SABBATICAL RANDOMNESS

MILES HIKED:
Erik 100
Laura 91
Curtis 46.5
Sadie 44

Erik also biked 96 miles!



DINNERS COOKED:
Laura -- 1
Erik-- no idea how many but he cooked every dinner except 1!

At the beginning of the trip Erik offered to cook every night if I did the dishes.  I accepted that deal and enjoyed many meals made by my amazing husband!  Lucky me!  And, sometimes I even got out of dishes because I have two teenagers who are able (if not willing) to do dishes.  Again, Lucky me!

FAVORITE PLACES:

Erik -- Arches

Laura -- Devil's Garden hike at Arches

Curtis -- Arches and Yellowstone

Sadie -- Arches

OTTER POPS EATEN IN 10 DAYS:

Erik 2

Laura 3

Curtis and Sadie 95!!!

I don't usually/ever buy otter pops but I threw caution to the wind and picked up a box before we went to Arches where we knew it would be 90 -100 degrees.  You can imagine my surprise when a week and a half later I went to get an Otter Pop out of the freezer (blue is the best) and they were all gone!

REAL SHOWERS TAKEN:
About 17 (Just for reference normally in 6 weeks I would take 42 showers)

PLACES WE STAYED:

Campgrounds  13

Friends house  1

Boise Bible College 1

Walmart parking lots  2

MILES DRIVEN:

Over 4000.  I don't think we even want to know how much we spent on gas!

CAMPGROUNDS THAT AREN'T UNDER A FIRE BAN:

4.   Would have been nice to know before we carried firewood with us for 3 weeks.

STATES DRIVEN THROUGH:

Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, (back to Colorado), (back through Wyoming), South Dakota, (Wyoming again), Montana, Idaho and back to Oregon!

STATE LICENSE PLATES WE DIDN'T SEE:
Deleware, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont

PICTURES TAKEN:
Over 1000 (and that is after I deleted a ton)

FRIENDS THAT HELPED US WITH OUR TRIP:

Too many to count!

-Our amazing church gave Erik a sabbatical.

-Our church lifted us up in prayer and gave us gas cards.

-Dave and Sherry let us borrow the RV.  The thought of six weeks in a tent was a tad overwhelming!

-Shelly supplied us with more junk food than could fit into the cupboards!  Our kids were in heaven!        Seriously, there were about four grocery bags full of just treats!

-Peggy gave me rolls of quarters for the laundromat.  What an unexpected surprise that really touched my heart.

-Stacy made delicious cookies.  However, they got eaten before we even got on the road...

-Friends who preached for Erik while he was gone.

-Katie let me borrow a vacuum cleaner. (There's no way we could have made it six weeks without one!)

-Thony loaned us the GPS... it only tried to kill us once!  "Turn right in 10 feet" (right over the edge of a cliff!)  "RECALCULATING! RECALCULATING!"

-Doug showed up on our doorstep just a few hours after we got home with a half gallon of ice cream!  Definitely made the unpacking a little more bearable.

Thank you everyone mentioned and unmentioned who made our trip possible.  We are truly blessed!

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

On the way to Yellowstone we stopped in Wyoming for dinner with friends from McMinnville who were visiting family in Wyoming.  We kind of laughed about it because we hadn't gotten together with them in our home town for several years... it took both of us being in Wyoming to get us together for dinner!

After dinner we drove until we found an A and W and made an emergency stop for floats.  Right across the street from the A and W was a laundromat so we decided to do laundry since we were there.  That was the quickest laundry stop ever (in the grossest laundromat ever)!  I think it only took an hour and fifteen minutes to get six loads of laundry sorted, washed, dried, folded and put away.  Go Team Neilson!

We pulled into Walmart in Cody, WY and camped in the parking lot that night.  We weren't alone... I counted 13 other RV's camping with us too.  

The next morning we did a quick shopping trip and then headed out to find a church.  We landed at a little baptist church in between Cody and Yellowstone.  It was a log church and in the foyer were about thirty pegs on the wall for all the cowboy hats.  I loved that and I would like to implement that at our church but no one wears cowboy hats so it would really be just empty pegs :(.  We sang old hymns that we hadn't sung in a very long time and everyone there was so friendly.  We left filled and felt blessed to worship with brothers and sisters in a little log church in the middle of nowhere Wyoming.

Yellowstone was a beautiful place to explore.  I think at this point (our sixth week) we were a little bit on a "beautiful sites overload" and counting the days until we got to head home but we still enjoyed seeing what there was to see... we just might have appreciated it more if it had been our first stop.






Some of the sites:

Buffalo!  I was really looking forward to seeing a bunch of wildlife in Yellowstone but we only saw a herd of buffalo.  I was kind of hoping for some (long distance) bear and moose sightings.

Old Faithful Inn.  We hung out here for a few hours one day so that Erik could work on his sermon for the next Sunday.  It was beautiful and I was already planning to come back and stay at this lodge during the  winter some time, until I found out they aren't open in the winter!

Yellowstone is famous for it's geysers, hot springs, fumaroles and mud pots.  However, no one really talks about the stink!  Sulfer is a very prevalent smell in Yosemite.

