Day 5:

This is what at least half of day 5 looked like, leading us toward Bellingham, WA.  In my opinion, eastern Washington State has really been overshadowed by western Washington State.  This country is beautiful!  The topography here is a geomorphologist’s dream… these rolling hills are enormous features formed by the catastrophic release of water from glacial Lake Missoula.  And the colors of the fields are amazing contrasted against this newly paved road….

Instead of traveling I-90 across Washington, we choose to head up to Grand Coulee Dam, drive across the channeled scablands, and up over the pass in the Wenatchee National Forest.

Here’s Clayton posing in one of the diver’s suits that the men wore during Coulee Dam construction.  They had lead weights on their feet so they could walk along the bottom.

After our quick stop at Grand Coulee Dam – we continued on through the channeled scablands.  Here’s a giant basalt boulder that was emplaced by the floods.

And down into the channelized part of the scablands, this is what the valley walls look like.  Layers and layers of basalt.  If I were to take a stab at interpreting this photo, I’d say that there’s a channel carved out in the middle layer that was subsequently infilled with more lava.  Although maybe it was a lava tube/channel given the weird cooling front/stress fractures surrounding it.  And the top layer looks detached along a listric fault.  But, I’m a sedimentologist – what do I really know?  (any other ideas?)

We finally arrived in Bellingham around 4-ish if I recall – where we met up with the family.  Here are Claudia and Clayton dining with cousins Olivia and Daniel.

The next part of our journey involved a lot of family and a very large Schooner.

Stayed tuned for Adventure West: Days 6-8….

Day 4:

After spending the night in Bozeman, we continued westward on I-90, headed toward Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.

Here’s where we crossed the Continental Divide -  sure doesn’t look like raindrops that fall on the other side of this overpass head west… I suppose there’s some slop in the location of signage at the divide.  The divide is around Butte, MT.  And here’s a view of the Anaconda Mine in Butte.  Pretty dramatic scenery.

Eric and I had plenty of time for geo-conversation on this day (and all subsequent days really).  Turns out, there are some fine Quaternary features along this stretch of road.  Glacial Lake Missoula was impounded here 12,000 years ago, and you can see evidence for it in the hillsides all along I-90 between ~ Missoula and the western Montana border.  But – more on that Day 5 when we visit the channeled scablands.

Sure was quiet in the backseat.

We made it to Coeur D’Alene and found a campsite at Beauty Creek.  It was a fine place to camp, although Beauty Creek itself was dry.

By the way – I highly recommend our tent.  It’s a Mountain Hardware Hammerhead-3.  A 3-person tent that we jammed a 4-person family into (Claudia and Clayton were stacked in head to foot).  It’s a great tent, especially without the rain fly.

After we set up camp – we jumped back into the car and headed for a public beach on Lake Coeur D’Alene.  Clayton was wowed by the float planes taking off and landing in the water.

And back to the campsite to run around a bit before dinner.

‘Twas a chilly evening at Beauty Creek…

1600 miles into our trip now – and the best is still yet to come!

Day 3:

Time to hit the road again.  But – before we get too far, at least one-half of the family requires a stop through Deadwood, SD.  At this point in our lives, Eric and I had watched all but the last episode of Deadwood.  We followed signs to Mt. Moriah cemetery, the final resting place for many of the Deadwood’s historical figures.  I think the entrance fee was $1.

At Wild Bill Hickok’s grave.

As requested by Jane, she was buried right next to Wild Bill.

You have to hike a trail that rises 700 feet above the rest of Mt. Moriah to reach Seth Bullock’s grave.  Here’s my youngest taking a break along the way.

Finally, we reach Seth Bullock’s grave, it’s quite peaceful up there.

I would like to spend more time in Deadwood visiting some of the places made famous by the HBO series.  (I for one, am crushed that they ended the series prematurely).  But, we had some road to cover this day, and Deadwood was absolutely swarming with bikers.

Next stop:  Bozeman, Montana.  This photo captures our drive to Bozeman.

I love these colors… there were storms all around us, made for some great driving.

Day 2:

It was this guy… or one of his cronies.  Taking his morning constitutional steps away from our tent.  Bison were everywhere in Custer State Park.  And, BONUS!  They were in rut.  We were told not to approach them, which I thought was quite reasonable.  I can’t tell you how many people were inching their way closer and closer to these guys, video camera in hand.  I guess they look lovable enough?!?

