DAY 21 Grand Canyon
David left early this morning to do a ranger-led hike partway down the canyon. We decided he will try it today and see if it’s something I can do the next day. So the kids and I had a quiet morning. Michael had a bit of a tough time, getting both legs stuck in one side of his Pjs, and then peeing on himself when I had his diaper off for a second. But after that, he took a good long nap that lasted most of the morning. Nora and I had breakfast together, colored, played with her shape-sorting snail, baked cookies together, and were playing outside and giving the dogs treats when David got back. He said he had broken off from the group to do the hike faster, and he was still gone 5.5 hours, so I probably won’t end up doing the hike tomorrow. Michael can’t really go that long without eating, and I didn’t bring my pump with me, figuring I wouldn’t really have a chance to be separated from him anyway.
On his way back to the campsite, David was able to extend our stay one extra day. Remarkably, we won’t even have to change campsites. We had it on our itinerary to take two days to get from here to Phoenix, but we can do it in one day and we’d rather stay here longer. It’s been really nice not being on the road.
We aren’t going to do another leg of our hike today, because David is beat from doing his morning hike. We are thinking about attending some sort of ranger program this evening. Now that we are staying another day, we have plenty of time to finish the rim trail. We are drinking so much water here, it seems like all we do in the evenings is run the sink water through our Brita filter pitcher and keep refilling our drinking water jug. We also have a 5 gallon collapsible jug in the outside storage area for times when we don’t have a water hookup.
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We hung out in the camper this afternoon, taking naps and such. At one point, Nora climbed up on the dinette bench, sat down, folded her hands and announced, “Look at pictures, please, Mama.“ She likes to watch the laptop as it cycles through all the photos we have saved on it. We haven’t had the computer out in a while, and I guess she missed seeing the pictures. She also decided for some reason that she and I should jump in the bathroom. “Jump! Bathroom, Mama!“ So we went in there and jumped. She can’t get both feet off the floor at the same time yet, but it’s fun to watch her try. One night she wanted all of us to go in there. We learned that you can fit two adults, a baby and a toddler in an RV bathroom David shut the door behind us just for fun. When I can’t pay attention to her, she has started talking to her black doggie. She pretends to get him drinks of water from her sippie cup, brushes his teeth, etc. “Look, black doggie! Star shape!” “Black doggie, jump!” “Black doggie, stretch!” (This is where she pulls his legs and stretches him.)
She has also been making us read her the text on a postcard we bought her to play with at Yellowstone. It’s of Old Faithful. At first she would just look at it and say, “Old Faithful.” Then she started making us read the little paragraph of text on the back. Now she has parts of it memorized. I’ll put the parts she says in all caps: “Yellowstone NATIONAL PARK. Old faithful GEYSER. Old FAITHFUL GEYSER was named in 1870 [Nora says this, but she says 1817] by surveyor Gen. H.D. WASHBURN, leader of the EXPEDITION OF THAT YEAR.” It goes on to talk about the amount of water that comes out, and temperature. If you leave the word out, Nora can also fill in “eruption.”
We met some ladies down the road from us who are from Columbus. They are driving a big Class A they just bought recently, and they gave us a tour. It’s really nice. We left at 3:15 p.m. to catch a ranger program at 4 p.m. and of course we were still late. It was about the California condor, an endangered species that lives in the park. The people trying to help them have gone to great lengths to propagate the species, such as making condor puppets to feed regurgitated food to the babies hatched in captivity, and erecting fake electric poles rigged with a shock mechanism to train them not to land on the poles and get electrocuted. They are even passing out free copper bullets to hunters in this area, because the condors are scavengers and eat deer and elk that have been shot with lead bullets and they are dying of lead poisoning. There are three pair of condors in the park currently. We came back and had foil dinners in the oven. Then we all showered in the camper. (Yes, all four of us.) And there was still enough hot water for dishes!

DAY 20, Grand Canyon
Michael slept from 8:30pm (approx) to 6:30 a.m. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve been feeding him after Nora goes to sleep, and once he gets comfortable, he doesn’t wake up again around 10:30pm, as he used to. We had just laid him down on the couch for the nap, figuring he’d wake again while we were playing cards, but he never did.
We had breakfast this morning and prepared for our next hike. We are going to start where we left off yesterday, Bright Angel Lodge, and head west several shuttle bus stops along the rim trail. Nora didn’t want to get dressed. David would hold up her shirt, and she would run away every time. So he just left her in her diaper. She stayed that way through breakfast and as we packed our lunches. Occasionally she would ask for her shirt, but she would run away again each time. I took the dogs for a walk, and by the time I got back she had decided it was a good idea to wear clothes, thank goodness. Of course it took a while to get going, even after that. Just when we thought we were ready, one kid would have a poopy diaper and we’d have to go back in. By the time we were really ready, we had already drank one bottle of water and had to refill it.
Today’s path is not paved, so we are just taking the backpacks and Snugli. That makes it easier to manage getting on and off the shuttle, too. We took the shuttle to Bright Angel Lodge, then started hiking westward. We ended up doing a total of about 5 miles, which actually is pretty difficult with kids strapped to you and carrying lots of snacks and drinking water. David’s ankle is feeling a lot better, so now I am the weak link, because I’m out of shape and losing some of my hydration and calories through nursing Michael. During the hike we decided that during our stay here, we may be able to hike the entire rim trail, a little at a time. We caught the shuttle at a stop called “The Abyss.” The last stretch after that to end of the rim trail is about 4 miles, so we can do that tomorrow or the next day. Then we will just have a short section to the east of the visitor’s center that we haven’t covered. The trail today followed the edge of the canyon. At first it was paved, then gravel, and then dirt. By the end, David would have to tell Nora to close her eyes because we were having to hike through some low branches of pine trees. It was beautiful, though, and you can see the Colorado River really well from some spots here. The canyon is so big, it’s easy to forget there’s a river at the bottom at all! But on this hike, there were several good glimpses. We also passed a mine that used to be the country’s richest source of uranium. In a national park, no less. The metal structure at the top of the shaft is still there and is quite unsightly. We met many nice people along the trail today. Some would just look at us and say, “You have a beautiful family there!” which is a really nice thing to say to total strangers. One man stopped us to say how great it is we are doing this, and what a good time of life this is, etc. Many people notice Nora on David’s back (“that’s the way to get around, right there!“ etc.) and don’t even see Michael on my front (his head doesn‘t clear the top of the pack yet), so I’m always happy when someone notices I’m carrying a bit of a load myself. The climate is really weird here. We will be hiking along, sweating and drinking tons of water. Then I will sit down in the shade for a minute, the wind will stir up, and I’ll be freezing. It’s hard to dress for it. We are trying to keep hats on the kids, too, but the wind along the canyon is fierce and we have to keep taking Nora’s off so it doesn’t blow in. David has been feeding her these rice snacks to keep her busy. She’s been a great sport, sitting in the backpack for almost 4 hours, with a few breaks. So she asks for “More snacks please, Dada,” and he hands some over his shoulder. Unfortunately she started stashing some of them. David stopped a couple times to ask me to remove rice snacks from inside his shirt. The first time he thought it was a strap that was rubbing wrong. “Is there something right here on my neck, about two inches down from my finger?” he asked me. Seeing a perfect square stuck between his shirt and his back, I said, “Yes, there is. Snacks.” I guess Nora is at the age where things just start turning up in strange places. There are rocks in the dogs food dishes, a magnetic doggie in the dish drainer and a rock in our bed.
At the first shuttle stop past Bright Angel Lodge, we ran into our new campsite neighbors. They were taking the shuttle to each stop, getting off and looking around, and catching the next shuttle onward. Well, we ended up seeing them at almost every single stop. So we were hiking at a good clip. I mean, they were waiting for the next shuttle, but they run every 10 to 15 minutes, so I felt we were doing good. It was getting pretty funny every time we would round a bend into a lookout point with a shuttle stop and there would be a crowd of people, and there would be our neighbors. On both of the long hiking days, Nora has taken a good nap in the backpack. The first day, David was wearing a cowboy hat and she made him take it off so she could lay her head down on the back of his neck. Today he just wore a baseball cap.
At the end of our hike, David said he could keep going, but my feet were hurting, so we hopped on the shuttle. Of course this was the longest shuttle ride we would have, since we were quite far from the campsite, and we had a most unpleasant driver. She would stop the bus if someone had so much as a pinky finger sticking out the window. She refused to move her handbag from the first seat, even though people were standing because the bus was so crowded. Her Eastern European accent probably didn’t help our perception that she was a bit too stern. When we transferred to the shuttle that goes to the campground, we realized we had been riding with our neighbors all along. When we got back to the Trailer Village stop, we hustled ahead of them in case our tent had blown over again and was resting against their camper or something. When we got back, it had come unmoored from the ladder but was still attached to the awning. It had spun around 90 degrees. So down it came. David put the awning up, too, because the wind was really catching it and blowing the whole camper.
It’s ironic that since we have been parked and not driving, I’ve almost been too busy to journal. There is a lot to do here, especially with our goal of hiking the rim trail. We are daydreaming about a time when the kids will be old enough to hike down the canyon to the river and stay at Phantom Ranch and hike back up.
It’s really nice having full hookups, but I can also see the advantages of staying in a primitive place like we did at Yellowstone. For example, on our way out of the campsite today we saw four enormous female elk. But I haven’t heard any of the elk bugling noises. I asked about it, and they do make the noises at night and in the morning. But since we have power to the camper, we listen to CDs or run the fan or other things that keep us from hearing them.
David went to scope out the hike he is doing tomorrow, seeing where it starts and what buses to take to get there. I put Nora in the stroller and Michael in the Snugli and we walked up to the General Store to get a couple things. When we came out, it was getting dark. Nora said, “Getting dark outside, Mama. See moon.” Mostly for her the moon is just an idea, because she’s seldom up late enough to see it. I wheeled the stroller around and pointed to the sky. She was elated. “MOON! Moon!” So all the way home, she was just staring at the moon and talking about it. She cracks me up.
Today we also learned that we have been on the wrong time zone for several days. I guess we got an hour ahead, somehow. I was sure we were keeping careful track of what time zone we were in. We changed the clocks to Central Time, then changed them to Mountain Time. When we were in Nevada, we didn’t change to Pacific Time, so when we got to the canyon, we should have been on the right time, but we weren’t. Puzzling.

