Nadia's Update - Short & Sweet - Just like her :-)

Dear Fellow Followers, 

I know I have not been blogging much, but that means I have a lot to tell you all. We went to Mount Rushmore and I learned a lot. I learned that Thomas Jefferson had two daughters named Lucy. I also learned that Mount Rushmore only took 20 years to build, but Crazy Horse has taken over 60 years to build and is still under construction. Crazy Horse is a newer monument created for the Native American people. A whole family is working on the construction of the monument. I also learned that if you wake up early you can see so many animals, the one morning we got up early we saw buffalo, turkeys, prairie dogs and cows. After we left South Dakota we made our way to Michigan. My favorite adventure has been the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, because we jumped off mini cliffs into the soft sand. That's it for now! 

Update From Siena...

Dear people reading this blog, 

I want you to know that after a month or so we are still having fun, I will inform you that we did stay in a hotel so far and we have recently left Lake Michigan and we are on our way to Cheboygan, we are trying to make our way to Montreal 

A few things that have been fun INCLUDE:

                        

                   Mount Rushmore 

It was really big and we went on a short walk to see the mountain from different perspectives at one point we were right under George Washington's nose.

                     Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse is a private monument and is probably like ten times the size of Mount Rushmore and it is still in the making and Nadia and I got small rocks from the mountain (Check out my Dad's blog for a photo of Crazy Horse - it was to far away for my phone to get a good shot).

                       Wind Cave

Wind Cave is a national park and part of a huge cave system. We took a tour of it at one point of the tour our tour guide turned out the light completely and no one could see there own hand in front of there face. 

                        Wall Drugs

Wall Drugs was pretty much a giant gift shop with some awesome attractions like a jackolope you could ride and a T-Rex that would eat every fifteen minutes.

So those we some of the highlights. 

                        THE END

South Dakota

South Dakota has never really been on my radar for a vacation location. Not that I had anything against South Dakota, but it's a long ways away from home, I don't believe I have any family there, it's not really on the route to visit any family that I would drive to visit, and there is no major ski resorts. However, on this trip, South Dakota was kind of a big mile stone: South Dakota is where we marked one month on the road, it is where we cross the middle of the USA (if you take a map of the USA and fold it down the middle you'll find the Dakota's, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas), and it was the our first real honest to goodness motel stay (in Rapid City).

We had 3 days to explore Western South Dakota with our first couple nights in a motel in Rapid City. As we drove from Billings Montana to Rapid City the last few hours of the drive was foggy with a misty rain, signs kept displaying messages to not use cruise control when the highway is wet. We finally reached the motel that Kathy found a Comfort Inn. The motel seemed like such luxury after all of us living for a month in a tiny box in the bed of a pickup truck. To be able to take a shower when ever you want without walking across a campground with your towel and change of clothes was a very welcomed luxury.

The next morning the weather was still a bit overcast, originally we had planned on visiting Mount Rushmore but decided rather than head south we would head east to the Badlands National Park. I opted to go to the eastern most entrance to Badlands National Park park and head back west though the park. On the way to the eastern entrance, we would pass the visitor center for Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Kathy suggested we stop and check it out. As we pulled up to the visitor center I wasn't sure what I would find, there wasn't much there other than a small building. We went inside and spoke with volunteer, the visitor center had only been open for operations for just a few weeks. Despite being open such a short period of time, the visitor center had a lot of information about ICBMs and the cold war. The museum brought back some bad childhood memories of the 1983 TV movie The Day After, but I was intrigued. We decided we should take a tour of the underground command facility. We got tickets with plans to visit after our tour of Bad Lands National Park.

Badlands National Park was incredible. Coming in from the eastern entrance it we were told to stop at the first spot after we entered the park by the volunteer at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and that from there we could see all the way to Kansas. I don't know if I could quite see that far, but it was a pretty incredible view from an otherwise pretty flat part of the planet. Unlike many other National Park areas, there park didn't seem to have any warnings about not wandering off the trail because you might damage the natural beauty. What they did have were numerous signs warning you about the rattle snakes. That was enough to mostly keep my daughters on the trail.

Lots of scary snake warnings to keep the kids on the path

Badlands National Park did offer a lot of potential hikes. I really would have loved to take a nice long but we had only one day, and we were trying to fit in a tour of the Minuteman Missile command location, and Kathy and Nadia were recovering from colds. So instead we opted to drive though the park and stop at every turn off we found interesting.