Anyway, after our close call with the bison strolling through our camp, we drove south to see the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD.

This place was amazing!  Look at all of the mammoth skeletons that they’re digging out… The photo below shows evidence of footprints in the mud.  Apparently, this site represents an old sink hole with a lake in it.  The mammoths would come on over to it, slip in, and become trapped.  All of the mammoths that have been discovered there have been ‘teenage males’.  Curious.

Here are my tiny explorers getting to know various mammoth parts.

When we had our fill of mammoths, we drove back through Custer State Park on the wildlife loop.  Did I mention this was Sturgis Rally week?  Oh yeah, we were the only car on the road… surrounded by Harley’s.

We did find some wildlife… looky here.  Burros!  I guess there are ~33 burros in the park.  Clearly not a native species.  The burros were brought in decades ago for commercial reasons, so people could ride them up to the highest peak in the park.  That venture didn’t pan out… so the burros were let free to roam the park.  They are sometimes called the “begging burros”.  Case in point.

Once we were through the mass of burros, we wound our way north to Mount Rushmore.  What a beautiful ride!  We took the Needles Highway through the park.

Here are three – fourths of the family in front of the Presidents.  Claudia was behind the camera, little brother rendered speechless by stoned wheat thins.

By the way, we decided to subsist on freeze-dried camp food while sleeping under the stars.  Turns out, there are super tasty meals to be had by simply adding boiling water to them.  AND there is very little clean up   We enjoyed Mountain House and Backpacker’s Pantry.

Day 3 to follow – on the road again…

Hello there!  It sure has been awhile.  I’m suddenly compelled to get a few things out into the ether…  I wish I could say that I’ve been taking a sabbatical from the google tubes… but alas, I’ve just been focusing my efforts on other priorities – like my day job, and an even higher priority – myself.  Back to our regularly scheduled program.

This past August, Eric and I loaded the kids into the car and drove like crazy.  5500 mile round trip to be exact – over 3 weeks.  You may say to yourself, ‘self – this is insane – why would anyone willingly subject their young family to this sort of experiment?’.  Well self – we wanted to see some of the country, and share our love of geology/geography with the kids at this very formative age.  Don’t get me wrong, we had the portable DVD player along, we’re not that crazy.  But – We made it!  The kids were (mostly) civil to each other, they appreciated the sights, we made some great memories… and I’d even do it again.  I’ll recap some of our adventure for you and give you some recommendations if you’re interested.

Day 1:

We were on the road by 4 am – on our way to the Black Hills, an 800 mile drive in one day.  Day 1 was our most ambitious day actually – good to beat the kids down get it out of the way early.  The photo above was our scenery for the majority of the day, heading west across the Great Plains.  This is what the Great Plains look like in the backseat…

That kid looks like a prisoner.

Day 1 surprise?  Well, we’re coffee snobs.  I have very little faith that I’ll find a satisfying cuppa joe on the road.  We avoid diners for that very reason – at least in the morning.  However, we took a shot on a sign that we saw from the highway in St. Charles, MN.  Took us a few minutes to get there but it was so worth it.  We ended up at Cabin Coffee Company for a great breakfast and wonderful coffee.  A good way to start our trip for sure.  While we were at the coffee shop, we called ahead to reserve a spot at the Center Lake campsite in Custer State Park.  Nope – we didn’t plan ahead at all.  We decided to take our chances and find campsites along the way.  It worked well for the most part, gave us some flexibility.

We stopped for lunch somewhere in South Dakota that day before powering out the rest of the drive to our campsite.  We decided to carry a cooler and pack lunch meat and PB&J along instead of eating out for lunch every day.

(Note the change of clothes on the little guy – hint #1 – make sure to check that diaper often on road trips – otherwise the car seat doesn’t stay too fresh).

