Goodbye, Glacier, we're heading east.

It was a bit hard to pack up the tent at Glacier this morning, though our sadness at leaving this gorgeous park was tempered by our eagerness to get home and reconnect with the cat, the house, and our friends.

We made good use of yesterday by taking the shuttle up Going To The Sun Road to Logan Pass and hiking part of the Highline Trail. This was a personal challenge for me, since the trail is cut into the side of a mountain and features some narrow parts with slippery, loose rock above sheer dropoffs. There's a safety line, which I made good use of, and soon the trail mellowed out and became quite lovely. It was bordered with tons of wildflowers and looked out over many snowy peaks. We were treated to up close views of a marmot and a group of bighorn sheep (who let us know that we were a bit too close for their comfort).

Back at the campsite, we put together our last big cookstove dinner. This one featured a product we found in a supermarket along the way and couldn't resist. It was Loma Linda/Worthington Foods Vegetarian Burger in a can! We opened it up, sliced it into burgers, and fried them up in a skillet. Surprisingly, it was a thumbs up all around. It's tastier than other fake burger products I've tried, and I'm kind of hoping to find it back home so I can experiment with making a fake meatloaf.

I think the high point of our campsite cooking was Friday night, when I made a soup/stew that used up our fresh veggies and canned products. I sauteed onions and garlic, added a diced potato, canned tomatoes, veggie stock, canned green beans, canned corn, white beans, and some quinoa. It all simmered together until everything was tender, and I liked it well enough to make it again at home (though strictly with fresh vegetables).

One night, as we ate around the picnic table, the boys talked about how much they miss the convenience of microwaving foods, and we decided that, on our next hotel night, we'd have a microwave meal. Sounds kind of weird, I know, but we kind of got into the idea, and tonight was the night. We got some microwave mac-n-cheese for the boys, along with some vegetarian nuggets. They were deliriously excited. Armin and I went for some healthier choices: microwave rice and a couple of packets of Indian food (tofu/corn masala and kashmiri spinach). Delicious! It was perfect comfort food after a long drive.

Speaking of long drives, today's was actually much less horrid than we'd feared. The boys were in good spirits, and we listened to an excellent audiobook that ended just as we reached our destination. The book was Ruth White's The Search for Belle Prater, and we all thought it was terrific. We've listened to a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy on this trip, and this historical novel (set in rural Virginia in the 1950s) was a change of pace.  (On a side note, Armin wants me to make sure to mention that we passed the Oscar Meyer Weiner-mobile at one point in our drive. He was so excited we nearly kissed the guard rail.)

Anyway, as we drove and listened, I thought about one of the things I've most appreciated about this trip. As we've gone to different parks, we've made a point to seek out evening ranger programs as well as ranger-led hikes and activities. Last night we listened to a presentation about ravens, and Ranger Lee was a terrific speaker. The rangers we've encountered have uniformly done an excellent job teaching about different aspects of their parks--I think I've learned a ton about teaching from watching them. They have all been extremely sincere and enthusiastic, without a trace of self-consciousness about their passion (whether it's ravens, the pine beetle, or the preservation of resources like Arches National Park). I think that, as a teacher, I need to let more of my geeky, earnest enthusiasm show through. I've got some good plans brewing for the next school year.

Tonight, though, we're enjoying the Olympics and some comfy beds before we drive to the Badlands tomorrow. It'll be hot (100 degrees!), but the boys can score one more Junior Ranger badge. Then on Tuesday we'll push eastward. I think some cooler weather is heading to Ithaca ahead of our arrival!

Yellowstone camping recipe

Gail writes:

Yellowstone is a big place. You don’t quite realize that until you’ve driven around for about 7 hours and covered a fraction of the territory (as a point of reference, that’s almost as long as it takes to drive from Ithaca to NYC and back). That pretty much sums up today. We left camp at around 9:30 and drove around to various hot springs and viewpoints. We lunched at Mammoth Hot Springs (where we got to say hello to a pretty grey housecat whose family was moving from Wisconsin to Nevada) and then walked a bit until thunder and lightning sent us scurrying back to the Visitor Center. After things cleared we went to Boiling River, where Armin & the boys soaked in the hot/cold waters.

Then we headed back to camp, and from here on in I offer up a recipe for camping adventure & dinner:





1. Arrive at camp to find winds gusting to 40 mph and thunder rumbling in the distance. Re-stake the tent as it tries to get airborne. Order everyone into the tent to hold it down. Read while it rains and rumbles.




2. Once the wind dies down and the rain is manageable, drag your cooler, stove, and kitchen boxes out of the car to start dinner. Open that bottle of wine you bought in the Grand Tetons and pour it into the fine plastic cups you brought with you.




3. Use 1 burner of your stove to make mac-n-cheese for the boys. On the other burner, start sautéing sweet potato and corn with some salsa. Add rice and water. Simmer. Drink more wine. Open the tortilla chip bag that is puffy because of the altitude. Munch on them and wait a while.




4. Add a can of drained black beans to the sweet potato mixture. Simmer some more until everything’s done. Serve up the boys’ mac-n-cheese, drink some more wine, and rummage in the cooler for the artisanal multigrain tortillas. Juggle things on the burners so you can heat them up. Watch your boys have a pinecone war with some kids from New Jersey. Pull up your raincoat hood against the next round of rain and enjoy a delicious burrito. Stamp your feet at the ground squirrels that want to eat your food. Finish the bottle of wine. Let the guys do the dishes while you blog.




5. Watch the sun come out over the mountains and put away the cooler, stove, and kitchen boxes so the ground squirrels and bears won’t get into them. Take a deep breath of cool mountain air and realize how lucky you are to be on this adventure with the people you love most in the world.

Armin writes:
The drive to Mammoth made it abundantly clear that heading north on the bike out of the Madison campground would have been a terrible idea. In addition to the endless stream of campers and RVs suddenly pulling off to view wildlife or make a sudden decision to visit a thermal area or waterfall, the road is under construction right now. Chip seal road work is very annoying, especially when there is loose gravel for about 30 miles, so I headed west on the flat-ish road to West Yellowstone. 

I was overjoyed to see the "Welcome to Montana" road sign, since Montana is my favorite state. West Yellowstone is a tiny park border town, and the ample signage advertising lodging and food had me imagining a focus group that was asked to identify the most appealing words for weary campers. My incomplete list includes:

Espresso
Internet
Showers
Hot Tub
Pizza
Gift Shop
Wildlife

Sunday afternoon update:

The list was much longer yesterday, but now I'm just exhausted and happy to be safely in a Missoula motel. We stopped for a nice lunch in Butte, Mt., and while waiting at a stop sign behind the sheriff of Butte, he decided that he was too far into the intersection and backed right into our van, in spite of the fact that I was laying on the horn. How could he not have seen or heard us? Perhaps he had is Lady Gaga CD turned up too loud. I didn't have enough time to throw the van into reverse, and was extremely bummed out about the bumper and body work damage. Fortunately the damage was cosmetic, and we were able to continue our journey to Missoula. You can bet, though, that if I lived in Butte, I certainly would not be voting for Sheriff John Walsh in his re-election bid.

]