Trip Home: Part 2

Grand Teton National Park ...

From Idaho Falls, we headed to Grand Teton National Park. We left after breakfast on Monday morning. The drive was nice. We climbed a very high pass. I think the grade was 10% (I am sure Jeremy would remember), and the pass was about 10,000ft or more. We came back down and entered the Teton Range in a fairly flat plain area. The mountains were off the the left (I believe that is west). They looked high, jagged, and pretty incredible. The reality is that they were lower than most of the mountains we had been gazing at the past year. Grand Teton, which is the highest mountain there, is under 14,000ft. That being said, these mountains are very difficult to climb because of their jagged peaks. We set up camp at Colter Bay Campground. It was a short walk to a large lake bordered by the Tetons. We took it pretty easy at this park partly because Jeremy's knee was giving him trouble. So, we took a blanket and our books and headed to the lakeshore to enjoy the day and the view. We went back to watch the sunset as well. The picture to the left that has Jeremy's feet in it was at sunset with the rays of sunlight streaming between the mountains. The view was a bit hazy, but they said it is due to the wild fires all the way in California! It was still pretty impressive. In the evening, we went to the Ranger Talk. She has been a ranger here for over 13 summers. During the year, she is a fifth grade teacher in Florida (I think). It was interesting to hear her experiences and look at her pictures. She also showed us pictures of her climb up Grand Teton - lots of technical rock climbing involved! We left the park on Tuesday morning to see if we could catch some of the wildlife in Yellowstone, which is only about an hour from Grand Teton Nataional Park.

Yellowstone National Park...

We were at Yellowstone from Tuesday morning through Thursday morning. This was the longest we stayed in any location. We arrived to the park through the south entrance. Although we were hoping to see some wildlife in the early morning, we didn't get lucky enough to see any. We traveled to the west to Old Faithful, which was our first stop. Old Faithful is a great geyser. It is not the biggest geyser, but it is one of the more reliable ones, and it is impressive. So, we waited for a short time before watching it in all its glory. From their we continued north through the rest of the geyser basin. We did take on trail to an overlook area (see pic on left) and then around to a waterfall (see pic on right). It was a good hike with a great view of most of the geyser basin to the south and all the way back to Old Faithful. The waterfall was pretty cool too. It was not huge, but it was pretty. There were a lot of people there - a whole boy scout troop, I think. So, our pictures seem pretty crowded. (Side note: This was probably one of the busiest places we visited, but we were lucky enough that it was not so busy as to get stuck in traffic jams.) We continued on through the smelly section of the park to our campgroud at Madison, near the West entrance. We set up the tent, hopped back in the car, and continued north to sight see in the upper loop. On our way, we pulled over at a large gathering of cars - usually this means great wildlife - and we were not disappointed. We walked into a grove of trees and saw two elk with the biggest set of antlers I have ever seen. I tried to get a good picture. We were only 20 yards away or so (I know that is not very smart), and I was nervous. They were pretty magnificent! (Note on pictures: The pictures are taken at two separate times in the same location. The one on the left is when we went into the woods. The one on the right is the next day; they look like similar elk.)

We traveled all the way to Mammoth and all around the loop back to Madison before dark. We stopped at a number of places along the way, but saved the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone for the next day. We went back to the campground for night. We went to a ranger talk that night (surprise, surprise) on the reintroduction of wolves back into Yellowstone.

The next morning we headed first to Grand Canyon of Yellowstone where you can see upper and lower falls - very beautiful. We got there early, which was nice because there were lots of people crowding the area by the time we were leaving. We drove pretty much right to the upper falls overlook. (This is Jeremy to the right at the upper falls.) It is a cool sight. If you have been to Niagra, you have an idea of how it feels to stand right at the brink of the falls. We hiked a short path to see the lower falls. There was no one at this falls, which made it really peaceful. This view is equally impressive. Apparently, the falls are higher than Niagra is, but the width does not rival Niagra. We then drove to Artist's Point. This is where a lot of pictures are taken, paintings are painted, and postcards are made. We took pictures too (see left). From here you look back on lower falls, but upper falls cannot be seen. We left the falls area and headed south to Yellowstone Lake. On our driving route today, we saw a few buffalo posing alongside the road and couldn't resist the picture - YIKES! We stopped at Bridge Bay for a picnic. We looped back around west, saw Old Faithful again, ate at the lodge, and took a walk on the boardwalks to see more of the geysers and hot springs in this area. The walk was long, and soon all the geyers and springs looked the same, but it was nice stretch our legs. We headed back to our campground before dark. Jeremy headed down to a stream in our campground to flyfish. I took a book, a blanket, and the camera. I don't think he caught anything, but if he did, he just released it anyway. This night we didn't go to a Ranger talk. We took our tired selves to bed instead.

