Day 29

Day 29

This morning we left around 7:30 and drove four hours to St. Louis for a short stop.  Since the most notable thing to see in the city is the arch that is where we went. The place was a mad house; there were tons of people everywhere. First we had to pass through security, which was pretty strict so we felt like we were in an airport. Then we jumped in line to by tickets to go to the top of the arch. Surprisingly the tickets were cheap and we had a discount with our national park pass. We had about a half hour before our time to go up, so we walked around the museum of the western expansion. It was a well-done museum, it even had those animated life-like robots of famous people that would talk to you, which kind of creeped me out and made me think of the movie “Night at the Museum”. The museum was really big and there were walls and walls of information to read, it would have taken us all day to read, so we skimmed and glanced.

            It was time for us to go to the top, so we got in line and then went through the different rooms to await going up. All of the rooms and even just the visitors center for the arch was so detailed and so well decorated, I thought that we were in line for a ride at universal studios theme park where they have all the really decorated waiting rooms, we were really impressed. We got to the last waiting room and then boarded the pod that was to take us up. It was about 4 feet tall and maybe 5 feet wide but I think it was less then that and five people sat in each one. It was small! It takes about 3 minutes to get to the top, forty people go at one time  in 8 pods and then scrunch into this little hallway that is the top middle section of the arch. There are about 20 tiny rectangle windows that you can look out of if you lay your body on this wall/ledge to look over. It was really incredible to look down and see how small everything was. We did find out that on a windy day the arch will sway about 6 feet or more, I felt a little swaying but nothing like that thank God. We had one man in our pod who is afraid of heights but it was his third time to the top, he just gets off and heads straight to the other side of the arch to go down and that is exactly what he did as soon as we got out of the pod.

            It was really neat to be in the arch and I am glad we stopped to do it. St. Louise seems like a really nice city and we want to go back some time but we had to get on the road to head to Indianapolis where we are staying with a friend of the Valder’s. It felt like a long drive, each one seems to feel longer and longer as our trip is winding down. We are starting to feel anxious about getting home.

            We made it to “Indy” and back to our own time zone, yay! We shared some pad Thai since were getting to lazy to cook. Then we spent the evening talking with Paul and his wife in their beautiful hundred year old home. It was really nice to meet them and get to know them. Now we are updating blogs and David is checking his 300+ emails. Now were going to sleep so we can get up and head to WV our last stop and last day of our trip. 

Day 28

Day 28

            Today we woke up and had breakfast with Bill at Sportsman’s Bar and Grill, owned by his old high-school classmate. Everyone there knows each other by name, a nice change from the hustle and bustle of strangers in Charlotte. We returned to the farm, packed up the car, and visited for a while. Kimberly Chisholm came over and said hi since we missed her the night before and we laughed at her clumsy misfortunes and talked about work and school.

Once she left, we departed for the Mall of America! We walked in under a sign with Princess Diana’s face on it, and you should have seen Katie’s face. Priceless! They had a Tribute exhibition for the late Princess, complete with her tiara, her wedding outfit, and a collection of her most famous outfits. Katie loved it all, but said the most amazing part to her was the collection of Condolences for Diana, spanning a wall-to-wall bookshelf. She even got to write her own in the book they had for visitors there. My favorite part was the handwritten rough draft,  typed and hand-edited second draft, and final version of her brother’s eulogy for her. In the typed edition, you can see where one of the royal reputation officers had crossed through any controversial or offensive statement towards any royals, and a final statement thanking Dodi for making her last days on Earth her happiest.

            From there we did real mall things, like walk through the 27 Acre amusement park. We walked around all four floors, not buying a single thing but stopping in the candy stores for free samples, and only missed one half of the third floor in our short three or four hour visit. We left and had dinner at the Nook in St. Paul, MN, the best burger joint in the nation (though I had a Black-bean burger). Katie got the stuffed burger, filled in the middle with melted cheese, like a jelly doughnut but better. We shared a root beer float (root beer from tap) and headed back down to Cedar Falls, Iowa, near Waterloo, where Kristie Chisholm lives, the third eldest Chisholm daughter. For such a short trip we did pretty well, seeing all the Chisholms except Katie and Kelly.

