Tetons. (Your Exclusive Update, by Lauren)

We arrived Saturday at the Tetons

The grey, craggy mountains are such a stark contrast between the flat, golden prairie

The view of the Mountains was somewhat distorted because of a Forest Fire in Idaho.



But I think that it added to dramatic effect, making the mountains look even more impressive.



 Ten years ago Dad and I came to Utah to visit his friends, I was 7 years old. When we stopped for lunch, in this same parking lot, I had insisted on eating on the roof of the car because I was afraid of the coyotes. Following tradition, when we stopped in the parking lot all the girls got on the roof for a photo.

Our real main objective at Teton National Park was to see a Moose. So we stopped at a Visitor Center and asked the Ranger if she could suggest a trail on which we would have a good chance of seeing a Moose. She suggested the Jenny Lake trail. A five mile round trip trail that had two major destinations; Hidden Falls and Moose Pond. Her only suggestion was that we make lots of noise. Why?...

...Because of the Bears.






Hidden Falls was Beautiful, and luckily we saw no Bears.
Unfortunately we saw no Moose either.

  

We were able to spot some Elk, with the help of our binoculars. There were quite a few elk wandering around on one of the mountains across from us. Daddy REALLY enjoyed the elk sighting,  he said that he felt like he was in heaven.







But our Teton trip wasn't complete until we left Teton National Park and started on our way to the camp ground where we were going to stay for the night. We noticed a large amount of cars parked along the side of the road, we stopped, and wouldn't you know, there was a bull moose lying in some bushes, down by the river.

He was one huge guy. And just before we left, a Momma Moose and her baby showed up, giving us a view of a full moose family. 

Today and tomorrow we will reach Canyon Lands National Park and Arches National Park. We will post more then. Miss You All!

  

Yellowstone! (Another) Update by Lauren

We Arrived!

Coyote, we had an amazing chance to see a coyote right up close!
(Warning! For those who might be squeamish: the next few pictures contain dead animal remains)

mmmmm! Elk... it's what's for dinner.

Dragging the carcass away from the road so he could eat in peace.

For whoever asked about a bear, here it is! A nice grizzly.

Bison

Old Faithful

Steam rising from Hot Springs and geysers, it seems like the surface of the moon!
Such a strange, beautiful, awe-inspiring place.

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

The Old Faithful Inn
Such a beautiful and impressive building, pictures just can't grasp it.

A Hot Spring Pool.
Just imagine, we are standing on top of a volcano. The Lava is four miles beneath us.
Four miles seems like a lot, but then it is still hot enough to boil millions of gallons of water
right where we are standing.

We stayed at an RV park within Yellowstone.

Make sure you check out the new pictures on the previous post.

lauren's Update

We’ve been in and out of cell service the past couple of days and we haven’t been sitting still long enough to write much. Just wanted to update y’all on where we’ve been and where we’re going. This will be strictly fact; hopefully there will be time and service later for dad to write another story.


Sun:

We entered Badlands National Park, South Dakota. No words to really describe the beauty there, it was just purely awesome. In the words of Wallace Stegner “You are acutely aware of yourself. How large the Earth is, even larger the Sky, and how very, very small you are.” That night we stayed in the park itself.

Badlands

Mon:




We explored Badlands more; we went for a hike and found a really cool wash in the rocks that created a spiral cave to climb in. We saw the Yellow Mounds in the Badlands, a large and breathtakingly beautiful canyon, and many other gorgeous places.

The Little Cave

Yellow Mounds

Then we continued on west and reached Crazy Horse Monument by dinner. Crazy Horse Monument was amazing, huge, and inspiring. The man who was commissioned to create the monument worked for years by himself, with nothing but an old Buda air compressor and mountain goats to keep him company. When he died his family took over the project. Their goal is to create this monument without government aid, and several times they have turned down multi-million dollar grants and have chosen to continue themselves. When Crazy Horse Monument is finished it will be the largest monument in the world. To put it into perspective; the Statue of Liberty is about 325 ft, Crazy Horse is 583 ft tall, all 60 foot tall faces on Mt. Rushmore can fit in Crazy Horse’s Head, and the hole in the rock, underneath his arm can hold a 10 story building.

Crazy Horse

A Model of the Finished Product

Tues.

We stayed at a campground not far from Crazy Horse and in the morning traveled the few miles to Mt Rushmore, which was really neat. We didn’t stay long, just took a few pictures and then continued on to Custer State Park. There we had to stop for about 15 minutes because of a traffic jam.

Traffic Jam!

After driving through Custer we reached Wind Cave National Park. This cave is really amazing; it is one of the few caves in the world which contains rock formations called Boxwork. Wind Cave was given its name because the change in the air pressure causes the air to rush out of holes on the surface of the cave. From Wind Cave we traveled towards Yellowstone.

box work

and more box work

Wind Cave



Weds. 
We continued on in the direction of Yellowstone, stopped once in Cody, Wyoming and reached Yellowstone at about 4:00.

 

Thurs:

We are going to explore the park, we will post more later.

The Lauren Game, #2

Game #1 answer.... Sioux City, South Dakota! Great Job to Everyone!

The new game contains two questions, 

#1) What was Crazy Horse's (a Native American Leader), nick-name when he was a child?
            a)  Curly
            b)  Little Chief
            c)  Dori
            d)  Trail Weaver
            e)  None of the above

#2) Where in the world were the Niles' Yesterday?

        43 degrees 59.63 N 

        102 degrees 14.55 W 

(Name the town and prominent landmark, be as specific as possible.)

Good Luck to Everybody, and use those brains!  

Rocks at Badlands Nat. Park

The Lauren Game, #1

Howdy Folks, 

Today's Question is... Guess Where We Are!