Thursday morning, we headed out fairly early after eating breakfast and cleaning up the tent. We first stopped at the Norris Geyser Basin for this cool shot to the right of all the steaming geysers. We were headed out the northeast entrance through the "Serengetti of Yellowstone." It is an open plain area. This is where the wolves were re-introduced. We didn't see wolves, but we did see, on our way there, a black bear!! It was on one side of the road foraging for food when we stopped to watch; it then meandered across the road - right beside our car! - and up the hill on the other side. It was crazy! We saw big herds of bison roaming the plains area. They are awkward looking creatures, but make great scenery. This was Jeremy's favorite area of the park. If we had had more time, I thnk we would have watched the bison for quite awhile. It was animal central on our way out. We took the scenic drive into Montana via Bear Tooth Pass. This was one of my favorite parts of my whole trip home. It was so beautiful. I don't know if captured it with the camera, but we tried. It was breathtaking - lots of mountain lakes, snow still on the ground in places, and green grass growing as well. Awesome! This is a pull over spot that we had some great people who had also stopped take our picture. We continued along the scenic route until we hit I-90, which we followed until heading south at some point to go see Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument. For those who don't know, this was the location of Custer's Last Stand. We made it to the Monument just in time to hear a very desciptive Ranger talk of the battle. I didn't remember a whole lot about it, so it was a good learning opportunity for me. It was very hot here. From there, we continued south to Buffalo, Wyoming where we stayed in a very small cabin the size of our Four Runner (see bottom right pic). We went to historic downtown Buffalo for some ice cream. We visited the Occidental Hotel. It was a "full service" hotel (if you know what I mean) back in the day when all the outlaws would come to this area to seek refuge. The shot to the left is of the lobby area. It was really cool.

Well, I think this was long enough. In the next post, I will tell you about Mt. Rushmore and the rest of our trip home.

Trip Home: Part 1

Okay, it has been awhile since we traveled home, so I may not include as many details as I normally would ... some of you might appreciate that! :)

We left La Jara about 1pm on Saturday, July 26th. It was sad to leave all our friends behind. Such a funny feeling to just up and leave after a year. I know we already miss them and wonder what they are up to. The house can definitely be a more hopping place when you share it with so many! Anyway, we headed the 6 or so hours to Arches National Park in southern Utah. We took our time getting there. By the time we got to the park, it was almost dusk. We drove through almost the whole park to get to Devil's Campground where we would be staying for the night. We set up camp right away. Then, we headed to our favorite activity in the National Parks - the Ranger Talk. I am not being sarcastic either. It is like watching the Discovery Channel live. That night the Ranger talked about the book Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. It compelled Jeremy to want to purchase it; he is currently reading it. The guy was a former Ranger in the park years ago - somewhat controversial in what he says apparently.

The next morning we decided to get up early and go for a hike before heading out on the road. Jeremy really wanted to see the famous Delicate Arch; it is a well-photographed arch. So, we woke up about 5:30am, cleaned up camp, and headed out about 40 minutes later. The hike was labeled strenous, but it was nothing compared to most of what we have done this year. The Arch was really neat. It was huge. You can see how small Jeremy looks next to it in the picture to the right. This is us a short distance from it in the picture in the upper left. The morning was cool, but by the time we were headed back the sun had started beating down - and it was only 7:30am!! We hiked to Landscape Arch as well. Not as cool, but it is one of the longest natural arches in the world. I think Landscape Arch would have been more amazing if you could see the sky through it, but the rock wall behind it made it less impressive. (See pic to the left.) We ate a quick breakfast of bagels with cream cheese before hitting the road. We headed north through Salt Lake City. Our car's temperature gauge shot up when we got to SLC. When we checked the coolant level, we discovered the problem - there was no coolant. We went to Big K, kept a watch on the car, and kept on driving. We went to Preston, Idaho. For those who don't know, Preston is the location of the Napoleon Dynamite movie. Unfortunately the Chamber of Commerce was closed, and they had maps of the movie locations. Fortunately, Jeremy talked to a lady at a gas station who drew us a map to Napoleon's house and the llamas. We only ended up visiting Napoleon's house. It is a little dumpier than in the movie, but we saw it! (See pic to the right.) From there, we headed to Idaho Falls. We had a hotel reservation that overlooked the Snake River. (See pic to the left.) It was a great view. It was also nice to sleep on a bed. :)

Well, that's it for tonight. Next blog... Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park (that means a lot of great scenery!)

