Day 1 - (Seattle) - The Center for Wooden Boats Festival was this weekend, so we were able to get a free boat ride around Lake Union in a little wooden motor boat with a couple of Seattle natives and their grandchildren. After that, we walked around the Olympic Sculpture Garden (really neat stuff), and the Fremont Sunday Street Market. A short hike up the Seattle Troll, and our quick tour of Seattle was done. (I'd really love to go back and see the Experience Music Project Museum and so many other things).
Day 2- (Mt. St. Helens) - We had to do a fair amount of driving in the afternoon, so we weren't able to do both views of the volcano. Thanks to the rental car guy, who told us about Ape Caves and the cool stuff to do down there, we decided to try it out. Ape Cave is the US's longest known lava tube. The upper tube, which was recommended by the rental-car guy, was much harder than Jen and I anticipated. It was really neat, but if you try it, we'd recommend taking along more than two travel flashlights, a flashlight keychain and a book light. Luckily, the book light was brighter than it sounds! After that adventure, I swore off caves for the rest of the trip, then we drove parts of the very scenic Columbia River Gorge and visited a local museum called the Columbia River Gorge Discovery Center and Wasco County Historical Museum. After a bit of driving, we also came across a replica of Stonehenge that was erected as a memorial to WWI soldiers. It wasn't the last strange thing we'd see!
Day 3 (Oregon) - This day was a good amount of driving. We started at the Oregon Trail Museum, and enjoyed our first really exceptionally warm day (over 100 F) and a hike to some restored wagon ruts from the original Oregon Trail. All of this really made me appreciate modern conveniences like air-conditioning, cars, and highways. Day 3 was when the scenery really started to change - going from trees and hills to mostly flat, mostly treeless prairie. We ended the day in Hailey, ID. This was the only day where we really didn't know where to stay. I am pretty sure we got the last room in about a 50 mile radius. It was a slightly over-priced bed and breakfast, much better than sleeping in the car!
Day 4 - (Arco, ID) - Day 4 was our day to visit Craters of the Moon National Monument. It was another very warm day (105F) and the scenery was an amazing alien landscape made of black volcanic rocks . Despite the heat, one of the "cones" still had snow inside, giving it the name "snow-cone". The completely alien landscape captivated Jen and I, and it was probably the photographed day of our trip. After braving the heat, we decided to visit a more modern site, the first Experimental Reactor Breeder to produce electricity in the USA. It was quite interesting to see the old scientific equipment and (lack-of) safety equipment, and all of the vintage signs and papers.
Day 5 - (Yellowstone) - Yellowstone. Need I say more? It was amazing, worth it if it was the only thing we saw on the whole trip. Within five minutes of being in the park, a black bear ran in front of our car. Other animals we saw were a bald eagle, grizzly bear (from a long distance), pika, elk, bison, and several baby bison. We did the lower loop first, it's the one with most of the geysers, hot springs, and other various geological anomalies. I have never seen anything like it! We decided to do the top loop, too, where we saw the obsidian cliffs, and a few other things. Our biggest hike for the day was a trip out the natural arch. There were rumors of a grizzly bear sighting on the trail, so we walked up with two families, one from Denmark with two young kids, and one from Oklahoma with two daughters. The oldest of the two daughters had just graduated with a chemical engineering degree, so we got to talk science for a while, too!
Day 6 - (Wyoming and North Dakota) - We visited the gift shop at the hotel, before settling in for a long drive to Little Bighorn National Battlefield and Monument. I don't much like visiting battlefields, but I was glad to see that there was a monument for both the US armed forces and Native Americans who fought and died there.
Day 7 - (North Dakota, Wyoming) - We spent the night in Bowman, ND. There are so many places we stopped on our trip where I felt like we could have spent so much more time, there were so many more things to do. Bowman was NOT one of those places - there were two restaurants in town, and we ate in both of them. Then, we went into the local museum, which was surprisingly large and well done for such a small town. It even had a dinosaur skeleton that was found in the nearby hills. After that, we drove to Devil's Tower in Wyoming and saw yet more amazing scenery! The prairie dogs by Devil's Tower were pretty cute, too.
Ok, it's getting late! I'll tell you about the rest of the trip later.
