A lot to see between California and Iowa!

We've seen so much since the last update! We'll have to skip over some things, but here's a look at what we did in September.

La Pine turned into a whirlwind of projects as our back slide turned out to be completely moldy and needing replacement. What a good thing that Abe decided to bring so many of his tools! His work in replacing a complete FLOOR was very impressive.

 Across Oregon and into Idaho - totally new landscapes! Rhanna was pretty freaked out at the lack of trees, so she was happy when we got into Montana.

Yellowstone involves a lot of driving while in the park in order to get to the different areas, but we were lucky to see quite a few animals on our first day. Emrys had been wanting to get to Yellowstone for months, so seeing a bison up close in the first fifteen minutes was super exciting for him. He also really loved the museums, and all the kids enjoyed working on the Junior Ranger program.

We celebrated Rhanna's 18th birthday while at Yellowstone! She wanted to dunk herself in Yellowstone Lake to commemorate the occasion; it was cold, but she did it!

Made it to Jackson, Wyoming to see the Tetons! The girls and I drove a different route and arrived earlier than the boys, so we had time to walk a labyrinth.

The Autumn colors were stunning!

Tea party with magic tricks under the crabapple tree in Jackson.

Rest areas in Wyoming are FUN.

We ended September in South Dakota, where we were met with a DOOZY of a storm, with high winds, about three inches of rain, and flood warnings. We kept checking this little creek behind our parking space for trouble, but it never overflowed its banks, thank goodness!

This rain was not the cute kind of rain we get on the west coast, no; it was a deluge. So we stayed indoors hiding out for the last couple of days of September. You'll see Mt. Rushmore in October. :)

PS - you can read a little more about this on a new blog we've recently started with another Fulltiming family, here: http://www.nomaderwherewego.com/thunderstorms-in-south-dakota/

The Crazy Week of 1,000 miles

driving through the foggy
redwoods.

This has been a insane week of traveling. We started out in California and we're now in Yellowstone, all done in four long trips. Some pretty crazy stuff happened during those trips; we had an emergency remodel on the back slide, a time change, several different terrains, bunches of historical landmarks and national monuments, and finally amazing landscapes and autumn colors.

So after we left California, we drove for around 7 hours to La Pine Oregon. The park we stayed at was basically a huge meadow. After the first night there, which was much colder than where we had been, Mom was feeling really chilly and there was a breeze blowing around her bed. So we took the bed apart to look underneath, and surprise! The whole bottom of the floor was completely rotted and falling apart with a gaping hole in the corner. So Dad took the whole piece of plywood out and he replaced it with a new one. It was quite the surprise project, but we (mostly Dad. We all tried to help a bit) got it fixed, and now we know Mom won't fall through the floor some freezing night. The next day was much less eventful, thankfully. We did some laundry and baking and the little ones dragged me through the sprinklers until we were utterly soaked.

The new floor

The hole in the floor

the bigger hole in the floor

We packed up early the next morning for the second of our longest drives. This time we drove from La Pine to Caldwell, Idaho. Another 7 hour day. It was pretty crazy what we drove through. We drove through a lot of high desert.  Some of the places we drove through were practically prehistoric looking, like you could just SEE dinosaurs walking across. We got to the park in the evening, all exhausted (except for the little ones; they seemed energized by the whole thing) and spent a long time playing and drawing with chalk before dinner. We stayed there for two days again, in which we caught up on baking and the second day Mom and I went out and found tons of specialty foods we had been looking for for a long time. Thank goodness for ethnic markets!! We also got some new jeans at a thrift store, and met up with Mom's friend Mandy. We talked with her for a while, which was really nice. It was weird to get used to the time change; we're now an hour ahead of where we used to be. Which lead to us all "sleeping in" and mom's alarm going off at "9:00am" and I climbed down to turn in off, and then flopped around the living room in a exhausted daze, much to Dad's entertainment. 

We decided that trying to do another 7 hour day was just too much, so we split up the trip into two shorter, three hour days. We left Caldwell not-quite-as-early-as-before, and this drive was very exciting, at least from my point of view in the bug. We girls stopped at a rest stop and got separated from Falkor and somehow, thanks to our GPS, ended up on a completely different highway than the boys. We'd been driving for a while until we realized we were way off, so we girls took a little side stop to Jerome, Idaho, where a great-grandfather had been born and we drove on the street he lived, which was pretty cool!

It was a really fun adventure, We also stopped and took pictures of all the historical markers along the highway and learned a whole bunch about the area's history and geology, which was awesome. We drove through Craters of the Moon, which was insanely awesome. You're just driving through the creepy, flat, dry, dead, desert that is the middle of nowhere, and getting more and more anxious and paranoid. . oh wait that's just me. Anyway you're driving and then suddenly there's just huge amounts of lava rock that goes as far as the eye can see. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen! We pulled over to check out a sign, and it was so quiet - there wasn't any noise anywhere at all. It was creepy cool! We ended up getting to the rv park in Arco Idaho around an hour behind the boys, so everything was set up when we got there. We somehow managed to create some kind of dinner and fall into bed,

We got up the next day, packed up, and were out of there. Nothing very eventful happened during this drive. Mom and I read a bunch more historical marker signs, listened to Fruits Basket Radio, and drove through MORE high desert. Then we suddenly entered the mountains and it because forested and mountainous and gorgeous! I was bouncing around in my seat and super excited to be back in my favorite landscape, and seeing the trees change colors. It feels like REAL autumn now!! While everyone got everything set up, Gwynnie and I went over to the little playground and played around.

We've had to start doing more prep at night because it's getting down to freezing temperatures here, like turning the water off, and covering the windows in the bedrooms to stay extra warm. It's pretty cool to start entering a new season in our new(ish) life.

Today we went exploring Yellowstone, but I'll write about that in another post.