Day 5: Is This What I Signed up For?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that vacations usually spring from idyllic visions that have sprouted in armchairs at home while we pore over guidebooks.  A two-week road trip to Montana and the Grand Tetons!  Camping!  Unhurried days, invigorating hikes, restful nights, simple but hearty meals, space and time for drinking in the fresh mountain air and scenic majesty!

Well, today was a pretty amazing day.  But it also held some frustrations, reminding us that this vacation is still real life, not just a glossy commercial for Big Sky Country.

Number one, we’re spending an awful lot of time in the car.  Which is to be expected on a road trip, duh.  I just forgot how sore my seat gets after 10 hours of driving.

Number two, we’re spending an awful lot of time in the car together.  This is fine for an extrovert like my husband, who processes every thought verbally.  And now he has a captive audience!  The captive audience, however, is an introvert.

Number three, I am just as prone to be busy-busy when I’m camping as I am at home.  No chance of taking an hour to sit and drink in the gift of the present moment, because breakfast must be cooked, dishes washed, crumbs of food cleaned or packed away (bears), shopping done, trips started on time to get to the next campsite on time!

Okay, now the good stuff.  We awoke this morning in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park to mist rising off the river, shrouding the cottonwoods like tall ghosts leaning over the campsites.  As we were packing the trailer, a massive beast strolled up out of the mist, cropping grass, moving across our site—a large, dark-maned buffalo.  We stopped packing and stared, snapped pictures, and reveled in the gift of this visit from the safety of the camper door.

The trip to the Bozeman area was uneventful, except for two deer leaping in front of the car early in the trip, and an antelope bounding in front of us over I-94 near Billings.

We camped twenty miles from Bozeman in the Absaroka Wilderness in the small Pine Creek campground—primitive, but a scenic delight compared to the dusty, crowded KOA campground up the road.  We chose to forego showers and a swimming pool, trading these for lush grass, private sites, shady pine and fir, and 8,000-ft. mountains towering over us, their massive peaks shouldering their way into our view every time we stepped out of the camper.

Bear had been seen in the campground that day, so we picked up every crumb, wiped up each drip of juice, and packed everything edible back in the car.  We went to sleep with bear spray at our side, and slept like babies in the sweet, cool mountain air.

Day 4: Teddy's Park

We awoke to birdsong and a slow, lazy start to the day.  Phil hiked to the picnic area with his pot and thermos, using the electric plug-in in the updated bathrooms there for his coffee, while I fixed one of our favorite camping sins on the gas stove:

Then we donned hiking shorts and bug spray and set out for the trailhead we had seen the night before: Lower Paddock Creek Trail.  As we turned off to the trailhead, we glimpsed a trio of wild horses standing high above us on an overlook.  (You can see them if you enlarge the picture and look up at the top of the hill, right by the largest cloud that is coming over the hilltop.)

Less than a minute into the hike, we were attacked by a swarm of biting flies that weren’t fazed at all by the bug spray, so it was back to the campground for long pants and sleeves and hats.  Covered to the gills, we set out again, following the meandering creek (now almost dry) for several miles.  Stopping for lunch, we sat on a grassy slope and watched a fox slink through the grasses, hunting mice and prairie dogs (which were whistling and barking at a frantic rate).  We found buffalo hair (some of the old winter coat) rubbed off in a thicket of bushes where a herd must have spent the night, judging from the fresh pies I stepped in.  The peaks and buttes rising around us were striped with layers of sediment, some of them shaped into fantastical formations by the weathering of wind and rain.

Then home for naps, an essential ingredient in good vacations.  We read our books, dozed, and had tea (another essential ingredient), then dined al fresco on burgers and leftovers.  There was plenty of time for another evening bike ride down the road that serves as a loop through the southern area of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  We found other trailheads, and a deer leaped into the road just ahead of us, heading back to higher ground after an evening drink at the river.

On the way home, we stopped to watch a group of wild horses and a foal cross the road on their way to an evening drink.

Back at the camper, Phil lit a fire in the grate so he could satisfy his pyromaniac urges and I could satisfy my passion for marshmallows toasted to a light amber, crispy-crusted perfection.  Then it was time to begin packing and organizing for an early departure in the morning.  A restless night of sleep, punctuated by strange noises of unknown origins.  One of the delights of camping.

Day 3: North Dakota for the First Time

We left the crowded tangle of freeways that is Minneapolis and found our way to I 94, the northernmost major artery of cross-country road.  We chose this rather than I 90 because I had never seen North Dakota.  I must admit my idea of that state was an endless stretch of flat brown land, unpopulated and dreary.  I was soon to be disabused of that.

Eastern Minnesota turned out to be rolling hills of farmland and belts of trees grown to push back the wind.  Here the sky emerged, dominating the green fields and small towns with its vast blue arc and massive clouds.

