain. Bailey doesn’t have very good hair days in the rain. YIKES! She’s our 14 year old, hot mess!

We (finally) arrived at Hattiesburg, MS, for our second night on the road and our last stop before reaching Hot Springs Village, AR and home turf.

Fun fact: Hattiesburg / Okatoma KOA is very first KOA at which we stayed back in 2023 when Ben retired and we took our first big trip. We just keep coming back.

Apparently, about 7-8 years ago, the current owner and operator bought what was generally considered a bit of a dumpy campground, and they turned it into a quiet, clean, well organized, well-maintained, and reasonably priced campground.

We really enjoy staying there when we pass through, and we recommend it to anyone!

Our larger dog, Charlie, hates it.

Apparently, Charlie is convinced that the tame and mostly docile local geese and ducks, are, in fact, attack geese and ducks. We have stayed at this campground probably close to a dozen times, and every time, the geese and ducks have been quite tame and harmless, but try explaining that to a dog with birding representing maybe 1% in his genetics. Thankfully, the balance of his genetic makeup is 99% wuss, so Charlie is mostly interested in staying the heck away from anything deemed scary. Or unknown. Or loud. Like, for instance, attack geese and ducks.

So, our evening and morning walks around the lake are usually at near record speed.

Uneventful evening and night spent recovering from a long day of not blinking, we broke camp in the morning and headed off toward Hot Springs Village to visit Noni and Pop-Pop for a few days and to fix anything that needed fixing either at their place or in the airstream.

Not only do we have Airstream Fat Camp coming up, we also traversed some of the nastiest roads around Jackson, MS. Potholes GALORE and wildly undulating road surfaces that really play havoc on a truck and trailer combo. While the truck is dropping down the swale in the concrete, the rear of the trailer rapidly is going up. And vice versa on the next swale. We watched the poor rear end of the trailer bobbing and dipping nearly two feet at times over the wild and poorly maintained concrete stretch of I-20. We were duped because this stretch of I-20 was NOT on the 2026 list of worst roads. Holy smokes, I’m nominating it now!

There is a ton of fastening, bungie-cording, shelf-shimming, and cabinet rebalancing that needs to happen while we are parked for a few days. We know it’s bad when the salt and pepper from the cabinet above the stove ends up at the rear of the Airstream, in the bathroom, at the base of the potty. Baaaaaarrrrrrffffff! Food stuff does not belong in the bathroom.

The being said, we drove the next 400 miles, still not blinking, on thankfully less bumpy roads, all the way to Hot Springs Village, AR. We parked the bug-covered, OVERWEIGHT, minor repair needing Airstream at the very clean little campground in the village, and headed to catch up with Ben’s folks.

We’ll be staying in HSV for a few days, cleaning out useless junk that doesn’t need to be with us, before loading up again (Don’t tell the Noni and Pop-pop, but they’re about to have a closet with a bunch of extra crap in it, until our return, next month). Then we’ll be saying goodbye to the dogs for a few weeks, and beginning our push towards SW Utah. We’ll be on I-40 for three solid days, so we’ll need to get the airstream stuff figured out and get some rest in anticipation of some long days on the road (Ugh, I just know during Airstream Fat Camp I’m going to lose my 5 extra coats, my flannel sheets, my extra comforter, my heated blanket and I WILL freeze to death in the mountains!).

Yay! The first day of the trip is finally here! We, of course, took the obligatory “us-ie” to commemorate the start of the trip!

Before we get too deep into the weeds on this trip and our journaling, we want to remind our 7 followers that this is a co-authored blog. Ben is the planner and takes copious notes and pictures during each day, which turns into the outline and the meat of our blog. Since Ann’s vision has been failing her for the past few years, all Ann does is add her two cents, and her humor, and Ben faithfully documents her GI escapades. It’ll be a fun little game for our followers to figure out who is doing the talking LOL.

We have almost a year of planning into this BIG 2026 Adventure and we’ve FINALLY been able to con our adult children into joining us for an exciting 10 days of our 60 day total journey. Besides planning which National Parks and sights to show the kids, Ben has truly outdone himself this year when it comes to digging deeper and investigating which roads we should NOT take on our journey. I’m happy to announce that this year’s journey will be 100% free of any cattle path, road, highway or interstate that is listed on the “2026 worst of the worst ranking paths/roads in the U.S.”

Not only are we choosing better roads, we’ve also been busy replacing all the dishes and everything else that was broken from all those horribly bumpy, absolutely terrible roads from last year’s journey. We even went so far as to replace the whole dang Airstream, completely by accident. The story of how we accidentally bought another Airstream is definitely worthy of it’s own blog, but we’ll cut it short and just say Ben “accidentally” found a screaming deal on a 2020 model of Airstream with a more spacious floorpan, which we love, but we could never justify buying brand new. The strange twist to this purchase was that the bargaining on the deal was finalized while Ben was rolling down the Tampa International Airport runway, taking off to Italy for a week of meetings. The last text I received as he was taking off was the following… “Bought a newer Airstream just now. I’ll tell you about it when I land. Love you!” UGH! Never give Ben too much time in airports to look for stuff to buy (huge eye roll by ME).

Our trip started a mere 30 hours after Chris walked off the Florida Polytechnic graduation stage (and off the payroll, but we haven’t shared that little bit of news with him quite yet). We now have exactly 9 days to boogie to Arkansas, where we’ll drop off both grand-dogs with the Noni and Pop-Pop and then head out to Zion National Park, where we’ll meet Hannah, Chris and Chris’ girlfriend, Maya, to begin our adventures on May 20th.

Now that the actual roadtrip begins, here’s the plan for today, DAY 1. Drive from the Englewood farm to Madison, FL. It’s an easy, shakedown kind of first day. It’s been a year since our last big trip, so we need to ease back into this gently, after all. Only a few turns to get us to Interstate 75 and then one more turn onto Interstate 10. Just a quick depiction below, so everyone understands the gravity of what we’ll be dealing with today. As the big lumbering truck and camper combo, our plan is to stick to the middle and right lanes and make our way gently up the state of Florida, into the panhandle.

Waze says it is about a 4-1/2 hr drive. 290 miles. Plenty of time to get there. 

So, we shut down the house, went through the list one more time, and at the bright and early crack of 10:30 am, we pulled out of the driveway. Right on time! No point in arriving at the RV park before we can check in, right?

We got all the way up to the highway, about 15 minutes from our farm on busy surface streets, and got going on 75N at exit 193. 

As soon as we hit 65 mph, the ass end of the of our shiny, newer Airstream began to gently sway (this is when I start to sweat because Ben didn’t see my side of the closet in the trailer. 😬 I don’t trust the weather in mountainous regions and so I prepare for the worst! Nothing wrong with bringing along 5-6 extra coats, just in case).

Trailer sway is a Capital B, Big Deal. Once it starts, it can quickly escalate to a Big Problem. Add in heavy wind buffeting from semi trucks or any kind of windy weather, and swaying takes a challenge and makes it downright dangerous. It means that the trailer is not balanced correctly or angled correctly.

So, we knew we had a problem that would require getting off the highway to address. So we slow rolled it at 64 mph to the next exit 195 (which was two miles north), turned around at the overpass, and took the interstate (at no more than 64 mph) back down to where we got on (exit 193).

Rather than drive all the way back to the farm, we go just off the highway to the side of the road and we (by “we,” we mean Ben), decided to take the hitch down a few inches, trying to tip the trailer forward a bit and shift the weight forward. While “we” were fixing the hitch, it seemed like a perfect time for us (me) to hit the bathroom. I mean, we’ve gone a total of 10 miles by this point and my tummy was rumbly. Never pass up an opportunity, right? 

Trailer adjusted, we jump back on I-75 to see if it worked.

65 mph. Nope. Still got a shimmy.  

Get off at exit 195. Again.

After consulting with our friend Daniel, who knows more stuff about more stuff than most people we know and after also checking the google, we decide we need to get a rough guess on how heavy the tongue is on the trailer. You want about 10-15% of the total trailer weight on the tongue, and you also want about 60% of the trailer weight to be in front of the axles. If there is too much, or not enough tongue weight, it can affect the steering of the truck. If there is too much weight behind the trailer axles, it can really amplify any swaying quickly. We need to know what we are dealing with here so we can address it correctly (and because all of the above is super nerdy info, you know Ben is heavily involved in this blog 🤓). (Hey now!)-Ben

Next stop, Daniel’s shop. Disconnect the trailer. Daniel used a forklift with a heavy duty engine scale to pick up the front of the airstream. Scale maxes out  at 1100 lbs so it’s probably 12-1400 lbs on the tongue. 

Which is A LOT.  With our weight roughly estimated, we go all the way back to the farm to put on the weight distribution hitch, which we owned, but is a bit of a pain in the butt to use. Honestly, if your trailer is loaded right, Ben’s thought is that you shouldn’t need a weight distribution hitch anyway (🤨hmmmm…”we” seems to be insinuating that “me” might have brought too much crap. “Me” is just waiting for “we” to say I need to take some stuff out of the trailer. UGH😒! Everything I packed has a purpose. With the kids coming on this trip, it’s all so important that I have no idea what I can take out!). 

So, next, we get the hitch on without doing the complicated weight shifting bars and we also moved a bunch of weight around to change the balance and shift the weight off the rear axle and out of the bed of the truck (Ben thinks I was shifting weight around, but I was really secretly going potty again. 🤪)

We decided to give the drive another try with the lower, longer hitch and new weight arrangement before dinking around with the bars that move the weight to the truck. It just such a hassle every time we hook up or disconnect the trailer.

We drive from the farm back to the highway where, once again, we get on at exit 193, and once again, there is a shimmy. 

We get off at exit 195, yet again, and find a big gas station. We grab the weight distribution bars. That’s the last thing we can think to do before just going back and dumping everything that added the weight to the trailer (here we go again with the too much “crap” talk). It had pulled fine earlier in the year on our Bradenton test run (again, this means it’s my fault). 

But we were carrying a lot more crap now (and there it is… “crap” and it’s 100% my fault 🤣). 

So, on with the bars. Let’s see how this works….never done this before but Ben read the text and understands the theory. Tab A into slot B, yep, ok, now pull this bar up to here. Ok, (hhhhrrrrrrrnnnnnnnggggggg )

hmm…

(hrraaaannnnnnnggeggeggggggg)

(breathing heavier than expected for something little old men and ladies do with their camper) one more try

(HRRHRRHEHHHHHHHHGSSSAAAAAANNNNNGFFGGGG!!!!!)

Ok there must be a tool for lifting this bar(light bulb goes off💡). Yep. And we know precisely where it is at that exact moment, and that place is not here with us. That tool, that we now very clearly understand what it is for, is back at the farm. 

So, we go all the way back to the farm. 

Open the garage.

There’s the tool. 

Let’s go see if this helps. 

hrrrrng. Click

Go to the other side. 

hrrnn. click. 

Ok, yep, that tool is pretty important to the hitch system. 

Really glad we didn’t grab it when we came back and got all of the other weight distribution stuff on the last run! 🙈

Trailer weight settled and distributed, off we go to the highway.

We get on at exit, you guessed it, 193. 

It is now 1:45 in the afternoon by the way. 

These shenanigans started when we originally left at 10:30. 

So, we were now almost 3 1/2 hours into this. We literally didn’t know what else to do if this doesn’t work. We’re already wondering if we need to delay our departure so that we can rid of anything that isn’t critical or just reload everything into the 2013 airstream. We know that the shorter, lighter Airstream loaded well and pulled just fine last year without a weight distribution hitch (Ben seriously has no clue about all the extra crap I packed into this thing. I mean this 2020 model has sooooo much extra storage and so many extra drawers. Is it not okay to fill those cabinets and drawers with junk food and games for the kids? Come on!).

The only thing that can be causing this much trouble is that the camper is a bit overweight, with too much stuff on board. When we get to Hot Springs Village, we are going to have to put this camper on a diet (I’m definitely busted!🤭).

Fingers crossed and lots of prayers as we get onto 75.

We hit 65. Not much going on back there. Creep it up to 70. Little itty bit of shimmy but not nearly as severe. It’s still lurking there a bit. Still wiggling slightly when we are passed by semis. But this is manageable.

So we cautiously continue past good old exit 195. We keep it steady and controlled at about 68-70 mph.

We took easy all the way up on I-75 and on to I-10. Thankfully, we made it to our first campground of the whole trip in Madison, FL.

We’ll take it super easy the rest of the way to Arkansas, over the next two days.

We are carrying way more stuff than we should be carrying. Didn’t really think of it until it happened. Oh well, we are good for now and we will deal with the weight issue when we get to Arkansas.

We shall title that chapter “Airstream Fat Camp”

For now, we are off the road and tucked in for the night. 

Tomorrow is a long day. Headed to Hattiesburg MS and the Hattiesburg / Okatoma KOA!

With a whirlwind Florida winter behind us, we’re now getting ready to set out on the road again with the Airstream for another western adventure!

But, before our 2026 trip commences, we had one more very important commencement to attend.

James “Chris” Mather, our youngest child and also our favorite son, graduated on May 9th from Florida Polytechnic University as a Mechanical Engineer.

Chris was completely robbed of his high school graduation due to Covid. Instead of crossing a stage to receive his high school diploma in 2020, he was handed a brown paper bag by a hazmat suit wearing teacher in a drive through line. The brown paper bag contained his cap, gown, tassel, a Class of ’20 t-shirt, Class of ’20 face mask, a bottle of Germ-X and his diploma. That moment didn’t quite demonstrate how excited we felt about Chris graduating from high school. So to say the least, we’ve been counting down the days to Chris’ university graduation. We’re so very proud!

After our big blowout RV camping trip this summer, Chris heads off to work for Parker Hannifin in a rotational set of roles that start him in Kearney, Nebraska!

We are very proud of Chris and excited for him!

So, now to the details about our upcoming journey… we’re headed back to Utah where we’ll be meeting up with Hannah, Chris, and Maya (Chris’ girlfriend) and we’ve rented them an RV! We will be doing a ten day trip to see Utah’s Mighty Five! (Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Arches National Park) as well as a drive through Monument Valley and a few days in Page, AZ to visit the Antelope Slot canyons. We’re so darn excited to finally get to a few National Parks with the kids! It was always one of those things we wanted to do while they were still in high school, but if your children are in ANY kind of activity or sport these days, they’re expected to stay through holiday and spring breaks. It just never happened until NOW 🙂

The kids all fly in and out of Las Vegas. That gives us exactly 11 days after Chris’ graduation to hustle our truck, camper, dogs, and ourselves all the way from SW FL to Zion National Park in SW Utah. It’s about 2400 miles and we try to keep our driving to about 300-350 miles a day, so it’ll take us about a week to get out there, without any issues!

We’re also hoping to meet up with some family and friends while on the 2026 adventure too, so maybe we’ll see you on the road!

Following the 10 days we’ll be spending camping with the kids and after we drop them back off in Las Vegas, it’ll be just the two of us again and we’re off for some new adventures. The plan is to see a number of national parks and sites in the southwest and south including Joshua Tree National Park, Lake Havasu, Sedona, the Poozeum in Williams, AZ (this is a repeat visit haha), Saguaro National Park, White Sands National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Area 51 at Roswell, NM, Fayetteville, AR and then back to Hot Springs Village for the 4th of July. Stay tuned because it should be a great trip!

More new places visited means that we will be adding to our places visited sticker collection.

We’re off to pack, but here’s where we stand before we leave on this 60 day, 10,000 mile adventure…

Not sure where we will be when we publish this, but likely we will be mowing or weeding or painting or cleaning, or any one of a thousand things we need to get done now that we are back in Florida.

After two months of almost no human presence, and an unbelievably rainy spring, the little five acre farm has been taken over by flora and fauna. The wild hogs have rooted up any flat ground we had managed to smooth out over the last few years, the line between the gravel driveway and the grassy yard, once crisp and sharply delineated, is now a blur of weeds and crabgrass with an occasional piece of gravel hiding deep within. We have some catching up to do.

The Airstream is washed free of all of the bug butts that have been splattered across its broad glass and aluminum front end, having earned every smear and smack as it proudly gritted its teeth into the wind across (nearly) ten thousand miles of roads. The interior has been cleaned, all linens washed and put away, and the camper is sleeping quietly in the garage, waiting for the next adventure.

The oil has been changed again in the truck, it has also been washed and waxed after a hard-working two months on the road, the interior and bed emptied of all of the temporary pantry and storage goods that had been stored there, and it is back to hardware store runs and trips back and forth to the farm.

All we have left to do is finish this blog and go through the thousands of pictures we took on this trip.

What an absolutely amazing trip to have been fortunate enough to plan, enjoy, and share! With each other and with family and friends along the journey.

Would absolutely do another long-ish trip again. Perhaps not quiiiiiite this long. That was a long stretch without the dogs haha.

We thought about how best to summarize the experience.

Do we convert all 2500 photos into slides, invite everyone over for fondue, and see how long it takes for everyone to sneak off to use the bathroom and never return?

Do we come up with a list of superlatives, like in high school for the senior year yearbook? Best scenic views? Best wildlife sighting? Best hike? Best park to poop in?

Or, perhaps, do we write a blog and try to capture memories as we went?

As you already know, we went with the blog option.

Thanks for reading and following along as we went on this grand adventure!

