We started off on Saturday, June 28th early in the morning. We got to Chicago around 11am. We took Cass to the Navy Pier and the three of us rode the giant faris wheel. Then we left for some pizza at what computer reviews said were one of the best pizza places. We were pretty disappointed when our pizza showed up with not so fresh ingredients. They used frozen spinach on our pizza. The rest was good, but not great. Especially when the point of our visit to Chi town was to get some really good pizza. So if you're ever in Chicago don't bother to stop at Caponie's Trattoria, at least not for pizza.
We then headed west via interstate 90, instead of 94 like our original plan, due to a late start. We decided to stop at Great River Bluffs State Park in Minnesota, just over the Mississippi River and state line. The park was small but gorgeous. There were a few short trails and we went for a short hike. The hike led us to a nice view from above of the Mississippi River on a bluff. We had a quick and simple meal of ramen noodles. The night offered the most relaxing sound of wind blowing through the tress. We slept for about ten hours, without meaning to do so. The campground was cheap and clean, offered clean drinking water, showers, flush toilets and recycling bins of all kinds next to the trash bins. The sites were spacious and private. The bugs were bad, but next to a river that is to be expected. I have to say we were pretty happy with our stay.
We continued on 90 west, and ended our journey in Sturgis, South Dakota, in a pretty crappy camp ground. We were tired though and it was the closest one when we all realized how hungry we were. It was right off of the interstate so you got to listen to the cars all night. The site offered no fire ring, no trees and zero privacy. But it did have clean bathrooms and showers, and it was only $16 a night. There weren't any mosquitoes. It suited our needs of eating/sleeping/leaving quite well. We ate cheaply again having canned soup for our meal, fell asleep very soon after the sun went down, and slept really well with out the air mattress.
The next morning we ate some fruit and headed into Wyoming. At this point the drive was getting prettier and prettier every hundred miles or so. We stopped in Sheridan for a quick bite and made it to my aunts house in Montana at around 4pm their time. They were surprised that we got there as early as we did. We were greeted by two aunts of mine and my two cousins, 10 and 12 who were unbelievable with my daughter. They entertained her pretty much every moment of the day from the time we got out of the car until the time we left. My 12 year old cousin, Page, is taller than me already and her younger sister, Riley, isn't far behind. We had lots of fun chatting and spending quality time together. My uncle got home from work and we all ate lasagna and salad together and enjoyed catching up.
On Tuesday (July 1st) we ate some breakfast, got cleaned up and headed to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park for a hike that led us to what was a very cool cave. It was a guided your, as they try to make sure people aren't touching the formations or damaging the Cavern. It was pretty cool really, for a guided tour. Very informative. It was an hour long, and I must say it wasn't easy getting through some of the tighter squeezes being 6 months pregnant. The hike was difficult, and Aaron's knee and my cramping belly were making it quite difficult on the downhill parts. The uphill was easy, as we paced ourselves, but going downhill it's harder to go slow. And there is just something not fun about the angle. At this point we were both silently questioning the two and a half mile hike into the Gathering with all our stuff on our backs. Two and a half miles isn't the big deal. 50 pounds on his back, 20 on mine, and 7 on Cass going up/down hill was the problem.
We then drove off to a picnic area and had lunch. We got back to my aunts house in time for a relaxing afternoon and evening. My cousins volunteer to do face painting at the Farmers Market in Bozeman for with all the donations going to the local animal shelter on Tuesdays, so they headed off to do so. We went to the local market and bought some food, came back and had a nice meal together. When my uncle Roy got home we all headed to the Farmers Market. I was impressed! There were so many types of vendors. In Indiana, a farmers market consists of local food growers selling produce. In Bozeman, there were not only produce stands, but arts and crafts, handmade goods, a playground, a free concert, and a nice ratio of young hippie types selling all kinds of cool stuff. There were alpacas to learn about and see face painting and plenty of stuff to do for kids. I wish we had a farmers market like that here. I would go every week. The town was nice too. I wasn't paying a lot of attention, and hadn't seen the whole place, but it seemed as though there weren't many bars for it being a college town. The groceries were cheap. They had organic milk for $1.99 a half gallon. I have decided that I really like Bozeman.
The next morning we headed to Palisade Falls. It was as short easy hike and it was easy for both Aaron and I. So easy, that we decided after another quick picnic lunch that we would go for another short hike to see another waterfall. I can't for the life of me remember the name of that falls, but I do remember how beautiful it was. The hike back I started to get a pain next to my belly button, and had to move pretty slow. By the time we got back to my aunts house it was worse, and that's when Aaron's previously hurt knee really started to ache. That's the night we decided that we weren't going to the Gathering. I got on a blog link from welcomehome.org and read about the strenuous hike in and the very serious police harassment. Too many things were telling us not to go, and we decided to not be stubborn and listen. Neither one of us wanted to stay at A camp, and neither one of us felt we were in the position to hike in all the supplies and water needed for a couple of days camping. Besides, I didn't want to push myself, my body was telling me no hiking for some reason.
