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Ingrid’s second 5th birthday party went well. She walked into a room decorated all red, with Clifford the big red dog decorations dispersed throughout. The St. Louis bunch were all there. There were no kids but she didn’t seem to notice. I think she enjoyed being the center of attention. This year, there was no shyness at all. It seems that living on the road has really changed Ingrid into a social butterfly. Kind of funny, since whenever I tell people she’s home schooled, I get the “oh, I would love to do that with my child, but the socialization is so important…”, it’s always something along those lines. Well I can tell you first hand that Ingrid has no problem socializing with other children. She is different than most her peers, in that she hasn’t learned to call other kids names, or hit them, or make fun of them. Also in that she is comfortable around adults, and can easily stay and have a conversation with an adult. 

So a room full of adults was no problem. We played Clifford trivia, pin the tag on the Clifford, and drop the dog bone into the 2-liter bottle. It was all extremely fun for Ingrid. She enjoyed laughing at all of our attempts to win the prizes. In the end, all the prizes somehow ended up in her bag and she didn’t really notice anything suspicious about that (or maybe she did, but decided not to bring it up). There was a chocolate Clifford cake and even a pinata! The pinata was not actually Clifford, but one of those little Mexican toros. The funny thing is that Ingrid ran up to me and whispered excitedly, “Mommy, it’s a bighorn sheep!!!”. The big horn sheep is her current favorite animal. Nice work, Grandma!

The day after the party, Grandma Pam took Ingrid and I to see Mary Poppins the play. It was playing at the Fox theatre, which I’d never seen before then. It’s a really old theatre, renovated, even with it’s own pipe organ. The show was spectacular. Mary Poppins flew over us in the end! We weren’t allowed to take photos during the show of course but here’s one Pam took outside while waiting for the show to start.

After driving for two days, we made a brief stop in Kansas City to see Katie, Andrew’s cousin. Ingrid loves Katie and she spent the whole dinner sitting next to Katie and just looking up at her admiringly. It was really cute and I felt a little sad when it was time to leave, because I know Ingrid would love to see Katie on a regular basis. 

Today we’re in Babler State Park, about 30 minutes from Andrew’s mom’s house. We haven’t explored the park much yet but we -love- the campsite. It’s incredibly spacious and beautiful. It’s quiet and relaxed, there aren’t many people here during the week. At night the cicadas take over and it’s super loud but not in an unpleasant way. This morning I found one in the Vanagon and I couldn’t believe how big it was. It looked like one of those bugs in a horror movie that ate something and became gigantic. I think this is the first time I’ve ever been able to see a bug’s eyes clearly without getting close to it. I think it was probably as big as a small bird.

Last night we came home to a massive lighting and thunder show. Well it was massive for me, anyway. Probably not a big deal to Andrew. The lightning lit up the sky completely, I’ve never seen lightning this intense. And the raindrops were huge! It was all part of the adventure and I was sorry that Ingrid missed it. She did wake once in the middle of the night and ask if it was time to pack to go to Grandma’s house yet, then fell immediately back to sleep. 

Tonight we have reservations for Ingrid’s favorite steak restaurant, Ruth’s Chris. Andrew’s mom introduced us to this wonderful restaurant and it’s become a tradition for us to go there whenever we’re together. It’s definitely a “special occasion” kind of a place but well worth the money. Our special occasion is the belated celebration of Ingrid’s birthday. Tomorrow Grandma Pam is throwing Ingrid a surprise party at her house. Everything is ready to go and it should be a fun time.

It’s been a lazy kind of a visit to this park, but oh so lovely. We arrived Friday afternoon and got a campsite with no hookups. However, we did get our own little clearing in the woods with a picnic table and fire ring. At the back of the clearing is a little trail that goes all the way down to a large lake.

