Summer Vacation - Road Trip

We're back from our road trip vacation where we logged over 3000 road miles with three kids ages 16,12,2 and survived! We went to Minnesota first for a family wedding, then on to De Smet, SD to the Laura Ingalls Homestead (my favorite), to Rapid City, SD (Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Bear Country, Custer State Park, Ironwood & Needles Highways), to Cody, WY, and Yellowstone National Park.

We weathered tornado warnings, hunkering down with other guest in the hotel's main floor where we were staying until the storm passed.

We surveyed the damage as we drove through the path of the storm the next day. There were trees and branches down through the entire state of Minnesota and very wet conditions.

We experienced temperatures reaching 102 degrees in some cities on our trip. Dry heat they tell us is better than the humid heat we are use to, but hot is still hot in my book.

I am afraid of heights. Let me rephrase that, I am desperately afraid of heights. Driving through the mountains, with steep grades and drastic drop offs, was a life threatening experience for me. I was in tears at times driving through the Buckhorn mountains to Cody, WY. I should have known better when the highway signs approaching the route we were going to take offered up another route that was safer with less grade. Seriously, there were three billboard sized signs suggesting another route. I begged my husband to heed the signs. He finally did - on the return trip! I had to endure the unsafe route on the trip to Yellowstone but we took the alternate on the way home. I have no pictures of the trip west through the Buckhorns because I was glued to the middle of the car and both of my hands were hanging on for dear life. Now, I know why they put those little handles above the window in the Jeep doors. I was petrified!

Our second night in our cabin (in the wooded mountains right outside of the East entrance to Yellowstone and an hour away from the next town),a ten minute rain spell produced one lightening bolt that hit the transformer that powered our cabin and the lodge that supported us. Did I mention this happened right at dinner time. Remember, the next town is 60 minutes away, the territory is mountainous and curvy, and the route not one I want to drive too often, much less in the dark. I was slightly worried I might not get an evening meal. However, we had a perfect dinner in the dark with the other guest. They were able to grill anything we wanted because that required gas, not electricity. Worked out ok.

During the power outage, everyone sat outside where it was lighter, so we all either saw or heard the car accident that happened at the end of the lodge driveway. Everyone was ok although they did take the pregnant lady to the ER to make sure. It was quite the night of excitement for the girls.

At one of our stop over cities on the drive home, we had interesting pool guests. A couple, ex-hippies, I'm guessing, spent the entire day in a routine that looked like this. Drink a can of beer while sitting at the table, go outside and smoke a cigarette, dive in pool and swim three laps, hug each other a few times, slide the cooler to the hot tub and enjoy beer and hot tub, slide cooler back to table, enjoy another beer, go outside for a cigarette, etc. This went on like clockwork all day. Oh, there was the minor interruptions when the guy had to take the cooler back to the hotel room to restock the supply, otherwise the routine was fairly consistent. To me, it just looked like a death sentence waiting to happen. I could not have survived it myself.

Thank God for my husband's laptop and a million DVDs checked out from the local library! Keeping the two year old entertained was critical in preventing her from kicking her sisters in the face every five minutes. In a car seat, the only thing she could really move was her arms or legs. So, kicking and pulling hair helped her pass the time. You can just imagine how well teenage girls handle shoes to the face and their hair being messed up. Now, that I think about it, it was funny. At the time though, not so funny.

Anyway, all kidding aside, we had an amazing trip. We were blessed to see God's beautiful country, the diversity in landscape, the clouds form into storms, and meet people from all over the United States and Canada. It was truly a memorable experience. I'm a history buff and there's so much history in the towns we traveled through to see and experience firsthand. However, as a Christian we had to filter out all the references to evolutionary theory and the suggestion that it took millions of years to form some of the things we saw. How about one major flood caused by God's anger at the world?

It's really beneficial to get the kids out into God's world and out from behind a textbook for a while. We were able to see things we had learned about in books and they came alive for us in a whole new way.

Hope you all are having an educational, relaxing, interesting, exciting summer vacation yourself.