We will have the slides ready whenever you stop by, but the fondue will most likely be chips and dip. Or guacamole! That sounds good. Either way, we’ll be ready. 😉

For those of you out there like Ben, here are the totals:

National Parks Visited: 7 (Hot Springs, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier, Zion NP, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon)

Pictures Taken: 10,000+

Pictures Retained after the Evening Sorting and Deleting: 2,966

Total Roadtrip Miles: 9,202

MPG Average: 13.4

Engine Hours on trip: 207

Gallons of Diesel: 687

Highest Price Paid for Diesel: $3.81

Total Price of Fuel: ~$2,400

Highest price we saw for diesel at a place that left travelers no options, that is, travelers that do not have a 60 gallon fuel tank and the ability to look at a map and determine that there will not be fuel out there, and if there is, it will not be cheap: $5.99

Refills of Highly Annoying DEF: 15

Gallons of Windshield Washer Fluid: 4

Oil Changes: 1 (Weatherford, TX)

Bags of Ice for the Drink Cooler (a very efficient way to keep a lot of drinks cold): 53

Highest Price Paid for a Bag of Regular Old Ice: $7

Memories Made on this Adventure: Countless

We stopped through Fayetteville for a few days. We were able to wrap up some projects that we ran out of time to finish back in May.

First on the list…build a CATIO!!!

Yeah. One those. We had no clue what a freaking catio was, but we used that Google thing on our phones and figured it out.

Hannah has two terrific guard cats that have been relegated to being indoor cats. However, both have freely tasted the wide open outdoors in their pasts and they very much enjoyed it. Based on their constant small wounds and skittering back to the house under duress, they must have really sucked at it from a self defense and self reliance perspective, but they insisted they enjoyed it and they kept going back.

But they are indoor cats at heart and Hannah intends to keep the little dumbbells around for a while.

So, we committed to creating her dream catio (we told her not to dream any bigger than 3’x5’).

Remember the old window air conditioners of yesteryear, with the little accordion thing on each side so you could keep it somewhat insulated? They make the same thing but with a pet door in it. So you open the window wide, place the pet door thing in the bottom sill, extend the two accordion sides to each side, and then close the window down to the top of the pet door thing and you are good to go.

So, our job (Ben’s job) was to build the screened in platform that the cats could then access through the pet door window. It had to be large enough to hold two sprawled out cats, secure enough to keep them from escaping, and roofed enough to keep the platform dry.

And that is what we did.

We also spent time working on some other interior and exterior projects and had fun hanging out!

Best of all, we had no tornados in the campground this time!

Wrapping up in Fayetteville, we headed down the road to Hot Springs Village to spend time at Ben’s folks and with David, Katie, and Peter for the 4th of July!

We got to reunite with Charlie and Bailey which was great.

We were able to help with a bunch of projects around the house and we got some lake time in, but before we knew it, the 4th of July was upon us!

As long as the area has been rainy enough so as not to pose a fire risk, we have a little tradition of heading up to our mountain acreage we call Razorback Ridge, to set off some fireworks the day before the 4th. The fire risk was low this year, so we had fun with some new and old friends watching our own private fireworks show, complete with a finale and everything! (The finale was just setting off two of the multi shot boxes at the same time lol).

The evening of July 4th, we went over to the real deal Hot Springs Village fireworks show and watched from the water on a friends boat, and it was one of the best fireworks shows we have ever seen. Especially the finale! The whole show was set to coordinated music ranging from Toby Keith to of course the Star Spangled Banner. Really a well done show, other than a couple of unintentional grass fires by the shore.

We wrapped up the time in Arkansas with a couple more projects, and then headed out on our last leg of the trip back to Florida, via Mississippi and southern Alabama.

Charlie and Bailey were fantastic travelers on their first time back in the Airstream since early May. They rode quietly in the backseat, just content to be part of the herd again. It was so massively helpful and thoughtful that Ben’s folks wanted to dog-sit while we made the big loop, and the dogs really had a great time there. Not surprising, since the dogs have spent most of their summers in Arkansas. They have to do a lot of varmint hunting and guarding to make up for the time they aren’t there.

However…

Something in their diet certainly didn’t 100% agree with them. Bailey was mostly fine, but oh boy, Charlie was cutting some major muffins (meatballs is probably more appropriate).

The first one happened about two minutes after we pulled out of the driveway.

We got to the very first stop sign before leaving the neighborhood, when a perfectly silent cloud of purple death floated forward from the back of the cab. It hit us both at the same time and we scrambled for the window buttons, clawing at the numerous switches and locks and mirror adjustments, all while holding our breath against this most noxious of vapors surrounding our heads and infesting our sinuses.

We finally got the windows down, and sweet, fresh, unfart-y air filled the cab and we could finally breathe again.

After we cleared the truck cab of the offending odor, we rolled the windows back up and just looked at each other in silence. The glance we shared speaks to the time we have spent together over the last 33 years. Without saying a word, we acknowledged that we are now locked in a confined space with this gasbag for the next 1200 miles, that we will have no warning when the next release escapes, and one of us would need to keep one finger on the window trigger at all times. Or at least until we could purge the dog of his intestinal woes. That was the only way to make it through this.

We turned back to the road ahead, and set off for Hattiesburg, 390 miles down the road.

We developed a pretty efficient system.

Whenever one of us “smelt it”, we already knew who “dealt it”, and we would race to get the windows down as fast as we could. One of us, “accidentally” hit the window lock button a few times (naming no names but we all know where the window lock button is located and we all know who drives this rig), causing the other to experience a dog-fart-nado on the closed side of the cab. The victim was assured this was an accident, but after fifteen or sixteen times, this victim is starting to have suspicions.

We made it to Hattiesburg, and while Ben windexed the inside of the windshield to get the purple off, I set up camp for the night. We only have a few more nights to go and we’ll be home! Off to Madison, FL tomorrow and then home!

Hopefully, this guy has gotten it out of his system. Thankfully the airstream has a pretty good ventilation system, but we may still have to trade her in after this… 🤢

27 years ago, maybe a few months after we got married and had moved to Hutchinson, KS, we were invited to a friend’s family house on Grand Lake, just east of Tulsa. We were both not yet 25 years old, so it was a while ago.

It was a short weekend, somewhere in July or August of 1998, so pre-Hannah and pre-Chris. We drove down to the lake house with maybe 7 or 8 other friends from Eaton in Hutchinson.

There were a lot of fun memories from that weekend, as we cruised the lake on the boat, cooked chili as a group and told stories, and generally hung out living the lake life.

For those that do not know, Grand Lake , nestled in the foothills of the Ozarks, is a 46,000 acre lake created back in the early 40’s when they dammed the Grand River. The result is a really pretty lake with a bunch of little coves and inlets, and about 1,300 miles of shore line. It’s a big’ un.

It also features a few small cliffs near which locals and visitors often gather in their boats to watch people jump from the 30-40 foot high walls to the deep water below.

Which is exactly where we found ourselves 27 years ago.

We boated around the lake on the first day there and found ourselves in the Dripping Springs cove, watching people climb up the cliff face on a narrow little path, while we watched others stand at the edge, deliberating whether or not to make the jump.

After a few took the fateful step off the edge and lived to tell the tale, we decided, why not?

Dumb.

We were old enough to know that we both were not big fans of heights.

However, we decided to try it anyway.

We hopped into the water, swam over to the very steep cliff face, and began our climb up to the jumpin’ spot.

As we climbed higher, we realized we had made a serious mistake. The cliff path was quite steep, very rocky and tough on the bare feet, and we were finding ourselves far above the normal height at which we preferred to jump in to the water, namely, not very high.

Nothing to be done for it now. We could have scrabbled back down the cliff, but we had our pride to consider. So we continued to the edge.

Scariest moment of our then young lives, looking down to the water far below.

We decided to go at the same time, because if either of us had gone first, the other probably would have chickened out.

Ben counted down, and we both leaned forward over the edge.

It’s funny to think about it, 27 years later, but I remember every second of that fall.

Time seemed to slow down as I stepped off the cliff. As the water rushed up, I noticed I just kept going faster and faster as the water approached. But the fall seemed endless.

As I fell, I felt my body shifting from a straight up and down, feet first approach, to a slightly angled approach. Not good. Definitely don’t want to hit the water on my back, yikes. Despite the fruitlessness of my efforts, I pinwheeled my arms backwards, trying to bring my feet back around to directly under my body.

By the time I hit the water, I had corrected the rotation a little bit, but only to the point where instead of hitting on my back, I hit the water in an almost seated position. The result was a super spanking. Holy moly. It was like the world’s biggest paddle just smacked me right across the booty.

After I surfaced, gasping for breath, Ben was right there and got me over to the boat, where I climbed in with a completely numb posterior. The ride back was in silence, as the pain started pulsing through my stunned rear end. Not only that, but between the fall and the lake water, I developed an ear infection. Later that evening, we got to visit the urgent care to get it treated. The ear, not the butt. The butt was on its own.

Fast forward 27 years, and we are back. Not for cliff-jumping, rather, just to hang out on the waters edge for a few days before dropping back down in to Arkansas and wrapping up our US tour.

We stayed at the Regatta On Grand, a really cool campground with most sites backing up to the lake. We had a little covered patio with a couple of rocking chairs, a couple little sofas, a fire pit, and a nice big grill. Really a great setup!

Hannah came up from Fayetteville to camp out with us for a couple days after a stressful few weeks at her job. We had fun just hanging out and cooking pancakes.

We head down to Fayetteville next to keep hanging out with Hannah and Ty and get some projects done on her house before we all head down to Hot Springs Village and Lake Desoto for the 4th!

Hard to believe this journey is about over!

The sole purpose of swinging through the DFW area was to see Chris while he was spending the summer interning at Ben’s old company, Parker. Chris’ grandparents also came down to see one of their three favorite grandkids in his work environment.

Our campground for the duration of the visit was located really close to Chris’ apartment and really close to the hotel that Ben knew from his many nights here back in his Parker days.

It’s interesting, we have spent a lot of nights at a lot of different campgrounds over the last three years. Every time we approach a new campground at which we have not previously stayed, it is always a little bit like those gamble chocolates, the kind of chocolates with no roadmap under the lid. Just a few rows of small, decadent-looking lumps of chocolate, concealing a mysterious core that could either be fantastic or disgusting. I’m looking at you Orange Cream. Yuck, It’s like eating toothpaste.

Anyway, campgrounds can be very different from one another. We have stayed in campgrounds where we have been blown away by the quality, safety, general care and upkeep, friendly atmosphere, or privacy, while we have also been like, ugggh, well, its only for one night. At those, we have the gun ready and we park the truck as close as we can, or don’t even disconnect the truck at all.

You can usually tell very quickly whether it is going to be a caramel filled type of campground or a molasses chew. This one was definitely more on the orange cream side. Well, it’s only for three nights.

We got to see Chris and his college friend, Quentin’s, apartment, since they are both interning at Parker. We also visited the plant to see what the interns were working on there.

We were able to take Chris out for dinner a few times and show him some of Ben’s favorite local restaurants.

Headed up towards Grand Lake, Oklahoma after Texas, a place we have not visited since 1998.

More on that story once we get there…

As the title suggests, we drove from the Grand Canyon to the Poozeum in Williams, AZ and on through the top of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. We knew these were going to be some tiring days and that’s why we didn’t stitch too many of these long driving days together. Couple that with really bumpy roads, steady 20-30 mph winds pushing us sideways from the south, and zero turns in the road ahead, and you’ve got yourself a long lonesome stretch.

Well, not that lonesome. We had plenty of time to chat and watch the scenery change from rocky rocks to smooth rocks to grassy rocks to grass. We are in the grass and scrubby trees phase of our journey now!

Weatherford, TX was our destination for today. This is where Chris and his college Florida Poly classmate, Quentin, are living while they are both interning this summer at Parker Hannifin in Mineral Wells, TX.

So, in addition to seeing Chris, visiting Ben’s old friends at the Parker plant, and getting some much needed service done on the F-250 (it is DUE for an oil change!), we have an action packed few days planned here in TX! Ben used to travel to this area quite frequently before he retired, so we are going to check out some of the local favorites here in town.

That being said, it will be really tough to beat all of the neat roadside attractions we saw along the way!

– The apparently closed Classic Car Museum at the truck stop formerly known as Russells Truck and Travel Center, but is now just any old gas station, so cross that off your list.

– The famous Cadillac Ranch, which we didn’t technically stop to see, but you could see it pretty well from I-40. Close enough for us at the end of a long day.

– The County’s Largest Arrow in the Ground in Quanah, TX

– The World’s Okayest, Biggest. Non-Functioning Rubik’s Cube in Chillicothe, TX

Despite the awesomeness of the roadside attractions, it was a pretty tough couple of days on the road, as we covered over 1,000 miles, all with really stiff and steady wind directly from the south. Since most of our three day drive was heading mostly East, it meant constant cross breezes. The Airstream is pretty aerodynamic though, so most of the drive was without event, other than when cornering and when passing or being passed by big trucks. Add to that the fact that Ann was feeling pretty crappy, and we are just glad that we are in one place for a few days.

We got all settled in Weatherford, and got to see Chris and his apartment while we were in town!

We are off to run errands, take care of maintenance stuff tomorrow and find more interesting stuff to write about…maybe lol

As we prepared to leave the Grand Canyon last night, Ann happened across one of those little “free magazines” with things to do in the area. In the DEAD back page, very inside corner, near the 1/2 page crease of the magazine, where someone had sloppily folded it in the wrong place and nearly covered it, there was an ad for an attraction that definitely caught our interest. So much so, that we had to rearrange our entire schedule for the next morning, just to make sure we didn’t arrive before it opened. “One of us” is a lot ADHD, so we knew if we arrived, say 30 minutes before they opened, “one of us” 100% wouldn’t have waited for that lock to unlock. Timing for this attraction was EVERYTHING. ⏰

Without further ado, this was our very first stop today…

Yep, the Poozeum, in quaint little downtown Williams, AZ., a museum and gift shop dedicated entirely to fossilized dinosaur poop. The fancy term is coprolite, but we aren’t really that fancy a folk to use a five dollar word when a 25 cent word will work just fine.

The owner and proprietor was very enthusiastic about his museum, and honestly, it was really well set up, really well organized, and absolutely entertaining. We also have to say that his shop front door was constantly opening and more people coming in.

There was a lot to see and a lot to learn about, but there were three clear standouts.

I had to put the pictures in. If that offends anyone, well, if you were easily offended, you probably would have stopped reading quite a while ago. So, off we go!

1) There was a whole display of dino dookie with ancient bites taken out of them. As some of you might know, we sure loved our little wiener dog, Pepper, who passed away this March, but she had one shameful, disgusting habit. She was VERY into “recycling.” But she only liked recycling poop. We felt that the poo biting animal was likely one of Pepper’s dinosaur ancestors. However, if Pepper had been alive back then, there would be no fossil record. NONE. She was quite thorough at her job. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

2) The next crowd favorite was a very girthy nugget that you could tell started as a very relaxing dinosaur dump, and then a T-Rex must have come around the corner, because those dinosaur buns must have SLAMMED shut, and the dookie got pinched off so hard that we bet there was an injury. 

3) Worlds biggest coprolite. Certified by Guinness, no less. This is a Tyrannosaurus Rex blambo that was so big it has a name, for goodness sake.

Meet Barnum, a prolonged poo measuring over 26.5” long (longer if it hadn’t had to make the right turn to get out of his poor bottom), 6” wide, which means something else was 6” wide 😳(The only bigger buns holes that we know of are the people that parked next to us in the Zion campground) and it weighs in excess of 22 lbs. 😮

I bet it was a massive relief to drop this load off during this fella’s early morning hike. PURE RELIEF! “We” 😉 can relate.

We finished our tour of the collection and we both decided that it is going to be very hard to top this experience. I mean, the National Parks are great and all that, but they didn’t have a finely curated Poozeum to explore.

We congratulated the owner on his establishment, bought our souvenirs (we had to get a Poozeum sticker for the Airstream door!) and we headed back on the road to our next destination, the Meteor Crater State Park, in Winslow AZ!

If you can see the pic above, that is the famous meteor crater, on the left. You can sort of see the raised edges where the meteor impacted and displaced a bunch of rock and dirt.

This site was about 5 miles off I-40, so if you are ever in the area, you can just skip it, like we did. We got to the lobby of the heavily secured site and were funneled into the line for the cashier. At $29 per person, we hesitated for about a millisecond, and said, nope, not that important to us. We made an about face, and headed back out to the truck.

So here is a pic of us in the Meteor Crater State Park parking lot, pleased with our smart financial decision. And smart use of our time.

And here is a google image.

There you go.

The rest of the day was spent gripping the steering wheel with both hands, as we bounced along rough highway with 20+ mph winds pushing us around.

We made it to our stop for the night, Grants, NM, where we found that it had gotten so hot in the airstream with 6+ hrs on the road, that our butter had gone funky. Learning experience while traveling in hot sunny weather, put anything melty in the cab of the truck or in the fridge.

We have a few nights like this on the road, while on our way to Weatherford TX. We plan to hit a few more really cool roadside attractions along the way. We already see that we will be going right by Russell’s Truck and Travel Center (with a classic car museum) and Cadillac Ranch. We may even dip down to see what’s what in Roswell, NM! 👽 More to come. If we don’t disappear. 🚀

As we reflect back on the fantastic National Parks we’ve been fortunate enough to experience over the last month or so, it is impossible to pick a favorite. They all had such unique layouts, ecosystems, wildlife, different habitats for outdoor pottying and activities to do.

We really didn’t give the Grand Canyon as much of a shot as we should have as Ann wasn’t feeling the greatest for the last few days. Plus, it’s also complicated logistics due to this park having a huge hole right in the middle. Because of this GIANT hole, you essentially have to decide if you’re doing the Grand Canyon in two days or over a week because it’s a freaking four hour drive between the north and the south rims. That’s a LONG day of driving, just to get a glimpse of the other side.

