Road Trip

 

 We arrived back home around 8:30 Sunday evening. Charlie arrived home from the kennel this morning🙂.

Yesterday we drove from Sioux Falls to South Bend, Indiana. We are now on our last stretch home. Nora’s favorite park was Yellowstone; Hazel’s was Badlands. John Mark’s favorite time was hiking in Badlands. I think that was probably one of my favorite’s, too. Nora and Hazel also thoroughly enjoyed driving the vehicles on Hannape Ranch.  This trip has been epic. And I think we all are thoroughly exhausted now. Also, these photos of Nora and Hazel were taken yesterday, but I don’t think that matters- they are wearing the same clothes today🙂. P.S. Oh yea…I can’t leave out the fact that we listened to a lot of Taylor Swift while driving around Badlands, and a lot of XM 10 spot radio plus a bit of Tic Tock radio😬, when driving around the Tetons and Yellowstone. John Mark and I were not the ones who paired the music with the scenery for this part of the trip. Just a bit more of this blog left to come…  

Though I am with the people I love most and am most comfortable with, I am right now missing my place of comfor t .  Whenever I travel, there comes a time when my longing need - the desire for adventure or something unfamiliar- turns to belonging need- the desire for comfort and familiarity - For home . Today I am wondering when this moment of transition from longing need to belonging need on this trip took place. And always when I’ve traveled, I’ve missed the moment that longing and belonging sh ake hands. This is a moment I’ve never captured. All I know is that my longing now is for home -a place that is familiar, and has all of our stu ff .  Taking this water bottle from Yellowstone back to my home feels nice. And makes me think: Maybe it’s not a moment, but a compromise…something from the place of adventure - and at times uncomfortable excitement - I was once longing for….back to the place of familiarity and comfort  that is my place of belonging in my life now. ...

I suppose we have technically been driving home this entire trip, given that home has been one of our destinations - the last one. It just has felt more official since we reached our point of greatest distance, and we started driving in the direction of home. Officially, this for us was Thursday. Yesterday we left Casper, Wyoming. And made some stops along the way. Our first stop: This place was essentially a sink hole in the latter ice age period, that a bunch of wooly mammoths, along with other animals, fell into. It was discovered in 1974 after a contractor bought the land and began to excavate. Next stop was Wind Caves National Park. We were planning to do a cave tour, but felt like we needed to keep focused on driving. So we just drove up to take a look at the animals. Here are some photos from the car ride after we left WindCaves. It looks like some of us needed the 5 cent coffee🙂.

During yesterday’s drive, Hazel spend much of the time working on her junior range booklet for Yellowstone.This morning she turned it in at the Old Faithful visitor center, and received her Junior Ranger badge. We decided to drive to Grand Canyon of Yellowstone before heading on our way. We were told by on of the rangers that we can’t leave Yellowstone without seeing this.  The drive there was scenic. We saw lots of buffalo. And also a big black big bear along the way. Here are some photos of the black bear: And the bison… Here are some photos of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone: After seeing the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, we headed out of Yellowstone and toward home. It was a long day of driving!  On the way, we discovered a good radio station: Wyoming Sounds. We checked in to a Days Inn at Casper, Wyoming around 8:45. And closed out the night with a very loud and windy storm, which we were glad not to be driving through. Yellowstone was a lot of fun. It was also A Lot! I th...

 This day started with a short guided tour of the hotel. Then some breakfast at the general store… Then we drove up to Mammoth, and stopped for some sights along the way. The road from Norris to Mammoth was a windy road over a canyon, with pebbles for guard rails. I’m sure the view was beautiful, but I was pretty much on the floor. Fortunately, John Mark was driving. This drive was so scary - it was by far my least favorite part of this trip -  and when we left Yellowstone, we made sure to avoid the east entrance, as the windy canyon roads without guardrails, and sheer drops, were the similar. In Mammoth…. We saw this. We also spoke with a park ranger about where to see wolves (Hazel was really wanting to see wolves). She suggested a place just outside of Yellowstone, in the down of West Yellowstone. So we went here: This was of course after making the horrific drive back from Mammoth. At least this time, our car was not in the side of the road of the sheer drop into the canyo...