It's been a while, but here's a recap of our Summer Road Trip 2018. Hope you enjoy (hi, Patty!).
We left July 3rd and drove through Washington to the northeast corner of Oregon and spent the night in a fancy old hotel in Baker City, and visited the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. We saw covered wagons, learned about how hard it was, and saw tracks still left by the wagons as they traveled west.
Next we visited Craters of the Moon National Monument, which was fascinating! The landscape really looks otherworldly and it seems surprising that anything can live there, but both plants and animals survive.
I was really looking forward to visiting the
Idaho Potato Museum the next day, but unfortunately the hotel I booked was sketchy and we decided to move on and not take any chances. Next time!
So we headed to Yellowstone National Park, which we had visited when Griffin was 7, six years ago. It was fun to see some of the same places in the park, but also some new things. We saw some new animals this trip, including a pronghorn and a grizzly bear!
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was so gorgeous. I wanted to spend all day just looking at it, along with the thousands of other people there.
This guy is in charge of the park.
Grizzly bear! With lots of people pulled over to the side of the road to see him (or her).
We left Yellowstone via a road out of the northeast corner, taking a highway that the map showed would take us through part of Montana to North Dakota. What I didn't know was that it was called the
Beartooth Highway, and is a famous road that is closed for the winter, as it goes up to 10,000 feet! So we went from hot springs to snow in a few hours. It was a lot of fun, the road didn't seem unsafe at all, I just hadn't realized we would be going up so high!
The difference between 2012 and 2018!
We stopped at Pompey's Pillar in Montana, because it has the only physical evidence still around of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Clark's signature carved into the rock.
We also stopped at
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and listened to a ranger presentation, because we may never be out this way again, so why not see all the sites? It was really really hot, and we didn't look around much more than the cemetery and the Indian Memorial. It was interested to learn how the monument has changed its presentations and displays over the past hundred years, from being focused entirely on Custer and the white man's point of view, to looking at it from everyone's point of view, especially the causes of the battle.
The plant identification was interesting, too, giving multiple names, including the native names, and their uses.
In North Dakota we visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park, mostly because Jake and Jen recommended it, and it was worth it! There are two units, the North Unit is in a different time zone (Central, an hour ahead) and the South Unit is an hour behind in the Mountain Time Zone.
Theodore Roosevelt's cabin
Another one of those places we may never see again, so we needed to stop, Mt. Rushmore! Very touristy but interesting, and I kept thinking about the movie "North by Northwest" and the chase over Mt. Rushmore the whole time.
We also stopped to see the Crazy Horse monument in progress, probably forever at this rate.
At this point, we had been through North and South Dakota, with lots of driving, lots of straight roads, lots of parks and monuments. We ended up in Denver, Colorado, visiting with a teacher friend, and decided we needed to go home. We had been thinking we would drive further south and visit Mesa Verde National Park, but we were done. And, it turns out, Denver is STILL a three day drive home to Seattle! So we called it quits. But before we did that, we visited Red Rocks, because of all the famous concerts there. Griffin ran down and stood on the stage, I stayed near the top and just soaked it in. Then we headed west again through the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake City.
I couldn't resist one more stop in Idaho, the
Minidoka Relocation Camp, where thousands of Japanese-Americans were sent during World War II, many of them from the Seattle/Bainbridge Island area. It was a way off the highway, down narrow farm roads, and then there was not a lot left. The remains of some buildings, a reconstructed guard tower, a trailer with some exhibits and rangers, and a couple of huts where people lived, and a baseball diamond.
What we found out from talking to the rangers and reading signs was that after the war the government sold off the land to farmers, so much of it is privately owned farmland now. Sadly, some of the Japanese-Americans who had been sent to live in the camps had decided they liked it in Idaho and wanted to buy the land, but the government wouldn't let them.
Griffin had read "The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" in 5th grade with his teacher, so he had the background knowledge to start to understand the situation.
Reconstructed barbed wire fences lined the canal.
Huts where people lived
After this we really were ready to go home, so headed to Richland, Washington, and then home. It was a fantastic trip, lots packed into about two weeks' travel time, and I think we will be ready to do it again in a couple of years! Maybe further east next time, or going south and into Arizona and New Mexico, I think that's Griffin's vote right now. Traveling with him is so much fun, I can't wait for the next trip!
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