DAY 19, Grand Canyon
Today we decided to try hiking from the visitor center to Bright Angel Lodge in Grand Canyon Village. It is all paved trails, so we took the stroller and the Snugli and the backpack and rotated which child rode in the stroller. We had a separate backpack with water and snacks. In the morning, our next-door neighbors were packing up and leaving. They had a 3-month-old son, their first. So we socialized a lot. They had come in a fifth-wheel, and the baby’s grandparents came in a big Class A. It was so new and fancy that there was a motorized mechanism to wind in the power cord. They were really nice.
We packed our lunches and took the shuttle to the visitor center. A little way into our hike, we came upon a family with 3 boys, ages almost-5, almost-3 and 2 months. We both looked at each other with relief and said, “Thank goodness we’re not the only ones!” (There aren’t that many families around because school has started.) We decided to hike together for awhile, but because their older two were walking on their own, it was a slower pace. They were a little bit high-strung, and the almost-3-year-old was still using a pacifier, but other than that they were nice and normal. They stopped for restrooms at one point and we decided to keep going. We did see them later when they were getting off the shuttle we were getting on. We stopped at the El Tovar hotel and had our lunch on their back porch. David and Nora went for a walk while I fed Michael in a highbacked cane chair with the wind blowing in from the canyon. It’s a beautiful day. We made it to Bright Angel Lodge and I got to see a photography exhibit at one of the studios. We shared an ice cream cone. Nora shared it, too. “Lick, Mama! Lick!”
We decided we weren’t tired yet, and we hiked all the way back to where we started. We caught the shuttle back to our campsite.
When we got back, our campsite was in chaos. We had put the dogs inside so they wouldn’t bark, but our screen tent had blown upside down and apparently left the campsite. Someone brought it back and put big rocks in the roof to hold it to the ground. Our camp chairs had blown around, too. The screen tent looks like it might be damaged a bit. We are thinking about taking it back, since it failed on the first time out. For now, we bungeed it to the camper. David made chili for dinner on the outdoor stove.
We decided to try the hot water tank today, too. We usually don’t even turn it on because it doesn’t get the water very hot, and takes a lot of propane. David messed around with the valves and found some mixing valve that was open all the way, letting cold water mix with the hot before it even got to the tap. So we have real hot water, and we took showers in the camper. It was a first for me. It was a hassle moving all the stuff we normally store in the shower, but only about as much of a hassle as packing a bag to go use a public shower. And showers here at the canyon are 75 cents for 3 minutes. So we are probably going to shower in the camper a lot. David also hooked us up to the water here, instead of using what’s in our tank and refilling it at the end, which we usually do. Hooking up to the water means the pump doesn’t come on when you turn on the sink, which is kind of weird now that I’m used to it. It’s nice, though, because the pump is loud. We got new neighbors tonight, too. A retired couple from Grand Rapids, Mich., pulled in next door. They are very friendly, and have grandchildren the same age as our kids.

DAY 18 - Seligman, AZ (Route 66) to the Grand Canyon
I forgot to mention that Nora really got a kick out of watching the clothes go around in the dryer at the campground laundry last night before bed. She just laughed and laughed. So we pulled up a chair and sat there and watched the clothes for awhile.
Michael has been smiling a lot more in the past 3 or 4 days. I’ll sit him on my lap, facing me, and make his legs kick or his arms go up and down, and he gets a big toothless smile on his face. He seems to be growing like a weed. He is starting to outgrow a couple of the smaller sleepers we brought along for him. We have plenty of clothes that fit him, though. He just seems to have hit that 6-week growth spurt I guess. It seems like he takes up a lot more of his bassinet than he used to. Also, he can already get out of the Velcro blanket. It is this special blanket that Velcros into a swaddling type thing, to keep their arms and legs tucked in. Nora slept in it for MONTHS until she outgrew it. Michael already can get both arms and one leg out of the thing somehow. Then he flails the free arms and legs until his top blanket is down around his knees. Then he cries because he’s cold. (Sigh.)
We are driving into the Grand Canyon now. Of course it doesn’t look like anything until you get out of the car and peer over the edge, so there’s not much to take a photo of. We are just reminiscing about when David and I came here after my Tucson internship was over. It was late March or early April and we camped in a tent in super warm sleeping bags and it was still freezing. The forecast this week is for 60s and 70s during the day and 30s at night.
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It’s a good thing we have reservations, because the section with hookups for campers is full. We found our site here. They pack you in pretty tightly here, but not nearly as bad as the RV section at Yellowstone, which we purposely didn’t stay in. I read stories that people can’t even put their awnings out without touching the rig next to them in Yellowstone. But here in Trailer Village at the Grand Canyon, we have just enough space. The dogs are both tied out to the post for the iron grill. We have a picnic table and a gravel surface. No grass, no tree. But there are trees around us near the restrooms and at the ends of the lanes. There are some songbirds here. We decided to really set up our campsite, since we are going to be here 5 nights. We put out the awning and assembled the screen tent David got me for my birthday. It is supposed to set up in 3 minutes or something. It took us longer than that, and this is our second time. We set it up at home to make sure it was what we wanted. Unfortunately you are supposed to stake out the corners, but the ground here is too rocky. You really can’t get a stake into the ground more than a half inch. We put big rocks on the legs. We got out our camp chairs and the tablecloth and everything. We’re in for the long haul. They have a shuttle bus here, so maybe we won’t even need to move the camper much.
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Took the free shuttle to the visitor center. The shuttle is quite convenient, unless you have two kids under two. In that case you have to figure out whether you want to drag a stroller onto the bus with you, or just sit funny in the seat because you have a kid on your back. But it still beats driving a 30-foot camper around. We walked over to peer into the canyon and we also checked out some easier hikes along the rim we might be able to manage. Then we took the shuttle to the general store and picked up a couple food items and came back here to make dinner. The general store is surprisingly reasonably priced. I suppose it’s because almost all of the park employees live in the park and shop there. Bagged salad (no, NOT spinach!) is cheaper than at home. Their wine was even priced normally, when I would expect they would mark it up a lot. At one of the KOA campgrounds, wine was $14.95 a bottle no matter what kind it was, just because they figured you were trapped there and would pay it.
We cooked and ate outside in the screen tent tonight.
I had a little mental breakdown this evening, feeling like I was going crazy from Michael crying and from constantly having to contort my body to reach things or step over the dogs or try to pass David in the hall or just to get from one end of the camper to the other. Nora was in bed and David took Michael and I took the dogs for a long walk. A really long walk. Like 4 miles. It was nice. It was really dark on this bike path we found, but the moon was bright and it was mostly park employees we passed on the trail.