Our intentions were to leave before dawn on Thursday and get there in time to be hiked in and setting up camp by early afternoon on the third. We intended to stay at KiddieVillage, and it sounds like the vibe that would have greeted us would have been pretty nasty. Google 'Rainbow Gathering 08 police' to learn more about what happened. I do not believe that Rainbows were throwing sticks or rocks at officers, and it makes me sick to think about peaceful people, especially women and children, being mace balled by cops for no good reason. I will not go off on a tangent about this, but it makes me very sad to learn about what happened that day. One brother was arrested for “stating words likely to incite lawlessness”. Anyone ever heard of free speech? I do still wish we could have went, but we will just have to go in a couple more years. I'm hoping that the location in two years will be in a state I have never seen. Or at least one that isn't impossibly far with whatever the cost of transportation is in two years.
The next morning, on the third, we slept in since we had decided not to go as far south as the Gathering and go to Yellowstone instead. We got to Yellowstone around lunch time and were greeted immediately by huge bison on the side of the road. We got camp set up, (camping in Yellowstone is pretty cramped, but we manged to deal with zero privacy for three nights) ate, then went off to see some of the sights. The next three days we spent taking it easy and seeing only the sights that were offered close to the roads, because with the cramping I was having I was in no mood to hike. Yellowstone is pretty amazing, considering how little of it we saw in the three days we were there. I was pretty bummed that my body wasn't allowing me to do any hiking, but I made the best of it. There was snow on the ground and it was in the low eighties pretty much every day. We stopped and played for a little while and Cass loved it. We ate off of the $50 in food we bought at a grocery in MT and didn't eat from their overpriced junk shacks even once.
On Sunday morning ( July 6) we got up and tore up camp, then headed a bit south then west toward Idaho on 22/33. We stopped for lunch in Jackson Hole, a nice touristy little town that surprising offered little as far as restaurants. What they had was overpriced too. But we were hungry and had no place to cook, so we stopped into a family style restaurant, that appeared to be buffet style. Once we had waited in a huge line for several minutes, we got a glimpse of the menu and hightailed it out of there. You could see from the plates of the diners that the food was not worth the price. It was about $20- $30 for an plate of anything that sounded good, $15 for a burger, $7 for sides, and drinks were like $3. So we ate at a rib shack, which wasn't great but I still felt we got the better deal spending little more than $20 for the three of us to get satisfied. We stopped at a grocery and a specialty meats place, and got enough food to last us a few more days. The grocery store was pretty awesome. Amazing selections and low prices. I was sort of jealous, living in a 'meat and tatters' part of the country, with very little selection and very high prices.
We actually didn't make it all the way to Idaho to camp, but after we left the next morning we realized we could have taken a short walk to cross the state line. The place we stayed, in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, was a $10 a night campground. The sights were hugely spacious and private. The non flush restrooms were immaculate and didn't even have an odor. There was mountain lion scat all over, but no signs of any animals. Cassidy was in heaven. She had bought a magnifying glass and tweezers for her bug hunts and I donated a plastic dish with a lid and poked holes in it for her. She truly wanted nothing more than to chase and catch bugs. She would have been perfectly happy had we stayed right there and let her hunt for bugs for the rest of the vacation. But we wanted to see more. So we packed up again, headed further west into Idaho, then South to Utah.
We stayed at a KOA in Brigham City. It wasn't much of a town, offering very little for shopping other than Wal Mart. I have not shopped at Wal Mart in more than a year and half and was not happy that it was my only option for groceries. the KOA was, well, not so great if you were a tent camper. It was a small campground, and our site was next to the road. There was no privacy from the other tent campers and we had to carry our things from the car to the site a lot further than you typically would at a KOA. But it had showers, laundry and a pool. So Cass and Aaron swam while I got everything including myself clean. We had an amazing dinner that Aaron cooked. Bison and elk steaks, sauteed asparagus, and creamy goat cheese and basil pasta. It was heaven after the days of cheap quick camp food.
