Back to School

It has been 13 yrs since we started homeschooling Darryn.  This is the first year that they will all be going to school.  Darryn is attending Del Tech Community College taking Business classes.

First day at GMS for Devan & Renae

Tubing

We finally were able to take the kids tubing.  It was such a busy summer that it was the first and only time that we took the boat out.  The motor didn't work right and we ended up anchoring our boat and just going tubing behind Brent Schrock's boat.  Thankfully we were with someone and were able to get towed back to the docks.

Graduation 2013

This was a big year for us....our first graduate from high school.  Darryn graduated at the top of his class of 13 grads and was the valedictorian.  Way to go, Darryn!

 GMS class of 2013

 Grandma Helmuth

Grandpa & Grandma Byler

Keeping the blog going......

Since we have the blog started now, maybe we should keep it going.  We need to decide on a new name, but for now I will post some other things that took place this summer

Wild Flowers

There were so many different wild flowers blooming along the roadways.  Here are a few that we got pictures of when we stopped or when we were hiking.

The Road Home...

We left Iowa Thursday morning anticipating many hours on the road, hoping to make it to Lyn's sister Esther's house in time to enjoy July 4th with their family.

We traveled all the way through Iowa.... yup, there's still corn and beans there.

We crossed the Mississippi River.... yup, it still had water in it.

We traveled through Illinois.... yup, there's still corn and beans there too.

What a delight to arrive at Esther's just in time for supper, a good one at that.  To the rest of the family, it was not for you that they pulled out the pork ribs and perfectly prepared them as a feast!  And to top it off, homemade "frosty" - coffee flavored at that.  It's no wonder that our kids wanted to eat lunch early that day so they would be hungry for Esther's meal, past experience has taught them well.  We greatly enjoyed the evening with their family, traveling to see the fireworks in the back of a pick up (as we used to be able to do in Delaware), parking along the roads to enjoy the show, as small town quality as it was, it was the presence of family that made the night...  One thing that puzzles me.... was that smell really something dead in the cornfield?  How well do I really know my family?

Friday morning we enjoyed a "farmers brunch" at Matt and Lacry's house before heading east toward Ohio.

Thanks Lacry and family for a great brunch!!!

We traveled the rest of the way through Illinios.... yup, there's still corn and beans.

We traveled through Indiana... yup, there's still corn and beans.

We traveled through Ohio... yup, there's still corn and beans with the added attraction of traffic and construction.

Arriving at Jolene's sister Joy's house, we enjoyed a relaxing evening with their family, sitting outside, tossing the ball toward a hoop, watching the kids enjoy goofing around...  Darryn using a hoola hoop is quite entertaining.

We slept fast, woke up Saturday morning ready to conquer our last phase of the journey.  With smooth travels to Delaware, despite a jam up at the Bay bridge, we pulled into Bushy Tail Lane at 6:05 PM.  The Trip Odometer said 7300 miles had been traveled since we pulled out of this lane.

The trip, 3 weeks and a day, many states, many sites, much enjoyment, very little relaxation, was over.  Only time will tell the memories it made, but one thing is for sure, it's over....

South Dakota fools the GPS

We packed up camp for the last time on Wednesday morning, anticipating the many hours of travel as we head east.  Our first detour was to travel the southern "wildlife loop" of Custer State park.  Deer, buffalo, and an antelope were all we saw, the infamous "wild donkeys' alluded us.  After stopping to ask for guidance we backtracked and were delighted to see an herd of donkeys headed down the hill toward the numerous vehicles waiting for them.  "Wild" is a slight exaggeration, these donkeys knew exactly what tourists meant, carrots and lots of attention, both of which they loved.  The kids enjoyed feeding and petting these bold fellows, it was rather cool...

They're headed our way.....

Two or three donkeys... hard to tell.

Darryn finally found a girl who would kiss his hand....

And we turned our attention to getting to the Badlands, as all good navigators do, we plugged in the name of our destination in the GPS, evaluated the suggested path, and took of with innocent trust of technology.  Some questions were raised that it was taking us to the south side of the badlands, but we thought it would be cool to travel through them from south to north.  And then there was a dirt road, but this is South Dakota.....  And then there was an Indian Reservation with a worse dirt road, but this is South Dakota....  And then there was miles and miles of dusty, dirty, bumpy dirt road, is this still South Dakota?, we wouldn't have known since there was nothing anywhere.  With trusting loyalty we followed the GPS, our road north was just ahead, no, but wait, we passed the road, what road, was there a road?  We turned around to be sure, we were sure, there was no road......  Thankfully there was farmer mowing hay along the ditch banks.  He feebly attempted to guide us, the best I could understand was "go to the end of the road, there's a visitors center".  Of we went for another 20 miles of dusty dirt road.....  To conclude the story, there is no road that runs south to north through the badlands, no matter how convinced our GPS was.  After reaching the visitors center, we realized we had another 30 miles north to the real badlands loop, we were in the south section owned by the Indian Reservation.... at least the road was now paved.