            We spent the evening with Kristie and her boyfriend, Jeremy, who is awesome! Their friend Brian (name?) was really funny and cool too. After a Burger King run we watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, a really creative and interesting movie. Jeremy has good taste. It was a fun evening and we went to sleep to late for as early as we had to get up the next day. 

Day 27

Today we drove all the way to Iowa from South Dakota. It was a long drive and once again David did all the driving, and as usual I offered but he declined every time,  U have decided I should keep him around if he likes to drive so much and I don’t. This trip was similar to the last it was beautiful but very flat, except for when we drove through the South Dakota Badlands. He badlands are really cool prairies and rock structures. The drive was long and now we were listening to Treasure Planet now and knitting, well I am knitting. We stopped to eat at a picnic shelter bur the mother birds ran us out and back to the car.

            We made it to Iowa in good time, actually early. We spent some time with David’s great grandmother and hung up our wet tarps, covered with dirt and yellow pollen. She told us the story about getting her teaching license. At the time, she had to take a test at the courthouse and they would mail the license to her on her 18^th birthday. She passed the test and got her certificate in the mail. That same night however, Lloyd Fox presented her with a ring, so she never taught a day in her life.

            I showed Katie around the farm a little bit, we got into this building but I had a hard time getting the door back shut since the building was so old, it became a battle between me and the door, which I won by using a crow bar and hammer, but I was covered in white paint dust.

Uncle Bill got home and took us out to Pizza then to the Chisholm’s farm so Katie could meet them. They are the Fox’s lifelong friends, Monty, the father, was David’s dad’s childhood friend, and now Steve’s kids are friends with their kids. They have eight children, but only four left at home now. We returned to the Fox farm and chatted with Grandma Fox and went to bed in the old house. 94 years old, to be exact, as Grandma Fox claims because up in the attic there’s a beam that has the year 1913 written on it, the same year she was born. I hope she hasn’t been up in the attic recently though! 

Day 25 & 26

We woke  up and hit the road; we had a long drive and no time to spare. It was once again a driving day so not too interesting, which is why I combined these two days. We are driving from Yellowstone to Mt.Rushmore in South Dakota, over all about a 10 hour drive, and at least and hour of that was just driving out of Yellowstone to show how big it is. We ended up driving more than 300 hundred miles just in Yellowstone Park.

So we drove all day, actually correction David drove all day, he drove the whole 10-hour trip. In my defense I offered several times and he said no, he enjoys driving and I don’t so it works out well. We have learned how to listen to audio books, so we are listening to Black Beauty. We drove through a lot of small towns, one of them was named Cody after Buffalo Bill Cody, It looked like a fun little town. Other then that our day was filled with driving many miles on long roads and past open fields. We got to the town of Custer, which is this cute little town near Mt. Rushmore where we were camping. We got to our camp ground and it was probably one of the nicest camp ground we had been to, it was run by an older gentleman and it was obvious that this little place was very important to him. That night we took it easy, cooked dinner (instant mashed potatoes and can veggies). The rest of the night we read, and sat by the fire drinking hot chocolate. We went to sleep early so we could have a full day the next day.

The next day we woke up ate some oatmeal and head straight for the national monument. We pulled up to the park thinking our park pass would cover the parking fee but it didn’t unfortunately so we paid 11$ to park, but it is a pass for the whole year so at least you can go back every day haha. As soon as you walk up the stairs from the parking garage, the four faces are right there high in the sky. I have always seen pictures of Mt.Rushmore but it is completely different in person, just mesmerizing. I just couldn’t believe how real they looked. It is a really nice monument; there is a lot to do. We walked down the walk of flags, which is a flag from every state and the date the entered into the union of the United States. We walked the president’s trail, which gives the information about each of the four presidents from the best view of the each of them on the trail. We stopped by the sculptors studio and museum to learn about the process to create the monument,  Just a few facts; 90% of the monument was sculpted by dynamite,  it took about 400 workers and hardly any of them were sculptors. It took around a million to make, and the sculptor died just before the last face was finished, he also sculpted the mural on Stone Mountain, GA.  After we left the monument we had to decide what to do next. There is a lot to do in the black hills area. We went to Custer state park, which is the largest state park in the U.S., it was really pretty, there was some really cool rock figures, more bison, some rock tunnels to drive through and pretty drives. We spent a few hours in the park and then headed over to learn about the crazy horse monument. We decided not pay to go see it, but it is going to be the biggest stone carved monument in the world, when/if they finish it. It has been in the process of being built for some decades now, the sculptor has already died and it is not even ¼ finished. Hopefully we can see it done in the future. After that we drove around Custer to see all of the little touristy areas and then headed back to camp to have a relaxing evening,