Here is the deal, I give you the Latitude and Longitude and you guess the closest city. Use that head for something other than a hat rack, people. (Googling is allowed, after you have given it a good try)
Put the answer on as a comment, first person to get it right, might get something special!

Are you ready, here it is:

42 degrees 29 520'

96 degrees 25 800'

Good Luck, and May the Best Man Win.

Heading West into the Sunset

Day 2- Surviving Iowa

Morning brought a fine mist in the air and fog covered the grassland prairies of western Iowa. We spent the night in a roadside rest area just east of the Missouri river and the Nebraska state line. We survived the night despite the warnings.

Yesterday, we made quick work of the rest of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. We crossed the mighty Mississippi at about 4:00 in the afternoon and decided to get off the highway and stop for a quick dip in Archeology, the office of the television show American Pickers.

The Girls at the Mighty, Muddy, Mississippi

Coralville, Iowa is about a third of the way across the state on I-80. I hope I never have to go to Coralville again… at least not with my current GPS. There is nothing wrong with Coralville mind you; apparently TomTom hasn’t invested sufficient research into this region of the state to accurately place the Panera Bread. We drove around in circles for thirty minutes looking for the bloody eatery (Daughter (the scribe) notes: as you can see dad is a little bitter, and poor TomTom is lucky to be alive). Wandering around, searching, is bad enough in a normal sized vehicle. Having to maneuver the unnatural platypus through intricate ballet moves as we negotiated through multiple parking lots pushed me to my breaking point. The Panera Bread was INSIDE the mall.

With our ballet performance behind us, we set out on I-80 to conquer the rest of Iowa before bed. As we drove for the next several hours we could see periodic lightning flashes across the entire western sky. The frequency and intensity of the lightning was increasing the further west we drove. When we merged onto I-680 near Council Bluff, Iowa, we realized we were the only vehicle on the road… a very eerie feeling. Of course, our imagination quickly connected the dots between Iowa, the flat plains, thunderstorms, and tornados. At that moment we were “hanging our hat” on the fact that this was not tornado season. The weather band on the radio revealed the truth; severe thunderstorms, damaging winds in excess of 60 mph, deadly lightning, golf ball sized hail, and seek shelter. I don’t know about you, but I saw the movie Twister, and these ingredients preceded every tornado in that movie. Based on the description of its path, we were driving head on into it. Without a lot of options, we ducked into the next roadside rest area to hunker down for the night. No sooner had we parked when it started to downpour, then the hail started. All the while, the lightning flashed and the wind blew. Fortunately this was, in fact, the extent of the storm. As I lay in bed listening to the hail bounce off the roof, I wondered: Given our size and shape, would we look like just another trailer in a trailer park in the eyes of a tornado?

The RV After the Storm

Psalm 29: 2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name; worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness.

West!

Yesterday, we set out on our westward journey: 6,000 miles, 25 days, 20+ states, 9 national parks, 6 people, 6 cameras, and one 32ft RV. Although we do love “The Amazing Race”, there will be no road blocks, detours, fast-forwards, speed-bumps, pit stops, or mandatory rest periods. This is the plan… and we plan to keep you posted. We hope to blog every day or so, to share our journey with you.


After hundreds of trips back and forth from the house to the RV, the RV was finally loaded… loaded to the gills (clearly there could be nothing left in our house). We left home at noon yesterday, after a bit of a late start. Proceeded west on route 88, then route 86. Crossed the line into PA around 7:00 pm and close behind that was the border of Ohio at around 7:45pm. Despite the V-10 it is tough to make good time in an 8.5’ x 12’ x 32’ bread box on wheels.

With a quick dinner in our bellies we decided to put a few more miles behind us before stopping for the night. As I drove, plowing through the air I pondered the engineering of the RV. The shape, size, and design is quite unnatural in the world of vehicles. I couldn’t help but draw a comparison between what the engineers were thinking about when they designed and developed the RV vs. what God was thinking when he created the platypus. It’s just not natural.

How long can you walk around with your legs crossed?

It seemed like just another Saturday…but it didn’t end that way. After lunch, we returned to our nesting box project. Since we had used our old 8’ x 10’ shed for a hen house, we needed to add nesting boxes to the sides. Instead of taking up valuable inside square footage so desperately needed by all 29 chickens, we added the nesting boxes to the sides on the outside. We cut a 1’ x 8’ hole in the side, about in the center of each of the 10’ walls. Then the nesting boxes were “stick” built in place to provide 8 nesting boxes per side.

Today, we added the dividers needed to create the 1’ x 1’ nesting boxes. As we worked, one hen in particular seemed to be inspecting our work. She was walking all around us as we installed the dividers; under our legs while we knelt down, jumping up into the unfinished boxes, and walking in one door and around the hen house only to come in the other door. Was she just looking for attention? She was a pest…or so it seemed at the time.

Once we completed the boxes, we added some fresh straw to the bottom upon which eggs could be laid at some point in the future. We had no sooner finished when this pesky hen (who was given the name “Inspector Hen’eral” by our 10 year old), flew up into one of the newly completed boxes. She began to arrange and organize the straw into a nest like shape before settling in.…to rest, we thought.

Upon our return home after a fun night out with our friends, the chickens needed to be put to bed. I “tucked” them in by checking their water and closing the doors to the hen house. Remembering the Inspector Hen’eral’s behaviors, I decided to check the nesting box that she so neatly prepared earlier in the evening. There, sitting right in the middle of the organized nest of straw, after almost 18 weeks, was our first egg! About half the size of a large egg, it was perfectly shaped (egg shaped of course) and smooth, with a very solid dense feel to it.

We had been working on the nesting boxes over the course of the last 3 weeks. Within minutes of completing them, a hen settles in to lay our first egg. You have to ask yourself one question,”How long has she been walking around with her legs crossed?”