We chose the south rim to explore for one reason and one reason only. The south rim has “Mather Point.” Yes, our decision was that simple lol. But if you’re planning to do the rim to rim hike through the canyon, any kind of riding through the canyon, either by mule or rafting, then you’re going to need more than two days.

This canyon system is so large and so wide and so deep, that it really defies your ability to wrap your head around what you’re seeing. To look across the canyon and say, ok, cool, there’s the other side right there, is one thing. To try and comprehend that what appears to be relatively close is actually 10 miles away, that gets a little more difficult. If you’re standing at Mather Point, looking across to the North Rim, it’s approximately 10 miles. And if you look down to the little river way down at the bottom, it’s about a mile down.

Like I said, a bit hard to wrap your head around. I tried to grab a video, zoomed as far in as the old iPhone would go, and then zoomed back out to standard. Its just such a GRAND canyon, as most already know.

Couple that with a constant, heavy, lumbering flow of tourists who crowd their way to the railings along the wide, level concrete sidewalks leading from the bus parking to the gift shop to the visitor center and to the rim, and you get the sense that everybody pulls up, buys their trinket, takes a wizz, wanders to the canyon’s edge, takes a picture, and heads back to the busses. The place is built to facilitate and funnel the flow of people, to and through the park smoothly.

Actually, we (Totally Ben. He completely dorked out over the railings lol) noted that the railings along the edge of the canyon receive CONSTANT wear and tear from thousands and millions of hands gripping tightly or sliding along down steps and of course toddlers and young children climbing them with exasperated and overheated parents nearby just trying to stop them! Each hand sweaty and sticky and oily (you might want to grab some germ-x just from reading this post. We did while writing it).

The railings get so much use, in fact, that a thoughtful engineer designed the railings to have very stout bases, anchored firmly in concrete in order to withstand the force of thousands of tourists leaning against them, but the railings themselves are just 2” steel pipe. Once the steel pipe gets worn out every few years, the pipes can be removed easily from the stanchions that hold them in place, and new pipe can be re-installed pretty quickly. A thoughtful approach to lowering long term maintenance costs while also keeping bumbling tourists from inadvertently wandering off the edge to fall to the canyon floor a mile below. I mean, its not a straight drop, but you certainly would not enjoy the journey down by that method.

Our last day at Grand Canyon National Park was spent rather mundanely. Ben washed the majority of the bugs and road dirt from the Airstream this morning. Once Ann was feeling up to it, we ventured down to the canyon again to ooh and ahh a bit more. Then we read a bit in the shade of the Airstream canopy, while the hot dry wind swirled around us, as we started planning the next leg of the journey.

This was the last National Park on this trip, and we will soon be back in Arkansas to both work on Hannah’s house in Fayetteville, and then we will join Ben’s brother and his family back in Hot Springs Village for the 4th of July at Noni and Poppop’s house.

But we are not yet finished with our explorations…

We are still 1,200 miles west of Fayetteville. So, over the next few days, we are grinding our way across the top of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas on our way to visit our son, Chris, at his internship at Parker Hannifin, the same company from which Ben retired a few years ago. Chris is spending the summer working just west of the DFW area at a fantastic business, where he is learning about the real world applications of mechanical engineering. He graduates next spring, so this is a three month long interview!

On the three day drive to Texas, we’ve scouted out a couple of must see sites on the way. An exciting lineup, including a museum dedicated to poo (dinosaur poo, but still poo), a giant meteor crater, Cadillac ranch, and we are still holding out hope that we can find a worlds largest non-stick frying pan, worlds largest toothbrush or something as equally dumb, yet entertaining.

For our last night here at the Grand Canyon, we decided to go see if we could catch sunset and then stick around to see the stars! We hustled over there, which was a three minute drive, parked in the commercial bus only area close to Mather Point, and headed over to the rim. The place, unsurprisingly, was packed! We made it in and checked out a couple of the views, grabbed a few shots, but it was just a tough place to photograph.

It is just so dang big.

If you see an interesting rock or shadow, or vein of sunset really lighting up a surface, it is tough to isolate amongst EVERYTHING else just as beautiful behind it. In the photo, it’s too much going on with zero depth difference between the subjects in the photo.

You just have to put down the camera and just take it in.

Until you get sick of all the people crowded around you, which is about 30 seconds later.

We headed back to the truck and snapped out the folding chairs and just waited for the late sunset twilight to finish dissolving into the black horizon. Almost everybody that had been parked in the bus parking area for sunset eventually straggled out to the parking lot and left. It was down to about four of five cars there when the stars really started coming out. It was such a clear night. Not a cloud in the sky and literally nothing in all directions to block the view of the sky.

After the parking lot got nice and quiet, we decided to fold up the chairs, lock the truck, and wander over to the canyon itself again.

There was almost nobody there, and it was the darkest of pitch black. We ever so slowly shuffled across the now open plaza toward the stairs that descended to the point. We made it down to the lowest area and made our way to the center. Five minutes later, we were laying flat on our backs on the rocks, looking up at the stars. It was dead silent, and even the few other couples sitting close by were just whispering quietly to each other, if they were speaking at all. It was a very respectful and almost solemn moment amongst strangers in a setting that starts to approach the real meaning of awesome.

After soaking it in for a while, we still hadn’t had enough of the gorgeous stars. We had certainly had enough of the sharp rocks under our backs though, so we packed it up and headed back to the truck and to the campground.

We got back “home” and sat outside for a few more minutes, just enjoying the silence and the starry night. We had been seated for no more than 30 seconds when a big old motor home came careening in, well, maybe not quite careening but definitely with a lot of confidence. It was 10 pm and it was already very dark, so these folks had been motoring for a while. Likely all day.

The rig turned into its assigned space and came to sharp stop. Two men got out, each working independently of each other, just doing their jobs and they seemed to really know what they were doing. It became apparent that it was a family of at least four, we only saw the father and the 17-22 year old son, but we could hear the ladies in high gear inside on whatever their roles were for getting things settled. Whoever was inside wasted no time. Before the vehicle even came to a full stop, the slides were starting to go out on this 35-40’ motor home.

It also became apparent that there was a priority sequence for the setup process. Number one, electric. Number two, getting the potty pipes hooked up and working. Pronto.

The guys were very focused on what looked to be a fairly complicated sewer connection system. We really couldn’t tell you how it worked, as ours is really simple on the Airstream, but it looked like what happens when a fire engine shows up at the scene of a fire. The kid was the fireman carrying “hose” (rolls of brown potty hose, which in RV lingo, the “Stinky Slinky”). The dad was working on the sewer connection like the fireman with the big-ass wrench who sprints to the fire hydrant to get it opened up and ready. The kid was back at the controls for this rig and asking operational questions and the Dad was clearly and concisely directing the kid. They were working together like a pit crew.

Once the kid confirmed from the inside panel that the tank was in fact almost empty now, you could see the tension slide out of Dad’s shoulders. You could tell the dad was still scratching his head trying to figure out how they filled the RV potty tank so quickly while he was truckin’ down the road all day.

Meanwhile, the chatter and shuffling noises coming from inside the camper NEVER STOPPED. It appeared as though the remaining family members, inside the RV, were just waiting with bated breath, for the tank to be empty so they could use the toilet again.

As our new neighbors discussed the day and days ahead, we shamelessly eavesdropped. We gathered from their schedule that they are going to do tomorrow what we did over 8 days. We lovingly refer to that as the “ADHD tour.”

As for us, we’ll be sleeping in a bit tomorrow, then pulling up stakes and heading for exciting roadside attractions! 🚌 🏜️🌵

Today was a bit of a rest and recovery day, so we just made a few trips around to the scenic views and to the shops for our sticker for the Airstream.

All of these parks and travel destinations have definitely figured out marketing. There are people that collect patches, stickers, pins, shot glasses, plates, hats, shirts, etc. Well,. I guess every place does that, not just national parks. Great way for the business to make some high margin impulse sales, and fun to look at the collection and remember when we went wherever etc.

Two years ago, we decided to go with stickers.

Whenever we have visited a national park or a cool place, we find a sticker for the inside door of the airstream.

You can even do a little amateur investigative work and assume that we mostly put them on like a sane person, left to right, top to bottom. (We did sneak in some smaller stickers to fill in the space.) From that, you can see that our first trip was to Key West back in 2023. In fact, we actually bought this 27ft International on our 25th Anniversary two years ago, hence the “25” on our plate.

Our first trip was a little wimpy trip from our house in SW Florida down 75, across Alligator Alley, around Miami, and down Highway 1 all the way to Key West. That was sure a bumpy trip and quite the learning experience! We have come a LONG way in terms of destinations, trip distances, and certainly finding the bumpiest roads we could!

Back to the stickers…What do we do when we sell the airstream and go to a little longer unit? Well, I guess we have to start over! Actually, we will probably just replace them. I bet we can order them on Amazon. (Bloop, they’ll be here tomorrow!)

While we were checking out the stickers, we also wandered over to see the Grand Canyon again. We were really close to Mather Point, and honestly, that was one of the main attractions Ben wanted to see here. The namesake of Mather Point was not a relative, as far as we know. His name was Stephen Mather, an American industrialist and conservationist, and he was the first director of the brand new National Park Service back in 1917. The point is also a very cool view from that perch.

However, the REAL reason we came to Mather point was for the pictures below. What a couple of dorks.

Speaking of pointing, we also stumbled across a book in the gift shop that hit just a little too close to home…

We flipped through it quickly and were very relieved (but a tiny bit surprised, honestly) to see that Ann wasn’t mentioned.

Shew, we didn’t get busted!

We finally cooled down in the airstream after the long hot sunny day. We were able to sit outside for a bit in the evening. It was still very dry and warm, but there was a lovely breeze that gently sighed through the valley, as the sun slowly settled down behind the mountains.

We even caught a pic of the shadow of a mountain to our west being cast on the mountain to our east thanks to the setting sun!

The canyon cooled down quickly as the last rays of lights lit up the sky, so we hung out for a bit, and then called it a night.

Wanting to beat the heat of the day the next morning, we departed Zion at the bright and early hour of 8 am. We knew that we needed to get stocked up, as we would be mostly away from civilization for almost a week. We hit the Walmart in Hurricane, loaded up the airstream, and headed down towards Arizona.

It was a really quiet and pretty drive, winding through slowly shrinking sandstone mountains, rapidly widening plains, and very few residents or even any structures in sight. Widely spaced, low fence posts set far back from the highway were the only indication that we were driving through ranch land as well as reservation land.

It was a good thing we have the big 60 gallon diesel tank on Ben’s truck, as there were no places to fill up for long stretches. We didn’t see a gas station that didn’t look abandoned, for what felt like 200 miles. Since we have close to 900 miles of range with the truck and we had just filled up back in Zion, we hardly even needed to glance at the fuel gauge.

Of far more importance, on this trip, were our biological tanks. Bringing a full, functioning bathroom along with you is just about ideal, honestly. Especially way out here on these wide plains with few services.

We can just say, “Hey, any need to stop?” as we pass a “historical marker ahead “or “scenic view” sign or if we see a wide spot on the side of the road coming up. If so, we just slow down, whip the rig in there, and we take care of business. It is also a good opportunity for Ben to walk around the rig and check the tires, lights, and just make sure everything is holding together. The roads out here are mostly pretty good, but there have been some rough and lumpy-bumpy stretches today that really had an impact on our bladders and our airstream, so we kept an eye on everything and just took it easy.

We finally pulled onto 64W and that took us on the road to the Grand Canyon.

As we cruised down the peaceful, quiet two lane highway, we started seeing more cracks in the wide flat plains to our north. We’re talking big old cracks. So deep and abrupt and right in the middle of what looked like grazing land. We’d been wondering how often cattle just forget or don’t see the cracks and whoooooooped right down to the bottom!

After 40 miles of increasingly wider and deeper practice canyons, we finally turned in to the park entrance of the granddaddy of them all, the Grand Canyon! This was the first time at the Grandest of Canyons for Ben. I was here when I was just a little girl, riding in style in the backseat of mom and dad’s Ford LTD, with the blazing HOT dark maroon vinyl seats and the 55 mph air conditioning. That car was a TANK! I don’t really remember much of anything about the Grand Canyon from that early 80’s visit, but to be fair, the drive from our hometown in Illinois was a LONG WAY in that boat with no A/C and we only had four different 8-tracks to listen to between the stretches of no FM radio stations. As a child, I was always completely annoyed by my backseat companions, which were flapping grocery bags that my mom insisted MUST be on the floor of the backseat and not in the trunk. 🙄 They were bags of mom’s stockpile of cleaning supplies (no one entered the Motel 6 room until Mom had it 100% sanitized), plus there were other bags full of her favorite canned soup and potato chips. Anyway, enough of that tangent. I’ll write a book someday about fond childhood memories 😆 The point of all that was I don’t remember crap about the Grand Canyon from the year 1980 something, except for flapping bags, hot seats and The Kingston Trio on repeat.

Basically, Ben and I are both experiencing this for the first time together. Like curious kids, we pulled in to the first view point we saw, named “First Viewpoint of the Grand Canyon,” which was an appropriate name, and parked the rig in a wide open parking lot for RV’s.

We hit the facilities, saw the big old canyon, made the appropriate “ooh” and “aah” sounds, and hopped back in the truck to go get set up and cooled down. Don’t interpret that as irreverence for the canyon and its natural beauty. Rather, this was just a sneak peak to satisfy our curiosity about the grandness of the canyon. It’s grand as all get out, but we needed to get the airstream on shore power!

We motored another 25 miles into the National Park on our way to Trailer Village Campground. This campground is just about the only one with full hook ups in the National Park. No frills, but nice shade on a handful of the spots. Ours was one of those with a little shade tree covering us from the west. We got the airstream all setup and I’m telling you, we opened every window in that thing and just let it cool down and air out! It was just a beautiful day in Arizona!

We settled in for the evening and spent our time chatting with the neighbors, including dodging what was starting to develop in to a LOOOOOONG conversation (Ben saw an opening and we DIPPED out of there), looking at the park maps, and planning out a loose schedule for the time here in the park. This is a very low key campground, and once the sun set, we were able to sit quietly outside, looking at the stars and watching satellites cruise by, far overhead.

There is also a pair of elk that have claimed this campground as their own personal grazing pastures, and we got to watch the mama elk startle a few of our unsuspecting neighbors.

Boy, we sure did get a kick out of that dude’s little jump when he looked up and the elk was right there. Although fairly calm and tame, they are still big wild animals and can be unpredictable.

Later in the evening, as the sun was fully down and the stars were shining brightly and innumerable up above, Ben went to go step outside to see what could be seen. After checking for curious elk, which would be nearly invisible in the dark campground until it was sniffing your hair, we got a couple of pics and then shut the airstream down for the night.

We will do a bit of exploring and check the place out tomorrow, but for tonight, we are just hoping to enjoy the cool air!

Oh, and one word of advice. When you are traveling between varying elevations, there will be an impact on anything you have in a sealed or semi sealed container. We bought this bread before we drove into Zion, right around 3,000 feet above sea level.

Now that we are just over 7,000 feet, there is significantly less air pressure, so anything that is sealed suddenly has less air pressure pushing against all sides.

As we sat there, reading quietly, just before going off to bed, we kept smelling bread. After a very brief investigation, we determined that the entire stock of sealed up loaves of bread and packs of buns was just farting away as the pressure inside the bags far exceeded the pressure outside. We both agreed that when comparing the many things that can and do fart in such a small, enclosed space, gluten free bread was probably the least heinous of the possible sources.

Today is our last day in the Zion area, and holy guacamole, summer is here! Every single RV spot at this campground is filled with mega busses and uber fifth wheels, we think we even saw a sixth wheel in there somewhere. And it is one toasty mofo outside today. It’s 103 ° in the shade and not a single cloud in the sky. Even at 4% humidity, there is very little going on outside the various campers, trailers, busses, Jeeps, and whatever else is in this place. The AC units are going full blast and thankfully, there is a gentle breeze coming from the vicinity of the electric meters, whose needles must be spinning at 30,000 rpm. We would not want the utility bill here with 190 RV’s sucking down power as fast as they can.

And the AC unit on our little airstream is absolutely not able to keep up with this outside temperature.

We had planned to use this last day in Zion for laundry, a bit of cleanup and organization, and maybe visit a couple of the local shops, looking for T-shirts etc. We did all that and we even shamelessly stopped at a bike rental place to get educated on which e-bikes are best because they had a wonderful misting fan.

So what to do next?

A nap is out since it’s 93 degrees inside the airstream. Do we go to a museum or to the visitor center, just to casually soak in the cooler temps? That would involve mingling with more sweaty people and their armpits, so no. Do we go wedge ourselves in to the little campground pool, along with all of our other camper friends? With as many kids that are hopping around in there and undeniably peeing it up, nope. Or do we sit down at the laptop and bitch about the heat and stupid people in our daily blog?

We’ll give you one guess as to which one we did.

As a matter of fact, our plan for tomorrow was to head down to Las Vegas for a night before continuing on to the Grand Canyon. The forecast for Vegas? 110 degrees and 3% humidity. This is the first time I’ve looked at a weather forecast and have seen a negative chance of precipitation. Like, there is so little chance of rain, that they took the possibility to negative territory. But, as they say, it certainly is a dry heat. As we were walking to the local stores, we were careful to keep our thighs from rubbing together and unwittingly sparking a forest fire… yeah, it’s that dry and dangerous.

It’s one thing to be all set up at a campground, in the shade, with the air on overnight so that the airstream has a fighting chance of staying cool during the day. It is another thing entirely to shut the power down, and drag the closed off metal tube through the desert for four to five hours, only to plug in at the Vegas campground and try to fight what is now probably 120 degree temps just soaked into every metal panel and structural component inside the camper.

