Saga Continues- Natalie's Version

The kids already did their blog highlights for Yellowstone National Park, but here are mine.

We took La Jefa for a cruise thru Yellowstone from the west entrance all the way to Mammoth Hot Springs (northwest corner) on our first day in the park. First, we stopped at the Norris Geyser Basin area where we saw many of the active geysers.  Ranger Dan put on a a little talk to explain the 4 types of geological events that occur within Yellowstone: mud pots, thermals, geysers and hot springs. The reason Yellowstone is so active is that it runs along a fault line that is constantly shifting. I did not know it was a super Volcano until researching it. Yellowstone estimates that 50 million people will have come to visit this park this year. CRAZY! That’s more than all of Canada.  I think we lucked out that the weather was less than ideal and that it was after summer holidays, becasue I could not imagine the crowds being much worse than they already were. We still had to wait for parking and manouver around people in all our photos. Today was overcast with snow. Yes, snow! We had our toques and mittens, along with our rain jackets.

From there we ventured from the geysers to the hot springs at Mammoth. Here we follwed the road to the end of the town to find that this is where the elk like to hangout this time of year. It was rutting season and it did not disappoint for my hunter family. They watched the animals for a good 1.5 hrs. The bull elk were screaming (bugling) at each other, but never really got to fighting. The lone elk trying to steal the local bulls ladies (cows) would always run off when the local elk came towards him. So it was very anti-climatic for me, but the boys loved it. The hot springs paled in comparison to the Elk. So we took a few pictures and headed home to our campsite for the night.

The next day we ventured south on the lower loop of Yellowstone to see the Grand Prismatic Spring. With the steam from the pools it was hard to appreciate the beauty until we walked another trail at a higher elevation and really got to see its beauty.  But ugh, self entitled drivers and people who can’t drive are quite common here. It was hard to nagivate, both on foot and in a vehicle. Ha Ha. 

We worked ourselves further south to Old Faithful Geyser. She goes off like clockwork, so we got there an hour early, grabbed some ice cream and settled in to wait for the show. The all of us enjoyed the show.  

It was 6:30 by the time we left and made our way towards the south entrance/exit of the park where we had to find a free BLM (Bureau of Land Management) spot for the night. These are usually cheaper or free. By 7:30 it gets dark now and we were just leaving Yellowstone. We had to drive another hour to get thru some of the Grand Teton National Park to find a forest service road. 

By 9 pm we had got gas and found the road and the camp area I was navigating us to. However, it was full!  We kept climbing the road- hoping that further up there would eventually be a vacant spot. No dice. This drive, however, was another serious climb. There were ruts and this time mud that were making us worry about getting stuck. Also, being 30 ft long we can’t just turn around anywhere we please. We ended up driving almost an hour to the end of the forest service road with no place to camp. We had to do a little Austin Powers turn to turn around and head back to the start. La Jefa proved she is worthy of her name. The road was bouncing us all around. Meanwhile, the kids had to climb up in their beds and put themselves to sleep as we were only going about 15 km an hour.  We decided to pick one of the more open fields lower down, that was already full of vehicles. We kind of just picked a spot that was not really a spot, but where we were not blocking anyone in. We just needed to sleep and we planned to wake up early and get out of dodge before everyone else got up. 11pm- we were finally settled and were climbing into bed. That night it got down to -2 and Gibson climbed into bed with us as he was too cold. If there is one thinig that I always pack too many of, it’s blankets. I warmed the little guy up, got a few more blankets and set him up back in his bed with them to keep him warm.  Our alarm went off at 7am and I grumbled, saying maybe we should just keep sleeping to Adam. He replies, ‘Are you sure you want to miss this view?’. Where we had parked was up on a little knob on the hillside and from there our bedroom window looked right out at the Teton Moutains across the valley. Breathtaking! The sun was lighting them up with as it started climbing up for the day.  I put on as many extra layers as I could and got out into the peaceful, crisp morning air and ventured to the edge of our clearing. There, I took in the sights. It was worth rising for. We spent 5 minutes enjoying the view and then hopped back into the motorhome and drove back down the service road to the highway. Once we were back on the highway it was a “cloud forest”, you could not see very far around you at all. Only mist and cloud. I was so thankful that we stayed up on that crappy road, even if it was just for those 5 min in the morning. That view made it worth it. Kids slept until almost 8:30 in their beds. Beauty of the motorhome.