DAY 17 Las Vegas to Arizona
David can put some weight on his ankle this morning and he says he can drive. We had an easy breakfast of cereal while packing everything up. Since David had such bad luck, he figured I was bound to have good luck. So I went over to the casino and put $2 in the quarter slot machine. Alas, the theory didn’t hold. I just lost the $2 and went back to the RV. We were about to leave when I checked the reservations we made several weeks ago at the Grand Canyon. Turns out we don’t have reservations there until tomorrow night. We must have gotten our dates mixed up somehow. So instead of having to do 300+ miles to the Grand Canyon today, we will break it up over two days and stay somewhere else.
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Drove over Hoover Dam at Lake Mead late this morning, after stopping in Vegas at Petco and Walmart. Before crossing, U.S. Customs searched the camper. They said they have to, since 9/11. It was kind of dumb, though, because we said we have two dogs in the back, and they just let us leave the bedroom door shut when they came in to look around.
Here are a few Noraisms today: “Mama’s apple. Dada’s apple. Nora apple. Baby Michael. Too little to eat apple.” Also, “We saw lightening. Mama making dinner. Power went out.” This is something from her story about a thunderstorm. It was sunny and hot in the middle of the day when she suddenly recited this page from the book. We haven’t even read that book in a week.
We have a choice of a few places to stay tonight, but I think we are going to end up at the Route 66 KOA. I am sick of giving my money to KOA (they are a little overpriced compared to Passport America) but there are only a few places available and I really need Internet tonight to check on the bank account and the bills before the end of the month. Vegas had Internet, but it was bad. I’m not sure if it’s because so many people were probably tapped in using it, or what, but it was terrible. I couldn’t even send an email.
On our lunch stop, we saw this crazy pink motor home. It looked like something a rock band would have used in the ’60s. Sort of Impala-looking tail lights, a fin on top of the back, and “hoods” on the headlights. No make or model logos anywhere, not even on the grille. It looked sort of like the exterior had been welded together by hand.
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Arrived at this KOA. It is nice in that it has a kiddie playground with stuff Nora can do. But it’s annoying in that you have to pay for Internet, the manager is a little annoying, the pool is too cold to swim in, etc. But it is a good stopover between Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Lots of other people must have thought so, too. The place has really filled up since we got here this afternoon. We did a little laundry and I got Nora a shower. We had tacos for dinner.
I guess David’s ankle is feeling better, since he carried a picnic table over from another site earlier. It still hurts, but hopefully he’ll be able to hike with us at the canyon.

DAY 16 Overton, NV to Las Vegas
We woke up in the beautiful Valley of Fire State Park, Atlatl Campground, site 8, and decided we should definitely come back here some day. We hiked a bit this morning, and we were able to let the dogs off leash for a bit. It’s VERY hot. I can’t believe a few days ago we were worried about the kids being warm enough, and today we were slathering on the sunscreen and worrying about them getting hot. We had a good morning and stopped to drive a scenic road near the visitor center. I became disoriented and told David to turn the wrong way. So our driving didn’t start out so great, but we got turned back around. We don’t really want to leave the park, but we have a reservation in Vegas, Nora keeps talking about swimming, and I need a cell phone signal and WiFi to finish my freelance project by month’s end so I can stop thinking about it.
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We pulled into the Circus Circus KOA campground, right on the strip in Las Vegas. It was a short driving day today - just one hour. It is very bizarre camping here, but it’s a HUGE park. Park isn’t really the right word for it, but oh well. They have a pool, so Nora will be happy. We are probably going to walk the kids down to the Bellagio to see the water fountain show later today. Fortunately we have full hookups here, so we can leave the central air running for the dogs. Nothing like sitting in the middle of a giant parking lot in Vegas in a tin box with the sun beating down.
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Nora went to the pool TWICE! Once with David and once with me. We got back and planned to walk to see the fountains at Bellagio, but David stepped out of the camper holding Nora and sprained his ankle badly. Thanks to his quick thinking, Nora was unhurt. The same could not be said for David. We limped down the Strip and had dinner, then took a cab back to the camper. Hopefully it will only be really awful for a day or so and then it will start to heal, because the Grand Canyon is kind of boring if you can’t go for hikes.

(Photos: The only thing in Warm Springs, NV; Starting down the Extraterrestrial Highway; The Little A'le'Inn [Michael is not liking it]; Atlatl campground in the Valley of Fire, including a pic of the stroller after Nora had her way with it.)

DAY 15 West Wendover to Rachel, NV (Little Alien)
We were on the road early today. Even earlier than intended. The screen on David’s cell phone keeps going out, so he used my phone as his alarm clock for this morning. I forgot to tell him my phone was still on Central Time. So it woke him up at 4 a.m. instead of 5 a.m. He went back to sleep for awhile, but we still ended up with the tanks dumped filling up the gas tank at 5:15 a.m. Stopped at a rest area in Ely, NV (the last civilization for miles and miles) for breakfast and a nap for David.
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I actually drove for awhile. We were supposed to take “Unnamed Road” from Ely to Rachel, NV, but when we got to the road, it was dirt. And we were supposed to drive on it for 100 miles or so. So we took a different route (along numbered highways), and I drove for a bit. We stopped in Warm Springs, NV, for lunch. There was nothing there but a boarded up restaurant called the Warm Springs Bar & Grill. From there we turned onto a little state route dubbed the “Extraterrestrial Highway” for its proximity to Area 51, where the government is supposedly hiding UFOs and alien bodies. Many of the very few vehicles we passed were white pickups and white SUVs with U.S. Government plates. One, though, was a mustard yellow van with antennae all over it and an electric scooter strapped to the back. In the early afternoon we pulled into the Little A’Le’Inn (Alien), as seen in the X-Files. Well, it was quite a bit dumpier than what was shown in the X-Files, and we decided not to stay in their RV parking lot as planned. We are ahead of schedule anyway, so we had time to drive on to the next place. We did stop in the diner to eat and take photos. On the walls were photos of not-very-famous people who had visited, as well as dubious snapshots of UFOs. This was the kind of place where they serve Pepsi and beer in the can and potato chips in the bag. Just before we left, a large group of tourists from the UK came in, which classed up the joint a bit.
Nora is doing great. We are amazed by her random thoughts, though. We’ll just be going along, and all of a sudden she will say, “Toys! Grandma Grandpa’s house!” She also must really like swimming because she is still talking about the time she went swimming in Mitchell, S.D. She pointed to her clothes drawer today and said, “Nora swimsuit in there!”
We are headed for Overton, NV, which is on the north side of the Lake Mead area. We will probably stay in a state park there unless I can get cell phone reception and find out if the private RV park has a pool. It’s extremely hot and dry.
Here’s another little tidbit of life in the RV: We make up a list of meals for the week ahead, buy all the necessary groceries, and then tape the menu to the freezer door. We turn last week’s menu over and tape it next to the current one, using the back of the old one to write the next week’s grocery list or a list of things to do.
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As we headed into Overton, we realized we hadn’t marked the state park on the map on the computer. David had just put the cursor in the general area of the town where it was, and made that our endpoint. So I was calling out directions to some random place in Overton, not actually the state park. We were so sick of driving by then that when David saw the Fun & Sun RV Park (which we had called and decided against staying at) we almost pulled in. It was basically a parking lot type of setup, and nothing much to look at and no pool. Fortunately a minute or so before we passed Fun & Sun, I had located the state park in green on the map, and I thought I could see the entrance road. So we kept going, despite crying children and tired grownups and whiny dogs. We saw a sign for the park and turned in. It was one of the best decisions we have made all trip. We drove into one of the most beautiful rock formation areas I have ever seen. We were surrounded on all sides by towering orange-red rocks, eroded into fantastic shapes. It was a self-pay campground, where you put your money in an envelope and put it in a box. The architecture of the park structures was amazing. All the buildings blended seamlessly into the rock. Even the signs look cool. It’s as if the campground were designed by an artist instead of a civil engineer. The camp sites weren’t that far apart, but the way they were arranged, you couldn’t see from one into another. We had a picnic table, fire pit, grill and water spigot, but no electricity. It was so beautiful. And of course it was filled with rocks, so Nora was happy. She filled all three cups on the tray of her stroller with rocks. Then she started in on the baby seat on the bike. Our site was quite secluded, with the picnic table located almost in a cave behind a big rock formation. The rocks absorbed the heat during the day and were hot to touch. As the sun set and it cooled off, I could feel the heat coming off them just by walking past them. We took some walks and Nora watched the moon get brighter as the sun went down. (“Dark outside. See moon. Moon! Moon!) It became dark very quickly, and we were using flashlights to see (and using a few of the lights, sparingly) by the time we put Nora to bed. David and I played cards by flashlight-lantern, and we stepped out to look at the stars. It was so clear. I could hear another baby crying in a campsite down the road. Michael was really needing a lot of holding this evening, but that’s not surprising considering how much time he’s been in his carseat today. Nora is such a trooper. We sing songs when she gets grumpy going down the road, and now she can sing her ABCs almost all the way through by herself.

