Exhaustion almost got the best of me....

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

We flew into London early in the morning, we had a long overnight flight and not much sleep in the night before. Needless to say it was a struggle to keep going throughout the day. We had some minor issues getting off the plane (kids going through the wrong customs and some instrument damage) but they were handled and we were on our way to Windsor.

I have been to London before so many of the things we were going to do I had seen before, like Windsor Castle. I couldn’t remember if I had done the tour, but once I was inside it all came back to me. My group of kids really liked it and took a lot of time to look at everything. They were especially impressed by the Chapel, which is going to seem tiny compared to some of the churches we are going to see in London.

Outside Windsor Castle

Inside the courtyard

We witnessed the changing of the guards at Windsor and got to see the band play some tunes. It was very odd to me, because they like to play arrangements of pop tunes, mostly classic rock, but I found that strange as traditional a ceremony as this was….it was very strange to hear a rock version of Toccata and Fugue.

A guard at Windsor

We had a quick lunch at a sandwich shop and I gave the kids some time to wander around. They ended up sitting by the train station (some sleeping) trying to catch up on rest. We then boarded the bus to head to our hotel. We were supposed to try and keep everyone awake to get everyone adjusted to the time change, but everyone seemed to pass out on the bus ride to our hotel. I was even losing 20 minutes here and there. I found it pretty funny how your body will just shut itself down when you’re that tired!

We checked in, had a quick dinner, and then it was time to take our groups on a walk to get acquainted to London. Our goal was to see St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Globe Theatre. It was a pretty good walk, I think our main mission was to get the kids good and tired so they would go right to bed. We enjoyed wonderful weather and hit the millennium walkway to the Globe Theatre right at dusk, which was beautiful.

After our walk, the kids were very excited to go to bed…as was I. I actually missed hanging out with the staff b/c I fell asleep unknowingly in my room!

The front of St. Paul's w/ Queen Victoria (?)

Looking back on London from the Globe Theatre

Tower Bridge from Millennium Bridge

I Hate Thinking of These Titles

Beautiful Idaho Evening Sky

We woke up semi-early to a nice breakfast courtesy of Kirsten. The morning was pretty uneventful b/c we were waiting to see what activities were planned for the wedding party. Nothing seemed to be happening so we went into Ketchum and had dinner at a nice little pizza place. So pretty much most of the day consisted of eating!!

After lunch we hooked back up with some of Ryan's other friends and hung out by the pool until it was time to go to the rehearsal. The invitation noted to wear comfortable shoes, and that is definitely the case. It's about a quarter mile walk to the ceremony site in a pretty rough dirt and gravel road. Once you get to the site it is well worth it though, completely beautiful!

The rehearsal dinner was nice and we went back to town around 9:30. It was right as dusk so the deer were everywhere. There was one point where I definitely thought we were going to hit one of them. I couldn't warn Ryan fast enough, so I just screamed at the top of my lungs! Of course we had the top down, another car coming toward us in the opposite lane and a huge deer in the road! A perfect scenario....Ryan was a good driver and didn't swerve or hit the deer...I have to say the Mustang's brakes are amazing, we stopped on a dime.

The night ended with drinks at a bar rooftop and then some crazy college-like partying after that. It was a long and crazy night but definitely a lot of fun. The reception should be one to remember!!

"Why aren't we flying? Because getting there is half the fun. You know that."

We saw signs (and followed them. I was as Bear Aware as one person can be).

We saw a bunch of tracks (right by where the four elk were at).

No, the next sentence isn't "We saw like, 37 bears, two were fighting, 4 were fishing and there were a bunch of babies". The next sentence is we didn't see one bear in over (roughly) 14 hours spent in Yellowstone over two days. I was pretty bummed. It got to the point where any vaguely bear-shaped rock, tree, buffalo etc. was getting me excited.

This is as close as we got to seeing a bear at Yellowstone:
And he's wearing a tie with no pants...

As disappointing as that was the rest of the day was very cool, if not reeeealllly long. I was finally over driving today during the last two hours of the drive. We went 490.2mi today. I'm glad we started as early as we did, my estimate for getting to Sun Valley was 10pm. We pulled in at 10:15. I have to say, my time estimation skills have proved to be pretty accurate

This was by the Fountain Paintpots. These pools looked really cool but the more intense the color, the more they smelled like sulfur. At times, if the wind picked up some of the steam, it was brutal.

I can't speak for Alie but I am pumped to not have to A)pack the suitcases up for three days, B)not wake up with an alarm tomorrow and C)not drive more than 100mi in a day until Sunday. The Google Maps for the next few days will not be mind blowing, but I'll link them anyway. We have one activity planned tomorrow and the rehearsal dinner at night.

