Four Heads

After our not so quick trip around Devils Tower, we ate a quick lunch and headed for the four heads. Alex's joke with Josh was "where are the four heads?" To which Josh would respond "right here (pointing to his forehead)." Josh laughed even more when he realized he was saying exactly what his dad would say. The fun never ends:) The walk around Mt. Rushmore was a little faster with much less whining.

We then traveled to the Flintstones Campground with all the amenities: a too-too train for Matthew, a life size Barney for Will, an Arcade for Alex, a pool for Collin, a bathroom in the shape of Bronto-Burger restaurant for Josh and an unlimited free hot shower for me. Ah...Life is good.

Devils Tower National Monument

We camped one night at Devils Tower. The campground was great; there was finally grass and we had a great view.

One of the Indian legends about how the butte came to be goes like this:

There were 8 children playing, 7 sisters and 1 brother. Suddenly the boy became dumb; he trembled and began to run on his hands and feet. He became covered in fur and his fingers were sharp claws. Where their brother once stood, now there was a bear and it began chasing the sisters. They came to the stump of a great tree and the tree spoke to them, telling them to climb up. As they climbed, the stump rose out of the ground just beyond reach of the bear that was trying to kill them. The bear reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The 7 sisters were born into the sky and became the stars of the Big Dipper.

I thought that this was great because when you look at the tower, it does look like it was clawed. The whole site is considered sacred to many Indian tribes and we were able to see some of the prayer scarves that they hung on the trees at the base.

What should have been a short 1 mile hike around the base took forever because of stubborn little boys. When one wasn’t whining, the other was screaming and neither wanted to walk. I was really wishing that some stump would take me up and away from them for a while.

Are Those Mountains Really Real??

As we left Yellowstone and entered Grand Teton National Park, the mountains seemed to jump out at us just on the other side of Jackson Lake. They seemed closer to us than any that we had seen so far, maybe because we were such a high elevation. The campground we stayed at had some amazing views of the lake and mountains (of course our site did not) but we were lucky to get a spot there.



Look closely for the herd of elk.

We visited Jackson and had a real meal (not the same old hotdogs or chicken strips cold and a bit dusty). Collin ate his first buffalo/elk/wild boar meatball (a disgusting combo if you ask me) which he liked. Josh tried a piece and said it tasted like chicken. Jackson is a cute western town and we watched a shootout in the middle of the street. The boys didn’t know what a shootout was but they loved it.

Alex asked all through Yellowstone when we would see a herd of buffalo. We never did see a herd there but on the way back from Jackson we saw a large herd up on a ridge. Now he asks when we’ll see a herd cross the street-highly unlikely.

We decided to take a long hike around part of Jenny Lake and up into Cascade Canyon. We did not know that this was one of the highlighted areas to hike. We just picked it as a cool looking canyon as we drove by on the highway. There is a ferry shuttle that goes from the south end of the lake to the beginning of the trailhead where there is a waterfall. We did not take the ferry and instead started close to 2 miles away at the north parking area.

We followed the trail along a river until in emptied into the lake and then around the lake until we came to what we thought was our junction. The first junction we came to was the canyon horse trail. I wondered if this was correct but Josh said of course it was. So up the horse trail we went. It was quite a climb to get up away from the lake but really nice because we were shaded and by ourselves most of the time.

We then came to a junction where we met a lot of people. At this point we realized we weren’t on the trail we thought we were. We continued into the canyon until the valley opened up and gave us a great view of the mountains and creek. We had a snack and then headed down the actual canyon trail. The trail gave us some great views of the lake and then the waterfall. It was really rocky and lots of people. Will cried most of the way down because Josh made him walk.


While we were resting in the valley of Cascade Canyon and Will and Matthew were playing on rocks, a guy walking by said “You’ve got a couple of young mountain men there don’t you”. I wanted to ask him, “You mean the one that cries when you take the Nuk out of his mouth and the one that cries when you make him walk more than 20 feet?” Mountain men… maybe someday but not yet.

