Spokane, WA

Spokane, WA

We love Washington! You probably read Lloyd’s posts about Spokane and he was pretty darn accurate. We had a great first day in Washington doing old-fashion amusement park stuff with the kids. It was a nice break from the usual hiking/woods/mountain activities we had been doing. It was also just neat to be in a city. The food, the entertainment, the people… you just don’t see people dressed up as Goth in the state and national parks! I guess you don’t really say “dressed up as” goth, it’s more like just Goth. The temperature on our first day was in the 80’s and it was very hot to be all Goth with the hair and the makeup and the black clothes… it seemed like a lot of work. We also saw people into the grunge thing. That looked a little easier. Even I can do grunge!!

Did Lloyd mention the coffee thing? The “Espresso” shack on every corner? It was cool. I especially loved the names… Hold Your Grounds or McSteamy’s. Good stuff! The other neat thing about our first day in Washington, was that I got up at 4:30 in the morning and it was light out! Gotta love a state that operates on “Y” time! Plus it’s really dry here and my hair has looked great!

Yellowstone photos

Yellowstone National Park, WY

Yellowstone National Park, WY

Yellowstone National Park is a phenomenal park! I expected it to be really nice, but I did not expect to be in such awe of how beautiful it is. I got chills driving in; almost a little teary and those weren’t left over “scared for my life” tears!

Yellowstone is an enormous park. We camped in Grant Village. All the main areas of Yellowstone have a lodge, a visitors center, big gift shops, restaurants, gas stations, and of course, campgrounds. Grant Village Campground is very nice, but rustic! No water or electric hook ups, but they have clean bathrooms. It was a good drive to the pay showers, and we never bothered with them. There is a big emphasis on keeping bears away from food. A fed bear is a dead bear is something you hear all the time in the park! Unfortunately, we never actually saw a bear while we were in Yellowstone. Lloyd found this hard to believe because when he visited the park as a kid, they saw bears everywhere. They even stuck hotdogs out the car window and fed the bears! Wonder what ever happened to those bears???

While we didn’t see any bears or wolves (but lots of other campers did), we did see lots of bison, prairie dogs, deer and antelope, a marmot, an otter, a pika, a moose (cool!!!), and an eagle! The wildlife is a real highlight of Yellowstone.

Each visitor center has an educational area and we spent a lot of time at the Canyon Visitors Center where the kids worked on the Jr. Scientist Badge. This was kind of like the Jr. Ranger Program, but for older kids. We learned a lot about the park geology, and that Yellowstone is really a giant volcano. We learned how the Yellowstone River formed the canyon and visited areas of the park that we would not have otherwise. It was a very worthwhile activity!

Another big highlight of the trip was the cowboy supper. We rode horses out to a delicious fire-cooked meal. We rode up hills and down, across streams, and through some gorgeous areas of the park! We saw lots of animals and had to ride around a herd of grazing bison. It was basically a trail ride but we did get to trot a bit and it was Nicholas’ first time on a horse. It was about an hour ride out and an hour ride back after dinner. We all loved the dinner! Steak (and veggie burgers), potato salad, beans, coleslaw, watermelon, cornbread, apple crisp, and really good strong cowboy coffee! We ate too much!

The weather in Yellowstone was perfect! We had bright sunny days and cool, no cold, nights. It rained for a little while on our last night, but not for long. After the rain we went outside and saw the most beautiful rainbow ever! It was really like looking at a new box of watercolors. The colors were just that bright!

The next morning we packed up and headed to Montana. All I can say is that these states just keep getting more and more spectacular!

The city of Spokane

This is Lloyd again.

OK, who turned on the lights? Oh, that's just the sun coming up at 5 a.m. Nice. I'm never going to get my clock straightened out. Oh well, nothing a lot of coffee won't cure -- and that's one thing they have here in Spokane: coffee. There is a coffee shop on nearly every street corner. A java junkie paradise. (I'm doomed.)

After getting some of that aforementioned coffee, we spent much of the day yesterday at the Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane. Probably a nice urban departure for the kids after weeks on the road and in the wilderness. The park had a lot of fun old amusement rides -- tilt-a-whirl, the spider, bumper cars, etc. -- an IMAX theater (we watched a spectacular film about the Grand Canyon) and a gondola ride over the Spokane River. We capped it off with a ride on a crazy old carousel, replete with the opportunity to grab the brass ring as you whirled by on your horse. Garrett won the prize as he grabbed 5 brass (plastic actually) rings.

All in all not a bad way to spend a few hours. It looked like heavy prep for the Fourth of July was underway and we were thankful to be there a day or two ahead of the throngs.

Lloyd: On vacation at last

This is Lloyd -- I made it to Spokane on-time and trouble free.

Vacation at last!

As I flew west from Charlotte and then Chicago, it occurred to me that Shana and the boys had covered a tremendous number of miles through some pretty rugged terrain in their two weeks on the road. This is indeed a vast country, and from 30,000 feet you really get a sense of the distances you have to cover to get anywhere. So, kudos to Shana for making the 2500-mile airport run to Spokane to pick me up!

Psycho GPS and a 7 Eleven trash can

Psycho GPS and a 7 Eleven Trashcan

Martha really is a neat little thing! We have used her help for finding unique places that we would not have found on our own. However, she sometimes gives pretty weird directions. Every once in awhile she’ll say “turn on road” what road?? Or “Off road”…why would we go “off road”??? And then there is the whole “r-e-c-a-l-c-u-l-a-t-i-n-g” thing every time we pull off the highway for gas. Which is fairly often since my biggest fear after being on an isolated road and having to pee, is being on an isolated road and needing gas.

And then there are times when Martha seems to just do her own thing. The kids and I laugh when she seems to think we are going one place and we are really going another. Oddly, this seems to happen mostly at night when the GPS screen takes on a darker hue. It’s almost as if Martha…becomes someone else! Garrett re-named Martha, “Graham” and we now refer to “Graham” as Martha’s darkside; her alter ego.

7 Eleven

A few months ago the WSJ ran an AP article about a woman traveling across the country with her dog. She mentioned sitting in a hotel room, eating a greasy KFC dinner, while her dog ate organic lamb, rice and vegetable dog chow from Whole Foods. Yep, the dog was eating better than she was! This was the kind of funny stuff she talked about and it was fun to read most of the article out loud to Lloyd and the kids over breakfast. But then she talked about how her car looked by the end of the trip…. like a 7 Eleven trashcan. This hit close to home. I made a mental note to NOT let my beautiful new Sequoia get to this point. But here we are, 2 weeks into the trip and the car is looking pretty bad. I even found a baggie of baby carrots under the seat. At least I think they were baby carrots. I do have pretty good vegetable recognition skills. It’s a good thing they were still in a baggie. We’ve had some pretty hot days and compost happens quickly in a car!

As I mentioned earlier, we are getting Lloyd today. Our goal, in addition to driving the 5+ hours to Spokane, WA, is to clean out the car! A carwash would also be really nice, but I haven’t seen one of those since Iowa!

Made it out.

Made it out!

We made it out of Yellowstone! We took the West Entrance out. While still a mountainous drive, I didn’t fear for my life like I did driving into the park. Seems the West Entrance is the “main” entrance. Lots and lots of campers drive in that way. Martha never mentioned the West Entrance…

On our way out we were stopped by a heard of Buffalo, and saw our first bald eagle! Yellowstone really is an amazing place!

While I have no idea what day it is, I do know that we are picking Lloyd up at the Spokane airport at 5:00 today. We are ready!