It is 3AM do YOU know where your kids are?! Just a parenting joke that seems appropriate at 3AM with my quirky sense of humor. I have been snuggled in my bed for an hour listening to the night sounds, enjoying the cool, moist air (often 40 degrees different than the day), watching the sky, listening to my tummy growl, and writing blogs in my head. The blogs and my tummy winning, I am up and writing. I have determined as I have been writing, I have shirked in my goal of lifelong learning and let my vocabulary wain. The last 3 years have been difficult, growth building and challenging. One of the costs has been I have let myself ‘shrink’ but that is another blog. Get ready, I may surprise you with my vocabulary building skills and send you running for a dictionary. 😉 Only time will tell…. Continue reading
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Has been a comment we have made several times since this adventure began. We started with painting the walls in the coach and then the light covers became a custom paint job. The last time the comment was made was recently when Matt reminded me he had planned to paint the ‘nose’ as we call the front of the coach. It was extremely sun faded and wasn’t even grey any longer in part. While on the safari yesterday, one of the things we were in search of was paint for the nose. We had been directed to an automotive paint supply place downtown but they were no help and as we left, I noticed there was another specialty paint store across the street about a half block down. We made a quick turn and stopped there at Stan’s Specialty Paint. They were very helpful and resourceful; we ended up with a silicone base paint called Hammerite.
Without any possibility to move our coach into the shade here or commercially spray it, we had to resort to rollers. This is less than ideal but our options are pretty limited at this point. The weather forecast was for temps less than 90 degrees today, no wind early and cloud cover so today became Paint Day. Continue reading
Idaho Falls
Matt hopes this day does not repeat itself any time soon with 3 of these ‘power safaris’ in a row in as many weeks. He, actually, is hopeful he NEVER has to have another one! Fat chance! However, even I am confident they will end soon. They exhaust me too! We are still finding organizers for bolts/screws, personal care products, a bench by the entry door, thermal window cover material (to COOL us off), a fan, paint and accessories, new phones (so we can actually make a call!), dog meds, case for my new glasses, local roaster coffee for Daniel (keep our deployed soldier happy!), a birthday gift for our grandson, and various other things. Add to that a trip to the health food store and the grocery store; Matt is ready to find solace in a bookstore, which he did today. Snooping one of the most extensive used book stores we have seen along with some chocolate, almost restored his shattered emotional condition. Continue reading
Looking for Moose Biscuits
FINALLY! Our first hike in the Tetons started with a drive into Victor, ID and a stop at the Emporium for second breakfast; a Huckleberry Milkshake. This idea of “second breakfast”, which is a Hobbit line from the Lord of the Rings, is starting to have favor with me. 😉 The Emporium is an interesting little tourist shop with a soda fountain and the usual trinkets. They also have a nice hat selection one of which ended up leaving on my head. The huckleberry milkshake is a local specialty and was quite good. Suitably fueled up, we headed towards the Teton Pass on the way to Jackson, WY looking for the trail head. I missed it the first time and we ended up making a trip over the pass to Wilson, WY. I had to ask someone on the other side for directions. Heading back up the pass with its 10% grades and switchbacks, I was grateful I was not one of the drivers I faced coming up the pass with a trailer! At the bottom of the pass, we eventually found the trail head and prepared to head into the Wilderness. We had driven right by thinking it was only a chain up station for semis.
Coal Creek heads up into the Teton range and is classified as moderately difficult. Primarily, I suspect, due to the elevation gain as the trail is quite nice and well maintained. It starts out in a small, forested canyon with a bit of a primeval feel to it but soon breaks out into a more open riparian zone with tons of wildflowers. I have never seen such a display of wildflowers as in this area. The vegetation is quite robust and the flowers have grown from chest to over shoulder high for at least 1.5 miles of the trail. RHonda was euphoric, stopping often to admire them, exclaim about their size and mumbled to herself constantly about them. The trail diverged from the creek bed and ascended up and across the side of the valley through a mixed forest dominated mostly by aspen trees. The amazing display of flowers continued as we climbed steadily towards the saddle from which Coal Creek flows south and Mesquite Creek flows northward. Continue reading
Each day of this journey has had opportunities to go ballistic, lose our tempers or be refined. By refined, I mean seeing the beauty in challenge; allowing ourselves to grow and stretch. We choose to find the humor in each challenge (there generally is some somewhere!) and not forgetting we are on the same team needing to work together. We joked at one point last year that we felt like the “Gumby twins”. The green stretchy character from our childhood was our mascot of sorts for months. He could be adopted again. Hmmm, maybe he should be.
Today was no exception. Seeing the Grand Tetons has been on my bucket list for most of my life. It was always too far for Matt to venture to so it remained on my list. Well, here we are camping just a mere 2 hours from the National Park . We have planned to hike both the park itself and the western side of the Tetons. Checking the weather last night was not encouraging. Unlike Colorado Springs, when the meteorologist says 50% chance of rain and it doesn’t, here, they say that and it rains. That was our forecast. We went to bed a bit disappointed but slightly optimistic that the morning would produce a better forecast. It didn’t. Plan B. Work today and hike on Friday when the weather was more conducive to breathtaking photo opportunities and hikes without lightning. Continue reading
Our boondocking eventually came to an end and we pulled out of the Routt National Forest headed for the Yampa River State Park near Craig, CO. Our first stop was in a little town called Oak Creek where we had seen an old-fashioned drug store with a soda fountain on our way back from Steamboat Springs a few days ago.
A Real Soda Fountain
Bonfiglio Drug was a real flash from the past; what a general store is supposed to be like. Wood floors, a little bit of everything, and most importantly a working soda fountain. I have this thing for vanilla malts and about the only place I will indulge this passion is at a bona fide soda fountain. I think the last one I had was last summer in La Veta, CO at Charlie’s General Store. It was a marvelous treat and we were soon headed west out of Oak Creek on County Road 27 taking the back roads to Craig. This turned out to be a great decision as we soon found ourselves in a wide open range land which couldn’t help but make me think of how the land would have looked to the pioneers as they traversed the territory.
We made an unexpected stop along the way in a valley by the Middle Creek Ranch to have a bit of lunch and let the left-front brake cool off. It seemed to be having a problem overheating. Continue reading