Lots of sunflowers in South Dakota

Our home parked in Badlands National Park

Badlands National Park

As we left the northwestern exit of Badlands National Park we got stuck as road construction was limiting traffic to one lane all the way from the park exit to Wall South Dakota. We waiting quite a while for the pilot car to come around and direct us though the construction and ultimately missed our tour of the Minuteman Missile site underground command center.

We decided to make up for the missed tour with a visit to the Wall Drug drugstore in Wall South Dakota, the original Wall Drug Store. It's actually kind of hard to miss because there are signs in a hundred miles in every direction advertising it.

When driving though South Dakota on I-90 you have to stop in Wall and visit the original Wall Drug

The next day the weather had cleared up and promised to offer much better conditions for viewing Mount Rushmore National Monument. The drive from Rapid City to Mount Rushmore takes you though more tourist attractions than I thought possible (Reptile Gardens, Bear Country USA, Old MacDonald's Farm, etc, etc). At Mount Rushmore we got in our obligitory family pictures and then walked the Presidential Trail, which providing countless different angles to photograph the mountain. After a few hours I think we had run out of photograph ideas, and the girls were starting to get tired with anything other than the idea of the gift store, so it was time to move on.

Mount Rushmore

I pushed for a visit to Wind Cave National Park with hopes of making up for a previous family cave experience in the Ape Caves on Mount Saint Helens (turns out an hour plus hike in a pitch dark lava tube with nothing but pen lights isn't a good family activity). The tour of Wind Cave did not disappoint. I even suggested a second tour immediately following our first one, but after hiking over a 1/2 mile to over 200 feet underground, Kathy was ready for some above ground time.

210 feet below ground in Wind Cave in Wind Cave National Park

We decided to stay in Wind Caves National Park at a campground a short distance from the visitor center where we took the cave tour. The campground was mostly shut down, with only one open section and the water turned off, and very few visitors. At night with open skies and very little light we had excellent viewing of the stars, satellites, and falling stars. As we went to bed, we could hear the distant sounds of elk.

The night skies above Wind Cave National Park

The next morning we got an early start. We had planned to make it all the way across South Dakota and camp at a state park in Minnesota, but we still wanted to get in an early visit to Crazy Horse Memorial before we started our journey across the state. Crazy Horse Memorial was pretty impressive considering construction has been ongoing for over 60 years, that the head of Crazy Horse alone will be larger than all of the presidents on Mount Rushmore and that the entire memorial takes no government funds (it's all privately funded).

Crazy Horse Monument

South Dakota is yet another state we will have to return to and visit again. I could imagine a week long visit where we spend then entire time hiking the Badlands and the Black Hills. Perhaps even a visit or two to those tourist attractions leading up to Mount Rushmore.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Wow, its has been awhile since I have made some time to write an official blog, I have been keeping a journal so that I can remember each day and adventure, but we have been pretty busy and I haven’t made the time to focus on a blog to publish, now’s the time. We have been spending the last few days driving since we left Bozeman, we are making our way to Montreal by the 14th of October so we can visit with Andrew’s parents and good friends before they head out on a cruise. We spent 4 days in Bozeman with my brother Danny, it was awesome to see him and also to have a real kitchen, laundry and shower to use. While in Bozeman we got our fix for our craving for sushi – which sounds weird, but my brother works at one of the best sushi restaurants I have been too, Dave’s Sushi, I also may be biased, because he also rolls the sushi, so he makes it really yummy especially for us. We also visited the Museum of the Rockies, which is an amazing museum with one of the largest collections of Triceratops fossils in the country and tons of other dinosaur fossils and models. I couldn’t help thinking of my daughters attending Montana State University and studying paleontology. We also took a beautiful hike to Lava Lake, 3 miles up to the lake, surrounded by mountains. Hiking with Uncle Danny, the girls were super troopers on the 6 mile hike. We finished the night up with a home cooked meal at Dan’s house with his friends. The few days in Bozeman brought us back to our college/early 20’s days – staying up late, sleeping in and playing video games for hours. It was fun to relax and have some family time. 

After Bozeman, we plotted out our route to Montreal, Danny suggested that we take the Beartooth Highway to head East. We took his advice and went through Yellowstone National Park – got to see tons of Bison and the amazing park that we visited last summer and then got on the highway.  I must say I was super grateful my husband was driving this route. This was one of the most beautifully, scary highways I have ever driven on (actually the road to Hana in Maui was scarier – but in the camper, Beartooth was equally as frightening). Tight turns, huge overlooks and an elevation gain to over 10,000 feet. Not to mention, during this drive I had started coming down with a cold, so my ears and head felt like they were about to explode. Once I got over my anxiety and pain in my head, the drive was truly amazing. The views were breathtaking and again, I was grateful to be in the passengers seat. 

