I left with my family and some friends to climb Peaked Mountain. We started at 8250 ft. and hiked for a couple miles to the top. It was surprisingly easy, maybe from 4 years of soccer I don’t know. About 100 ft from the top there was an extremely steep, maybe 30 degrees, I wanted to climb there so our friends and their dog came with me up the steep part and we arrived at the top 10 minutes ahead of everyone else to see a huge mountain range that extended for miles, we also saw the people who took the chairlift on the next mountain over, heh amateurs. The eclipse started slowly and the temperature slowly decreased and the moon slightly took a larger and larger bite of the sun. We waited for an hour and I even pulled out the word bored. But right as the sun went out a shadow raced across the land and sky enveloping us in darkness and the temperature dropping to 40 degrees as a huge, spiked, white ring blazed in the sky as well as some stars and venus. Everyone was freaking out grabbing their cameras and photoing the eclipse as fast as possible. We stood there frozen from the sheer impressiveness of the eclipse as well as it being almost freezing.Then after two minutes of pure darkness the light and warmth of day returned from the darkness. Everyone was saying “Did you see that?” and “That was amazing!” It truly was a once in a lifetime experience being at 10000 ft and seeing the moon swallow the sun and darkness covering us. After the totality everyone packed their bags and started the walk back down. One super hardcore guy was so amazing to have biked up the mountain. We walked down the mountain enjoying the view and taking a couple checks on the sun every now and then. And right as we got down I checked the sun and saw the normal ball of  orange, with eclipse glasses of course.

Last week I received an email from Amazon to advise me that they had not heard back from the company who sourced my order of eclipse glasses and, therefore, they could not attest to the protection they may or may not provide were they to be used while staring at the sun. Roger, lawyer-speak for “if you go blind using these, it’s your own darn fault.” Well, shoot. Amazon kindly refunded my money, but we arrived at Grand Targhee without any critical protective eyewear to view the eclipse. Not good.

While I have a feeling I will lose my sight at some point in my life, I’m hoping it’s much, much later than, um, now. Believe it or not, acupuncture is a blind person’s occupation in Japan (I am not making this up), so I should be able to manage if it comes to that, but Flight really does need to be able to see to do his job. I was quite relieved to see that, because the resort was predicting 400,000 people would arrive for the event, they had plenty of proper glasses for purchase. I bought commemorative ones for our family, which we promptly donned and stared at the sun to check their efficacy. In hindsight that may not have been the best idea because maybe Grand Targhee also ordered through Amazon, but the glasses turned out to be just fine (as far as we know…). We did bring with us a couple of the Amazon pairs to potentially serve as camera filters should we try to photograph the eclipse prior to totality.

After exploring all other not-quite-the-BEST options, we circled back to hiking to the top of Peaked Mountain and I briefly wondered whether the mountain peak namers had run out of more creative options. Before we started our journey, we watched an educational video about eclipses, which was neither Panda Pop nor route planning (I’m just setting the story straight, see Flight’s picture below). My college roommate had sent me the link and we gathered around my phone to learn how the movements of the celestial bodies occasionally make totality so.

Theoretical astronomy lesson complete, lab to begin shortly…

We took the cat track most of the way up the mountain and then walked the ridgeline near the top. Keeper seemed to have no difficulty with the climb (must be all that soccer…) and easily hiked to the peak.

The girls did reasonably well, but relied on Flight to tote them for a spell once we passed a motivational 9400’ of elevation. They each asked me to carry them at various times as well, but I repeatedly assured them that the offer was extended only by their father as I had brought a whole can of nope sauce for such requests. I did, however, offer encouragement to self-propel, singing “Just keep walking, just keep walking” to Dory’s tune, which was less than enthusiastically received.

As we climbed, the view to the west grew more expansive and breathtaking, both literally and figuratively, as did my anticipation for what we might see at the top to the east. I had no idea what to expect ahead, but WoodSprite did, as she reminded me several times during our trek: “Mom, I sawll (native Maryland pronunciation – we’re trying to expunge that from both of our daughters’ lexicons) these mountains yesterday. You’ll like them.” We were at last rewarded for our hard work with this stunning view:

Behind and below us the mountain valley sprawled out showcasing the town of Driggs and beyond, striations of glacial movements past defined our view to the south, and the Tetons loomed to the east.

Spectacular landscape in every direction, it was ridiculous. I have been referring to that vista as looking at the backside of the Grand Tetons since most people view them from the east side of the range (where the National Park is – and where we’ll be next week – !!!), but, really, who’s to say which is the proper side…

Having carved their own more direct mountain path, Keeper and our friends welcomed us when we summited. I promptly sat down to regroup and tried to take it all in. As I glanced around, the doubter in me offered, “Well, at least the hike was amazing should totality not live up to the hype.” Flight and I have since agreed that, even without the eclipse, that hike landed solidly in our top five favorites ever.

We claimed our vantage point and, after getting situated, we eagerly donned our glasses to check on the moon’s progress. Before the eclipse I was a little fuzzy on the whole event’s time line. I knew that totality was going to be little more than two minutes long where we were, and that I could grasp, but I really didn’t comprehend that the entire eclipsing process would take hours to unfold. More specifically, I got it intellectually, but I didn’t know how that would translate into reality. Initially paranoid about missing any bit of the experience and eager to engage the kids, I immediately threw out “Ooooh, look kids, the sun’s got a little bite out of it.” “Oh, wow. It does.” “Do you see how the moon is moving in front of the sun?” Pause, “Not really.” Hmmmm… Our first few minutes of intent eclipse observation assured us we could relax a little as the main event was going to take a while to manifest.

I entertained a passing thought, “I should have brought my knitting – or at least a deck of cards.” Idle time is tricky for me. Being still and listening is especially so – a character trait I hope (maybe?) to soften on this journey. We struck up conversation with a lovely couple from Driggs who briefly gave us a list of local area must-sees. Keeper actually said he was kinda bored. I tried to keep my inner 11 year old (who sits next to the doubter) from echoing his thoughts. “Mom, why is it going so slowly?” Initially exasperated and then, after a deep breath, I replied, “Because it’s the moon. Please try to be patient.” I shifted around to get a few more panoramic shots. “Hey, Babe, you’re standing in front of my (precariously perched iPhone on) time lapse.” Oops. No wonder it focused on not the sun – my apologies, Flight! Eclipse check again. “Hey, Mom, it’s like an orange crescent moon. A little one!” Excellent – now we’re getting somewhere.

As the light started shifting, the temperature dropped. Both the changes in light and the chill were barely perceptible at first, and we kept donning our glasses to make sure the moon was still making progress. The doubter kept downplaying the magnitude of what we might actually see, Operation Expectation Management well underway. At some point, when there was only a sliver of sun visible through our glasses, the light took on an eerie, otherworldly hue and everyone donned the extra clothing we had each discarded on the hike to the summit.

The temperature dropped nearly 40^o when we were swallowed by the darkness. Beyond the wispy echo of my breath I could see Venus and a handful of stars. Witnessing twilight barrel across the valley and then engulf us in totality touched in me something very deep and very primal.

I instantly bonded with every person on Peaked Mountain, sharing in something I couldn’t quite name. Simultaneously tearing up and grinning like a loon, I so desperately wished I could open every pore of my being to soak up the experience in its entirety. I’m again riddled with goose bumps as I type this.

And then it was gone.  As muted daylight returned and steadily grew in its intensity, I couldn’t help but feel the profound loss of something wondrous even though I knew was never mine to begin with.

