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.

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!

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.

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.

It was an easy flying commute but a tough few hours.  After much back and forth and variations on the theme of “so you’re comfortable with this?” from my end, TC decided it was time to depart Michigan and get her trial by fire qualification via a drive from Michigan to Minneapolis.

In theory this was easy on me as I was able to simply fly to MSP from Boston after my redeye from Oakland.  Much easier than trying to get into Marquette or even Duluth.  In practice, it was nerve-wracking at best, thinking about her doing her first no-kidding long drive with the kiddos and without me.

Quick digression, though… I mentioned Oakland, and this was pretty cool.  I had 24 hours there during my second of two trips while gone from the family back in the UP, and was fortunate enough to have a brunch with my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and all her kids (one home for the weekend from college even!) at my parents’ house.  This is extremely rare, both managing to do this sort of thing under the auspices of work and getting all of those people together at once.  Noteworthy and unforgettable!

Back to Minneapolis.  I arrived there at about lunchtime while TC and the fam were en route.  I was able to track Keeper’s phone’s location, so every half hour I’d keep my angst in check by bringing up the display of Keeper’s face trucking down Minnesota’s back roads toward Minneapolis.  Progress appeared solid, and I grabbed a Lyft to the park at which we’d planned to camp with the intention to scout campsites and check in prior to their arrival.  We had opted for a park on a lake (you need to work not to be on a lake in Minnesota I think) on the west side of town near a good college friend I’d hoped to visit while in town.

My Lyft driver was a very personable, younger Somali gentleman whom I was able to chat with on the 45 minute drive.  My Navy time never took me to the horn of Africa, and my knowledge of the area is more or less limited to Black Hawk Down and Iman / David Bowie, so I wasn’t the best conversational partner.  I did manage to ask him whether he enjoyed Minnesota (yes, but it’s quite cold in the Winter) and whether he missed Somalia at all (NO!).  Um, duh.

Returning to the family, Tacco killed it.

Managed both the gas station evolution (which requires far more pre-planning than it would appear) and a detour through downtown Minneapolis, the thought of which made me shudder.  They rolled in triumphantly in the late afternoon, and we settled into another thoroughly pleasant campground.  The Midwest seems to do these well.

The following day in Minneapolis was devoted to errands, as we’d yet to have such a day.  Eye exams and new glasses for the kiddos, Trader Joe’s for the rest of us, and a bit of mall time in the interim.  Not the Mall of America mind you, but the one in Wayzata is as thoroughly pleasant as the campground was, as is the rest of the town.  I can see why Brandon and Brenda missed it at times, despite their new Beverly Hills digs.  I’m sensing a recurrent “pleasant” theme in Minnesota.

We spent the evening catching up with one of my college roommates and great friends, and his oldest son at their gorgeous house on (another!) lake in Plymouth.  Fantastic.  As often happens, it ended up being the type of thing that was so brief that it makes me wish for a full-on several day visit instead, but still great to see him.  I’m able to do that sort of fly-by visit quite a bit with my job, but I’m finding that we’re doing even more of it than I’d expected we would with this trip, as we keep remembering about people who are in town and/or others who happen to be either vacationing in our area or currently living somewhere in our path.  It’s turning out to be one of the unexpected benefits of this year.  It would’ve been nice to join them on their boat on Lake Minnetonka the following day, but it was time to head West.

So I abandoned my family in the wilds of Michigan.

OK, it wasn’t quite so dramatic as that, but I didn’t enjoy leaving them for that long.  Going forward I’m going to have to balance having fewer commutes to/from Boston with having long stretches of time away from the fam.  We all knew this was the deal going into this adventure, but there’s knowing and there’s knowing.  The reality hadn’t hit yet.

There were some positives though.  First of all, as Tacco already covered, Van Riper SP turned out to be one of the better campgrounds we’ve stayed at, despite its being not especially near anything we wanted to see.  That was a huge relief for me.

I was also able to spend a night in our house back in Annapolis and make sure things were more or less in order, as well as knocking out my semi-annual FAA physical with my normal doctor.  Bonus in that I was able to visit a few cousins who happened to be rolling through town.

My commute went well, too, and that was far from a given.  I flew out of Marquette, which is a small airport with only a few scheduled flights per day  [side note: are we the only two who didn’t know that Marquette University is nowhere near Marquette, Michigan?  It’s in Milwaukee, in case we aren’t].  The two that were my only potential players for a connection to Boston prior to my show time both looked full, so I was crossing fingers for no-show passengers or an available cockpit jumpseat.  Fortunately I got the latter to Chicago and was able to get to Boston relatively easily.

Tacco covered our UP time as well, and did a bang up job of it.  She and the kids were, of course, there for much more time than I, so I don’t have much to add.  I will say that, though it’s gorgeous, if I had to choose between the northern part of the lower peninsula and the UP I’d opt for the former.  Pictured Rocks on Lake Superior is stunning, and that red/pink/purple sand is like nothing I’d ever seen.  The park in general, however, seemed like the type of place better seen from the water than the shore.  Unfortunately we didn’t have time to test that theory.

The latest issue involves my commute back, more specifically where I commute back to.  Tacco hasn’t yet done a full uproot-and-reroot-the-family-via-a-long-drive evolution and is rightfully cautious about doing so.  On the other hand, they’ve been in Van Riper for quite some time, and despite my trip ending early in the morning after a redeye, I couldn’t get back to Marquette until late evening, and am dependent on the same small/full flights that I lucked into on the way out to Boston.  An option would be for them to move west to Duluth, where I could reach them by afternoon.  A better option (but much longer drive for them) would be to meet them in Minneapolis.  Not only would it be a much easier and single-leg commute, but it gives us a head start on our bolt across the prairie to the mountains and our appointment with the eclipse.  But…

I’m skittish about this, for obvious reasons.  I was hoping she would be able to become comfortable with decamping-driving-camp setup while I was present, if for no other reason than to provide moral support and peace of mind.  Probably more for me than for her.  It’s not that it’s difficult, it’s just a lot.  And driving through Minneapolis could present challenges that she didn’t get driving through rural Michigan.  But we shall see.

