Bend, Oregon: The Beginning of the High Desert

We came on to Bend to see Papa and Grandma, who are attending The Rally--a gathering of 6000+ rv enthusiasts. We got a day pass into The Rally today, and Gloria had a ball shopping and gathering freebies from the vendors with Grandma. Dad, Noni and I toured new motorhomes and trailers. It was fun, but I just don't think that many people should be in one place together. Noni's favorite thing was the free watermelon.

We visited the High Desert Museum. They have animal exhibits as well as cultural exhibits. We saw otters, raptors, a bobcat and a lynx, as well as fish, bugs, spiders, reptiles, etc. Gloria and Leona made spider bracelets and egg crate bugs and caterpillars. They scrubbed floors, carried water, and stacked wood at a living settlers exhibit. Gloria made rope inside a teepee. And they climbed around a giant spider web, dug up fossils, and crawled around tunnels. Gloria said the spider web was her home. They would be happy to come back here everyday.





We also went to Lava Lands National Monument. We took a short walk that gave us a chance to talk about the things we learned a Craters of the Moon, but rain and a tired two year old cut short our visit.

Then we visited a small nature center in Sunriver. The girls looks through microscopes at various samples of things from the woods, they studied reptiles and rocks, and then we took a nature walk. The biggested adventure there was the toad migration. The baby toads, only about an inch long, are leaving the pond and going to the woods. They were everywhere. Volunteers were clearing them from the roadway as we tried to enter the nature center area. Gloria caught and cleared dozens from the path during our walk, and we stopped so I could gather more off the road on our way out. We also saw a bald eagle that lives on a small island in the lake that borders the path, and we came across a bunny just beside the path. It sat quietly and watched us and we stared right back at it.

Bend has been much more fun that I expected, but we are going to leave in the morning to start making our way back to Texas. This leg of the trip will teach us about deserts and will require us to detour around wildlifes. It will be much different from the lush green landscape we spent the last month in.

See you soon!

The Big Decision

Well, I don't know how this works for the betting pool on the length of our time on the road, but I've decided we're coming home. The girls are saturated with new things, I think. And Gloria is so painfully homesick for her family and friends. And if she is starting school this year, we need to get home in time for her to do that with everyone else.

I am glad we took the trip together. The break in routine and completely concentrated time with the girls was wonderful. We saw amazing places, and if I were alone and still in my twenties, I would almost certainly be staying up here! But I'm not. And I've discovered that, at this point in my life, I need family, friends, my people around more than I need beautiful scenery or the coolest crowd. (Not that my Dallas friends aren't incredibly cool, of course!)

I'm keeping the trailer. I want to be able to travel with them in the summers. Every year, there will be more they can understand. And I don't think my itch to travel is about to disappear for good.

I don't know how the timing works for those betters among you--whether the length of the trip is measured by when we decide to go home or when we actually get there. We still have a lot of cool stuff to see over the 2000+ miles between here and there, but I expect to be home by or about the beginning of August.

The Oregon Coast

On our way to Tillamook, Oregon (yes, like the cheese), we visited two more lighthouses: Yaquina Head and Yaquina Bay. Yaquina Bay was only in operation for three years in the 1870s because it couldn't be seen well enough and had to be replaced by the Yaquina Head lighthouse a few miles north. But we loved that one because the lighthouse is incorporated into the keeper's house, which is open and decorated as it would have been at the time of its operation. It is a great way to talk about how life was different. Noni especially has grown to love the lighthouses. She asks to see them wherever we go--whether we are near the coast or not!


Once we got to Tillamook, we visited two cheese factories and a sausage company. Such tours are big hits with kids. One of the cheese companies (Blue Heron French Cheese Co.) even has a petting zoo outside the store. We also discovered that Gloria likes brie (and summer sausage!). We visited Cape Meares Lighthouse--the shortest lighthouse in Oregon--and the kids got to climb to the top, right up beside the cut-glass fresnel light. Cape Meares State Park is also home to the Octopus Tree, a sitka spruce that has six trucks spreading from its roots.