In preparation for viewing this once-in-a-lifetime event, I’d read about “Eclipse Chasers” and in my mind I had dismissed those people as being something akin to the groupies we met on our Def Leppard cruise (that’s a story for another time…). After seeing totality first person, I get it now. Totally. I may even have already looked up where we might catch the next one (July 2^nd 2019 and December 14^th, 2020 – Chile anyone?). Although these pictures can’t possibly capture the enormity of the experience, this is the best I could do with a filter-free iPhone.

With the return to some semblance of normal lighting and after a brief moment to gain concurrence among the group, it seemed only minutes later that we headed back down the mountain in a heady stupor. Keeper, Firebolt, and our friends took off at swift clip and Flight tried to ride the middle distance between them and me and WoodSprite before he, too, disappeared on the trail ahead of us.

As WoodSprite and I ambled down the mountain, often holding hands so she wouldn’t let me fall, I tried desperately to catalog details of the eclipse in my memory bank. I was thankful her shorter legs made for a slower descent and our progress took longer still because we kept stopping to keep an eye on the (d?) eclipse.

A couple hundred feet above the resort base, we could no longer see the moon through our eclipse glasses, but presumed she was steadily continuing on her path as we progressed down the remainder of our own.

I need to begin by saying that I won’t do this justice.  I couldn’t possibly.  I was clearly building up this day and experience for a while and my expectations were high.  But with hindsight I realize that my expectations were focused on the whole of the experience – the hiking together, the being on the top of a mountain sharing something cool with friends, the views.  I had never seen a total solar eclipse, but like most people I think, I’d seen several partial eclipses and they hadn’t made that much of an impression on me.  I knew this would be different, but I was completely unprepared for HOW different.

The kids were game in the morning, and gave no resistance to our early wake-ups – an auspicious start.  My friend, his younger son, and their dog were planning to meet us either at the trailhead or on the trail, so we bundled up (still cold in the morning!) got our stuff together, and headed up.

We were hiking up a cat track for at least the first 2/3 of the way, so it was wide and easy to follow, but also a steady climb.  My friend and his son met us shortly after we had begun (they were a bit more nimble than we were), and together we made decent time up the hill.

The kiddos did surprisingly well, but the anticipated calls for frequent stops to rest and “I’m tiiiiired”s started coming out at about the half-way point.  We were getting excellent views of the valley behind us, but still no Tetons.  We had counted on about a 2.5-3 hour hike and started in order to be at the peak prior to even the partial part of the eclipse starting, but we were actually ahead of schedule.

At about 2/3 up, we hit the top of the chairlift that serves that peak (but wasn’t operating), yet we still had another 500′ or so of vertical to go, which turned out to be the steepest part.  There was a small path that led to the top via a long switchback, but Keeper and the other two guys were feeling strong and opted to bushwhack straight up in order to cut the distance down.  I hung back with the girls and took the longer, less steep route in order to offer pack mule assistance, which took me to my exhaustion limit pretty quickly.  A 40 lb Woodsprite on your shoulders is one thing, but Firebolt is a good 70 pounds I think, and tends to squirm — not good when you’re trying to balance, you’re wearing both her and a pack, and you’re at 9500′.  I made my best effort, but realized I was breathing as swiftly and deeply as I could and was getting light-headed along with the exhaustion.  I think she appreciated at least the short ride, and wouldn’t have enjoyed feeling her father pass out and crumble beneath her.

Things changed significantly one we reached the ridgeline and made our turn up to the final scramble toward the peak.  Suddenly we could see everything, and even the girls were speechless.  That last 1/4 mile seemed effortless.

We made it!  The others had reached the peak about 15 minutes before us, and we found ourselves in the company of about 2 or 3 dozen fellow intrepid hikers (and one guy who had ridden his mountain bike up — kudos!), with a 360 degree view, perfect 65 degree weather, no clouds to speak of, and a slight buzz from the anticipation and the elevation.  We could see the other ski area peak from our position, packed shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds of people who had taken the chair lift up.  Amateurs.  Ha!

Here was our setup.

And then things slowed down.

The partial eclipse started and we all put on our glasses to look and to concur that yes, there was indeed a little strip of sun being blotted out by the moon, but of course you can only look at that for so long.  So we relaxed, mingled with folks, took a few more pics, set up a time lapse videos…  It was fun, and it was exciting.  But other than the stunning setting and the headiness of having hiked up there, it was exactly how I’d remembered other eclipses. “Is it darker?  I think it’s a little darker.”  “yeah, I think so” [glasses on, glasses off] “Yup, it’s like a crescent now” “Yup, the light’s kind of weird.  I’m pretty sure it’s a little darker”  “Yeah, I kinda think so.”  For about an hour.

I tried to take a few pics with the eclipse glasses over my phone lens, and they worked, but were pretty uninteresting.  A tiny, orange, crescent sun in a field of black.  Um, that’s nice.  I bet there are hundreds of thousands of those on iPhones and Samsungs around the country now.

I had read something about not trying to take pictures of the eclipse when it happens, as there would be plenty out there that would be better than yours — rather to devote all of your attention to watching it and experiencing it, as it would be a ton to take in.  Sounded good to me, but frankly at this point I felt like I had the time to take it all in 15 times over and still take a hundred pictures of everything I’d like to capture.  Still, I opted to take that advice, and to set my phone on “time lapse” and let it capture things on its own, and borrow others’ pics later.

The kids started getting a little restless.  “Is this it?”  “No guys, it’s not, just wait.  There’s much more” (aside to Tacco — “there is much more right?”)

The sun got smaller and smaller, and it still didn’t look that different outside.  In fact it became very surprising to see how much of the sun could be obscured and still have it look like a mostly normal day.  Yes, it was dimmer, yes, the temperature dropped a couple degrees and it looked like dusk, but all the way up to just a sliver — probably 95% obscured — the whole thing was fairly ho-hum.  Keeper even tossed the word “bored” out there.

And then EVERYTHING changed.

I cannot overstate how different the next 2-3 minutes was from everything that preceded it.

Picture a 360 degree sunset at high speed.  It was that, and we could see the moon’s shadow rushing up the valley toward us at 2000+ mph.  I’m not exaggerating.  The temperature dropped fast.  I knew it would, but I didn’t expect it to drop as much as it did — about 30 degrees almost instantly.  It was a race to look from the extraordinary view of the valley with the shadows tearing across and the street lights coming on, to the mountains, to the sun through the glasses as the last sliver of sunlight was blocked, and then back again.  Stars and planets became visible.  People started getting louder and louder, just babbling.  “LOOK!”  “oh my GOD!”  You couldn’t look around or take it all in fast enough.

And then totality, and the sun which had looked pretty much like, you know, a sun up to just seconds ago, looked like something entirely different — like nothing I had ever seen before.  Of course I had seen pictures, but seeing it right there with the diamond ring and then the fiery corona against the dark sky… again, indescribable, and completely primal.   People were yelling, laughing, crying.  EVERYONE was.  I know I was babbling too, and I have no clue what I was saying.

Two minutes of that we struggled to take in, whirring around, staring, listening, yammering, shouting, and then boom, it was done.  Just before totality ended, I remember seeing a deep red color around the corona which I had read about, and I tried to point it out to Keeper, but he was just as engrossed as the rest of us.  He may have seen it, may not have.