Day 7: Sun Valley, ID

Alie stole a lot of my picture thunder for today, so I'll post yet another of the type of thing I find cool (think Geographic Center of the US cool...)

Pretty awesome huh?

One other closing thought...Even though we aren't trekking the West anymore, we are both still going to post updates and pictures for the rest of the trip (and, again, I am at some point going to put all of our pictures online somewhere. Also, scans of some of the better film close up pictures.)

Highlight of the Day: This one is tough. From one perspective, the best thing about today is that we are pretty much done with the major driving. Also, the Tetons were beautiful and you could get close to them. I just couldn't get over the four elk (3 male, 1 female) I took a bunch of pictures with the film camera w/telephoto lens and got some great pictures.

Finally arrived in Idaho

Grand Tetons

Man was today a long and exhausting day...I don't know why exactly but we were going from the minute we woke up today. We left the hotel around 6:45am in hopes of seeing some bears. As I'm sure Ryan will tell you, we didn't see any bears :( We rode with the top down and absolutely froze on the way up to the park, we finally had to put it up b/c I was so cold.

We did our second day of Yellowstone which was pretty neat. While looking for bears we did find two bison that were fighting with each other. That was pretty neat to watch, although we didn't get a real good picture of it. I've been asked a couple of times what my favorite part was and I'd have to say Yellowstone just b/c of all the animals we got to see up close. We saw some elk up close and they kept coming closer so Ryan and I decided that it was close enough and we got back in the car....you never know with these wild animals!!

We drove south after Yellowstone to the Grand Tetons. It was beautiful, but didn't have the animal appeal that Yellowstone did. There was a lake though, which was absolutely gorgeous.

Ryan and I stopped for a quick dinner in Jackson Hole, WY (I've always wanted to ski there) and then it was off to Sun Valley, ID for the wedding events to begin. After a super long drive, we finally arrived and had some drinks with Ryan's friends. I decided to crash early since we had such a long day. I hope no one is a light sleeper around here b/c that party is really loud....it doesn't help that we all have to have our windows open b/c there is no a/c....at least it's pretty cool up here!!

Alright here are my pics for the day and I'm finally off to bed...whew!!

Old Faithful
(we couldn't have timed this better)

Elk in Yellowstone

The Falls at the Yellowstone Grand Canyon
(they were so awesome, we had to go again)

Clark: "Despite all the little problems it's fun isn't it?" Ellen: No. But with every new day there's fresh hope."

We totally did.

This guy was less than 10 feet from the car, he even turned and looked at us. Seemingly knowing we thought he was cool and he was soaking it up.

Well the great charger crisis is semi-solved. Alie wrote more about it, but I have to add that I have a new appreciation for Radio Shack... I just finished figuring out our mileage from today and we drove A. Lot. I have to admit, it did drag the final hour or two. Not bad, just impatient to get to the hotel.

Just one more North By Northwest item. I forgot to mention yesterday that I was disappointed that the visitor's center at Rushmore was all new. I couldn't see the one in the movie. The new one was cool though...

We went to the Crazy Horse memorial, Wind Cave NP and Jewel Cave NM today after Chargergate was fixed. I had been to Crazy Horse before, it was interesting to see the progress since the last time I was out here.

I thought I'd put all of our mileage per day for those of you scoring at home (because of the forced baseball reference I have to mention the Cubs. They haven't lost since we left. I think its obvious to assume it is because I am gone. This mention of the winning streak is in hopes that they at lose a game before I come home or I might just have to stay here indefinitely through October...). I also relinked the Google Maps for each day.

Day 1: 373.9mi
Day 2: 454.4mi
Day 3: 458.8mi
Day 4: 203.1mi
Day 5: 515.7mi

Total: 2005.9mi

We only have one more big day of driving (tomorrow) and then the wedding commutes and the drive back to Boise. I'm excited for the rest of Yellowstone (i.e. Old Faithful and a couple of other areas. Ahem bears. Just saying. We'll be in the park around 8, so be there.) and even more excited for Grand Teton NP. I'm gonna try to fit in the last of the geeky music selections tomorrow too.

Day 6: Cody, WY to Sun Valley, ID

I am assuming we have world wide interweb access in Sun Valley. So, if there aren't posts until Sunday. That will be the reason... Keep checking back though and tell your friends.

Sorry, I just had to. I think they (prairie dogs) are super cute, but this was just too funny looking. (No, I did not hit it... Please.)

