Stats

Miles : 8281.1

States: 18 (OH,KY,TN,MS,AR,OK,TX,NM,AZ,UT,ID,WY,MT,SD,IA,IL,ID,PA)

National Parks, Historic Sites, and Monuments: 18

Finishing up

I will post about days 35-38 later (tomorrow?) along with trip statistics, but for now, know that we are back home safe and sound and were greeted by Buster the boxer and Sophie the Puggle with many cries of happiness that their family had returned!

We are home a day early as Abby will be leaving in the morning for a mission trip in western PA for all of this next week.

Day 35

Another travel day as we head to western PA. We wrapped up the Creation Museum and Kings Island a couple days before I (Crystal)  anticipated.  We will probably spend a couple days in western PA before heading home.

Day 34

Today we speak the day at Kings Island. It is part of Cedar Entertainment, so lots of roller coasters.  We spend a lot of time at their water park.  We really enjoy good water parks.

For dinner, we met up with Dave & Sherriann and their sons.  It was wonderful to catch up!

Back to Kings Island for the fireworks, then we slept at a Walmart in Grove City, OHIO

Day 33

Today was Aliza's day - her number one venue to visit is the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.  It opened at 10a, we arrived at 10:02 and parked in lot 7!  Yes, it is a busy place.  We had gone through most of the museum by around 12:45p and Ken and the boys were in a different room than me and the girls when I heard, "Crystal Brothers, please report to the publications office."  (Ken never heard the page). As it turns out, they said "public safety office", and I begin to think that Ken paged me (no cell signal inside the building) or perhaps one of the boys got lost.  So, we find the public safety office and are told, "Indian Springs campground called and they are going to tow your camper."

I asked Abby to go back and find Ken and the boys in the exbit hall and I find an exit to the outdoors to get signal to call the campground.  Answering machine. Ken comes out and he calls the campground and gets a real person, we all get in the car and head back to the campground.   Ken drops me off at the office while he and the kids start prepping the camper to move.  I ask some questions and tell the owner what the CM staff told me and she explained that they just needed us to move to a different site and they were not going to tow us.  So, we moved and ate our brown bag lunches and went to Ark Encounter (40 minutes south of the Creation Museum, and 52mi south of the campground.)

The problem started because when we called the campground the night before, we only asked for one night, but we left three nights of rent in the envelope as we decided to stay there and there appeared to be several open sites.  However, the camp office is only open from 10-4, so we never actually saw anyone to verify that we could stay in that site multiple nights.  

Anyway, it all worked out in the end, we enjoyed the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter and still have a place to sleep tonight.

In the insect area of the Creation Museum, there is a display of leaf insects.  When Annie saw it, she exclaimed, "Wait!  They exist!?!?!?"  The man next to us burst into laughter and said that she had made his day.  

Tomorrow's agenda: Kings Island amusement park and meetup with Sherriann and her family.  Sherriann was one of my roommates at Grove City College.

Day 32

Today is a travel day.  We started in Galesburg, IL after sleeping at Walmart.  We checked in at Indian River RV Park about eight minutes from the Creation Museum.  We will go to the museum tomorrow and perhaps Tuesday, then up to the northeast side of Cincinnati on Wed/Thursday for Kings Island.  We plan to catch up with one of my college roommates while in the area (Sherriann).

No photos today, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana are mostly cornfields and wind turbines especially along the interstate.

We are trying to readjust to EDT time before we get back home next weekend as we will be off and running on Monday morning when we get home.

Day 31

Today is Annie's 11th birthday!  

We are heading to Des Moines, IA, for a small surprise activity for her for the afternoon.  Meanwhile, we are driving through Iowa on I-80E.  Iowa grows two things: corn and windmill farms!

My sinuses are not real happy with the cornfields, but this is the most green we have seen since Arkansas, sometime in early-mid June!

