I can't tell you how many times I heard, "Oh, did you fly out there?" when I told people we visited Yellowstone. Frankly, it never even occurred to me to fly. The park is ginormous and in the middle of nowhere. At some point you have to drive because the closest airport is an hour away and the only way around the park is by car (or tour bus, which we'll get to another day).
While flying was certainly an option, it doesn't have the allure of the road. We would have missed something if we had just hopped on a plane in Boston then landed in Cody or Jackson. By air, it's hard to fathom how large our country is. Living in New Hampshire where we can be at the ocean in less than sixty minutes, to Boston in an hour, or the mountains in two, taking the better part of the day to drive across a single state is pretty wild.
On the road, you catch the nuances and eccentricities of each state, such as:
The tiny white churches which pop out of green expanses of prairie in the Great Plains.
On the road, you catch the nuances and eccentricities of each state, such as:
The tiny white churches which pop out of green expanses of prairie in the Great Plains.
Wall Drug signs on I-90 in South Dakota. We counted 49.
And who doesn't dream of driving through the valley of the Jolly Green Giant?
We wanted the boys to experience some of the places they have learned about in school. As we all know, it's one thing to read about how huge the Great Lakes are in a text book. It's entirely another to actually dip your toes in.
I intended to write this blog while traveling, hunkering down with my laptop in the hotel room each night to recap each days events. Since that didn't happen, what you're getting is part travelogue, part memoir, and part how-to, written while sitting at my kitchen island or maybe at the dining room table, wherever I can get a few minutes of quiet in our house during the remaining summer break.
Enjoy the ride.
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