Wisdom of the road

Here are some of the lessons we learned from the trip:

• National Park campgrounds are beautiful, and inexpensive, but almost impossible to get during the busy season (summer?). What to do?
• Some spots/campgrounds are reservable. These may be more expensive - like in Yellowstone, the reservable campgrounds were run by a concession company. Make your reservations WELL in advance.
• For Glacier and Yellowstone, you can see the times that the campgrounds filled each day on a website. These all seemed to be morning times, some quite early. So you could stay overnight at a hotel very near the park, and be in line early; or you could drive through the night and time it to arrive in the park in the early morning. Neither of these was very feasible for us on this trip.
• Try going in the off season. I don't know when you can find a good combination of nice weather and smaller crowds, but I know it isn't in July!
• Utilize National Forest camping. The national parks are surrounded by national forests, which offer campgrounds (often primitive). Apparently one can also pull off and camp by the side of the road in most national forest areas - be sure you bring your own water. A small RV or camper van would make this much more feasible.
• Pick up "Official State Maps" whenever you can - at rest areas/welcome centers, and sometimes at hotel or campground check-in. AAA maps and google maps are great for navigating, but the official state maps let you plan the big picture, and often give more detail on the areas you're passing through. 
• Small cooler wasn't enough.  It couldn't hold ice for more than a day.  Need a medium, well insulated cooler for future trips.
• Car top carrier was essential for us.  Carried all the soft goods - sleeping bags, pillows, pads, etc. Probably could use a slightly bigger one - 16cuft perhaps.
• Audio books are great for passing the time
• Sprint/Virgin Mobile phones are useless in the Northwest states.
• A vehicle with more ground clearance than a mini-van is probably a good idea if you want to access primitive campgrounds in national forests.
• You need more than a day to see the parks.  I would say 4 days minimum (Paul).

Day 30 - Smith/Dorn Resort at Sibley Lake

The luckless fisherman

We had a good nights sleep with the parents waking late and the kids waking earlier and enjoying a decadent breakfast of jam with croissants on the side.  There were a lot of activities planned for the day so we had to get moving.  The girls were anxious to use the paddleboat and go swimming so we did while Katrina, Dawn and Aidan played Dominion.  I tried my hand at fishing after hearing that some nice sized fish were caught right off the dock.  Many casts later I had a couple strikes on the lure, enough to keep me casting, but sadly no fish resulted.  It would be BBQ, not fish, for dinner tonight. (The BBQ was delicious)  After Evan and Jeffery returned from camp, the new water tube was inflated and the kids gave it a maiden usage.  We were pulling the tube behind a pontoon boat so the speed was limited but it was enough speed that the kids had fun and even experimented with full-body skiing behind the tube.

The maiden voyage

Once the sun started to set the whole crew, Wefel's, Smith's, and Dorn's played several rounds of murder.  Dawn introduced this game to us during past camping trips and the kids (and adults) enjoy playing it.  Once it was fully dark, we took a chance and set off the fireworks we had been hauling around with us for the past month.  There is a backstory on the fireworks in that they were intended for Aidan's birthday since setting off fireworks was his birthday wish.  Overall it was a fun and busy day.

Tomorrow we should be home.

Day 29 - Off to Pequot Lakes

We woke to the sound of thunder which spurred us to action.  We had the fastest pack up time ever at 45 minutes.  We were on the road early and the storm never really materialized.  After a couple hours of driving we made a stop at McDonalds. I'm not a fan, but on this trip I have become fond of their breakfast oatmeal plus we needed more monopoly game pieces.  :)

Dinner.  really?

My reputation preceded me.

Most of today was spent driving through North Dakota.  The signs of a modern day oil rush are everywhere.  Lot's of construction, hotels, houses, stores and billboards advertising refinery equipment.  Go Fracking!  We made lunch in the car as we drove and made it to Pequot lakes in time to have ice cream for dinner at the local ice cream store then arrived to a warm reception at the Smith/Dorn cabins around 7pm.

I like the Pequot lakes water tower.  Well done.

Day 28 - TRNP

Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  This park is a hidden gem.