(photos: Our desert campsite in West Wendover; The great Salt Lake)

DAY FOURTEEN - Pocatello, ID, to West Wendover, NV
We started driving before breakfast today. We have 300 miles to do today, which is a long driving day for us. At least it is easy interstate miles today. We are passing through Salt Lake City, but since neither of us cares to see the Mormon Temple, we probably won’t stop there. We stopped at a rest area and toasted some bagels for breakfast. We could have done it on the road, but the dogs needed to be fed and walked.
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We did end up stopping in Salt Lake City, but we just pulled off at a scenic overlook to have lunch. It is hard to see the lake or take photos of it because of the haze on the surface. It makes it look like the mountains in the background are floating. We are planning to spend the night at a KOA in West Wendover, just across the border in Nevada. We are definitely in the desert. You can see those watery mirages on the road, and although it is in the 60s and 70s today, both sides of the road are white. It’s not snow; it’s salt. In the absolute middle of nowhere, in the middle of the salt flat, was a modern sculpture. A big post with colored balls on it. Very weird.
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The West Wendover KOA is OK. We aren’t used to being in the desert yet, so it looks dusty and crummy, but actually there is a little concrete barrier with grass and rose bushes on it. But the campsites are gravel and dust. We do have a picnic table and a fire pit and a level parking area, but it’s too dusty to eat outside. David took Nora to the playground and she got so dusty that when she got back, she put her hand on the screen door and a huge puff of dust went up from her hand. This town looks pretty dumpy by day, with the main road lined with casino motels. Even the gas station has a casino. It is literally a few yards over the border into Nevada. But after dark, the place looked positively lively. Flashing bulbs lit up all the casinos and it almost looked like Reno from our campsite. The lady at the front desk gave me a one-time-use 10-percent off card for the next time we use a KOA. It worked out great because we made a reservation for Thursday night at the KOA on the Las Vegas strip, which is probably the most expensive KOA in the country. It’s going to be $42 for one night, and they said it would cost more than that if we didn’t make a reservation. It’s warm here, but it’s getting cooler as night falls.

DAY THIRTEEN - Yellowstone to Pocatello, ID
Got on the road early. As we drove, we ate the blueberry muffins I made last night. Near the park entrance, we entered Montana. Shortly after that we turned south and entered Idaho. We are looking forward to staying at a KOA campground tonight with electricity, water, showers and laundry and hopefully Internet, too. We REALLY need showers. And it would be nice if the couple sweatshirts we’ve been wearing nonstop for the last 5 days were clean again. Idaho is not too impressive. Although an odd thing happened on I-15 shortly after we got on it: we were looking at farms surrounded by pine forest and all of a sudden we were looking at desert scrub along the sides of the road. Then it changed to cornfields. Very odd. We can see a lot of mountains to our east.
We did some menu planning on the drive, then stopped at a grocery store. We pulled into the Pocatello KOA about 3 p.m. Showers and laundry were the first order of business. Then Nora took a late nap. We had to wake her up for dinner, and she was not happy. But then we had pudding for dessert and she was much more content after that. We blew bubbles for awhile. We have Internet here! And electricity! But it’s so warm, we may not really need it. Nice to have, though. Just clicked through a list of cheapest states to get gas, and of the many states we are traveling through, only a couple are on the list. And one is Ohio, so that won’t be helpful for awhile.
Pocatello seems like a nice little town. The University of Idaho is here, and it is surrounded on all sides by mountains.
I made dinner last night (the first time on this trip!) and then David took Nora to fold the laundry and bring it back to the camper. He convinced her to go by offering her a ride in the duffel bag. It was such a success, she demanded a ride in the bag on the way back, too. Since it was filled with folded clothes, I saw them returning, David holding the duffel bag, clothes folded at the bottom, and Nora lying down across the clothes on top, inside the handles. She was awake, but lying perfectly still. She was so excited, though. “Mama, ride bag! Lay down, Mama!” She didn’t want to get up, even after David put the bag down on the floor. We played some cards and went to bed with the furnace set at about 68. It was a beautiful thing, not waking up cold or worrying about the kids. I slept great.

DAY THIRTEEN - Yellowstone to Pocatello, ID
Got on the road early. As we drove, we ate the blueberry muffins I made last night. Near the park entrance, we entered Montana. Shortly after that we turned south and entered Idaho. We are looking forward to staying at a KOA campground tonight with electricity, water, showers and laundry and hopefully Internet, too. We REALLY need showers. And it would be nice if the couple sweatshirts we’ve been wearing nonstop for the last 5 days were clean again. Idaho is not too impressive. Although an odd thing happened on I-15 shortly after we got on it: we were looking at farms surrounded by pine forest and all of a sudden we were looking at desert scrub along the sides of the road. Then it changed to cornfields. Very odd. We can see a lot of mountains to our east.
We did some menu planning on the drive, then stopped at a grocery store. We pulled into the Pocatello KOA about 3 p.m. Showers and laundry were the first order of business. Then Nora took a late nap. We had to wake her up for dinner, and she was not happy. But then we had pudding for dessert and she was much more content after that. We blew bubbles for awhile. We have Internet here! And electricity! But it’s so warm, we may not really need it. Nice to have, though. Just clicked through a list of cheapest states to get gas, and of the many states we are traveling through, only a couple are on the list. And one is Ohio, so that won’t be helpful for awhile.
Pocatello seems like a nice little town. The University of Idaho is here, and it is surrounded on all sides by mountains.
I made dinner last night (the first time on this trip!) and then David took Nora to fold the laundry and bring it back to the camper. He convinced her to go by offering her a ride in the duffel bag. It was such a success, she demanded a ride in the bag on the way back, too. Since it was filled with folded clothes, I saw them returning, David holding the duffel bag, clothes folded at the bottom, and Nora lying down across the clothes on top, inside the handles. She was awake, but lying perfectly still. She was so excited, though. “Mama, ride bag! Lay down, Mama!” She didn’t want to get up, even after David put the bag down on the floor. We played some cards and went to bed with the furnace set at about 68. It was a beautiful thing, not waking up cold or worrying about the kids. I slept great.