Highlight of the Day: Is there any question? I am typing now because of Steve at the Rapid City, SD Radio Shack. Not that the natural wonders and beautiful scenery weren't great, but I start getting the shakes if I don't have internet. (Still mad because of losing the cable, however it happened...)

The trip is saved!!

Some neat weather we encountered today.

The day started off a little rocky, we were hopeful that the hotel in Wall, SD would have the computer charger and we could go pick that up and be done with it. Of course, this wasn't the case...they could not find the charger so we were out of luck. As you might have guessed, we found a temporary fix for our problem and the much anticipated blog will continue. We found a super cool guy at RadioShack and he helped us find a universal power cord. We are positive that the cord is in that hotel so we're hoping to hear from them....if not I'll order another one from Dell and return the one from RadioShack.

Anyway, onto the fun parts....we drove by Mt. Rushmore again on our way to Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was....(for lack of a better word)....Crazy!! Mrrh, I know. We watched the video on how the project started and about the sculptor. He was a pretty funny guy, he died in the early 80's but his wife and kids are carrying on the project. The monument is absolutely huge, like twice the size of Mt. Rushmore. It was really cool to see them working on it too, I was hoping to see some dynamite go off, but it didn't happen. I really hope they get it done in my lifetime so I can see the finished product..it will be pretty amazing!!

We also drove to two caves (Cave of the Winds and Jewel Cave). Our parks pass didn't get us in for free at the Wind Cave and the Jewel Cave times were too far away so we didn't go into either of them. We did see the museum stuff that went with them so that was pretty neat.

The day ended with a five and a half hour drive back to Cody, WY in preparation for our Bear expedition tomorrow at Yellowstone. We're leaving insanely early to see them (like 6:30am) so I really hope we see one!! We're also going to the Grand Tetons, which I hear are way more beautiful than Yellowstone.

FYI, that cool pic Ryan posted yesterday of Mt. Rushmore through a rock was totally supposed to be my post but he did it while I was sleeping...*sneaky*...I was really miffed that he stole it, but I guess I stole his potato festival pic a few days ago....I guess we're even now, unless I want to be evil and post a North by Northwest pic we took today....nah, I'll just call it even so you can look forward to it in his post. Let me also tell you, this is the second time he's asked to have his picture taken this trip!! Here are my pics from the day:

Another neat pic of Mt. Rushmore

Crazy Horse

What Crazy Horse will look like when it's finished.

Some memorabilia from the Crazy Horse Fife and Drum Corps

*** BTW...thanks Mom for looking up all that stuff for us on the internet!! :) ***

The pics that I wanted to post yesterday

What Mt. Rushmore was going to look like...

Mt. Rushmore

The Badlands

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? "

I switched the title of today's post to a different awesome 80's movie in honor of our first stop today. South Dakota used to have over 300 Minuteman II missile silos. They were all decommissioned in the early 90's and one of them is now under National Park control. I was all bitter (shocker) today because the formal tours of the launch control center can only hold six people and there are only two tours a day. I called over two months ago and the tours were already full. We still got to see the actual silo (and missile), just not able to go down to where the two Missilemen sat and lived underground. We ran into one of the tour groups and in the brief time we saw them I found a reason in my head for why almost everyone in the group was not as entitled to be there as us, but whatever. They had a video at the headquarters that showed you what we would have seen, so we kind of saw it.


We went to the Badlands after that. This was the first place on our trip that I had already been to. Still cool though. I got burned a little today on the drive from the Badlands to our next stop, Mt. Rushmore.


This also was somewhere I was 13 years ago. It was completely different. There is an all new enterance, parking, museum and a cool trail that goes as close as you can get to the base of the mountain. Roosevelt had what looked like some weird tv antenna coming out of his head and there were people up on top.

No, not them.

They were getting Rushmore prepared for the 4th of July. We ended up going back after dinner to watch the lighting of the monument. Really poor music choice and the lights are on the worlds biggest dimmer. Kind of meh. Not awesome, not a waste of our time.

Tomorrow, super light day for sights, heavy on the driving. Aside from a possible detour back to Wall (more on that at the end...), it should be an easy drive. Take it Google Maps...

Day 5:
Keystone, SD to Cody, WY

Oh, that detour. Well, we can't find the charger for the very computer I am now typing on. You see the dilemma. It's either at our hotel in Wall (we can't find out if they have it until 8am) or lost forever. So, if there is now update tomorrow, it either will be until Sunday or if Dell can send another replacement to Sun Valley by Thurs. or Fri.. Awesome. I don't know how it got left, that's the most frustrating part. But, if this is the "worst" thing to happen on the trip, then I'll take it. Oh, I can't say enough how frustrated I am.

