My first visit to Zachary's Pizza

As the saying goes, there are 2 really great pizza places in the Bay Area: Zachary's Pizza and the Cheeseboard. People who have lived in Norcal know of these two places and often argue over which is better. So, finally, I had my first experience at Zachary's Pizza.

David and I had to make a trip to Emeryville to Ikea. Ikea is cool and all IF the place is empty. It sucks going to Ikea when it is crazy busy. Imagine having these tiny aisles that you need to navigate through but you have shopping carts and little kids running around the shopping carts and all you want is a couple lamps. Then you realize you're on the wrong floor completely and could have avoided some of the crazy kids. Fun, right?! NO. So after the crazy visit to Ikea, David suggested we have dinner at Zachary's Pizza since I had never been. He went one New Years with his family a few years ago.

Using his wonderful iPhone, we looked up directions and made it there in one piece without dying (his GPS was all screwy in Oakland).


Zachary's was insane! There was a line out the door on a Sunday night just before 6pm! When I first entered, it looked like there was no order to the madness but then I realized it was very organized. If you want to eat there, you head up to the greeter and he takes your name and gives you a piece of paper that says approximately when they will have a table ready for you. But, the cool part is that you can then place your order while you are waiting for your table so your food should be ready once you sit down! Neat, huh? You can also order half baked pizza to go which you then finish cooking at home.

We put our name in (about a 45 min wait) and placed our order. We found a nice spot to wait out of the main flow of traffic. We waited about 10 minutes and then they called us! We still had to wait a fair bit for our pizza, but we had free refills that were filled very often (awesome!) and a salad to munch on while we waited. Soon, our order came out: we ordered a small pizza. It was wonderful!!! The pizzas at Zachary's are Chicago style so they have really thick crust. We got the crust stuffed with cheese. It had pepperonis buried under the layer of pizza sauce topped with chunks of tomatoes. MMM! Even tho we ordered a small, we still had leftovers to take home. That's how much pizza you get. It's very deceiving.

So, I had a great first experience at Zachary's. It's not David's favorite kind of pizza cuz he doesn't like tomato chunks, but I LOVE those. Next time we're near East Bay, we'll have to try the Cheeseboard out and see how it compares.

Settling down in California for now

Now that David and my US road trip has come to completion, it's time to settle down and start working again. David received a job offer he couldn't refuse in San Rafael which is in Northern California. Once he had his job finalized, we began looking for various places around his work to live. His work is off the 101 freeway in North Bay so ideally we wanted to find something close by. He has the inside scoop that the company would be moving their office to Novato after the Thanksgiving holiday so we started our search there.

Novato is a cute town just north of San Rafael with approximately 53,000 people so not too many. It's located roughly 30 miles north of San Francisco so it's an easy drive if suburbia becomes too much. We checked out about 5 places before deciding on the place we ultimately chose (since we needed to decide rather quickly so we could head back to So-cal and finish packing). We decided on a 2 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath 2 story townhouse. We have a garage and washer/dryer hookups! It's located on its own "court" and it's very quiet here at night. We have a Lucky's (yes, they're still around) around the corner from us and a larger Safeway not too much farther away. We have several restaurant choices all within easy walking distance but most of the restaurants are located in San Rafael. The restaurants are mainly on Grant Ave which is lined with lighted trees at night, making it a pretty cute street to drive down. But, so many places in Novato close pretty early, as early as 6pm.


click image for gallery
So, now we have a place to live, but we don't have anything to put in it! Before David and I went on our road trip, David had a big yard sale and got rid of most of his stuff. The only furniture he held onto were two double beds. Now began our frantic search for new furniture experience. We started in the high desert because we figured it would be better to buy stuff in Socal where it would be cheaper, where we had my Dad's truck to ship it back to Phelan in and where the movers could move it for us! We managed to find a couch set which consists of a couch, love seat and recliner (5 recliners in total!). Next, we located a washer, dryer, and dining room table. Those were the basic things we needed. We ran out of time to get anything else until we were up north. All of this and more were piled into my parents' garage awaiting the big move.


David had to drive back up to the townhouse before I was able to. David's company was paying to relocate us so I had to stay down south to oversee the movers packing up our stuff. We had a utility company coming on the Friday before he started working so I tried to send some stuff up with him such as a aerobed, vacuum and clothes so the house wouldn't be too empty. The moving company came the following Tuesday and I was able to drive up then.




Poor David had an empty house to stay in for 4 nights. I brought up the remainder of the clothes and most of the kitchen stuff so at least we could cook and eat at home. The place was pretty empty when I arrived. All the rooms were empty except for our bedroom which only had the aerobed.




Originally, the moving company said that they wouldn't be able to deliver our things for 9 days!! 9 DAYS to be without all of our stuff!! Luckily, after David called and bugged them every day for nearly a week, they said that they would be able to deliver it on the Saturday after I had moved up. So, only a 4 day turn around. Not too bad.

They arrived early on Saturday and finished unloading pretty quickly. It was so nice not to have to move everything ourselves. A moving company is the way to go if you can get your work to pay for it!! :) It took the weekend to unpack everything and get it organized (yes, I'm insane and can unpack that quickly). We have a pretty big townhouse. It's soooo nice to have so much space and a place to put everything!

So, as I mentioned earlier, we were lacking a lot of furniture. Once we were both up here, we went out furniture shopping AGAIN. We managed to find a desk, printer stand, and 2 shelves at Staples. Then we found a cute furniture store in San Rafael that sold inexpensive bedroom sets. We badly needed dressers. We found a set that came with 2 dressers, a mirror, a bed frame, and 2 night stands. We ordered a queen mattress to go with the bed so now we have 3 beds! Guess, we need to get rid of one of them. :P

So, the house is looking lived in.










We are still waiting on the delivery of the bedroom furniture, so I'll post new pics of those once they have arrived and are all set up. We only have a couple more things to pick up but have to go to the Ikea in Emeryville to get those. Not looking forward to that. Maybe we'll get to that this weekend. Now, I need to find a job.... :)

US Travel Journal Part 8

September 9, 2008

Hmm, the day was so long, I’ve forgotten what happened!! Well, first of all, scratch the plans that I told you all about yesterday and this is what we did instead. Don’t you love how we just change our minds all the time! At least David and I are both that way or one of us would get really annoyed at the other. :P Instead of going to Salt Lake City to walk around the city, we decided to head south to Arches National Park instead. The weather wasn’t really good for pictures in SLC so we’ll come back to it another time when we just have a car.

It was a long day of driving. We had to drive south to Provo, Utah and then head east along Hwy 6 towards and past Price, UT. Next we headed east on I-70 east to Crescent Junction and then south on Hwy 191 to Arches National Park. We stopped at a rest stop along the way for lunch and arrived at Arches around 4 pm. As we approached the park, these towering red mountains came into view. It reminded me of the Grand Canyon except there wasn’t a deep gorge with a river in it.


There’s supposed to be shattered thunderstorms all week in Utah, so Arches NP was covered in clouds too but we were still able to get some pretty good pics when the sun came out.


click image for gallery
The visitor center was at the bottom of a mountain and the road into the park wound up this mountain. The landscape was formed by vertical spits in the rock and water slowly wore away at it leaving tall pillars. The park was amazing. The colors of the rocks shown so brightly in the sun: reds, oranges, yellows and even some green. We stopped at Balancing Rock. We hiked the short loop around the formation and waited awhile for the sun to come out.


We drove through the rest of the park without stopping until the back portion called Desert Garden. The light was starting to fade as the sun was sinking low into the sky and was masked by thick gray clouds. We hiked part of the trail.


Once we finished the small hike, the light of the day was almost gone as we walked back to the RV. We drove out of the park in twilight. It’s pretty neat at night too. With just a touch of light left, the dark blue sky silhouetted the tall black pillars. Deciding to stay at a rest stop further south, we drove through Moab. It looks like a pretty happening town. I would love to go back there and walk up and down the main street. Not sure if we will tho but if we come back! :)

Well, that’s it for today. I’m pooped. Good night.


September 10, 2008

Pretty tired tonight so will only have a short entry. We went back to Arches NP and drove through it again but this time we stopped and hiked more of the trails. It was so beautiful in the morning with nearly clear skies. The sun was bright and the rock formations in the park were lit up in a bright orangish-red color. We stopped at the Courthouse towers first and took a few pics.


click on image for gallery
Next we headed over to Turret Arch and North and South Window Arches. The North and South Window Arches were joined together by a large concentration of rocks and the whole structure looked like ET’s face. :)


We hiked up to Turret Arch and then Southern Window Arch.


Turret Arch
We took the primate trail around the back of the Northern Window Arch but the best viewing of it was on the other side. The primate trail took us back to the RV so we hiked back to the better viewed side of Northern Window Arch for some good pics. Then we hiked back to the RV for more water and lunch. It looked like it was gonna rain but it never did. I only felt a few drops on my face here and there.


On the other side of the parking loop (leaving the RV in the same spot), we hiked to Double Arch. This Arch was amazing. I hiked up to the top of one and David took a picture of me. The wind was blowing so hard it almost took my hat off my head and blew me off. Luckily, I had places to hold on to.


The formation is called Double Arch because there are two arches that connect at one junction.


Next, we drove to Delicate Arch. To see this arch up close, you have to hike 1.5 miles up a not so difficult trail, 3 miles round trip. It was pretty easy; just my lungs like to slow me down on the uphill parts. :P The first part of the trail is well marked and on gravel. We stopped to see some petroglyphs along the way.


Next, the trail turns to walking on the slickrock and being guided by small flat stones stacked on top of each other called rock cairns.


It wasn’t slippery at all but I could imagine how slippery it would become if it started to rain. Parts of the trail were also just on very fine sand. It was like the finest beach sand that you could find but it was bright orange.


Once up to the top and around a mountain, there it was, ever so delicate, resting on the edge of a rounded rock that was worn away like a bowl. Delicate Arch was my favorite arch in the park. When the sun hit it just right, it lit up bright orange.




We hung out here for quite awhile, waiting for the sun to come out for the best pictures. As I sat on a big rock, David walked around trying to take pictures from every angle. I saw a squirrel as I waited hoping it would come closer so I could take a picture of it, but he was scared of me like he should be. There were 2 ravens that were not so people shy. There were a few couples relaxing on other rocks feeding the birds so they could take pictures of them. Dumb people! Don’t they think before they feed animals. They treat everything like it is their domesticated pet. Makes me mad. But, I digress. :) The sun would only come out for a minute or two and then would hide behind the clouds again. We waited for at least a half hour before returning back to the RV. The hike back was mainly all downhill so it went by very fast. We even saw a couple small lizards on the trail running at full speed away from us.

