Advice you never asked for.

Quick recap of the last couple of days:

Thursday we did the grave of sacajawea, then found an awesome utopian
paradise of a picnic spot. Lake, mountain, pine trees, perfect. then
grand teton national park (see picture below) then into yellowstone
where we did old faithful (which was a bit overrated and not all that
faithful if you ask me, but the kids loved it.) We saw buffalo, closer
than I was planning... Plus herds of elk (sans horns) and deer. But
the high point was the grizzly bear. The picture is horrible because
with a naked eye, the bears looked like a small speck. Honestly we
never would have seen them, but there was a crowd of foolish people
(and their unfortunate children) walking out TOWARD the historically
ferocious grizzly who would surely kill to protect the 3 cubs who were
feeding on a carcus near a small lake. So, we pulled off to see what
the crowd was all about, and a guy told us about the grizzly bear and
cubs, but said we would need a really good zoom or some binoculars.
We used our video camera and let the kids all pile into the front seat
while we watched the grizzly bear and cubs walk around (safely from
the vehicle.). It was pretty awesome. We did the entire grand loop of
yellowstone, which is crazy considering we had already done so much
earlier in the day. The kids were excited to "stay in a hotel that we
don't have to wear our shoes in the house." Which is more than we can
say for the jackpine motel from the previous night.

Friday we woke up and ate breakfast on the road, drove through the
rest of montana, then idaho and into washington state where we camped
for the night. Idaho was actually unbelievably beautiful, which I
didn't see comin' to be honest. We got to our campsite with plenty of
time to cook dinner, make s'mores and even pre-make breakfast (bear
surprise) for this morning. We cooked bear surprise on the fire,
packed up and got going around 9:30am. We are heading now to mt.
Rainier, despite a great deal of peer pressure from our friends rick
and christine to skip the mountain altogether so we can arrive at
their place in newburg, oregon earlier. I'm sure once we arrive
(smelling like campfire and beef jerky) they will wish hit mt. St.
Helens as well.

A lot of people following our tour de usa have asked the same
questions: how are the kids doing? are you glad you actually did it?
Do you think you'll come home early? Are you having fun?

Well, we are having fun. It would definitely be EASIER to have stayed
home, I mean it is a ton of work, packing and unpacking at each
stop... But it is so worth all the amazing things we are experiencing.
I do not think that we will come home early. We are pretty determined
to complete the trip, and so far we have hit everything on our
itinerary! The kids are doing great. Below is a list of unsolicited
advice for anyone considering traveling with young kids for an
extendied period of time.

-rotate team captains. Each day one of the kids is team captain, and
they have some extra responsibilities. (Ex: "captain, I have to go to
the bathroom, stand here and make sure the baby doesn't roll away!"
But, the real fun is that the team captain gets to make special
choices, and they feel pretty bad-to-the-bone when the opportunity to
navigate the fate of the family comes up. It is usually something
obvious. (Ex: "we can have tunafish or s'mores for our treat,
captain's choice.") But the captain is also in charge of choosing the
music, the show if they watch one, and even the campsite or picnic
spot. This is also a great charcter-building opportunity, when you can
throw the whole thing in their face. (Ex: "uh oh, the captain
shouldn't have taken his shoes off and thrown them, because now one's
missing and you have to hop around on just one sneaker.")
-name your meals. Everything should be ridiculously named. They get
more excited about "bear surprise" or "mountain pizzas" than they
would if we just told them what we were actually eating.
-use pita bread and tortillas bc they don't squish.
-use shows as a privilege to be earned, not a constant thing...
Otherwise the trip will be a "movie-marathon" instead of a road trip.
-break the rules. When I was little and was camping with my dad, he
said we were having orange cremesicles for breakfast. It was a dream
come true. breaking the rules makes it fun and keeps kids involved and
excited to see what might come next.
-if you are camping with your baby, bring extra everything. If your
baby needs to eat and all your other kids are sleeping and you can't
risk waking them all up and you are NOT one to risk the tragic
outcomes of removing your baby from the carseat while in transit, and
if you are really desperate, and agile, I recommend crawling in the
back, contorting your body in humiliating positions so you can lean
over and breastfeed your baby in the carseat. Again, agility is key
here. Also, you must be willing to "check your dignity with the
seatbelt and just go for it."*
-make an activity pack. I have a 60 page one I can email you.
-if you have a million kids and don't want to buy them each their own
sleeping bags, just buy two and zip them together making one
queensize. You'd be surprised how many kids you could pile in one
double-bag. Plus, they stay warmer together then they would in a
single sleeping bag. Also, two camping pads laid horizontally is
usually long enough and plenty wide for a few kids... And cheaper than
buying each child a camping pad.
-don't be afraid to let them stay up later than usual and wake them up
before they would normally get up... It just means they will sleep
more in the car.
-use backpacker's squeeze tubes. These are great bc you can fill them
with peanut butter, jelly, condiments, homemade baby food, etc. We use
them to squirt pb and j right into a pita... Great for the road. (I
know you can buy squeeze jelly, but I don't like that kind of jelly
for my kids, so this is a way to have the convenience of a squeeze
tube, without compromising your eating preferences... Basically you
get the convenience without the food coloring and high fructoose corn
syrup. just put your own jam in the tube. Voila!).