Highlight of the day: Approaching Mt. Rushmore with the Hermann's theme from North By Northwest). I don't care what you say, it was cool.

A Hazy Day at Rushmore

Today started off super cold...we even rode to the missile silo with the top up, for like the third time all trip. We arrived at the Delta-9 Minuteman 2 Missile Silo just in time to hear a park ranger give a presentation on the magnitude one of these missiles have if detonated. It was pretty mind blowing and it's a little crazy to think of how defenseless we really are if someone decides to attack. We drove to the visitor's site and got to see the DVD of what the launch facility looks like. Pretty weird stuff.

Our second stop was to the Badlands which was really cool. I had no idea of what they even were so I was pretty impressed with what I saw.

The final stop of the day was to Mt. Rushmore. This was pretty cool, I have always wanted to go here. I took a ton of pictures here as well. It was really cool to learn about how the monument was built and to walk the trail that took us right under the sculpture.

We drove back to Rapid City for a nice dinner at Firehouse Brewing Co and then it was back to Mt. Rushmore to watch the lighting ceremony. We got some good shots of that as well.

We have just learned that we might have left the power cord to the computer at the last hotel and won't know for sure if it's there until 8am tomorrow. Hopefully Ryan can get a post in and we'll get the cord back tomorrow..I hope... I'll post more pictures tomorrow when we have power for sure.

"Get in the car, or perhaps you don't want to see the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only four short hours away?"

"This means something, this is important"

Arguably, the part of the trip I have been the most excited for was today. I have wanted to go to Devils Tower for over 15 years, whenever I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the first time. When I was in SD in '94 with Boy Scouts we were frustratingly close, I never thought I'd be back. It was well worth the wait. I was relieved to find no military personnel or dead livestock on the winding roads approaching the tower (I actually said that same comment out loud and got silence from Alie. I'm gonna assume it was because she didn't get the reference, not because she is ashamed to be associated with me at times... Yep, that must be it.). The iPod was pumping out the Williams score to Close Encounters, I don't care if it was uber geeky, I had goose bumps.

We Didn't see this:
But, what we did see was still really awesome...
After we left, I realized we didn't get gas when we departed Gillette and we had like no gas. Every town we went through didn't have gas. That was a fun few miles of apprehension before we filled up.

Because I am a sad, simple person at times, I had no problem with a 200mi detour just to cross into a state and turn around. Looking at a map, I noticed the Geographic Center of the U.S. was on the way to ND. Right up my alley.

We had to drive 8mi on a gravel road just to get to this:


Alie wrote more about how I took these pictures, lets just say I had to dodge some cow pies.

Tomorrow is like a comparative commute for us driving wise, a slight audible on the Google Map, I think we are going to Mt. Rushmore tomorrow instead of Wed. I'm sure you were all holding your breath on that one. Also, at some point, I am going to put all of our pictures into a Flickr account, maybe not until we get back, I'm not sure. We have a ton, 135 of Yellowstone alone.

Day 4: Wall, SD to Keystone, SD

I don't have actual mileage for today because of bad internet (I'm sitting in the mighty Mustang writing this...) but, we left at 11am and got into Wall at 10:30pm. I know we drove over 400 total miles. Getting easier and easier. In closing, in perhaps the most stunning moment of the trip thus far...

I allowed (actually, requested thank you very much) a picture of myself to be taken.

Devils Tower and Two More States….

I am typing this blog in a Word document b/c our internet isn’t working right now. Ryan is going to drive over to the Days Inn after I’m done and piggy back on their wireless internet since ours seems to be inadequate.

Today was yet another good day. Our major event was a visit to Devils Tower. It was pretty awesome, as I’m sure you can imagine. Ryan had his music geek moment with selected pieces from Close Encounters which was kinda neat. The tower itself was huge and we took a 1.3mi hike around the base of the tower. I guess you can climb to the top, but from my limited experience fake wall climbing, I think that would be pretty much impossible.

The other event of the day was driving to North Dakota, just to say we’d been to ND, and can mark it off our states list. It was a pretty drive and we saw lots of livestock and some random antelope type things. Oh, and we also drove to the Geographical Center of the US…that was pretty random. We drove to the middle of nowhere to look at a red pole in the middle of a cow pasture. Ryan was adventurous and jumped the barbed wire fence to get some better pics.

We are staying the night in Wall, SD and the excitement is starting to catch up with both of us. We were looking forward to our first real meal of the day, only to find out Wall has NO food sources….other than Subway, which was closed, and the infamous Wall Drug. So..we ate at Wall Drug. It was a pretty good meal, but random. It just seems like there can be nothing else in Wall, other than that drug store.

