Today, we have been very nostalgic, naming favorite memories from each of the last three years. The first year was a tie between going to Yellowstone and Mexico. Yellowstone was very much a working honeymoon while in Mexico we just relaxed on the beach. We were roughing it after our third honeymoon plan had fallen through (Oh COVID year of 2020). We had to figure everything out as we went, as neither of us had really been camping before.
Our neighbor heard that we were going camping in Yellowstone as complete newbies and was concerned about our naivete. She offered some good advice to get a tarp for under our tent, and thank goodness because it was damp from dew most of the time.
The trip pushed us to our limits of our skill and patience, but we learned a lot and had a great time. There were some moments of great pathos, though. We were setting up camp, exhausted, just on the other side of the Montana border. I was gathering wood to start a fire and slid backwards into a thistle patch. Derek had been trying to start a fire, finally got it going, and started coffee. It got hot finally, and then a storm came up, rain put out the fire and wet the wood, and then wind tipped over the coffee pot. I came walking up from the river for help with the thistles I couldn’t reach, and then a bird pooped on Dereks head. We all needed a minute to reestablish composure after that.
We remember being amazed at our ability as a new family to decide to do something and go do it. We learned a lot about how we liked to travel. We are morning people and prefer to be set up where we will spend the night by 3-4 pm. We like to see everything on the road and don’t tend to travel more than 4-5 hours a day. How we would push each other and balance each other in the next few years. I make sure Derek is wearing sunscreen and doesn’t drive off the road looking at things. He spontaneously stops the car to climb and bring me up mountains. Safe ones, he’s not a risk taker thankfully. Coffee is not optional.
Driving across Wyoming gave some perspective on how much desert there is in the US. The place names reflected the perilous landscape. Dead horse creek, crazy woman canyon.
There was a very romantic place named the Wedding of the Waters, an interesting feature because of the lay of the land it looked like the water was flowing uphill. This was near Thermopolis, a geothermic feature with a free hot mineral pool. That night we camped in a gorgeous canyon and watched the Perseids far from light pollution.
We camped at the first campground outside Yellowstone that allowed non-hard sided units (due to bear activity) roughing it was real, some of the campgrounds didn’t even have water, we had to bring it back from the campground across the valley. but the prettiest views were hidden from main view. We stopped at seemingly boring stops only to uncover spectacular scenery.
We saw a grizzly bear, buffalo, moose, caribou, elk, and pronghorn antelope.
We listened to Tolkein’s Tales from the Perilous Realm the whole way down this highway.