sane adventures

We are approaching the final planning states of our Summer 2012 trip. People in past years thought we were crazy for taking some of the trips we have. For instance last summer we drove about 7K miles and made stops in Denver, Arches National Park, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, LA, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, 4 Corners, Great Sand Dunes National Park - among many other stops. Two years ago we spent our time in the Canadian Rockies. This year we will be starting in Florida making possible stops in Memphis, Amarillo, Denver, Rocky Mountain National Park, Portland, Olympic National Park, Seattle, San Juan Island, Vancouver Glacier National Park, Fargo, Chicago and Atlanta. We do all this with 2 adults and 2 children; one of which has special needs. By the way all ... read more

The Flight Home We had to wake up early, around 5:45 am, to get showered dressed and out. As usual we left on-time (more or less) and drove to the airport, returned the car and took the bus to the terminal. The lines to check-in were ridiculous, we had plenty of time, so we didn’t have to rush, but all the extra time went by the wayside waiting in line to check the bags. After we checked in, it seemed as if Noah wasn’t feeling well, all I cold think of was, should we have kept the car and driven home. We got to security and because of Noah they let us through the premier (first class or shorter) line. No wait, went right through. The regular line was probably a 20 or 30 minute wait! ... read more

Quiet Day This was the one day I didn’t have anything planned for. We slept in again, got showered and dressed and got in the car. We decided to have brunch at the Egg Shell in Cherry Creek. This is another restaurant that has been around a long time; it was wonderful and everybody thoroughly enjoyed it. Then, with nothing better to do, we drove up to Golden, we got out of the car, took some pictures and walked around. Noah through one of his fits, and we got back in the car. Since we had nothing else to do, I thought it would be a good idea to show them more of the mountains and some small towns. We drive from Golden to Nederland, which is deep in mountains just outside of the town of ... read more

The Suprise The Surprise We awoke to a wonderfully sunny, beautiful day in Denver! We slept in a little, packed up, checked out of the hotel and got in the car. Went back to the UPS store and shipped the rest of the stuff home. We drove over to DU, showed the kids the dorms and parked the car. We walked over to the union and went to the Bookstore where we shopped for “stuff”; once again, Noah wasn’t doing so well. Anyway, we bought what we wanted and left. We walked around campus a little bit and went back to the car. We started driving and showed the boys the old ATO house. Then we drove into Cherry Creek. It was time for a brunch or lunch. We decided to go to the Cherry Cricket ... read more

Scenic Drive to Denver We woke up early but at a reasonable time and got out as quick as possible. We got on the road and started our drive. Todays drive was basically interstate the entire way to Denver. This is the first time that we have an entire day of driving on the interstate. However, this drive is entirely in the largest mountains in Colorado. We ate breakfast in the car as usual and drove through eastern Utah and then into Colorado. Our drive took us through Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Eagle and then we made a stop in Vail. During the drive up and down and around in the mountains, Amy was not enjoying the ride in the backseat; which is unfortunate since it is such a magnificent ride. We walked around Vail for ... read more

Long Travel Day - MT, ID, UT The Drive Today is the day we need to start heading towards denver - we have 2 days to get there, but I only want to have 1 really long day. We start out driving from bozeman around 8:30am and the mountains were incredible to see. The drive out of town was on a decent 2 lane highway as we headed toward Idaho Falls. Scenic drive through Montana, but as soon as you hit Idaho it got kind of boring. The ride into Idaho falls started to really drag. Once in Idaho Falls we got onto an interstate. We were going to have a picnic lunch in the Idaho Falls area but couldn’t find a picnic area, so we stopped at a McDonalds - Yuck! We piled back into ... read more

Travel Day - Yellowstone - Bozeman, MT Woke up fairly early, everyone got dressed - it was cold around 38 degrees. Packed up the tent etc...Jumped in the car, made a quick stop at the General Store and off we went. We made the drive north to Mammoth where we made a quick pit stop. We then climbed back into the car and drove north out of the park through Gardiner, Mt and made our way to Bozeman, MT. While rain threatened the entire way, we made it without rain. We checked into the hotel and quickly went off to lunch at Famous Daves BBQ - it was excellent and I also noticed that there is no tax at restaurants here! Now it was finally time to get cleaned up. We went back to the hotel ... read more

Yellowstone National Park Got out of the tent around 7 and it was quite cold, probably around 38 degrees. Got dressed, walked around and woke everybody up around 8. Today was going to be a less hectic day than the previous few. Everybody got dressed and we left to go to Old Faithful. Once again we stopped at the General Store in Grant and ate breakfast in the car. We arrived at Old Faithful around 9:45am, Old Faithful had just erupted, so we had about 40 minutes to look around. We started out at the visitor center, and then went to listen to a ranger talk about wolves, it was for the kids but very informative. Around 10:15 we made our way over to the bleachers that surround the geyser. Behind us was construction work taking ... read more

Yellowstone National Park Woke up, showered got dressed, packed the suit cases, checked out of the hotel. We stopped by the General Store in Canyon Village to grab some breakfast, they didn’t have much, we got some muffins and we had some cereal for the boys. We started our drive south towards Grant Campground in the Lake Region of YNP. As soon as we started driving we saw a Mule Deer on the side of the road and of course we saw a ton of Buffalo on our ride, while Ethan also spotted a herd of Elk. We got to the campground around 9:30am, we checked in and they found us a campsite that was vacant so we could setup camp now, and not have to worry about it later in the day; which was very ... read more

Yellowstone National Park Woke up, got dressed and got into the car. We ate breakfast in the car with the groceries we still had. We drove south to the Mud Volcano and ___ Cauldron - On our drive we were stopped by some Bison crossing the road; it was pretty cool everyone really liked the Bison, and was a great photo opp. When we made to our destination, we all walked to the Mud Volcano, then Ethan and I made the 2/3 mile hike (roundtrip) to the _____. Ethan really enjoyed the hike, but didn’t like the “smelly” steam in his face. We all loaded back into the car and started to drive back north, made a quick stop at the ___ Cauldron where we also saw a few Bison, one was rolling in the mud. ... read more