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.

Day 31 - Drive home :(

No trip through Wisconsin is not complete without a stop at the Mouse House.  Good cheese and fudge.  We picked up some cheese, fudge and sandwiches there and took them on the road.  We made it home around 9:30pm and found the house in good order.  Our cat sitter went beyond the call of duty and mowed the grass and picked up the cat vomit of which there seemed to be no end to.  Thank you Paula.
Boo to the cats.

Where does all this stuff go?

I need to go to work tomorrow so many of the post-trip unpacking tasks will have to wait until the weekend. (I actually ended up working Saturday so many of the tasks are still on-going).  The mound of mail to process is overwhelming.

All good things have to come to an end and sadly the epic journey is over.  It's been fun.
The reality of our daily life is starting to set back in.

If you made it this far in the Blog, then I applaud your persistence.  Hopefully it has been entertaining while also serving as a journal to help us remember what we did in July 2013.

The Wefels

Day 23 - Chetzemoka Park

Today we went to a lovely little city park in Port Townsend, called Chetzemoka. The main attraction of this park (for us) is access to the water, and to a sandy beach with wide tidal flats. We arrived lat in the morning, and the tide was way out. Initially it was foggy and eerie (as the wind blew over the sand, it would make misty wisps):

but then the sun burned off the fog.

Paul and the kids got to work building a castle/fortress, and a series of streams and reservoirs to drain the ground around the castle (I helped with streams - my favorite part). Notice the substantial sea wall:

Here are some of the hydro structures:

But no matter how well we build, we can't hold back the sea forever. Eventually the tide came rushing in; that's when the real fun began, of frantically shoring up the walls, trying to delay the swamping of the castle.

The sea won, as it always does in the end.

We followed up with a late picnic lunch in the park, then back to the house for more fun with cousins on the beach. I drove Jack and Sandy to the ferry to catch their flight the next morning; only one day left for us at the beach!