Annie's birthday fudge sampler from Wall Drug.  Chocolate, Strawberry Shortcake, Peanut butter, and maple.  Ken lit two matches for her to blow out as an 11.

In Des Moines, we enjoyed an hour at Sky Zone trampoline park, then two hours at Clive Aquatic Park.  Both were much enjoyed, especially by the birthday girl.  Then we met a work aquaintance of Ken's and her family at Machine Shed Resteraunt for dinner.  That was very nice as well.  I think Annie had a good birthday -- she had expressed concern that her birthday would not be very good if we were driving all day, so we tried to make it fun for her.  Now she is watching one of her favorite movies (Ramona and Beezus) as we continue to head east.

We are done with National Parks for this trip unless we happen to add one spontaneously, but at this point, we are Cincinnati bound for the Creation Museum and King's Island.

Day 30

We really like the cool dry weather here in the northern US - Idaho, Montana, Utah and South Dakota.  The forecast is callong for 95-101f temps here tomorrow and Sunday, so it is a good time to move on as we really like the 70s for hiking and sightseeing.

Last night, we finished off the Custer, SD area with the Legends in Light laser show at Crazy Horse Memorial.  It is well worth staying up late to experience.

The Ark opened today at the Creation Museum in KY, we plan to see it next week as our last stop on our tour of the US.

We are about 45 miles west of Wall, SD and the SD ranchlands are peppered with hand painted signs. The cool weather and huge wide open spaces and big sky are ever inviting.  Perhaps some would thk it almost desolate, but we are enjoying the vast prairies and seemingly infinite horizon.

Our first stop of the day was Minuteman Missile NHS.  There is really only one word for this site dedicated to the Cold War nuclear program -- sombering.

The Badlands look like another planet - so dry and barren.

One of Isaac's Jr. Ranger badges fell off his backpack and he and Ken are rehiking a short hike here in the Badlands to try to find it.  Isaac has worked very hard for the whole vacation and is the only one of our children to complete the Junior Ranger program at every single park and site we have visited.  Losing his Hot Springs badge is very sad.

Found it!!  Annie found Isaac's Hot Springs Junior Ranger badge on the floor in the SUV!  It must have gotten hung up on somethin as he was getting in or out of the car!  He is happy!

Wall Drug is a trip!!  It was fun to just walk around and see all the Jackalopes. We also got some donuts and $0.05 coffee (for $1.xx since we got it to go).

Tomorrow is Annie's birthday and she wanted fudge instead of cake, so we picked that up in Wall as well.  We are going to try to find something fun to do for her tomorrow as she does not want to be in the car the whole day.

Annie likes all the "marshmallow fields even though they aren't done yet".  😊. She knows they are not marshmallows, but likes to call them that anyway.

Day 29

6000 miles so far

The morning brought another cave tour at Wind Cave NP - we have toured the longest three cames in the US as well as the largest cave chamber in the world!  Wind Cave is unique in that it contains box formations which have not been found in other caves.  There was a bat flying around in the staircase when we began the Natural Entrance tour.  Leaving Wind Cave, we saw a very large herd of bison and a few prairie dogs.

The Black Hills area is very pretty with its rocky outcroppings and Pondarosa pines.

The afternoon brought Mt. Rushmore NM and my long-time friend Tanya!  We have "known" each other for probably 16-18 years through an old online newsgroup called Oz (it was for scrapbookers), and we had met IRL once before in 2002 in Philly - before Ken and I knew we would be moving to the Philly area!  It was fun to catch up with her again, here in her home area.

Ken is working on adding a new page to the blog with some photos, so be sure to check the tabs near the top of the blog for a new photo page.

Day 28

Gilette, WY Walmart was our sleeping spot last night along with many other campers.  Today we head into Custer City, SD - listening to C.W. McCall as we travel US-16 into the Black Hills.  We did have to explain convoys to the kids as we listened to old trucker music.  Our CB has been almost silent the whole trip.

