McBerkoBlog

Escanaba at last! My hometown, in the Upper Peninsula on the northern shore of Lake Michigan, where both my parents still live. We got to spend time with family, catch up with high school friends, see my cousin's band (Sit Down Francis - they were great! check them out!) play to a crazy large crowd at the Ludington Park bandshell, celebrate our July & August birthdays, do our annual Starbucks + Marshall's trip. Swimming, new Spiderman movie, pasties, girls careening around the yard in the side-by-side, Art Fair, Pupere makeover, Sayklly's candy, Sharknado, cousin spa nights and sleepovers in Gramma's living room. These days went by fast!  First sheet mask for Dad? When you're trapped after your back surgery... After Esky, we drove downstate to visit Bill's dad, Jim, and stepmom, Karen, in metro Detroit. We had a lovely visit there, and spent a beautiful sunny afternoon at a pool where Zadie went down the big water slide approximately a million times. Another...

Continuing east to Minneapolis today. This is another place in the trip where we could've spent much more time. This was our 4th day in a row of 4+ hrs driving with a longer day ahead of us to get to Michigan, and it was starting to wear on everyone.  Of all the many activities in Minneapolis we'd researched, we decided to start with the Mall of America where the girls wanted to see how you fit an amusement park into a mall. In the end, we never made it anywhere else. We got smoothies, shopped a bit (Zadie stopping at every kiosk during this summer of squishies), got Ruth's glasses tightened at Warby Parker, were awed by the Lego sculptures, then finally hit the rides. The girls did some easier rides together, then I rode one roller coaster with Ruth so we could give Zadie the scoop. She was interested but worried that it would be too scary. They eventually rode it together after some pro-level big sister support from Ruth and bravery from Zadie herself. Zadie loved it.

Goal for day: drive across most of South Dakota. We decided on two stops along the way to keep this interesting - 1880 town, and the Corn Palace. This hadn't been on our radar for the day. We'd only learned about 1880 town the day before, while Googling/Chatting/looking for options along the drive. Zadie had wanted to pan for gemstones somewhere along the trip, and we'd missed the shootout in the street show in Deadwood (which I remembered from a childhood trip but missed this time through as we traveled through during their day off), so this was a good option for both. 1880 town has a bunch of small buildings along a Main Street, everything decorated as if it was - yup - 1880. They also had a couple small museums of western movie memorabilia ("Dancing With Wolves," filmed in SC, featured promenently) and other antiques. Zadie loved finding all the gems in her sack of dirt. The Enloe Theater department would've improved the shootout show by a large margin, bu...

[It's now been more than 3 months since we returned from this trip. We're getting closer to the end!] Day 27. I wish we'd had some time in Rapid City, since our hotel was downtown and surrounded by cafes, restaurants, and statues of presidents, none of which we saved time to explore. We arrived late, crashed, then took off again right after breakfast. I did manage to fit in a short workout in the huge gym at this Hyatt Place. Pretty much every Hyatt Place that we stayed in had a well-stocked and often roomy gym, along with plant milks and healthy options for breakfast. Great value for me because I could book them with transferred Chase credit card points at a good rate, and great value for Ruth since she usually got her own bed separate from Zadie.  Our first stop today was Mount Rushmore, which might have gotten the lowest average rating from our family had we been asked to grade each of our stops along the way. Zadie was irritated the whole time (boring, hot, too much wal...

The over-100 degree days were definitely wearing on us by this point. This was another long driving day, which seemed even longer because our stops were short due to the heat. We stopped at Little Bighorn, for instance, hoping to explore the Visitor Center for a break, but it was closed for construction. We ate a quick lunch in the shade, visited their mini gift shop in a trailer, and started driving again - too hot to walk around the grounds. Ruth chose Hamilton as the soundtrack for the second part of the afternoon as she drove us to Devil's Tower. (Side note, having a third driver really helps break up the trip!)  We loved the prarie dog village at Devil's Tower. So many prarie dogs!! This was one of the first places where we were close enough to hear the prarie dogs little "eek" sound as the popped up on their hind legs - adorable.  Devil's Tower itself is wild to see, and especially surprising after driving through all that flatness. We bailed on the hike ar...

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 ...