Lastly, for the day, we drove up to the Devils Garden area and attempted to hike to Double O Arch. Along the way, we saw Landscape arch and the arch that recently fell in August of this year: Wall Arch.

The hike up to Landscape Arch was pretty easy but soon after the trail became a “Primate trail” on one part of it (next to the remnants of Wall Arch) you had to scramble up sandstone rocks. The light was starting to dim and we didn’t want to hike that in the dark on the way back, so we turned around and headed back to the RV. We stopped at Balancing Rock on the way out of the park. David was able to get some good sunset pics here.


We decided to stay at the same rest stop that we stayed at the night prior since we left the park at 8 pm again tonight. We made a couple of pit stops in the town of Moab first. Got some gas, supplies and souvenirs before heading to the rest stop. We took some wonderful showers and had a snack. Now, I’m off to bed. All that walking in the sun has made me pretty tired. Night!


September 11, 2008

It was soooo nice to sleep in this morning!!! We didn’t need to leave super early since we were at a rest stop and not at an RV park, so David made me pancakes :) and we took our time getting ready. We’re heading in the direction of 4 corners today. 4 corners is where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado all share a border and there’s a marker there. So, that should be cool to stand in 4 states all at once! :)

We got on the road about 9:30 and headed south. I was consulting the map to determine the best route when I realized that we would be only 10 miles from the turn off to go to Mesa Verde NP. David’s really been wanting to go there and had heard that you couldn’t drive an RV through it. I figured that since we were so close we should check it out and inquire about the RV. When we got to Cortez we headed east towards the park entrance.

At the entrance, there was a sign that said no trailers or towed vehicles allowed on the road. That must have been what he had heard. When we arrived at the ranger station, the ranger took one look at the RV and said, “Ya, your length is fine.” Sweet! We get to see the pueblos!

Mesa Verde NP contains the ruins of homes of the ancient Pueblo people. There are 3 guided tours that you could sign up for and were only $3 per person per tour. That’s a deal! So, we signed up for the Cliff Palace tour which is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. It was pretty neat! The tour starts up on the road about the cliff. Then a ranger takes you down to the site and talks about the history of the site. The tour walks onto the site and takes you up a few ladders. It was fun to climb around. And, it was a very easy walk, only a 1/4 of a mile in length. Our ranger, Joe (a woman), was an excellent ranger. She made the tour very enjoyable and we had so much fun listening to her jokes and antics. She said that on one of her tours she had an old Pueblo Indian with her; she called him “Grandfather” so she talked about his stories in a funny way. She was a crowd pleaser!

Cliff Palace was awesome. Everything is made out of stone, wood and mortar. The Indians built multi-story buildings and sunken rooms called kivas into the cliffs. As far as Cliff Palace, the cliff is on a south facing wall so in the winter, it is shielded from the wind and in the summer as the sun orbits higher in the sky, it is shielded by the sun! Pretty neat, huh!

After the tour, we drove over to the park museum which had a brief movie on the park and several displays of Indian tools, pottery, jewelry and clothing. The Indians used everything that was around them for living. They even ate cacti! And they made sandals out of yucca leaves. We visited the gift shop before heading out of the park. Since it was after 5 pm, we decided to stay at a camp site right outside of the park’s entrance. It’s a kooky little RV park. As you drive in, there’s a mini-golf course, a tiny swimming pool and even a multicolored painted tractor tire. The laundry facilities are under the eave and outside of a building. But, somehow, they have internet and full hook-ups. It’s nice to have internet again. :) I know, I always say that! :D

That’s it for today. So, we didn’t make it to 4 corners, but we’ll get there tomorrow and hopefully this storm will blow over (it was raining not too long ago and we could hear thunder and see lightning) and it will be clear skies tomorrow. Anyway, night!

PS It’s pouring now and you can hear the thunder again. Fun! Mmm, warm bed….zzzzzz.


September 12, 2008

I awoke to clear skies this morning but you wouldn’t think that if you had been sleeping in our RV last night. Before I went to bed, it was raining pretty hard and it started to leak in the shower again. Then, I was woken up twice by thunder and loud rain pounding on our rooftop. David was up late processing pics and then the rain woke him up too. He only got a few hours of sleep in.

I woke up at 7 am like I usually do these days. David brought me tea in bed to help me wake up. He’s so sweet! :) Nothing sounded good for breakfast so we made grilled cheese sandwiches instead. We lingered at the campground until close to 11 am (which was check out time). We headed into Cortez and got gas and made a trip to Safeway. Ahhhh! Finally a normal size Safeway. We just haven’t had much luck with stores on our trip. Either they are too small and have a limited selection, they are remodeling and don’t have anything or they are located in a different country and don’t have the same things. So yes, it’s wonderful! :) We’re in CO by the way.

David almost threw me out of the front window this morning. Luckily I wasn’t up moving around the RV and was actually in my seat with my seatbelt on. We were driving out of Cortez and the light changed yellow. It would have been fine if he had ran it or stopped, but he hesitated so by the time he made a decision to stop, he had to slam on his breaks to stop. If we were in a normal car, this action would have been fine. But, it’s different in an RV. We have everything that a house has, but it’s stored away in various compartments. So, as long as it’s packed properly, transport really doesn’t shift it around too much. But, if you made sudden turns or stops, these cabinets can come open pretty easily as you all read about when the books fell on my head. :P So, I yelled at David of course cuz that’s how I am and went to see if there was anything thrown around the RV. I had to push the bed back on its wooden platform since it had slid forward until it hit the wall. Several drawers had flown open, but nothing broke which I was happy about. Anyway.

From Cortez, we headed to 4 Corners. It wasn’t crowded at all. We easily got our pics taken at the Dias.

After this, we picked up some Indian Fry bread with powdered sugar. It was very tasty and I think I prefer this more than honey, but I haven’t tried it with cinnamon and sugar yet. We sat down at a nearby picnic table to enjoy our treat and engaged other travelers, a woman and her uncle from CO and a man from AZ, in conversation. The guy said he had been on a road trip from DC and that his nephew is Steve Wozniak, the co-creator of Mac. He said he had just talked to him last week. Interesting. Wonder if he was telling the truth. Anyway, after we finished eating, David picked up a patch and got a cotton candy snow cone. I poured it into a big cup once I got back to the RV so it would be easier to pass back and for between the two of us. Once, when I took a bite, I noticed that there were tiny bits in the snow cone. On closer inspection, I realized it was a tiny ant!!! When I searched the cup, I found a ton of them and we had been eating them!!! EWWW!!! They must have crawled into the syrup and died. So, we got a little extra protein today, huh. I threw the rest out.

After 4 Corners, we drove towards Bluff. All the rocks were bright brick red and the road was so bumpy! I hate the roads in these backcountry areas. From Bluff, we drove to Mexican Hat. The town was named this because of a rock formation that looks like a sombrero.

From here, we drove through Monument Valley.

It was very hazy. The sun had a lot to do with that. My pics turned out fine if I shot away from the sun. The valley is probably very neat in the morning. The rocks and mountains here were dark brick red as well.

Once in the museum and trading post area of Monument Valley, we stopped at an abandoned parking lot for lunch and David took a nap. I can’t really take naps during the day anymore. The buildings in the lot looked brand new but were never used. Even the sidewalks looked new with weeds growing up from the cracks. It looked like it could have or would have been a school.

Once we were finished with lunch, we went to leave but the exit was tied off! Someone must have tied us in while we were having lunch. David got out and untied the rope to let us out. At least there wasn’t a padlock there!

From here we continued south. We drove through various Indian reservations most of the day. There were trinket boots everywhere, especially in tourist attractions like 4 Corners. David said this earlier and it is so true. These people used to live off the land and knew how to use everything to survive and thrive. They were masters of the land. Now they have been reduced to trinket sellers. It’s so sad! The White Man is just so evil.

We decided at lunch that we would put Grand Canyon off for another few days and check out the Meteor Crater by Winslow in Arizona. So, we drove thru Flagstaff, AZ and to the rest stop just past the crater. That way, we wouldn’t have to drive too far in the morning to get to it. We arrived there around 9 pm. So, we did a lot of driving today. Or, I should say David did. We started in Colorado, and then went to New Mexico, then Arizona, back to Utah and then back to Arizona again. We’ve had a very tiresome day so we’re gonna try to get some sleep. There’s a train near here and a ton of trucks so we’ll see how much we can get. Night!


September 13, 2008

Clear skies in the morning! Good sign! Maybe the storm is leaving the southwest. I’m hoping!! I slept in a bit this morning and didn’t get up until almost 8am. It was nice! :) We got ready quickly and left the rest stop to head to Meteor Crater. We were the first RV in the parking lot. It had opened at 7am and we got there just before 9am. The last time I had visited the crater was back in ’96 so it’s been 12 years for me. But, David had never been, so he was excited to see it. We walked up to the ticket booth and the guy who takes your ticket after you buy it already yelled a warm “Good morning!” to us. He started a conversation about Amsterdam (David was wearing his souvenir t-shirt). The guy was probably in his early 20’s and you could tell that he didn’t get too many people his age coming to the crater. David talked with him for about 5 minutes before more people showed up and we were able to slip past him into the center.

The center looked different from when I last visited it. There’s a test pod that I thought used to be up on the rim of the crater but was now in a court yard outside of the gift shop and Subway (ya, I don’t remember Subway either!). We walked out to the rim of the crater first before checking out the info movie and the museum. There was practically no one there that early in the off season. It made for some good pics. I like not having to wait for a crowd of people from a tour bus to move out of the way.