DAY TWELVE - Yellowstone N.P.
We had breakfast at Old Faithful again, and this time we took the tour of the Yellowstone Inn. (We were delayed on the way by a herd of buffalo in the road.) It was really fascinating, especially the story of it being built in one year, which means the workers were toiling in a winter where the temperatures stayed well below zero for months. The historic rooms of the original inn are preserved and you can still stay there, if you don’t mind a tiny room and a long walk to the bathroom. More modern rooms are available in the wings that were added on. We saw the geyser go off again and Nora impressed all the other tourists by saying, “Old Faithful!”
We went back to camp where, by some miracle, it was actually warm. We got to play outside without checking the kids’ hands to see if they were too cold. Nora played with rocks, of course, and we blew some bubbles and took some walks. Had an early dinner, a leisurely bedtime for Nora, complete with a “sponge bath” with a washcloth and a pan of warm water. We played cards for a bit, then went outside and talked with our neighbors again around the fire. They have been very gracious and fun. We had a lot of laughs. It was nice having a day that was half filled with sightseeing and half filled with relaxing at camp. David went and dumped the tanks so we don’t have to do it in the morning. Michael did great, eating at about 9p.m. or so and then not again until 4:50 a.m. So if we had just gone to bed a bit earlier and woken up a little earlier, he technically would have slept through the night. We got a little overconfident about the weather, sending Nora to bed in just one layer of pajamas. We ran the furnace before we went to bed, and again at about 1 a.m. when I woke up cold. The second time was enough to drain the battery. When Michael woke up at 5, David decided it was too cold in the cabover and brought Nora into bed with us. She was actually pretty good and went back to sleep.

DAY ELEVEN - Yellowstone N.P.
This is our big Yellowstone sightseeing day. The park is huge, so we decided to take one day to drive the loop of roads around the park, which is about 100 miles. Since we can’t run the generator until 8 a.m., we left camp early. We woke up around 7, I think, moved the kids from their beds to their carseats, and drove to the area around Old Faithful. We got there about 8:15. I ran up to the visitor center to check the next geyser eruption and the sign said 8:58. So we had bagels and leftover omelet-bake in the parking lot and walked over to see the glorious spray into the air. It was still cold this morning, so there was a LOT of steam, so much so that it was difficult to see the spray of water or figure out how high it was going. We told Nora it was like a shower, with hot water and steam. So for the rest of day she kept saying, “Old Faithful. Shower. Take off clothes.” In the afternoon she told me once, “Old Faithful. Soap, Mama! Soap!” There is a fascinating looking inn at the Old Faithful area, and they have free tours. We were going to go, but missed it due to the timing of a diaper change. We plan to go back tomorrow.
Our next stop was the West Thumb geyser basin, which is an area that has a lot of small ponds and puddles with steam and bubbles from the heat coming up from deep in the earth. The last large cauldron of bubbles we walked past (on a wooden boardwalk, because the ground is so unpredictable) was blue. We could feel the heat on our faces, and it was like walking into a steam room. It felt nice in the cold weather.
We drove through the Grant Village campground, which was where we had planned to stay until we learned it closes for the winter during our stay. We drove north from there, past the east entrance where we came in on our first day. Along the Yellowstone River, cars were pulled off the road every which way, but all I could see was a single animal out in the field. No big deal here. So I pulled out the binoculars and saw it was a grizzly bear lumbering around in the meadow. About 100 yards from where we pulled off to see the bear was a buffalo, but no one really cared about that. They were all straining to see the bear that you could hardly make out with your naked eye.
We stopped at Sulfur Cauldron, where I got out to read the sign about the boiling puddles of mud below me. Apparently almost the entire, gigantic park of Yellowstone is the top of an enormous, ancient volcano. I felt kind of dumb that I didn’t know that before. It is hard to imagine such a huge volcano, that would require a 100-mile drive to go around its rim. But that explains all the stuff bubbling up from underground. The churning in the pits in the earth here were so loud you could hear them from the road. One was churning so furiously it looked like some sort of muddy beast was about to emerge.
We continued driving and saw huge herds of buffalo/bison on both sides of the road. There are either a whole lot of professional photographers here right now, or a whole lot of amateur photographers with $25,000 cameras. I have seen more 400mm and 500mm lenses in the last three days than in my whole life.
We pulled into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone area, and in the parking lot was a rental RV with a picture of Mount Rushmore on the side. Nora caught sight of it out the window and said, “Hi Big Faces!” We wanted to hike to see the upper and lower falls at the canyon. When Nora saw the upper falls, she said, “Slide!” which, when you really think about it, is just what a waterfall is. I tried to explain that it was a slide that only water is allowed to go down. Still she started in about her swimming suit and swimming pools. She doesn’t care that it is 45 degrees out. The path to the lower falls proved too treacherous for us, so we went back to the parking lot. We headed for our campground but messed up on a turn and started into the northern loop we had not intended to explore. We were about 10 miles into it before we realized it and turned around. It was interesting to see it, but not so interesting we wanted to drive until dark. On the way back, the road was blocked by four enormous buffalo, taking their sweet time. It was really cool to see them up close, though. Nora was unimpressed and demanded more crackers.
We returned to camp to find we had new campsite neighbors. It is three families from Butte, MT. (Well, one of the families has moved to Billings, but still makes the annual campout.) They are super nice and made me a drink and invited us to their campfire. One of the couples has one of their kids, the spouse and a 5-month-old grandchild along, so that was good, too. We ate dinner separately, then after Nora went to bed we all talked around the fire for awhile.

DAY TEN - Yellowstone, NP
I woke up in the middle of the night, before Michael’s first time up. Not sure what time it was, but I could hear Nora whimpering in her sleep. She had kicked off her blankets, of course, so David got up and brought her into bed with us and turned on the furnace. Just as we were falling back to sleep, Michael started crying, so I fed him and put him in bed with us, too. Good thing it’s a queen mattress. We slept pretty well until about 6:30 when it started hailing and David got up to check that it wasn’t too windy to leave the awning out. Nora woke up, too, and started talking a lot. We got her quieted back down around 7 a.m.. just when the coach battery was finally all used up. We had the furnace set pretty low, but it used up all the juice running the blower those few times. We might not have noticed, but our carbon monoxide detector starts beeping when it doesn’t have enough battery power. So whenever the battery gets run down, we are jarred awake by the beeping. David got Nora up and they started making breakfast, but I was a wimp and stayed in bed until it was 8 a.m. and we were allowed to turn the generator on again.
After breakfast we put the dogs on leashes and the kids in backpacks/frontpacks and walked to the campground office. We were contemplating leaving early if the weather was going to be a problem. There was a sign posted on the bulletin board advising that some of the roads in and out of the park were closed, and the ones we were likely to use (the west and south entrances) were “snow tires required.” We don’t have snow tires, but we weigh a lot. I inquired at the counter whether we were trapped in the park. The man explained that they have to post the signs, but that the west and south entrances were easily passable. He said the ground is too warm to sustain any accumulation of snow or ice, so even though it snowed yesterday and is supposed to snow today, it wouldn’t stick. He said not until late October is there a chance of becoming snowed into the park. He also said yesterday and today would be the worst days for the weather, and then things would improve. So we are sticking to our original plan of staying four nights here. I also found out from him where we get propane, because we will probably need to refill our propane tank. Without an electric hookup, we have to run the refrigerator off the propane. The propane also heats the air in the furnace (the battery or generator runs the blower) and the stove is also propane. We cook almost every meal on the stove. Fortunately it is only about 15 miles to get propane. We are going to get some tomorrow. Today we are determined not to drive anywhere.
We walked the campground, brought the dogs back to the camper, and set out on a hike to see the elk down by the river. (Pets aren’t allowed on hiking trails here, partly because they attract bears.) We made it about 40 yards with Nora walking and whining and complaining when we decided we should go back and eat and have naptime before trying to get her to walk anywhere. We kept asking what was wrong and she couldn’t tell us, but I guess she was hungry because halfway through a granola bar she was her old cheerful self again. We’ll try the hike again in the afternoon.
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We saw the elk, but we needed our binoculars to see them. It was a nice hike, though. It’s been a peaceful day. We had a nice dinner (with wine even!) and braced for another cold night. Because we didn’t drive anywhere today and we didn’t run the generator a whole lot, either, and because it’s quite cold, the battery still didn’t have much power at bedtime. We put Nora to bed above the cab, and we played cards for awhile. When it was time for us to go to bed, we set up the PackNPlay on the couch like old times. It’s warmer on the couch than above the cab. I put an extra blanket on her and on Michael. We ran the furnace full blast just before we turned in for the night, and that was it for the battery. So we knew we had to make it the whole night with no more furnace. It wasn’t as cold as the night before though. Or maybe we are just adjusting to the cold.