After all that, the Badlands lived up to their name in our opinion, a land that gave us bad memories.  As much as Jolene tried to get us excited about the unique landscape of nothing, it took more than that to impress this bunch of weary travelers.

Leaving the Badlands we came across a tourist trap taking advantage of the many prairie dogs in their yard.  we stopped for a close up connection to the interesting little critters as they took food from our hands.

Devan's "Freddie and Evangeline"...

Every Prairie Dog was named George according to Renae...

We hit the road east traveling the farm lands of South Dakota.  Our GPS adventure costing us time in an area with no food and with our kids expressing starving symptoms as if they had trekked the area on foot, we gleefully pulled off to a Subway, only to discover it was "opening soon".  We settled for convenience store food... there was literally nothing else for miles and miles....

Our day ended as we made it to Souix Falls, Ia just in time to see a close up of the local ballparks fireworks.  A Comfort Inn Motel, a midnight dip in the pool, and all was well....

The Famous "Heads"...

Tuesday morning found us leaving Cody Wyoming bright and early headed toward South Dakota.  The road took us across the Rocky mountains for the last time, a beautiful crossing it was.  We stopped at the pass to climb up and look around, the sweet smell of flowers was in the air from the many alpine varieties in bloom.

At the top of the pass crossing the Rockies

We arrived at Custer State Park and our campground in time to set up before we headed to Mt Rushmore.  Custer is in the heart of the Black Hills, home to the Needles highway that winds through the mountains.  The road has numerous 1 way tunnels carved through the rock; the rock formations make for a very scenic ride.

The Needle Rock

One of many tunnels on the Needles Hwy

We arrived at Mt Rushmore for the evening, anticipating the history presentation, video, and witnessing them turning the lights on the faces after dark.  They found a way to bypass our National Parks pass by charging us $15 to park... I was annoyed.

We enjoyed our time there, the history and story behind the carving of the mountains was interesting.  The evening presentation was well done... it would be our recommendation to see Mt Rushmore at night, it adds an interesting perspective.  We left there with a greater appreciation for the 4 men who are immortalized on the mountain... and of the opinion Reagan should one day be added...

Devan was stressed that this was our last night camping and we had not had a campfire to do smores.  Usually our schedule was tight enough that were too tired to start a fire.  We headed back to camp via the Needles hwy (almost kissing a rock with the Yukon on a sharp curve), made it to camp by 10, started a fire and enjoyed smores... a fitting end to our camping adventures.

Cody Wyoming

Monday morning found us packing up headed to Cody, Wyoming, a town just outside the East gate to Yellowstone.  (A clarification about Yellowstone, despite the lack of beautiful scenery, we were glad we stopped in there.  If we had it to do over again, we would not have allocated as many days in that area.)

By this time we had put on almost 4500 miles, so Lyn took the Yukon and camper to a the tire shop for new trailer tires (they were scary bad), oil change, tire rotation, and a new battery.  A weak battery had created the need for us to have our battery jumped 3 times...  Note to Lyn - "Listen to wife when she suggests taking jumper cables along".  Jolene and the kids spent the morning exploring the shops of downtown Cody; what a cool town with many Western shops... our purchases included cowboy hats and shirts, truly the western lifestyle was impacting our interests.

Our plans for Cody included going to the "Cody Rodeo Stampede".  Cody has an amateur rodeo every night of the summer, but over the 4th of July week they bring in the Professional boys of rodeo, we had an incredible fun time.  Setting the stage for the rodeo, we went to the Cody Cowboy Company for a "cowboy buffet" and a Western music show.  The Western show included both a champion fiddle player and a guitar player.  What fun, I'd recommend this for anyone visiting Cody and wanting to soak in the western fun....

Cody will go down as one of the highlights of our trip, a fun western town who strive to enable tourists to catch a glimpse of the western lifestyle.  Makes you want to say "Yee Hawww".

The Triple C Cowboys were our entertainment...

Our own 'bull riders'.

The clown and his "pony-ac" car.

This & That

Illness:

If you read our earlier posts you will recall that we battled the stomach virus about a week ago.  While we are all up and functioning, many of us are still not 100%.  Usually someone does not feel like eating or is complaining of a tossing stomach.  When we got to Yellowstone signs were posted that the stomach virus was going around. Several of the kids have thrown up a time or two since then with Ericka having the worst bought one morning.  We are making it through, but it has impacted the energy level and desire to do some hiking, etc.