We woke after a good sleep and decided we liked the campsite enough to stay another day and go explore the park. We went to a ranger program at the Painted Canyon visitor center - which is also an interstate rest area.  I would guess it is the only rest area where you have a good chance of seeing bison in the parking lot (and 100% chance of encountering bison poop).  We hiked around the the Painted Canyons then went back to the south park and drove the loop through the park.  Saw the prairie dog towns and prairie dogs, bison herds, wild horses and a cool wasp like insect that digs holes in the ground and moves rocks.

We ate dinner in the make-believe western town of Medora at a buffet that was pretty decent.  Medora exists today from the generosity of Harold Schafer who donated millions to restore the town.  A foundation and donations plus tourism keeps the town afloat.

After dinner we took a short hike to the Little Missouri river where the kids played around for a couple hours in the water.  They found lignite, a low grade coal that is layered throughout the badlands.  It makes a cool crackling sound when it gets wet.

Early to bed as we head to Minnesota tomorrow.

cartop carrier shot

Day 27 - Drive to TRNP (North Dakota or Bust)

Apparently, camping in a National park just isn't in the cards for us on this trip.  After leaving the hotel we drove hwy 2 following the very busy train track. We drove east across the top of Montana though plains and reservations. The undulating hills lulled our navigational skills to sleep: we missed a turn, and ended up heading south by smaller, almost deserted highways. (Travel tip: keep your gas tank filled up!) We picked up some sandwiches and arrived at Theodore Roosevelt National Park around 6:30MST.

 The MST/CST timezone runs through the north part of the park and skirts the east side of the south part of the park which we were heading to, so every time posting includes the time zone.

Our backup site.  Not too shabby.
also requisite car-top carrier shot

At the park entrance, the park Ranger said getting a site would be tight and it indeed was, we just missed out on a couple tent sites and all the pull-through sites were full although some sites looked to be abandoned but with a valid camping slip attached to the post.  We were sad, as the sites were very nice and scenic,  but we were prepared to not repeat the night we had at Glacier.  Right next door to the TRNP entrance we found the Madona campground which did have available spots and after giving them a once over and deciding they were pretty good we paid for one.  The campsite advertised free wi-fi and indeed they tried to.  It worked about as you would expect.  We setup camp and ate our Subway sandwich dinners. We believe if we hadn't stopped to pick up sandwiches we would have been able to get a site in TRNP.  The whole problem of getting a campsite at a National Park has led me to a business idea which should become the topic of a future post.  

The kids ran off to play on the campground playground until it got dark, then we roasted s'mores and most of us hit the sack.  I lingered around outside as the sky was crystal clear and dark.  Saw some meteors, satellites, and the Milky Way which inspired me to try my hand at some digital night sky photography before turning in for the night.

unedited picture of star trails

Day 26 - GNP

All I can say is wow.  I think it is possible to overdose on awesome natural beauty and today was the day to do it.  Of course only getting 3 hours of sleep probably had something to do with that overwhelmed feeling as well.

car-top carrier shot

We drove the (deservedly) famous Going-to-the Sun Road through the park stopping numerous times along the way and took approximately a gazillion pictures.  Interestingly, it appears that you can't actually see or experience glaciers from the road.  Instead you have to use the many hiking trails through the park to reach the glaciers.

In an earlier post I said Yellowstone is the Disney World of the NPS. Well, Glacier is the Disney Land of the NPS.  This place was crowded and developed.  Parking at attractions was scarce and non-

east entrance/exit
note the gas price

the visitor center we had to pass on

existent at the Logan Pass visitor center which led people to do stupid things with their cars.  We made it out of the park's east entrance in one piece and stopped in Shelby, MT at a newly constructed Best Western to recuperate.  Armed with our new found knowledge of GNP and how things work at the NPS we are going to have to take a separate road-trip someday to really be able to experience Glacier. There are so many hikes to cool things that a week may not be enough time but will certainly be better than the six hours we gave it. Tomorrow it is off to Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP) where we roll the dice again on getting a campsite.  TRNP doesn't have a status page or reservable sites and we will be arriving in the evening.  Let's hope it works out and that there isn't some pig wrestling festival going on that has all the hotels and campgrounds in North Dakota filled.