We moved on to Ada, Oregon, a tiny town on Siltcoos Lake outside Florence. Siltcoos Lake is the largest lake along the Oregon Coast, and just about all of the shoreline is privately owned, so it is very quiet. We stayed at a fishing camp. The girls got to play with a lot of kids here. They loved catching and playing with salamanders along the dock. Gloria said this was her favorite place on the whole trip--because she had kids to play with.

While we were in Ada, we visited Sea Lion Caves and Heceta Head Lighthouse. We took an elevator down in the large sea cave and saw dozens of sea lions playing, swimming, and calling to one another. Gloria had been warned by her grandfather that it would smell bad in the cave, and she had been very concerned about--even practiced holding her nose. She said it wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. Of course, we weren't there for the largest concentration of sea lions inside the cave. We were told that sometimes hundreds will be in the cave together. Heceta Head Lighthouse is only four miles from the cave and there are nice views of it from there. But we drove on up the road and hiked up to the lighthouse itself. The keepers house is now a bed and breakfast, but it is also open for tours in the afternoons.

From here we head inland to Bend.

Long Beach Peninsula

We left Whidbey Island and drove south toward Seattle, stopping off to see a lighthouse in Mukilteo. The lighthouse was closed, but we met a volunteer coming out, and when she heard we were from Texas, she took the girls passport books to have them stamped and gave them shells, stickers, and postcards. Most of the people we meet are so nice and so willing to go out of their way for us--or at least for my cute girls!

From Seattle, we headed back toward the coast at the far southwest point of Washington. We stayed in Long Beach and drove up and down this great, homey peninsula that looks like a 1960s beach resort. Carousel, museum of curiosities, the whole bit. The free museum's main attraction is Jake, the Alligator Boy. I didn't take the girls, but I bet it's something a 10-year-old would love.

We hiked to the lighthouses at North Head and Cape Disappointment. North Head Lighthouse is taller and had a beautiful view, but we liked the black and white stripes on Cape Disappointment Lighthouse. On the way to Cape Disappointment Lighthouse, we passed Dead Man's Cove. It was a lovely cove with a beautiful sheltered beach, but the beach was closed because the paths down were too treacherous. Gloria did not accept that story easily, but she smiled for a picture at the overlook. At the end of the hike, the girls were tired and happy to find a bench to stretch out on.

We also visited the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center. When I talked to Gloria later about where the expedition camped and how they hiked from Station Camp to Cape Disappointment, she said, "But I didn't see them there." History is a little abstract for a 5 year old, I guess.

Her favorite thing, as always, was walking on the beach and watching the animals. There are a lot of shore birds at the Willapa Wildlife Refuge at the tip of Long Beach Peninsula, and we hiked out a little way along the beach there.

Our Favorite Honda Dealership!

We decided to stay on Whidbey Island to have the van's air conditioner fixed. I liked the dealership and looked at the weather report inland, so it was easy to decide we didn't want to go far without fixing it. Now I'm so glad we did. The work was all done by lunchtime, and the service manager called Honda and got it covered as warranty work even though I was well outside the warranty. Sims Honda in Burlington, Washington is officially my favorite dealership ever.

We're enjoyed our time on the island, but we were ready to start moving again. On our way off the island, we stopped at the Deception Pass Bridge. The water under the bridge is so strange and turbulent--the source of the pass's name--and the bridge is so high, that walking across it is very disconcerting. But the area is remarkably beautiful. There's a landing half way across the pass where we parked and looked around. Gloria would have been happy to climb right over the railing and hike down to the shore at the bottom of the cliff! It heard that it is the most photographed landmark in Washington, and that makes sense.

Whidbey Island

We were happy to be headed toward the coast again because it can get warm, even in Washington, with the van's air conditioner out, and it's been out for a couple of weeks now. The days on Whidbey Island are in the low to mid 60s, sunny and breezy. We got here on the July 4th and wandered through the Fourth of July Extravaganza in Oak Harbor. The girls got temporary tatoos. Gloria loved her Tinker Bell tatoo and wanted her friends and family to see it. They sampled playground equipment until Noni fell in the sand and filled her eyes, nose and mouth with it. She was a good sport about getting it washed off (and out), but she was also ready to go back to Rosie. Fireworks don't start up here until 10:30, and the girls were asleep long before that, but I could hear occasional booms deep into the night.