Plus, no offense, but we’ve never done anything but lose money in Vegas, so we used our time between griping about how hot it is in here to find a campground somewhere cooler. Anywhere cooler.

That is how we ended up cancelling Vegas and instead, we are going to head down to the south rim of the Grand Canyon a day earlier than planned. Thank God, when we called, they had an RV spot open up, so we are good to go.

The weather forecast at Grand Canyon calls for highs in the mid 80’s and lows in the mid 40’s. If you had asked us if Ann would have ever been excited about heading in to a forecast like that, we would have said, nope, not excited.

But today, we’re both very much looking forward to some 40’s at night!

Ironically, one of the things we organized this morning was putting away all of our cold weather gear haha. Think we will need it again? Nah. Guess we were a bit premature on that. Luckily, everything we have with us is pretty much within an arms length or two, so a little rustling around and shifting of various totes and bags and we will be able to fish out our cold weather stuff whenever we need it.

But that day is NOT today. Today, I don’t want to even look at a pair of pants or a sweatshirt.

We did need to shift camping spots this morning because we extended our stay by a day and the spot we were in was booked for the last day. So we said goodbye to the mega-bus, inconsiderate buttholes next to us. We won’t say what state they were from, but Nosy Nora in the Colorado campground was nothing compared to these folks. About 5 minutes after they backed their bus to within an inch of the wall that ran behind our line of camping spots, we had all five of their kids’ e-bikes parked on our site and behind our Airstream.

Our Airstream isn’t a behemoth, so we felt ok about the 5 ft of space we left behind us so we wouldn’t have to look out our dining window directly into a huge wall and fence. Instead, we got to watch five children come and go on their bikes about 100 times a day. One of their boys even entertained us during our dinner on their first night by peeing on the block wall behind our camper. Guess he didn’t see us eating right there. 🙄 Boys! Plus we found out on the morning we moved spots that they were charging their bikes using OUR electrical panel. To add to our misery, their pudgy chocolate lab kept laying out doggy snicker bars by our truck and the kids kept walking in front of our starlink, breaking the signal so we couldn’t work on the blog. UGH!

So this morning, we hauled the camper a couple hundred feet over to the only spot available in the campground. We miss the tree we were parked under but not the assholes lol. The shade, or lack thereof, makes a massive difference in this direct sun. The positive is that we did get our view back of the Zion peaks.

So, no Vegas for us this time, which means that we have now driven as far west as we are going to on this trip. Our travels start taking us back east and ultimately towards Florida, but we still have three weeks left on this trip.

Next stop, Grand Canyon! And cooler nights!

We are headed out to cook dinner as we speak. The grill is so hot from being in the direct sun all day, I doubt we will even need to turn it on to cook the chicken tonight!

We decided to take the very scenic, two hour drive from Zion to Bryce Canyon National Park today to see what we missed in 2023, when we motored through. Plus, our cousin Nancy said it was one of her favorite parks and we’re pretty close! So, we loaded up the hiking stuff, made sure the airstream was locked up and doing its best to stay cool behind us, and we set off at the bright and early crack of 9:30 for Bryce!

Made it to Bryce and this time, we found a parking spot!

After a quick pre-hike potty visit, we set off for the Navajo Trail Loop, a trail marked as an easy / moderate 1.9 mile hike through the hoodoos and canyons of Bryce! According to the googles, hoodoos are tall, thin rock columns, often compared to totem poles, that are formed primarily by erosion. Rain, acid rain, and wind all contribute to their formation, and when melted snow works its way down in to crevices and cracks and it freezes again, it causes the rocks to split and splinter. This is apparently called frost wedging. Once there has been a bunch of frost wedgies, the result is a landscape like you’ll see in the pics. Tall rocky outcroppings surround very narrow canyons, with steep climbs in and out for the adventurous hikers.

Today, we were a part of the group of adventurous hikers. We figured it can’t be too terrible of a hike, as we were following a grandma clutching her giant purse and another woman in a dress and flip flops, but right off the bat the drop offs are SCARY. Logically though, if these people can do this hike in resort wear, then we’re definitely over-dressed in our full hiking gear. Plus we have our CamelBak’s full of water and first aid supplies. Luckily, we didn’t embarrass ourselves more by bringing our hiking sticks. Geez, that would have been truly embarrassing.

The steep, heavily switchbacked trail quickly led down between the massive red rock walls. As we descended, we saw an awful lot of people coming up who were really wheezing and gasping and sweating like they had just finished a marathon! Between that and the very steep drop offs from one switchback trail to the next just below, we were already getting mildly concerned about what lay ahead.

After scrutinizing the people who looked most like they were about to fall over and die, we did note that many of the struggling, wheezing, uphill “hikers” were definitely in “couch potato condition.” This gave us the confidence to just keep going and we would deal with the uphill part of the hike when it happened. We’re old but we’re not in terrible shape.

Just like many of the other national parks we’ve visited on this epic trip, we were just floored by the natural beauty of the place. Around every corner, we saw interesting rock formations, hardscrabble, twisty, pine trees that had grown straight up between two narrow canyons walls, despite likely only getting direct sun for a few hours a day, as it passed by directly overhead, and eroded terrain that must be like a raging river when the snow melts.

Apparently, while rare, hoodoos exist all over the world, but there are more here in Bryce Canyon than anywhere else. And they are everywhere. Really cool.

Hoodoo who?

We gently stepped and sometimes lightly skidded our way down the trail to the bottom, losing elevation with every single step. As we progressed, we noted that most of the people of Walmart, who we had passed at the top were no longer passing us coming out. Huh, they must have turned around. (Note, the subtle foreshadowing!)

We reached the bottom of the loop, which curved clockwise to begin the climb back up. It didn’t take very long at all before the light chatter stopped completely and heavy breathing started. Mind you, we were back up at 7,000 feet or so, and us Florida flatlanders were just not used to this.

We climbed and climbed, passing neat rock formations and finding rare shady spots to just breath for a bit. The number of pictures slowed down considerably, especially the ones where Ben, trotting along ahead, would cheerfully say “Smile, Ann!” and Ann would mutter something darkly under her breath before grimacing for the camera. Before long, Ben was huffing and puffing too, and the camera BS came to a stall.

As we climbed, we started passing those same clueless folks that had no idea what they were about to get in to! We even passed a big old dude, just raw-dogging the hike in a tank top, sweatpants and sandals, with no water, no hat, no walking sticks. We would have warned him, but we were too busy doing our own impression of couch potatoes, breathing heavy, looking kind of desperate, and sucking down water from the camelbaks we were both wearing and CURSING ourselves for not bringing our walking sticks. DUMB DUMB DUMB.

We eventually made it back up to the top of the loop at the parking area, incident free we might add (there was panic in the last 1/4 mile of the climb but it’s hard to poop your pants when you’re dying!). We headed for the truck, then to the visitor center to purchase our official visit sticker for the Airstream and then began our two hour drive back to Zion. While invigorating and great exercise, it was face meltingly hot and we were ready for a cool drive back in the AC.

We cruised back towards Zion on the same beautiful highways that we had driven that morning. We had passed what appeared to be a forest fire on the way up and had googled it to see what was going on. Turns out, it was a 1900 acre fire that had been burning for three days. We saw a helicopter flying overhead with the little water bucket thing, so the forest service was all over it. All we could do was watch from a very far distance as the fire quickly spread through uninhabited forest. Got some neat pics though…

Just as we were about to go back through the long tunnel leading in to Zion, we saw a herd of bighorn sheep just chilling on the side of the road. What is a group of desert bighorn sheep called? A band? Who comes up with these? Anyway, there they were.

Finally, we passed through the Zion – Carmel Tunnel and made our way back to the airstream far below to just chill for the rest of the afternoon. Here is a video of us coming through the tunnel.

Not sure what day we will publish this, as it usually takes us a couple days to finish writing, editing, and posting these little stories, but in our universe, it is Fathers Day today. We wish all of the fathers in our vast audience of about nine readers a great, albeit belated, Fathers Day! While we would have loved to spend the day with our fantastic adult kids, they have to work and we don’t, so there you go.

We worked really hard to plan for every possible uncomfortable situation that could arise with another bike ride. We definitely wanted this Zion bike experience to be more pleasant, compared to our chilly, posterior-pounding Glacier bike ride.

First of all, we don’t have to worry too much about snow on the road or freezing to death on this ride because it’s hot as heck here in Zion, so no need to pack extra layers or gloves. Secondly, no need to carry bear spray on our hip here, as we’re told that Zion isn’t really home to too many bears. Thirdly, my privates are mostly healed up and the butt cheek bruises are mostly faded from our Glacier bike ride. BUT JUST IN CASE, I made a very recent padded undergarment purchase, aka an “insurance policy,” so there shouldn’t be any pain today and I’m told my butt should ALSO look more shapely. 😉

With my butt padded, our packs loaded with water, protein bars, important first aid stuff (that we’ve luckily not needed, thus far) and “pottying in the wild” supplies on our backs, as well as hiking poles wedged into Ben’s pack, we set off for the bike rental joint at the early hour of 8 am. I am NOT bright eyed nor bushy tailed at this time of the morning. We’re breaking my 9 am rule, simply to beat the heat.

When we arrived at the bike rental place, the first thing we noticed was that the seats were made for actual butts, instead of hyper tough and athletic steel butts. We might be in for less butt-punching today with the granny seats. 🙌 Aren’t they big and beautiful?

We got the 30 second training on the use of the bikes from the rental dude, made a last minute air-conditioned bathroom stop, and we headed out on the little highway that leads from the base of the canyon all the way to the top, where the Narrows hike is located. Again, now we only had to contend with the busses on this scenic drive, which was perfect! Finally, we could look out the left side of our bikes to see the old rock slide area instead of seeing an armpit or an ass on the bus! Everything outside smelled a lot better than that bus too!

What a difference it was to be on bikes vs in the sardine can bus. It was night and day! We engaged the little electric pedal assist motor and just cruised silently and effortlessly up the road.

The views were just amazing! We biked all the way up to the top of the mountain, then turned around and glided back down for a while. When we wanted to stop for a pic, we stopped for a pic. For example, not far down the road from the top, was a sign for the Great White Throne! Now, by now, you should be well aware that any roadside throne must be investigated to prevent future incidents. We looked around for a while, but figured this must be metaphorical. No secret pooping places out here, sadly.

We got back on the bikes and headed on down to stop 6 to use the prequalified potty’s there, then down to stop 5 to start our hike. When we were here 18 months ago, the bridge was still shut down, so at that point, we accidentally made a 3 mile hike in to an 8 mile hike, which included 4 miles of horse poop path.

This time, the bridge was repaired and open, and we were able to get in a nice hike, with no surprises of either kind, other than finding places for Ben to pee. Geez louise, if I’m the number two machine, Ben pees enough for both of us. I swear, it’s every 15 minutes! Thankfully, men don’t have to go through nearly as much rigmarole to take a whizz as women do. Just a glance up and down the trail, find something interesting to aim at, and let her rip, tater chip. By the way, I argued with the iPad for several minutes over the spelling of rigmarole. It is clearly missing another “a” somewhere, but I am not going to argue any more. (Rigamarole)

Made it back to the Emerald Pools, not sure if it was the upper, the middle, or the lower pool, but it was definitely greenish and pool-ish, so we went with it.

We finished our hike, and headed back on down the road on the bikes. The bike ride alone was totally worth doing, and much like the drive up the Zion Carmel Highway, if you only have time for a few days in Zion, just rent the bikes and cruise the road. Amazing experience.

We wrapped up the bike ride with no sore butts to report, and headed back to the airstream to cool down.

Tomorrow, we’re taking a road trip to Bryce Canyon National Park. It’s a two hour drive through stunning scenery, and while we made the same trip in 2023, my stupid pancreatitis attack kept us from enjoying it. Back then, we were only able to drive into the visitor center, see that there was no parking for a truck and a camper, we let Pepper out to take a number two (passive aggressive, I know, but she did have to go, so….) and then we left.

This time, we’re just making a day trip with the truck, so parking should be easier. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any pancreatitis issues this time 🙏🏻, so we wanted to give Bryce National Park another shot.

And if we don’t like it, perhaps one of us can leave a number two there. You never know…

Unbelievably clear skies last night as we settled in to a FINALLY cooled down airstream, and we were able to get a couple pics of the canyons surround us.

Great campground, but holy guacamole, is it sunny and hot! Thankfully, we had a nice big fat tree over our site, and we backed that Airstream as close as we could to that tree, nestling the butt of our camper right up to the trunk, and wow has that made a difference! Much more pleasant during the heat of the day.

Ben had a 5 am board call and was able to get another pic of the deep blue, pre-dawn sky. Stars still out!

Since Ben rudely interrupted my sleep and I was up anyway, we decided to get in an early morning hike and see some areas of the park we never made it to, on our last visit. It was already toasty pretty early in the morning, so this was the only way to beat the horrible afternoon heat.

We ended up finding a little trail head, thanks to social media (begrudgingly and surprisingly!), on the far end of the road that climbs and twists back on itself many times on the way through from one entrance of the park to the other. Just the drive is worth the visit to the park. You wouldn’t have to do a single hike, you could just drive this road and pull over at the little pullouts along the way to look around, and just explore the park that way and still be overwhelmed.

We popped through the very narrow, very dark 1.1 mile long tunnel at the far end of the park and had to drive a bit down the road to find a parking spot that we could squeeze our oversized truck into. With the sun beating down on us already, we suited up, and started hiking back towards the beginning of the trail. As we approached the trail head, we noted a VERY IMPORTANT structure, available to incident-prone hikers. And it was modern! Well, modern in the sense that it was slightly bigger than a porta toilet but it still didn’t flush. lol

Speaking of incidents. I know we got off to a rough start with the, ahem, trail one of us left through a string of national parks stretching from Colorado through Wyoming and Montana, and back through Idaho and now Utah, but this Zion Canyon area takes me to another level of “concern.”

Up in Tetons, Yellowstone and Glacier, they had green things growing out of the ground in various shapes, sizes, and densities. Trees, bushes, brushes, weeds, wild flowers and grasses. Lots of places to hide behind, in the event of “incidents.” Here, NOTHING. You’re either jammed in to a fairly tight canyon to do your business, or you’re pretty much completely exposed. Unless you’re wearing all tan or brown, you’re gonna be visible. FOR MILES.

Even if you think you’re “hiding,” in this particular national park, it’s guaranteed that there’s someone there. High visibility and a ton of people are both terrible for my emergency bathroom options. If we ever return to Zion for a third time, I definitely need a military style, tan, camo net that I can squat under and a bigger backpack to fit it in. ✅

Just as a side note, there is no such thing as a “silent fart” in a canyon. Can someone tell my husband that? His excuses for why he keeps trying to get away with it, just don’t fly with me. 🙄 How he make those kinds of noises ALLLLL day and doesn’t have an emergency, is beyond me.

So anyway… we hit the trailhead at Canyon Overlook Trail, and immediately started climbing up in to the canyon, away from the little road behind us. This whole canyon is just red and grey rock in various stages of breaking down from mountain to boulders to rock to pebbles to dirt to dust. All piled up on top of each other. It’s lumpy and dusty and there are awesome places where, long ago, relentlessly flowing water just carved big swoops in to the solid rock, or where bigger boulders piled up, all shaded (mostly) by steep, narrow canyon walls above.

We had a couple of scary height spots, but a pretty neat hike. We were both thinking, Hmmm, I thought it would be busier here. Turns out it was, just not where we were. More on that in a moment.

It was a fun hike! A mild, near incident averted by the pre-reserved bathroom, and we decided to go back, pack a lunch, and head in to the park via the shuttle just to have a picnic by the Virgin River and plan the next day’s adventure.

The road in to the park itself is closed to cars, so you need to take a little shuttle in to the park, or since we are really close to the park entrance at this campground, you just walk a half mile. Then, you take the shuttle that only operates inside the park, and you get off at one of 9 stops, from which you can check out the local trail heads and overlooks. Decent system. Designed to move tons and tons of people through the park.

Full of excitement and hope, we set off for the shuttle. We loaded on to the shuttle and found our place to stand, where we could hang on easily. It was like being in China because the people kept coming on and kept coming on and kept coming on until finally we were, as Ben said, “nuts to butts.” A bulging shuttle, packed with a Walmarts worth of people trundled up the hillside toward the bus only area of the park. Our operator was bright and cheerful, as she described what was going on around us and what to expect as we rode our way into the canyon. If you look to the left of the bus, you’ll see where rockslides have taken out the road several times. We both turned to our left to look at what she was describing and our only view was the hairy armpits of people standing next to us, who were also holding onto the railing above. When the tour operators said blah blah blah is on the right, we decided not to take our chances, and just stayed staring ahead.

We made it to the last stop and the top of the park. The last comment from our cheerful driver was that it was unsafe to go in or near the Virgin River water, as there was an outbreak of some kind of algae or flesh eating bacteria (not sure which she said 🤔). That little announcement made us decide to just forego the river side picnic and just have the picnic right there at shuttle stop 9.

I MUST comment that the beautiful modern bathrooms at Stop 9 were mysteriously closed and a parking lot full of porta toilets had been substituted for the beautiful modern bathrooms. Hmmm. I can’t help myself and I never miss a chance to “go,” but these were GROSS. Every door I opened had a potty full to the TOP and not a stitch of TP. I didn’t have to go that badly. Pass! Moving on.

Gluten free sandwiches with BBQ chips in front of my fav closed bathroom.