(Note: never heard of Theodore Roosevelt National Park? Neither had we. It just so happened that when we mapped our route, we found this national park that lay almost exactly in the middle of two driving days. And since we had already bought our National Parks Annual Pass, we decided it was perfect, we had to go check it out. -Katrina)

Day 25/26 - The perfect storm (not in a good way)

bye-bye beach
(car-top carrier shot)

We left the beach early for the drive to Glacier National Park. and were on the road by 8am PST which is 10am CST so in actuality, it seems we can't do better than a 10am departure time :)

Driving through the Yakima Valley area was interesting. They've really gone for wind power in a big way - lots of arrays of turbines. Continuing east, we saw lots of huge dust devils playing around the hills and hay fields.

We left the interstate at St. Regis (the Paradise exit!),

sign near gift shop.
spelling help maybe?

and stopped in at a gift shop/tourist trap. Free popcorn, free trout display, we only spent $20 on a t-shirt - what a bargain! ;-) It was a fun stop, but we probably spent a little too much time there. We now headed onto some small but incredibly scenic highways.

Eventually we realized we weren't making great time, so we made a bathroom stop, made up some sandwiches, and kept driving, eating in the car.

We arrived at Glacier around 8:30PST and realized we were in MST now.  There wasn't anyone at the gate so we drove in and around the various campsites close to the west entrance and they were all full - as we suspected they would be.

(The National Park Service (NPS) actually has a status page for the Glacier campsites showing which are full although I'm not sure I understand the 'filled by' time.  Most were filled before noon that day. How do people get to the campsites so early?  Don't people exit their campsite later than the fill time?)
The page is a step in the right direction: http://home.nps.gov/applications/glac/cgstatus/cgstatus.cfm

We had decided to fall back to one of the primitive site campgrounds (which usually don't fill up) only to find that the Inside North Fork Road was closed.  There wasn't any info posted anywhere about the road being closed.  What now?  We decided to camp at a national forest site but by now it was getting dark and finding the roads leading to the campsite didn't happen - wish we had some sort of map detailing access to the national forest campgrounds.

Tired and frustrated, we decided to go for a hotel and see about a campsite in the morning.  Turns out there was some sort of horse jumping competition happening which filled all the hotels in the area - as best we could tell, for more than an hour's drive around the National Park. The search was even slower and more frustrating because we had no cell coverage, so all we could do was drive from one hotel to the next. Eventually we got word from a kind hotel clerk that they had called around to all the hotels in the area, and nothing was available.

The private campgrounds were also full and there were dozens of RVs camped out in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  By this time it was close to 1am MST and our only real option for lodging was to camp unless we wanted to drive another hour south away from GNP.  So we worked on finding a National Forest campsite but kept coming up short on figuring out how to actually get to one.  We parked in a Holiday Inn Express parking lot for a while, letting the kids sleep in the car.  I kept contemplating setting up a tent in a back corner of the lot but that action wasn't wholly endorsed by the family :).

super sleepy kids

Finally around 2:30MST we decided to try for a campsite I found that was supposed to be only 12 miles from Kalispell.  Driving there was a trick and luckily this site was in google navigation.  After many false stops, along lots of very dusty, washboarded gravel roads, we came upon a NPS camping sign and a small deeply rutted rock and dirt road.  We tried going down the road but turned around when we started bottoming out more than I was comfortable with at 3am in the middle of a national forest.  We setup the small tent by the tent sign, tossed the kids in and all quickly fell asleep.

our roadside camp in the morning
the one time we used the smaller tent

(Note: this was by far the quietest campsite of the trip. No highway noises, no airplanes, not even any insects or frogs at 3:30 am. Four quiet hours of sleep. -Katrina)

view from one of the campsites we
could have had if we could have
made it down the road

We woke up to a sunny morning, still quiet.  I hiked the small road we attempted last night to find that we would have actually ended up in a bona-fide campsite had we risked the road.  As we packed up the tent, our feeling of solitude was broken as two young ladies went jogging by on the gravel road and later a DirectTV truck drove by.  Oh well.  It was an adventure nonetheless.

We formed a new plan to go find breakfast at a McDonalds, then drive the Going-To-The Sun road through the park to the east exit and then find a hotel early in the evening for some R&R.

Day 24 - Last beach day

Today was our last day before beginning the trek east. We worked on cleaning, laundry, and other pre-departure tasks in the morning (including cleaning up the leftovers), then headed down to the beach for our last day of play, last tube rides, last kayak paddles, last sunset.