Sorry Ontario, you get no love this trip.

We solved the problem of where to stay for the next 8 days or so.  I believe I’ve mentioned this already, but this is something we’ve not yet entirely gotten the hang of, as we’re not thinking in terms of weekends / weekdays, and aren’t yet comfortable rolling into an unfamiliar area with a “I’m sure we’ll find something” mindset.  We’re hoping that this will be the last time I’ll need to spend 6 days straight (plus commute) gone.  It shouldn’t have happened this time, but I made a bit of a mistake with my trip bidding, and with August being high season for airline flying as well, there’s not a lot of wiggle room for trading out of trips, dropping trips, and the like.  The up side is that I was able to manage 20 hours or so back in Annapolis to check on the house, run a few errands, and collect wayward mail.  The considerable down side is that, with Tacco (and consequently me) not entirely comfortable marshaling the Davista/Toad beast down the highway, we needed to have a place, somewhere near an airport, where she and the kids could hang out productively for a week while I’m gone.  And airports are in short supply in the U.P.  As are campgrounds during high season with a week of availability.

This all sounds somewhat inconsequential as I type and read it, but quite a bit of time and mental energy was expended trying to work this out, and we’re still not certain we have a good solution.  The plan was to stay a night at Brimley State Park on Lake Superior on the Eastern U.P., then drive across to Van Riper State Park semi-near Marquette, where Tacco/kiddos will homestead for a week.  We know nothing about Van Riper, and are a little concerned by the fact that it had so many vacancies when everything else was booked solid.  We’re not even sure there will be cell phone coverage.  At any rate, though, that’s the plan, and we’ve resolved to resolve these types of issues further ahead of time in the future.  Nothing like resolving to resolve — sort of like having a discussion about what we need to discuss…

Michigan continued to delight, scenery-wise.  The drive up Grand Traverse Bay was stunning, with several towns we would’ve liked to stop in and explore awhile.  The picture above is, of course, the Mackinac Bridge (only one “ack” sound in that), which is quite long and spans the strait between Lakes Michigan and Huron.

There was a noticeable difference in landscape between the lower and upper peninsulas.  The upper was much more heavily forested (mostly evergreens) and has a distinct “remote” feel.  We didn’t see too much of it as we headed straight north to Brimley.

Not a bad spot at all.  Dipped our toes in Lake Superior, did our first real campfire / s’mores evolution, and got a great sleep.

One observation, before signing off.  There has, to this point, not been a night when we didn’t fall into bed, shortly after the kids, completely exhausted.  And the perceived “to do” list hasn’t shrunk to the extent I had imagined.  I don’t know how this is possible.  One of the things I was looking forward to during this year was having the time available vs things I need to get done ratio swing radically to the other side.  Time after the kids are in bed to sit outside and write, read, talk, etc.  That hasn’t happened.  This is not a bad thing, in fact the flopping into bed after a full day feels extremely satisfying.  But I’m intrigued by this idea that no matter how much or how little I need (or feel like I need) to get done, I allow it to fill up my free time.  Either we’re just not in the swing of this lifestyle yet and we’re still in the process of reinventing the wheel, or it’s a deeper issue of time management and mindset in general.  I’m looking forward to tackling this.

 

Things look so much better today.  Called the mechanic first thing and he said he’ll have the clutch replaced by the end of the day.  Weather’s gorgeous.  We’re able to stay at the Holly Rec Area, just need to change sites, which is fine because we have to dump/fill the tanks anyway.  After a few more whiffodils to get our car back and get the rental car returned to the airport, we can head north.

Keeper taught Firebolt to whittle in my absence, and I just had to include those pictures up above, because she whittled… a… hm…  what is that exactly?  I feel like I’ve seen something like that in Washington, or maybe Amsterdam.  Anyway, she looks proud, or at least coy.

And this was great, we’ve tried to make pre-breakfast family exercise of a part of our routine, and it turns out Holly Rec has some decent single-track, so Keeper and I grabbed our bikes and hit the trails.  First time this trip, and maybe only the 3rd or so time I’ve gotten to do that with him.  Hard to explain how much my heart swelled when he was gushing about how much he was enjoying riding through the woods.  “Yes, exactly!!”  That’s certainly something I miss about Anacortes (where we used to live in WA), having trails like that so accessible.  Good, easily accessible mountain biking will be a pre-req for our next house.

We also were able to hit the “inflatable park” out in the lake before departure.  TC and Firebolt opted to watch us from the shoreline, but Keeper, Woodsprite, and I had a blast.

I do want to say this about southern Michigan and the Detroit area.  We really enjoyed it.  I have to be honest and say I didn’t really expect that.  The people we met, every one of them, were genuinely kind and helpful.  This stood out.  No fewer than a dozen people stopped to offer help to Tacco and the kiddos when they were stranded at the side of the road.  The police checked on us 4-5 times and offered anything they could.  The mechanic did a fantastic job, and went above and beyond to get the car running again in a day so that we could get rolling.  And on top of that everywhere we’ve been has been borderline gorgeous.  Lakes and forest everywhere, mild weather (other than the occasional thunderstorm), and lots of flowers and wildlife.  There’s even a solid beer geek scene!  I hear the scenery is even better up north; we’re ready to go!