Western Towns and Wacky kids...

So anyway...  

Apparently, the world's largest buffalo wasn't enough of a tourist draw, so they built an entire tiny western town on the same property.  

Cool.

Having arrived first in this tourist mecca, the kids and I wandered through the local mercantile while we waited for Jess to arrive.

Meeting a blog friend for the first time is just plain weird... so many thoughts flit through your head.  

What will they be like?  What will they think of me? 

What if we don't like each other?  What what what... 

And you find yourself trying to imagine how the initial meeting will go,
but there's no way to actually plan it is there?

So I was wandering the mercantile and out the window I saw some tiny familiar faces.  

They were the main cast of characters over at Jess' blog.  And with them was Jess, of course.  

I opened the creaky screen door and timidly asked, "Jess?" 

I don't exactly remember what happened next, it's all a bit of a blur of introductions

and wandering around the over-sized bison 

and maybe some griping about taking pictures in the harsh light of noontime in the summer.

And I remember that my ginormous children were also in a bit of a mood,
not a bad one, just silly.  

They were playing on playground equipment clearly marked "for small children only." 

(Seriously... where's their parent?  Oh... taking pictures of their bad behavior? Hmmm.)

They made themselves comfortable in the saloon (a bit too comfortable maybe) 

and settled down for a game of cut-throat poker. 

(How do they even know how to play that?) 

Which resulted in a few people getting put in jail.  

And while all this was going on, Jess and I got to know each other, to find out who we were and if we like each other as well in "real life" as we did on line.  

This may have been just a bit more important as we had planned to spend the entire day together at her house eating REAL food and not doing laundry. 

(I had recently decided to do laundry during a quick stop in South Dakota.)  

We watched our children play (or rather my children act like crazies while her children looked on warily)

and bonded over the mutually mystifying concept of some guy's use of a pop-up flash with a very expensive and very long lens. 

"Doesn't he know that he'll get a shadow??" 

(I believe this may still give Jess a twitch from time to time.)
  :) 

And then... after a lunch of curly fries and chicken nuggets, we packed the children up and Jess bravely allowed us to follow her back to her home.

Or were we the ones being brave??
 

After driving and driving and driving down a dusty road 

and then turning down yet another dusty road in the middle of farmland

with nothing but corn, sunflowers and sky as far as the eye can see, 

Julia pipes up and asks,

"Hey mom?  Shouldn't one of the rules be 'Never follow a stranger into the middle of nowhere?'" 

Yes, Julia.... that's a good rule, a very good rule... ;)

North Dakota on my mind...

As I was planning our trip across country, whenever I told someone that we were going through North Dakota they would invariably ask "Why?"

It wasn't a why as in "why on earth would you want to go there?!"

in a tone that is generally reserved for New Jersey, third world countries and well... Seattle.

No... it was more of a question of "Why go there? What is there to see or do?"

They were curious, but...

Honest truth... I had no idea.

North Dakota seems to suffer from a lack of advertising.

I wonder if the people of ND prefer it that way, maybe it keeps all the riff-raff and obnoxious tourists away.

I did a lot of research to see what might be worth seeing in the great state of ND.

First thing on my list...

The world's largest buffalo statue!

Yeah, man... I'm going there!

I'm a sucker for cheesy and dorky tourist attractions and world's largest anything.

And... Grant's favorite animal for all of his childhood was a bison/buffalo.

He even had a stuffed bison that he had named "Adonis."  

(Gotta love that kid.)
So we had to go.

As I planned this little pit stop, a voice from blogland called out and said,

"I live just a few miles from that 'largest buffalo', let's get together."

(Or something like that.  I'm paraphrasing.)

To which I replied, "Great!  I'll have run out of clean clothes by then.  Can I do laundry at your house?"

Screech!!!  Hold on!
Did I just ask a total stranger (albeit a blog friend) if I could come to her house

and do laundry???

Who does that?

And who would let me?

Well, I did and Jess would. 

:)

(Grant getting ready for his first buffalo run.)

But... in an effort to ease into that activity, we both agreed to meet at the World's Largest Buffalo Statue.

(Large bovines make great meeting places.)

(see Jess back there?)

 The story of that meet up and the trip to her house where I didn't end up doing laundry
will have to wait for another day.

Fall back...

I don't really care for this whole daylight savings time thing. 

I kind of think that we should leave well enough alone. 

And as much as I appreciate the concept of that "extra hour" of sleep,

I never actually get it and generally just have an extra hour of daytime.  

(Also useful, but still...)  

What I don't like is having an hour less daylight.  Sad...

As soon as the clocks turned back, I found myself looking toward the winter solstice. 

