After deciding a month ago that it would be a good time for a road trip, we decided to head to Yellowstone National Park. We'd always wanted to see it. And since the path to Yellowstone roughly passes some really interesting places, we thought we'd make a 6-week trip out of it. Week 6 will be spent with our BFFs, the Chmura's, in northern Wisconsin at a camp called Fort Wilderness.
At about half way back from Fort to home, we're stopping to spend some quality time with my (Paul) sister Chris and her Husband Vern.
The places we want to see in addition to YNP are Devil's Tower National Monument, (doo, doo, doo, BUM..., BUM...!), Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Grand Teton National Park, and of course, The Badlands.
During the exhaustive routing prep, Penny learned some really important things that would drastically effect our itinerary. The biggest thing was that sane people plan these kinds of trips a year in advance. Big national sites book up quickly, and finding campgrounds with openings is next to impossible. Second, the higher elevations in Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana can still get down into the '30s at night, and early to mid-June is the rainy season. Third, having the Independence Day holiday was going to make finding campgrounds even harder. Well, the kind we like anyway. We prefer campgrounds run by Federal and State agencies.
Ok, so nobody ever accused we 2 P's of being sane, so we pressed forward with the prep. While Penny spent countless hours finding campgrounds along our proposed route, I was busy trying to fulfill my duties as Minister of Fun and Entertainment, (Penny is Mistress of Finance,).
For two days I tried to find a way to secure our kayaks to the ladder racks on our trusty pickup. We really wanted to have them with us, but as it turned out, it wasn't gonna happen. Our kayak saddles couldn't get a good enough grip on the racks, With the boats strapped down, the saddles slid apart on the racks and all the straps loosened up within a mile. No kayaks for you!
We ran into a problem with our tow-hitch gear about 10 miles into our journey and had to head home to repair it. That put us a day behind.
The scheduling of the first leg of the trip was crucial as we had to make actual reservations to insure we'd have a place to setup base-camp for our 11 day adventure in Yellowstone. As it was we were staying in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho, about 27 miles from the West Entrance of Yellowstone. The western part of YNP is where the majority of the geothermal features are.
We had planned to make a bee-line west on I-80 through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. Once in central Wyoming, we planned to exit the Interstate and head northwest on some state freeways and scenic byways through the Grand Teton National Park and mountain range, until we crossed over into Idaho and entered the Caribou-Targhee.
If you ever want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. Our plans began to be thwarted once we entered Wyoming.
Til next time...
