6/28/09

Wake up time came bright and early this morning parked in the TJ Maxx parking lot. Kat seemed to have slept quite well and I had weird dreams most of the night and didn’t sleep all that great. We looked amazing though. It is lovely to see what 14 hours of driving, no shower and a sleeping in a parking lot can do for a girl.

Somewhere either in our last hours in Nevada or our first few hours of Idaho last night we lost the cover on the roof vent over the bed which made for a nice view of the stars when going to sleep but with rain expected later in the week we spent the morning trying to find an RV place that was open so we could get a new one. We didn’t. We are keeping our fingers crossed that somewhere in Montana when we get there on Tuesday will have one.

The drive to Yellowstone was beautiful. The views were truly breath taking and almost hard to believe they were real. We both took lots of photos but none of them really could capture the full feel of it. We also spotted a few birds that looked to be mixes of a few things so we aptly named them ourselves. There was the bird that looked like a skunk which is the Skunkbird (obviously) and the bird we saw on the lake which we named the Peliswan; it looked just like a swan but with a pelican’s beak. We both missed our calling as bird watchers.

We pulled into the Yellowstone entrance around 1:30. I was kind of expecting the smell of sulfur to hit as we crossed through but it didn’t. We stopped many times at all the different geysers and, like the tourists we are, took many photos. The geysers and mud pools are where it is stinky; I think Kat actually likes the smell of it. We made it to Old Faithful and walked up to the look out just seconds before it erupted. We were impressed with our timing and acted as though we planned it that way, unlike the poor folks that had been there for the 78 minutes before us patiently waiting. Again, the views along the drive were absolutely incredible.

We are staying in Fishing Bridge RV Park. It doesn’t look so much like the photos online but it works. We had a good laugh hooking up the RV to all of the amenities for the first time and very grateful for the detailed notes we took during our lesson. I also don’t recall seeing any mosquitoes in any of the photos online which I am really impressed by. How the photographer managed to capture this place without them is besides me. We are looking out the window right now and it is hard to see past the billions of them on the screen fighting to get in here.

We went for a few small walks today and have our day planned out for tomorrow with some bigger hikes and hopefully no bears. At the store earlier we heard probably four different groups of people talking about the bears they had seen earlier today…agh. I wanted to buy a “bear whistle” at the store but Kat assured me that she can whistle louder than anything we could buy in a store; but, at the same time, she also thinks that they are too cute and cuddly looking to hurt us.

We just had a yummy RV cooked meal and are planning on spending the evening relaxing, watching some movies and hopefully showering at some point. Oh yeah, there is no cell service or wireless here…if you know either of us, which obviously you do if you are reading our blog, then you can only imagine how we feel about it. After the initial shock wore off we decided that we are kind of happy about it; it may not be our first choice to be out of contact completely with the outside world but this is why we are on this trip. To disconnect a bit from our current realities and figure out where we are in life.