The Wandering Goose :: vol 14 :: Indian Campground

Chapter 1 : The Flat
Today's drive was going to be the easiest of them all!  We had the fewest miles to cover and Willow woke up early, so we got an early start to the drive.  We were headed to Buffalo, WY where it was going to be at least 95 today, so we were excited to get there early and spend most of the afternoon in the swimming pool.  Royal has been a little worried about the truck tires, he says one of them has a few pretty bad cracks in it and he's hoping it makes it home without popping.  I keep encouraging him to go get someone to look at them, or just go buy some new tires since it's inevitable anyway, and it would be better than getting a flat while driving.  Turns out it wasn't the truck tire we needed to worry about.  So, we were driving down the road and another driver pulls alongside Royal and makes motions that we have a flat tire.  Royal and I peer out our side mirrors trying to see, but can't see anything, so Royal says, "Well, I'm just gonna try and see if we can get to the next exit".  Then, we turn some corner and Royal gets a good look at the side of the trailer and says, "Oh crap!  That's a bad one!  We've got to pull over!"  So, as he starts slowing down and pulling off the road, the tread goes flying off the tire!

Royal gets out and starts inspecting, I call AAA.  We get the kids and dog unloaded and put in the trailer, and I'm told AAA will be there in about an hour.  Well, that's just gonna be too long for Royal to sit.  So he unhooks the trailer and gets the spare tire off the back.  Then he jerry-rigs a jack he has in the truck and uses the back stabilizer jacks on the trailer to get the tire off.

Did I mention we are on the side of I-90?  With huge trucks and fast cars whizzing by, all while Royal's tush is pretty much sitting on the white line?  I kept begging him to just leave it and let the professional who gets paid to change tires on the side of a busy highway do it.  Well, we all know how well Royal listens to me.  So, I sat in the trailer and prayed the he wouldn't get squished out there.  And Royal managed to get it done, all before the AAA guy showed up!  He's so handy!  (Dad, aren't you glad I didn't call you to come change my tire???)  And this is how we rolled down the road for the rest of the day.  Awesome!

And we drove right into Wyoming!

And right to our campsite, with no further delays!

Chapter 2 : Indian Campground
This RV park is really quite nice.  It's pretty big, with good sized sites, and lots of big trees for shade!  They also have a great swimming pool and playground and lots of room for the kids to ride bikes.

One more campground to go and then we'll be pulling into our driveway!  I'm getting excited to not be riding in the car anymore, and I think Royal's getting tired of me having to buy more books since I pretty much finish one each day in the car!

The Wandering Goose :: vol 13 :: Rocky Mountain RV Park

Yellowstone Again!
We spent the majority of a non-driving day in the car, driving.  It just doesn't seem right.  But, we are here again in sweet Yellowstone National Park, and we just couldn't NOT take advantage, plus Royal needed to see a few things.

We crossed the 45th Parallel

 Sadly, we didn't see a bear today, and hardly any buffalos.  Shocking, since we saw so many buffalos just a month ago!  This one was walking down the road and scared the heck out of Royal when he saw it.  I was looking about my window and I hear Royal shout, "Oh crap!  What is that!?!"  Oh, just a lonely little buffalo, wandering down the side of the road.

Today, it seemed, was a day for elk!  We saw a few right as we were waiting in line to get into the park.

Then, this lonely one munching on some grass.

Then, this herd standing alongside the road!  The only herd we'd found that had an elk with some antlers on it!

 And then there was this little spectacle, of them running down the sides of the road.  I rolled my window up for fear it would reach right in and bite my arm.  I have no idea why it would want to bite my arm, but there are "dangerous animal" signs all around, and I wasn't taking any chances!  :)

We visited some old and new places.  We stopped at Sheepeater Cliff, named from the Shoshone Indians who used to live in the area.  The cliff is formed from basalt lava that cooled 500,000 years ago.

And we took a little hike down Gardner River, because the kids were already complaining about being in the truck again and needing to use their legs.

Then we drove by Roaring Mountain - one of the hottest places in the park - the magma is only 1-2 miles below the surface here.

Then we stopped in at Artists Paintpots

And then drove south so Royal could witness Old Faithful and we could have lunch.  I didn't take any pictures here because, well, I wanted to watch the whole eruption without my camera in my face.  :)  Then we started heading back north and stopped at Black Sand Basin, which has a couple geyers and some really beautiful colored pools, like this one.

And since the kids were tired of getting in and out of the car and just couldn't walk anymore, we didn't stop at anymore areas, but took a couple scenic detours on the way back.  First we hit up Firehole Lake Drive.