There were some really beautiful colors in the pools.

Old Faithful was something we'd really been looking forward to seeing.

God has made some amazing creations!

Here's all the people that we got to enjoy Old Faithful with!

So, I didn't get to see a lot of wildlife but here's proof that there are animals all around... this was a cave (across a river and taken with my zoom lens) and those white sticks are bones!  I'm not sure what animal lives there or what animal was eaten there.

We drove 60 miles to see the plateaus at Mammoth Hot Springs.  The plateaus were really neat but most of them were dry.  We drove a long ways and then climbed up a lot of stairs to find dry plateaus.  It was sort of anti-climatic.  We looked around a bit and then it started to rain so we went to the nearest lodge for showers and then found some ice cream.

We stayed at Madison campground in Yellowstone.  The rules were really strict there because of the bears.  We couldn't leave food, cooking utensils, water bottles, shampoo, or anything that would even remotely leave a scent out.  We have a pretty good size collapsible bbq grill and that couldn't even stay outside if we weren't using it.  Stepping over it inside the RV wasn't a lot of fun.  But, it was better than bears in our campsite!
The good side of that campground was that we could have fires and could collect dead or fallen wood which means we didn't have to buy $7 wood bundles.  Yay!  Also, there was a great river super close to the campground.  The water was a very comfortable temperature and  we spent several days relaxing by and in the river.

Our own little island

Sadie had a bit of fun in the mud

Curtis and Sadie started damming up part of the river.  I was really surprised that they didn't get into a mud fight... Sadie looks ready to go!

Sweet Sadie Sue

Looks like after six weeks of photo ops. someone is really done having his picture taken!

Curtis and Sadie

When we left Yosemite we split up the trip home into two days and stopped in Boise Idaho.  First stop in Boise was the minor emergency clinic to get some relief for Erik's poison ivy (which, by the way, was the only medical issue we had... I don't think we even used a single band-aid on the whole trip!).  Then, we went to Boise Bible College where we would be spending the night.  The college actually has a place for RV's complete with electric and water hook-ups.  For dinner we met up with a professor friend of Erik's and his family.  Cody (ACC's summer intern) joined us for pizza as well.  After dinner we caught up with Justin and Tally (ACC's interns starting next month) at Dairy Queen.

The next morning we got up early and headed for Oregon.  We were home by 2:30!  Hooray! 

SOUTH DAKOTA

We were all looking forward to South Dakota for different reasons.  Curtis was excited because we would be visiting Mt. Rushmore and he loves all things presidential.  Sadie and I were pretty happy because our campground actually had showers.  And, everyone was happy because this campground also had hook-ups for the RV.  Yay!  Movies, computer, Kindles, DSi, X-box.  Most of our campgrounds have been without electricity so this week was definitely a treat!

Our first stop was Mt. Rushmore (and where most our S. Dakota pictures were taken).

We really didn't do a whole lot that week except for a lot of relaxing.  I finished reading "The Count of Monte Cristo".  Three mornings Erik and I hiked five miles around the lake.  One day we hung out at the lake.  Another day we rode bikes five very hilly miles to the closest lodge for ice cream and internet.  While we were at the lodge I sent in an application on-line for a teaching job.  Just as we were getting back to the campground I realized that in my cover letter I put the wrong school's name.  So, the next morning Erik and I rode back to the lodge on our bikes again to fix my mistake.  On this trip I got to ride his super light road bike and he rode the heavy mountain bike. Those hills were a lot easier on the light road bike!

One day Erik headed out by himself to hike a trail he had found on the map.  Apparently, the trail wasn't much of a trail and crossed a creek six times.  He finally ended up turning around and heading back because he wasn't sure he was ever going to get to where he thought he should be going.  Unfortunately, three or four days after that hike he discovered that he must have been walking through poison ivy.

Some of the wildlife Erik saw on his hike:

Mostly, South Dakota was all about relaxation.  I didn't take very many pictures.  Partly because we didn't do much but I think part of the reason is that I was starting to get overwhelmed by all the pictures I've taken and the thought of scrapbooking them all!  

Oh, many others were excited about South Dakota because the Sturgis motorcycle rally started two days after we left.  There were bikers ALL over the place.  

Next stop: Yellowstone and then home!  I think we are all feeling ready to go home.

DENVER, CHEYENNE & LUSK

We left Utah and headed into Colorado on I-70.  Little did we know that the section of interstate we would be on is the highest point of all interstates!  11,158 feet is pretty high to drive up!  At the top is the Eisenhower tunnel that is 1.7 miles long.  We play the "hold your breath in a tunnel" game and no one made it through that tunnel.  :)
We slowly made our way over the pass and were awed by some of the beauty along the way.  Just outside of Denver we stopped at an RV campground.  And, praise God there were showers! And they only cost .25 cents for 5 minutes.  After showers and unpacking a bit my brother stopped by and we had dinner with him.  I had asked him to pick up ice cream for dessert and lucky us, he brought everyone their own individual Ben & Jerry's ice cream!  It was great to catch up with him and give him hugs.