We're Home!

So, I don't know who is really still reading this, but I thought I would continue posting as much as possible for all my friends in Colorado. We had a big trip home - more than 3000 miles and over 400 photos!!! I will post about it bit by bit over the next week or so. Keep checking back.

In the meantime, I thought I would update you on life...
We arrived back to our place on Tuesday (August 5th) evening. We had planned to just sleep on the floor, but the carpets were still damp (we had the carpets cleaned that day); in addition, the house was a bit dirty. So, we called our dear friend, Andrea, who let us stay at her place at the last minute. On Wednesday, we went on errands - changing the title of the car back to our name, getting a new license plate, and, in the process of that, getting Jeremy a new social security card (his card was laminated which apparently makes it invalid). We met Jeremy's mom (Gloria) and his brother (Jason) at our house around 11am. We began cleaning at that point. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned - with a short lunch break - until 4:45pm!!!! It finally felt more like our house at that point. Then, we ate at Skyline Chili (Jason's request) and Graeters (Jeremy's request) before bringing one load from the storage unit and then waving good-bye to family. It was an exhausting day.

On Thursday, my three brothers (Nate, Luke, and Ben) took a day off work to come help us unpack our storage unit. Jeremy and I picked up some stuff and were unloading when they pulled up. They were ready to work. We took the Four-Runner, my parent's van (no seats), and an S-10 pick up (courtesy of Mike) to the storage unit for about 5-6 trips. On about the 3rd trip Nick (youth pastor at our church) arrived to help. And on about the 5th trip, Jason returned to help. We had the whole thing cleaned out in about 3 hours - amazing work! All the boxes were in their designated locations within our house, so there would be very little carrying boxes up and down stairs. We took everyone out to El Vaquero Mexican Restaurant (thanks, mom!) to feed their hungry bellies. Everyone then departed and left us to do the unpacking. I really enjoy unpacking. It was exciting to see what we had here. We live in such wealth here (versus the MVS unit). I couldn't believe how many wooden spoons, serving utensils, matching dishes, and various sizes of pots and pans that I have. I feel completely blessed. We were completely unpacked by Saturday noon. Friday night we took a break to go have a delicious and relaxing supper with Mike and Anja.

Over the weekend, we visited with family. It was good to see everyone. My little neices and nephews certainly don't seem that little anymore. It is crazy how much they change in six months!

On a side note...My dad is recovering from back surgery which he had on Wednesday, July 31st. He seems to be doing pretty well - normal set-backs, still good signs of recovery occurring. Please keep him in your prayers for encouragement and healing.

Work notes... Jeremy is job hunting and interviewing. Pray for patience, confidence, and opportunities. I went into school for the first time today. I will do more serious work tomorrow. Pray that I don't stress out when I start looking at the curriculum.

Coming Home

On Wednesday, Jeremy and I played in our last softball game. It was a nail-biter of a game. Jeremy had a great hit past the left center fielder. I had two of my more solid hits in awhile. The final score was 11-9; we WON!!! Our record is 7-3. The team has one more game on Monday night before tournaments begin. Hopefully, they will do well. We have been busy, busy, busy this past week. On Monday night, we had softball. On Tuesday, we were with my cousins til 8:30pm. On Wednesday night, we had softball. On Thursday night, we had a volunteer going away party with La Puente til 9pm. Tonight, we have a little party with Jeremy's boss, Mike. So, hopefully, by tomorrow at noon we can have everything packed up, in the car, and be on our way to Arches National Park. We are almost packed up, but we have a few more things that need done. I am sure it will get done. Needless to say, we will not be blogging for awhile. I would like to start again when we get back to Ohio, but it may be mid-August before it happens. Here is itinerary if you would like to know where we will be when...