Back inside the center, we checked out the museum and watched the movie on meteors. After picking up some souvenirs and not eating at Subway, we headed back to Flagstaff. The plan was to get gas in Flagstaff and then head north to the Grand Canyon. Of course with us, we always get sidetracked somehow. :) First we got gas and almost got stuck in the gas station. That’s the problem with RV’s. You have to plan ahead whenever you plan on stopping somewhere. Luckily the gas station had a back alley that was large enough for the RV to fit. As we were heading out, there is the Flagstaff Mall and behind it is a Best Buy. So, we headed to Best Buy. As I case David around the store, I ask him, “what are you looking for?” He replies with, “Shh, you’re gonna mess up my vibe” or something like that. So, I continue to follow him. He picks up an external hard drive: 320 Gigs. He’s been wanting one of these for awhile now. I guess he figured now was as good time as any. Next, we head over to the cell phone area. Ahh, he’s going for one of the new 3G iPhones. And that was what he was after. But, David likes to do a lot of “window shopping” first before he makes any big purchases. So, after talking to 2 sales representatives for a very long time, he decided that now wasn’t the time. Then, he remembered that he wanted to put some more RAM in my laptop, so we put the hard drive away and went back to the RV to tear apart my computer. Luckily I knew exactly where my RAM is and how to get to it so it only took a couple minutes before we got a stick out. We took this inside Best Buy and found 1G upgrade to my 256 RAM. We picked up the hard drive and picked up a battery charger to his little camera since we accidentally left that in Phelan. :P My laptop runs so much faster now and it makes it soooo much easier to run programs. I think David finally got sick of me complaining about him having to baby my laptop if he used it. :)

After Best Buy, we headed to a nearby Del Taco for lunch. It was soooooooooooooo yummy!! I missed Del Taco. David got a bunch of tacos and I got the chicken soft taco meal. We saw a notice in Del Taco: Free Wi-Fi. ???? Ya??? So, after we finished our lunch, we hopped back in the RV, fired up the generator and enjoyed some free Del Taco Wi-Fi for a bit. Then we headed to the Grand Canyon.

Since we were so far south, we decided to check out the South Rim first before heading to the North Rim. It was so much closer and we could see it today.

As we drove into the park, we noticed smoke off in the distance. It looked like a forest fire. I hope the park isn’t on fire!! The park rangers at the entrance didn’t give us any warning so we figured it was safe. Just inside the entrance there is the Watchtower that overlooks the Grand Canyon. We stopped there for a bit to take some pics and then headed further into the park.

There’s a free shuttle that takes you around the park and a large lot for RV parking way in the back of the park next to the Backcountry Info Office, so we drove back to “Lot E”. The bus wasn’t there yet, so we popped into the Backcountry office to pick up some trail maps in case we wanted to hike tomorrow. The bus, the blue route, arrived just as we were exiting the building. Perfect timing! We hopped on that and headed east towards the view of the south rim of the Grand Canyon. David was telling me that there was a really good Grand Canyon movie in the IMAX and you could only see it here. But, I couldn’t find it anywhere on the park map. So, we took the bus to the Canyon View Information Plaza to inquire there. It turns out that the IMAX is in a city just south of the park called Tusayan. We’ll go there tomorrow and see it (and there’s a rest stop there that we can stay at tonight).

There was nothing at the Information Plaza. So, we headed over to the rim to take some pics.

The Grand Canyon was soooo hazy! It wasn’t pleasing to look at at all. I remember the last time I was here, there was a bit thunderstorm and lots of really cool looking clouds and lightning striking right in the middle of the canyon. Today, there weren’t any clouds but just haze. I’m guessing it’s from the fire nearby. We were gonna stay there to take sunset pics which was supposed to be at 6:38 pm. But, just by looking at the sun in the sky, it looked like it was still a good hour away from setting. That’s weird. Do we have the wrong time set? We should still be in Mountain Time. After checking the park paper, The Guide, we found out that Arizona is on Pacific Time until November 1. So, the past day we were going off of the wrong time. Lucky for us, we hadn’t stayed at any RV parks or we could have run the risk of checking out after the check out time!

After taking a few pics and now knowing we still had an hour until sunset, we headed back to the bookstore. David found a patch for his collection and we decided on a place for dinner. We were hoping to find a place that had southwestern food. It looked like there were two potentially good restaurants at the Bright Angel Lodge. We hopped on the bus and headed that way. As the sun was starting to set, we hopped off the bus at Yavapai Point. We found a spot that was right next to a cliff. It was a steep drop straight down to the bottom. No surviving that kind of fall! I was careful to stay away from the edge.

But, it wasn’t really that pretty or mystifying. There was a layer of dark smog or clouds above the canyon and the canyon itself was soooo hazy. We decided to head to dinner before the sunset. We only waited a couple of minutes. The shuttle service is way better in the Grand Canyon unlike Glacier NP. The buses are pretty frequent and they are a decent size. We didn’t have to worry about them filling up! We exited the bus at Bright Angel stop and headed over to the Arizona Room. It sounded southwestern so might as well look at the menu. They have an enchilada dish! Sounds good to me. We didn’t have to wait very long and we ended up getting the last table available that was setup to accommodate 5 people. At least we got a table! There were large glass windows on the canyon rim side of the restaurant. It was a lovely place for a restaurant. I ordered the veggie enchilada with a red pepper soup and David ordered baby back ribs with the soup as well. Shortly after we ordered, the sun set. The majority of people waited until the sun set to eat dinner so there was a large line of people waiting for a table. I’m glad we got there when we did!

We were brought out cold corn bread (but it was delicious!) and rolls shortly before our soups arrived. It tasted similar to a tortilla soup and even had shredded tortilla chips on top. It was delicious as well. The waiter was very attentive and regularly refilled my water glass. My stomach had a bit of time to digest before the main courses came out. My enchilada dish was soooo good. It had this spicy sour cream sauce on top and the tortillas were filled with steamy veggies of corn, tomatoes, zucchinis and black beans. David really liked his ribs. The BBQ sauce was very good. We both ordered dessert. I ordered a raspberry sherbet and he ordered a snicker cheesecake. Mine was pretty good; David’s was average. The rest of the meal was awesome tho. From there we waited out in the cold for a bit before the shuttle came and took us back to the RV.

It was pitch black as we exited the park. It’s a full moon tonight but it didn’t seem to help brighten the road any. It was a short drive to Tusayan where the rest stop was located. We spotted the IMAX so we know where to go tomorrow. We continued south, looking for the rest area. We left town. Still no rest area in sight. We saw signs for a managed fire in the area. So the smoke from the fire that was ruining our pics is actually an intentionally set fire?! Great! Thanks guys! We passed the airport and still couldn’t find it. We knew we had passed it but didn’t have anywhere to turn around in the dark and couldn’t see any turnouts to turn around in until it was too late. Finally, we found a dirt road sign that we had time to stop for. After doing a 3 point turn, we were back heading north and intently looking for the rest stop. We never found it. We got back to Tusayan and didn’t see any sign for it, so we turned around and parked in the back of the parking lot of the IMAX theater. There was another RV here too so we figured it would be alright to stay the night here. David turned on the generator to transfer his pictures to his Mac and discovered internet. So, not only are we staying in a free parking lot, we have free fast internet. Sweet huh! And we can just exit our door in the morning to go see the Grand Canyon IMAX movie without having to drive.

So, another long day, but we are doing good on time. We decided after seeing the Grand Canyon South Rim today that we don’t need to see the North Rim, so we’ll be heading to Bryce Canyon NP tomorrow if we don’t get sidetracked along the way! Night!


September 14, 2008

We woke up bright and early at 7 am today. That was a good night of sleep! It was very quiet in the IMAX parking lot so that was nice! We wanted to make the 8:30 am showing for the Grand Canyon IMAX, so we hurried to make breakfast and take showers. We made the showing and the movie was wonderful!! I love IMAX movies. You feel like you are right there! I could picture myself rafting down the Colorado River and flying over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter or light flying craft. It can only be seen at that IMAX tho which I find disappointing. You can buy the DVD but, David said last time he watched it, it wasn’t as good as in the theater. So, you are in the Grand Canyon area and want to experience this awesome IMAX movie, head to Tusayan. That’s where it is.

We’re definitely headed to Bryce Canyon NP today, but first we made a slight detour to dump in the campground in Grand Canyon NP. After that, we were back on the road headed east and then north. The roads were pretty bumpy and shook the RV a far bit. Upon later inspect in the evening, I found an impact hole in one of the water jugs. Ugh. States need to put more money into their roads!!!! We stopped in Page, AZ for lunch at Sonic. It was great to have cherry limeade. :) Lake Powell is in Page, so we got to cross the dam that is there.

We crossed in Utah shortly after that and the roads improved for a short while, then were crappy again. Ugh. David was all too happy to leave AZ. The roads were so bad. He says he hates AZ and never wants to go back. Ever! (Note: David apologizes to everyone who is from AZ). :P We stopped for gas in Kanab and got some frostys at Wendys. It was hot in Kanab! And we had just finished our limeades so it was a welcomed treat. The teenage girl at the cash register just did not care about her job. There was this huge line of customers and that girl was totally responsible for it. I wanted to tell her that life only gets worse from here just to try to cheer her up. Ya, I’m evil, but she was rude. Oh well. At least she didn’t make my frosty. I half expected her to spit in it.

From Kanab, it’s a straight shot north to Bryce Canyon NP along the 89. David was getting pretty tired as we approached. Driving this RV is stressful and exhausting to him. And since we’ve been driving a lot these days, he’s been pretty tired. I had to keep him pumped and awake as we neared the NP. As we neared the park, I noticed a big plume of smoke to my right. Great, another fire. I hope they don’t have a managed fire in Bryce too. As we made the turnoff fro Bryce, there was the sign. “Managed Fire. Do Not Report.” Great! These pics will be crap too. The road leading up to the entrance was very pretty tho and didn’t have any smoke looming over it. The hoodoos and the surrounding mountains are a bright orange clay.

We finally found the rest stop we were looking for. It was on the wrong part of the map. We’re not doing very well with rest stops lately. Stupid AAA. Anyway, David took a nap and I worked on my computer for a bit. Once David wasn’t a zombie anymore we headed into the park for park maps and info. Our plan is to check out the park tomorrow since the sun was about to set. As we neared the park, the smoke loomed overhead. We asked the park ranger about the fire and she said that it was supposed to last for a few more days. That put a damper on our hopes of seeing Bryce Canyon in its beauty. But now we know that they light fires in mid-September in the national parks. We also found out that the last 5 miles of the park is closed due to the fire. Oh well. We’ll see what we can see tomorrow. We drove into the park until we could turn around and then headed back to the rest stop. We made dinner and read the park newspaper and pamphlet. It looked like there are some cool trails to check out. Maybe we’ll get the chance. After dinner, we watched a few episodes of Deadwood and then headed to bed. Let’s hope that the fire/smoke conditions are better tomorrow. Night!