The next morning we headed North to Cheyenne to see our friend Justin.  When we got there he was canning green beans from his garden so Erik pitched in to help and I pretty much just tested the fresh green beans.  They were perfect.  :)

We stayed with Justin for four days (and 4 nights in a real bed!).
The Cheyenne Frontier days were gong on so we went to a big pancake feed in the morning and then a rodeo in the afternoon on Friday.

On Saturday Erik and Justin spent a day setting the posts for a snow drift fence while the kids and I hung out watching the Olympics, reading and taking naps.  I also caught up on laundry this day... and there was a lot!  I don't think Justin realized just how much we had when he volunteered his washer and dryer.  Thanks Justin!

Sunday we went to church in Longmont and then to a Rockie's game in Denver.  It was about 90 degrees that day.  We walked about a mile to the ball park and then sat down in the sun to watch the game.  Actually, I didn't sit... my seat had been stuck in the down position and was so scalding hot that I couldn't sit on it!  Eventually, we scouted out some seats that were in the shade and about the time we moved seats the clouds rolled in and we all felt sooooo much better.

On Monday we got up early, said goodbye to Justin and headed towards South Dakota.  We noticed on the map that we would be driving through Lusk, Wyoming where Erik's grandparents were from.  We stopped by the cemetery in town and started looking row by row at all the headstones for Ethel and Lawrence Tucker.  After searching forever we finally found Erik's great grandparents names and a great aunt.  We also found his great grandpa's name on a war memorial.  As we were leaving the cemetery we noticed a large notebook right by the entrance.  In this book you could look up names of the people to find out where their grave was located.  That probably would have helped shorten our search a bit.

ARCHES NATIONAL PARK

How do you know that the sabbatical you are on is really working?  When two first born, type A, super planners show up to their next destination a whole day early!  Yes, it happened to us.  We’ve had this trip planned forever, reservations made at all the campgrounds since January, and most of the details taken care of.  So, we show up to Arches and pull into the campsite that we think is ours.  We unpack, take the bikes off the back of the RV, move the BBQ off our bed, and start to explore the campground.  After we were there for an hour I got our paperwork that we had printed out at home so that I could check in with the camp host.  I happened to look at the paperwork and noticed it said, “check-in: Friday”.  I wasn’t even sure what day it was but Friday didn’t sound quite right.  I asked Erik and he confirmed that it was Thursday.  We had arrived a whole day early!  And, the signs heading into the campground said, “FULL”!  I quickly went to the camp host (who laughed at me when I explained our little oversight) and he said that they have two sites that they hold back and don’t let people reserve but, those two sites were already given away!  Thankfully, the solution to our problem was that we could park in the group camping parking lot for the night.  The next morning we headed out on a hike and by the time we got back we got to move into our normal campsite.  Yay!

Arches National Park was amazing!  The campground was nestled in among all these huge sandstone rocks that were just waiting to be climbed all over.  It was an enormous playground for big kids!  The Arches were beautiful.  The hiking was so much better than at the Grand Canyon or Bryce (there were no major elevation changes like the previous parks!). 

The major down-side to Arches was the heat. Oh my goodness, it was HOT!  And, there were no showers.  We hiked early in the morning or waited till evening.  We found shady spots to spend the rest of the day in.  And, we were creative in our showering. 

The first day we hiked up to the Delicate Arch.  It was a really neat hike that started out on gravel but soon progressed to hiking over sandstone. 

At night we sat outside and watched thunderstorms in the distance.  Sometimes there were five or six storms all around us (they were all really far away though).  It was beautiful and reminded me of the thunderstorms when we lived in Missouri.

On Sunday we went into Moab and visited an Episcopalian church which was quite an experience.  After church we went to McDonald’s for about three hours to charge up our electronics and get some internet access.

One morning Erik and I got up at 5:45 to go on a 7 mile hike to Devil’s Garden.  We got to see 8 Arches on the hike.  The hike was by far my favorite hike out of all the places we’ve hiked so far.  The hike was on gravel, sand, over sandstone rocks, and along the top of rock fins.  We loved the hike so much that we did it again the next morning. 

Some of the Arches we saw on that hike:

Somewhere along the way we picked up an extra traveler or two.  I don’t really remember when but at the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon I noticed that a packet of oatmeal had been torn open.  I just thought that a BBQ skewer had created the hole.  But, this week I found two granola bars that had been chewed open and bits of it were eaten.  If you have read my blog previously, you know I don’t do rodents very well.  My really brave husband cleaned all the food out of the drawer and headed 20 miles into Moab on the scooter to get mouse traps (that’s 40 miles round trip!).  He set the trap and we waited.  Sure enough, as soon as we were all in bed and Erik had just fallen asleep the kids and I heard the mouse stuck on the glue trap.  I woke Erik up and he disposed of the mouse.  Yay!  Just in case he set up another trap and sure enough, the next night when we were all in bed he caught another one.  It’s been a couple days with no more visitors so I’m really hoping that they have been taken care of.

We ended up leaving Arches a day early so that we could stop for the night in Colorado to see my brother, Dann.  I hadn’t seen him since January so I was really glad that it worked out. 

Next stop is Wyoming for four days to see a friend of ours that Erik met at college in Juno, AK.