Even as blazing hot as it was, we decided to hike down to the start of the famous Narrows. We had no intention of going through the narrows today. Just hiking up to them. Hiking the Narrows requires that you basically walk in the river (which according to our bus driver, was apparently tainted at the moment), going from ankle deep to some places waist and chest deep. Depends on the season. Looked like a wet day from the folks that were coming out with their shirts half wet.

It was a neat hike for the most part. Beautiful canyons on both sides of us, neat river running through the middle, and THOUSANDS of people doing the same thing we were. It wasn’t long before we felt like we were in a line at Disney and we weren’t enjoying the scenery as much. We took a deep breath, stepped off the path for a while to let the crowd ebb through, and we turned back around towards Stop 9. It was still beautiful, but we were just peopled out.

We loaded back on to the shuttle in the same manner as before, this time saying, let’s sit so we can see the sites that they were talking about on the way up! Almost as soon as we said that and sat down, then the bus, once again, filled up to capacity, and now, instead of armpits, we had a couple of foreign traveler butts to keep us involuntarily occupied for the duration of the trip. Speaking of that, the driver cheerfully announced that we would be making every stop on the way down the mountain to pick up more travelers, so pack in! Uggh, many butts later, we pooped, err, popped off the bus, beelined for the camper for a well deserved “stay away from people” break.

Tomorrow is e-bike day! We went hunting in the tourist trap stores and found a pair of expensive padded bloomers for me to try out and hopefully, this time, it will be a better ride!

After a quiet ride down the highway from Idaho, we had planned to stop by Bear Lake, which sits sidesaddle in both Idaho and Utah, but a headache snuck up on Ann, so we decided just to head straight down to the campground in Heber City, just outside of Park City, UT.

Ben and the skiing gang have skied Park City two or three times, and always thought it was a really neat, although very busy and very pricey little ski village. It was neat to see it in the summer. There was a ton of maintenance under way and lots of rushed remodeling to take advantage of the short construction season.

Since Ann wasn’t really feeling up to cooking, we decided to grab dinner at one of Ben’s favorite Thai restaurants, on Main Street. Nothing like a little curry to cure a headache.

As we got closer, there were clues that something wasn’t quite right. Either an apocalypse had hit while we were finding a parking spot, just one street over, or there was some kind of emergency situation we had accidentally snuck ourselves into. No one was around on Main Street and there were only emergency vehicles blocking both ends of the street.

The best way to get where you’re going when things don’t look good is to keep pressing on, right? So, we kept walking to our restaurant destination, expecting someone to start yelling at us or Zombies to pop out of nowhere. We finally made it to the Thai restaurant 10 minutes before our reservation. There was one dude who came to the door to let us know there had been a natural gas leak and the area had just been cleared. Apparently, he was the only staff that showed up once the area was cleared and he didn’t seem too confident that he could produce our dinner by himself.

Well poop, lol. We’ve had hail storms, tornadoes, close bear encounters and bike seats made of granite on this trip. Some little old gas leak wasn’t going to ruin our date night.

We didn’t get our planned Thai food but thanks to the need to evacuate everyone earlier, we had no competition for a table at the next restaurant up the block. Sushi is good too!

Our plans for the next day weren’t really defined but we knew we had some errands and chores to do before heading on to our next adventure in Zion. All our bloomers needed to be washed again and the refrigerator and freezer needed to be restocked before we hit “no grocery store” land.

It was about the time we were planning our strategy and reaching out to a local friend that we got a message from a local family member. We were aware that we had friends, as well as family somewhere in Utah but did not realize we were camped almost in their backyard! Thanks to THIS VERY BLOG, we realized our proximity, and we were able to shift up plans and spend some time with our cousins (or third cousins, twice removed, thrice baked? I never understood that stuff). We met them at Sundance, which I also knew was somewhere in Utah but didn’t realize it was 20 minutes from us. Really a special place and we had a blast catching up with John and Nancy!

After a lovely dinner and great conversation at the Owl Bar, at Sundance, we walked around the home base resort of the famed film festival and got some of the history of Sundance. Really a pretty cool place and absolutely stunning scenery. We said our goodbyes (knowing we’d see them in about month at our family reunion) and made our way back to the campground.

Once back to the campground, we spent our last evening in Heber City hanging out under the stars, with our little tiny airstream just mashed between monster mega busses and extended length 5th wheel campers. We really felt like the little kid brother camping with the older kids. But ours sure does drive and pull pretty easy! 😂

Once it got dark, we snuck off to the “adults only” hot tub area in the RV park. We felt the need to investigate what exactly “adults only” meant. We’re still kinda new to the RV park/resort thing, so we’re still learning about all the little intricacies and subtle, unwritten details about campground etiquette. We were really hoping “adults only” just meant no kids allowed, but we quietly feared that it might mean suits and trunks were optional. You don’t always find the sexiest age group, nor body type hanging out at the RV pool. No offense to our fellow RV park hanger outers. These scenes are not typically Miami spring break type of scenes. The truth hurts lol.

Anywho, there was one other couple there and they had suits on (thank goodness!) and there was a lingering whiff of weed coming from the cozy fire pit area. This is Mormon Land! Hmmm. The little rec building attached to it smelled like Mac & Cheese (evidence of the munchies!) and although yummy, there’s not much “adult” about it. Pretty boring scene here at the “adult only” pool area. Plus, as adults, the lights were turned off on us at 10 pm. Don’t worry. We showed them! We didn’t leave the area until 10:20 pm. Honestly, they should have just called it the “Old Fart Pool Area.” There weren’t any kids allowed and, to our great relief, that’s as special as it got.

The next morning, we packed up under the blazing sun and headed south towards Zion National Park. We were informed that we were pronouncing “Zion” incorrectly by a few of the locals. We had been pronouncing it like Zaiii – yaawn, and apparently, it is supposed to rhyme with the word “lion,” which with a slight southern twang sounds like “lyin.” So “ZI-uhn”. We practiced for the whole five hour drive. Then we pulled in to the campground and we were welcomed with “Welcome to Zaiii-yaawn!”

So we just gave up with pronouncing it correctly. Just by looking at us and hearing our voices, they’ll know we don’t belong here. Using the phrase “ya’ll,” is a dead giveaway you’re not from around these parts.

We were here back in late 2023 on the retirement tour. We loved the area and really thought it was just awesome, and we did get in a great hike to the Emerald Pools while we were here the first time. However, after eating a new food last trip, Ann got sick and we had to cut the visit short. That’s why we decided to come back, so we could give it another shot!

We had picked a shady spot which we had noted the last time we were here (that’s one of the perks of returning to a place you’ve already camped I guess). Got all set up, and will be hitting the park in the morning!

We had a blast earlier this week visiting friends in southern Idaho! Had a really good time with Michael and Therese and they were absolutely tremendous hosts! If you’re ever in the area of Buhl, ID and have need of an outstanding AirBnB, look no further!

First, about the area we were in, let’s zoom out for a moment. Way out.

Basically, this is high desert. But it’s not totally arid, the ground is certainly fertile. Lots of agriculture on what otherwise would have just been a relatively flat, very wide plane. Lots of fresh water readily available because the area sits on top of an aquifer comprised of basically old old old lava. It’s stuffed with water so the irrigation has been simple as the city has developed over the centuries, and there are several large geothermal plants that make power where the water really flows out. Big challenge as the city grows though.

Here is the really cool part though; they figured out that 10,000 – 15,000 years ago, there was a huge lake on the plain. How they “know” this, I’m not sure. Did they find a 15,000 year old highway sign from before the flood, or something? 🤔 Anyway, we’re talking a HUGE lake. Lake Bonneville sat in what is now the Great Salt Lake Basin. But it was way bigger. 32,000 sq miles. The size of South Carolina. Bigger than Lake Superior.

So, what I am saying, is it was big.

And the natural dam that had contained the lake gave way.

They figure a 410 foot tall wall of water ripped down through the river valley below at 70 mph. At its peak, 33 million cubic feet per second of water flowed across the Snake River Plain. It ripped along, wide open, for 6 weeks (Again, how do they know this?) and then slowed to merely a massive torrent for another year. They’re guessing 380 cubic MILES of water. And it carved out this massive canyon for a long long way downhill, and left rich, fine, crushed lava, silt, and organic stuff to line the valley, while the solid cliffs stood sharply on either side. And the plump aquifer that had lain quietly beneath the topsoil and surface material was now just rent wide open, its capillaries and arteries and veins all severed at the new breach, and waterfalls have just gushed out to fall to the wide, rocky, snake river far below.

Did I say that this thing is 600 feet deep?!!

Waterfalls taller than Niagara Falls (by 15 feet, but still)

There is a bridge here where it’s legal to BASE jump / parachute off of it, and people do. Sadly, people also jump to their certain deaths from this bridge.

It’s a pretty low key group of mostly life long Idahoans and Covid-inspired transplants from the usual places, who populate this thriving community atop the two, now opposing cliff sides, both looking down on a wide, green, lush, valley far below with a meandering, wide river. The entire community is solidly perched upon this crack, and the residents casually drive up and down the many graded and twisty roads to go in to or out of the canyon. It’s just so normal. All ag, most commercial and industrial stuff, and most retail, is up on the plains above. Lots of residences and some light commercial like restaurants and gas stations, and marina are down in the valley. 

Honestly, if this hadn’t blown up in to a town centuries ago, as it was a fantastic place to hunt, fish, be protected from the elements, this would 100% be a national park. 

Hydroelectric generators and power stations run off of the water pouring down the falls or gushing out of the ripped open capillaries from the aquifer and they power EVERYTHING and almost everyone has a spring somewhere close by for fresh water. At least in the valley.

As the Snake River winds its way downhill towards Washington State, it is still a very wide and fast moving river, but due to the way it was formed, it is also very rocky. Rocky to the point where no one has a boat with any kind of hull depth or draft, as it would crash on the barely submerged rocks, where only the locals can safely navigate. Kayaks and jetskis are everywhere. It is a beautiful river to explore, as there are many falls, and quiet coves tucked in where rock was rapidly deposited during the flood.

Industry has also taken a good foothold here as well. We saw lots of ag on the plains and in the valley. Clif bars are made here. Chobani yogurt is made here (barf). There are also a bunch of trout farms that sell to big time restaurant chains.

It’s such a neat place.

You definitely should not go (say the locals lol). Yuck.

Secretly, we loved Idaho but we’ll respect the locals and not dish all their beautiful secrets to the four people that read this haha. Idahosanites are just fine with everyone believing that Idaho = POTATOES 🥔

We spent our last evening in Glacier lightly packing up after our four nights here, looking at maps for the driving day ahead of us, relaxing by the campfire in the best camping spot we have ever had, and icing down Ann’s sore booty from the great biking adventure.

Packed, fed, relaxed, and buttocks iced, we hit the sack, ready (sorta) to hit the road in the morning!

As a process check, we’re about halfway through the trip, depending how you measure it. In total time on the road, we’re not quite to halfway. In total number of nights that will be spent in the airstream, we are at 24, with 24 to go. It is actually going really well!

The airstream is certainly cozy. Storage space is at a premium but we’ve managed to organize and reorganize throughout the trip to make things more streamlined. However, it’s amazing how things still get “lost.” Considering the Airstream is approximately less than 180 sq ft, it’s hard to imagine things can get lost but we’re still looking for an avocado we bought two days ago. Crazy! Soon we’ll smell where we lost it. 😩 Honestly, we have to get really creative to protect anything soft while we’re bouncing down the road. So things like bananas, whole cantaloupes, tomatoes, and avocados are hard to keep from bruising in cabinets or the refrigerator. After throwing away many bruised and battered produce items, we finally started experimenting with letting the produce ride in the middle of our bed, with surround made of bed pillows to keep them safe. Even then, super horrible, crappy roads can sneak up on us, and even those tricks don’t work. Bananas, by far, are the most thrown away, unused item for this trip.

All in all, we’ve really enjoyed this trip. We’ve only had maybe 2-3 instances where we were both in urgent need of the one and only potty onboard. Thus far, we’ve resolved those conflicts with a very quickly delivered, very well reasoned argument/plea from both parties about the relative severity of the urgency. Sometimes the argument/plea is delivered only with body language and facial expressions. Whoever wins “first dibs” gives a heartfelt promise to make it fast, and a sign of commitment by leaving the phone on the dining table , so as not to be distracted.

Or Ben just pees outside. There’s only been one time, a very early morning, where Ben had to make use of the campground potty house. As cold as it was that morning, there was no other possible scenario. Ben was the only one of us that would brave those temperatures. Bottom line is that the entire trip has been pretty incredible.

On that note, we have met a LOT of people on this trip that have sold their homes and gone full time, working a bit at campgrounds for free campsites and utilities. They describe six months in Arizona or Key West, or Texas during the winters, and places like Glacier, Yellowstone, etc in the summers. People have been doing this for years and years and seem to have really figured it out and have settled in to a groove. Ann and I talked about it and said, nope. Not going full time!

Back to the topic of the present day journey, we headed out toward today’s, destination, a one night stay for us, North Fork, ID, population 299. Not 300. Wanna bet everyone in town knows the name of the dude who didn’t respond to the census?

It was an awesome drive, this time skirting the eastern shoreline of Flathead Lake, a huge, natural lake formed by glacier movement through the area. For scale, Flathead Lake is about half the size of San Fransisco Bay, bigger surface area than Lake Tahoe (although not nearly as deep), and mostly surrounded by tall pine stands all around.

Along the way, there were a ton of really cool lake shore properties and you could just tell the place was built for summer activities, with boat docks, mostly still empty of boats, lake houses with small unassuming entrance and parking on our side, the road side, but you could see that these unassuming houses opened up to expansive, multi storied, all glass fronts facing the lake. And the place was just lousy with orchards and vineyards! We were surprised to see acres and acres of waterfront orchards, mostly cherry, with clean rows, perfectly maintained grass and branches, and 8’ hog wire fences around each property, likely to keep out the deer. It was just a gorgeous drive.

At the south end of Flathead Lake, we turned on to Montana 93, another twisty, curvy, climby state highway that took us up another 5000 feet to cross Chief Joseph Pass at 7,264 feet. Once again, God was watching over us as we had nobody pushing us while we navigated the tight hairpin turns with the airstream in tow behind us, following us closely through the curves. Pictures just do not do it justice, but we tried anyway!

We decided to stop in what we thought was good old sleepy Missoula, MT to restock on groceries ahead of 7 nights in Utah. Missoula has grown up a bit since Ann harassed this place nearly 30 years ago. It was jammed in that town! Beautiful scenery and the city has largely kept up with the population growth, but if Walmart on a Saturday afternoon (is it Saturday?) is any indication, they are still rapidly outgrowing their britches. We picked up what we needed, shoved the groceries and supplies in every nook and most cranny’s that we could find, and continued on the drive down to North Fork.

2.5 hrs after leaving Missoula, we pulled in to the Wagonhammer Campground, perfectly perched on the side of the Salmon River, with plenty of afternoon left for some downtime. We topped off the truck, cleaned up the airstream, had an relaxing dinner, and in the morning, we are headed further south to stay with a dear friend and his lovely bride in southern Idaho. Looking forward to meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones!

Oh, forgot to mention the weather! We are back to the heat! We started getting used to 70 degrees being hot during the day, which it was at 3000-8000 feet, but the nights were really chilly, getting down in to the mid 30’s.

That changes today, apparently.

We pulled in to North Fork with air temps in the upper 80’s. Hot dang, that meant someone had some leg hair to shear off and the shorts were coming back out. With not much else to do in North Fork, Idaho, a good chunk of Ann’s evening was spent with a razor in hand!

Holy moly, what a neat experience!

It turns out, every year, the Going-To-The-Sun Road is just too high and too deeply buried in snow to remain open. This is the main drag through Glacier National Park. The road is 50 miles long, with a really tight and high stretch in the middle, making it difficult to maintain in the face of heavy snow, avalanches, high winds. Pretty rough place in the winter.

But as warmer weather hits, the snow starts to melt, and once the roads are mostly clear, the park opens for the season. It is usually at least another month or more before the big road is fully open.

Until then, they have this pretty slick idea in place. They still have the blockage only at the very top of the peak, but they close the road waaaay back, more than 15 miles from the closure. The road is completely closed off to cars and trucks. But cyclists and hikers are free to travel its length, almost to the closure!

The only thing you really have to be aware of is the wildlife that likes to stand in the road. They obviously haven’t gotten the memo that the tourists are back. There were a few points in the road where we felt deer were about to chase us off but they eventually decided to move out of the way. FYI… a dorky bike bell does NOTHING to get them to move off the road. You just have to ride and hope they run off away from the road. 🫣

Other than the occasional bit of jaywalking wildlife, you can hike or bike right down the smooth two laned highway, at whatever meandering pace you want, and just soak up the absolutely beautiful surroundings. Stop at a moment’s notice to check out a waterfall of gurgling snowmelt, rushing down the mountainside to join all of the other snowmelt meeting at the bottom and engorging the river, itself twisting and turning through the valley far below.

It was already an overwhelming visit, and we were able to see maybe 15-25% of the park due to the road closure, but what we saw and experienced just blew us away.

And then to be able to just cruise through it for miles and miles as the road climbed and twisted and curved its way up through the valley and up the sides of the mountain, up 2200 feet over that 13 miles, was really something to be blessed to be able to do.

Oh, and if you will take a glance at the map of the route below, you’ll note that this was an incident free day!

We rented a pair of e-bikes from a local outfitter, and they were really pretty fancy bikes. Good suspension, disc brakes, fully integrated battery. Good, thick tires. The pedal assist bike could be off, and just be a very heavy bike, or it could be in one of four settings: providing 25% of the thrust, 50%, 75%, and almost 100%. The pedal assist really made the relentless uphill climb quite a bit easier, and they could have made it effortless at full power, but the battery would have pooted out long before reaching the top.