We found a dealership that can fix the van's air conditioner, but the part won't be here until Monday. So we'll be staying on Whidbey Island until Tuesday. It's no hardship given the weather and the views and the Mexican Restaurant I found in Oak Harbor! It's really good and is helping with some of my homesickness. It you can't be with the ones you love, eat as if you are.

Continuing on the lighthouse hunt, we visited Admiralty Head Lighthouse and the eagles that nest there. Being a lighthouse keeper was a very solitary and remote life, and they had an example of the traveling bookshelves that would be passed from lighthouse to lighthouse by the inspectors so the keepers would have something to read. There were at least 700 of these bookshelves with solid doors that were in circulation. Within sight of the lighthouse, we climbed around in the old fortifications from Fort Casey--built to protect Puget Sound from the Canadians, British and Spanish. Given that the perceived risk has fallen, the fort is now part of a state park and a national historic reserve. There seem to be deer here all the time, very at peace with the tourist all around them.

We even went to a mall. It's amazing how much fun a mall can be when you spend enough time in the woods. The girls had a ball at the play area with their instant friends. Then we saw Ratatouille. Gloria loved it, and Leona liked it well enough to not scream. It really wasn't very stressful because some loud, obnoxious little boys sat behind us. It's not something I ever thought I would be happy to see happen, but it does decrease the pressure of seeing a movie with a wiggly two-year-old who can't always remember to whisper.

North Cascades National Park

When we left Papa and Grandma, the girls and I continued around the Cascade Loop. We stopped at the Rocky Reach Dam on the Columbia River north of Wenatchee and learned about the use of fish ladders to provide a route up the river for spawning salmon and trout, and we visited a museum inside the dam about the Columbia River. The girls also enjoyed a playground there provided by the public utility department--a really cool one that had a hand pedal trolley and a climbing wall with a rope.

We stayed overnight in Carlton, Washington in the Methow Valley. It's a tiny town, but we had a fantastic dinner at the only restaurant there: hamburger steak with mushrooms and onions, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, real downhome cooking that tasted as good as anything I've ever had. We walked by the river and had a quiet night.

The next morning, we continued up the Methow Valley and onto the North Cascades Highway. This may be the most beautiful stretch of road I've ever been on. The mountains are steep and rugged, glaciers cover much of the high ground, and streams, waterfalls, and cascades run down between the peaks. Ross Lake, in the middle of the Cascades, is deep blue but nearby Diablo Lake is dark green.

We stayed at Newhalen Creek Campground near the North Cascades NP Visitor Center. There were a number of short nature trails near our camp, and we did the Ladder Creek Falls Trail, the Trail of the Cedars, and the River Loop Trail--all beautiful and the longest only a mile long. Gloria especially liked the rainbow that appeared over the bottom of Ladder Creek Falls.

Gloria became a junior ranger. We also attended Ranger Programs both nights we were at the park, and Gloria, as an official junior ranger, was asked to help out by counting the attendants and to answer a few special questions about the park. We had to drop back by the visitors center on our way out this morning so Gloria could say goodbye to her favorite park ranger.

Papa, Grandma and a Bavarian Village

After stopping to replace our camera, we traveled east to the center of Washington and joined Papa and Grandma at a campground outside Leavenworth. Leavenworth was a town abandoned by the railroad and then by its sawmill early in the century. The town refused to die, though, and in the 1960s, it made itself over as a charmingly decorated Bavarian tourist trap. It's cute, and the town seems to be doing well. The 59 Diner sold over 4000 milkshakes last August, for example.

This is also where we began to encounter mosquitos. Ick.