September 15, 2008

We woke up with the sun as it beat down into our bedroom window. Ugh! It’s too early. I got up and made some tea with The Music of the Night (Phantom of the Opera) stuck in my head cuz that was the song that Johnny Depp was playing on the piano in my dream as he whined about not being able to find work. Yes, it would have been nice if he was serenading me instead of complaining but I can’t manipulate my dreams. :P

As I was doing dishes, I noticed a strong smell of smoke coming into the RV. When I looked out the window, I gasped. The park was covered in smoke! Thick smoke. We’re not going to be able to hike in this, let alone walk around in this. After David exited the bathroom, I told him about the smoke. He went outside to take pics while I finished getting ready. When he returned, he was lightheaded from inhaling the smoke. Sadly, we decided to give Bryce Canyon a miss and we headed to Zion NP. Hopefully Zion isn’t covered in smoke too.

We headed west to I-15 and headed south. As we neared the exit for Zion, we noticed a haze settled over the area. We stopped by the Visitor Center for Zion that was off I-15 and asked the rangers if there was a fire near Zion. They said that there was one north of Zion but it wasn’t affecting the park. But, you could see the effect it was already having in the area. We gave Zion a miss too and headed back to California. We can always come back with a car and see these two parks pretty easily since they are so close to home.

The drive back to Phelan went pretty fast. We took I-15 back, stopped in Las Vegas for gas and Primm for lunch. It was sooooo hot in Vegas. We both thought that it would be a little bit cooler since we had left in July, but nope! We drank soooo much water on the way back to stay hydrated. To keep the RV from overheating, we had to turn the A/C off on the hills. It made the drive very uncomfortable. We stopped in Baker at Alien Fresh Jerky. We picked up several bags of jerky to bring back to the desert. The place was pretty neat. It was decorated with tons of aliens.

The drive after Baker continued to be hot and miserable and we arrived back in Phelan about 6 pm, hot and tired.

It’s good to be back in the desert and not traveling around the states. But, it was fun while it lasted. I had hoped that we could hike a little bit more and drive less but we started to run out of time and needed to cover more ground faster. My favorite place on the trip was Glacier NP in Montana. There are a lot of neat trails up there and the landscape is beautiful. I hope you all enjoyed my travel blog and maybe I have inspired you all to travel more as well. :)

US Travel Journal Part 7

September 3, 2008

Another long day. Boy, am I tired! We only just stopped driving at about 8:30pm for the day. Let me try to recount on what happened today.

We awoke to cloudy skies. That was upsetting because we had planned on going back to Mt Rushmore to take morning pics cuz the monument looks the best with the morning light. We decided to try anyway and drove over to the monument after we dumped and refilled our propane at the campground. It was so cold there! I’m glad I have my snow jacket (yes, I get cold easily). :) At first, the sky was just covered in clouds, but it was so windy that it began to blow off and we got some really good pictures.

click on picture to view gallery
After picking up a patch and some postcards, we left and headed to Crazy Horse Memorial. It wasn’t too far from Mt Rushmore so we arrived there around 11 am. It was $10 a person to get in!! We later found out that the funds go towards the building of the statue so that made us feel a bit better. We watched a short video on the sculptor and the making the monument. The statue wasn’t finished when the sculptor passed on, but he passed on his plans of the statue to his wife and today his wife and 7 children work on completing the statue. In the outside view area, there is a statue of a 1/34 scale model of what the large one is going to look like.

We decided to have lunch there at the Laughing Water Restaurant. I got a delicious taco salad on Native American pan bread and David got a buffalo burger. For dessert, we decided to try the Native American pan bread with honey. The food there was pretty good and the service was great. They even had free refills on iced tea!! :)


We left there around 2 pm and drove over to Wind Cave National Park. Here we also watched a short video about the Cave and the National Park. We went on a discovery tour at 3:30 pm into the cave. The cave was really neat. Since there is wind that flows in and out of the cave with changes in pressure from the outside environment, there were not any stalagmites or stalactites. Instead, there was a structure that looked like the inside of cardboard.

click image for gallery
The tour lasted about an hour. There was this one kid on the tour, a pudgy boy about the age of 12. He was there with his probably single mom. He was the most annoying kid and pretty dumb. The ranger would stop the group on several occasions and present the group with a bit of history or geologic facts about the cave. At the end of his discussion, he would ask if anyone had any questions. This dumb kid would always raise his hand and, not ask a question, but say some random sentence. One such occasion when we were still outside the cave (and David loves to repeat it back to me just to annoy me cuz he knows how much that kid irritated me), the kid raised his hand and when called upon, he said, “There’s a tumbleweed” and pointed to the bush. Ugh! At one point on the tour, his mom smacked him cuz he was misbehaving so much. At least it stopped me from doing it!! :P Anyway, back on the road again, we decided to take the scenic route back up to the town of Custer and along the way we saw a ton of wildlife. We saw bison, deer, antelope, deer and prairie dogs.




Once we got back to Custer, we noticed a huge storm heading our way and we were gonna have to drive right through the middle of it. The lightning was intense. It was striking all around us and instead of it being white light, it was purple light. One struck very close to the highway as we drove. We drove west towards Wyoming and once we crossed the border, the sun poked its head out of the clouds and made for some really nice pics.

click for gallery
The rain continued off and on as we drove north to Moorcroft. We found a rest area next to the town to stop for the night. There’s huge light in the rest area which will make it fun to sleep through and guess what, there’s a train close by. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll be able to sleep through it. As long as there isn’t too much rain and wind. K, I can barely stay awake so I’m heading to bed. Night! :)


September 4, 2008

I finally got some good sleep last night. The train near the rest stop only woke me up one time and I blamed it on David in my half wakefulness (sorry sweetie). :P Funny thing happened this morning. We looked in the fridge and realizing that we had used all the milk last night for making dinner, we had nothing to make for breakfast. After some searching we found a box of blueberry muffin mix and luckily, it only needed water added to it for preparation. So we had muffins for breakfast. Ya, we’re running low on food. Our fridge was nearly empty this morning. We decided to head west to a town called Gillette, one of which we had passed through on the way to South Dakota. It was about 30 miles out of the way cuz we had planned on going north from Moorcroft to Devils Tower. But, we needed food, so after we finished breakfast, we headed to Gillette. We took the first off-ramp (which turned out to be the wrong one) and after some searching we finally found a grocery store. Now, we had food, so we made lunch in a nearby parking lot before heading back east towards Devils Tower National Monument.

Once off I-90, you couldn’t see the mountain until you were pretty close to it. Boy, was it a sight! You may ask, why Devils Tower? Well, Devils Tower was the mountain that Spielberg used in Close Encounters at the end of the movie, and the mashed potato scene. From I-90, it was about 35 miles to the park entrance. We drove up to the visitor center and took pics. I grabbed my binoculars out of the RV and looked for climbers. And there were many on the mountain, even with dark gray clouds approaching. There is a trail that runs in a loop around the mountain and it’s only about a mile in length, so after grabbing my umbrella and David his rain jacket, we took off on the trail. Devils Tower is actually green in color. Not what I expected at all!


As we got about halfway around the mountain, it started to rain pretty hard, so we headed back to the RV. It is supposed to rain for the next week there, so before we decided whether to stay the night, we checked out the campground. The campground has a view of the tower, but it is covered in trees so your view is partially blocked. David decided that he didn’t want to take night time pics, so after consulting the map and taking a break, we got back on the road. We made one last stop at the gift shop for some shirts, etc and hopped back on the freeway with our future destination of Yellowstone.

Outside of Buffalo, WY, we found a rest stop for the night and made some pizza for dinner. It was soooo good!! Especially with pepperchinis on it. We’re gonna stay here for tonight and head into Yellowstone tomorrow. I think a movie is in order after all the crazy driving we’ve been doing over the past few days. That’s all folks! Night!


September 5, 2008

Another night of restless sleep. Maybe tonight will be better. We are on our way to Yellowstone today. Not sure if we’ll make it all the way today, but we’ll try. :)

We headed west toward Buffalo, WY and then southwest to Worland. This was a very scenic drive. And the area looked as if it had gotten a fresh dusting of snow in the night. Along the way, there were various markers with information regarding the rock in the area and how old it was.

Once we got to Worland, we had the option of traveling north and west to Cody or we could travel south and then northwest to Cody. Along the route to Worland, I was telling David about a hot spring that was south of Worland in a town called Thermopolis. I thought just the name itself was pretty cool. David liked the name too so we decided to take the southern route.

Thermopolis wasn’t a very big city. The Hot Springs State Park was just outside the city itself. The Bath House still gives free soaks in the mineral springs so we decided to check that out. Unfortunately, the springs are sulfur ones and, for those of you who have smelled or handled sulfur before, it is not something that one would care to soak themselves in. Can you imagine reeking of sulfur for days?? Not something I would care to do. So, we gave that a miss and headed over to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center instead.

The Wyoming Dinosaur Center was pretty cool. They had tons of fossils and large replicas of dinosaur bones in their museum. There were even windows that gave a view into the lab where the paleontologists cleaned their finds, cataloged items and made molds. It was so dusty in the lab; it brought back memories of my digging days. :)

After the museum, we headed northwest to Cody. Cody was named after Buffalo Bill Cody. The town was actually a decent size. There was a ton of RV parks and hotels and modern conveniences such as Wal-mart, K-Mart, and Albertsons. We made a trip to Albertsons to pick up the few items that we were unable to find in Gillette such as TP. Can’t run out of that! :P

After we got back to the RV, it started to rain yet again. Oh well. We’re used to it by now! On to Yellowstone! David was getting pretty tired since we’ve been driving a lot these days, so we found a nice little campground just west of Cody right next to Buffalo Bill Reservoir. We have a wonderful view of the lake and snowcapped mountains. Hopefully the sky will be clear in the morning and we can get some good pics of the lake and of Yellowstone. That’s all for today. Gonna watch a movie and read my book for a change. Night!


September 6, 2008

Yay, a good night of sleep finally but why am I so tired? Maybe I need to catch up on sleep.

We’re headed to Yellowstone today. I can’t wait to see it! It’s been 20 years since I was here last and David’s never been. We left camp at a decent time and headed west to Yellowstone. In the pass to Yellowstone, it began to hail and the sleet. We saw snow on the highway yesterday and now sleet. The only road condition we haven’t driven thru yet is snow and ice.

Our first stop before the campground once inside the park was at a geothermal feature called Mud Volcano.

There is a 2/3 of a mile loop that you can walk and see the various geysers. The different sulfur pools smelled horrible! We were both light headed and me nauseous after we completed the walk.