Saturday morning we went exploring by car. We didn’t have a planned route at all and we took a bunch of off-road detours. One spot we stopped was particularly fun; it ended at a little stream over a bed of rocks. There, Andrew spotted a huge toad in the water. We looked it up later and learned that it is almost on the endangered list. In the afternoon we took a family hike to the lake. It was Pluto’s first real hike, as opposed to just walking around an RV park. He looked a little apprehensive at times, but this is bear country after all. There are also plenty of elk and the occasional moose. The friendly host at the Yellowstone campsite told me that if elk see a house cat, they will stomp it to death; apparently they put house cats in the same category as wolves. We walked to the lake in single file, and spent some time at the shore just enjoying the magnificent view of the Tetons (some say this is the most beautiful mountain in the U.S.). Ginger went for a dip in the cold lake, and Otto enjoyed watching her. Pluto sat on the rocks and groomed himself. Afterward we had dinner at a restaurant in the park. We have been pleasantly surprised at how good the food is here in the park. It’s very different than Yellowstone, where the food was barely edible. Same goes for the bookstores and merchandise in general. Here at Grand Teton they have a huge selection of very high quality books, like the kind I would hand pick from Amazon. It was really difficult to pick just a few. We came home with a book about the Sioux Indians that we started reading today.

After this mellow stay in Grand Teton, we have decided that staying in parks is the way to go. Instead of doing laundry and going to the playground, we end up going to ranger talks and hiking little trails looking for flowers. Having said that, our next stop will be at a KOA campground near Mount Rushmore, where Ingrid will enjoy swimming in the two heated pools, playing in the Splash Park, and trying out the Giant Jump Pillow : )

It’s pretty sad leaving Yellowstone. The bison, the beautiful and vast meadows, the flowers, I will miss them all! We had some very very close encounters with bison near the road (thankfully, we were inside the car); we saw a herd of pronghorn antelope in the Lamar valley; visited lush waterfalls; saw some amazing pools and hot springs; spotted a fox near the petrified tree; almost ran over a long colorful snake on the road; learned about the sad history of the wolves. Andrew met up with a fellow Adventure Rider and moto’d some beautiful single track trails in West Yellowstone.

On our last day, Ingrid and I went for a hike up a steep hill across from the campground. It was our first official mother and daughter hike. I wanted to show Ingrid how wonderful hiking is so I was really hopeful that everything would go well. We packed some potato chips and she got to wear her CamelBack with water in it, and her little Teva sandals, and her Junior Ranger baseball cap. It did go well, and she enjoyed the hike despite the heat and the swarms of grasshoppers that sometimes ran into her. We took our time and stopped a lot to look at bugs or flowers or just the view. At the top we talked about the hard work we did to get here and how good it feels to be alone at the top of a mountain, enjoying the cool breeze and the silence. There is something about being in nature that quiets the chatter in my mind, and makes me feel peaceful and elated at the same time. I feel just as happy as when I am dancing, except that with dancing it is more of a vividly alive feeling. I hope that Ingrid will experience this someday too.

Yellowstone is definitely on the list of places to come back to, “someday”, when Ingrid is old enough to do some real hikes.

We’re finally in Yellowstone. We’ve dreamt of being here for a while… it’s the place we always pictured ourselves whenever we thought about living on the road, kind of a milestone. It feels good… like this is proof that we made this dream happen. It’s a good time to think about our time on the road thus far. Do we like this lifestyle? Is it as good as we’d hoped it would be? Should we continue?

Yes, yes, and definitely YES! Oddly, after 8 months on the road, it feels like we’re just getting started. We have the rest of our year loosely mapped out- St. Louis, New York, some of the eastern and southern states, Florida. After that, we think we’ll pick a place and stay awhile. Really get to know somewhere. Maybe Alaska, maybe Mexico. Those are just preliminary ideas.

We’ve visited Yellowstone NP two times so far. Yesterday we drove from the west entrance to Old Faithful, the famous geyser. Just a few minutes into the drive, we came across our first large mammal: some elk cows and calves resting in the tall grass of a marsh. We also saw some Canadian geese and ravens (but those don’t really count). Lastly, some bison! These were huge and awesome, and there were several people out of their cars taking pictures. Later I read that bison can weigh up to 2000 pounds, and can run 30 miles an hour, about 3 times as fast as we can! Also they are very agile. You should probably not get out of your car if you are near one!