We battled more rain so we were in and out of the tent when the rain would stop and start but the biggest issue was the wind, it felt like tornado winds it was so fast. I was afraid we were going to lose the tent, but at least it is our last night camping. Besides the weather it was a quiet night and then we went to a really nice and patriotic lighting ceremony at Mt.Rushmore. The ranger talked, then they showed a film and had a flag ceremony for the service men and women in the audience. It felt like a nice Patriotic closing for our trip to experience America. 

Day 24

Day 24

Today we woke up to more rain, which made us not want to get up and out in it. Luckily not too much later the rain stopped for what we hoped was the day. So we set out to see the rest of Yellowstone. We saw most of it yesterday so we headed back to the old faithful area to first check the time of the Grand Geyser which is the tallest geyser that we had missed the day before. We went to the visitor’s center, checked the times,  and saw it was set to go at 2. We had some time to kill so we walked around the museum on geysers, then we went to watch Yellowstone’s version of the park film. Yellowstone wins for worst film of all the parks we have seen. It was so boring so we left early to go catch another showing of Old Faithful.

            After that we ran over to look around at the old faithful inn. we were hoping to see the big fire place but unfortunately it was under construction, but every thing else was so rustic and warm, I would love to stay here one day. We were starting to get short on time to go see Grand Geyser and we wanted to get desert at the lodge, so we ran back to the car, ate pb&j, then headed in the eat some desert. David got this chocolate volcano fudge thing and I got a brownie sundae. I was going to take a picture because it looked so good, but I guess I got too excited because I forgot until after I had already ate it. By this time we were really short on time so we ran as fast as we could with full stomachs to the geyser, we thought we were going to puke. We made it to the geyser but we quickly found out that it had already erupted. This is the second time we have just missed seeing this thing, now it was getting personal. So after taking a moment to digest, we took a drive to the other valley that we didn’t go to yesterday to see and animals and beautiful land. It was a nice drive, this time around Lake Yellowstone, which is so pretty with the snow capped mountains behind it. We saw elk, a wolf and many bison. We would love to find that bumper sticker that read “stuck in a bison jam” because we were in so many. There are herds of bison everywhere so much so that they started to be as exciting as cows in a field. It more entertaining to watch people nearly kill themselves to get a picture.

            So we drove and took small walks and viewed all the view areas to see animals, hot springs bubbling mud and geysers. We had a nice drive singing and looking at amazing Yellowstone. I may have mentioned this before but Yellowstone has a little bit of everything, I am glad that it was our last national park stop because it felt like a summary to all we have seen on this trip, valleys, canyons, waterfalls, rain, animals. It’s like Disney world with all the different sections like animals kingdom, magic kingdom etc. There are different sections and each is different wonderful.

            After our drive around we headed back to the old faithful area to make out last attempt to see the Grand Geyser. It was 6:45 and there was a four-hour window that it could erupt from 7-11. The predicted time was 9 pm, but we were determined to see it this time, so we waited because it was early earlier. We waited with anticipation, and wouldn’t you know the geyser erupted right on time this time, but our 2 and half our wait was worth it. The grand geyser is breath taking, make sure you see it next time you’re in Yellowstone.

            Tired and Cold, we headed back to camp, cooked mac n’ cheese, which we have decided that we don’t want again for at least a year and we turned in for the night.