Saturday (7/26) - Arches National Park, Utah
Sunday (7/27) - Salt Lake City; Idaho Falls, ID
Monday (7/28) - Grand Tetons National Park, WY
Tuesday (7/29) - Yellowstone National Park, WY
Wednesday (7/30) - Yellowstone National Park, WY
Thursday (7/31) - Buffalo, WY
Friday (8/1) - Devil's Tower, WY; Custer, SD
Saturday (8/2) - Custer, SD
Sunday (8/3) - Wall Drug, SD; Corn Palace, SD; Mountain Lake, MN
Monday (8/4) - Dyersville, IA (Field of Dreams); Chicago area, IL
Tuesday (8/5) - Goshen, IN; HOME in OHIO!!!!

Thanks for your prayers and support.

American Basin

On Tuesday, we took our last day off work. (I know it is our last week, and this does seem a bit strange.) My cousin (Kristin) and her family were on their annual camping trip in Colorado. They have been camping near Lake City, Colorado for the past 10 years or so. We decided that we would drive to go see them and hang out for a day. (I usually tried to visit about once a year their place in Kansas City, so this would get in my yearly visit.) We left about 7:30am; it is about a three hour trip from our place. We met them in the quaint little town of Lake City about 11am. We hopped back in the car to head to the American Basin - one of the most beautiful places in the San Juan Mountain Range. It is a four wheel drive road there through the mountains. It had lots of snowmelt waterfalls cascading down the mountainsides. There were huge towering rockies all around us. It was beautiful. The road opens up into a basin with a river running through it. There are lots and lots of wildflowers! I obviously don't really know any of the names. I included some pictures though. I did not get a picture of the state flower of Colorado, the Columbine, that was all over the basin. The sky started clouding up as we were making lunch - mini raviolis and sauce, yum! I think my pictures would have turned out better had there been more blue skies. We hiked only a little ways because 1) Jeremy and I could hardly walk, and 2) time was growing short because we wanted to leave by 4ish. The picture on the right is my cousins family by one of the waterfalls we saw on our hike. On the way back down the four wheel drive road, we started noticing the mountains ahead of us looked like they were getting snow - in JULY! Then, we started seeing it where we were driving! Actually, it was hail and lots of it! Check out the picture to the left.... looks like a winter wonderland, huh? We actually got out of there about 5pm, a little later than we expected, but okay.

On the way back we stopped at the North Clear Creek Falls, which Jeremy has been wanting to see. It was pretty neat. I included a photo to the right. We were starving, so we stopped at Boogie's Restaurant in Del Norte. They were excellent burgers! and they were fast with our food, which is always good when you are starving. :) We made it home by 8:30pm; I did our chores for the week - lots of sweeping and mopping. Then, I headed to bed. One night behind on packing stuff, but I am sure we will catch up at some point - after the softball game or the going away party or supper with Mike and Gigi.... we'll see.