Afterwards — no kidding just a few minutes after, if not seconds, everything looked pretty much normal again.  Dim, yes, but normal. Except for the 40 or so people trying to make sense (out loud) of what they’d just seen and understand why a sight that everyone could’ve described in advance of seeing it had just affected them in a way that was so different than they’d thought it would.  In retrospect, I think Keeper nailed it as well as anyone — for about 10 minutes, at just about full volume, he exclaimed multiple variations of “TOTAL. SOLAR. ECLIPSE, people!”

My time lapse video chose to focus on a point far nearer to us than to the sun, so unfortunately it’s blurry and more or less unusable.  See Tacco’s post (and hopefully Keeper will write one too) for some amazing shots at totality.  Here is us right after, trying to make sense of it.  You can probably see the excitement.

 

Once it was over, no kidding just a few minutes after totality, we figured we might as well head back down.  Not sure why I had envisioned staying up there for the whole thing, all the way back to a full sun, but that seemed utterly pointless after what we had just seen.  The whole way down was a blur — we really were that affected, as was everybody else we happened to walk by.  Took a few family and group shots along the way.

And that was that!  There was actually much more to this day that I’ll get to in the next post hopefully, but by 1PM we were down the hill and done with Grand Targhee, getting ready to move on while still trying to figure out what had just happened.

If we can remember and recapture even a sliver of it, I’ll be grateful.  Wow.

As Flight described, not unlike being subjected to the Weather Channel’s apocalyptic hype about whatever storm might be brewing, we were convinced that there would be masses of people on top of people joining us to observe the total solar eclipse at Grand Targhee. The lack of traffic during our inbound leg had our eyebrows raised rendering us unsure of what to expect upon our arrival.

The spot we were allocated in the wide-open gravel parking lot was snuggled in between a handful of other RVs, however we were encouraged to park as close as possible to a fairly steep drop off and our newest best friends. There were only two ways to park Davista in our cramped space, the bow facing the drop-off or the stern. Either way, leveling our house was not going happen. “Why is this important?” you might ask. Aside from having Flight rolling downhill and crowd me while we sleep, dishwashing evolutions require considerably more care (usually more than I can manage) lest the tops of the kitchenette cushions get a little damp with runaway water.

We opted for facing the drop off, which meant the front wheels were off the ground entirely and we were resting solely on the forward jacks. That’s just fine when you’ve got plenty of flat ground around you, but it made me less comfortable only 10’ from the drop-off (I know I sound like Nemo’s Dad). When I expressed concern about this observation, Flight reminded me that the parking brake is set on the rear wheels which were solidly on the ground so, even if we came off the jacks unexpectedly (stranger things have happened), we wouldn’t venture too far. I wasn’t convinced by that logic and suggested we park about a foot away from and centered on one of the poles sunk deeply into the parking lot perimeter used to identify the drop-off even when under many feet of winter snow. “That should keep us from rolling off,” I thought to myself. Chances are we won’t budge, but that doesn’t keep me from exploring all unlikely possibilities.

I should back up and describe what’s (I think) at the root of this perhaps seemingly unreasonable fear. Some of the sequelae lingering from the near-fatal car crash Flight and I were in 18 years ago challenge me with vertigo and spacial disorientation.   The human body is an incredible piece of gear that can adapt to almost anything and mine is no exception.  I am very thankful to be as functional as I am, however some of my system’s post-trauma quirks have required further adaptation.

To make sense of where we are in relation to the world, our brains are given three major inputs: visual cuing (meaning anything we see), information from the semicircular canals in the ears (to provide sort of a dead reckoning based on perceived motion), and proprioceptors in the joints (to tell us where our limbs are in space). The way these three inputs are interrelated can be tested when you have consumed too much alcohol. Should you find yourself a little in your cups (and I am not advocating such behavior), crawl into bed (after getting a ride home), and close your eyes. Alcohol reduces your body’s ability to make sense of the semicircular canals’ input, so when you are then at rest and have no visual cuing, you will have no idea where your system is and you’ll begin to spin. If you do get the bed spins, you can continue with the experiment by putting your foot on the floor. The new input from the proprioceptors in your joints should be enough to override the other two inputs and you should stop spinning. Should being the operative word.

I learned so many things studying bioengineering in graduate school.

In the past few years I learned that the neural connectivity between my inner ears and my brain was severed in the Jeep accident and never regrew, so I have been relying on what my eyes tell me to know where I am. Since my semicircular canals no longer provide information to my brain, if I am still and close my eyes, I will fall over. Makes closing my eyes during yoga quite the spectator sport. !!! Usually my visual cuing is enough to keep me steady on my feet, however when that input is absent (especially in the dark or underwater) I will readily lose my bearings, which is uncomfortable at best and can be panic inducing at its worst – all without the benefit of first savoring a good single-malt.

The only way I can think to describe it is this… Perhaps you have found yourself sitting in a parking spot with the engine running? You put the car in reverse and you have your foot solidly on the brake while maybe contemplating whether to go to CostCo or Trader Joe’s next when the car next to you starts to back out. Concerned that it is your car that is in motion, most people have the tendency to apply even more pressure to the brakes but quickly recognize the correct source of perceived movement and easily laugh off the fleeting discombobulation. I get that jacked up feeling all the blessed time. Because I find that disorientation incredibly disconcerting, I don’t like to introduce potential unexpected motion into anything. Knowing that we weren’t going more than a foot should the jacks give way and the parking brake not hold was very comforting – thus my gratitude for the enormous steel pole to keep us from sliding to oblivion.

After we made camp, level or no, we were happy to reconnect with some dear friends and marveled at how well our seven kids played together, even while some of them weren’t feeling so hot.

The next morning, while Flight and Keeper went for a mountain bike ride with some of the other men folk, I went on a short hike with our girls.   The girls responsibly asked for water along the way and the irresponsible adult in the group had neglected to bring any, which was kinda the opposite of Flight’s and Keeper’s provisioning experience for their ride. Also popular was the request for Chapstick, which I also didn’t bring. This omission, however, was planned as instead I brought our own wildly popular (in our family) lip balm concoction. You can learn to make your very own here – highly recommended and way better than Burt’s Bees!

We all met up again as a gaggle at the base of the mountain where Keeper tried out bungie-cord assisted trampoline operations. Witnessing her brother execute double flips, Firebolt flat out said, “no way” was she doing that (!) and WoodSprite suggested she might ONLY consider taking a turn after further observing Keeper’s turn. As there was a bit of a wait, I purchased two bags of mining slurry, which the girls adroitly panned at an interactive flume and uncovered hunks of various gemstones, some quite sizable. $20 well spent.

We headed back to Davista to change into long pants and closed-toed shoes for our two-hour trail ride. A short amble to stables revealed some interesting posturing among the kids. When asked if they’d ever ridden before, both Keeper and Firebolt enthusiastically said yes, I’m sure mentally referring to their recent five-minute (each) stint in the saddle while at the Ingalls Homestead only days before, after which they likely fancied themselves quite the experts. Roger, perspective.

We decided to forego riding helmets as cowboys don’t wear them and in a text exchange Flight noted our Dutch friends would be mortified (Ik bied u mijn oprechte verontschuldigingen aan). The ride was hot and dry (and hot) and I was thankful for the Camelbak I toted.

Keeper and Firebolt easily managed their respective steeds and thoroughly enjoyed their first trail ride, although I’m not sure why they insisted on making crazy faces for the post-dismount picture. If anyone should have worn an unnatural expression it was she who was a wee bit sore having stood a little far from the saddle – and an English one at that – for more than 15 years.