*i must give credit to sam cassara for the hilarity of this remark.

One Week Down

We are on day 7 of our trip! I really can't believe how much ground
we've covered, by the end of today we will have gone through thirteen
different states. In this week we have seen and experienced so many
things. It's crazy knowing that some of these experiences will be
once-in-a-lifetime type of things. Then again... There's always next
summer. :)

So, yesterday we made it to Mt. Rushmore. I was shocked how much I
enjoyed it. I had always heard that it was really overrated, but
worth it for the kids enjoyment. So, my own enjoyment was a pleasant
surprise. It was huge, which surprised me for some reason and the
actual attraction was relatively small and manageable. We were able
to drive in, check it out, picnic and get back on the road quickly,
but without having to rush.

After that, we drove as far as we could to get into a hotel because
this morning is yellowstone. We didn't want to camp too close to
yellowstone because of the bear population. (We felt like we run a
high-risk for bear attacks between harper's gremlin cry in the middle
of the night - which could be confused for a wounded animal - and
london's poop inexplicably smelling like movie theatre butter.) So,
we stayed at a little place called the jackpine motel in riverton,
wyoming. If you are looking for a small, quaint, clean and rustic
place to stay in wyoming... This is not the place for you. If,
however, you are looking for green shag carpet and a questionable
odor... We highly recommend jackpine. But, the showers were hot and
the toilet flushed... Which is a luxury these days. It is funny how
quickly our perspectives shift after a few days without little
pleasures like toilets. At mt. Rushmore I filled our nalgene bottles
with ice and water from the soda fountain and the whole family
(included tom) gasped in delight.

Yesterday we realized that en route to yellowstone from our hotel, we
would come within an hour or so of Sacajawea's grave. I did a report
on her in 3rd grade, because she was the only female on the list of
explorers that you could report on. Her whole story amazed me, and I
was disappointed that her burial site and memorial statue wasn't right
on the route. But, tom had set the gps to get to the site while I ran
into the store to restock supplies and just headed there without my
knowing it. I was so happy when I realized what was happening! I
might have cried a little. (But I also cried recently when I got a
season pass to seabreeze, our local amusement park, for my birthday
this year. I like surprises.)

So, we just went to an active native american cemetery where we
visited the grave of sacajawea and her two sons - one was actually the
baby she carried in a papoose (sp?) while she led lewis and clark on
their expedition to the pacific, and the other was her adopted son.
Both lived into their 80's, while she died at 25. She's my hero. So
is tom for going out of our way (when we were already running behind
schedule) to let me go there. This was also cool for the kids too,
because it is also had the first ever school for native american
children. It was also interesting to see different burial customs
that native americans have compared to ours. The kids each put
something (flowers, a coin, a plastic egg with a coin in it) around
the statue of sacajawea, which ended up making for some neat photos.