We arrived at Canyon Village about 11:30 am and got a spot at the campground there without a problem. It’s so nice that it’s not the high season anymore. Funny thing happened while David was registering. I stayed behind in the RV while he registered. He was taking quite a while to come back from the office and I was beginning to wonder what the hold up was. Maybe there was a line? It turns out that the office is run by older people and there were also older people registering for a spot. And what do older people love to do? Talk and talk about nothing in particular and they take their time talking. I really do hope that I do not become that way when I get old. I mean come on! There’s a line! Oh well. We still got a spot so all was well. We located our spot and had some lunch. We have a back-in spot, but it was pretty easy to get into. During lunch, it began to hail. Great! Luckily, it didn’t last for very long. After lunch, we drove around the northern loop of the park. Yellowstone is so pretty! Sadly, a lot of it is burned so parts of it have an eerie stillness to it because of the fog in the mornings and the blackened burnt wood.

We made a quick stop at the Yellowstone Grand Canyon.

It was pretty steep and had a river at the bottom. We arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs around 2 pm. We got out and walked the wooden trail there too.

We noticed a herd of elk on the drive in (we had to park a significant distance from the village cuz the parking lots were too small to accommodate us) so we walked over to check them out.

There is a grassy area where they were grazing. The male slowly pushed the herd of females across the street and behind a restaurant there. Luckily they weren’t in danger of being hit by cars because there were about 8 rangers and volunteers stopping traffic. We took a bunch of pics, visited the gift shop and headed back to the RV. We were pretty tired at this point and just sat back and watched the scenery go past as we completed the loop and headed back to camp. We arrived just before 7 pm so we had time to do laundry before the center closed. It’s nice that so many places have laundry facilities these days. Now, if only the national parks had Wi-Fi. :P

It was dark when we got back to our camp spot. I got out with my flashlight and helped direct David in the spot. It’s hard to direct in the dark! After three tries, we got the RV parked without crashing into anything. It was too late in the evening to run the generator so we played a few hands of cards. Now, I’m off to bed. Night!


September 7, 2008

We were able to break camp early today and were on the road by 8 am. We headed down the southern loop to Old Faithful Geyser. We stopped first at Norris Geyser Basin and walked around the trail there.

The smell of sulfur was in the air. Yuck! One of the geysers even sprayed us with mist. Hopefully I won’t smell like sulfur later! The basin was covered in fog and gray clouds. Nothing grows in the geyser’s vicinity so there was an eerie feeling to this area too. But the geysers were really neat to look at. Seeing water boil in the pools was just awesome. Some were very colorful while others were muddy gray. And the steam vents! When the steam from the thermal vents was blown across the pathway into your face, it made you want to gag. After we walked both basins in the area, we continued south to Old Faithful.

We arrived at Old Faithful just after 11 am. The area has really changed in the last 20 years. You used to be able to park right next to the geyser but now, there are lodges and stores next to the boarded broadway that runs alongside Old Faithful. The parking lots are a good distance away now too. I didn’t mind all the extra parking space and the little bit of exercise. We waited for about a half hour for Old Faithful to erupt.

It gave a false eruption and then a real one shortly after. But, the eruption wasn’t that big and the wind shifted towards the bench we were sitting on so we got misted by the geyser. If it was a warm summer day, it would have felt good. But, it was cold today! So, being a bit wet on top of that didn’t feel good. At least we dried off rather quickly due to the strong winds. We decided to walk around the trails there and see the other geysers.

Halfway around, we found a bench with a great view of Old Faithful and some of the small surrounding geysers. We hung around here, waiting for Old Faithful’s next eruption. It took about an hour and 20 minutes for it to erupt again. It was worth the wait!

It shot up so high and the wind had stopped for a moment so the steam and the water shot straight up into the air.

After taking several pics and video, we were windblown and cold so we retreated back to the RV for warmth and lunch.

We were back on the road after lunch and heading out of the park through the southern entrance. It was difficult seeing everything in Yellowstone with an RV and only an RV. Many parking lots are small and don’t have room to park an RV. Also different points of interest around the loops only have a small turnout for a couple cars to park in. I can’t imagine how crowded the park must get in the summer. Having a car next time we travel here would be very helpful.

Next, we drove through Grand Teton National Park.

The park really isn’t that big. We were in and out of it pretty quickly. It did look like it would be good for hiking. We’ll have to come back in the spring sometime.

Next, we drove through Jackson Hole. It’s a cute town but very touristy. Even more so than Banff. So we didn’t even stop and continued south.

We stopped for the night at a rest stop in Wyoming on the border of Idaho. We’re both pretty tired from getting up so early and all of the driving today. We had dinner, relaxed with some Deadwood and now are off to bed. Good night! :)


September 8, 2008

Dang, that was a good night of sleep!! I told David this morning that I wanted to stay at this rest stop for days so I could continue to get some good sleep. :P

We’re headed to Utah today. My best friend Sara and her family live there so we plan on visiting with them today. We don’t have too many miles to drive today so it should be a relaxing day. We got on the road about 9:30 am. Along the way, we saw signs for jerky. We finally saw the little cart that was selling it. They had elk, buffalo and beef jerky of all different flavors. We got 3 different kinds of beef jerky and tried out one as a mid-morning snack.

We passed through various small towns such as Paris, Idaho and Fish Haven, Idaho. Just past here was Bear Lake. This lake is beautiful! We stopped at the marina and took some pics.

Then we continued on to Logan, Utah. We stopped here for lunch. A funny thing happened. They had a Jamba Juice!!! So, I had that for lunch. But, we needed to park somewhere other than the Jamba Juice parking lot. Across the street was a grocery store and the lot was pretty big. So, David make two rights, one at the light and then one into the driveway of the grocery store. I’m not sure if David just turned the RV into the parking lot too fast or the driveway was just really bumpy, but, on turning, the two cabinets that are above my head on my right side flew open and ALL the books and maps in it fell out on my head!! And it wasn’t all at once, it happened over like a 20 second interval. David was just rolling with laughter in his seat. I’m sitting there cracking up too, with my hands over my head trying to shield myself from further books, but telling him, “Hey, this isn’t funny!” Ya, so I’m okay and I got my Jamba Juice after that and David got a bagel from Einstein Bros Bagels. There was also a Taco Time in Logan and, since we haven’t tried it yet, we popped in there for a bit more food. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. I tried a beef taco, but the tacos at Burger Basket in Phelan are way better.

From here, we headed onto Ogden. We had reserved a spot there earlier in the day at an RV park called Century Campground. They have full hook-ups and wireless so that was a nice treat for us. Haven’t had internet in like a week! I’m glad that we have hook-ups cuz it’s hot in Ogden!! We have the A/C on full blast. I was just freezing my butt off in Yellowstone yesterday! I can definitely tell that I’m back in the desert. We arranged to meet up for dinner with my friend Sara and her husband Jay at 6:30 pm, so we relaxed and played on the internet until they arrived at the campground. We’ve been craving Mexican since we’ve been away from California for awhile now. Sara knew of a good place in Ogden called Javier’s. It was pretty good. The chips and salsa was great and I really enjoyed my enchiladas. :) It was great to catch up with Sara and Jay, and David was finally able to meet them. After a long relaxing dinner, they drove us back to the RV and gave us some ideas of what to see while we are here in Utah. (Sara, it was great seeing you guys! We’ll have to visit again soon!) We’re going to check out Salt Lake City tomorrow since David’s never been there. Hopefully the weather is nice so we can get some good pictures.

That’s it for today. Sorry, I’ve taken my sweet time posting my blogs but I was hoping by delaying my posting that the pictures would be ready to post links in the blog. We’ve been so tired from all the driving that the last thing that David wants to do is work on pics once we’ve stopped for the day. I don’t blame him! So, I will repost these blogs with links and pics once they are available. Until then, I hope you all are enjoying reading about our travels around the states. And, until next posting, I hope you all have a good week! Night! :)

US Travel Journal Part 6

August 27, 2008

We awoke to dark gray cloudy skies and rain. Ya, sightseeing isn’t much fun in the rain. We originally, planned on going to the east side of Glacier NP but cuz of the rain we decided to give it a miss and head east to drier, warmer weather. We’re going to visit Badlands NP in South Dakota first so the best route there is I-90. We drove for about 8 hours today before David just became too tired to drive anymore. We drove through Kalispell, Missoula, and Butte before stopping about 70 miles west of Billings at a rest stop. We ran the generator so we could watch movies. We watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Match Point. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was good but very trippy to me. I guess it is difficult to understand the drug scene when one has never been in it. :P I really like Match Point. I was surprised by the ending, but I won’t give any spoilers here for those of you who haven’t seen it. :)

Well, that’s all for today. Off to bed! Night. :)


August 28, 2008

Sleeping in is a wonderful thing! :) Especially when you awake to blue skies…ahhh! :)

We left the rest stop about 10:30 am and headed into Billings, Montana. We’ve driven over 3,000 miles so the RV is in need of an oil change. We figured since Billings is the largest city in Montana that it would have a place for RV’s. And, sure enough, it did. We saw a sign on the way into the city. It was easy to find and we didn’t have to wait. We were in and out of there in about 30 minutes and back on the road heading east. Outside of Billings is the Little Bighorn Battlefield in the Crow Indian Reservation.

click image for gallery
This is where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was killed during the battle. So, we decided to check it out. We were able to use our America the Beautiful Annual Pass so entry was free. After having a quick lunch in the parking lot, we watched an instructional video on the event in the visitor center.


After walking around the Custer National Cemetery, we went on a bus tour of the battlefields. There’s one road that leads from the Little Bighorn Battlefield to the Reno-Benteen Battlefield. After this educational tour, we walked around for a bit checking out the memorials there for the “White Man” and the Native Americans that were killed in the battle.


Once we saw all there was to see, we continued heading to Wyoming.

click image for gallery
David wanted steak since we were in Wyoming. So, I looked in the AAA Tour Book for a place to eat in the next big town which was Sheridan. I found a place called Wyoming’s Ribs and Chophouse. I called and made reservations and got directions. They said they were located on what I thought was Elder but was really Alger. And the AAA Tour Book said it was on Broadway in the Sheridan Inn. So, I got all confused and first we missed Alger, and turned on the next street and I was trying to lead David back over to Alger and we ended up on Broadway, so I thought we were on the correct street. When I saw the Inn on Broadway, I thought that was where the restaurant was. So, we ended up parking by the Inn, but the actual restaurant was on Alger, about 1/2 a mile away. The lady on the phone had mentioned that there was a theater on the same street where we could park so I saw that and found the restaurant in time for our reservation.