We enjoyed some gourmet burgers en famille and made our way to the other two families to bask in the anticipation bubbling throughout the campsite. A neighboring camper popped over to show us his recent artwork and share in some wine. Even Santa made an appearance to distribute candy – didn’t know he owned a pair of glove shoes. !!!

The kids were comfortable enough to want to ride bikes at all hours and were disappointed when we reined in their enthusiasm after dusk. Actually, we just encouraged them to do a night hike (on their own) instead and they seemed okay with that alternative.

As Flight mentioned, there was ample discussion about picking the BEST spot from which to view the eclipse. Flight’s Dad is notorious for conscientiously evaluating each and every available site at any campground to make sure the best one is found, so as to maximize the potential fun. Good enough simply isn’t. The apple has not fallen far from the tree and Flight has really been struggling with the BEST option. My vista checklist is pretty simple really: 1) hike to somewhere higher than the base (8000’), preferably with a killer view, and 2) be together as a family to observe the eclipse.

I’m good wherever that takes us…

All right, now we’re moving and grooving.  We’ve got the driving part down, we can set up and break down in 15 minutes, we’re in the mountains, we’re meeting up with friends, the kids are still in great spirits, and we’ve got a total eclipse to see.  This is exhilarating!

Left Bozeman yesterday late morning and followed an acquaintance’s advice to head to Grand Targhee via 287 (Madison River valley / Ennis) rather than 191, the two-lane, steep mountain road that passed Big Sky.  Great call, though in retrospect I think Davista would’ve been up to the task.  But the Madison valley is gorgeous, in a wide-open mountain vista sort of way.   Saw many tiny roads that led miles to thousand-plus acre ranches likely being bought up by celebs tired of the Hollywood scene.  I can imagine coming out there and doing nothing but fly fish blissfully for a week, if only I knew how to fly fish.

This pic somehow combined part of the previous day’s route with the one I’m referring to.  Notice, though, that we’ve reached level 62.  I have no idea what that means.  Note also that we’re hanging out in the 6-8,000′ elevation zone now, where we’ll be for awhile.

Driving down route 287 I was reminded of (and refreshed Tacco’s memory about) a flight I’d taken in the P-3 back when I was Whidbey Island based that was particularly memorable.  The majority of our flights were simply flight / landing currency hops, in which we were given the “keys” to the P-3 for 4-5 hours and left to our own devices, with the only real requirement being that we come back having logged several instrument approaches and touch&gos.  I was flying with a good friend of mine that day who had grown up and lived currently in Missoula, and he suggested in his low key way that we fly out to Jackson Hole, then cancel our flight plan and fly VFR (i.e. we choose our own route / altitudes and don’t really have to talk to any air traffic controllers) back to Missoula via Yellowstone and the various Montana valleys, and he’d “give me a tour,” before re-activating our flight plan and returning to Whidbey.  Sounded like one of the best ideas ever, so we did, and I wish I remembered half of what I saw and what he told me about the history of the area.  Absolutely stunning.  And I remembered flying up this very valley and seeing the whole thing from the air while hearing all about it.  It had seemed so much smaller then.

Perfect weather (again!), and in my bliss I opened not only my large driver’s side window, but my screen as well.  I guess I figured the screen was blocking some of the pristine Montana air, but what it was really blocking, or would’ve been blocking if it were closed, was Keeper’s new (favorite) swimsuit, which worked itself loose from the storage compartment above me in the wind, floated next to me for a split second, then darted out the window into the Madison River valley.  Sorry son.  (he was a little bummed)

We bypassed West Yellowstone to the west and entered Idaho just to the west of the Tetons.  I like how much I’m getting to say “west” now — it’s been awhile.  We had coordinated with the other families and learned that we would be the first to arrive, so we were taking our time.  We were headed for Driggs, where we would turn east and head the last few miles up the mountain to Grand Targhee.  Traffic was on my mind, as I’d heard several reports of hordes of people converging on the swath of totality (eclipse-wise), and I figured this area was about as prime as it gets for viewing.  But nothing!  Roads were wide open.

That part of the drive turned out to be especially scenic as well, with the Tetons looming jaggedly in the distance, and Driggs was a jumpin’ little town.  They were clearly playing up the eclipse thing for all it was worth, but I did get the idea that it would be a fun place to hang out, even eclipse-free.  We had planned to disconnect the Outback for the final haul up the mountain, but after talking to a gas station attendant who assured us it wasn’t a bad grade at all, we opted to stay connected.  And sure enough, Davista had zero issues.

We pulled in to Grand Targhee and were somewhat surprised to be directed into an essentially empty dirt/gravel parking lot.  The attendant squeezed us into a fairly tight line with the only other 4 motorhomes there, and when questioned about that, assured us that the entire lot would be full come eclipse time.  Well ok then, at least we’re at the edge and have a view!

There were some much more inviting-looking grassy parking lots down below us where people were also camping, and we were told that we could venture down there if we wanted, but after scouting it in the Outback we realized that it was no place for Davista.  Not only would we have a very difficult time getting level, but we’d likely bottom out multiple times on the rough road.  The other two families, when they arrived, opted for the grass areas (like we would’ve had we been in something less cumbersome), but it was an easy walk or bike ride down there.  The ski base area was a ¼ mile walk away and they had a restaurant/bar, lift-served mountain biking, and some kid-friendly activities there.  Grand Targhee is a cool place!  Small and low key, but just big enough to be interesting.  I can imagine really enjoying skiing there, and what we were there for was even better.  We all got together later that evening for some wine and a chance for the kids to get acquainted / re-acquainted.  We had a 12 year old, two 11 year olds, a 10 year old, a 9 year old, an 8 year old, and a 5 year old, so it was a good grouping.  Only damper was two of the kids (not ours) feeling sick, but in general they had a blast running and biking around the campsite with flashlights and headlamps, and it was good, no actually great, for the soul to see our friends again.

The next day we spent playing in the ski area.  They had set up a two hour horseback ride for everyone, but Woodsprite was just under the minimum age, so I stayed behind with her and we opted to take a chairlift ride to the top of the mountain in order to scout out a good eclipse viewing spot for the next day.  The ski area offered a package in which they’d take you by chairlift to the top of the mountain and back down again on eclipse day for a mere $150 (!), but they had been sold out of the chairlift rides for quite some time, so we were looking for a place we could hike to instead.  It was Woodsprite’s first chairlift ride and she found it thrilling.

Even more thrilling was the view from the top.  I mentioned having a view from the parking lot earlier, but that wasn’t of the Tetons; you really can’t see them at all until you reach the peak of the ski area, but once you do, it’s breathtaking.  They’re such a young, jagged mountain range, it’s hard to compare them to anything else in the US.  We wandered around, found a few snow patches and hiked down to one, and collected compliments on her My Little Pony sunglasses.  I’m reminded how important one-on-one kid time will be this trip, and need to be sure to carve as much out as possible given our constraints.

 

Earlier in the day, Keeper and I had done some mountain biking with my friend and one of the other kids.  I’d been looking forward to mountain biking with Keeper on some actual trails for awhile.  We’d done some in Michigan, but this was the serious stuff.  Though they offer lift-served riding, we decided that would be a bit much for the kids, never having done it and not really having the right equipment for it.  A broken femur or collarbone would put a damper on all of our trips.  The down side to not doing it lift-served of course was that all of the climbing would be self-powered, and heavy breathing comes quickly when you’re starting at 8000’.  I had to laugh when I was filling the hydration packs and Keeper suggested we wouldn’t need any water.

