McBerkoBlog

Taking it down a notch today. We needed to travel about 4 hours further east, so planned that for the hot (102 degrees!) afternoon. The slow start to the morning gave us time for two loads of laundry, swimming time for the girls, and workout time for me.  Montana & South Dakota - so, so hot Our drive through Montana was pretty uneventful. After all the dramatic scenery in Glacier, the middle of Montana was pretty flat and boring, all grain and cows. Our biggest excitement of the day was stopping at a roadside attraction - a single blade from a windmill installed at ground level where you can see how truly huge they are. We also finished the audiobook version of "The Unteachables" by Gordon Korman, one of Zadie's favorite authors. Ruth bailed on this book early in favor of her podcasts, but Bill and I enjoyed the book as much as Zadie did. We reached our hotel in Billings just before 5, grabbed some takeout, and relaxed.  The next day, we met up early with an old colle...

We started this morning by breaking down camp for the final time of the trip - hotels and stays with family from here on out. The sky was hazy due to nearby wildfires, though the air didn't smell of smoke. As we headed out for our final visit to Glacier National Park, we had our closest bear sighting yet. Before we even reached the park, a black bear crossed the road directly in front of us and then stopped along the side of the road to snack on little purple flowers. Exciting start to the day! For our final day, we explored the Two Medicine area in the south. We hiked the short path to a scenic and VERY cold stream at Running Eagle Falls, named after a famous female warrior in the Blackfeet tribe. Bill, Ruth, and Zadie took off their shoes and waded through the shallow, freezing water while I used the lovely and dry bridge to get closer to the falls. We hung out here for a while playing with all the pretty rocks. Later at Two Medicine Lake, we relaxed on the shore, soaking our fee...

Amazing day! This was our best animal sighting day yet, and once again wowed me with how unique and surprising each day in a national park can be. After so many days of parks in the Rockies, I wouldn't have been shocked to feel that a new place was more of the same, but that never happened on our trip. Our first long stop was the Hidden Lake Overlook hike at Logan's Pass. As soon as set off, we found a hoary marmot right next to the path, and two bighorn sheep lying in the grass nearby as if it was their job to pose for the perfect photo. Next we spotted some mountain goats far off high in the mountains, and were so excited to see them. We'd laugh at our distant goat pictures soon enough. People heading back kept telling us that there was a grizzly ahead, visible from the overlook. The trail was longer than Zadie was happy with but we wanted to push onward in hopes of seeing the grizzly. We walked through snow and Zadie even forded the little snow melt streams in her Crocs ...

Hotel weight room for me, breakfast and showers for everyone, and grocery restocking at Walmart before we hit the road once again. We had a 3.5-4 hour drive from Helena to Glacier, which was really flat until we got close to the park. We stopped in a small town in Montana to eat a picnic lunch at a city park near a rodeo. A cute little fawn and her mom entertained us. The park had the fanciest outhouse we'd seen - nice and bright, clean, multi-stall - though Bill's side wasn't quite as fancy, with its "pee gutter" urinal. Ew. We entered at St. Mary's Visitor Center to stop and look around, then backtracked the few miles outside the park to our nearby KOA. This was the one place where our luck ran out with reservations, the park campgrounds booking up immediately after being released. Being a KOA, sites were packed together like sardines, but at least each site had tons of plants so felt reasonably private. We set camp, made some pasta for dinner, then visited ...

Time to pack up yet again. Northwest quadrant of the park today then heading north toward Glacier. We stopped at Roaring Mountain and the Obsidian Cliff (Ruth: "1 star, underwhelming"; I agree) on the way to our big site for the day - Mammoth Hot Springs. I was excited to see this area since all the pictures I'd seen when researching looked otherworldly.  Zadie: Meh Zadie was Yellowstoned out by this point, over it, and not interested in walking around this area in the heat. Here's her take, written as we drove away: Mammoth Spring was horrible, hot, and long. I was very upset and it sucked. 1 star, 0 if possible. Sincerely, Zadie The rest of us enjoyed it! How could you not? Ruth said it looked like the moon. We had several hours to drive after leaving here, but made several stops along the way. First, we got some Thai food in a small town where we split two yummy meals and still had a ton of leftovers. Next, we drove through downtown Bozeman (cute!) where we popped ...

Seemed like time flew by when we were actually in Yellowstone, and that it's taking longer to document than it took to see it! Nevertheless, we persist... Today was northeast quadrant day. Another slowish start to nice weather (high 82 today, little sprinkles but no major rain), then we headed back up past Grandma Nancy Mountain, aka Mt. Washington, to see Tower Falls and the Calcite Springs.  We went west to the top center of the park - pretty views but no animals - stopping at the Petrified Tree (meh), then stopped for a picnic lunch in a construction zone. With no active construction around us and no other options nearby, we decided it was safe enough.  Sign: “Temporary construction area. Keep out.” Ope! To this point, we'd seen very few animals today. Zadie had even started a car "game show" called "Rock or Bison?" where the answer was always rock. Heading into the Lamar Valley, there was a sign to watch out for bison, and I laughed and joked about how w...

Back through the southeast quadrant of the park today, since we'd made minimal stops on that same route in from Grand Teton. We started slowly to let the girls catch up on sleep after their thunderstorm car sleeping night, and they needed showers too. Plenty of days in the park meant we didn't have to rush, for which everyone was much happier. We also realized at breakfast that between our coffee, chai, and oatmilk, we could make a pretty decent dirty chai latte for Ruth. Not too shabby for a campground! In our trip bible page for today, we noted this was a big bison day - "bison, bison everywhere!" We hit our first bison traffic jam today. We were amazed every time we got to see the bison close up, and were surprised at the super mad and honking guy - guess he was over it. We never bored of bison. We saw herds of bison for the first time in Yellowstone today (having seen only the one herd previously in Teton), and especially loved seeing all the baby bison including ...

Let's take a break from recapping the day to day of our travel to look at the logistics of this trip, which was quite the challenge to plan. Figuring out what to bring and where to put it was as difficult as figuring out where to go and what to do.  Planning We started planning last November, focusing first on which cities and parks we'd visit. We had a family discussion about where everyone hoped to go, what types of things we wanted to do, and how long we were open to driving each day. I took that info and started mapping out some options, then we met again to discuss the options and adjust the plan. Among other changes, we chopped off an entire final leg during this review once we realized that our trip would be ~7 weeks long! That left us with a plan for what city or park we'd be in each night of the trip, which was key to be able to book campsites when reservations open 6 months ahead. I had notifications on my phone to remind me each day reservations opened so I could...

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...