Last Tuesday Lyn was lifting while setting up the camper and put his neck out of place.  With no chiropractor to go to, it's been a rather painful week.  Thankfully Jolene brought a vibrator that has helped tremendously, ibuprofen has been a friend.  It has not been helpful that the beds of the pop-up are far from the Hilton...

License plates:

Soon after we left West Virginia Ericka downloaded the license plate game app where we can mark off the states as we see them.  We were down to just a couple when we entered Yellowstone.  The bet was that we would never find Delaware or Hawaii.  Yellowstone pulled through by providing both.  The missing states are Rhode Island and Washington DC.

This weeks plans are to take in a rodeo at Cody tonight, then on to South Dakota for Mt Rushmore and the Badlands.  Our trip will wrap up as we visit family the last couple days heading east (translate "free motel" :))

I forgot to mention in the last post that we saw some buffalo calves and a grizzly gave us a nice view on our way out.. pictures included here.

A great celebration ensued when Renae spotted this one, our Yellowstone highlight.

Is this one of our kids????

Yellowstone

The roads through Yellowstone are laid out like a figure 8, so Saturday morning, in order to beat the crowds and heat, we were up early to travel the north loop.  It was much more mountainous and scenic, but still a far cry from the grandeur of our previous stops.  We stopped at some Hot Springs, saw a bear, passed the infamous buffalo walking down the middle of the road; all in all it was a long drive with not much excitement. We did see our second wolf, this one was the "true gray" wolf, again the distance prevented us to get good pictures.

We were back to camp by mid afternoon, relaxed for a bit, made supper and then went into West Yellowstone to do some shopping.  The town is set up like a tourist trap, comparable to the boardwalks on the beach with many T Shirt shops.  The difference was the western theme; furs, knives, cowboy hats were part of our window shopping.

 Sunday morning was a lazy morning as we packed up camp, headed through the southern end of Yellowstone, out the East exit to camp in the Shoeshone Valley of Wyoming just outside of Cody. Since we were going right by Old Faithful we opted to view her eruption again; a more impressive display I might add. Our travel sights included large herds of buffalo and our first grizzly bear.

We have our noses pointed east now.  The entire trip was centered around getting to Yellowstone and then it's working our way home.  Whether it was the heat or road weary travelers, our entire family would concur that Yellowstone did not live up to it's hype.  In talking to other travelers, I heard the same thing repeated over and over.  The wildlife was nice, the hot springs and geysers amazing, but the landscape and amount of miles traveled made for a long couple days.

What I did not know or expect was that the draw to Yellowstone is the fact that it is an "active volcano", if Dwight is correct, he calls it a shield volcano.  The many steaming hot springs, colorful cascades created by hot mineral water flowing from the ground, bubbling mud pots, burping caves that sound like a dragons lair, and the constant smell of sulfur is an impressive feat of nature unlike any other place.  Our expectations of beautiful scenery was not met, the other facts of the park were worth the stop.  Now we know...

A friendly lumbering black bear gave us a nice pass by...

The sign said "boiling hot water, do not touch"....

Mammoth Hot Springs, impressive feat of nature.

We came, we saw....

Old Faithful

Friday morning after a breakfast of eggs and thick cut bacon grilled over a wood fire, we packed up and headed toward our long anticipated destination of Yellowstone.  Upon entering the park, we stopped at the visitors center, got our information, and realized Old Faithful was scheduled to blow within the hour.  Pulling into the parking lot we realized that the mecca of tourism was in front of our eyes.  We just made it in time to watch her blow, an impressive display, and something we could check off our list as "done that".

It was hot, very hot; hot enough that we decided to go to our camp, set up and come back for the evening, hoping animals may be more active as well.  When we finally arrived at our camp site in West Yellowstone, Montana, we were disappointed how far it was from the park.  While we were only 6 miles from the entrance, the park itself is huge with the miles in between attractions causing much travel time.

Our return to the park that evening was rather disappointing, simply miles and miles of pine trees... the kids compared it to traveling to Minnesota.  We did manage to see some hot springs, buffalo, and one very nice elk that came within 10 yards of us...  We also viewed the Yellowstone canyon, a canyon with many colors from the minerals in the area.  Our highlight was spotting our first wolf, it was dark enough that pictures did not turn out too well.

After the grandeur of the Tetons, Yellowstone was a disappointment.  We are told and can verify that there are several different landscapes within the park; sadly, our first day was in what was considered the lest beautiful of them.

Old Faithful and her many viewers

Buffalo, one of the first of many, the strangest animal we've seen.

Yellowstone Canyon, the picture does not do the colors justice.

Our friendly elk, he came within 10 yards of us and wouldn't look at us.