DAY NINE Burgess Junction, WY to Yellowstone
Woke up before the sun to get some good driving in before the kids woke up. Strapped them in their car seats and hit the pavement. As the day dawned, we could see the mountains that have been looming on all sides since last night. It’s been kind of slow going with the steep grades and curves. Stopped in the town of Cody, the last real town before national parkland. It was a cute place, actually, with nice little shops lining the road. We bought a newspaper and mailed some mail. Ate some oatmeal and peanut butter bread and Nora got to play on the bed for awhile. Fed, walked and watered the dogs. After we drove out of Cody, we passed a lot of private ranches and inns. Some of the architecture was pretty cool.
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Pulled up to the East Entrance and there was a huge traffic backup because of road construction. We cooled our heels for maybe an hour or so. Good thing we had our house with us. Then we made it through the gate and had to wait another 15 minutes or more until it was our turn to get to use the road, which was down to one lane. Once we got on the road, it wasn’t paved for several miles. We did get back on pavement but I was going a little crazy from trying to keep both whiny kids and whiny dogs quiet so David could drive on the snowy road (yes, it’s snowy here) coupled with the fact that I feel like I’ve only been out of the camper for 15 minutes in the past 2.5 days. At my request, we pulled off into a picnic area for lunch and naps. It started hailing during our nap. I did get some nice sleep though. This park is huge and it was a LONG drive to our campground. The last 30 minutes David joked, telling us about every 4 minutes that the campground was 15 minutes away. The landscape is so wild here. There are just big holes in the ground belching steam. It’s easy to imagine how it must have seemed to explorers. We are bracing for some cold nights and cold days, but we’re determined to have a good time. For one thing, it will be a relief not to have to drive any distances for awhile. One day we will probably drive the big park loop, which is close to 100 miles I think, stopping at a lot of the scenic areas. But for at least a day or two we will stick close to the campground and try NOT to be driving. We are not the only loons here this time of year, by the way, it’s quite populated here at Madison campground. Even most of the sites in the tent camping area are full. I saw at least 40 tents over there when I was walking the dogs, including an old canvas one hung over a line strung between two trees.
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We put out our awning (for shelter from the snow, not the sun) and our camp chairs. Our neighbors in the next campsite are very nice. Their first grandchild was recently born, so the lady, Karen, was fawning over Michael. They had a fire going with wood left by a camp neighbor who left the day before, and they said we could share their fire. We cooked brats on it for dinner. We are only allowed to run the generator up until 8 p.m., so we are trying to get the coach battery charged up as much as we can. We plan to run the furnace tonight, but we already know from last night that there isn’t enough juice in the battery to run the furnace all night.
It’s a little frustrating because there are a few sites here that have full hookups, and it’s unclear why they aren’t available to the general public. Or why, if they were running electric to those sites, why they didn’t just run electric to all the sites.
But on the other hand, it’s kind of refreshing to be worrying about things like basic survival. That’s what camping is supposed to be about. And man existed for thousands of years before forced-air heat, so I’m sure we’ll be fine. We put Nora in her warmest pajamas with the feet in them, and overtop of that some fleece overalls my sister made for her. We put her over the cab in her bed, where I had taped newspapers to the windows and taped some of the curtains shut. Michael went to bed in Pjs with his blanket that Velcroes around him and another blanket and an afghan. At 8 p.m., we shut off the generator (and the CD player and the lights and the furnace) and played cards by the light of a single bulb, running off the battery. We went to bed not too long after that, due to sheer exhaustion. We had an old blanket we brought along to use on the beach or for the kids to play outside on, so we put that on the bed, too.
I think I understand why they have the generator rule, and maybe even why they don’t run utilities to the sites. It’s so incredibly dark and quiet. We can hear the elk making their elk noises down by the river. They sound like wooden flutes, the kind that were cool in rock bands in the ‘60s and early ‘70s. Aside from that, you really can’t hear anything at all.

DAY EIGHT - Bye-bye Big Faces
We told Nora Mount Rushmore was the Big Faces, and she would say hi to them whenever we saw them. So today was the day to say bye-bye to the Big Faces. We had a bit of a long morning at the campground. Since we are heading into Yellowstone and aren’t going to have much in the way of facilities, I wanted to at least have all the clothes clean, so I took the laundry to the laundry area at the campground. Of course it was way overpriced ($2 to wash, $1.75 to dry, and the tiniest washing machines I’ve ever seen with a coin box on them) but it was there and we were there, so that’s how things go. We also took showers. David and Michael went first. There were no benches or seats outside the showers here, so David ended up putting Michael in the duffel bag (open of course) on a pile of clothes on the floor while he got started in the shower. Nora and I had a similarly difficult time when it was our turn. It was really tight quarters in the changing stall outside the shower, so some socks and pants’ cuffs ended up getting a little damp as we both tried to get dried off and changed, and only one of us capable of actually putting clothes on. We were also all using the same towel, since I had put the rest of them in the laundry. By the time I got the towel, I was really just smearing water around. David dumped the tanks and we headed out of South Dakota. We stopped in Gillette, WY for food a couple items. The scenery is pretty and the driving pretty easy on I-90 again, but David says he’s sick of being on 90, which we have been following pretty much since Chicago. Tonight we’ll be turning off it onto a mountainous road to Yellowstone. We are staying on the western side of the park (which is huge), so we still have quite a bit of driving tonight and tomorrow. It is really vast and kind of desolate in Wyoming. We passed roads called Dead Horse River Road and Crazy Woman Creek Road. We pulled off in a “rest area” to make dinner and it was little more than a turnout: a paved lane about 10 yards from the highway, with a wide shoulder to park on, and a big trash bin. We let the dogs run around a little and then David made Hamburger Helper while Nora and I played on the bed with her shape-sorter snail. It’s really the first time we’ve had a real toy out (besides a foam ball and the outside cup) this whole trip. She just say back there, putting the shapes in and dumping them out. She doesn’t make mistakes anymore. Triangles go in the triangle hole, stars in the star hole and flowers in the flower hole. Not sure when that happened. She is growing up so fast. Also back there I was holding Michael and Nora said, “Michael Raymond” which is pretty crazy because I don’t remember even telling her that was his middle name. Maybe she has overheard us telling other people. Anyway, by the time we were done with dinner, the sun was setting. We put Nora in her pajamas, gathered up all the stuffed animals she requested (“Black doggie, brown doggie and Mister Bear, too!) and tucked her blanket into her carseat. We’ll be dry camping tonight - just parking somewhere. We have our eye on a picnic area in Burgess Junction. Hopefully it won’t be too freezing tonight. If it is, we’ll bring the kids in bed with us and close the dogs in with us in the back bedroom. We’ve been seeing a lot of cows and pronghorn antelope along the road. We can see mountains on the horizon, blending in with the clouds. The weather has been nice today. Like no-jackets kind of nice. But there are big swings between daytime highs and nighttime lows, so I’m not getting my hopes up. We stopped in Sheridan, WY, for gas at a place called the Rock Stop. The pillars holding up the canopy over the gas pumps are actually stone, like you would see on the front of a house. Weird. But it’s the prettiest gas station I’ve ever seen. The lady working there gave David his 69-cent cup of coffee for free after pumping 80 dollars worth of gas. We are gearing up for some “real” camping the next few nights. Tonight we’ll be without any amenities, and I made reservations for the next four nights at Madison Village in Yellowstone. I wanted to stay in Grant Village, but apparently it closes for the winter on the third night, contrary to the information in my AAA CampBook. Once we are in the park, we’ll just have a firering and a picnic table and place to park. We can get showers near Old Faithful, I guess, but no electricity unless we run the generator, which is only permitted during certain hours and not overnight. Not like we would really want to burn 8 hours worth of gasoline all night anyway, but if it gets really cold, it could be interesting. Madison campground is at a lower elevation than Grant anyway, so maybe it’s better that we had to switch. Anyway, it will be fun to be totally out of touch for the next few days, playing cards at night instead of updating the blog and emailing. That’s how it should be.
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After all that time on I-90, it was finally time to turn off, but I was in the back feeding Michael and David forgot to get off. The GPS and mapping software rerouted us to get off at the next exit, in 7 miles, and head south. We turned south and after a few yards passed a sign that said, “No services ahead.” A few feet later there was a sign that said, “End state maintenance.” Then the road turned to dirt. Washboard dirt road. It was pitch dark, too. David said, “I really have no one to blame for this but myself,” as we both laughed and everything in this place rattled. When I walked back after we got on a paved surface, there were stuffed animals all over the floor and the over-the-door hook on the bathroom door rattled itself so far toward the hinge that the door wouldn’t shut. While we were driving on the dirt road, the dogs were freaking out and a couple times Dalice had his paws draped over my seat and his head was on my head. We passed a porcupine, ambling down the byway. David said, “Maybe that scene from “RV” wasn’t so improbable after all!” Soon enough we were back on pavement and back on track.
We started through the mountains of Bighorn National Forest, intending to stop at the halfway point. All along the road, about every half mile, were camping and picnicking pulloffs in the National Forest. David said he wasn’t that tired and figured he could get a few more miles in. So we passed up the Visitor’s Center where we intended to stay, and of course, there were no more camping pulloffs, even though we were still in the same national forest. Then we started seeing deer all along the road, which was nerve-wracking. Then we hit dense fog, which was really just the clouds that were along the mountain at that elevation. David decided to turn back because the driving was too bad. So we went back to the visitor center and pulled in. We slept pretty well and woke up before the sun came up. Turns out the furnace blower can run off the coach battery until it goes dead, so we had heat until about 5:30 a.m. We were at almost 10,000 feet.