Cattle ranches and oil rigs have been our scenes this morning.  Last night we had a vast starry sky to the south and a two hour long lightning storm masked by thick black clouds to the north as we traveled down through Wyoming I-90.

Jewel Cave Scenic tour was on our agenda for the day.  Then we went to Crazy Horse Mountain. Both were worth experiencing.  At Jewel Cave, Ken volunteered to be the caboose for the tour and assure that everyone end the tour together.  The younger three children earned their Junior Ranger badges and patches, and our tour guide was from Clifton, NJ!

Crazy Horse Monument was recommended by our friend Brad - we all enjoyed it.  The children especially enjoyed the hoop dance demonstration and we ate dinner at the resteraunt there -- I had buffalo stew (yum).

Day 27

Today, we leave Idaho for Bozeman, MT and points eastward.  Bozeman marks the northernmost point of our trip and where wentake a sharp turn east.  We are now closer to the north pole than we are the equator.

US-191N from West Yellowstone to Montana is purportedly one of the best scenic drives in America.  We agree.

Today's destination is the Museum of the Rockies with it's large t-rex collection, exhibits on wildlife, Native Americans, an outdoor living histoy exhibit and a planetarium, it should be a place that we all enjoy.  We went to all three movies at the Taylor Planetarium, enjoyed the Pompeii exhibit, Living History museum and more.  One very intriguing find was a fossilized dinasaur bone which had intact soft tissue and blood vessels which is forcing scientists to rethink their theories on fossilization and the "millions of years" scenario. (Maybe thousands makes more sense afterall?!?!!). In the planetarium, one of the films had a sample of an audio recording of Jupiter "singing".... 😏

Near Taylor Fork, MT

After a few hours at the Museum of the Rockies, we stopped for supplies and groceries, and are heading east.

Bozeman, MT

I-90E between Bozeman and Billings... I love Montana - it is beautiful country - big, wide open spaces and majectic mountains, and cool dry weather!

East of Billings,MT

We decided to skip Little Bighorn NP in favor of some extra time in South Dakota: Jewel Cave NM, Wind Cave NP, Mt. Rushmore NHS, Badlands NP, Minuteman Missile NM, and my friend, Tanya!

Day 24

Our third day at Yellowstone NP was spent at Old Faithful.  We correctly (within 6 minutes) predicted the 2:19p eruption based on the elapsed time of the 12:43 eruption.  We walked the Upper Geyser Basin trail and caught a third eruption of Old Faithful. 

The children were startled by the audio CD tour commentary on the Upper Geyser Basin when the story of a 9yo boy dying in one of the thermal features was told.  Abby noticed that some of the warning signs posted at the trailheads were paid for by the boy's family and the NPSimproved the   boardwalks and increased the warnings about staying on the trails after his 1970 death.  Yellowstone does, afterall, sit on top of an active supervolcano, so caution is necessary.

Up next was the Fountain Paint Pot (mud pots are a favorite of the children's) and the thermal features on that trail.  We drove both the Firehole Lake Drive and the Firehole Canyon Drive.  Upstream from the Firehole Falls is a swimming hole which is heated by the geysers upstream!  Aliza, Isaac, and Zeke enjoyed swimming in the Firehole River.

Photos later when Ken has time and wifi.  No wifi here.  We have cell signal at the campground and up until we enter the NP, then we only have signal at some of the bigger visitor centers.

So far, a quick poll has shown that the favorite NPs among the Brothers children are: Carlsbad Cavern, Yellowstone, Hot Springs, and Petroglyphs.