Driving through Fargo signaled our entrance into North Dakota, and as we rolled down that long, straight stretch of road that is I 94, I found how mistaken my ideas were.  No flatlands here.  Instead there stretched out rolling prairie sinking and rising in every shade of green and yellow imaginable, crowned with buttes and small peaks, watered by sloughs walled in by reeds.  We drove past houses leaning into the wind, some abandoned, weathered carcasses with empty eyes and sagging mouths.  The clouds in the massive sky were bruised purple, and underneath them fell columns of rain, bent slightly in the wind.  The vast stretches of prairie were lonely and lush.  “So this is North Dakota,” I thought.  “It’s like nowhere else in the States.”

Then we stopped at a Walmart to pick up supplies.  Driving into the parking lot, we could have been anywhere in the US—Mississippi, Utah, California.  Every shopping center looks the same wherever you go.  I suppose this is what civilization has done:  homogenization.  But even while bemoaning that fact, I was glad to shop in a place that had everything I needed at cheap prices.

Within 40 miles of the state’s western border, we plunged into the Badlands, a misnomer for some of the most varied, rugged, and stunning landscapes in the Midwest.  I think the pictures will have to describe what we saw:

We paid $10 for a week’s pass to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, then drove five miles up a dirt road to the southern campground, skirted by a wide river and sheltered with cottonwoods.  We arrived at 5 p.m. and found many sites still open, though the park was mostly filled by sunset.  We set up, fixed dinner, and then explored the campground on our bikes.

Venturing further, we took to the main road and found a trailhead that we vowed to hike the next day.  The start of the trail was set in a vast meadow that turned out to be a city of prairie dogs that probably rivals L.A. in sprawl and population. Their main activity appeared to be making loud noises to warn each other of intruders.  Here's what they sounded like:

**well, can't figure out how to get the video on yet, so that will have to wait.***


So we took the hint and headed home, glad for a screen tent that gave us bug-free repose, and a glorious evening that melted into a sky of brilliant stars.

Day 2: O Day of Rest and Gladness

Day 2:  O Day of Rest and Gladness

Happy birthday, Estee!

After one of Neal’s famous breakfasts, we went to the new church they’re attending and were treated to an invigorating, thought-provoking sermon.  We then shopped at Cabela’s for guns, bear spray, and gummy bears (did not buy guns, at my insistence), and came home for lunch.

After the obligatory game of Catan, which I won but felt guilty about winning because it was Estee’s birthday, we napped.  Ah, the grace of a Sunday afternoon rest.

On a walk around the lake behind their home, I captured pictures of their place from across the lake, and also got pictures of the giant cottonwoods before the last of them is cut down.

(The house right in the center of the picture, far across Blackhawk Lake, is Neal and Estee's.)

Estee’s birthday dinner at the Burough was an adventure in culinary taste and vocabulary.  We dined on comfit, pate, aspic, pork belly with rhubarb, and raw beef.  Incredible flavors.  Great conversation and company.  A wonderful birthday with our all-time favorite daughter-in-law.

It is a gift to visit grown children and to see love, grace, and purpose in their lives.

And we love the cats!

Day 1: Zooming to Minnesota

Day 1:  Our two-week road trip to Montana and the Grand Tetons begins today.  The goal was to leave at 6:00 am.  This is always my ploy to get off by at least noon. Today we pulled away from the curb at 7:30 am, feeling very smug about being only an hour and a half late.  No last-minute flurries, no cries of despair, no desperate wiping down the bathroom sinks or sweeping the kitchen floor.  All was in order, everything fit in the trunk, nothing was forgotten or left behind.  Success!

Another good thing that happened was that my friends must have remembered to pray.  I had expressed fears that Phil and I might do serious bodily harm to each other over differences in driving habits.  The first day of a road trip is always touchy.  But I was given grace to keep my mouth closed, and to render compliments and encouragement as needed.  The day passed without a serious altercation, and we drove our trusty old Buick laden with camper and bikes and suitcases and food chests through the farmland and forests of Michigan, the freeways of Chicago, and the pastoral dairyland of Wisconsin without incident, arriving at Neal and Estee’s home in Eagan just before dinner, after ten hours of travel.

Phil had opined, “We’ll stop every two hours to stretch our legs,” but once he got on the road it was tough to stop.  We realized that it takes at least a day to move out of the “get to our destination as fast as possible” mode and into “the journey IS our destination” mode.  So.  More potty stops in our future, hopefully.

Neal and Estee hosted a rack of lamb dinner, with roasted vegetables and a great wine.  We are tempted to stay here and be spoiled for two weeks, rather than face the rigors and privations of camping.