The bike really made the climb quite a bit more comfortable (that’s Ben’s opinion!)!!!

MY opinion is that the seat was made stone. It literally felt like someone took a piece of granite from the mountain and chiseled two small indentations, which I guess they thought seemed “close enough” to human butt cheeks and then added a granite thong to it, just for funsies. I don’t believe for a minute this bike was designed by a woman OR for a woman. It hit hard in ALL the lower, delicate woman parts. How can the first 15 minutes of peddling uphill cause the fattest part of my butt to bruise and bones in my pelvis, which at one time were flexible enough to birth babies, be shattered? 😱

Honestly, the pain was so bad that I didn’t care how dorky I ended up looking if it saved my tush. I was just on the borderline of cold when we started out, so the first thought I had about shoving one of my shirt layers down the backend of my pants wouldn’t work or I’d freeze to death. I had the perfect little pillow in the truck that I use for my lower back and that would have fit nicely down my pants and would have softened the butt punches, but it’s miles back in a random campground parking lot. Honestly, I even thought about taking the helmet off my head and strapping it onto the seat to see if that would add any cushion. I couldn’t get the straps on the helmet tight enough to stay on the world’s smallest thong seat. 🙄 The rest of the contents of my pack were useless. Granola bar, nope. A can of bear spray, definitely not helpful here. Chapstick might help my butt later but would do nothing to help now. All useless items for the problem at hand.

Even more annoying was that Ben kept taking pictures over his shoulder as HE effortlessly glided up the road. If he would have asked me ONE more time to smile before my sore neither region made it to the top, I would have seriously considered making him sleep outside the Airstream that night. Luckily he’s learned to read my facial expressions over the last 33 years.

I have much greater respect for those who ride bikes on a regular basis. I am convinced they must have been born with cast iron undercarriages, or gooches, or grundles, or even the other word, whatever they have going on down there, it must be tough.

As we slogged our way up the hill, I was making good use of the electric assist, and Ben, to his credit, kept checking in to make sure I was ok, but my dang butt just kept getting more and more sore. We would stop for a scenic view or to check out a water fall, and it was a great break for my butt and bits, but then we would get back on, and I was back to trying to find a tolerable, never mind comfortable position.

We finally reached the top, or close enough because I started seeing huge piles of snow on both sides of the road above us. That was enough for me to call it because the temp kept dropping too, so we had a quick breather and a protein bar, and started our way back down the mountain. And it was DOWN, all the way and FREEZING! And of course the sun had disappeared by then and dark black clouds were moving in.

Luckily, my legs were not needed for pedaling for a while, which was bliss because I didn’t feel them anymore anyway. What I wouldn’t give for my butt and lady parts to go numb too but oh no. UGH. At least I could raise my sore fanny off of that murderous, granite hard, torture device called a seat and coast down with my weight on one lower pedal or the other!

Down we coasted, on and on through the same twists and turns we had just navigated. Passing the fellow electric bikers meandering their way up the road, as well as the hard core, no electric assist bikers, sweating and pumping up the long slow grades under their own power. We even passed a few families, with kids in carriers on the bike, being towed behind in a little carriage or in one case, tethered to Dad’s seat post with their own bike, dragging and bouncing along behind Dad, as he worked his way up the hills.

We rode 26 miles total, through just beautiful country. We definitely plan to come back to Glacier someday with the kids, but next time I am bringing my own seat and extra padding! If you edit out all the bitching about the seat, it was a stunning day with an almost overload of beautiful sights.

The evening included regular intervals of Advil, ice and a heating pad.

Despite the very early hour, the chilly morning temps (34°!😱) and a very cozy airstream, we (Ben) decided to get up at 4:30 am and drive over to Lake McDonald to try to get some sunrise photos. Ann was very much hoping Ben would sleep through that silly alarm he set. Ugh!

We did catch a neat night shot last night when Ben went outside to see if there was a chance to see northern lights. No northern lights, at least not at the early hour of 10:30 pm, but the moon was rising over the pines and it created a cool setting.

We suited up, grabbed a cup of coffee, and headed out the door before the clock struck 5 am.

It felt like we were the only ones in the park this morning, and as we stood on the pebbly shore, a quiet, slow breeze across the surface of the lake sent gentle ripples of otherwise calm lake waves to softly lap against the millions of small pebbles. A very relaxing and unique sound. Ann described it as walking through a beach made of kitty litter, the rocks were so rounded and fine.

We grabbed a couple of pictures at a few turnouts, as well as on the bridge leading in to the park, across the Middle Fork Flathead River.

Then we headed back to the Airstream for a continued nap for Ann and a board call for Ben. The plan, after naps and calls were completed, was to head back out to the park for a hike. This time, we were armed with two cans of bear spray, two knives and a thorough refresh (thanks to YouTube) on how to quickly arm, aim and fire a canister of bear spray. Watchful awareness was our best friend today!

Still a bit freaked out about the bear near miss yesterday, we headed up the trail at John’s Lake Loop, a relatively short hike, but it was starting out steep. As the road dropped away behind us, we noticed that there was no one else on the trail. It wasn’t like it was early or anything, it was like 10:30 in the morning. It was also eerily quiet in this section of the woods. We felt a small sense of relief, when the first snapping twig sound we heard was a boring old deer, which was just quietly munching away, while watching us cautiously. He wandered downhill and we kept hiking up the wide, tree-rooty trail.

Then we came across THIS huge pile of poop in the path. Like the kind a very very large bear COULD lay down. This was no dainty lady-like pile and certainly wasn’t human, as it was right in the middle of the path with no TP in sight. The very quick conversation went something like this…

Ann- “That’s horse poop, right?”

Ben- ”Pretty sure that’s horse poop.“

Ann- “Yeah, because I see grass in there.”

Ben- “Bears are omnivorous, they eat lots of grass.”

… (then there was a much shortened version of the jeopardy theme song simultaneously playing in BOTH of our brains…

Ann- “So, that could be bear poop?”

That was pretty much the end of the conversation. With no cell signal except for the one that looks like this…

We couldn’t Google what bear poop looks like, so yep, we were out of there and there wasn’t much more discussion about it.

We did an about face and boogied right back down the steep hill. Ben didn’t wander off to take any pics, so we were moving right along.

About 1/4 of the way back down, a deer, different from the one we had seen a few minutes before, bolted behind us and off to our left, away from where we had just been.

Our descending pace increased noticeably. As we exited the desolate path, back on to the road where we parked, there was a sweet looking Mennonite family just starting their journey up the path, with no hiking sticks, no bear spray or any evidence that they knew what they could possibly be getting into. But honestly, the man looked like he was used to taming unruly bulls bare-handed and the sweet, shy woman looked like she spends her days churning butter, so we figured they could handle themselves in a situation with a bear. Who knows. We could be wrong but we’re gone. Plus, if those Mennonites get eaten, maybe the bear won’t be as hungry for US!

After getting back to signal land, we googled it. After extensive poop research over the next 20 seconds, we are 94% sure it was horse poop, and 100% sure we made the right call anyway.

We drove back toward the west entrance, once again passing the beautiful Lake McDonald, which looked different with every passing change in the sunlight. We learned that it was carved by glacial activity, it is 10 miles long and 500 feet deep, with the wide basin a result of the glaciers moving through. Pretty neat. Not a bad view for what turned out to be our somewhat limited exploration of the national park, as the main road is still closed, but we have some good news on that front in a moment.

We got in a couple of small hikes down by the river. Low key and bear free. Saw another deer who saw us, but was more concerned with addressing some deer hygiene issues.

So, in the end, we got in a respectable four miles of hiking. Not bad for a late start and two changes of venue.

The rest of the afternoon was just spent doing pretty much nothing, the weather was perfect, the windows were wide open, the sun was shining, so that was enough for us!

The plan tomorrow is to pick up our e-bikes, head up Going-To-The-Sun Road to where it is still closed for snow removal at the very top, and then we continue up the highway on bikes, for the next 13 miles! It is closed for all vehicle traffic but hikers and bikers are free to head up.

We should get some great views tomorrow!

And yes, we are both taking bear spray again!

We set out for our first hike in Glacier at the crack of 9:45. Ben had a call at 9, so it was a good excuse for a lazy start.

After going through the west gate of Glacier NP, and after we passed the visitor center intersection, we were officially on the Going-To-The-Sun Road, the East – West road that crosses the entire park. Once again, an absolutely gorgeous drive, which was made even better as Lake McDonald came in to view. We were absolutely floored by the majesty of the wide, glassy smooth lake, with snow capped, heavily wooded mountains surrounding it on all sides. We have to come back here at sunset to get a pic! Will try sunrise as well, but the sun comes up at 5:36 am this far north, and we are definitely adjusting to Mountain time, so we shall see. Ben does love his sunrise pics though, and Ann may be a little grumpy in the morning, but she’s typically down for whatever, so we will likely have an early morning tomorrow.

Our objective this morning was to hike the Avalanche Lake Trail, a five mile, out and back trail leading to a lake, according to our handy map. We arrived at the trail head, thanking our timing once again, as all of the parking lots were full, but the tent camping area was not yet open, so we were able to join our other tourist friends in parking in camp sites, and we set off for the trail head.

Once again, we made a wrong turn.

With minimal signage indicating the direction of the trail, and with zero GPS signal, we wandered the parking lot/ campground for the first 3/4 mile of our hike, looking for signs to lead us to the wilderness. Because she knew Ben wouldn’t ask for directions, Ann asked a group of young men who were getting ready for a hike if they knew where the trail head started. Each of the five men looked in a different direction, so that was all the answer we needed.

We continued on our path through the campground parking lot for what seemed like 30 minutes, passing three different “closed for the season” bathrooms, which might have been just one bathroom that we looped around three times, because eventually we passed our truck again. 😩 Acting cool, this time we just followed the herd and we found the trail not 100 yards from where we parked. 😅

Here is the map of the trail today, with the familiar markings that you’ve seen before…with maybe a new marking or two.

The first new marking shows the mid-trail bathroom that we were very surprised to see, which was located not far after, well, you know. The second new indicator was the very up close and personal wildlife interaction we had today. It also very nearly caused an involuntary “incident.” More on that in a moment.

The hike was absolutely beautiful, with very thick pine trees, huge in some cases, lining a very narrow and steep canyon. All along the path we either had a roaring river or sometimes a creek flowing sometimes hurriedly and sometimes lazily, through the canyon. We passed three deer, just wandering next to the trail, keeping an eye on us hikers, but not letting our passage interrupt their grazing.

As we approached the Avalanche lake itself, the path narrowed quite a bit, and we transitioned from heavily wooded terrain like the pic above, to thick bushes and shorter trees. The vegetation really closed in on both sides, and Ben was thinking, what a great time for a bear to show up.

And one did.

Ann was trailing a few steps behind Ben, when to her right, in a little opening in the underbrush, there were some cute little tan outlined eyes, a cute little tan outlined mouth, a plump, fuzzy fur body, about the size of a medium sized dog, but with short stubby legs and sharp little claws. A black bear cub, just standing there, within 2 feet of Ann, watching us go by.

This IS NOT a picture taken by us, but Ann wanted you to experience what she experienced, so here is the closest in color and size that she could find on her internet search. Thank you Pinterest.

Our first concern was not the cub. Our first concern was where is the mama!?!

And, much like pooping in the woods has the effect of attracting EVERYBODY to your immediate area, seeing a bear up close apparently has the opposite effect, because there was suddenly NOBODY coming or going to help provide a noisy distraction or safety in numbers.

This is the ONE time we had forgotten the bear spray in the truck. We had debated going back for it about a mile from where we parked, but there were lots of people out, the hike was relatively short, and we figured we would take our chances since the only bears we’ve seen on this entire trip were a snoring, drooly mess, about 20 ft up in a tree and a mama bear and her clubs playing in a field pretty far away from us. MAJORLY wrong decision for today, apparently.

Ann’s initial response, after it registered that what she was looking in the eyes of was a young bear cub , was to loudly say “OH” and freeze. You’d think after thoroughly reading ALL the huge signs around the park that describe step by step what to do if you meet up with a bear, that Ann would do at least one thing right. Nope. At this point, Ben realized that something was off and turned around to see Ann’s face and it looked EXACTLY like the face she made when she thought she was being attacked by a bear at last night’s campfire. All Ann could say in her loudest whisper voice was “BEAR, BEAR, BEAR!” So, with no one around except for us, and armed with only a stale protein bar, an emergency weed gummy, a wadded up raincoat, a liter of water and a can of sunscreen to fight off a pissed off mama bear, we slowly and calmly kept walking down the path backwards until we felt we were out of danger (mostly). Luckily, the bear cub stayed put or ran the other way. Either way, we didn’t see it again, thank goodness.

We came across Avalanche Lake just 50 yards further down the trail and lots of people. We spread the word about the bear, found a couple we thought we may be able to outrun, and headed back through bear sighting country towards the trail head. The bear was long gone, although our hearts were still beating a mile a minute.

That will be the last time we forget bear spray out here!

Anyway, fun times, great memories, only one trashed pair of bloomers (🤦🏼‍♀️), but we survived our brush up with the scary bear, which has been well marketed in three different parks for weeks now. Ultimately, we knocked out a 5.5 mile hike in a little over two hours, saw some absolutely incredible scenery, and spotted a couple places for some awesome sunrise pics. All in all, a good day, and we haven’t even had lunch yet!

Relying on the kind stranger’s advice from the day before, we decided to take a road less travelled to get to West Glacier. He said it was a long two lane twisty road that ran along the base of the mountains and followed alongside the river. We thought that sounded just about fantastic! So, we woke up early, had our coffee, found a do-it-yourself car wash, just to get some of the bugs off of the Ford and then we packed up the airstream and headed out!

And we immediately turned the wrong way. LOL 😆

After a few very terse, yet loving, comments between us, we took a deep breath, made a quick u turn through a gas station, and happy happy, off we go. It happens. It actually happens to us pretty often because Ben likes the GPS always oriented to North (boring and lame!) and Ann likes to live on the edge of her seat and have the GPS oriented in the direction we’re traveling (a little more chaotic but FUN!).

The stranger was absolutely spot on. We made our way through Montana to reach highway 83 and getting there was an amazing drive in and of itself, with neat little towns nestled in narrow valleys with a range of steep rocky hills in the far distance on both sides. It was not very heavily trafficked either, so we were under no pressure to go any faster than deemed safe for the road conditions or the sharpness of the curves we navigated. The road to 83 was just an incredible drive!

Then, we turned on to 83.

The river seemed to widen and the hills closed in comfortably on both sides of the heavily wooded valley, as we started working our way north on this quiet highway. The GPS indicated we had about 93 more miles until departing 83 for roads beyond.

As we looked at the GPS map, we saw that we were approaching a series of lakes, all formed by the river that had cut and continued to cut the very valley we were in.

As we approached the first lake on the left side on the road from us, it just seemed to open wider and wider as we started passing along its southern outlet. It was very dark, cold, glassy water, without a ripple on its surface. The trees on the steep banks, on both sides, were almost all evergreens, lush, densely packed, ranging through all shades of green, from very light to so dark as to be almost brown. The trees marched right up to the waters edge, almost interrupted.

As we passed by what seemed like a mile of beautiful lake, we reached the northern end, and it tapered to a marshy area and the road returned to being heavily wooded on both sides. We were blown away by how private and quiet this area seems. We observed a few side roads as we had passed by the lake, that obviously led to private residences. Just a beautiful setting.

And then we passed another lake, even larger and wider than the first. This one had a few houses on the slowly widening, slowly smoothing out shoreline, and the highway started moving away from the lakeshore slightly as well. These were just gorgeous homes, with dark siding and earth toned or darker roofs, fitting very well into the woods and greens that surrounded them.

We continued to drive north, and we continued passing these beautiful lakes, either still sharing a shoreline only with densely packed woods, or sometimes hosting one, two, or in the case of larger lakes, multiple cabins, large home compounds, marinas and restaurants. By far, the one that just made our jaws drop was the only one like it that we passed.

We came a round a corner on a fairly narrow section of road, and we encountered another deep dark lake. This one had a small island on it. Maybe 1/2 acre island. And on that 1/2 acre island in the middle of this quiet lake was a monstrous house. It fit right in to the heavily wooded island, but it looked like it took up at least half of the island!

As we got closer, it got bigger and bigger and we noticed there was no bridge, only boat docks. And across from the island was a smaller version of the same house on the shore, with a matching set of boat docks. Just an amazing setup. And then it was behind us and we carried on, enjoying the views.

We finally found a pull off so we could grab a quick bite to eat, and make sure we didn’t get to the campground before the 3 pm check in, (made that mistake back in Goodland KS, of all places, where we got there two hours early and they charged us $10). This is just a slice of what we saw. Such a cool road.

Eventually, we reached the northern end of 83 (having driven yet another awesome highway, end to end, on this trip), and continued on to our campsite in West Glacier, just outside of the national park.

Over the past few years, we’ve stayed at a bunch of KOA’s and we’ve seen lots of different setups, from the bare bones “KOA,” where there’s nothing to do but get a fitful nap next to the interstate (they’re usually about to lose their KOA status), then there’s the “KOA Journey,” which are nice, well organized, and with enough amenities to get you on to your next destination, and then we have the KOA Holidays, which typically are found in nicer settings, further from the highway, with wider lots, nicer common areas, and usually an bit more privacy. This is typically as fancy as we go. BUT, this was going to be a new experience for us, as we’re staying at a “KOA Resort” this time around. Ooh la-la!! Aren’t we feeling bougie today?! Does Ben need to have a tie and sport coat to check in? Are women allowed to wear hiking pants to brunch?