It’s been another exciting day, just gotta get Ryan some internet and an ice machine and we’ll be all good. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep and another big day tomorrow, which will include: a Missile Silo, The Badlands, and possibly Mt. Rushmore. Feel free to leave comments (I hope you’re reading)….Ryan is kicking my butt in the comment department and likes to tell me about it all the time!! : )

"Sorry folks, park is closed. Moose out front should have told ya."

Not a moose, but we saw at least 50 of these guys (or girls in this case) on the drive out of the east entrance to Yellowstone.

We checked out of our hotel at 8:30am and got to this hotel at 11:30pm. Total miles: 454.4. It really didn't seem like it. For one thing, it doesn't get fully dark until 9:30, so that makes a big difference. I thought I'd give the wildlife roundup from today. The bison count is more of an approximation, if there was an open meadow, there were buffalo. We got to the point that we became jaded with buffalo. On top of that, it was my trip goal to see a bear. Yellowstone has black and grizzly ones. Bears seen today:0. Bears just missed because stupid people from Wisconsin (yes, even here...) and other lesser states stop in the middle of the road, thus making us miss them:3. So, attention bears of Yellowstone, you have until Thursday to get your act together. I will be expecting a veritable bear convention, anything less and I will be upset to say the least.

Yawn.

2 Bald Eagles
2 baby condor-type things in a nest
19 elk (10 adult, 9 kids)
2 trumpeter swans
1,789 Bison
3 Bull Moose
42 Mule Deer (35 adult, 7 kids)
Some cool bird of prey +2 in nest
Groundhog-type thing like 2 feet away
3 pelicans
2 other cool birds of prey hunting + 2 in nest
50+ little deer things (pic above)
0 friggin bears

Physically, I didn't realize how different Yellowstone was. In one spot, it looks like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (except Big Thunder Mountain doesn't smell really, really horrible). In another, it looks just like Colorado. Another, the Pacific Northwest. Really cool. We covered a little more than half of the main park roads today, on Thursday we will see Old Faithful and finish up the other areas on our way to Grand Teton NP.

Tomorrow is a comparatively light day. More in car time, but less sights. Needless to say I am very excited for it though. Come back tomorrow to see why. Ooohhh, suspense. Google Maps link below.

Day 3:
Gillette, WY to Wall, SD

Highlight of the Day: The moose in the water was really cool. They are huge and we were pretty close. That and all of the bears we saw. Oh, wait. There weren't any.

A Day in Yellowstone

We just got to the hotel about an hour ago. I had to grab a quick shower b/c I was still covered in dirt from the day. I didn't bring any extra shoes to save packing space so I hiked the whole day in my flip flops! Needless to say I was a bit dirty.

I don't think I can sum up today in my post, there was just too much. I think Ryan calculated it to a 14 hour day. We got an early start and hit Yellowstone right away. Our first sighting was of a Bald Eagle that was sitting on top of a tree. It was pretty spectacular! We ended up seeing a ton of Bison, Elk, Moose and Deer as well. We had a couple of near misses with Bears too, but never did see one. It's pretty funny, you always know you're going to see something cool b/c the traffic gets insanely heavy and people just park wherever and get out of their cars to see whatever animal is putting on a show. It's quite the event! I had no idea how big Yellowstone is either. We spent literally the entire day there and only covered half the park! We are going to cover the other half on Tuesday which will include Old Faithful and hopefully some Bears!

The drive to Gillette, WY was gorgeous! We went through two National Forests (Shosone and Big Horn) and saw some spectacular scenery and mountains. The convertible was definitely the way to go, I feel like we've seen so much more by having the top down the whole time.

I took a ton of pictures so I will try and pick out some cool ones to post along with this blog. I'm so glad we got to bring the Digital SLR (thanks Dad!)...I maxed out a 1G compact flash card, I took that many pictures!

Sad thing, I lost my hat due to wind at some mineral springs today. I would've went after it but it went into this thermal area that if you walk on, could explode or something...it was the hat Ryan bought me that I thought was dorky so he thought I did it on purpose....the hat was actually growing on me, so I was pretty bummed. I'm sure some Moose is enjoying it now though.

I think that's all for tonight, hopefully we get in earlier tomorrow night so I don't have to be so general, I'm looking forward to an exciting day at Devil's Tower!!
Emerald Springs



Mammoth Hot Springs
(where I lost my Hat)

Yellowstone Grand Canyon Upper Falls


Yellowstone Lake

Bald Eagle

Moose