The ride was glorious, though it did give me just enough of a fix to REALLY want to do the downhill stuff.  Keeper did an excellent job with his old, heavy hardtail (my old bike).  The climbs weren’t his favorite, but I think he’s getting the bug.

Another dinner and post-dinner wine session with the whole group while we strategized tomorrow’s eclipse viewing put an exclamation mark on our day.  I’m a bit apprehensive about the family’s ability to do the hike, which is about 3.5 miles and 2000’ up (to 10000’), and unfortunately it looks like the whole group won’t be doing it.  There’s still one sick kid (high fever… poor guy), so at least one kid+adult will have to stay down at the base, and the other family realized that they’re needing to make a drive all the way back to Seattle for work on Tuesday basically right after the eclipse, so they’re staying down too.  Yet after Woodsprite’s and my trip to the top, I really feel like being up there will be worth almost any amount of discomfort, complaining, etc it takes to get there.  This feels like a once-in-a-lifetime event, and to see it from a once-in-a-lifetime spot seems worth just about any effort.  I’d like to hike up to the peak that is not served by the chairlift, however, as I think it would be more fun to be with a smaller group, one that had make the effort to hike up.  I’m not sure exactly what the view from there will be, but I can’t imagine it will be anything less than mind-blowing.

I was going around and around in my head with all this and discussed it with Tacco, as I thought she might have some of the same misgivings, but she came through instead with a resounding vote for doing the hike “no matter what.”  I love it.  And her.  So tomorrow we get up early and we hike to the top, eclipse glasses and hydration packs on our backs.  Yes!

I have a rare moment to try to catch up on some writing and will try to make the most of it.

Flight well and thoroughly covered our stretch from Spearfish, SD, to Bozeman, MT, including our brief overnight stint in Sheridan, WY, but (as per norm) I will add my two cents on the unfolding adventure. Spearfish, SD, was beautiful and I am very thankful we saw it in the wake of and not during the Sturgis Rally.

The highlight of our trek to Bozeman was seeing Devil’s Tower. Native American stories about the rock’s formation involve variations on a theme of children being chased by a giant bear who then pray for help. Deliverance comes when either a tree stump or the ground grows into the enormous tower, moving them out of harm’s way. Foiled, the angry (and still hungry) bear jumps and claws at the tower trying to retrieve his elusive prey, and the resulting deeply gouged scratch marks are what uniquely define Devil’s Tower.

Or maybe it’s an alien mothership embarkation/debarkation point. You choose. Apparently I need to see Close Encounters again, because Flight’s absolutely correct – I remember little about the movie other than the musical exchange. I can still play those notes on the keyboard, if ever needed.

 

 

 

Although this picture is one of my favorites from the stop, I prefer the selfie I took of me and Flight (see his post below) because it almost looks like he’s wearing Devil’s Tower as an offset cowboy hat. If I had noticed that sooner, I’d have more appropriately posed that shot. Ah well, maybe next time…

My experience of Sheridan, WY, was exactly as Flight described – it was a fine place to do laundry and park Davista overnight, but it didn’t make the Must Revisit List (ever). The managers of the KOA were kind and offered our kids free mini-golf (it was play-by-donation) and I was pleased that our kids insisted on making a donation (from their own coffers) before they played. After our unremarkable stay in Sheridan, we eagerly made our way to Bozeman.

I, too, was really impressed with Bozeman for all the reasons Flight cited. One of the general impressions I have of our country, given the limited exposure to date, is that pretenses tend to fall away the farther you venture from our nation’s capitol. I know that some of the bigger cities, regardless of longitude, may be teeming with pretentiousness, but for the most part folks seem to get easier going as you move west – and that was typified by Bozeman. All whom we observed seemed eager to thrive doing whatever best fed their respective souls and appeared entirely uninterested in anyone else’s thoughts on the matter.  I was tempted to join them.

Our exploration of the main downtown area was after dinner and, unfortunately (or not?), many of the shops were closed. Frankly, I was okay with only window-shopping, as our present storage options are pretty limited, and, after a couple blissful hours of wallowing in the Bozeman Hot Springs, heading directly to the Montana Ale Works and Sweet Peaks Ice Cream Shop was exactly what we needed. Delicious eats and libations (Reverend Nat’s Cider – are you kidding me?!) at the former sated both the inner foodie and beer (and cider) geek and the latter’s dessert offerings were simply sublime.   They have another Sweet Peaks in Missoula, should your travels take you there first.

Our last stop before heading back to the Davista was at the local Co-Op, which was brilliantly appointed. Flight and I had previously flowed out our meals for our impending stay at Grand Targhee where we would be entirely off the grid. We purchased all that we needed for grilling and Instant Pot sorcery (we’ll have to run the generator for that luxury – and be sure to not use the microwave simultaneously lest we blow a fuze) as well as some energy bars in anticipation of our mountain hikes. I’m eager to set eyes on the Grand Tetons, as I’ve not yet made the opportunity to do so.

Unfortunately Bozeman Hot Springs is closed for bathing on Saturday until the evening (apparently that’s maintenance day), so we’ll simply pack up and leisurely head south in the morning.  Seems rather unceremonious given it’s the final stretch of our travels before we arrive to observe THE BIG EVENT.

Montana at last!  I’ve been looking forward to this, as it feels like we’re officially in the area of the country that I’ve been longing to get to.  Not that Wyoming isn’t mountain country, it certainly is, but up to now we’ve just been blowing through and destination oriented (got an appointment with an eclipse).  We’re now within striking distance, and seeing a part of the country I haven’t had much experience with.

Note the little blip in the route over “Sheridan” in Wyoming – that was… let’s call it a “learning experience.”  We needed to take smaller roads to get back to the interstate due to the aforementioned road construction.  Not a problem, but they demand even more attention than the usual ton of attention, as the hazards (and turns you need to take – insert foreshadowing music here) are much closer to you and less easily spotted.  Compounding that, you tend to lose internet coverage, which puts a bit of a hurt on Google Maps, if you happen to be using that to navigate.  [aside: I bought a good old fashioned USA Atlas at a truck stop when we got our rig weighed, much to the delight of Tacco, who is quite old school in this sense.  It has turned out to be a very good call.]  So what happened is not so much that I missed the turn – I certainly saw it, I just blew by it and knew two things equally certainly: 1) we were supposed to be on that road, not this one, and 2) there was absolutely no way we were going to be able to slow down enough in the distance we had available in order to make that turn.  No big deal, or so I initially thought.  But as we continued to barrel down the two lane road to what appeared to be nowhere, I realized that two lanes and two shoulders is not nearly enough width to get the Davista/Toad beast turned around.  And pulling off onto any of the various dirt roads that disappeared into the distance in the hope that at some point they would lead to a turnaround point didn’t seem wise either.  Mile after mile passed in the wrong direction into dusty, hilly oblivion, and we were getting perilously close to just pulling over (still slightly in the road, mind you… the shoulders aren’t wide at all), disconnecting the car, making a 5 point turn in the middle of the road in the hope no one would drive up and get stopped by us (or hit us), reconnecting the car, and heading back.  I didn’t like that option one bit, but it was looking like the only one, when we spotted something resembling a town, or at least a settlement, approaching in the next valley.  Whew!  3 lefts and we were back in business.  That blip on the map doesn’t look as long as it felt.  Either way, lesson learned.

