McBerkoBlog

First full day in Yellowstone! After the rainstorm the night before, we were happy to wake up to sunny skies. We quickly set up the girls' tent while it was dry, then bought coffee so we could get on the road early. Yellowstone is huge, and our plan for the day was to explore the southwest section of the park starting with Old Faithful. It got hot early (low-mid 80s), and we aborted our hike time around Old Faithful due to Zadie's complaints. (Bad sleep night for her did not help the situation.) We grabbed a spot on the ground and watched Old Faithful, which Zadie declared unimpressive. She said we oversold it and it didn't live up to our hype. :) Lesson learned! She was excited, however, to explore every one of the zillion gift shops in the area. We visited too many, got a few gifts and souvenirs, then found a picnic table for lunch. When we stopped in the Old Faithful Lodge for a bathroom break before leaving, we got to see a second eruption. On the route back, we stopped...

Slowly but surely catching up with documenting this trip on the blog, folks, stick with me! We're about halfway through. Thank goodness for our daily written notes for reference. Anyway, on to day 16 - from Teton to Yellowstone today! Big day. Followed a short path from our campground over to the river to check out the view and look for animals (no luck), then packed up camp. We drove  south to Jackson first to stock up on groceries and call my dad. Bummed that we didn’t have time to walk around Jackson – cute town! We looped back the way we came, and after a long delay due to a car accident on the two-lane road, saw our final views of the Tetons as we drove north to Yellowstone. Quick stop at Colter Bay for a picnic lunch, then on to Yellowstone. I was excited for everyone to see Yellowstone. All through the trip, we had been amazed at how different each area was from the last, but with all the geothermal activity, Yellowstone was quite the outlier. We purposely hadn't watched...

Day 2 with the Tetons! We spent this one full day in the park, and made the most of it. After seeing so many close-up deer in Rocky Mountain and then the bison herd when we arrived in Grand Teton, we were excited to spot more animals and left early to start searching. Big fail. Antelope Flats? No antelope. Was that brown thing across a field an elk? Even with our binoculars, we couldn't tell. Distant bison. In one win, eagle-eyed Ruth spotted a huge bird flying with  a snake in its beak. We were glad we saw the bison close-up yesterday or would’ve been really bummed with the lack of animals today! We looped up to Colter Bay at the north side of the park for the Visitor Center, gift shop, and lunch at a restaurant where we had our first huckleberry ice cream of the trip. Thumbs up all around on the huckleberry, which Zadie put into her “top 4 flavors” and likened to the classic  Michigan flavor Blue Moon. After lunch, we made our way to crowded  Jenny Lake and lucked out ...

On to Grand Teton National Park! Big excitement late in the day once we arrived at the park, but we started with a hotel breakfast, restocking groceries at Walmart, and 5+ hours of driving through Wyoming. We stopped for a picnic lunch in a small town park with a rodeo arena, where we saw a mom and baby deer. We spotted many pronghorns along the way and not much else.  Immediately after entering the park’s east Moran entrance in the late afternoon, we saw a huge herd of bison, including a huge one right next to the road. This was really exciting for everyone – our first bison of the trip! We realized later how lucky we were to see this, after our other attempts to see animals in Teton came up short.  After stopping for some pictures in front of the beautiful Teton range, we stopped at the C. Thomas Visitor Center and watched a movie about the park, then headed to the Gros Ventre campground since it was getting late. There were bear warnings everywhere, so we spent some time he...

Overall, the goal for this day was to travel half the distance between Rocky Mountain National Park and Grand Teton National Park, about a 5 hour drive to our stopping point for the night. Since it was primarily a travel day, we enjoyed an unhurried morning and then packed up camp.  We struck out on bighorn sheep sightings one final time at Sheep Lake, stopped at a specific visitor's center gift shop at Zadie's insistence, then went to check out Estes Park, CO. We followed a cute Riverwalk path with lots of stores, visited a cafe with  yummy vegan options for lunch, got the girls some ice cream, then hit the road. After several hours of driving, we stopped in the small town of Saratoga, WY to visit the “Hobo Hot Springs”.  The city has a free bathhouse and several outdoor pools heated by the hot springs, all located next to a river. In the river, which was generally a cooler temp and nice for wading, there were  shallow pools sectioned off with rocks where the natu...

This was our one full day in Rocky Mountain National Park, and we went all over the park. We started the morning in Bear Lake, which is popular enough that the parking lot typically fills early. We arrived just in time to snag a spot and hiked the short (.7 mi) loop around the lake. Between the zillion photos we took and all the rocks Zadie wanted to sit on, we took our sweet time going around the lake,  enjoying the beautiful scenery, butterflies, and salamanders . So pretty.  After a quick snack, we decided to continue on to Alberta Falls. I'd read that the hike was just over 1.5 miles round-trip, but from where we were it was closer to 2. We grabbed a quick snack and headed off. Zadie saw a sign listing the mileage to the falls but didn't realize it was half the total length since it was an out-and-back hike. As it started heating up, her excitement from the Bear Lake part of the trip tanked and she was hiking mad. By the time we reached the falls, she refused to even look ...

Back to bullets! I will catch up, I will catch up… (and I will flesh these out later, I will….). - Last morning at Joe & Alex’s. Bill & I stocked up on groceries while the rest of the group walked to the playground. They saw a bunny and prairie dogs (which we are still very excited about, so adorable), and played “cheetahs” with Anna, a spinoff of tag.  - Alex tipped us off that one of their neighbors had an Alaska license plate. Woohoo, one more state off the list! We’re getting close. [Update: We ended up seeing several more of these in National Parks.] - After we called Dad & Mary to check in after Dad’s back surgery (all pretty well, considering), we ate some leftover pizza and took off for Rocky Mountain National Park.  - Joe’s timed entry ticket was for before 1, ours for after 1. We lost cell service immediately upon entering the park so stopped at a bunch of scenic lookouts searching for Joe and Anna. They found us at the Alpine Visitor Center, the highest ...

Ruth finished her summer online community college course today with an A on her history final! So proud of her for keeping up with all her work during our trip. Now she can fully relax for the rest of the trip, or as much as that’s possible on nights you’re sharing a tent with your 9 year-old sister. :) Ruth’s other big win today was figuring out how to set up her new phone. She got locked into a recovery cycle where she’d have to wait a week to recover her account because she had no way to MFA in with her existing phone’s screen broken. She realized that since the phone was still working, she could guess where to press on the totally black screen to enter her passcode and then approve the new login request. Clever!  We had a great day with Joe, Alex, Anna, and Will this day, driving up to the mountains over the Continental Divide to hike around Pass Lake. On the scenic drive there, we saw rock climbers and even bighorn sheep on the cliffs. At the lake, we threw rocks in the lakes ...

On Thursday morning, we had breakfast, packed up camp, and headed to Denver to see Joe, Alex, and the kids. The girls were so excited to see their cousins! But first, we stopped at an old ghost town named St. Elmo that AI recommended to us. Pretty drive there up a mountain along one of the beautiful rocky streams that seem to be everywhere in CO. We saw few cars and worried we were headed to nowhere, when we finally popped out at the town. We made the quickest possible pit stop at the stinkiest outhouse before heading back to the main attraction- chipmunks!  The tiny town is known for its tame chipmunks, and the general store sells bags of seeds to feed them. Feeding wild animals is a no go generally, but this was so much fun and the girls were utterly delighted! Chipmunks would run right over you or sit on you, and eat right out of your hand. Zadie was a Snow White, with 3-4 chipmunks surrounding her at times. Ruth had similar luck - there were hungry chipmunks everywhere   A...