After the drive on the Beartooth Highway we made our way to Billings and spent the night in a clean and quiet RV/Campground – we missed the super moon because it was bit cloudy, but we did get one last look at the finals stages the eclipse before we all went to bed. After Billings we made our way to Rapid City, SD. At this point in the trip we had been on the road for a little over a month and we decided to treat ourselves to a hotel room. Rapid City is centrally located between the Black Hills, Badlands and Mt. Rushmore in western South Dakota. We lucked out at the hotel as well, apparently the Comfort Suites we chose was a popular one and the only room available for us was a Family suite – which means it had 2 queen beds, a king bed and a sitting room – we weren’t sure what to do with all the room, but we were excited to figure it out! Our first day in South Dakota we explored Badlands National Park, we hiked around the various trails and checked out the beautiful overlooks. As described by our OhRanger.com pamphlet- “The wind and rain erosion have created an eerie moonscape of deep gorges and jagged sawtooth ridges with rocky layers painted in subtle hues of sand, rose, gold and green.” This area was truly amazing, we understood why it was called Badlands, when imagining early settlers traveling across this treacherous land, it is no wonder they called it the Badlands (we also read it on one of the informational signs). After our day at the park we headed back to Rapid City with a quick stop at the famous Wall Drug. Anyone driving on I90 towards Badlands or Wall can’t miss the multiple signs and billboards for 5 cent coffee and free donuts at Wall Drug and all the other crazy Americana exhibits it has to offer. Wall Drug is basically the biggest souvenir shop, restaurant, museum and drug store, that also includes a Traveler’s Chapel. 

It was a fun shop to see, but also a little bit overwhelming with stimulation. We made it back to our luxurious hotel and enjoyed a delicious dinner at the restaurant across the parking lot, Dakotah Steakhouse, apparently rated one of the best steakhouses in South Dakota, and we agreed. I was still battling a cold, so the chicken dumpling soup was just what I needed. Plus some delicious steaks and yummy sides, we were happy to splurge a little.  The next day the sun was shining, we checked out of our hotel (after our free breakfast) and made our way to one of the highlights of the trip, Mt. Rushmore National Monument. The monument and the history behind the creation of the sculpture is amazing. The amount of money, time and man power it took to create this sculpture was fascinating. After an hour or so hiking around and taking tons of photos, we decided to head out. Even thought we didn’t get to hike into George’s nose, it was still very cool. 

Our next stop was Wind Caves National Park. We took a little over an hour tour that took us 209 feet underground. We took a guided tour of the ½ mile cave system called Natural Entrance. These caves, and Jewel Caves which is a bit further west from Wind Caves, have about 250 miles of explored passageways underground. On the tour we saw a variety of rare crystal formations including gypsum, box work and snowy calcite crystals. What I found most outstanding is that all these passageways are all natural, the volunteers that explore the caves are not able to change or manipulate any of the holes or caves they find, if they can’t fit through the slots, the can’t go any further. And even without any manmade passageways they have still found so many miles of passages. After the caves we camped at a campground in the Wind Caves park. Since it is October, a lot of parks and camping areas are closing up for the season, but we were still able to find a beautiful site over looking the rolling hills with a wide open sky, perfect for Andrew and Siena to take awesome star photos after dark. As we headed out of town we stopped by Crazy Horse Monument, which is still under construction after 67 years. This monument is all privately funded and family run. As a tribute to the Sioux warrior Crazy Horse it will be the biggest sculpture in the world, for size comparison Mt. Rushmore could fit in the head of Crazy Horse. I hope it gets finished, I'd love to see the completed project. 

I have always been interested in seeing Mt. Rushmore, but never really felt like South Dakota was somewhere I wanted to spend my vacation time. After our short visit here, I am so happy we made the time to see it. There is some truly amazing land in this part of the country and it is definitely worth the visit. And now we are traveling on, we have spent 2 nights in Minnesota. First night after a super long drive we made our way to Blue Mounds State Park. Sadly, we got in too late to really enjoy the park and the next day we headed further east to Great River Bluffs State Park. We got in earlier to this camp ground and had time to explore the cool trails that overlook the Mississippi River. Today, as I type we are in Wisconsin, making our way to another state park called Wells State Park which is located on the shores of Lake Michigan. We decided we have enough time to spend a couple nights there and we are looking forward to taking a day off of from driving and enjoy some sunshine and beach time.  So, if you have read this far, now you know where we’ve been. We have been busy and moving fast, but definetly enjoying the sites. 

