Headin' South

Ahhh, the final blog. I had no idea how much time it took the kids to actually upload. I guess, though, they can only thank themselves siince they also make yearly books out of this. Kappel Yearbooks. I'm already off track. But the dishwasher is going, so is the washer, dryer, swim lessons start in an hour, have to make a grocery list, Reeder's playing leap pad next to me with volume on high and Hayes is riding his lightning mcqueen bike around bashing into things-and it makes noise, too. I think I have a pretty good life. Oh, and we're running late cuz Clint's '78 Cruiser decided not to start so we took him to work this am.

Back to Wyoming. Focus, Marianne, focus.

Unfortunately, Wyoming had to end. We headed cross the border to Idaho, which was our initial plan for this trip. I am so happy that Stephen convinced us to go into Wyoming, I am sorry to offend but Idaho just didn't do it for me like I thought it would. I was told it was so aaaaamaaaazing. Nope, go to Wyoming for that, friends.

But, thanks to blogstalking Shannon's photographer's blog, I found yellowstonebearworld.com . OMG! This thing was everything we thought it would be! Fantastic, if you think carnies are wonderful kind of place. And we do!!

For $55 bucks, we drive the RV through a "wilderness" (Clint kept comparing it to Arbuckle) and see bears, elk, wolves, moose, all the wonderful animals you don't see when really in the wild. Put on your humor hat and drive with us!

No seat belts for this portion...
Bison!

And the whole crew riding shotgun. By this point you will notice that Stephen took the wheel. He wanted to and an ole soccer injury leaves my tailbone not what it once was-and that drivers' seat is not nearly as comfortable as it seems. If only I would've followed the trainers' instructions when I was 18 and took a blow up donut to classes (including human sexuality) and sat on it maybe I wouldn't be complaining 14 years later. But, well, I didn't.

Bears! They were sitting in the road, lounging around, pretty weird.

And I didn't get a good pic of the wolves. But they followed our RV and a lady in a golf cart wrapped in chicken wire followed them to make sure they didn't hurt our coach-they were after the grill, we think, which was in the crawl space we called the "mother in law suite" under the back of the rv-kind of like a trunk space. No offense to Max, Marlene or Marcia, obviously.

And then we got to go IN to Bear World, no extra costs here!

And rides! Forget the Tetons, this was, by far, the kids favorite stop! Monster trucks for crazy Hayesy.

And drop zone, no hands. He's nuts. Truly nuts. When we drove by the stratosphere later he commented on how he'd like to do the roller coaster at the top. Reed and I said no thanks (again, my college days, I did that, too...).

I hope my Mom takes a REALLY good look at this pic. We have a pic of E and me as little girls next to a peacock. I'm gonna try to locate it and show it next to these girls.

But, at Bear World there is also a petting zoo!

And a moose. I think that these have become my favorite wild animals. You can have the bears, the elk, the deer. I'll take the moose, thank you very much.

And who doesn't think THIS is funny. Natural, natural, natural.

And Hayes NEVER stops talking. So, when we dared to go into our first restaurant on the trip, I decided to get creative with my parenting. This worked for about .5 seconds, and he found it SO funny that it backfired and made for an even louder eating experience. Oh, well, can't say I didn't try.

And then we stopped at the Potato Expo. We were in Idaho afterall. And our Moon Guidebook (which normally E and I love, but we definitely NOT recommend for Idaho) said it was a must see. World's Largest Potato Chip? Heck yeah! Let's pull over!

What? Excuse me? This is it? You P&Gers consider this a success? A potato chip the size of a cookie sheet? Give me a break! This is the worlds worst excuse for the largest potato chip. E and I are going to beat this, and we won't even need an industrial size oven, or lab coats.

We sorted some potatoes...

And upon leaving (we paid $3 bucks per adult) we received free taters for out of staters. Pathetic. Not even a real potato. Just add water, wait 30 minutes and eat. Forget it, I left ours in the RV.

LAVA HOT SPRINGS! Final destination on the tour. Hot Springs, take me home! Again, Moon book raved about the water park.

I walk up. Hand over my credit card to pay the $30 for our family. Take a whiff. Um, excuse me, I say, why do I smell chlorine? Oh, this is just a water park, hot springs are four blocks away. What? The Moon book fails again. Why didn't someone mention that the biggest thing to do at Lava HOT SPRINGS was a chlorinated water park? Oh, well, as Kelly Bensimon says, we'll make lemons out of lemonade. But wait, I think she actually means making something worse when it's already bad. So, if we followed her advice I think we would freak out, start eating gummy bears, and leave the water park-have I confused all of us or just myself?

The photo below depicts more than you might think. No, it's not just E being superMom with all four again, it's actually her analyzing the slides. Remember the caves? Yeah, she's checking out which one is not covered to allow for more fresh air while sliding. Guess which one she did? Yep, the convertible red.

And the dads raced! Photo finish-Uncle Stephen by at least 10 splashes. Maybe the green slide was shorter....

And Clint decided to get REALLY brave and ride the wedgie slides! Reeder, Eden and I waited at the bottom patiently.

And this is where Clint gets REALLY crazy. He told me that he was going to jump off a spring board. I turn my back for ONE second (kind of like what happens with is son) and he's climbing to the tip top of the crazy thing. Yeah, that's him waving. He's lucky my camera couldn't pick up the heart beating out of his chest. He says he wasn't nervous but come on!

I think this would be the worst part, the waiting.

Greg Louganis, watch out-my hubbies on your heels!

And, as evening draws closer I realize how thinning a late afternoon shadow can look. Well, look at that cute prego...

Of course there were slides for all sizes.

And our final dinner. Another super crazy campground so we actually allowed the kids to eat INSIDE the rv (and power vacuuming it was on the to do list the next morning anyway). So, kids, enjoy dinner!

I will not, as promised, discuss the inability of two certain individuals to start a fire earlier in the week. Since that is prohibited, I will just mention that E and I took it upon ourselves to start the blaze the final night. We used about 4 penny savers, 3 cardboard boxes of various sizes and 10 logs. Voila! The hottest, largest campfire ever. Notice Reeder in the OU chair and how far away she is. She was a little nervous about the sparks that were flying...

And the rest of us kept backing up do to the amount of heat.

The VERY last thing we did was actually visit the hot springs. Who knew? They were incredible. We took the girls and rotated adults leaving the toddlers out of this experience. We didn't think 102 degree heat was good for them.

But it was soooo nice. I think Reeder could've stayed there all day.

Eden in the pools...

And Reeder modeling the 112 degree pool. None of us could put more than a toe in that one...

Eden at the far end of the supa hot one, showing the steam...

More pools...

Finally, the mustache.

In profile....

We're home now, relaxing, contemplating next years' trip. I think Clint and I already have a temporary travel plan. When he gets back from Afghanistan (don't talk to E about it, she starts to cry these days), we're gonna leave Cincy, head North to Chicago-visit Amber and the Cubs, go to Minnesota for a Twins game, head to Badlands, Glacier Nat'l, Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon. A few details to be ironed out but I think we're just about packed.

First though, we're heading back to Boulder in about a month with my Dad-he's flying out here to help me move back to Cincy with the kids while Clint's where E doesn't want us to discuss. Gotta stop by the kin in Tulsa (yes, I just used that word). Settle ourselves in the Nasty, send these two crazies to school, have a baby, take at least one roadtrip to Chicago, another down the East Coast. Welcome Clint home late Spring/early Summer.

For now, though, I'm gonna put these kids down for a nap, enjoy Dateline, maybe enjoy some shut eye myself.

Thanks for reading my wordy blogs, promise to hand the computer back to the kids now:).

With love, Marianne