We found out about the 59 Diner from another camper, and Gloria decided it was the best place to eat EVER because she could dance to 50s music on the jukebox while she waited for her food. So we also took his suggestion to drive up to White River Falls in Snoqualmie National Forest. We drove along to the end of the paved road; we kept driving when it became a gravel road; we got a little nervous, but we kept going when it became a simple dirt road. But finally, there is was: White River Falls campground. We pulled in to a beautiful, small campground and could hear the roar of the falls. It was hard to get a good view of the falls, although we could see tantalizing portions of it as it dropped in a curve away and then back toward us, but that was almost more fun. It felt private and discovered.

In Cashmere, we toured Aplets and Cotlets, a candy company that makes a version of turkish delight with fruit and nuts in it. I liked the Cotlets best: apricots and walnuts. On the way back, we visited a farm with a petting zoo outside Peshastin. Gloria pulled Leona around and around in the wagon: we find heavy work for her wherever we can!

The best part of the week, though, was getting to be with Papa and Grandma again. We're leaving in the morning, but we'll see them again later this month!

The Day of Two Losses

Today we went to our two festivals: the Pirate Daze Festival in Westport and the Sand and Sawdust Fest in Ocean Shores. The girls' favorite "sand castle" had Bruce the shark with Crash and Squirt (sea turtles) from Finding Nemo. My favorite was a camping scene--a really liked the dog roasting a marshmallow.

In Westport, there were pirates everywhere. They take their festival seriously! We wandered through the booths, dancing with a pirate band, and walked along the long fishing pier. We saw fish, lots of crab scuttling around, and even a shark (which was cut loose by the fisherman). We also visited a small aquarium with local marine animals (the catch them in the harbor) and a big touch tank. The girls got to touch lots of anemones and seastars, sea cucumbers and kelp. It was hard to drag them away and their hands were ice cold by the time we left.

What a fun day, and then, trying to get everything and everyone safely into the car, I dropped our camera on the ground and drove off without it. By the time I realized it was gone and got back, someone else was apparently very happy to have a new camera. (I wonder if our pictures were deleted already?) I lost a couple of days of pictures that really bum me out and I feel like an idiot, but I reminded myself that we were safe and unhurt, so how bad could it be?

We drove back to Rosie the trailer for the night. Domestic activity, rowdy kids and dogs covering the small patch of floor. I later learned that Gloria was playing with the door handle and unlatched the door, leaving it almost closed. I put the girls in bed and started washing dishes, but Jackson was whining. I bend down to check on him, and realize that Hank is not under the table with him where I'd assumed he was. Where's Hank?! Gloria began to cry and said she was afraid he went outside after she played with the door. Some very nice people helped me look for him, but Hank found his own way home pretty soon--sandy, wet and happy.

So today, I lost two things: a camera and a dog. If I could only get one back, thank goodness it was our Hank.

The Grand Tour of the Peninsula

Today was a marathon, too full of great things. It should have been a four or five day loop, I think. We played in tidepools along the coast. The girls saw and tentatively touched seastars, anemones, barnacles, and mussels. They climbed on beach logs, and made wishes on "wishing stones"--the round beach stones that have a white line running all the way through them. Gloria's wish every time was to have her family with her. I think my poor girl is getting homesick.

We drove north and into the mountains along a beautiful mountain lake. At the main visitor center for Olympic National Park, Gloria took the pledge and was awarded her junior ranger badge. We saw a movie about the park and a display on the animals that live in the park.

Then, Gloria's and Leona's favorite part of the day, we found the best playground ever in Port Angeles, on the northern coast. It had a tire swing that would spin fast enough to satisfy Gloria and bring out squeals of laughter from her. Volunteers put the whole thing up, and it had a play town and an elaborate fort. The climbed and swung and spun. At a pretend ice cream stand, Gloria and Leona sold each other ice cream for $30 a scoop.

We drove on around the peninsula to the east and stopped at the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge to take a walk. If we had been up a ten mile hike, we could have walked to the New Dungeness Lighthouse at the end of a long narrow sandbar. But instead, we walked a mile or so and admired the lighthouse from afar. We took some back roads along the edge of the coast to try to get a better view of the lighthouse and came across a restaurant called The 3 Crabs. It was delicious--a wonderful accidental find. And a couple came by to say how well-mannered my girls are. Gloria beamed. After dinner, we saw a rainbow over the cascade mountains--so vivid it seemed almost flourescent. It was the girls' first rainbow, and they pretended to take pictures of it with the viewmaster.