Next stop, yellowstone national park. The drive is gorgeous, and the
kids each got a piece of clay rock from the wind river indian
reservation when we stopped to take a picture on the side of the road.
Nothing like a road trip on a budget to make you steal souvenirs from
the native american's protected landcape.

there isn't any sand in this desert.

As you can all see from the pictures... We arrived safely at the
badlands. Due to the time change, we actually arrived right around
the planned time! The drive (about 7 hours) went super quickly
without any complaints from the kids. They are already in a good
travel routine. Once we break camp, we pile in the car and get right
to driving. They spend a couple of hours just looking out the
windows, coloring and writing in their acitivity books. We do a
couple of cd's of fun road trip music and they dance and sing. After
we stop to make and eat lunch, we put on a show for them, then they
all sleep for the rest of the drive. They really are rockstars.

So, the drive was a breeze and after the few days prior... We felt
like we earned that! As soon as we got to the badlands, we took some
pictures and explored a little. Almost as soon as we got there, a
small herd of some animal, which is still in question, walked right
across the road super close to our van. One guy said "about a quarter
mile up there are a bunch of antelopes with their babies!". Then tom
called the sheep, which is way less exciting. So, for the sake of the
story, I will go witthhhhhh.... Gazelles. A herd of gazelles were
just hanging around the cars with their babies. It was awesome.

Shortly after that, tom's deep depression came to an end when a herd
of buffalo also crossed the road in front of us, putting tom in the
middle of a lifelong dream - and only feet from real live buffalo.
(Whether or not these buffalo are wild is a matter of serious debate
between tom and I. He takes the position that since these buffalo are
undoubtedly happy and would probably never want to leave the badlands,
then they are wild. I, obviously, disagree because that is the
stupidest thing I've ever heard. A happy buffalo is not necessarily a
wild buffalo. Wild means free. Even if the buffalo don't want to
walk down I-90 to go to Wall Drug, they aren't wild unless they COULD
if they wanted to. I digress.)

So, we set up our tent at a free, primitive campground right in the
badlands (or batmans as harper calls them). Then we hiked up a pretty
steep hill and had dinner on the cliff. The kids did great climbing,
even harper insisted on going the whole way without help. It wasn't
an easy hike, so they were pretty excited to reach the top, which gave
us an awesome view. We ate a fast dinner and headed back down to
camp. We had zero run-ins with rattle snakes, which was more than
some other hikers that we met could say. One buffalo did wander down
to our campground, but minded his own business as we took pictures
(from a safe distance, mom.)

We got right into our tent and did a little family devotional. (Tom
organized some devotionals with some memory verses that the kids have
already all mermorized the first couple lines. They are some verses
from deuteronomy about how god goes before you in your travels,
pitching your camp for you by fire, etc. It is perfect scripture for
our trip. after that we ate backpacker's freezedried ice cream which
was funa and the kids loved it. We slept without the rainfly for the
first time because we did not want to miss the sky. It was beautiful
and worth taking the very small risk of getting rained on.

This morning we got up and actually broke camp and left ten minutes
EARLY! Ahhhh! Granted we had to get up at 6:30am and it still took
us 2 1/2 hours to get going... But we had ten minutes to spare!

We continued exploring the badlands, which we may have appreciated
just a touch more than the kids. Don't get me wrong, they really were
in awe at the vastness of it. At first. A few hours in... Let's just
say that I'm glad the park charges per car and not per person, because
at one point marlie literally had a pillowcase over her head. What
can ya do?

From there we went to the famous Wall Drug. We splurged and got a
pizza and some homemade donuts. It was nice not having to deal with
coolers and campstoves and packing food. We just arrived back to the
badlands for night #2. There is a cactus on our campsite and we have
a view of the beautiful rock formations, as well as the prairies. So
tonight, we will enjoy another beautiful night at "the batmans" and
tomorrow: "Rount Mushmore."

@laracapuano