And finally, here’s our car at rest… I think it was about 7pm before we got to the campsite.  And what a gorgeous place it was…

I’m relaxing just thinking about it…

Because we drove like mad to get out there – our plan was to stay 2 nights at Center Lake.   I would love to go back there and spend more time at this particular spot.  We even had some big big wild visitors stop by…. more on that next time…

It was exciting to see the storms approach, to hear the tornado sirens, to watch my garden overflow with water… to see the rainwater pour off of the roof – laughing at the gutters (OK…. so they were packed with pine duff)… to watch the pond that formed alongside my home… to watch it rise until it expanded into the sunporch… to be in the basement with my kids hearing new and interesting running water noises as it made its way into my home…. from somewhere in the foundation.  Huh.

Now we’re in fix it mode.

Finally bought a shop vac to suck the water out of the crawl space under the den… and decided to tackle the sunporch next.  Remember this?

and this:

Suddenly we have this:

and this:

and this:

Yep – the moldy carpet was removed to reveal the moldy green and red painted concrete floor.  Yuck.

So now we’ve got to clean that floor, remove the old paint, dry it out… fix the drainage problem in the back of the house (which started with a clean out of the gutters), and the re-clean that floor and finally re-paint that floor.

It’s going to take a while to dry out the sunporch – as it’ll involve diverting drainage around it…

Funny how hard it is to stay high and dry – even when you’re sitting on top of the moraine

You know… I’ve taken a hiatus from blogging…

Turns out, I’ve had to live my life a bit – away from my computer.  It’s been a nice distraction

Spent a whole weekend away (OK… maybe it was just 24 hours of the weekend…)  But, nonetheless… it was time to get away.

Got me thinking really… about camping.  About getting back to nature… You see, as a geologist, I’ve done my fair share of sleeping in a tent (or just sleeping on the ground for that matter).  And I miss the heck out of it.

In grad school, I had ~3 summers away, camping out in my field area of southwestern Wyoming… and occasionally visiting my husband’s field area in the sub-alpine meadows of the Uinta Mountains…

In grad school (and 1 month before my wedding), I had 2 weeks camping in the Grand Canyon.  2 weeks of using the natural facilities… 2 weeks of watching a district attorney from Manhattan and an assistant producer to the Conan O’Brien show camp out (for their very first time ever) in the Grand Canyon.  This was a luxury for a grad student… and an incredible luxury for a Geology grad student.  When we got home to our apartment in Madison – I swear I wanted to pitch a tent in the backyard and pee in the garden….

You know what?  I’ve forgotten how to live like I was in grad school.  And you know what?  It’s so nice to realize that I’m in complete control of my life… My husband – who makes a fine living as a geologist – makes it his job to get out in the field.  And myself – who is my own boss… can decide to do the same.

We went camping last weekend – at Point Beach State Forest.  It was Clayton’s first time sleeping in a tent.  We learned a few things that night.

1. We took 2 tents.  Next time, we’ll just take 1.  Forget about kids tent and parents tent.  When you’re camping with kids – it’s dogpile time.  They made it half the night on their own before they woke up and realized that they had no idea where they were and where mom and dad were.  Easiest to cram 4 people into that 3 person tent than to try to have mom and dad time on a camping trip.
2. Remote good.  Clayton is loud… he apparently really likes the outdoors, and he expresses his happiness via his lungs.  I think that we’ll have a great time camping this summer – off the beaten path!
3. Kids + headlamps = blindness.  You can’t teach a kid headlamp etiquette overnight… these things must be learned in time.

We have many more lessons to (re)learn…

Our last family camping trip was 4.5 years ago.  Here’s Claudia camping at 1.5 years old…

This is wrong.  We must rectify this…. we must remove ourselves voluntarily from the tethered e-planet that we’ve moved into.  Last weekend was our first step.  I’m proud of us.

For people who love nature so much, it’s a shame that we spend most of our waking hours inside… Here’s what happens when we venture out…

Good stuff… better than leather couches and tv, that’s for sure.

Happy camping!

One of the best things about raising two little people is bringing them into your world and watching them begin to love the things that you love.  In our home – there’s no better example than that of music.

Maybe it’s because Eric sings them to sleep – Slaid Cleaves, James Taylor, Death Cab For Cutie, John Denver… Claudia used to ask for “Sweet baby Dreams” (thats ‘James’).