It would have been the end of a very nice, really long day exploring. But we were still almost 150 miles from home. Fortunately, the girls fell asleep in the car and mom didn't. We made it back to Rosie just before midnight. The headache I woke up with confirmed that the trip would have been better made over a few days, but it was definitely an adventure worth having one way or the other.

Washington's Olympic Peninsula

We are in Ocean City, Washington, in the middle of Washington's North Beaches. We've walked a rainforest trail in the southern part of Olympic National Park. Elk and deer graze in the forest, so it is open enough for some wildflowers to grow near the path and to allow clear sight through the trees. Seedlings often take root on fallen logs to avoid the competition on the forest floor. Eventually, their roots grow through and around the log into the ground. When the log rots away, it leaves space below the tree. You can imagine how the girls--especially Gloria--loved pretending that she lived in the cave-like spaces under the trees. And of course, there was the largest Sitka Spruce in America. We just had to "climb" it.

We also visited Gray's Harbor Lighthouse in Westport--the tallest lighthouse in Washington. We got a passport book put out by the U.S. Lighthouse Society. We got our books stamped at the lighthouse and at the maritime museum that has a fresnel light on display that used to be in the lighthouse on Destruction Island (isn't that a great name?). Once we get stamps from 60 lighthouses, the society will verify the book and send us a patch that says, "I have seen the light!" We are on a lighthouse hunt now. (Janice, you have a lighthouse down there, right? That needs to go on our agenda!)

Gloria just loves the beach, and running in the sand is certainly good for us all, so we walked a dunes trail in Westport, around the jetty at Ocean Shores and with the dogs to the beach just beyond our campground. It was the dogs' first time on the beach, and they went crazy for all the smells! They were ready to go crabbing. There's a sand castle competition here this weekend and a pirate festival in Westport, so I don't think we'll be able to leave right away!

Keep leaving the comments! We love to see who's following along with us.

In and Around Seattle

We headed up to the Seattle area along with Kevin, Chris and Carter. Again, they stayed downtown, and we headed to a small town outside the city, this time in the foothills of the Cascades. We were just a few miles from beautiful and impressive Snoqualmie Falls. We also took advantage of being near farmland to pick some strawberries together from a u-pick field and buy cherries by the road.

Roaming around Seattle, the kids got a kick out of the various decorated pigs and had to be photographed at every one we came across. One very big day, we rode the Duck boat in a land and water tour of the city and Lake Union. The girls favorite thing was waving out to people on the sidewalk. We visited the Experience Music Project (Gloria says "cool!") and the Science Fiction Museum (Gloria says, "a little scary"). The kids enjoyed some of the rides scattered in the shadow of the Space Needle, and then we all rode the Needle to the top.

We said goodbye to the guys and packed up to head for the coast. Gloria is ready for more beaches!

Fun with Chris, Kevin and Carter

We've seen Chris, Kevin and Carter just about every day since we got here. The kids have had a great time together and Gloria and Carter are perfectly matched on the playground: those two know how to play hard! Portland has so many great parks, and we explored whenever and wherever we could.

One day, we drove to the coast and the kids played on Tolavana Beach. Noni didn't like the sand and it took significant effort to get her to stand in the sand at all, but she eventually warmed up to it to play gingerly. We thought they would play in the sand and wade a little, but they didn't care about the cold and Gloria and Carter were quickly soaked. I changed Gloria into a bathing suit and she played until her lips turned blue and she began to shiver. I put her in the van to warm up, we dressed in warm clothes and walked down the beach to see "the big rock."