DAY SEVEN - BLACK HILLS/MT RUSHMORE

(Photos: Mt. Rushmore (duh); a herd of buffalo, a burro saying hello; all six of us at a National Forest overlook where we had dinner [if you squint you can see Rushmore over our shoulders in the distance] and Nora getting some hiking in.)

It was bitter cold last night and a circuit breaker popped on the furnace (outside) but we had the space heater to keep us warm. It wasn’t as bad as the night before, plus this time we knew what we were in for, and had the kids in their warmest pajamas. I slept well and Michael only woke us up once in the night to eat. We had French toast and fruit cocktail from a can this morning for breakfast. David went out and reset the breaker on the furnace so we ran that for awhile to heat up the walls and the furniture a little. The space heater seems to heat the air, but it still leaves the couch and seats cold to the touch. After breakfast, I did the dishes and straightened up and David went up to the office to ask Michelle about sightseeing. She gave us a nice map and some good recommendations. Then we asked where we could get air in our tires, and the owner opened up his personal garage and let us use his air compressor. They seem very nice here. So now we are on our way to Mount Rushmore!
Just in case anyone is curious, a few things that we do differently on the RV than we would at home includes the dishes. We heat water on the stove (rather than fire up the hot water tank) and then instead of pouring it into the sink, we usually just wash the dishes in the pan and set them in the other side of the sink when they are clean. Then we rinse them off all at once real quickly. It saves a lot of water. We have unlimited water at this place, at least during the day, but we don’t hook up to freshwater at campsites. We like to be able to come and go without a lot of setup and take-down. We just fill up our freshwater tank before we leave or when it gets low and use that. Even when we have unlimited water, these are just habits we picked up from other people (including Don and Sheryl and David’s parents) and we tend to use the same methods whether we have a few gallons or all the water in the world. We also put things away a lot better on the RV because we have to or there would be no space to walk. Right now it’s tough because I had all the winter stuff (kids’ coats and all the hats and gloves) in a big plastic zipper bag stowed away carefully, but we are using them so much we can’t put them away every time or all I would be doing is putting that bag up and down. So that’s making things a little tighter. Plus the space heater is in here, too. And the dirty laundry got too big to fit under the bed and is now in the shower. It will fit under the bed once we use a few more packages of diapers. But we are doing great. As I finish up this paragraph, I can see the faces on Mount Rushmore.
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We had a great day of sightseeing. We hiked to the base of Rushmore, Nora on David’s back and Michael on my front. We went to see the Crazy Horse carving, but it is not completed and when you turn in to view it there is a sign that says, “No U-turns” but doesn’t have any prices. So you pull up to the little booth and I guess they figure they’ll embarrass you into paying the $20. But we said we weren’t interested in paying that much, and it turns out they do allow U-turns after all... We could see the carving from the road anyway. Next we drove through Custer State Park. It was $10 for a visitor pass, but they do have a wildlife viewing road there. The driving all day was quite difficult. The views are gorgeous, but the roads are narrow with no shoulder and the hair-pin turns sometimes made us laugh out loud they were so ridiculously tight. David has been doing a great job handling the 30-foot motor home through the mountains, with all the downshifting and tight corners. A few miles into the state park, David needed a nap. We pulled into one of those scenic overlook turnouts in the road. I tied the dogs out, put Michael in the front pack, and stood with Nora while she put rocks in and out of her cup for 45 minutes. Since we were pulled off and standing outside, people in passing cars kept thinking there must be some wildlife, and so they pulled off, too. It was pretty funny, because the entire time we were there I didn’t see a single animal. Then we came in and read some stories and ate apples. David woke up refreshed and impressed that I had two kids and two dogs outside by myself. We got back on the road and a few hundred yards later saw buffalo and then pronghorn antelope. We pointed these out to Nora, and she would dutifully look out the window and then return to her book about Dora’s Chilly Day, which was apparently much more interesting, the 43rd time through, than a herd of real live buffalo. A bit past the antelope, we came across some of the burros they have in the park. They used to do mule rides on the burros, but they stopped doing it and let the burros free in the park. So the burros and their descendents are just wandering around. They came right up to the window of the car. The dogs were going nuts barking at them, but they seemed to be hoping we would share our snacks.
To get back to Mount Rushmore, we chose a road that had several narrow tunnels with limited clearance. They were toward the end of a long, twisty mountain road, and we were both a bit concerned we would get all the way to the end of this road and then not fit through. A few hundreds yards onto the road, we saw a pickup truck pulling a huge fifth-wheel camper coming from the other way. He pulled off, so we did too. He said he had gone through the tunnels, so we knew we were safe, because his rig was much larger than ours. It turned out that the tunnels through the mountainside were beautiful, and one offered a great view of Mt. Rushmore framed by the tunnel as we drove through. We don't have a photo of that because the tunnel came after one super-tight turn and there was a 360-degree turn (no kidding) right after it, and there was someone behind us. We pulled off in one of the National Forest parking lots to see the view. It was such a nice place, with RV parking and a little hiking trail, that we decided to just stay there for dinner. We had been planning to go back to the campsite and make dinner before returning to Rushmore, but hey, when you have your whole house with you, you can make dinner anywhere. David cooked up beef ribs with onions and green peppers, rice and canned corn. Then we drove the rest of the way back to Mount Rushmore. When we pulled in, David said, “I vote Nora does the dishes.” I said I would vote the same. Nora was looking increasingly leery. David said, “All in favor of Nora doing the dishes, say Aye.” And we both said Aye. “All opposed, say Nay.” We both swung our gaze to Nora, who, to our utter amazement, said "Nay." Pretty loudly too. She was outvoted, but since she isn’t tall enough to reach the sink, I did the dishes. David took Nora and went to the Rushmore museum while I finished up in the camper and fed Michael. We met up in the amphitheater for the nightly lighting ceremony. The park ranger, who sounded like he had smoked a lot of dope in his short life, gave a talk, and then there was a movie about the sculpture and about the four presidents. Then they turned on a spotlight that lit up Mount Rushmore against the night sky. The Big Dipper happened to be right above the carving tonight. Nora was asleep in the stroller and Michael was snoring pretty loudly in the front carrier by then, but hey, they are too young to remember any of this anyway.
Michael has been doing great. Even through we’ve been in three time zones in a week, his circadian rhythms seem to be right on. If it’s dark out, he has a little awake time, then eats, then sleeps. Doesn’t matter what the clock says. So that’s good, since we are trying to adjust to Rocky Mountain Time. We will be in Mountain Time for awhile, so we may as well get used to it.
We plan to set out tomorrow morning for Yellowstone, but we don’t intend to do the whole thing in one day. We’ll get about halfway tomorrow and I’ll call and try to reserve a spot in one of the Yellowstone campgrounds for the following night. Not sure where we will sleep tomorrow, but that’s half the fun.