The scenery was amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen. It looks like there was a huge fire there, and only a few tall trees remain, and they look dead. The rest of the trees look like small Christmas trees, and they densely pack the landscape. It looked remarkable to me, but Andrew says it’s because I’m used to the big trees on the west coast. It’s unbelievable how many trees there are! Like a lawn of trees with barely any space between them. Then there are the gushing rivers, so wide and a gray-blue color. At the bottom you can see the hardened lava. And meadows so large that you can’t see the other side.

We saw some smaller geysers, fumaroles and hot springs. Ingrid hated the rotten egg smell of the hydrogen sulfide. The hot springs were beautiful, such a clear and pure color of blue. I would be very tempted to dip my toe in there if I had not seen the steam coming off (you are not allowed to set foot off the raised pathways, because there is scalding hot water just underneath the surface and it can be very brittle). We saw a bubbling pool of grey mud that looked like a giant pot of boiling water! Essentially Yellowstone park is a huge caldera, about 60 miles wide. So there are these vents and pools everywhere. Old Faithful was fun to see. It was set to go off at 6:26pm and we waited patiently; it finally erupted a few minutes later, shooting boiling hot water about a hundred feet in the air. It was spectacular!

Today, we visited some waterfalls. Also, another geyser called Steamboat. Steamboat is bigger than Old Faithful (300-400 feet tall, I believe it’s the largest in the world) but totally unpredictable. There have been as little as 4 days between eruptions, and as long as 50 years! I was kind of nervous being close to it but it only spouted about 40 feet. We walked to another beautiful crystal pool, called Beryl spring. I hope the photos will do these pools justice. Also another boiling mud pool. All amazing and other-worldly. On our way out of the park, we were thrilled to see a bald eagle. It was on the other side of the river and on top of a very tall tree, but our camera helped us see it better. What a great way to end the day. Tomorrow we plan to get to the park by 7am, to see the large mammals in the Hayden valley. I really want to see a moose!

Otto is back home and doing fine. No more diarrhea. The vet gave him an injection of Metronidazole ($75!), which kills anaerobic bacteria in his gut. This really seemed to do the trick. He’s on a bland diet of cooked chicken and rice, lots of rice, until he bulks up a bit. Also a probiotic, antibiotic, and anti-inflammatory for his colon. As soon as he started feeling better, he was ravenously hungry. I’ve never seen him like this. 

We left Bozeman yesterday morning. We actually enjoyed the detour. They have a nice downtown with an old feel to it, near Montana University, with lots of funky and fun restaurants and shops. On our last night, we ate tapas! I haven’t had tapas since our trip to Spain in 2001. We ate spinach and Gruyere cheese filled croquettes with garlic aioli, mussels in a sherry butter sauce with homemade foccacia, tiny lamb burgers with grilled onions, tortilla espanola, and shrimp sauteed in garlic chili oil. For dessert, cheesecake for us and a chocolate cupcake for Ingrid. Yum!!! It was one of those evenings where the food, atmosphere, and our memories of Spain all came together to make a memorable experience. 

The KOA campground in Bozeman was fun too. In addition to a pool, they had a “splash park” (see photo on previous post). Every night they hosted an ice cream social; that was kind of a fun way to meet our current neighbors- Pluto is usually the ice breaker. People find it amazing that he walks with us everywhere. Personally I don’t think it’s all that amazing, but whatever. It’s a fun way to meet people.

Ingrid and I went to Barnes and Noble (very excited to find a big bookstore in town) and bought another drawing book, with all sorts of animals this time. So far we’ve drawn a seagull and a bear (in honor of Yellowstone). Also a human anatomy book. We’ve been reading about how the human body is studied, about cells (did you know you have 100 million million cells in your body, in over 200 varieties?). Ingrid is very interested in the human body and when we flipped through the book, I had a hard time keeping up with her questions. I had to say “I don’t know, but we’ll find out” several times. It’s funny because I remember being the same way when I was her age, totally fascinated by the human body.

This morning we are back in West Yellowstone and we’ll be here until next Saturday morning. The KOA here is wonderful too, with a big old school playground, mini golf course, and big indoor pool. We’re right across from the playground and I have to face Ingrid away from the window when we’re studying. Bears come through at night looking for food! Today will be our first trip to Yellowstone NP. Fortunately, or unfortunately?, President Obama is here this weekend too.