The service was really good! As soon as our drinks dropped to almost empty, our waiter was there refilling them. The food was really good too. David opted for ribs instead of steak, mashed potatoes and shrimp. The meat just fell off the bone. He really enjoyed his dinner. I decided on the pot roast over mashed potatoes. I got a huge plate of meat! I wasn’t expecting that. I should have just got sides instead. I was only able to eat about 1/4 of my meal so I got it to go. I should be really good on tortillas. :) We were too full for dessert so paid the bill and walked back to the RV.

It was starting to get dark once we got back on the road, so we stopped at a rest stop just past Buffalo, WY for the night. We started to re-watch the HBO Deadwood series to get us excited about Deadwood. I’m hoping we can make it to Badlands NP, SD tomorrow and find a spot. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult with it being Labor Day weekend and all. K, that’s all for tonight. Gotta digest my food! :P Night!


August 29, 2008

We woke up fairly early and got on the road before 8 am. We continued to head east on I-90, only stopping in Gillette for gas. We could see Devils Tower way off in the distance from the highway, but we decided to see it on the way back. Instead of heading to Badlands NP today, we decided to stay the holiday weekend in Deadwood, SD.

There is a KOA in Deadwood that has internet and offers a shuttle service into the town. We arrived there, secured a spot, and parked the RV. And, boy was it a tight fit!! But, David knows how to park this huge vehicle pretty well.

The first shuttle of the day was at noon, so after buying our round trip tickets, we hopped on and rode into Deadwood.

Deadwood itself is very well kept up. The Main Street is lined with nice brick which matches with several of the brick buildings along the street. Several of the businesses are named after famous people who lived in Deadwood such as Wild Bill Hickok and Charley Utter. We walked around the city several times. We were able to find the saloon where Wild Bill was killed.

They have a mini museum in the basement of the saloon which tells the story. We had lunch in the Gem Steakhouse and Saloon located in the Mineral Palace.

The town has mini gun battles at different locations, so we watched the first one of the day. Funny enough, it was performed outside the Hampton Inn. :) Those guns are loud! They make me jump. :P Next, we located the visitor center and picked up a map. This gave us the location of the cemetery where Wild Bill and Calamity Jane is located. We started to walk toward the cemetery and got side tracked by the Adams Museum. That museum is packed with relics of the history of Deadwood.

After spending some time in there, we were both exhausted so we decided to do a little shopping, cooled off at a neat restaurant / bar and head back to the RV. We made dinner and watched some more Deadwood.

Tomorrow we hope to see the cemetery and maybe pan for some gold! That’s all for tonight! The heat wore me out. Good night.


August 30, 2008

Hmm…I hope I’m not catching a cold. I just could not get up this morning and then I felt out of sorts all morning. David has been fighting off a cold for the past week or so, so maybe it’s starting to make its way to me. I hope not! :)

Since I was feeling under the weather today, we stayed in camp this morning and watched some Deadwood while I relaxed. I started to feel better after lunch so we headed into town. David wanted to play some blackjack so we scouted around the casinos for a proper table. After a long search we determined that most of the casinos in Deadwood contain slots and not much else. There were pretty slim pickings as far as blackjack tables. We finally found a couple and David had his fun. :) We returned to that neat restaurant / bar from yesterday and sat outside instead. It was fun to watch the people walk by.

It was pretty hot again today so we decided against walking up to the cemetery. We’re gonna get up early tomorrow and do that. We did a little bit more shopping, found a casino that has free soda (crazy huh!) and caught the shuttle back to camp. After we let our dinner digest a bit, we went down to the pool and spa. The pool was too cold for me so I opted for the spa. David tried to get into the pool, but we soon joined me in the spa. It was so nice! My muscles are very relaxed now. We chatted for a bit in the spa with a father and son who were from Iowa. After the spa, we came back to the RV, took showers, watched some Deadwood and now I’m heading to bed. I promised David I would be really to leave the RV by 8 am so I need my sleep. :P Night!


August 31, 2008

I woke up pretty late this morning. I guess that’s what happens when I stay up til 2 am. :) It was pretty cloudy today even with some rain, so we stayed in the RV and watched Deadwood for most of the day. I’ve been adding pictures in my previous blogs so that they are easier to read. :D But, I can’t post them until David’s finished with them. Not feeling so hot this evening. I think I’m still fighting off a cold. Still managed to do laundry tho. Anyway, I’m heading to bed. We’ll be leaving Deadwood in the morning and heading to Badlands National Park. Looks like the rain we left in Glacier has finally caught up with us. Hopefully, it won’t rain too much. Night. :D


September 1, 2008

It was misty and foggy when we woke up. Our plan is to check out the Badlands National Park today. If it is cloudy there like it is here, the pictures aren’t going to be very good. Might have to wait to take pics until tomorrow morning.

We unhooked in the mist and left Deadwood before 11 am. We had had enough of Deadwood and still didn’t make it up to the cemetery. Oh well. :P

We headed back north to I-90 and drove through the town of Sturgis which is a big American motorcycle town. They have a huge event every year in August. I’m glad I missed that!!

We headed east on I-90. As we got closer to Wall, our exit for Badlands NP, we saw a mass amount of signs for Wall Drug. I looked it up in the AAA book and it turns out that they used to have signs for this store all over the country and even overseas. It was the first to advertize free water to travelers. So we decided to check it out since we were here.

The store itself was several blocks long containing a gift shop, a couple restaurants, an ice cream parlor, a doughnut shop, and several various shops containing items anywhere form fudge to jackalope head mounts.

click image to view gallery
In the back, they had a few more shops, a jackalope you could sit on and a T-Rex. Ya, it’s a pretty weird place but it’s famous. We had to get some fresh doughnuts and saltwater taffy. Both were really good.


From Wall, it was a short trip to the entrance of Badlands NP. The lighting wasn’t very good because of the overcast, so we drove the 45 minutes through the park to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center on the eastern end of the park.

click image to view gallery
We had lunch in the RV before heading inside. There, we watched an educational video on the park. It was neat to see the park in all four seasons. It even snows here in the winter. The Badlands was formed from erosion due to the rain. The soil erodes away at a rate of an inch a year! After the movie, we drove over to the Cedar Pass campground. It was pretty empty so we picked out a spot and used the automated machine to pay for our spot. Neat huh!

The storm looked like it was starting to break a bit so we decided to drive back through the park and stop at the lookout points to take pictures. There are several lookout points throughout the 60 minute drive on the Badlands Loop and each had a convenient spot for an RV to park. We stopped at the fossils trail lookout and walked the quarter mile trail, looking at the fossil cases along the way. The Castle trail (a 5 mile trail) started here so we walked about a half mile of it and turned back. The ground of the park is dry and cracked from the hot sun while the mountains around it remind me of Bryce NP. It’s really cool how the water has sculpted the mountains and the landscape.


We stopped at a second turn out and walked to the overlook there. We even saw a couple rabbits here. Lastly, we stopped at the Pinnacles lookout and had dinner. It was really windy here being on a plateau. We waited here until the sun set in hopes of the sun coming out for sunset pics. Sadly, it stayed behind the clouds. It even started to rain. As it got dark, we admitted defeat and drove the drive back to the campground. Along the way, we could see frogs jumping a cross the road. Also, we could see the lightning in the distance.

We’re hoping the storm will blow over tonight and we’ll have good weather for picture taking tomorrow. Wish me luck! I’m heading to bed early. Night!


September 2, 2008

Man, we accomplished a lot today. Where to begin?

We went to bed about 9:00 pm last night, so David woke me up at 4 am with his constant peeking out of the blinds to see what the weather was like. I remember at one point he realized I was awake and informed me that the crazy wind that we had experienced during the night blew all the clouds away. Then he continued to peek through the blinds until I told him to stop or get up. :P He let me sleep for about another hour and I got up at 5 am. He was already up and ready and already taking pictures of the morning twilight. I made some tea to warm me up (gotta put the comforter back on the bed tonight!) and put my contacts in. At about 5:30 am, we pulled out of camp and started heading west along the Badlands loop. We stopped quickly at Prairie Wind Overlook and then headed over to the Panorama Point to wait for the sun to come up. There was a small group of clouds over the eastern horizon so it took a little bit longer than usual for the sunrise. Right when we got up to the lookout for the Panorama Point the sun rose out of the clouds.

click image for gallery




We continued to drive west, stopping at some overlook points and completing the drive at Pinnacles Overlook.


We stopped here and look some pictures before heading back east along the same road. David had it all planned out on what areas would be best to take pictures at depending on how high the sun was up. We basically stopped at practically all the overlooks and points on the way back to the visitor center. We stopped at a few more lookout points along this route as well.


From there, we headed north to complete the loop back to I-90. We had read the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in the Badlands NP newsletter. We stopped at the information at the Minuteman Missile Visitor Contact Station and got directions to the Historic Site and the Missile Silo. We hurried over to the Historic site and managed to get on the last tour of the day.

The Historic Site was pretty neat. The site was de-activated in 1992 so we didn’t have to worry about anyone dropping a nuclear bomb on us while on the tour. :P A ranger led the first part of the tour, showing the group around the station that was topside. The building housed the living quarters and dining area for the launch controllers and above ground staff. Next, we took an elevator down to the launch control center.

This second part of the tour was lead by a retired launch controller himself. He talked about the standard procedures that they went through while on duty and explained the different equipment in the control center. He said that they really didn’t have much to do while on their shift. After that, they took us back up to the surface. We next drove up the highway a bit to the missile silo.

This site was unmanned but had a cell phone self guided tour. We listened to that in the RV after we were finished there. It was sooo windy that you wouldn’t have been able to hear anything on the cell phone. To continue on with our military themed day, we continued to head west to Ellsworth AFB where the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. We didn’t make it in time to tour the de-activated missile silo on base, so we took pics of the aircrafts outside and toured the museum. We checked out the gift shop when we were finished and found astronaut ice cream!! And it was cheap! So, we bought a lot.

On returning to the RV, we made lunch and then headed to Mt. Rushmore! We stopped in Rapid City to get gas. It was a quick drive south to Mt. Rushmore.