The Canadian Rockies

It's been a long time since I last visited the Canadian Rockies, maybe 17 or 18 years ago, before Kathy and I were married, and then again maybe 16 or 17 years prior to that on a family trip with my parents and grandparents. I don't know why it's been so long between visits. Perhaps I had forgotten just how beautiful these mountains are. The Canadian Rockies are really unlike anywhere else I visited in the world. Over the past two weeks we visited and stayed in Jasper National Park, Banff National Park, and Waterton Lakes National Park and I feel like we barely scratched the surface for what these parks had to offer.

Looking down to the town of Banff, AB from Sulphur Mountain

I tried to write up my description of how these mountains are different than the US Rockies, and went looking online for help in describing the mountains. I found this description in Wikipedia that strangely looked very similar to my own, so I decided to go with their description:

According to Wikipedia’s article on the Canadian Rockies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Rockies#Geology):
“The Canadian Rockies are overall more jagged than the American Rockies, because the Canadian Rockies have been more heavily glaciated, resulting in sharply pointed mountains separated by wide, U-shaped valleys gauged by glaciers, where as the American Rockies are overall more rounded, with river-carved V-shaped valleys between them. The Canadian Rockies are cooler and wetter, giving them moister soil, bigger rivers, and more glaciers. The tree line is much lower in the Canadian Rockies than in the American Rockies.”

Looking down from Tunnel Mountain in Banff, AB

In the US I've seen much of the Rockies from New Mexico, through Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana and the US stretch of the Rockies is definitely beautiful mountains, but the Canadian Rockies truly are unlike anything in the US. It isn't difficult to imagine giant glaciers carving the valley thousands of years ago. From the main towns in either Jasper National Park (Jasper) or Banff National Park (Banff) you look in any direction to steep cliff faces of mountains stretching thousands of feet above the town. With seemingly endless options for hiking without traveling further than the edge of town, and both Jasper and Banff have easy access from the (relatively) warm valley floor to the cold snowy high mountain tops near town by tram (Jasper) or gondola (Banff).

On top of Whistlers Mountain near Jasper, AB

I really don't know why my three visits have each been separated by so many years. I would very much like to think that my next visit to the Canadian Rockies won't be so many years from now. We have already talked about returning in a couple years on a ski trip, or perhaps a future summer visit. However, I know that once back home in my comfortable life, the Canadian Rockies will seem too far away, too foreign, too cold. I will tell myself they are too far away to drive for a typical vacation. I will say that in the winter they are far too cold, even in the summer I'm sure I'll convince myself that I want to go to some place warmer. But maybe my daughters will remember this incredible place and demand a return trip, or perhaps I will remember to read this blog post and remind myself that it's worth the trip.

Athabasca Falls in Japser National Park

Donuts or Beer - searching for free internet in Canada

The title was suggested to me by my friend Tom after reading my email complaints about the difficulty of getting internet access. Technically I'm on vacation, at least for the start of this trip I'm completely on vacation, and the last thing that anyone should be looking for while on vacation is a way to get on the internet. However, since this trip is quite a bit longer than a typical vacation, both Kathy and I need to work. Along with work, there are the little things in life that need to be taken care of like paying bills, and when you're living life as a transient you need the internet to take care of these things. Also, I think that because we are new to the transient life, there is still a bit of paranoia that we will miss something, forget to pay some important bill or forget to respond to some important email. These are fears that are easily put asside during the two weeks of a typical summer vacation, but when you are going to be gone for over 9 months, you can't just ignore these things until you get home. 

Before I started this trip I added a little bit of very expensive international roaming data to my AT&T plan, and added some roaming data to our Verizon cellular data modem. The AT&T has worked well where there was cell coverage, which as we travelled north (especially Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK) we found absolutely no cell coverage of any kind. Most of the paid RV parks we have stayed at had free (albeit slow) wifi. However many of the RV parks we have stayed in required you to sit yourself near a wifi access point that was never placed close to where they decided to have you park your vehicle. Along with the often inconvenient locations for wifi, the start of our trip was pretty much constant rain (unless we were somewhere where the internet was completely unavailable like the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert, then the weather was spectacular). I found myself, more than once, sitting under a tree with the rain coming down waiting for my email to finally download.