Wyatt wanted to get some more biking in, which is always his main request, and so we used the iOverlander app along with the Trail Forks app to try and coordinate a good next camping location for him. We ended up driving south of Idaho Falls to Heiser, where we camped along the Snake river. Once again, we were staying on BLM land that was free.  We found a good spot right on the river’s edge, but I did think this was an area that could be sketchy. We found a great open site, but some of the ones that were more secluded, off the beaten path, seemed to have people squatting in them. I mean truly living there in some rather unappealing sites. It was sad to see these areas get trashed like that. For that reason I felt like I did not want to stay here too long. So we biked the nearby trails and the kids made some bike jumps in our campsite.  We enjoyed what we called our weekend. We planned our next destination- Craters of the Moon National Monument. I actually think we might overnight in the Walmart parking lot! I know, I know, I said I wouldn’t! But here I am thinking it is our best option as we need to get to the park early the next day to get a camping spot at the Lava campground.  We have to be strategic in our camping choices as some places charge $45-65 US (almost $100 CAD) a night for nothing special. I don’t mind spending it occasionally, but not for a bunch of nights in a row. Plus, I don’t want to stay at this camp spot on the river with the homeless camps so close by. 

Nope, nope, no more Walmart parking lots. So loud- noisy, cars and trains and some of the campers were, like, permanently living in the parking lot. They had flat tires and obviously weren’t going anywhere.  We did all our running around in town, hit up the laundromat, a few thrift stores and mailed our letters. The boys found some treasures and even me, who was not looking for anything, found somethings.  We ended up running a lot later than anticipated. We tried to do some schooling in there, which is always a battle of wills.  

    From what we read online, the campground at the Craters of the Moon fills up fast so we tried our hand at another Harvest Host, this time a goat farm. We got to see goats, baby goats and they showed us how they milk them. This family moved from Texas to Idaho so that they could make unpasturized goat yogurt. We bought some, of course, and had fun conversations with the host family. We left early the next day and managed to secured a spot at the Lava campground. It did not disappoint!

Craters of the Moon is a whole other experience. It truly feels like you are on the moon. We headed to the visito centre first to get a detailed map of the trails and attractions. It was great because there was a video we got to watch that described the process of the eruption and how the different geological features around it were formed. The kids liked it so much that we watched it twice. We saw Spatter Cones, pahoehoe lava, a’a’ lava and lava tubes. The area was so cool, for a lack of a better word, or maybe it’s that I’m hanging around 8/10 year olds who say that constantly. At least you don’t hear me saying ‘thats sick!, or Bruh!’  Oh the COLORS! and TEXTURE of the lava rock was so unique- from shiny and sparkly to flat black. From blues, reds, yellows. And because of all the holes, so light to pick up. I wanted to take it home with me as I knew I could not explain it well enough. 

  After finishing up at Craters of the Moon we decided to head to Oregon as we were snaking our way back to the West Coast. We need to make it to Portland in 3 days to pick up a parcel my mom sent us. It was some school stuff we forgot back at home. We snaked along the Columbia River that separates the border of Washington from Oregon. We actually went into Washington to do some biking stops.  They were nothing to write home about but at least we got some excerise.

Adam and I were really struggling to get the kids motivated to do their school work and also to have them treat us as teachers, not parents. Heated moments, raised voices, crying and meltdowns were not the way we saw this trip going. I reached out to a friend for something else entirely, but she asked how we were doing and out came my concerns. She sent me this podcast about homeschooling. I RELISHED in it! The thought processes and the way the speaker spoke of what homeschooling should look like really resonated with me. I have listened to a few so far and will continue to do so. If you are homeschooling or thinking about it it might be worth a listen. The Podcast is called ‘The Life Without School Podcast’. It was episode 19 that really spoke to me. Now I know this won’t resonate with or work for everyone, but it spoke to me and I needed to hear it that day. We have no other options except to homeschool this year. 

We have reached Portland. I did not really have any expectations for Portland, but I was not expecting what we found. Homelessness everywhere. Now, I know all major cities have homeless issues and I am not naive to it, however; it usually isn’t so out in the open like we are seeing. The streets of the suburbs are lined with homeless camps and derilect trailers. We ended up going to a park out of town, where we chatted with a lovely local lady. She told us that Portland has a sleep safe policy and that everyone has the right to a safe place to sleep, which translates into broken down campers on the side streets and tent cities in any type of common spaces- parks, in front of buildings, in the suburb green spaces, etc. Can you imagine Dale Meadows lined with tents, with garbage strewn all over? And, there would be nothing the police could do. It is so bad that there are security guards in the grocery stores. Our campground has security. Public transit has a safety member on board all trains/buses with cameras. The kids saw so many homeless that they started to get scared. I was even scared.  I’m not sure what the answers are. I do feel that people should have a safe place to live, but the destructive lifestyle spread out all over the town is what worries me. We used public transit and had our eyes opened to the world of the homeless lifestyle. What can we do about the ever climbing homeless rate? It's so multi factorial, I know, but curious to know other peoples think/their take on this ever increasing problem.

We explored an amazing bookstore and lost ourselves in many new books. We also took in the coolest science centre, OMSI. They even had a real US submarine that Adam and the boys got to tour.  Tomorrow we will hit one of Portland’s many climbing gyms for the boys and pick up my package before we hit the road again, towards the coast.