Dinosaurs, Hot Weather, and Californiarado

Day 4. We woke up and packed up and headed out of Rock Springs, and it was HOT! We drove through basically the desert, and drove past Flaming Gorge National Park, which looked like a nice oasis in the middle of a desert. We reached Utah, and in Vernal, we visited the Natural History Museum. It had big statues of Dinosaurs and some nice exhibits. Mostly they were nice because they were inside and air conditioned. We watched a nice movie about how dinosaurs lived hundreds of millions of years ago, and Sierra had a few things to say about that after watching the Dr. Dinosaur movies (sorry, only my mom will understand this). We decided to skip the excavation site because again, Sadie was sleeping, and it was HOT. We also took a look at the campground and decided to keep driving. There was a sad little muddy river, no shade and some rocks. We drove and drove and drove and got to Glenwood Springs, CO. Supposedly there was a campground there, but unlike Wyoming and Montana, where there are hundreds of signs telling you where the campgrounds are, and RV parks and campgrounds around every corner,and right off of the main road, Colorado does not seem to promote the activity of camping. We kept driving and decided that in this part of Colorado, camping means staying at the Super 8 with the rock facade to keep in line with building codes. Even Target had a rock facade. That is a LOT of rock. There were no campgrounds that we could find in Carbondale, or in Basalt, except for one completely packed, rundown RV park that I am sure the city of Basalts' community planners are devising ways to sieze and bulldoze as I type these words. It did not conform to the rock facade standards. Unfortunately the campbook I had grabbed at AAA did not have Colorado, so we stopped at a gas station (with a cool antique wood and rock siding, and even the Conaco sign was ritzy), and asked where a campground was. "Are you kidding, this is Colorado, there is camping everywhere?!!" was the answer we got. They told us how to get to all this camping, and we headed out. We went through a little town that looked expensive, and started driving on the road with all the camping. After 20 minutes of driving, we decided that their idea of camping was the pullouts for the fly fisherman. It certainly wasn't the areas with the 50 bazillion "no trespassing" signs and the huge summer houses along the river. It was a beautiful canyon with red rock and lots of aspen trees. We were all very tired and ready to get out of the car when we pulled into the national park at Reudi Resovoir. It seemed that 50 other cars from California had the same idea, and the campground was already full! I think those poor 20 people that actually had campspots were stuck in gridlock all day while Suburbans and Range Rovers and Mercedes SUV's drove through the campground in a constant stream. It was completely nuts. We drove 30 minutes back to the main road, called the condo and added a night to stay in Snowmass for the night. It was nice to have a nice soft bed and a shower. Aaaaahh.

Wild mustangs...

Day 3. We woke up after a great night of sleep, Sadie slept until 8am. Thank you 4D batteries. We ate breakfast, packed up and got up to the Hot Springs pool as soon as it opened. It was awesome. It had a beautiful view, and it was super clean. We all had fun swimming, even Sadie. After about an hour and a half we hit the road. We drove through the badlands, and got to Rock Springs just in time to visit the BLM office. The nice lady there gave Sierra posters and all kinds of information on how to adopt a wild horse, God bless her. Sierra has not been the same since she learned that a wild mustang can be adopted for only $125 dollars. I don't know how a kid that "hates math" and "can't possibly do all those problems" can figure out in about 30 seconds that it will only take about 5 months to save enough to adopt a wild mustang. After the propaganda visit, we got to go out to the observation deck and spent about an hour while Sierra picked out all the horses she was going to adopt with some binoculars. You can guess what the evening conversation was about. After staying at the most awesome campground in the world the night before, we stayed at the Rock Springs KOA, and it was...well, it had a pool, and it had wireless. My mother always said "if you can't say something nice...".

Disneyland...National Park Style

Day 2. We slept not very well, due to the fact that I forgot to pack the 4D batteries that I thought were for the lantern, and ended up being for the little machine that blows up the mattress we sleep on. Oops. And Virginia City's 15 souvenir shops all close at 6 o'clock sharp, so we slept on the ground. Sadie mercifully woke us all up at 6 am. I'm sure all the other campers were happy about that as well. We ate some dry cinnamon rolls and headed out on the road. We got into West Yellowstone an hour and a half later. Sierra was having fun playing the license plate game, which works really really well in the Yellowstone area. We visited the Bear and Wolf Discover Center, and saw lots of wolves and bears, including the mama bear of two little cubs we used to visit at the Pullman Bear Center. That was cool. We then headed for Yellowstone, and when we got to the big Ranger Station entrance we all decided it was just like Disneyland. There was a huge welcoming sign, and Forest Rangers in these neat outfits, and we had to pay a ton of money to drive through. There were also thousands of people driving through from almost every state in the country (trust me, we have a map with little check marks on each state we saw...the license plate game). There were traffic jams from people jumping out of their cars and taking photos of animals on the side of the road (we did this too), and there were people everywhere. We drove by Old Faithful but decided to skip the hike to see it because of two reasons. First of all, Sadie was asleep, and the number one rule is don't wake a sleeping baby. Second of all, the parking lot for Old Faithful and the lodge and the shopping mall (yes, shopping mall) looks like the parking lot at Disneyland, jam packed full. It was insane. So we kept trucking along. Grand Teton National Park was less crowded and so beautiful. The mountains are breathtaking. We stopped to eat lunch and Sierra swam in a lake. It was really nice, except for the ginormous mosquitos. We then drove through Rodeo Drive North, I mean Jackson. I don't think Jackson should really belong to the state of Wyoming, I think it should technically belong to California. We camped at an awesome site about 8 miles off the road with a hot springs. I think that the only reason it wasn't full at 7pm when we got there was that it was 8 miles off the main road down a gravel road, and people from California must not like to get their Lexus and Mercedes dirty. Because every other campground was packed, and this one was way more awesome than any other campground I have ever stayed at. We made some dinner, blew up our mattress and had a peaceful night of sleep.

5 States, 11 Days, 30 hours of driving and One little car...

DAY 1.

Snowball is packed up and we are on our way to Snowmass, Colorado. We drove all day to Virginia City, MT today, a grand total of 3 and a half hours from home. Virginia City is a little old fashioned type town with no cell phone coverage, 15 souvenir shops, 2 ice cream stores, and no gas station. Job had to drive on empty seven miles back to the last gas station, and then knock on the owners door so he could get gas. Hopefully it isn't a trend. He left me in Virginia City with Sierra, Sadie, and the 15 souvenir shops and two ice cream stores. But all's well that ends well and we finally made it to the RV camp site and they have wi-fi! Although it is not fast enough to upload my photos. I'll have to add them later. Until tomorrow...

Cousin Lucy

Kelly, Marshall, and Lucy came to visit...

...and now yay, we have a cousin...

...here are the two little cousins, Sadie really liked Lucy. She wanted to hold her and squeeze her and kiss her, or maybe eat her, we couldn't tell. In any case, it was a very good time and we miss them very much.

Happy Birthday Grandma Vivo!

This is late late late, but I have been on a blog sabbatical, so I haven't been puting much of anything up for a looooooooong time. But Grandma Vivo had a birthday on June 26 and we wanted to say happy belated birthday! We love you and miss you very much!