And then Firehole Canyon Drive, which had some really beautiful waterfalls, but I don't really have any pictures because we were just driving through and sometimes it's hard to take a decent picture out the window while moving and trying to avoid getting random people in the picture.  :)  And that pretty much was our day.  Long and hot and fun and staring out the window at beautiful scenery that I'm just not sure when we'll be able to see again.  Tomorrow is another driving day.  One day closer to home!

The Wandering Goose :: vol 12 :: Rocky Mountain RV Park

Chapter 1 : The Drive
Today's drive was suppose to be kinda easy peasy.  We had about 350 miles to do, roughly 5-6 hours,  a doable day.  We didn't worry about our departure time too much, just let the kids sleep in, slowing got breakfast, they rode their bikes around for awhile, and eventually we hit the road, ready to get to our next destination.  But then 20 minutes into our drive, we were at a dead stop.  And we continued to sit like that, along with the rest of the cars on the road, for about an hour and a half.  Royal shut the truck off.  I got out and got back in the trailer to get more movies for the kids to pick from, and to get our poor, whining, trapped dog some snacks to chew on.  We eventually drove past the culprit of the backup.  A car and a semi truck had collided around 6:30 in the morning and both of them had caught on fire.  All that was left for us to look at was completely burned out vehicles being loaded up on tow trucks.  Sad.  :(  But at least we were finally driving!  At least for about 5 minutes, when Willow declared she had to go to the bathroom.  We made her hold it for a bit and we found a truck stop, and I figured since we were stopped and it was close enough to noon that I'd just make lunch.  It had taken us about 3 hours to go 51 miles down the road.  Ugh.  But on the bright side, Royal found a $5 bill when he was out walking Sam around the parking lot.  So I took the kids inside the travel center and bought them ice cream cones.  :)  And then we hit the road and started making some good time, at least until we would go through another construction zone and would have to go 35 mph.  We finally pulled into Gardiner, MT around 4:30, about 7.5 hours in the car.  A little too long of a second day for me, but we made it.  AND we crossed the Continental Divide!

Chapter 2 : Boiling River
Our campground, Rocky Mountain RV Park,  is literally a mile from the North Entrance into Yellowstone National Park.  That's right!  We're back!  Get ready for some more buffalo pictures! The kids and I decided that Royal was not to miss out on the fun we had here!  And we started our fun right after dinner tonight.  We drove into the park and drove a few miles to the Boiling River to go for a soak.  The Boiling River is a hot spring that dumps into Gardner River and makes areas of the water warm to soak in.  Boiling River's water is REALLY hot and will totally burn you, Gardner River's water is FREEZING, so you have to find the right spot where the two meet to soak yourself in warm water.  The current is also a tad bit strong for my liking, so I had a hand on the kids pretty much the whole time.  But it was still pretty fun.

The Wandering Goose :: vol 11 :: Eagle Nest RV Resort

Chapter 1 : The Drive
Man, could I get used to this boring driving!  Is this what "normal" people's camping trips are like???  I'm kind of jealous!  It doesn't make for many interesting stories though!
So, we took off from Kaylee's driveway this morning around 6:15, with a big 550+mile drive ahead of us.  Royal wanted to go up to Glacier State Park on our way back this time, but it was quite a ways out of our way, so we decided Flathead Lake would be a good spot to go and if we could find a good campground, then maybe we'd stay for 2 nights.
Goodbye beautiful Western Washington....:(

Hello Idaho...

And then a little bit later...Hello Montana

The kids did pretty darn well today.  Not much complaining, lots of movie watching, they both took naps (this was shocking, they hardly slept on the drive out west!), frequent bathroom stops, and gas fill ups.  We did stop in Wallace, ID for gas and there just happened to be a park right off the freeway, so we decided to stop for a bit and move our legs and have a snack in the shade.  We still had a good 2 hours to go to our destination, so this park came at a great time!

We all went down and stuck our feet in the river.  It was 94 out, so I was really tempted to just lay down in the middle of the thing and stay forever!

(did you notice Willow's shoe is starting to float downstream?  don't worry I caught it!)
Then, it was back in the truck for the final part of our journey for the day.   It took us about 10 hours to get to Polson, MT, which is on the south end of Flathead Lake.

Turns out, Polson, MT is a hotspot.  Everybody was full, except for the 3rd RV park we called, and we got their 2nd to last spot for the night.  Unfortunately, we only have a spot for tonight.  So, we don't even get to stay and explore Flathead Lake tomorrow, since our next stop on our way home is another 6 hour drive ahead of us.  We kinda drove all the way up here for nothing.  It's a bit of a bummer, but it sure is beautiful!