Day 23

Day 23: Rain or Shine

We woke this morning to the sound of rolling thunder in the distance and some menacing clouds to go with it. Our neighbors, apparently med school grads on their way to begin their residencies in Seattle, gave us some leftover eggs and bacon, bringing our morning back up to neutral at least. We skedaddled before the rain arrived, praying that our tent would remain dry in our absence throughout the day. We drove North from Madison, where our campsite is, towards Norris and eventually Mammoth Hot Springs. When we got to Mammoth Hot Springs, the rain let up, so we got out to look around at the terrace hot springs. We were so close to the famous North entrance so we drove down there to see the fancy stone entrance gate. Since the weather was staying nice we continued to Yellowstone River Grand Canyon and its immense waterfalls—Lower and Upper Yellowstone Falls (very creatively named). We saw a really nice rainbow go over the canyon and waterfall. After a short hike (we’ve been slacking off for a few days on hiking), we rewarded ourselves with some crackers and Cheese Whizz, overpriced Cheese Whizz, that is. Although this is a terrible food for you it is just one of those snacks that is gross and yummy at the same time.

After taking a quick glimpse of Upper Falls, we drove a very long ways in search of Moose (Meese?). Our gas-guzzling was in vain. Though it was only a half gas-guzzling because, thank God, we have a hybrid. We returned to Canyon Village and did laundry and took showers. We sat for a long time as a storm went on and the power even went out. Then we sat there even longer because I took the change into the shower room with me so we couldn’t start drying our clothes until I was out of my (really long shower, Katie adds ) Starving, we returned to our campsite and cooked up some black beans and rice in the rain. Then the rain stopped for a little bit just as we were finishing eating. We called it a night.

Day 22

Day 22: Ol’ Faithful

We drove straight up to Yellowstone National Park, America’s first National Park, once we packed up this morning. It wasn’t too long of a drive because the Grand Tetons are neighbors to Yellowstone. We got into Yellowstone and decided to go straight to see the Park since we already had reservations and that were calling for thunderstorms. We started with the most famous part of the Park, the geysers.

            We had lunch in the parking lot, taunted by a hungry crow and then ran over to make it just in time to see Old Faithful erupt. It was an amazing sight; the geysers water went up over 100 feet, which surprised us because from where we stood it did not look that tall. After we watched old faithful, we went out to walk around the 150 other geysers and hot spring pools in the area. Of course we didn’t make it to all of the different hot water areas but we made it to a lot and we were able to see a few of them go off. We barely missed the Great Geyser, which is the tallest predictable geyser in the world, but we are going to try and go back to it later. The hot springs and geyser were so beautiful and my favorite part was the colors created around the hot spring pools because of bacteria. Some of these pools looked like rainbows with the bright blue/clear water and the yellow’s, reds and greens around them. We went out to one geyser that was not on path taken very often and with all the talk of buffalo and bears we were a little worried, so we sang as loud as we could to scare any animals away, for some reason the only song I could think of was “O when the saints go marching in”. Unfortunately all that hard work in animals attacks prevention and we still missed seeing the geyser erupt.

            After we left that trail we got in the car and hit each little look out and hot springs stop there was to stop at. We were lucky the bad weather seemed to be holding off on us.

            After driving around and walking around all of the many small trails to see the hot water wonders we made it to our campsite in the Madison junction of the park. One of the most amazing things about Yellowstone is how big it is, it’s huge! So we made it in time to put up our tent just as the rain was starting. We made dinner and then headed back out down back towards the geysers to watch wild life and get a few minutes of cell phone reception. On our journey we saw tons and tons of buffalo. Of course the crossing of the herd caused a traffic jam that allowed us to take pictures but it was a little crazy how people get around wildlife, I cant even imagine what the buffalo must think of us. People will just pull their cars over anywhere, jump out and get close to the animals all to take a picture, it was a mad house. But the buffalo or bison we can’t really tell the two apart were so graceful and beautiful.

            Just about this time the clouds cleared enough for us to see Yellowstone in evening light. The steam stacks rising from the hot water areas just glowed in the sun and it was just incredible. Evening time with the sunset, the steam and the animals had probably been one of my favorite things we have seen.

            When it started to get dark we headed back to camp and settled down for the night. I finished my second book on this trip and David had yet to finish his one book that was already half way started before the trip. I think this may be because he stops to summarize every paragraph that he has just read. I know as much about his book as he does, but I love that he wants to share it with me.  We hope the weather tomorrow will be the same as today and that the storms will hold off so we can enjoy this beautiful landscape.