We were nervous, but getting a little more excited as we meandered down the long winding road to the main entrance. It was at the main gate that we spied the maintenance guy picking his nose, just before he excitedly greeted us with a wave. It was at that point we relaxed a little and figured out that the tone was a little bit less formal than we had feared. Ben took a deep breath, relieved to know that he was still going to be able to pee in the woods surrounding our campsite. Resort just meant you “should” put shorts or pants on before you exit the camper to pee in the woods. It would take a little reminding for Ben, but those kind of “resort rules,” we could handle.

Once through the gates, we pulled in to a really cool, well maintained check-in area. We were then led by golf cart through a winding, well landscaped, heavily wooded little set of neighborhoods of campsites, populated by everything from pop up campers to 60’ diesel class A’s, with two stories and six slide outs, and everything in between. We reached the back corner of the campground, through some rows of cabins and backed in to perhaps the nicest campsite in which we have stayed! We honestly didn’t believe the oohing and awwing of the front desk ladies when they all told us out campsite was their favorite campsite. Once we saw it, we understood why.

This place is really nice! Our campsite is really private and we were able to open up all of the curtains without having to make direct eye contact with everyone in the park. It really doesn’t feel cramped in here with the curtains closed. Its more cozy by far.

But it sure was nice to open the curtains up today!

After running to the park, grabbing a map and getting some advice from a very helpful ranger at the visitor center, we returned to the airstream, set up the first campfire we have been able to have since we first got to Denver, and settled in to some campfire time. Just behind the edge of the campfire area, where we were sitting, was a good sized, rectangular, open field, about the size of a soccer field, lined on two adjacent sides by about 7 campers all backed up to the field, a fairly dense section of woods on the third side, and pretty much just our campsite on the fourth side.

While Ben was on the phone with his folks, there was a large chocolate lab from one of the other campsites, just running around the field, tongue flapping and tail wagging ferociously, as he soaked up the smells and the freedom to just run. He was having a blast! Wasn’t going near any of the other campers, just to his family and then back to the open field. Ben could see most of what happened on the field, but Ann’s back was to it, so it was just noise in the background for her, while we sat and enjoyed the crackling hot fire.

While Ann was reading, the big lab decided to explore our end of the field, and came running in a long, wide arc that would bring him right by the wooded section and on to our edge of the open area. Ben saw this arc start and saw where the big, huffing, thundering dog was headed. Ben was just getting ready to intervene, in case the lab was a little too excited. Suddenly, the lab thundered up behind Ann, breathing heavily and pushing through small branches and tall grasses, like a wild animal seeking it’s prey.

Ben tensed up a bit, but Ann couldn’t see what was happening. She could only hear the heavy wet breathing and crashing branches behind her, and she could only see Ben’s body language tense, so Ben got to watch Ann’s eyes open wider than they had ever opened before, as she absolutely, in that one half second, knew, that there was a bear running up right behind her!

Then the lab barreled past Ann on her right and she was able to see the overzealous canine make the final turn in his arc, as he happily headed back to its family.

Ten minutes later, after Ben was able to breathe again, from laughing so hard, we decided that maybe we had been seeing too many scary bear signs and maybe we should just hit the sack. Still, made for a funny story, according to Ben. 🙄

Tomorrow is our first full day in Glacier, and although the Going to the Sun road is still closed due to snow and ice up there, a fact Ann was not aware of before Ben blabbed it, we are planning to do a few hikes and see what we can see!

No northern lights for us on Sunday evening, as storms moved in a the sky clouded up and obscured any subtle aurora from showing, so we called it a night.

The next morning, we ran a few last minute errands and said goodbye to our new friends that we would never speak to again, and headed west and north towards Helena, our one night stop on the way to Glacier National Park.

Within minutes of exiting the bustling town of West Yellowstone (population 1200), we were back in the forests, rolling hills, and streams that make up most if not all of the topography in these parts. It felt like we were still driving through the national park, with the exception of far off homesteads, farmhouses, and some light commercial businesses to support them, scattering the landscape. Every 30-50 miles, these far off homesteads and small local businesses would start to get closer and closer together, the speed limit would start to drop and bloop, there was a town. No sooner did we see a town name and a bar/diner pass by, then the speed limit would ramp back up, the town would thin out to the point that the last thing we passed by was either a saw mill or a garbage dude, or a propane business, and we would be back out in the rolling country.

We passed through a short leg of Montana before we crossed in to Idaho for a stretch, and then back in to Montana. It was a pretty day for a drive, despite being on the cooler side of chilly.

As we went through these small towns, Ben was absolutely beside himself with all of the old trucks that had been parked in yards for likely decades. Old Ford, Chevy, and Dodge pickups from the 40’s up through the 80’s sat quietly, rusting in peace, and if Ben had his way, he would have stopped to at least get a couple of pics of some of these old workhorses. But Ben had the discipline, restraint, and of course, the wisdom to know that it was at best impractical to stop, and at worst, dangerous.

Also, I plain just wouldn’t let him stop. What are we going to do, put it in the airstream? Thankfully we hadn’t had any cell service all day or Ben would have been on Facebook Marketplace.

So, on we drove, watching the landscape continuously evolve, and listening to Ben call out years and models of the old trucks we cruised by, on our way north.

There were no “incidents” today, we are pleased to report. One quick rest stop as we changed two lane highways, using the airstream for its portable facilities, and we were back on our way in to Helena.

Once in town, we stopped at the local Wally World, aka Walmart, where we stocked up on groceries and Ann bought, among other things, a couple of birthday cards. Upon checking out, the cashier paused after scanning the cards to open them and read them, laugh, and then continued checking Ann out. We love small towns haha.

While Ann was in the Walmart, Ben was out guarding the camper. When we pulled in, it was apparent that this was one of the Walmarts where it was ok to camp in the parking lot. We saw four or five campers in the back few rows, with at least one fully on its way to squatter status. We thought it best for Ben to hang out with the camper so we didn’t pick up any hitchhikers.

Loaded up with fresh supplies, we towed the airstream over to the KOA on the north side of town and got everything set up. By now, the temps had dropped a bit more and the wind had really picked up. So we decided to go hit a local hot springs, about 20 minutes away.

Let me tell you, after three weeks on the road, that big hot springs pool felt amazing. Ben was in and out of the steam room, the sauna, the cold plunge (45 degree water!), and the hot springs tub while I just watched him and I soaked up the heat. We spent about an hour there and it really helped. Finally warm(ish) again, we headed back to the camper.

I forgot to mention a neat friend we made! The very moment we had pulled in to the campground, no sooner had we pulled in to our spot, had not even started leveling the airstream yet, a truck pulled up right next to us. An older gentleman got out and introduced himself and said “I saw you drive by the gas station up the road and I thought I’d pop over to welcome you to our town”

Turns out, he was a Helena native and an airstream owner as well! Hardy, weathered, and with a whipcord build that suggested a life of hard, active work, he visited with us for a few minutes and gave us some ideas for what to do while in town. It was really neat to just see people reaching out and being neighborly. I wish we had gotten a picture, but we did not, so here is a quick sketch I made of him (not really, we just googled an image and this is pretty close, as far as you know at least)

On to laundry and then settling in for a quick dinner of frozen pizza which was honestly, one of the best frozen, and even better than some take out, pizzas we have had. DiGiorno Rising Crust Three Meat pizza, if you’re interested. This post was not sponsored by DiGiornio. Although it could be…(call me, DiGiorno).

Another thing about three weeks on the road in a pretty small camper, you start really looking at what has not been used or touched, because if we haven’t done either by now, what would change going forward that we would suddenly need that fourth serving spoon, or that third coffee cup, or this appliance or that camping gear? So, there was a bit of a purge this evening.

We opened up a lot of space, and all of the gear, extra plates, etc are going in to the back of the truck, where they will still be in reach if we made a mistake.

But I don’t think we made a mistake..

When space is this tight, everything gets washed almost immediately after using it. There is no counter space to leave things laying around to be washed, there is no dishwasher to act as a staging area for dirty dishes until the next wash cycle. When you stand up after dinner, you never even set the plate and utensils down, you start washing and rinsing right then. Dry everything off, because, again, no counter space to let things dry, put everything away, and repeat for every meal. We pretty much have it split up pretty well, since there is really only room for one person to cook or otherwise prepare meals, Ann pretty much does all of the cooking. And Ben does all of the dishes.

So extra stuff just doesn’t make sense when it just doesn’t get used. Off it goes! Good to get some stuff cleared out!

We take off for Glacier National Park in the morning and we are staying in the little city at the West Gate, called West Glacier (population 212), hence the reason why we are stocking up on groceries while we still have stores!

P.S. We are missing the dogs of course, and Ben’s folks are having a blast with them down in Arkansas. Here is a pic of Charlie and Baxter just doing dog stuff together…

Bailey is ok too. She’s off napping lol

Like, it is really really big.

Our objective today was to head over to Lamar Valley to check out the many places to watch for wildlife. It was to be a low key day as Ann was not having a great day, so a chance to see some more of the park and to stop at some overlooks to see if mooses and meeses and wolves and of course bears might be out and about sounded perfect.

We knew we had to plan accordingly, as Lamar Valley is close to the northeast corner of the national park, and we are camped on the western entrance, so GPS called it a two hour drive. That does not take in to account bison jams. So we loaded up the cooler with water and lunch, used the at home facilities one more time, and headed out, knowing it could easily be a three hour drive.

Almost instantly, we realized we had made a mistake…

This was our view as we entered the park. We were a-crawling. The logistics of this place are such that even going 5 mph through the park is still much faster than going around the park. As I mentioned, it’s a very big place. So our options were to turn around and just not go to Yellowstone today, or buckle up and get through it, hoping it was either a bison-jam, or at least knowing that people would spread out a bit more as they poured in to the park. Paths diverge wildly once inside the park, with Old Faithful and farty rock land far to the south, canyon land toward the center, Lamar Valley to the far northeast, etc. So, for the next 30 minutes, we advanced about 5 miles, and we tried subconsciously to convince all of those in front of us that Old Faithful is just awesome.

“Turn south”

”Go see it, you know you want to!”

”It doesn’t smell THAT bad down in geyser land”

“The chalky, watery, stained ground is really pretty actually, especially in the nice light today”

”I bet Old Faithful farts up extra high today,” and so on for five miles.

As we approached the first large intersection, our efforts paid off and most of the cars in front us felt the inexplicable need to turn south, towards Old Faithful, while we happily whipped a left and turned north towards our destination.

It was smooth sailing from that point on, and we really started getting immersed in the natural setting again. We curved around low wide prairies with ever present rivers snarling through them, we saw herds of bison both off in the distance and close to the road side again, and eventually, we started climbing up the steep mountains that had been silently approaching as we motored forward. As we climbed, our tires clung to the sides of the mountains on narrow two lane roads with no guardrails between our truck and steep drop offs to the valleys far below. We were trying to figure out why we couldn’t hear each other whimper when we noticed that we were nearing 9,000 feet and our ears had yet to adjust to the altitude.

After descending from the peaks back down to the prairies below, we pulled off at a few of the turnouts or pullouts positioned frequently and thoughtfully along the side of the road. Knowing that this was the recommended approach for viewing wildlife at a distance, we had purchased a pair of cheap binoculars downtown the night prior. Let me tell you, if we had not had the foresight to pick up those little binoculars, we would have been in pretty much the same position. They sucked. Here is a shot of us using them, and what you cannot hear in a photo is us saying, “Wow! These binoculars suck”

But we pressed on. We just used our eyes since they worked a bit better.

We eventually made it to the center of Lamar Valley, which by the way has THOUSANDS of rocks that litter the ground and, from the right distance, look just like sleeping bears and sleeping moose.

We eventually picked a random gravel side road that indicated there was a hiking trail at the end of its 3 mile length. So we dropped the old Ford into 4×4, engaged rock crawl mode, and started down the washboarded, pothole littered, narrow dusty gravel track. Almost immediately, out careened an old Honda Civic, bouncing joyfully down the road towards us, having just completed the 3 mile each way drive with no ill effect other than being coated in a thick layer of dust and dirt. The Honda hit the paved road behind us, made a right, and peeled away quickly. Ben quietly disengaged four wheel drive and put the transmission back in to highway mode, and down the gravel road we bounced.

Not two miles down the road, we encountered the tell tale signs of wildlife present. A herd of brightly colored, loosely organized, well equipped tourists with all manner of cameras, telescopes, real binoculars, tripods, had gathered on the side of the road, cars parked haphazardly with doors hanging open. Additionally, there were a few haggard park rangers trying their level best to keep these tourists from getting to close to said wildlife and causing a more serious incident. Other than the rangers, all eyes were trained on the valley just below.

We decided to see what was going on.

We parked the truck next to yet another Honda Civic (sigh), hopped out with our shitty binoculars and our cell phones, and headed toward the direction the camera-people were pointing.

Just over in the woods we saw two bear cubs in the tallish grass, playing and wrestling with each other, while BIG mama bear (grizzly? I didn’t get close enough to ask) grazed nearby, never straying too far away from the cubs, but also giving herself a little space because even bears get sick of the kids every now and again.

We watched them through the shitty binoculars and Ben caught a couple videos on the cell phone, and it looked like nothing else was happening, so we headed back to the truck, where we ALMOST HAD YET ANOTHER INCIDENT!!!

This time, it would be a near miss with a low lying, hard to see, prairie pizza. Ann just bought those shoes!

Crisis averted, we started on the long trek back towards the campsite. We were more prepared this time for the steep drop offs, and we even pulled in to one or two just to check out the view.

As we were cruising around a winding mountain road, we came across a bison in a very unlikely place, parked between the side of the road and the steep rocky face, just munching away on thin, exhaust scented grass, without a care in the world.

We reached the valley floor again and decided to stop and check out the fast moving, shallow river winding along the side of the road. Ann found a spot to do a little grounding and Ben decided to see how cold the water was. The answer, pretty cold, but it was a therapeutic stop for both of us.

We wrapped up and headed back to the truck and on to the campsite, where we are hunkering down as yet another line of thunderstorms passes through and we are hopeful that the skies clear up a bit before the aurora comes through later tonight (writing this on Sunday, June 1).

Regardless of the weather, we pull up stakes in the morning and head to our in between stop at Helena, MT where we will once again stock up on groceries, take care of laundry, hit a hot springs for a little heat therapy, and the next day we are on to Glacier National Park!

As we settled in for the evening, the very first day we arrived at Yellowstone, and specifically our little campground in West Yellowstone, just outside of the west entrance to the absolutely ginormous park, we noticed that it was starting to get a little chilly. A quick look at the forecast for the evening and Ann was headed to the thermostat to crank up the heat, put on seven more layers of clothes and she even put the two extra down comforters on the bed. The temp dropped to 34 degrees over night, which of course started to wreak havoc on Ann’s body, so we hunkered down, kept the furnace cranking, and hit the hay.

Suffice it to say, we thought that perhaps sleeping in a bit and letting the temps warm up before we left for the hike would be appropriate. And since it was Ann’s birthday, that is exactly what we did. It was a nice slow morning, and by the time we left, it had started to warm up outside and it was just crystal clear and sunny. A perfect day ahead!

One thing we learned quickly; this is a big national park. We had a 80 minute drive to the Canyon Village, where we planned to get a map and then head to the trail head for the day’s hike. Before we left however, we knew that we wanted to give a certain someone every opportunity we could to take care of possible trail side incidents. So we gave ourselves time, let the temperature warm up, and then hopped in the truck and started our 80 minute drive toward the canyon area. Today was going to be an incident free day!

One thing we had heard about in advance about Yellowstone was that you need to plan for drives to take a bit longer than normal, both due to the heavy traffic with all of the visitors coming to enjoy the park, but primarily for the wildlife that mostly ignored road signs and designated crossing areas and just did whatever they wanted. They call these unpredictable delays “Bison jams.”

As long as you know this is going to happen, and drive cautiously, especially around corners, it’s just part of the experience.

We still have not seen any awake bears , living moose or wolves, but the baby bison were pretty cute!

We were blown away today but just how beautiful the park is, even on the main roads headed toward the center of the region. Slow, wide, winding rivers curved and meandered through lush green prairies, with steep hillsides and jagged mountains lining the sides of the valleys. We would see fly fishermen in waist high waders on the edge of the river, slowly working their flies over the water, hoping to land the elusive native cutthroat trout. Actually, I don’t know how elusive they are, but there was a picture of one on the Yellowstone map, so I’ll just assume they are elusive. I think people who fish like elusive fish. What fun would it be if they just kind of hopped into the bucket? 🪣 🐠

After a pretty drive with only two or three bison jams, we made it to the visitor center for Canyon Village. By the way, we have yet to see a building in this park that is anything less than well designed, well staffed, clean, organized, with easy parking. They did a great job designing the infrastructure and support buildings and they’ve done a great job keeping everything up. Very impressed.

Ann decided to inspect the bathrooms one more time just to make sure we would have an incident free day. We got a little advice from one of the helpful rangers, picked our hike, and motored a few miles down the road to the trailhead for the hike from Artist’s Point to the end of the trail at Point Sublime. As usual, the map showing the red starting point and the blue ending point is shown below.

Since it is Ann’s birthday, we will let the map speak for itself today as to whether or not it was incident free.

What was really neat about this hike was that it followed the south rim of the absolutely beautiful, but frighteningly deep canyon for about 2 miles. At the very bottom of the canyon was a raging and frothing river, swollen with snow melt and just roaring through the canyon 1000+ feet below our narrow ledge. The trail wound along the edge of the canyon, with most of the trail only a few feet from the very steep descent to the canyon floor far below.