Today, they came out to the Gorge and met Rosie, our trailer. Then we drove east on the Historic Columbia River Highway to Multnomah Falls. On the way we stopped at Vista House, one of buildings designed for travelers on the highway about 1915. It's recently been restored to it original state. We had lunch at the restaurant on the bottom of Multnomah Falls, then we hiked up to the top of the falls--a mile of steep switchbacks to the top and a slippery mile back down. The kids did great. Noni and Carter hiked most of it, and Gloria virtually all of it, on their own steam. For dinner, we went to Tad's Chicken n Dumplins in Troutdale, near where we're staying. It's the only one of the original roadhouses that remain on the Columbia River Highway. The dumplings are soft and as big as softballs. The macaroni and cheese is the best I've ever tasted. Oh, yes, I love it here.

Tomorrow, we're going to Seattle where the kids have been promised more time together. So far, though, the Pacific Northwest seems as cool as I hoped.

Columbia River Gorge

We drove today into the Columbia River Gorge and are staying in a small town just inside the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. It is so beautiful here. So lush you feel cradled by the greenery. We passed waterfalls so tall and slender, they looked like tangles of spiderweb. And this town, Corbett, is perfect--interesting and quaint, but it doesn't seem deliberately so. We just missed the community breakfast this weekend at the fire department. It's a 20-30 minute drive into Portland, but that's fine. I love it here.

From the reactions I've received to the blog, I realize that I have given an incomplete picture of our time on the road. Rhonda often said that Gloria was acting out because she craved more of my attention. I started the trip with the naive idea that, when she had all my attention, Gloria would be less defiant and out of control. Okay, I wasn't thinking clearly. If anything, she is more defiant and unruly than ever. I suspect it's a combination of not having sufficient structured exercise and becoming so secure in my attention--she has me no matter what.

On night, when she would not lie down, was squealing, laughing, throwing the quilts on the floor, and getting her sister very riled up in the process, by 10:30, she had lost her blanket, her pillow, and had to spend a few minutes lying on the floor instead of the bed. She didn't like that, so we finally had a talk and she settled down.

On our marathon day of driving, the girls were amusing themselves by talking, laughing, screaming and squealing and making various animal sounds. After several hours of this, I was feeling a little on edge and asked them to use quiet voices for a while or to play a quiet game. No response. I ask again, and Gloria tries. Noni, if anything, gets louder and acts like she can't hear me. Some of you have seen her suddenly lose her hearing this way. Finally, I say loudly, "Noni, just HUSH please!" Apparently, that hurt her feelings, and she bursts into tears and cries "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" until my head is going to explode.

So there are times that I think working long hours is not all bad. But being with them all the time is not as hard as I thought it would be. We have a rhythm together that generally works, painful as it is when we get out of sync.

By the way, if you want to see some of the wildlife that the girls fell in love with in Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, check out Papa and Grandma's blog at http://farrisjourney.blogspot.com.

Craters of the Moon

Okay, this is a cool place!

Several times over the last 15,000 years, Craters of the Moon has been the site of volcanic events along a long rift. We learned about the types of lava flows ("pahoehoe" is smooth or ropy and forms when the lava is very fluid; "aa" is very jagged and rough, carrying along rocks in its thick flow). Even our campsite is cleared out of the middle of the lava field.

We wandered through cinder gardens, climbed a cinder cone (called "inferno cone") and two splatter cones (one called "snow cone" that always has snow deep inside--this tickled the girls). Even in early June, the sun on the black cinder and lava fields made it hot, and the girls were happy to find shade anywhere they could. We also explored caves or lava tubes. The girls did a great job climbing over the rocks to get into the undeveloped caves. Although the girls loved the exploring, I think their favorite thing was the butterfly that landed on Gloria's hand and hitched a ride for a while. They are very focused on animals!

Gloria became a junior ranger: her 4th junior ranger badge. And we all loved exploring here. It was such a great contrast to Yellowstone's landscape, but it was still another way to talk about volcanic activity. We all want to come back here again.

After a full day exploring and a second night at Craters of the Moon, we hit the road early for a marathon day of driving and are spending the night in Hermiston, Oregon. We took a break to visit the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City, and Gloria said she learned a lot about the wagon trains to Oregon. They had life-size displays of scenes from the trial and lots of videos in addition to the wagon ruts themselves that record the course of the wagon trains.