It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but I kind of had a feeling that it would be like that. And I imaged it as being white rock too. But, we arrived in the evening and the sun was already behind the mountain. We parked the RV and looked around a bit. There’s a passage way leading up to the monument that houses all the flags of the US states and its territories. That was pretty neat to see all the different flags. The parking pass is good for a year, so we decided to get a camping spot for the night and then head back for the evening ceremony. There was a KOA close by (I’ve never seen a KOA this big; it even has a waterslide!) and charged us an arm and a leg for the night and we didn’t even get full hook ups. But, the KOA offered shuttle service to Mt Rushmore for the evening program so we got tickets and hopped on that. We didn’t even have time to park the RV, so they let us leave it in the holding area until we returned. Parking in the dark is gonna be fun! No, not really!

The evening program was alright. Very patriotic. A ranger gave a talk and a video was presented for further information about the four presidents on Mt Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. Then, they had us stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner and they slowly lit up the monument. The monument is pretty neat at night. And man was it cold!! As soon as the program was over, everyone jetted for the warmth of their cars. We headed back to our shuttle (which was nice and warm!) and a quick trip later, were back at the campground. We got a little lost in the dark and missed the parking spot on the first run but found it on the second pass.

The comforter is definitely going back on the bed tonight. It is so cold. It looks like summer is finally turning into fall, at least here if not in southern California.

That’s it for the day. It was very long and I’m pretty tired. We have to get up early again tomorrow to take sunrise pics of Mt Rushmore and then I’m not sure where we are headed! Night. :)

US Travel Journal Part 5

August 17, 2008

Yay! I’m not sore today! I think my legs are getting used to all of this hiking. :)

Well, not too much to tell today for a day in Lake Louise. I tried to do laundry but couldn’t find a Laundromat. We picked up some supplies at the local grocery store and picked up some postcards to mail to the family. And…we found internet access at the post office. $5 for the day. Not bad since we both could use it. I think we were online for almost 6 hours today. :) Ya, we were deprived. We started out next to the door of the post office. The connection speed was great but no outlet. My computer battery quickly died. So, then we found an outlet to power our laptops, but the signal was pretty bad. We broke for lunch and then returned to continue our internet usage. After close observation of the exterior of the buildings, I managed to find another outlet that was in direct line of sight of the post office. The connection was better and we had a bench to sit on rather than the ground. Next, big gray clouds began to move in. But, all the forecasts said it was sunny. Go figure. What do they know anyways. :P And, then it began to thunder and rain. Here we are, sitting on a bench outside under the eve of a building with our laptops in a thunderstorm. Funny picture, right? The storm didn’t stay around for long and then we were able to depart back to the RV. What a day! :)

We drove back to our campsite in Lake Louise, had dinner and watched Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Too funny! That was a good movie.

Anyway, that was my day. We are leaving Lake Louise tomorrow and heading onto greener pastures. Probably Banff townsite. Who knows how the day will unfold. Night.


August 18, 2008

We left Lake Louise today for Banff. It was a quick drive and we arrived in the Tunnel Mountain Campground before 11 am. After a quick registration, we found our spot and setup camp. Banff townsite has a bus service that has with a stop right outside our campground. Badly needing to do laundry, we gathered up our clothes and made use of the bus, riding it into town.


click picture for gallery
The town of Banff is very posh. It has a couple malls, popular restaurants like Tony Roma’s and Chili’s, many touristy shops and the modern conveniences of a larger city like Starbucks. Yes, Banff has a Starbucks. Who knew! We quickly found the laundromat: it was inside a mall! Yes, inside the main mall. Weird huh. Laundry took only a little over an hour to do. We decided on sushi for lunch. I spotted 4 sushi places in Banff. Lunch hit the spot. We’ve both been craving sushi. After lunch, we went in search of the town hall. I had read online that you could pick up coins to use on the bus and, by prepaying, it was cheaper. After picking up the coins, we headed back with our clean clothes to the RV.

Slipping into a food coma, we relaxed and read on the bed. David wanted me to look up the meaning of a word in Microsoft Word, so while I was searching, I realized I had internet! There is a nearby hotel that has an open wireless connection. That quickly took us out of our slumber state, but it didn’t work for long. Slowly a thunderstorm started to roll in and with it, the internet started to whimper out. Oh well! I got one good email out of it. :)

We wanted to go back into town to take pics and browse the shops without our laundry, so we waited for the rain to stop and hopped back on the bus into town. The bus ride is only 10 minutes. We are pretty close but it is much easier to take the bus than walk. We checked out most of the town pretty quickly and dropped into a bookstore and teahouse. We decided on Chili’s for dinner just to say that we’ve eaten at one in 3 countries (England, US and now Canada). We were surprised to find it located in a fancy hotel called the Fox Inn. The service was alright (they were pretty busy). I enjoyed my dinner of tacos. After dinner, we headed to Safeway to pick up some more sandwich meat and headed back to the RV.

The internet is still out :( but that’s okay. I have a good book to read for the night.

We were planning on staying Banff townsite for several days but an opportunity has arisen that we cannot pass up. In Yoho National Park (just west of Lake Louise in British Columbia), there is a town called Field and near there is where the Burgess Shale is. David’s been trying to find information on guided hikes for about a week now and he finally was able to get a call back. It turns out that the Burgess Shale hike/tour is booked. But, a German professor is taking a group of his students up to another area near the Burgess Shale in search of trilobites. And, there was room for us! So, we are gonna go fossil hunting (but can’t collect any) on Wednesday in Field, Canada. I’m excited! The only downside is the weather. There’s rain in the forecast and hiking on wet shale is not going to be fun. Hopefully it won’t rain while we are hiking but rain in the afternoon once we are finished. So, it’s off to Yoho tomorrow and then back to Banff on Thursday. K, now, I’m tired. Night! :)


August 19, 2008

Not too much happened today. It rained. A lot! We left Banff to head to Field, British Columbia in Yoho NP. We made a pit stop in Lake Louise for gas and then headed into a storm in Yoho NP.


click image for gallery
We headed to the visitor center in Field since we missed the turn off for the campground. As soon as we stepped inside the center, it began pouring. Fun. :P And we’re supposed to hike tomorrow. The visitor center gave us a map of surrounding trails. Once there was a break in the rain, we walked up to the community school (keep in mind that Field has a population of 250 people) to sign waivers for the hike tomorrow. We are hiking Mt Stephen to see the trilobites.

Once we knew what road the campground was on, we found it pretty easily. It is small, but we found an easy site to back into. We walked up to the front to get a registration form and it started pouring so we had to run back to the RV. It’s been raining all day. It let up about 6 pm and has not rained since but remained cloudy. The clouds give a neat effect on the surrounding mountains. The effect is a little bit eerie. And we have another train close by, but far enough away to not be annoying. We are actually pretty close to the main highway so we can hear a lot of cars and trucks.

That’s it for today. We have a difficult hike ahead of us tomorrow so I need my sleep! Night!


August 20, 2008

Happy Birthday Dad! I wish I had cell signal or internet. I’d send him a message. Oh well. :P

The rain woke me up last night and there was a train passing at the same time. So, I’m not sure which exactly woke me up. And, when it was time to get up, it was raining. Ugh, hiking in the rain is not fun. It’s a bit slippery.

I was able to get up pretty easily. David was sweet and made us pancakes and hot tea for breakfast. Good hearty breakfast to get our blood pumping. We got ready quickly and drove over to the visitor center in Field. We found the group with ease; we are hiking with a group of German students. They all looked pretty fit. I had my doubts if I was gonna be able to keep up with them. I haven’t completely worked all of my asthma out of me yet, so here goes!

Luckily, the rain was barely coming down when we started our hike. We left the front of town and walked up to the trailhead. I was having difficultly keeping up already! Once the guide arrived at the trailhead, he explained that there was an area we were prohibited to hike in and the area that we would be hiking in is restricted (you have to have the right permit to hike in it).


click picture for gallery
So, he took off up the trail. David and I were the last one in the group of 9. I had already taken a puff of my inhaler when the guide stopped to talk about the sign, but it wasn’t helping. The guide was going much too fast for me to keep up. David was doing fine. Quickly I ran out of breath and started to feel the tell tale signs of an asthma attack coming. I told David I wasn’t gonna be able to do this hike cuz I couldn’t keep up with everyone. He gave me the keys and ran to catch up with the group. I stood there for a few minutes to get my breathing under control before I was able to head back to the RV. Ya, I’m bummed that I wasn’t able to do the hike. It looked like a really neat trail. The rain had stopped and left the surrounding forest damp and fresh. And, I was pretty excited to see some fossils! :( Oh well. I hope we can get our money back for my half.

I came back to the RV and made some hot tea and changed into some dry clothes. To distract me a bit, I even vacuumed the RV. I decided to start on The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. That should keep my brain busy until David returned from the hike.

David returned around 4 pm. The rain had just stopped, giving him a break from the wet and cold weather. He was drenched.


At least he had his waterproof hiking boots on. I had the water heater and the heater on anticipating his arrival. I made some hot tea while he took a hot shower. He said that the hike was grueling. He’s a tough hiker and he said he could barely keep up. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it. The guide led them up at a very fast pace, gave them a 20 minute lunch break and then continued at the same pace up to the trilobite bed. The last part of the hike, he had to scramble up on his hands. The Mt Stephen trilobite bed was at the top. He said it was covered in dense fog and rain. Everything was very slippery. And he said there were hundreds and hundreds of fossils on it.


Pretty neat, huh? I wish I could have seen it. The German students that were in the group were searching everywhere for the biggest fossil to take a picture with.

It started to rain pretty hard so they headed back. It was really slippery on the trail which was mainly roots and rocks covered by wet forest litter. I’m glad I didn’t have to hike down that! Poor David fell too and hit his shoulder on a rock. Ouch! I want to head over to the community school tomorrow and see if I can get our money back on my non-hike. And my pen. The guide took my Montverde pen. I really like that pen even tho it has blue ink. :P

After David rested for a bit, we drove back to camp, dumped and had dinner. We relaxed the evening away reading and playing cards. It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow so not sure what we’ll do next. K, back to my book! Night!


August 21, 2008

The rain woke me up again last night. I think I’m fearful that the RV is gonna leak so if I hear heavy rain, it wakes me up. I’m normally a very heavy sleeper. And, I went to bed with a stomach ache (I think I had too much dairy yesterday) so that woke me up too. I was hoping it would go away while I slept, but I woke up with a stomach ache too. Ugh.