Chapter 2 : Our Site
We are staying at Eagle Nest RV Park.  It is really quite nice!  I was surprised, since this one ranked 3 out of 3 on my list, mostly because it was in town and was the farthest from the lake.  But the camp sites are beautiful and clean and all of the people camping here are really friendly!  And thank goodness they have a pool!  And the drive loops they have are small enough that the kids can ride their bikes around and around and we can keep an eye on them right from our site!  More energy burned is never a bad thing!

We are backed right up to a golf course!

So, it's on the road again for us tomorrow!

Kelso Catch Up

How in the world did I get so far behind on my blogging???  Oh right, I remember, Royal finally showed up on our vacation and then things got extremely busy and crammed full, which is Royal's way of doing vacation.  I'm tempted to not even bother posting, but then that would leave out a whole bunch of things that we did.  So, here's a little rewind and catch up!

Royal flew in on Tuesday the 23rd, the day after we had finished snapping and canning 50 pounds of green beans.   :)  Wednesday, we took the kids to the Children's Museum down in Portland.  Thursday, the Cowlitz County Fair started, so of course we had to take the kid's to that!  I spent all of Royal's money on ride's for the kids.  They had a blast, and Willow discovered just how much she really loved cotton candy!

Friday, we did some running around, and I spent more of Royal's money at places like Costco and the Columbia Employee Store!
Saturday,  Royal caught a fish!  Sadly, this was the only day that Jayden didn't get to go fishing with Royal and Fireball and this was the one and only fish they caught, but Jayden wanted a picture with it anyway!

Saturday afternoon Kaylee and Rand and their kids drove down to Kelso to play with us.  We took the kids to a park and let them run loose.  And then in the evening, after the Wagner's had left, we went to the Thunder Mountain Rodeo!  I have no pictures of the cousins playing or the rodeo, because sometimes I get so tired of seeing my life through the view finder of my camera...

On this trip, we also got to meet our newest nephew/cousin Myles!  I know Willow looks a little crazy in this picture and Myle's looks a little scared, but somehow this is the only picture I have...bad aunty!

On Monday, Royal and I took the kids down to Longbeach, WA, where we met up with my mom and aunt as well.
Jayden wants a go-cart for his next birthday, so he was pretty pumped that there was a go-cart track for him to race Royal on.  Willow wasn't big enough to drive her own, so Royal had to cram himself into the teeny tiny kid's cart.

The rest of the time went by in a blur.  Tuesday afternoon Royal and I drove up to Seattle for an over night date.  I'm pretty sure this was the first one we've had since having kids.  I totally don't count flying out to Wichita for Royal's interview a date.  I have no pictures of our adventures, but we did a lot!  We went out to dinner with some friends we have in Seattle.  Then on Wednesday, we walked all over the place.  We had breakfast at Pike's Place, walked down to the waterfront and then over and up to the Seattle Center.  Turns out Royal had never been to the Pacific Science Center, which is awesome in itself, but right now they have King Tut as a special exhibit.  So we went through that (can you believe I didn't have my camera???? King Tut!?!  what is wrong with me???), and then we watched the new batman movie on their 6 story IMAX screen.  Then we walked back down to the waterfront and went on the new 200ft Great Wheel they have on one of the piers.  By then it was about 5 o'clock and there was no way I was going to voluntarily sit in Seattle's rush hour traffic, so we drove up to the U-district and Royal took a drive down memory lane as he drove me around the UW campus telling me all the stuff he used to do and places he lived.  We made it back to Kelso around 9:30 that night.
Thursday morning, I got up and played with Willow in the morning while the boys were out fishing, then spent the next good 4 hours prepping and canning 100 pounds of peaches.
Friday, I spent the majority of the day picking up and organizing and repacking the trailer.  And then saying good-bye to our friends and family in Kelso, as we drove the trailer back up to Olympia so Royal could see some of my family before we left.
Saturday was spent doing a few errands in Shelton, and sadly playing and saying good bye to cousins and family one last time before we headed back to hot-land Kansas.
I can't believe our vacation in Washington is over.  It seemed like when we were planning it, we were going to be there for what seemed like forever, but now I feel like I didn't get to see people long enough or even at all and there is just so much I still want to do.  Not to mention, living next door to my sister is pretty much the best thing on the planet.  Sisters are just not meant to live states apart.  And now we head back to Kansas with tentative plans on when we shall return.  The kid's are excited to go back to our house, and school is starting soon, but now I have to start the readjustment to parenting on our own, without nearby babysitters ready to take the kids for a night or come over for a bit just to give me a break.  Real life I tell ya.  It's for the birds!  :)