We headed to SLC Utah, with intentions in mind of seeing the lake and getting a hunk natural salt for my mom. It's a long story as to why I wanted to get my mom salt, but I got it and it seemed to make her day when I returned with it. I made a guess and picked out a place that was on the map as a state park on the coast. My guess was, if it's a state park it must be one of the prettier places on the coast of the big lake. We got off at the Saltair exit, and came to this strange place that didn't resemble a park at all, nor was it marked as one. But the only other direction option was not open to the public, so we figured this must be it? There was this big building that was obviously used as a place for concerts and other large events. There was a gift shop inside, so I headed there first to get the salt. They had it, and I was happy. So we ask the guy at the shop which way to beach access and he tells us. Me being as sun shy as I am, decided to go back to the car to get an umbrella, because I could tell, even slathered in sunscreen, I was going to fry in that sun. I told Aaron and Cass to go ahead and that I would meet them out there on the beach. So as I follow behind them, I see them with a group of a few women almost reach the edge of water and quickly head back. That's when I realized how terrible the smell was. I started looking around and noticed a LOT of bird carcasses. And bugs. Nasty, giant flea like things. In giant black swarms. My family and the three women are heading back my way, obviously with intentions of getting as far away from that beach as quickly as possible. We all had a good laugh about how disgusting that beach was, and how that gift shop guy must get a sadistic kick out of directing people to that terrible place all day long. Luckily there were 'foot showers' in the back by the building, so we cleaned the nasty remnants of that terrible place off of our shoes and high tailed our asses back to the car. It was the one beach we went to and it was further proof to me that I am no beach bunny and never will be. The scariest part is that when we arrived in the parking lot there was a lady getting into her car toweling off in a swimsuit. This freak got in that water. It smelled like death, and was pretty obviously not a healthy place to be with the thousands of dead birds on the coast. I don't know if something happened there or if that was just the nature of the lake, but EWWWW is all I have to say. I don't see myself ever returning to SLC or that disgusting lake ever, even if it was a free trip. No thank you! Once we got out of the city, headed east toward Colorado on 40, Utah was beautiful, but HOT. And there were no trees for shade relief. If you know me at all, you know the sun is my enemy. I burn easily. I burn in the car with 70spf on. Applied every couple of hours. It's ridiculous. So it was obvious that the beautiful Utah parks were not a good place for me to camp. When it's more than 100 degrees out, it's pretty uncomfortable to just be, much less with long sleeves, pants and a hat on. Even the breeze from the open window in the car was hot. It was miserable. It gets annoying having to limit myself on what I can do because of my super sensitive skin, but it's a part of my life that I just can't change. No boat rides for us. No swimming outdoors during the day. And no camping without shade. Not enjoyably anyway, and I had my fill of displeasure for the day. We ended up staying in Vernal, at another KOA, which wasn't bad but it was still a KOA, with no real outdoorsy feel to it. Aaron cooked a great meal again with smoked muscles, clams, tomatoes, garlic and olive oil over linguine.
We got up the next morning and headed to Colorado. We decided that we would go to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Until we realized how much it was going to cost. It was $20 just to get in (Yes, we had just paid $25 for Yellowstone, but that was for several days and it was YELLOWSTONE) then another $20 to camp. In the surrounding town there were several campgrounds, but it was $30 to put a tent on the ground. No running water, trees, or privacy. Out of principal, we refused to pay it. Especially since at three of four campgrounds that we got to see the campsites, you had to put your tent on gravel. What kind of asshole designs a campground with gravel being the place you are forced to place a tent. Are you kidding me? We decided we would get to a bigger town (Winter Park) and pay for a room. At this point I was willing to overpay for comfort rather than overpay for bad conditions. But it was a ski town, and it would have been a $100 for a room in that town after tax. And we weren't paying that either. So we kept on going south/east on 40, and came across Mizpah campground in the Arapaho National forest for $11. The campground host was very kind and had the most beautiful dogs. Malmute/ husky mix. Cassidy wanted to keep the one that played with her for an hour. I decided I wasn't going to go a whole vacation with out a little more hiking, and we followed a trail that started in our campground. We found and old homestead. There wasn't much left of the house, but the food storage shelter was still in great shape. We saw a wild deer on our hike and lots of beautiful wildflowers. The hike was short but satisfying. There was a really pretty creek running behind the campground which was nice to listen to. We once again ate out of a can and enjoyed the quick dark and cold. The fire we got going with collections from the forest wasn't a very hot fire. It must have got down to the mid thirties that night, but that's what double blankets and cuddling are for. After the last couple of miserably hot days, it was a welcomed cold. We slept well, then got up early, packed up camp for the last night, and got back on the road.
We ate fruit and dry cereal and stopped as little as possible. I think we got away with one stop at Quizno's for lunch, and one other restroom break before we got to Omaha and got a clean room at a decent price. We ordered pizza, and enjoyed the air conditioning. We got up early and made it back to Indiana by nightfall. On the way we saw a beautiful rainbow. It was the first time I had ever seen a rainbow reach from horizon to the next. The colors were a lot more bright than the pictures allow. After a few minutes, it turned into a double rainbow. I still think the Rainbow Gathering would have been a more satisfying thing to base our vacation around, but considering the circumstances, I am really happy with our trip. Of all the places we experienced, I honestly can't wait to get back to MT someday: ) There was a lot more to it that I would like to see.
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