We crossed into Montana shortly thereafter, or more accurately, into the Crow Reservation.  Very near the site of the Battle of Little Bighorn, I noted the illumination of one of those annoyingly vague, amber caution lights.  This one looked at least somewhat like the outline of an engine, but without amplifying detail.  Hm.  In an aircraft, one of the first things you do when learning how to operate it is to memorize the exact meaning (and often corrective action) for every one of the status lights you might see.  Without the requirement for a type rating in the Winnebago, I’d neglected to do the same research.  So we pulled over at the first gas station, complete with a tiny Little Bighorn “museum” (read: cheesy store with cheesy music looping) to refuel and regroup.  Let me be extremely clear – this was not where I wanted to break down.

Fortunately, crisis averted again when I bothered to actually read the operating manual and learn that this particular light was equally vague in potential cause, and that breakdown wasn’t imminent.  Basically it was something to do with the emissions system (that’s about as much detail as the manual gave) and, if it didn’t go out on its own in awhile, it needed to be checked at the next service interval.  Ohhhhh-K.  I feel like they could make something that minor a less ominous-looking light, or at least a more informative one.  Maybe even make it green instead of amber.  Ford could take a lesson from Airbus or Boeing.  Anyhow, lesson #2 learned today.  Though that does lead to another bigger point, which is that unless you’re renting one of these things for a week or so and ensuring the maintenance is someone else’s problem, there really is no getting around the fact that there will be a ton of things that break.  Davista is brand new, and I’ve had the tool set out & pulling things apart not once, but multiple times in the few short weeks we’ve been gone.  There was a time when I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that; that feeling would be, if not a complete show-stopper, at least a very expensive and plan-killing proposition.  We were warned at the dealership that things would break, in order to set our expectations.  These expectations have been exceeded – a LOT of things have broken.  But the bright side is that they’ve all been relatively easy fixes given some basic troubleshooting and the courage to risk, you know, disabling your house.  YouTube helps too.

OK, Montana.  I’d been looking forward to doing this part of the drive and seeing Bozeman in particular.  Everyone who has mentioned it has raved about it, and everything I head made me think it would be my kind of place.  Deep in the back of my mind it occupies a place somewhere on “The List,” which in this particular case contains the places we might possibly settle after this year of traveling.

But the smoke.  From the point where we got onto I-90 near Billings and continuing all the way to Bozeman, the sky was hazy and brown with smoke from the multiple forest fires in the West.  I guess it’s a bad forest fire season this year.  Or maybe it’s normal, but it seemed quite bad.  Such a shame in a way that you can drive through an area one time, and the particular conditions of that day stick in your head as “how that area is.”  In my mind now, eastern and central Montana is smoky and a little smelly.  OK, I’m able to discern and understand that this was temporary and to see the beauty of the area despite the smoke, I get that, but still, first impressions, and all that entails.

That said, the area to the north of Yellowstone was stunning and would’ve been stunning even if the whole thing was on fire.  You’re basically following the Yellowstone River upstream, and the mountains just to the south rise steeply and impressively, made even more impressive by the knowledge that they contain what’s essentially a super-volcano.  Livingston, where the river turns the corner and heads up into the park and its source, looked especially impressive.  But then you drive through a pass and into the valley in which Bozeman sits, and it’s quite different.  Tacco was a bit disappointed; I think she had similar expectations about Bozeman first impressions.  I knew from many overflights that it wasn’t as nestled against the mountains as other Montana towns, so I wouldn’t say that I was exactly disappointed, but with the smoke, the mountains disappeared entirely.  No small feat when they’re 5-10 miles away!  The effect was that it looked like flat, dusty, smoky farmland and could’ve been anywhere.  Tacco: “This is not what I expected.”

We made our way to Bozeman Hot Springs, west of town.  It’s one of those hot springs where they build a complex / spa over the actual spring and direct the water into various swimming pools.  And they did a good job of it.  It looks like they’re expanding and improving it, but it’s great as it is, with 4 or 5 outdoor pools built around natural rock outcroppings, and an indoor soaking area / gym, which we avoided.  There’s also a campground / RV park attached, which is the reason it was our destination, and the overnight stay included unlimited access to the hot springs.  It’s a nice campground, too, with lots of amenities and a little stream running through the sites.  Things were looking up after the initial impression.

The kiddos were excited to get into the water, so we made quick work of setting up camp and headed over to soak for an hour or two prior to heading into town for dinner.

I now see why everybody digs Bozeman.  It’s a really cool town.  Lots of great options for eating, but we gravitated to Montana Ale Works (I might’ve provided a bit more of the gravity than others) for beer, cider, and big bison burgers.  It was excellent.  Thereafter we walked around town and loved the vibe.  Funky and mountainy, but zero pretense.  There were MSU students (I assume) on many of the corners playing various instruments for cash, but we saw more violins and cellos than we saw harmonicas and guitars. That doesn’t seem to jibe with the “no pretense” thing, but you’d have to see it – it absolutely does.  Another thing I noticed was that the women seemed dressed up more than I would’ve expected, yet not in a “look at me!” way.  It’s hard to explain, but Tacco and I discussed it, and agreed that the vibe was like a very confident, very “we love this place and we do whatever we feel like doing and we really can’t be bothered what anyone thinks of us or our town.”  i.e. ultra-cool, but not at all precious about it.  Loved it.

All in all Bozeman is now probably struck from “The List,” as the coolness and access to the outdoors wouldn’t be enough to overcome the difficulty in commuting to work from there, but I Get It now.

Tomorrow we finally hit the part of our adventure that has been planned for months, and the excitement has been steadily building.  We’re converging on Grand Targhee ski resort, just into Wyoming from Idaho and on the west (“back”) side of the Tetons, with two other families.  One are dear friends from Seattle and old squadronmates, with whom we’ve been trying to get together and spend shared family time for a few years now (thwarted, sometimes at the very last minute, by sick kiddos).  We’re all camping in the ski area parking lot there and are planning to arrive near the same time, enjoy all the ski area has to offer, and then watch the eclipse on the 21^st from what should be one of the best vantage points there is.  There’s predicted to be 2 minutes or so of totality there, and we’re hoping for a breathtaking view of the Tetons to complement things.  Expectations are high – I really hope it all comes together.

By the way, the vaguely ominous but actually pretty benign engine light went out on its own.  Sweet!

Another long drive day, but eased by our finally seeing some serious terrain!  Mountains, we’ve missed you.

We headed north out of Spearfish on some semi-back roads to approach Devil’s Tower from the north.  This was Davista’s first real mountain driving.  I say it was hers, not mine, because driving it isn’t difficult, but you can hear and see that she’s straining.  We had finally gotten around to weighing her officially at a truck stop back in South Dakota (we’d done it in Maryland without her being fully loaded just to get a sense of how much more weight we’d be able to carry and where to load it), and were relieved to see that we were legal, at least in Winnebago/Ford’s eyes.  But just.  Essentially I don’t think there’s a way to do this type of endeavor in this kind of rig without pushing your max weight pretty much constantly.  It’s far more airplane-like than car-like to be continually considering your weight, weight distribution, and upcoming demands on the equipment, and then adjusting your water and fuel tank levels, etc in order to compensate.  Really, other than the weight shifting/shedding, the only recourse if we get into a really tough stretch is to pull over, disconnect the TOAD, and have Tacco drive it behind us while we manage the steep grades.

