McBerkoBlog

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...

Back to bullet points for time saving! Long driving day from Amarillo through part of New Mexico and into Colorado. Stopped for some Mexican food where the waiter kept teasing Zadie. (“You wanted the cheeseburger, right?”) Restocked at Walmart before the park.  While Ruth was driving, phones beeped with an “Imminent Threat Alert” about a dust storm warning that we should prepare for a sudden drop to zero visibility. Yikes! Thankfully it wasn’t that bad, though our car still shows the aftermath of the    dust storm.  Got to visitor center right before they closed. They warned of lighting earlier (very dangerous up on the dunes), and it was still sprinkling. That rain made the sledding decision for us - you can rent sleds for the dunes, but it doesn’t really work when wet.  By the time they closed, the sprinkling had stopped and we set up camp and made dinner.  Headed to the dunes for sunset and instantly realized how hard it was going to be to walk up a sand...

So quickly I’ve stopped posting updates! Thank goodness we’ve been writing updates daily in our “Trip Bible”, the folder with pages for each day with all our travel confirmation numbers, hotel addresses, etc. - everything we might need if we have no cell service, a not infrequent case in mountains or ranch lands. In the trip bible, we wrote planned itineraries for some days, or at least options of things we may want to do, so we’re updating that as we go with final activities, notes, and memories.  Given that I’m over a week behind at this point, I’m switching to placeholder bullet points in an attempt to catch up a bit. I’m telling myself I’ll update these later with more detail.  Alma: Stopped on the way to OK City in this city’s Popeye Park for a picnic lunch. “Spinach City.” This small town is adorable! Zillions of flowers and other plants lining the streets downtown.  Oklahoma City: Stayed in Bricktown, cute area with a little river walk.  Hot afternoon (90s aga...

So apparently Little Rock, AR is not a hopping place to be on a Sunday! We had planned a pretty chill day since most of the sights (like Central High School) are closed on Sunday. After two days of museums, I figured we could skip the Clinton library and instead walk around the riverside park and eat at the big food hall downtown. Well, turns out that food hall is closed on Sundays (oops!), so with a hangry Zadie, we ended up at a the closest option nearby, a Flying Saucer. She was happy with a grilled cheese and tomato soup, and we didn’t mind having a beer.  The riverside park was lovely, with a ton of sculptures, nice splash pad, and great landscaping. We spent some time watching all the moss-covered turtles in the wetland area until we started wilting in the heat. This string of days in the 90s is a killer! We’re revising the plan for the next few days to spend more time indoors, especially during mid-afternoon. Thank goodness that almost everywhere we’re staying has a pool. We...