Day 23

I think we have finally adjusted to Mountain time as the last two days we have slept until 8a local time, which is 10a EDT. We sent Happy Birthday messages to my dad and our nephew. 🎂🎂🎂

After we finish breakfast and pack lunches, we are off to Yellowstone again - Mammoth Hot Springs is on the list.  Yellowstone is just incredible - as we walked through the Norris Geyser Basin, we passed this little hole with a tiny bit of water in it labeled Vixen Geyser.  As the children passed it, it erupted 15-20ft into the air and continued erupting for 8-10 minutes, then drained back down into the earth like a sink drain.  Some of the thermal features just look like a rusty crust, but the sound eminating from them is reminiscent of bacon frying in a pan or a gurgling sound that is difficult to describe.

Ken got great photos to add later.  We had a bison walk right up next to our vehicle - that was exciting!

Day 25

We slept in!  We worshipped with FBC West Yellowstone and joined them for their pot luck (they have a really neat ministry to the tourists and the seasonal NP workers).  Everyone there was very friendly and told us about the best places to visit outside the NP.  We also got our laundry caught up and some housekeeping items in the camper.

The afternoon brought some downtime, then back out to the Junior Ranger station at Yellowstone NP for Junior Ranger oaths, badges and patches.

Back to the camper for steak, au gratin potatoes, berries and more.  The campground is right on Henrys Lake. 

Rainbow in Idaho

Henrys Lake in Island Park, ID

Ken is getting the children set up for some fishing in the lake. 

Zeke

Photos from around the campground

Day 22 - Yellowstone

We are sleeping in this morning.  Ken is tired from the long drive from Kanab, UT to Island Park, ID, so no early morning today.  Once we are ready, with lunches packed, backpacks prepped, etc., we will head to the Visitor Center in West Yellowstone, then into the Park.  I think our plan is to head to the North Loop today.

We picked up a few items north of Salt Lake City yesterday - fishing supplies, two Camelback style backpacks, and some cast iron skillets (found a great deal on the small ones that we use to fry eggs and saute vegetables!), and some sneakers and hiking boots for some of the kids whose packed ones didn't fit quite riight, or were left at Becky's house, or were worn down to nothing.  The camelback packs have a 2L water bladder and tube that comes around the front for drinking.  We saw these all through Zion where hiking is popular and found a good deal on a different brand in a sporting good store.  We will find out at Yellowstone whether they work well for us.

Henrys Lake - our campground is right on the lake with majestic snow capped mountains as the backdrop!

We are staying on the north side on Henrys Lake where the highlighter ends - in Idaho.  To get to Yellowstone NP, ~20 miles away, we pass through West Yellowstone, in Montana, then into the National Park, in Wyoming.  

Gibbon Falls

Bison, including baby bison!

Day 21 - the actual day 21

Somewhere in Phoenix, I lost track of days, but today actually is day 21 and it is a travel day.

Piute County, Utah

Snow up on the mountains.

We spent over three hours trying to find an RV park near Yellowstone last night.  Most places are already booked for the long holiday weekend and /or they are in the $80/night range!!  Ken found one near Henrys Lake, ID which is about thirty minutes from the west entrance to Yellowstone.  We might not make Grand Teton due to the camping situation, but we will see. Right now, we are headed north on US-89 and in Salina, UT we will get onto I-15N and ride that up through Salt Lake City and into Idaho.  We hadn't planned on Idaho, but, it looks like we will be adding it to our map afterall.

US-89 is a good two lane road and a beautiful scenic route with a great view of the Rockies.

Sevier R.

US-89 near Big Rock Candy Mtn.

Traveling I-15N toward Salt Lake City, and the signs that we are in Mormon country evident everywhere! A small Young Living Family Farm field of lavender lies only a few yards from the interstate, Marriott, Amway, doTERRA, towering white Temples, Brigham Young University, and more prove the stronghold of the LDS and their success in business in this area.  Scrapbook businesses such as Creating Keepsakes, ProvoCraft and WeRMemory Makers are here as well.

Passing by the Great Salt Lake and nearby Promontory Point was a good teaching moment.

The scenery changes again as we approach the Utah-Idaho border and grasslands and farms replace the scrubby bushes and cattle ranches.