All that to say that she did fine, but I found that several stretches had her shifting all the way down to 2^nd gear and gutting it out at 4000-4500 RPM and 40 miles per hour, with the pedal floored.  I’m trying to decide whether I’m glad or foolish that I don’t have a transmission temperature gauge.

Devil’s Tower though.  Visually, it always impresses, even if it’s just a hunk of rock.  We hung out at the area below the base and had lunch & checked out the gift store, then drove into the park to check out the actual rocks from up at the actual base, but were told immediately at the gate that there was no more room for RVs, so if we’d like to go up we’d have to park in the trailer area below and hike up.  *sigh*  So I guess we’re those people.  We decided not so much on the hiking despite Woodsprite’s insistence that she wanted to go up there.  We knew that her enthusiasm would last for about 1/10^th of the hike and there wasn’t a ton of reward to be had up at the top, so we made it a photo op instead.

I got a kick out of Tacco asking me whether there had been UFO sightings there, as there were all sorts of “alien” tchotchkes in the store for sale.  I explained energetically that it was all about Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but immediately noted in her expression that that movie hadn’t made nearly the impression on her as it had on me, which led further to a realization that the four years that separate us is enough to create a generation gap of sorts.  i.e. I’m “the old guy” who vividly remembers Richard Dreyfuss carving the Devil’s Tower shape into his mashed potatoes, while she was pretty much just a young kid doing young kid things. *sigh again*

The remainder of the drive took us to Sheridan, WY, right at the base of the Bighorn mountains and just south of the border with Montana.  And here we hit our first truly substandard overnight situation.  At a KOA, no less, where we generally pay more than we do at the other campgrounds.  In fairness, it wasn’t really the KOA’s fault, but it sits right at the edge of a busy road upon which there’s all night construction, which is both noisy and dusty.  It’s wide open, not a tree to be found, and with dirt roads and sharp rocks, so not a good place for the kids to ride their bikes either, which has turned out to be the first thing they want to do when we stop, every time.  I like that.  At any rate, we shared the campground with only about a dozen other campers, spread way around the dusty site.  No matter though, it was only a one night stop, with a push on to Bozeman (hopefully) in the morning, and a short drive to Grand Targhee for the real fun the following day.  We did sleep well.

When deploying with the Navy back in the day, just weeks before heading home there were command-wide discussions about how to reenter life. Although I didn’t have a spouse to return to yet, I very specifically remember the advice given by the chaplain briefing us: Don’t go back into your household and assume your old role in your family.   Just as you have been changed by your deployment, so have your loved ones. Your family has been managing just fine without you and you will need to work together to reestablish your family dynamics.

Brilliant advice.

Although we are on a deployment of a very different sort and we’re just at the start, Flight’s days away from us number 9 of our first 15 underway, and the initial few we were all together were thick with the haze of our departure. Having just shown that I can handle this deployment thing all by myself (even repositioning this massive land craft) has placed us both in a changed mindset in a very short amount of time, and we have had an unusually tricky time trying to catch up with the change. I use “unusually tricky” because Flight and I have both become fairly adept at recognizing any uneasy space between us and pointing out to the other, “Hey, I feel like we’re not on the same page here. Can we talk about _____________?” In the wake of our six-day separation and Davista’s successful relocation, we might as well have still been in different time zones and neither of us said a word.

Compounding that lack of communication was a touch of senior officeritis. Maybe? I’m not sure just what that means, but it seems like a good description. Let me back up a little bit…

Entering into marriage a little later in life, Flight and I had each developed our own (mostly) competent way of doing things. Both of our “ways” to tackle most things will usually work well enough, but we each have technique items we prefer. In Naval Aviation, there are checklist items that are mandatory to accomplish according to standard operating procedures (SOP), yet “technique items” are just that, preferences on how to best accomplish non-mandatory tasks.   To cut down on confusion when training junior aviators there is always a distinction made between the two. Some senior aviators forget the distinction and technique items are adopted as SOP (I actually blame my genetic stock for such an inclination and not my aviation roots). Regardless of the task at hand, Flight is usually gracious enough to remind me when I confuse the two by simply asking “Is that a technique item?”

Only one more aviation reference in this post, I promise, as it is entirely germane to the current communication soup sandwich Flight and I have been savoring. In multi-piloted aircraft, whenever control of the aircraft shifts from one pilot to the other, there is a three-way change of control. The pilot assuming control of the aircraft says, “I have the controls.” The pilot relinquishing control says, “You have the controls.” And the pilot who now has the controls says again, “I have the controls.” Although it may sound as though we’re part of the Department of Redundancy Department, clarifying who’s flying the plane at such changeovers removes any ambiguity of piloting responsibility and has saved many lives. As I observed when we departed Brimley SP, establishing and following checklists (so as to not drive away from a campsite still plugged in) is critical. At least as important is revisiting who’s in charge of what prior to executing said checklist to keep us running smartly on the road (so neither of us assumes the other completed a checklist item like disconnecting us from the campsite’s electrical supply without actually having done so).

You might think that with all this common sense training during our collective time in aviation and 15+ years of marriage, we’d have this working-together-as-a-crew thing wired by now. For the most part, yes, but, apparently, not always so. Instead of discussing this new development, namely that I was also a newly minted Davista Mission Commander and we were each wrestling with what that meant, we oddly defaulted to the responsibilities we held prior to Flight’s six-day absence and both resented the implications. In fact, we never even discussed any alternatives to this established (?) SOP. Shame on us, we absolutely should know better.

So, as gracious as Flight’s post is about our trek across the Dakotas, he neglected to mention his frustration with doing the whole drive himself. Our lack of communication came to a head after this brutally long day of driving. Flight had offered another dawn patrol departure to book through Minnesota and South Dakota to get us to Spearfish, SD, where I have a friend from recruiting days. Operating under the assumption (Navy life lesson #2: Never Assume) that Flight has always preferred to drive whatever vehicle we’ve been in regardless of the distance (he is a pilot, one who has often touted, “what do I do for a living?” when previously questioned on planning such long (car only) drives), I figured he was happy to assume the controls out of Minneapolis and I gladly took up the right seat thinking, “Great – I can get some writing done.”

As the miles ticked by, Flight was getting more and more frustrated. Because I had already proven I was adept at driving Davista (had I?), he was waiting for me to offer to spell him for a period. Which I didn’t. In the 20+ years I have known Flight, if he has needed help with driving, he has always asked. He hadn’t, so I was happy to keep writing, trying to capture what we’d been up to in his absence, yet his growing resentment was compounding my own. For six days, he was off having grown up alone time and had ample time to write post after post, while I was pioneering this deployment thing in the wilds of the UP.   So, on the one hand, I felt as though I earned some quiet time to write. On the other, I did manage a homeport change without him, how come he hasn’t asked me to drive? Does he not trust me (I, ahem, haven’t always been the best at driving top heavy vehicles…)?

Not a word exchanged.

Adding to the frustration was our individual understanding of the plan of the day (POD). To break up the day, we had planned a couple of educational stops. The first was in DeSmet, SD, at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead. The girls practiced doing laundry the pioneer way (maybe they’ll assist with ours now?) and decided they would prefer a cabin to a sod house (and not just because that’s where the kittens were sleeping). Keeper enjoyed the riding adventure as much as the girls did and we all marveled at the pioneer “Packing List” (200 pounds of bacon?!). They also had a medicinal garden I coveted. I could have spent the rest of the day there. And Flight was itching to get back on the road.