DAY SIX Mitchell, S.D. to the Black Hills

(Photos: Nora, Michael and I outside at the campsite near Mt. Rushmore. All other photos are at Wall Drug.)


We went over our route last night and decided we didn’t need to be in such a rush to finish sightseeing in S.D., so we had a leisurely morning planned. We nearly froze last night, though. It was so windy at the campground that the RV was continually shaking and moving all night, even with a big rig parked about 12 feet away, blocking the wind. It got really cold, too, and we had to fire up the furnace. It didn’t seem that cold at 9p.m. when David considered getting the space heater out from underneath. We were both up a lot last night checking on the kids and adding blankets. Nora’s cabover bunk is great, but it is an acrobatics act to try to put blankets on her while standing on the dinette bench. I ended up keeping Michael in bed with us the last time I got him to feed him. We made it through the night, and David made pancakes in the morning. Thankfully for me, David did all the outside stuff, including feeding the dogs and emptying the tanks and taking down the leveling blocks, etc. It was freezing outside and I had no interest in going out there. Nora and I read Dora’s Chilly Day together. We were just getting ready to pull out when I discovered Michael had pooped so much that his PJs were soiled. Fresh pajamas and a clean diaper and 5 minutes later, everyone was buckled in and on the road. Apparently the long driving days are starting to wear on Nora a bit. David was getting her off our bed to put her in her car seat and he asked her, “Do want to go for a ride in the big car?” She said, “Noooooo.”
Another cute Noraism: I taught her what eyebrows are and she calls them eyesbrow, which sounds a lot like ice-brow. Took me awhile to figure out what she was talking about.
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The wind hasn’t let up at all, which is making driving tricky for David. We are doing lunch on the road, and it was a bit of a challenge getting sandwiches together while trying to keep from crashing into any appliances. It was also dicey opening the fridge, as I never knew when a gust of wind might send a glass jar of spaghetti sauce flying out at me. It is also raining. A campground I phoned from the road said it is supposed to go down to 17 degrees tonight there. Our plan is to make it to Wall Drug for dinner, then go another hour to a campground in the Black Hills near Mt. Rushmore. The weather stinks, and I’m glad I’m not driving, but it does work out well that this is a driving day. If we have to be cooped up in here anyway, at least we are going down the road. A big challenge so far has been getting a weather report. I forgot to check weather.com last night when we had Internet access and there are almost no TV stations or radio stations with news. The best we can do is the 5 seconds of weather you get between songs on music stations. I did check a newspaper in Walmart yesterday, but it said 50 and 60s and sunny all week, so that was not too accurate. Even though we are driving west, it should have been partially accurate for a couple days. We haven’t changed latitude much since then. I guess it would make sense if we could see a TV weather report and watch how the fronts are moving across the country, but there is no TV out here, even with our big antenna up. As I’m typing this, we just passed a sign saying we are entering the Mountain Time Zone. A few miles back, we passed a fancy big Class A RV that was off on the side of the road. It looked like their awning had somehow not been locked closed and had come open in the wind and ripped partially off. That’s an expensive mistake or malfunction, whichever it was. They looked a bit like the RV in the Robin Williams movie with the awning broken and flapping in the wind.
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Pulled into Wall, SD with 1/8 tank of gas remaining. Gas is 2.63 so we aren’t going to fill up. Hopefully it will be cheaper in Rapid City.
Paid a visit to Wall Drug, a huge drug store and restaurant complex that started when a tiny drugstore tried to lure passing tourists to stop in the nearly abandoned town of Wall, S.D. by putting up signs along the highway advertising free ice water. The ploy was so successful the place is a big tourist destination, and signs are legendary. Apparently there is a sign in Kenya stating how many thousand miles it is to Wall Drug, and advertising free ice water. It was fun. David bought Nora a fancy polished rock for 42 cents. We put it in her pocket and she spent her time at Wall Drug mostly asking to take it out and look at it. We ate at the café there, which was quite pretty with its wood walls, wood floors and Tiffany-style stained glass ceiling. Nora noticed it before I did. (“Light! Light!) We had to get all bundled up even to get out of the RV it is so blustery. After we all got hats and coats on, David got out to walk the dogs. I had Nora practice saying “Wall Drug,” but she had gotten distracted by the time he came back. I tried prompting her with, “Nora, tell Dada where we’re going!” and she just stared at him. He said, “Wall……” to try to help her, and she said, “Wallpaper?”
Anyway, we had fun at Wall Drug, but Nora’s morning nap on the road didn’t really keep her going through the afternoon and she had a full-on temper tantrum when I insisted we go to the bathroom to change her diaper rather than having her continue to push the umbrella stroller at a snail’s pace through the crowded aisles. She was actually kicking and crying in my arms as I carried her, which I don’t think she has ever done before. David got himself a new cowboy hat to replace the leather hat he has had for 17 years. All the cowboy hats look really good on him with his long hair. We got back on the road about 5:15 p.m. We’ll be stopping at a Flying J to gas up, and then we’ll have another hour to the campground where we are staying.
The sun is out! We haven’t seen the sun since Saturday, I think. We seem to have driven out from under this low pressure system we’ve been under for more than a day. It is all clear skies in front of us. I guess that’s why it is supposed to be so cold tonight.
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Pulled into the Crooked Creek RV campground near Mt. Rushmore in Hill City, S.D. David says the lady at the office, Michelle, is really nice and helpful. The roads aren’t paved and the sites are right on top of each other, but there is wireless Internet and it is close to everything we want to see. At dinner we made a toast (Nora and I were drinking water) to staying two nights in the same place. Tomorrow we get to drive around and see the sights and we don’t have to “get” anywhere. That will be nice. At dinner I told Nora that she was going to sleep in her upstairs bed, and then when she woke up in the morning we were going to go see some very exciting and interesting things. She looked at me seriously, paused appropriately, and then said, “Ketchup?” We all started laughing hard, including Nora, who is never one to be left out of a joke. David said, “Oh geez, Nora,” and Nora kept repeating, “Oh Geez” over and over.
We had a nice quiet evening, with David doing a bit of planning and emailing on the computer while I read a novel I picked up at Walmart. Michael had a good evening, too, because I held him while I was reading, and I think he was getting sick of being in the carseat all the time and not being held much except to eat.