Needless to say, we both stayed as far away from the edge as we could, as neither of us like heights very much. More accurately stated, we are terrified of heights. As long as we did not have to make direct eye contact with the drop off, we were just fine thank you very much. It was a pretty setting and a challenging hike, with very few other people on the trail. It felt like it was just us alone out there for most of the two hours it took us to hike the whole four miles.

By far, our favorite part of the hike was a little side loop recommended by the ranger, which took us about a third of a mile away from the canyon (thankfully) and down to a quiet little lake, where we took a couple pics and then headed back the way we came. It was on this little side loop that a curious little squirrel took an interest in Ann and came in very close to check us out, like he’d never seen a human before. Ann named him “Pepper The Yellowstone Squirrel.” He followed us along the path, hopping from dead tree to dead tree, so we stopped walking to see what he would do. When we stopped, he really laser focused on Ann and came within about a foot of us before the hikers coming up behind us scared him off. We got a couple of really cute shots of him posing for us before he scrambled away. This was Ann’s favorite part of the day. She also swears Pepper The Dog just keeps reincarnating into other critters, to keep up with Ann. 😍

We made it back to the trail head, where there were no facilities of course, and decided to go back to the visitor center to test the facilities again, and then we made the long trek back towards our campground in West Yellowstone.

Along the way, we whipped off the road to a little parking/stopping area and went down to the meandering creek. It felt like “A River Runs Through It” as we listened to the river murmur across long ago worn down granite rocks, churning little whirlpools around sunken logs, and looked over the stony shore of the Yellowstone river bed, looking for nuggets of gold or flint arrowheads. We also watched the other side of the river for large wildlife coming down to get a cool drink, but we must have caught them on break.

Back in the truck, we headed back down to town, where we picked up a cheap pair of binoculars (likely guaranteeing that we would not see anything at a distance, thus we would not need them), and a few grocery items. Back to the camper for a steak dinner, made by Ann for Ann’s birthday, although Ben did turn on the grill!

While grilling, Ben ended up talking to another airstream dude a few doors down. A younger guy with his 10 year old son along for the trip. From Nashville, the were going take it out on a father son three day weekend in east TN, but the son, a few days before they were to leave, said, “Dad, lets go to Yellowstone!”

So, they did.

Two weeks after leaving TN, they were here in Yellowstone, same day we arrived. Mom is flying in tomorrow, and they are continuing on to Bamff, British Columbia, then to the Pacific and down the California coast.

That’s pretty neat that they did that!

While Ben was talking to the dad, Ben noticed some trim hanging down. He just can’t help himself, even on an almost 10,000 mile road-trip he’s still looking for a project. Ben tried to contain himself and tried just giving him some advice as to how to fix it, and it was about then that the dad leapt up out of his chair and excitedly said “Do you know how to do some of maintenance on these? Come inside!” Before you could count to three, Ben was back at our Airstream grabbing his toolbox, rivet gun and our little Dyson stick vacuum. The itch to do a small project was scratched by replacing a handful of rivets that had popped out and fixing a piece of exterior trim with adhesive that had failed as well as a few more exterior rivets, a few fuses were blown, a latch had come unscrewed. The guy was ready to trade it in on a new airstream because he just had no idea what to do. Thanks to Ben, now this guy knows how to fix things.

Ann took the opportunity to check out their airstream, mostly because we are kind of nosy about them, and also because there are just so many configurations, trim levels, and features, and ultimately, we still know very little about these trailers, as we have only had two and they were fifty years apart in technology, so when we have the opportunity to nose around a bit, we do so with gusto!

Knowing this guy’s wife was coming in the morning, Ann showed the guy how to work a Dyson stick and at least vacuum all the crumbs off the floor. Ann and I then took the opportunity to bow out and head back to our home on wheels, where we had an outstanding steak dinner for Ann’s birthday and we called it a night.

The plans for tomorrow are to hit another completely different section of the park, about a 2 to 2.5 hour drive from here, so we already know it is going to be a 4-5 hour driving day, however, without a trailer on the back, and in freaking Yellowstone, we already know it is going to be such a pretty drive with lots of pull offs, that the drive itself will be an adventure, let alone Lamar Valley, home of the large wildlife ranges. Excited!

Oh, we just got the word a few hours ago about conditions being right for us to see the aurora borealis tonight, and since we are out in the middle of nowhere and pretty far north, we have a shot at seeing them tonight and tomorrow night! Will report back if we are able to see them tonight!

We decided to take another shot at the sunrise photo shoot this morning! After a few taps of the old snooze button, we got up, grabbed some coffee, the bear spray, and warm coats, and we stepped out in to the chilly, still, pre-dawn morning. Diesel trucks do not heat up very quickly, so Ann’s seat heater was immediately jammed all the way to the max position, while Ben ran the heat on high to get the frost off of the windshield. The days have been very pleasant here and we are very fortunate, but the overnight and this early morning cold stuff is absolutely BS!

We headed out in to the park for the 25 minute drive to Antelope Flats and Mormon Row, as always, alert for wildlife that may be up and about.

This is a good time to pause and to raise a point of concern that has bothered us all of this last few days.

Honestly, we are frustrated with lack of wildlife around here. We spent the last few months getting mentally psyched up for all of the wildlife we would be surely encountering up here. We were loaded up with bear spray, we have practiced self defense “tall/big” postures to appear as large as possible when facing predators, and we were honestly excited to have an opportunity to see bear with young cubs (at a distance) or moose wandering the side of a serene lake, or even elk, wolves, polecats, whatever, just give us some nature man!

Not sure what the heck kind of a show they are running around here, but all we have seen are ravens, cows, horses, one great blue heron (lost?) and a few caribou that are on the sauce, running down the road all wonky, unable to make a decision. Even the bison or buffalo herds were so far away on the horizon that they may very well have been cows.

So, while still on the miffed side, we were somewhat mollified when we did see a couple of caribou on the way to our photo spot, including crazy aunt Gertrude above and this majestic fuzzy horned buck below. Fun fact, caribou are the same thing as reindeer. We still want to see some bears and moose though!

We got to Mormon Row in time to get set up by the T.A. Moulton barn for the light to brighten and hit the face of the barn as well as the mountains just behind it. By getting set up, I mean Ann waited in the truck that was now nice and warm, and Ben wandered over to where all of the other people were standing around waiting. Many had their professional gear all on tripods and others had expensive DSLR’s in hand with an array of filters mounted and ready, but most of us just had iPhones, which, let’s be honest, have gotten pretty darn good at being cameras.

Once we snagged the barn photo, we headed back to the camper to get ready to pack up and head out.

Destination, Yellowstone National Park!

Another neat thing about this particular area, Yellowstone is due north of Grand Teton, so it was just a right turn in to Grand Teton, and a drive up the beautiful Jackson Hole valley and up to the continental divide again and back down. It was a beautiful, slowish drive all the way up and before you know it, we crossed in to Yellowstone!

We decided to stop at the West Thumb Geyser Basin and check ‘em out!

We parked the airstream in the last open RV spot in the parking lot, hopped out of the truck, and almost immediately nearly bumped a big mama elk, just grazing right there at the edge of the blacktop. The rangers were doing their best to close off walkways and keep the dumb tourists way from the big ole elk, but most of the tourists outsmarted the ranger by foolishly ignoring him and just walking in to get a pic. Dummies.

Here is my pic.

After the elk excitement passed by a few seconds later, we walked down toward the boardwalks built to contain visitors while also guiding them around and through the area, which had many natural hot springs, geysers, and thermal vents, burping jets of steam, water, or just bubbling and simmering along. We hung out in one to warm up a bit but now we just smelled a bit farty and we were warmer but also a bit moist-er, so we took one last glance around the area, saw this it was more of the same everywhere and decided that we were good.

So we left.

Next stop, Old Faithful, which was on the way to our campground in West Yellowstone, just outside of the west entrance to the park.

We pulled in to the massive parking lot area, which had a large section at the back for RV’s and busses, imagine that. Yellowstone gets between 4 – 5 million visitors per year, and most of them stop to see Old Faithful. Figure the park is only accessible half the year, and that’s nearly 30,000 people per day. The place was built for volume.

We parked the airstream just a few spots down from another airstreamer who was also just pulling in, and no sooner did we say hello to them, another one pulled in beside us both. One was a retired couple from Vermont who were full time in their 25’ camper with their two large dogs. I don’t think they ever stopped smiling the whole time we were talking to them. The other was a young couple from Omaha with three or maybe four young girls, all jammed in to a 27’ trailer like ours. They looked happy but exhausted, and we couldn’t blame them!

After leaving off from our new friends that we would never see again, we headed toward the obvious center of the park and the star of the show, Old Faithful!

We traversed wide wide wide sidewalks coming from all directions and all angling toward the bround semi-circle ring of three rows of hard, low seats all arranged around a pile of dirt and rock 100 feet away with a little steam farting out of it steadily.

We paused and stood behind the last row of low seats, as every single seat in the semi circle was taken. Just as many people stood behind these seated folks, with at least 500-600 people arranged around the farting dirt pile. Maybe closer to 1000.

We stood there for maybe two minutes before Ben kind of looked around a bit, took a deep breath and leaned over to me and said, “This is kinda cool, but it mostly sucks, let’s go check out the timber lodge.” And I just started laughing and said “I knew you wouldn’t make it long” and so we wandered around the semi circle towards the edge closest to the lodge. Just as we were slowly backing away from the steaming steamer, it did its eruption thing. The crowd loved it, and we’ll admit, it was pretty neat. Water and steam billowed out and kept squirting higher while steam billowed out in a fan behind it and drifted downwind. Would be really neat to see in the middle of winter, where it would really make a big cloud!

But it just kept going and going, so we decided to beat the rush and we turned around and headed over to the lodge, the largest log structure in the world. It was four floors of awesome rough logs and timbers and it was really well done and very cool. We checked it out for a bit, then swam upstream against the incoming flood of of our fellow Old Faithful observers that we had recently left behind, to exit near the boardwalk leading to a few other geysers. We decided to take a stroll out to see them since we were in the middle of Old Faithful land already.

The boardwalks built by the park service really are top notch. We are talking well anchored, solid 3×10 planks of mostly pine, that are built to withstand a lot of shuffling people. And it was doing its job today. The boardwalks were crammed with tourists, again, just like us, pointing cameras at bubbling and farting water, elbowing each other for either good views or to nudge you out of the way so they can go to the next view, or wrangling tired or rambunctious kids, who have probably been trapped in a bus or a car or a minivan for the last week and have energy to burn, all moving in opposite directions while also trying the get a look at the many thermal features along the boardwalk and railing.

It was nuts.

We decided to get the heck out of there, so we quickly adjourned to the rapidly filling parking lot, where we had a quick lunch in the airstream and then headed to our campsite, about an hour away to the west.

As we departed the Old Faithful area, we passed through many more geyser areas.

I don’t want to be irreverent when it comes to our national parks. Believe me, this is such a unique part of the park, with its geothermal vents and bubbling springs, but I mean, it looks like the inside of a water heater. Kind of chalky, calcium-y, stained, dripping, inhospitable, and smelly.

It doesn’t all have to be tall pine trees and deep ravines with winding rivers and creeks, all watched over sternly by craggy mountaintops, but at the same time, we can appreciate the unique geothermal landscape by leaving it alone to let it fart out its pressure in peace and quiet, not with 30,000 people standing around and oohing and ahhing.

To each their own. For us, we amended our plans for Yellowstone and rather than planning hikes through the geyser basins, we are going to focus on the wildlife in Lamar Valley and the hiking trails by the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. With only two full days to explore this massive park, that will give us the opportunity to get a taste of the variety this national park has to offer!

Even on the short, 30 mile drive from Old Faithful to our campsite in West Yellowstone, we encountered three bison jams, with these huge creatures meandering next to and across the narrow road leading through the park, either grazing on the side of the road, slowly meandering through, or even leading their young along the same path.

We made it to the campground, got all set up, grabbed some not so low priced groceries at the local grocery store, and called it a night. Off to explore the park in the morning, on Ann’s 51st birthday, which she insists we don’t celebrate. I think I’ll ask her to make a cake for herself as well just to make her feel special.

Yes. There was another incident.

Before we get to that however, we made a number of promises over the last few days about early morning sunrise pics. We are happy to report that after yesterday’s hike wore us out, we hit the sack early and were able to get up at 4:45 am and head out to Schwabacher Landing for an absolutely beautiful sunrise. It was not quite 40° out, but Ann put a winter coat over her jammies and off we went. We arrived at the spot about ten minutes before sunrise and we were not surprised to see a few hundred of our fellow travelers already in position, waiting for the sun to light up the face of the mountains. What was really neat was how quiet and hushed everyone was. This opportunity to see and photograph a gorgeous sunrise being reflected off majestic mountains above a serene stream was definitely being treated with respect and reverence.

Definitely worth getting up early!

We returned to the Airstream for breakfast and Ann got a bit more rest while Ben caught up on a little bit of board work. At the crack of 10:30 am, we set out for a slightly less ambitious hike, this time, we targeted the Taggart Lake Trail! Trail maps indicated it was a short 3 mile hike with about 400 feet of elevation change. After our big hike the day prior, that seemed about perfect!

We set out with our walking sticks, our camelbaks loaded with water and protein bars, and we were quickly immersed in nature, once again without many people around. We felt like we had the trail to ourselves, once we ditched all the non-hiking tourists at the visitors center. But before we ditched those tourists, we made sure to make fools of ourselves, or at least one of us did. LOL

So, the map below shows the trail we planned to take.

Oh, forgot to show you where we started. See the artfully created red dot on the map below…we left the trailhead and went north, which would ultimately take us on a counter clockwise path, touching Taggert Lake at the Northwest corner of the route. Now supposedly (we say supposedly because so far we haven’t seen an active bear nor a moose in any form except a statue), this hike territory is supposed to be littered with scary animals. The signs all warn us of death or worse (pooping our pants) if we encounter one of these scary critters.

Since you read the title of this post, and you have picked up on the fact that one of us has some occasional tummy issues, you would be correct in assuming that there was yet another incident. And let’s just face facts, one of us will always have a lousy broken pancreas, therefore there will ALWAYS be incidents. Also, one of us is horrified about these issues and one of us laughs hysterically and loves going into detail about the other’s GI challenges. SIGH!

If you’re familiar with the maps that “Mr. TaterTot” has been posting, to mark these incidents, you’ll be able to discern roughly where the incident took place. Yeah, that’s only 1/2 mile in to the hike. Newsflash…Ann has always been a panic pooper, meaning as soon as she’s leaving civilization, her bowels panic and decide that they must empty, one last time. Happens on airplanes and boats too. Okay, it happens in any situation where we’re told we can’t use the bathroom or when there are none. But because we’re a pretty awesome couple and team, we’re both becoming experts in finding suitable spots, enough off the trail and free from dangerous fauna that might be curious or from flora that might be tickley. The National Park Services really should be handing out awards to those that can pull off these incidents flawlessly and with care and concern for nature. If anyone from the NPS is seeing this post, we’d be happy to help with a fitting acronym for the award. We”ll be working diligently on this until we hear from you.

Shew, that was a big tangent. Anyway, we found suitable location was quickly found that met the criteria, although minimally at best, but in a time of crisis, beggars cannot be choosers. In keeping with long established tradition, one of us kept watch, while the other took care of business.

For those of you old enough to remember K-Mart, and specifically the Blue Light Special, you’ll recall that no matter where you were in the store, if that blue light special cart got wheeled to a location in the store and the blue light started slowly spinning, you hustled over to see what the deal was. It drew people in from wherever they happened to be, like moths to the flame, for a chance at 20% off of ladies bloomers, or 30% off toothpaste, or 25% off boy’s Schwinn bikes.

Stay with us for a bit longer. The K-Mart bit is only a half tangent. The connection is that we’re starting to suspect that naughty forest floor poopers activate some kind of beacon or alarm, similar to the “Blue Light Special.” Whatever they’re activating, it’s very effective at attracting hikers. No sooner did Ann, I mean, no sooner did the unnamed pooper get committed to the business at hand, it seemed like the signal went out to every family, group, and wandering solo hiker that happened to be in the area. They appeared out of nowhere, meandering up and down the trail to converge at roughly our location. Talking, hollering at their kids who had run ahead, “Hey! Get back here Tommy! Sally! Let’s set out the blanket and eat lunch here!”

Horrified, we froze, like the prey in the face of the apex predator. We dared not move from our respective guard position and guarded position, lest attention be directed toward us. One family just wouldn’t leave the path in front of our spot. UGH! We finally had to casually wander back toward the trail, not 30 feet away, and become more and more animated as we got closer to the trail, talking about “We thought we saw a rare bitter-toothed, black billed duckmungeon, but alas, it was just a stick. Dang. Oh well, y’all have a nice picnic!” And we headed on our way to less pooped up parts of the trail.

Once the urgent business was out of the way, the balance of the hike was just absolutely beautiful. We went through an area that had burned several years before, and the hush that settled over the trail was both calming and a bit unnerving. No birds, squirrels, or other small animals had ventured back in to the leafless and mostly branchless, densely packed trees.

Now after seeing the pics, don’t you think that if all these crazy scary animals existed here, shouldn’t they be in this setting? But there wasn’t a scary animal that we saw and honestly the only other wildlife we saw were the horseflies swarming around us. After two hours, and four miles, we “pooped” out of the wilderness, and headed back toward the campground to take care of laundry and to get a nap. It was a long day with a very early start.

Tomorrow morning, we pack up and head out towards Yellowstone!