Tomorrow, we'll head toward Portland to see Kevin, Chris and Carter. Gloria has been asking for days when she will get to see Carter. It can't happen early enough for her.

On Our Own ... and Near Disaster!

We left West Yellowstone and the security of Papa and Grandma and made it four hours down the road before we ran into our first near disaster. I wanted to go to some sand dunes in San Anthony, Idaho--just 12 miles off the freeway and good, fun exercise for all of us. I was a little leery of the day use parking lot because the long entry looked sandy, but it was the official parking lot, I saw people driving out and there were signs everywhere prohibiting parking on the shoulders. So I started into the lot, got about 25 feet down the entrance road, and sank abruptly in the sand, almost the to the floorboards. I tried prying boards and mats under the tires, but everything sank.

I walked out to the road where I could get some limited cell phone access and had just gotten the numbers for two local towing companies when a hero pulled up in a big white pickup with a long horse trailer behind. "Do you need some help?" Dad and others promised me that people would help when we needed it, but this was better than I had reason to hope for. His family piled out and unloaded the six horses, he unhitched his trailer and roped his truck to the rear bumper of the trailer and hauled us out while I reversed in the van (for what that was worth).

From the kids point of view, the best part was getting to pet the horses! Apparently, there had been so little rain that the usually firm sand had gone very soft. Where the horses often exercised, they now sank up to their bellies!


After offering thanks and taking pictures, we ignored the signs and left the van and trailer on the shoulder (half on the asphalt road) while Gloria raced up and down the sand dunes until sudden big drops of rain sent her back into the van. Then we drove on to Craters of the Moon National Monument and gratefully hit the sack.

We Love Yellowstone!

We've had a wonderful time in Yellowstone. The kids now call all bison "Gloria's bison" and elk are all "Noni's elk." We saw bald eagles flying up to their nests and a baby eagle peeking over. We saw a black bear foraging no more than 100 feet from the road. We've seen baby bison, moose, elk and dear (the kids especially love any baby animals). Today, we saw a coyote alongside the road, which Gloria said was "nearly as good as seeing a wolf, but not really." Gloria is enjoying her birthday binoculars from Grandma and Papa.

We visited the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center, where Gloria became very interested in wolves. And she was a Keeper Kid at the Center; she and about 20 other kids went into the bear enclosure with a naturalist (while the bears were out, of course) and hid fruit and vegetables under rocks and behind stumps for the bears to forage when they came back out. We got photos of the bears finding her food. The 8 grizzlies at the Center were orphaned when they were too young to survive alone or were removed as nuisance bears (getting into trash, etc., they become too aggressive with people and property) and were taken to the Center instead of being destroyed. Bear management officials kill many bears every year, and there's tremendous emphasis here on being sure bears can't get to any human food: "a fed bear is a dead bear" is the slogan.

The girls have been great hikers--not always happy, but usually so. Gloria was all grins when we hiked to Mystic Falls, despite a pretty good knock on her shin from falling hard on a sharp stone in the path. (She expends a little extra energy while hiking.) Noni was very upset by a fall in the mud on the way to Mystic Falls. But she and Gloria made it down to Red Rock Point and back up the the top of the cliff you see behind them above the stairs. I was far more out of breath at the top than either of them. The view of the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is beautiful from Red Rock Point and the girls were very proud and excited when we got there. But getting back out is a climb! Dad looked at us like we were crazy for doing it. For her last full day in Yellowstone, though, Gloria wanted to go back to Old Faithful because "it is SO BEAUTIFUL when it blows up into the air." She was not disappointed either because, just before the eruption, the wind changed and we got sprayed. Gloria giggled and threw out her arms. Noni started to cry and hid her head against my neck. It was an exciting end.

Dad has put in our new furnace, and he is planning to install our new water heater tomorrow. In another day or two, we should be heading west. Next stop (a brief one) will be Craters of the Moon National Monument, then we continue west hoping to meet up with Carter et al.

By the way, Kevin and friends, I've used the crock pot several times and I love it. And the first aid kit has come out repeatedly. Adventure girls have to deal with splinters and scrapes pretty often, but we're prepared.