It was still raining this morning when David made breakfast. We headed back to the community school in Field to try to get my half of the money back. The guy wouldn’t go for it. Oh well. Don’t go to Yoho NP! I’ll give them a bad rap and then maybe they’ll lose business. :P The guide was a real dick. There was no way I was gonna be able to keep up with him and he was the guide! I paid him to guide me up there, not put on a chase for me to keep up. What if I had gotten lost? Oh well. We left Field and Yoho NP after we picked up some ice from the local gas station. We headed back to Banff in the gray rainy weather.

We arrived back at Tunnel Mountain Campground shortly before 11 am and had no problem getting a spot. We needed to do a small load of laundry to wash muddy clothes so we walked to the bus stop in the rain and took the bus into town. Feels like London all over again!

Today is the Banff open air concert. The main road in the center of town was closed to vehicles but the bus still dropped us off at spot near the laundromat. The washing went quick since most people drop off there dirty clothes rather than washing it their selves. We enjoyed a nice Chinese lunch, ran a few errands around town and hopped back on the bus back to the RV. It is soooo wet and rainy today. We made some hot chocolate and turned the heater on when we got back.

Nothing much else happened today. Just another rainy day. We watched a couple of movies and David made homemade pizza for dinner. MMM. We’re gonna climb Sulphur Mountain tomorrow if the weather clears up and take the gondola down the mountain. Well, I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted for one reason or another. Night!


August 22, 2008

We awoke to mostly clear skies. Hopefully it won’t rain today. It’s been raining a lot! We need a bit of a break so we can hike. :) We wanted to hike to the top of Sulphur Mountain today, but I really don’t want to hike in the rain. So, we decided to wait a bit to see what the weather was gonna do. We took the bus into town to pick up some supplies (David needed a new water bladder for is backpack) and picked up a map of Mt Rundle (David wants to hike this crazy mountain). The weather looked like it was gonna hold, so we went back to the RV, changed into hiking gear and rode the bus up to Mt Sulphur.

Mt Sulphur has a gondola at its base and an old cosmic rays weather station on top. Instead of paying the $50 to ride the gondola round trip, we hiked. It took us about an hour and 45 to get up and about an hour to hike back down. We took a snack break at the top and checked out the weather station. Not much too it really.

We decided on Indian food for dinner since we haven’t had it since May. It was really good! The chicken tikka masala was different from what I was used to but it was still really good. And so was the garlic naan. I had some tasty chai tea while David had a Kingfisher beer. Dinner really hit the spot! We were lucky enough to have the bus waiting for us when we arrived back at the bus stop (we’ve been missing it all day). Now, we’re back at the RV taking showers and getting ready for bed. We’re gonna do a small hike tomorrow to let our muscles relax before we do the really hard hike on Sunday: Mt Rundle. K, I’m gonna hop in the shower and hit the hay. Good night! :)


August 23, 2008

Ouch! I can’t move today. I am so sore! I think it’s because I practically ran down the mountain on the way back yesterday. What? I wanted Indian food badly! :)

We planned on doing a little hike today but David was nice to me and let me have a break since I was so sore. Instead, we did a little bit of tourist shopping in town. We picked up some postcards and t-shirts and had lunch at this little Greek place in town. Very good! And they even had free refills on their soda. What a concept! :P I also tracked down the internet connection I was finding near the RV park. Ya, I know, it supposed to be for a paying customer at the hotel at the back of the RV park, but hey, they don’t have a password protecting it! David and I found an empty campsite right across the street from the hotel, plugged our computers in and enjoyed some free Wi-Fi. :D It was nice to have the internet and catch up on worldly events.

We’re hiking up Mt Rundle tomorrow. We’re getting up at 6 am and heading over to the trailhead with the RV. It’s supposed to be an 8 to 10 hour hike round trip and it’s about a 5000ft elevation gain from the bottom to the top. Scary huh! The worrying thing is that there might be a storm heading in tomorrow afternoon, so if it looks like it’s gonna rain, we’re heading back to the RV and quitting the hike early. Don’t want to be struck by lightning! So, fun stuff. I’m gonna be so sore on Monday! K, need my rest. Night!


August 24, 2008

We hiked Mt Rundle today.


click picture for gallery
I am sooo done with Mt Rundle. It was so hard! I’ve never climbed a mountain with that intensity. It was very pretty up there. We even saw some deer.


The view from just the side of the mountain was amazing. You could see all of the town below and the river and the falls. But, it wasn’t an easy hike.


We got up at 6 am, got ready and drove over to the parking lot at the trailhead. We started on the trail about 7:30 am. The first part of the trail which led up to the mountain base was not too bad. There were 12 switchbacks and 3 gullies to cross, but the real challenge was once we got to the mountain base trail.


From here to the top, the trail was very sketchy and not well marked. So, you might start heading up one route and then realize halfway up it that you aren’t on the trail anymore. Not fun! So, at the beginning of the trail you first had to cross a gully that had steep sides and no footing to scale the sides of the bank. The next part was all roots and trees.


Imagine walking up huge steps that had rocks and sand all over them but they aren’t steps at all; you’re just scaling the mountain. That went on for quite awhile until we immerged from the tree line. The wind was blowing pretty hard to the point where it was threatening to blow me off the mountain.


This is where it got really scary. You are out on the bare rock of the mountain with a not so clearly defined trail. And, it’s not dirt that you are hiking on. It’s gravel, but on a steep incline so you are slipping and sliding everywhere. You take a step forward and you slide back to where you started from. The trail gets to a point where it was just the bare rock and you were expected to climb up that.


And with the wind, that was a scary combo. So, we said we had gone far enough and started to head back. If we had continued forward, the trail becomes a raised ledge or “backbone” along the mountain so you are completely out in the open with barely any place to walk and the wind is trying to blow you off the mountain. Then, the last bit is a scramble where I’m sure you have to be down on all fours trying to summit the mountain without dying. It was dangerous up there. I’m glad we decided to turn back when we did. There was a point when I was hiking through the steep gravel where I took a step and lost my foot and at that exact moment the wind came up and blew me backwards. I thought I was gonna die. It was scary. It was shortly after that in which we decided to turn back.

Heading back down the trail was even worse than climbing it. When you are climbing up a mountain, you are naturally leaning into the mountain so you really don’t realize how steep it is. But once you are climbing back down the mountain, it can get hairy cuz you can lose your footing so much easier. I feel several times on the way down. Luckily, I didn’t hurt anything.

Once we were back to the normal trail (the easy, normal trail), we had lunch and rested for awhile. David said he’d buy me sushi to make it up to me for trying to kill me on that crazy mountain. :) It was a tough mountain. I even fell again on the easy part of the trail cuz I was going too fast. I scrapped up my arm pretty good too. So, ya, I hate Mt. Rundle and I’m sure it hates me too. I don’t think I’ll ever take on a challenge like that again. Everyone has their limits and I found mine. :) But, the sushi was good! Night!


August 25, 2008

Yay, I’m not sore today!! It’s weird. My body is getting used too all of this trauma I’m putting it through, but my arm does hurt. I scrapped it up pretty good when I fell and I have a nasty bruise on it. But, that’s all that hurts. :D

After 3 weeks in Canada, we figured we had seen all there was to see of the 3 major national parks, so back to the states! And, we loved Glacier NP so much that we’re gonna go back and see more it. We got up fairly early since we went to bed really early and got a head start on the road south. We drove into Canada through Alberta, so to see something different on the way back, we drove south through British Columbia to the Montana border. We drove through Kootenay National Park which was pretty but kind of drab because it was raining yet again.

We saw Radium Hot Springs as well but there really wasn’t much to that resort spot. We made it to the border about 2pm.

The customs officer asked us the usual border questions and then went to talk to another officer. David could hear their conversation. It went something like this:

“Should we check this vehicle?”
“Did they have any fruits or meat?”
“No.”
“Nah, let them go through. We’ll check the next one.” :D

Great. I’m glad the customs officers are “random.” It was nice not to have them search our vehicle tho. When David and I drove back from Mexico a couple summers ago, the guy inspected David’s little Geo. David hadn’t washed it in months so I’m sure the customs’ guy thought we were bringing people over. Anyway…

So, we entered Montana without a hitch. We waited until we crossed the border to get gas since it was so expensive in Canada. We were happy to find a gas station with gas for $3.85. I’m so happy the price has gone down. I still wish it was under a $1, but that’s another story. :D We also got a huckleberry slushy which was yummy! Back on the road, I spotted a juvenile bear on the side of the road, but since I had the slushy in my hands instead of the camera I couldn’t get a picture of him. But, I did see a moose on the side of the road earlier in the day and got a picture of him. We stopped for lunch in Whitefish. The map said there was a rest stop there, but it wasn’t a rest stop. It was the parking lot of a tennis court, but it said rest stop on the sign. Weird. We found a Safeway in Whitefish but, strangely enough, most of its shelves were empty. After inquiring, we discovered that the Safeway was being remodeled and they were in the process of tearing it and rebuilding it. Lucky for us, huh, since we needed supplies. We made due with what was available.

We arrived at San-Suz-Ed campground in the late afternoon and were welcomed by the Linux lady that ran the front desk. She remembered us from last time. Shortly after we set up camp and got on the internet (they have really fast Wi-Fi here!), it started raining and it hasn’t stopped all night. We’re up pretty late too (until 3:45!) and it’s still raining. It actually raining so hard that it’s gonna be hard to fall asleep! I uploaded pics to Facebook and MySpace for your viewing pleasure. David’s uploading more pics to his website as well. He has a bunch still to go through. Look for more pics over the next day or so. Well, I better try to sleep or the sun will be up before my head has hit the pillow! Night :)


August 26, 2008

I managed to sleep in until 10:30 this morning and I could still hear rain falling on the roof. At least we have internet to keep us busy today! :) We decided to stay at San-Suz-Ed for another day to wait out the rain. I did laundry (and boy, I needed to!) and relaxed with my laptop. David’s been reading articles online and working on pics. Yes, still working on pics. The rain stopped after I was finished with laundry (good thing I have my water proof bags!). So, not much for today. We did join the community camp fire and talked with one of the owners’ sons (I think). He comes up here in the spring to help with the upkeep of the campground and provides the park with a campfire every night between 7pm and 10pm. He has a place in Arizona that he stays at in the winter. I could see David wanting to have a summer and winter home one day. Luckily it didn’t rain on us but it was cold! Upon returning to the RV, we cranked the heater and enjoyed some hot chocolate. I’m pretty tired after my poor amount of sleep last night. I’m gonna turn in. We’ll probably check out the eastern side of Glacier NP tomorrow and then head east. We’ll see how the day goes. Night!