It may be the shortest day of the year, 

but after that the sun gradually inches it's way back, bringing longer and longer days. 

I found myself anticipating the gradual lengthening of days until Summer finally rolls back around.  

Don't think I'm wishing away the wonderfulness that is Thanksgiving and Christmas and snow days.  

I like them too.  

For now, rather than looking so far ahead to next summer,

I think I'll look into the more recent past and remember, hold onto, enjoy 

the memories of our incredible summer adventure.

Pickin'

Halfway between Chicago and Des Moines is the town of Le Claire, Iowa

which just happens to be the place where the Mike and Frank from History Channel's 

American Pickers have their shop.

We stopped there and ate our lunch at a picnic table alongside the Mississippi River.

Then we drove up to their little (and I do mean little!) storefront.

The place was full of people snapping pictures.

I left my "real" camera in the car, but took a few iphone pics.

It was fun to see some of the items that we remembered from the show.

But the prices were a bit high.

(Don't they know that we saw how much they paid for these things?!)

The guys were out of town doing what they do best... pickin.

And Danielle wasn't in the shop either.

So we settled on taking pictures with this guy.

:D

Chicago and Brooke!

I'm currently sitting in a hotel in Montana, just on the edge of Glacier National Park
and I finally have a moment or two to catch up on blogging.

(Catch up being a relative term.)

We've been on the road for three weeks now and still have another week to go.

It's overwhelming to look back at all the amazing things we've done and seen so far.

I think I'm on visual overload!  But in a totally wonderful way.

This trip has been amazing, but the very best part of it has been the people we've met along the way.
So many wonderful people!!

Reaching waaaaaayyyyyy back to August 5th (or was it the 4th?)was our trip to Chicago,
where
we met with the amazing Brooke from My Boysterous Life!

Fun!!!!!

Brooke  truly was amazing!

She took on the role of both tour guide and taxi driver for us!
How awesome!
Getting into and out of Chicago could have been a huge stress, but she made it all so easy on me,
by maneuvering through the many streets that had been closed down for Lollapalooza.

We wandered through the Shedd aquarium and talked like old friends.

When we were all fished out, we hopped in a couple of cabs and went to Sears Tower

(Willis Tower... whatever...)

 (They can call it whatever they want, I think it will always be Sears tower in my mind.)

The view, despite the haze, was pretty amazing.

We even got a good overview of the crowds at the previously mentioned Lollapalooza. 

And look!  I even remembered to take a picture of Brooke to prove that we met!

(I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.)

There's even a picture of the two of us together, but the one taken with my camera has an amazing view up my nose and I've chosen not to share that with you.

Brooke has a wider shot which she can choose to share or not, but whether they ever get blogged, at least I know that the pictures exist.  :)

We all took turns standing on the Ledge looking over the city.

I thought it might be scary, but I was okay.

Julia (and Brooke too) was a bit more freaked out!

Chase, Brooke's son, thought this was hysterical.

(Love that kid!)

Once all of our stomachs finally settled we took part in a Chicago feast.

Yummy and yet, so heavy!!

Thank you again, Brooke, for making our trip to Chicago such an amazing one!

Kent Lake, Michigan and a bloggy meet up...

We've been on the road for just over a week now.

And while I feel like we've covered so much ground and have done so many wonderful things,

I know that there is so much more to go.

I haven't had a lot of time to blog, but being in the car gives me lots of time to think,

so I find myself composing blog posts in my head.

Unfortunately, my mind is like a sieve

and I can only remember bits and pieces of these "amazing" posts that I've mentally composed.

But let me start with the one thought that comes to me most often

(other than "get outta my way, you slow driver!)

and that thought is...

I Am Happy.

I am grateful.

I am excited.

I am having fun.

I am blessed with wonderful children

and wonderful friends

(who have made this trip so much more amazing than I could have done on my own.)

One particular example is this day at Kent Lake, where they had a great splash pad and water slide

and a wonderful swimming beach.

Just a half an hour from our hotel in Detroit, 

but we would never, ever have found it if Alita from Alita Jewel's Treasures

hadn't taken time out of her day to meet us at the nearby Dairy Queen

and to show us to one of her favorite summer hangouts.

Her boys were adorable and Julia had a great time running around the splash pad with them.

I had a wonderful visit with a bloggy friend.

A great time was had by all.

BUT...

Can you believe that neither Alita nor I took a single picture while we were together?

Didn't even break out the camera.

Maybe we were shy, maybe we were nervous, 

maybe I was feeling a little self conscious about my... well me.

(I weigh far more than I like to mention here on this blog.

I like to pretend like no one will notice, if I just don't bring it up.)

(and maybe if it's in parentheses, you still won't notice.)