The first place where we spent any real length of time was Jasper. Originally we had only planned to spend 4 nights in Jasper, but with the weather being so wet we opted to abandon the Southeastern corner of Alaska and the western half of British Columbia head to Jasper early with the hopes that the weather to the east would be drier. In the end we lived in the town Jasper for 8 days. In Jasper National Park there aren't RV parks, it's National Park campgrounds which are clean, and very nice, but not set up for people to come and get work done on the internet. So one of the first things Kathy and I needed to find was a place with wifi so that we could get occasionally work done and pay some bills that had not been taken care of prior due to our travelling and general lack of internet access. The best options that we found were Tim Hortons (excellent donuts and coffee), Jasper Brewing Company, and a laundromat/coffee shop in Jasper. The first two had free wifi, and the later charged a few bucks an hour for wifi. The problem is that if you want to get any REAL work done you need at least a couple hours. I did this at Tim Hortons on a couple occasions, but I was not the only person attempting to get work done there, and the place was usually full of people with their laptops open. At the Jasper Brewing Company where we ate lunch a couple times, I tried to respond to emails, but it didn't feel right to be the only person working away on a laptop in what I would describe as a sports bar. Besides, the Jasper Brewing Company was the first place I had found in Canada with a good IPA, and drinking beer(s) is not always conducive to getting any real work done.

Eventually I suspect Kathy and I will get into the grove of subjecting ourselves to the internet only when necessary (such as posting this), and scheduling that time appropriately around all the other activities that are so much more important (like finding the ultimate Canadian IPA). Canada has been difficult, because cellular internet is so much more expensive for us here, and we are avoiding the large cities where internet access is everywhere and motels where it is provided free with your room. Once we are back in the US, the internet will be a little bit easier to access. For now at least there we are still recovering from the addiction for the need of constant internet access that we had become so used to.

P.S. This blog post is being completed via wifi at Starbucks in Banff. The ONLY place with functioning wifi in this town on a busy weekend. 

Hello Week Four...

Hello Week Four…  

We spent 8 days in Jasper and enjoyed all it had to offer. Even in rainy and snowy weather we still found fun things to do, hiking, swimming, hot springing and lots of exploring. And some not so exciting activities as well, including grocery shopping, laundry and hunting down Internet to get some work done. Now we are in Banff and Lake Louise, we have 4 full days here and have a bigger town and more area to cover. We hiked the most popular trail in Banff, the Tunnel Mountain Trail which offers awesome views of the town, mountains and the rivers around. We are visiting Lake Louise as well and will do more hiking and learning about the Canadian Rockies.

View from the Tunnel Mountain Trail 

As we make our way into our first month of the trip I am feeling once again grateful and happy for this opportunity (I feel like I say this in every blog post, but it is the truth and I don’t want to take it for granted). I am happy to see how we are all getting used to the ins and outs of the daily routine. Although each day is different, most days there are a lot of things that remain the same. Coffee, tea and some down town time each morning, with reading, mediation and relaxation before we start the day is something we try and do each day, we had this same ritual at home and it is carrying over here in the camper as well. And now, since we are all in the same tiny space the girls are starting to get in the same groove as well. We spend many mornings reading in our beds, and it is almost 10am before we realize we need to have breakfast. Even if this means we start our day a little later, it is nice to have something that feels like home. Another ritual that some times gets shuffled around at home is family dinner. These days, lunches are either out and about either sandwiches or quesadillas at a trail head  in the camper or at a local brewery with wi-fi so we can get check our email, but dinners have regularly been in the camper or around the camp fire. Most nights it’s a simple dinner, grilled meat and veggies or a bag salad – served right out of the bag (one of our new favorites). But the one thing that is always the same is that we are all together, we are not waiting for Andrew to get home from work or not fitting it in between after-school activities, but just dinner after a long, fun day. The girls also have figured out how to make the camper feel a little more like home, they were only allowed a small box of legos and Playmobile items, but they are so great with playing pretend with these guys,  they spread them all out and its like they go into their own little imaginary world. They also enjoy roasting pinecones on the fire and making little “wedding banquets” for the squirrels, but they like to have both indoor and outdoor activities.  

After our visit here in Banff, we will head south, making one stop in Waterton, AB and then back to the USA and into Montana. One thing I have been enjoying (and kind of cursing at the same time) is the lack of internet and connection. I find it freeing that I have limited phone service and no data on my phone. I realize how connected to my device I am at home. I like the fact that we have to schedule our internet time to get our work done and then that’s it for the day. Although I do miss sending random texts to my friends and family back at home, I would love to share simple moments with them when the time comes up, I do know there will be time for that as the trip goes on and being gone for 9 months it will be nice to have more of those moments to stay connected, but for now, I really enjoy the simplicity of our life less connected (she writes as she posts this blog using the Starbucks wifi).