By the time we got back, Josh and I were really tired from hiking the elevation with a little boy on each of our backs but we had promised the boys swimming. So we went to a different campground area where Josh took the boys swimming (their only bath in 4 days). I went to do laundry and some woman commented on the amount of laundry I was folding. I told her I had 4 boys and hadn’t done laundry in over a week (we were also out of clothes). I paid $3.50 for an unlimited shower but they didn’t advertise the fact that it wasn’t hot. That didn’t matter to me; it was wonderful to feel clean even for just a few hours.

Hey Boo-Boo

Yellowstone was a bit of a disappointment (for the adults, not the kids). Maybe it was because of all the hype, maybe because it was so crowded, or maybe it was because so much of what we had seen, we had seen at other places on a grander scale.

But the geysers and boiling mud pots were unlike anything we had seen or smelled (lots of sulfur). Collin and Alex really liked the Dragon Mouth Spring which was a cave that made a lot of noise (from the gases-stinky) as it spit hot water out of it. We saw some wildlife (river otter, buffalo, elk, coyote, bald eagle) and there are some views in Yellowstone that were unlike anything we had seen anywhere else.

And Yogi did not steal our pik-a-nik basket.

Spectacular

Glacier was amazing. This was the view of lake McDonald which was very close to our campsite. We were enjoying this sunset the first night when thunder started behind us. We hurried back to our campsite and thankfully didn't get much rain.

Josh was very concerned about the bears so our campsite was in a middle loop at one of the larger campgrounds. Willy made great friends with the boy next door. We never did see a bear but lots of deer and mountain goats.

Jackson Glacier is one of the larger glaciers in the park.

At St. Mary's Lake we took a short hike along a ridge that viewed the lake. We then continued on to see a waterfall.
We traveled by shuttle throughout the park and iked some. At Logans Pass, the highest peak on Road to the Sun, we walked up a trail where parts were covered in snow and yellow glacier lily's were blooming. Josh, Collin and Matt continued on to an overlook of Hidden Lake.

We left the park and travel a small road out to the highway, Cows were in the road which was very exciting to the boys. Now off to Yellowstone!

Craters and Slides! Oh My!

On our way to Glacier National Park, we stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. It didn’t so much resemble anything that would make us think of the moon. It was a volcanic lava field. We climbed what would have been the peak of the volcano which gave us a really neat view of the surrounding mountains and countryside.

We also walked through a cave created by underground lava flows. We had lunch here and then continued north on a scenic highway towards Glacier.

The boys had fun in the caves.

After driving through farm land that looked like northern Michigan, we drove through a narrow hundred mile river valley surrounded by mountains. It rained hard ahead of us but only sprinkled on us. We had to keep our eyes on the road because of all the possible hazards such as free range cows, game crossings and rock slides. Shortly after we passed a sign warning us of possible rock slides, we went around a bend and were surprised to see our whole lane blocked by big rocks. We went around it and after another mile we came to where there was a back up of about 30 cars. It was another slide of mostly rocks and hard mud which we were able to get over in our 4-wheel drive Durango. After crossing a couple more mud slides like this, we came to one that was a little bigger. We watched another 4-wheel vehicle almost get stuck in the soft mud, big rock soup. People were guessing the soup was at least four feet deep.

After a couple of hours, a bulldozer came and dumped it all in the river while a hundred people watched. We then continued on our way.

Rain in the Desert

Today we spent the day traveling through Nevada. It was desert. We saw lots of salt flats with some yucky looking water. We thought we smelled humidity which seemed strange because we were in the desert in the summer. Then it looked like rain ahead and it turned out that it was not a mirage. We got rained on in the desert. We even saw some lightening.

After the rain, things looked a little greener than you would expect, but what was most noticeable was the smell. It smelled like a mix between Pine Sol (something we need to pick up for our bear repellant) and B.O. We couldn’t decide if we liked the smell or not. At first we thought it was some factory in the town where we stopped to eat, but when we smelled it way outside of town, we decided it must be some smell that the desert bushes let off after rain.

As we headed north to go from Nevada to Idaho, we drove past the northern part of the Ruby Mountains. They were really pretty. See pictures below.