Potatoes, anyone?

We are an hour from the campground and I still have cell service, so I will post this as I am able.  The campground does not have wifi and cell service is spotty at best inside Yellowstone, to my knowledge. We plan to stay at Jared's Wild Rose Resort RV park through next Tuesday.

Day 21

More thoughts on Bryce:

Aliza : It looks like creamsicles!

Ken : The horseback ride was very tenuous.

Today, we head to Zion National Park.  I am not taking my iPad in my pack so, most photos will wait until Ken uploads.  We plan to hike part of The Narrows, The Patriarchs,and Emerald Pools in the morning, then go to the myseums, etc in the heat of the afternoon.  We a required to ride the shuttles here so all of us will carry our own pack with water, sunscreen, etc., so we won't carry anything we don't need.

Driving into Zion NO

This is just a little tunnel.

Here we are waiting to be measured to go through the big tunnel, not wide nor high, but long - 1.1mi. long.  It was constructed between 1920 and 1930 and n some concrete and steel reinforcement, it has not changed much, so large vehicles must pass through very carefully.  Oh, it is also quite curvy.  I like tunnels about as much as I do heights, so this has been another stretching experience for me (Crystal).  Did I mention there are no lights in the tunnel except the occasional window and headlights?  I have my "panic attack aromatherapy stick" handy.

Whew, and we are through the tunnel and snaking down, down, down into the canyon... I tried several times but could not get a good photo of the hairpin turns of this entry road.

We hiked to the lower Emerald Pool and the Riverwalk trails.  Aliza, Annie, Zeke and I waked up the river almost to the entrance of The Narrows, but we were not adequately prepared to hike The Narrows (hiking boots are not good in the river).

Lastly, we experienced a rare phenomenon-- a heavy downpour lasting about 15 minutes in Kanab, UT (high desert)!  We were warned at Zion that the risk for a flash flood in the Narrows for tomorrow is "probable".

Tomorrow morning, we will head north for Grand Teton NP followed by Yellowstone NP.   We may not have cell signal nor wi-fi in northwest Wyoming, so, if I don't update the blog it is due to no connectivity.

Day 20 - midway

We are officially past the midway point of our trip - the trip is 39 days, and so day19/20 marks the halves.  The rock formations in southern Utah are stunning especially in the earlier parts of the morning.

North of Glendale, en route to Bryce Canyon, the landscape once again becomes green and speckled with cattle ranches.

The road we are traveling, US-89 is very reminiscent of the hilly, winding roads theoughout northern and western Pennsylvania.  Conifer forests cover the Rocky Mountains here.

The sun climbs over the Rockies in Hatch, UT ay 7:50am MDT.  The size of the moutains cannot be captured accurately on my iPad camera.  

All the children are working on Junior Ranger program and as a family, we are working on Bryce Canyon NP's "I Hiked the Hoodoos!" Hiking scavenger hunt.

Ken, Abby, and Aliza rode mules down into the hoodoos.  It was a two hour ride. Abby said that she was pretty sure that this was the end or how she would end up in a full body cast as her mule and Ken's mule walked on e very edge of the cliff.  Aliza's did that occasionally, but not to the same degree.  (Photos later)

It was a long day at Bryce -8a-8p plus the hour and a half drive each way and a LOT of hiking!  At the end of the day, we went to see the Ranger about Junior Ranger badges and "I hiked the Hoodoos!" Rewards, and the Ranger asked where we are from.  The kids answered, the. The lady behind us said, "We're from West Virginia and have five kids also, do you happen to homeschool?"  As it turns out, they were parked right next to us in the parking lot in their Ford Expedition (we drive a Ford Excursion). So we chatted a couple minutes about road trip destinations and the Creation Museum.

Tunnel on Rt. 12 leaving Bryce Canyon.

(We are doing better health-wise, but I struggle with the altitude)

Sunset near Hatch, UT. (8:51p MDT)