Blanca Peak

Blanca Peak.... Jeremy and I have two different stories; I don't know if he'll have time to put his story in print or not. Mine is much more bleak. I wanted to hike Blanca when we first arrived in the Valley last August. But, of course, you can't just go hike a 14er. You need to adjust to the altitude and prepare a bit. By the time we had done that, the small window of opportunity was gone. The weather can be brutal up there in the wind, winter, and colder fall nights. So, we waited unitl next summer. Unfortunately, by this July, I didn't really care if I hiked it or not. I have done a lot of things during my time here in Colorado, and I didn't really feel like I would be missing much if I didn't do this. However, David and Emmy, Jeff, Kendra, and Jeremy were all going. Claire was waiting on my decision because she was as enthusiastic as I was. Because Jeremy was going, I felt I needed to go - you know, not be the loser who won't try something in our relationship. :) Jeremy told me to just stay home if I didn't want to go, but I didn't listen. So, on Saturday, July 19 at 9am, we started our journey from La Jara toward the mountain. We had to stop to get gas, change backpacks, and some other miscellaneous stuff. We finally arrived at the parking spot at 11am. We (Jeremy, me, Kendra, Claire, and Taylor) rolled out of the car and placed our 25-30 pound backpacks on our backs - yuck! You follow "the most difficult 4-wheel drive road in Colorado" for the first day's hike. It was horrible. This road would take us to Lake Como where we would camp that night. The road was rocky, steep, and never-ending. I hated every step of it. Poor Jeremy was with three reluctant - and not always very encouraging - hikers. Each hiker we passed gave us bad news - "Still a long ways to go", "After the stream, you have 1100 feet of elevation to go. It steep and bad." Until finally, we sat down a rock to rest thinking we could go no further, and a hiker coming down said, "Don't stop now. You only have about 15 more minutes!" We slowly rose from our resting positions and continued on our way. Claire let out a scream for joy when we finally saw the lake at 5pm - almost 6 hours and 6 miles after the beginning of the trek. We set up tents, laid on the grass, fly fished, ate freeze dried (and very yummy) suppers, and enjoyed the view. It was beautiful at Lake Como. Jeremy caught his first trout (see pic to the left). We crawled into our sleeping bags and waited for the 5:30am wake up call.
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At 5:30am, Will (volunteer at La Puente), Jeremy, Claire, Taylor, Emmy, and I emerged from our tents, wiped the sleep from our eyes, tried to eat some breakfast, filtered water, and then began part two of our trek to Blanca. We started walking without the really heavy bags and discovered what a gift losing about 25 pounds can be! This part of the hike was beautiful. We passed three more lakes and hiked on the rolling trail. We thought this was going to be easy until we arrived at the boulder field. This was no normal boulder field. This was the whole side of Blanca. It lead to Blanca Peak, Ellingwood Peak, and Little Bear - All 14ers! We slowly picked our way up the side of the mountain. Will - our fearless leader - was like a mountain goat and went straight up. I freaked out a bit and started trying to follow the cairns. This gave me little goals and helped keep my mind and stomach settled. We arrived at the high point of the saddle between Ellingwood and Blanca. You can see the crew (minus me who is taking the pic) on the saddle - note drop off on the backside of us! The other picture is of the ridge to Ellingwood Peak and then the backbone of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind it. The view into the valley was awesome. It was lush and green. I am not really sure that my camera captured it, but I tried. The San Luis Valley was flat and went on forever! Jeremy summited Blanca after resting awhile. I decided that maybe I didn't want to walk along the ridge (you can see the Blanca ridge behind us in the group photo) and would consider the saddle my summit. Claire and I hung out there and waited for the remainder to summit and return to the saddle - about 40 minutes round-trip.
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When the group returned, we headed back - destination: the car! The hike from the lake to the summit was 3.2 miles one way. The boulder field was surprisingly easier on the way down because we could follow the "trail" down. We continued hiking, refilled our water up at the first lake, and continued hiking. We finally made it back to the campsite (total hiking for the day: 6.4 miles) about 2pm. We tossed off our small bags and flopped down on our sleeping bags. I was exhausted! We laid down for about 10 minutes before packing up camp. We left about 3pm for the final leg down the dreaded Jeep road. My feet hurt, the pads of my big toes were rubbed raw, between my shoulder blades was going numb with pain, and I was miserable. The road never seemed to end. When we finally hit treeline we should have been relieved; however, this was the exact moment the thunder started and the rain began falling. We continued hiking. The rain turned to small pellets of hail. The thunder cracked; the lightning flashed. Most of us took cover for a bit. The storm did not let up; we decided to keep going; we were already wet anyway. Finally, after 30 minutes the storm let up, but the cold breeze continued. We were miserable and dragging our feet, trying not to trip on the rocks. We arrived to the car - such a pretty sight - but I had no energy to even be excited. We ordered pizza, which we were too exhausted to eat, watched a re-run of Seinfeld, took some Advil, and went to bed.
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I will never again hike Blanca Peak. I guess I would recommend it for the views after/at Lake Como. I am still working on being able to say that I am proud to accomplished such a feat. I am just happy - three days later - to finally be able to walk without limping, although there is still pain that shoots through my tired calf muscles. Jeremy, of course, may paint a little better picture (as would one or two others in our group), but this is my account of Blanca Peak.

Softball

We Won!!! It was a fun game on Monday night. We won 14-2, which may have helped. But really, the team was just fun to play. They would compliment good plays by us, and we would reciprocate. Our record is now 6-3. We have two more games left before tournaments start. We will only be here for Wednesday nights game and not for tournaments at all. We will have to find out how our team is doing when we return to Ohio.

Jeremy and I are headed to Lake City, Colorado, which is about three hours from here. My cousin, Kristin, and her family are camping there and we thought it would be our only chance to see them for another year. It will be fun. I think I may have time tonight to blog about our hike up Mt. Blanca. So, check back tomorrow. Have a great Tuesday.