Anyhow... I have no photographic evidence that I met up with Alita, but the memory will stay with me

and I am more than grateful that she brought us to such a fun place.

Thanks, Alita!

*************************

I've been keeping up with posting a pic or two a day on facebook, so find me there too.

Have a cup and sit for a while...

So... I thought I'd share some virtual tea with you today.  If you'd rather have coffee, you're going to have to go somewhere else, or maybe pick up some from Starbucks, because when I make coffee, you get two choices, sludge or colored water.  Either way... it's just not good.   My husband is the coffee drinker and maker in the family and when he is home I am more than happy to share that pot of coffee, but when he's away, I pack that coffee maker up and store it in one of the cabinets, because it's just collecting dust out on the counter.

It really would be nice to have you over for a cup of tea today.  It certainly would get me motivated to clean a little more.  My house would be grateful.  My kids might not be, since I would probably get them working too and while they are all very good helpers and will do the chores given to them, none of them actually WANT to clean.

So... How have you been?  Did you have a good weekend?  Did you keep warm?!

Let me tell you what I've been thinking about... My trip.  It seems to be the one thing that occupies my mind day and night.   We know that in August we're going to have to move from Washington DC to Washington state.  That's going to happen one way or another, but HOW exactly we are going to get there has been up for debate for quite a while.  It's been a fun debate.   I bet by the time August rolls around, you'll all be sick and tired of hearing about this trip.   But it's a pretty big deal for me.  It's the first time that I'll be doing a cross country trip without my husband which means that I'll be doing ALL the driving.  No sitting back and reading a book for me.  :(  I might occasionally let the two older kids drive, but I can't really think about that right now because it gives me butterflies.

We've joked about contacting TLC or the Discovery Channel and proposing a TV show.
 "One mom, three teens and an eleven year old spend a month traveling from Washington DC to Washington State in the family mini-van, checking out the sights from big city attractions to off-road oddities and everything in between." 

Sounds like a show, right?

One of the hardest parts in planning this trip was simply narrowing it down to a general route.  The whole country lay before us and any number of routes were possible, but where did we really want to go?

Suggestions ranged from Grant's:

Start in Maine, travel across Canada, ferry down Lake Michigan and then hit Rt 66 and go south all the way to Mexico then up through Baja California, and the West coast to Seattle.

Yeah... no...

Or....

Quincy thought that if we were going to go for it, we might as well catch a plane to England, trek across Europe and Asia and take a boat from Japan to Seattle.

Intriguing but not likely.

The Disney to Disney route got a lot of excitement.  I even considered it for about a second until I decided that it was too long and too hot a route.

We narrowed it down a little further and were making "smaller" decisions, like North Dakota or South Dakota?  Chicago or Michigan?  Yellowstone or Glacier National Park?  Canada? or not.

(Have I mentioned that we don't really DO straight lines when we travel?)

It was a little overwhelming and confusing, but on Sunday night, I finally came up with a plan!!  GREAT!!! Now all I needed to do was fine tune the details.

But then it all came to a screeching halt!!!  FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND Harley Davidsons (and other assorted makes of motorcycles) roared smack dab into my plans.  The very week that I thought we would rent a quiet cabin and tool around the Black Hills of South Dakota is the same week that the Sturgis motorcycle rally is taking place this year.   That's a traffic jam that I don't even want to contemplate.

image found here

And so....  back to the drawing board.

Do we skip South Dakota entirely or do we try to rearrange the dates of our trip?  We've seen Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse before and they're really cool, and we'd love to see them again, but are they important enough to change our whole schedule for them?  And if we don't go through SD, I guess we'll head up through North Dakota.  (It's always good to have a spare Dakota... you never know when one is going to be over-run with motorcycles.)

 aww... they're so little!

Does anyone (and by anyone I mean someone in particular... you know who you are) have any great ideas about things to do in North Dakota?  I'm thinking Teddy Roosevelt NP, but what else is there that I don't know about?  And I would love to hear if anyone else has any insights about any of these places.

Chicago, IL
Des Moines, Iowa
Omaha, NE
North Dakota
Montana
Glacier NP
Calgary
Banff NP
Kelowna, BC

Have you been there?  Do you live there?
I'd love to hear it all from the obvious to the off the beaten path to the crazy roadside sights to the food that we must not miss. 

Well now... if we were having tea together (or coffee) I think I may have just monopolized the conversation... sorry.

But that's what comments are for!!

What about you?  Are you already making summer plans?  Is that what's getting you through the winter doldrums?  What kinds of adventures do you have planned both near and far? 

 I tell ya... that trip is constantly occupying my mind.  But it's fun to think about, so why not?