Maybe it’s because on my 1.5 hour I-10 commute with Claudia, we would listen to Johnny Cash, Jack Johnson, Alison Krauss…

Lately, Claudia has been listening to Alison Krauss – a lot… we’ve finally had to evict it from the stereo…

And then there’s the Badger games.  Eric took Claudia to a football game last fall… she loved the music they played there, brought it home with her in fact.  Imagine this scene:

Mom: “Come on Clayton (urging him to get into his car seat), Let’s pack it up, pack it in”

Clayton: “Let me begin!”

Too good.

I busted out some of my old CD’s the other day.  You know, the music that you listened to before ‘you’ were ‘us’.  I was jonesing for some Beastie Boys.  I broke out “Check Your Head”… and guess what?  It was well received by my kids!  Imagine that…

Now – it’s quite common to hear this around the house, “Hey Claudia! Where’d you get your in-for-ma-tion from, huh?”

My most proud moments are when we’re around a group of people, and my daughter starts to sing something like, “Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won’t answer anymore….not the whiskey drinkin’ Indian nor the marine that went to war”.  And, if Johnny Cash is on in the car, she won’t get out until she hears “Ring of Fire”… it’s her favorite you see.

Three cheers for us!  We’ve managed to avoid many of the well known mind numbing kid music – and guess what?  The kids are still OK… in fact, they’re cool.

I do need to come clean though.  Yes, we do have some kid music.  We’ve got “The Johnny Cash Childrens Album”…. Jack Johnson’s Curious George Soundtrack… and we have “Science” by They Might Be Giants.   To be fair – it’s not all artists that we’d listen to anyway.  We’ve got Hoyt Axton’s “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog”… It’s a pretty good album – it compels the kids to orbit around the house until they are completely wiped out.

I can’t wait to see what they decide to like when they’re in control of their own music…. I’m sure I’ll hate it… 

Can you see it?  Look really really closely… it’s on the left side of the Charden.

How about now?

Sure looks like rainbow chard…  but I don’t know what it is… I planted this bed full of rainbow chard, and this is the sole seedling… the survivor… the volunteer?.. the naturally selected.

The seed packet says that they should take 7-10 days to germinate.  So, by my calculations, I should have a garden full of chard seedlings by now.  I planted them on Monday, April 5th.  And it’s now 20 days later.   Maybe I planted them too deep?  Maybe I sowed them too early?  Maybe they were all washed down deeper or floated away… The day after I planted my Charden, it rained and rained… in Houston, we would’ve called it a ‘frog strangler’.  Here’s the data from the Badger Mill Creek gauge:

Note, April 5… the day I planted my garden… before the rain fell.   Just for more perspective… Here’s the data from all of April…

So… I’ve re-seeded my Charden.  Maybe I haven’t been patient enough – maybe the chard will spontaneously sprout at some magical average temperature.  If it weren’t for that lonely seedling fighting the good fight, I might not have even considered that something is a-miss in the Charden.

Now, to keep those rascally rabbits away from my precious, gasping Charden…

I love this…. go ahead, you can watch it again… I’ll wait.

Dwight and I have a lot in common actually.  I used to listen to a lot of heavy metal… I can see how Mötley Crüe could psych you up.  I used to crank up the music to be ready to face my day.

I think I need to channel some of that right now.

I was just discussing the idea of psyching yourself up with Eric – as we watched our daughter kick her soccer ball around the living room.

One of Claudia’s favorite movies is “Bend it Like Beckham”… in fact, she got that movie for her first Christmas (we thought is was a good girl power movie).  Here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it.

It’s her ‘psych yourself up’ movie.  More relevant now as she’s learning to play soccer.

And here’s the best family related ‘psych yourself up’ story.  Back in grad school, Eric and I were on a Thursday night bowling league.  Games started at 6:00 or so and the lanes were right across the street from the Geology Dept.  Every Thursday before bowling – Eric would watch fight scenes from Gladiator in his office.

True Story.  Not sure what it did for his game – but he was ready to kick some ass anyway.

I’m on a mission to find my outlet… to find something to fire myself up.  Music seemed to work for me in the past, and I miss my old tunes.  It’s probably time for me to join the 21st century and download MP3′s of some of the old hair bands (turns out, they are mostly still on tape).

Hoping it can keep me ‘above the line’ as they say.

So tell me about your rituals… How do you to fire yourself up?