Our next stop we missed by 15 minutes (maybe because I was stuck in the Ingalls Homestead gardens?). We hoped to see the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, but arrived just after they closed.   Probably just as well. Although we didn’t get to see the Delta 1 Launch Control Center, just driving to the site spurred a “Deterrence vs. Disarmament” discussion with Keeper, which led to listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History Podcast, “Destroyer of Worlds.” Highly recommended, if you have 6 hours of activity to accompany a podcast.

It was not until after we got to Spearfish, dined and visited with my dear friend before saying farewell, and then put the monkeys to bed, that we were able to discuss the day’s unfolding. Both then and in writing this post, I have come up with the following lessons learned (I’m sure Flight will add his own): 1) come up with and discuss a POD to appropriately manage expectations for everybody involved, including the kids; 2) clearly delineate who’s in charge of what for said POD and revisit turnover procedures, if necessary; 3) communicate often while executing POD to smooth the way forward; and 4) pop a bottle of wine and debrief regularly.  Shouldn’t be too tricky, right?

While teaching at the Naval Academy, I really enjoyed discussing peer leadership with midshipmen, as that’s perhaps the most challenging aspect of being a junior officer. As easy as it might be to just avoid doing so while at USNA, I would recommend that they dig in and do the hard work to develop that skill set now as it will serve them well for the rest of their lives. I would always cite being married to another Commander as a great example of using peer leadership in every day life. Flight and I have each become pretty decent at recognizing situations where the other’s expertise exceeds our own and we (mostly sometimes) defer to the other’s savvy.  We are still figuring out this Davista deployment thing and, while some of our respective “ways” are seamless transitions from non-mobile living, much of it is well outside our individual and collective bailiwicks. As you may imagine, it can occasionally be tricky having two senior officers in a marriage and this deployment is helping us to refine our operations – I look forward to seeing where it takes us.

 

 

There was quite a bit of talk about which Dakota was going to get our attention and gas money.

On the North Dakota side:

• Neither of us had ever set foot in the state
• Google Maps assured us it was the shortest path, by about an hour at least
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Didn’t know it was there?  Neither did we
• I’ve heard so much about the oil boom there and what it’s done to/for the state – wanted to see it first hand
• Looking ahead, I wanted to approach Grand Targhee from the North, rather than from the Jackson Hole side, both for potential traffic reasons and for brutal mountain pass reasons. We’d yet done much uphill travel and weren’t sure how our rig was going to fare.

On the South Dakota side:

• Everyone we asked the question to said “SOUTH DAKOTA, NO DOUBT!” Pretty much at least.  North Dakota did get some love, but for the most part it was more “if you do decide to go that way, at least do this…”
• The Black Hills are nice, though we’d been to Mt. Rushmore on our way out to Annapolis from WA and found that immediate area a bit too touristy
• Tacco wanted to see De Smet, where there’s a bunch of Laura Ingalls Wilder stuff (and Firebolt is in the process of reading Little House in the Big Woods)
• An old friend of Tacco’s lives in Spearfish, on the west side of the state, near Sturgis.

I’ll skip to the end of what took up far too much time and mental energy and tell you that we opted to take the southern route, but then cross back over into Montana so as to take the northern route around Yellowstone and into Grand Targhee.  An extra couple hours, but who’s counting?  Other than us I mean.  We’re counting.

Anyway, we set off from the west side of Minneapolis and found ourselves in what I’d long pictured the rural Midwest to look like.  Here’s our route:

Lots of small farming towns, and mostly arrow-straight roads.  I found that I thoroughly enjoyed that sort of driving, with one exception, and that’s that these particular roads, likely from the yearly repairs after the freeze/thaw cycle, have creases in them about every hundred feet or so.  They’re the type of thing you wouldn’t even notice in a normal car, but we’re so not normal.  I’ve alluded to our (lack of?) suspension before, but every tiny irregularity in the road makes its presence felt, so my experience of Minnesota and the eastern half of South Dakota was overlaid by a constant “ka-KLUNK [pause] ka-KLUNK [pause] ka-KLUNK” ad infinitum.  I’d say it put a damper on things but it was sort of the opposite of that, with the same effect.  If you know what I mean.

Still a nice drive though, with a steady (but not heavy) rain.  After a few hours, we pulled into De Smet and found the LIW homestead, which is actually a 50-or-so acre plot fashioned into a living museum of sorts, up a dirt road, our first in Davista.

Despite the rain, it was an excellent stop.  I earned Tacco’s scorn by running up along side the horses the kids were riding (one on actual horseback, two in a small rickshaw-type setup being pulled by a horse) to get a better vantage point for a picture.  Freaked the horses right out, which I’m now told is a completely predictable response.  Both she and the guide gave me a resigned “ignorant city folk” look.  Though hers was a bit more pointed.  She has some horse experience from childhood in the Midwest, and is savvier about such things in general.

Learned quite a bit about prairie living back in that time and some more about some of the Homestead Acts.  Still hard to fathom the government just giving away large tracts of land at a time when there really wasn’t much opportunity to own land, and in fact in Europe it was all owned by aristocracy.  No wonder so many folks crossed the pond.

The rest of the drive was kind of a grind, as this turned out to be our longest driving day so far – about 10 hours.  Certainly no record, but we’re doing our best to keep drives to 6 hours or less and do stops along the way.  We did cross the Missouri River half-way through South Dakota and noticed how different the landscape looked almost immediately.  My friend the night before had explained to us that SD is really two states, with the East of the Missouri side being farming country and the West of the Missouri side being all about ranching.  I made an effort to toss a little education into the mix by talking about rivers, watersheds, the Continental Divide, etc to the kiddos, but didn’t get much response.  In fairness, I only became really fascinated with geography in my 30s (other than an odd phase at 2-3 years old when I was all about a puzzle map of the US and decided to learn not only all the states, but their capitals too, which turned out to be quite the party trick), so I shouldn’t expect too much from them.  One of our goals is to have them be able to identify all the states, major cities, rivers, regions, and mountain ranges by the end of the year, but baby steps…

We got a peek at the Badlands from the interstate, but didn’t mind missing them too much as we’d spent some time there on our way from Anacortes to Annapolis 4 years earlier.

Finally pulled into Spearfish in the late afternoon/early evening, and found it to be an excellent little town.  It turned out that we missed the Sturgis rally by about a week, so the whole area was probably recovering and there was quite a bit of festival detritus on the way in, but the town is beautiful.  It sits on the edge of the Black Hills, with a cold stream running through town, on which lies both a trout hatchery and a city campground, where we stayed.  Keeper and the girls went straight to the fishing poles to see if they could pull the next day’s breakfast out of the stream, but no luck there.  Didn’t see any fish in the water at all in fact, so we might have missed the high season (or I scared them away, which seems to be a recurring theme with fish).

TC’s good friend from her recruiting days back in Whidbey joined us at the campground with some snacks and IPA, and we had an excellent visit until well into the evening.  Great to see her!

We wound up our time in Spearfish with a hike up the stream and around the hills a bit.  It was the first time this trip we’ve felt and smelled “mountain air” and it was extremely welcome.  I don’t think Spearfish is especially high in elevation, but the drive there from Minnesota was essentially one long, gradual climb.  The air was dry, it was warm in the day and cool at night, and it smelled like pines and fresh stream.  I love all of the above and am looking forward to much, much more of that.