Coast to Coast (March 26-April 18)

Time to hit the road! This time around we decided to take the northern route all the way from the Pacific coast to our final destination on the Atlantic coast. That is a lot of driving time! For their actual time spent in the car, I prepared a binder for each girl containing a set of Easter coloring pages, an itinerary and map of our route, a coloring page for each state we'd be traveling through (featuring a state map, state bird, and other local icons), a road sign scavenger hunt, a license plate check list, and a set of mazes, dot-to-dots, sudoku and kenken puzzles. They also had the usual collection of small toys and travel games, books to read (including a fully-loaded nook for Bug), and they acquired a couple sets of paper dolls along the way. By far one of their favorite activities was creating things out a massive bag colorful pipe cleaners. Proud parenting brag: They didn't watch a single in-car movie for the entire drive! Instead we listened to Adventures in Odyssey and Chronicles of Narnia audio dramas (the first four books). They loved them! (which is especially good because my lighter went on the fritz a few days into our trip, and I couldn't have powered the DVD player anyway).

Of course, we had to have adventures! We turned this into a three-week road trip in order to visit friends and family and see the sights along the way. Here's the itinerary:

Reno, NV: We met up with a college friend of Daddy and mine and his family at a local park, so all the kids could play, then went out to dinner with them.

Nampa, ID: The girls were thrilled to get in a quick visit with some of their friends on this stop! Our former pastor and his family recently moved there, and we got to catch up with them before they headed back to church in the evening.

Craters of the Moon: This was an unplanned stop along the highway. We started noticing increasing numbers of distinct, starkly black rocks. Monkey and Bug called it: These looked like volcanic rock formations! Sure enough we soon noticed signs for Craters of the Moon National Park and stopped to tour the visitors center and take a walk around.

Yellowstone National Park, WY: This was another visit with a college buddy, who happens to live and work inside the park. It snowed overnight, which made our morning walk to admire the hot springs quite chilly and a little slippery. It didn't take them long to figure out which spots on the boardwalk were above the hottest springs! We also enjoyed the visitor's center, which had lots of good info about local history, geology, and wildlife as well as taxidermied specimens of the latter. Since the bears were just waking up for the spring we decided not to risk any actual hiking, but we did drive through the park to admire the scenery and look for wildlife. During our driving in and around the park we spotted bison, elk, coyotes, magpies, pronghorns, and bighorn sheep. We also went looking for owls: we spotted their nest and poked through some pellets, but we think the owls themselves were probably hunkered down in the nest to escape the biting wind.

Bison own the road!

Everyone enjoyed the warmth of Mammoth Hot Springs.

 Bozeman, MT: Another meet-up with old friends--this time one of Daddy's friends from high school and her family. It was also another chance for the girls to get some running around and playground time.

A Highway in South Dakota: I don't remember where we were exactly, but we drove into an unexpected snowstorm and discovered my car does NOT handle snow well! Two of the girls and I skidded across the left lane and ended up in the median. Fortunately, there were no other cars around, and Daddy pulled over to wait for us to get back on the road. We said lots of prayers and drove very slowly to the next exit with a hotel. (FYI, Daddy parked the car at the hotel and confirmed that I wasn't a bad driver; my car really, really can't handle snow!) So, what does one do when snowbound in South Dakota? Go swimming, of course! The girls had a blast in the indoor pool, and by morning the roads had cleared up.

Mount Rushmore: The girls were skeptical about this stop, but when we rounded a bend in the road, and saw the four massive heads of Presidents looming above us, Bug exclaimed, "That is the coolest thing I've ever seen!!" Mission accomplished. Of course, we stopped to get a closer look at the monument, watch a video and wander through the museum about its creation, history, and maintenance. We decided to stick around for lunch and sample some buffalo! Between the five of us we tried buffalo burgers, hot dogs, chili, and stew. Yum!

Jewel Cave: That same afternoon we took a guided tour of the third longest cave in the world. The tour covers a mere fraction of its depths but features some very cool rock formations and taught us not only about its geologic formation but also its history as a public attraction and national monument.

Badlands National Park: The girls loved getting to do some rock climbing in this impressive park! We had to cut their rock scrambling short and have a good conversation about stewardship and conservation when we realized how much damage our explorations were doing to the formations. They were disappointed, but they perked up when we headed for a mile and a half hike that began with warning signs about narrow ledges and a long ladder. Once again they proved themselves awesome hikers and conquered another tough trail! This was also the first trail they've been on that involved the necessity of looking for trail markers and the practice of walking as far as you can within sight of the last marker to try to find the next one. As usual we also toured the visitors' center and learned about fossils, ancient local wildlife, erosion, and herbivores vs. carnivores. During our hiking and driving around the park, we also spotted rabbits, pronghorns, and innumerable prairie dogs!

We conquered another tough trail!

Wall Drug: You can't see the Badlands without stopping in at Wall Drug! The girls were highly entertained by the endless billboards leading up to it, and had a great time exploring the little shops and displays and getting in a few fun photo ops.

Minuteman Missile Historic Site: We happened to spot the sign for this site and decided to stop in. It turned out to be an unexpectedly neat site, featuring a tour of the missile command center by a former operations commander. A few days later, at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, we got to see one of the actual minuteman missiles.

Wheaton College, IL: This was another stop to see friends from college (both now professors at Wheaton). Daddy actually gave a talk to one of their classes about his career path (he majored in the subject she teaches), and we also got to view the college's extensive geology and taxidermy exhibits as well as explore the Wade Center, which features things like the original wardrobe that inspired C.S. Lewis to write the Chronicles of Narnia and his and J.R.R.Tolkien's writing desks. We ended our visit with dinner at our friends' house and more time for the girls to play outside with their son.

Sadly, you can't actually climb into the inspirational wardrobe.

Uncle P & Aunt S's house! The girls had a blast getting to play with their little cousin R, and just hanging around the house with family. We also took the opportunity to take a short, brisk hike through the woods and along the shore of Lake Michigan. Then we experienced the local delight of shopping in Grand Haven and eating at Calvers.

Cousins!

Ann Arbor, MI: This one wasn't an overnight--just an extended pit stop to eat lunch with some friends we knew from a previous location who moved there recently. Good times!
National Museum of the U.S. Air Force: This was a huge museum that traced the history of flight from the Wright brothers to modern stealth bombers and space flight by having us walk through hangars full of representative aircraft. We had fun comparing the different planes and seeing how and why the technology developed.

Wright Brothers Museums: This stop was actually two different locations: one near the flight field where the brothers did a lot of their work and featuring a flight simulator of one of the first  successful planes. All three girls got to try it out with some assistance from the docents. The other museum located at the brothers bike shop in downtown Dayton was much more extensive and went into their personal history and the development of their work in flight.

Grandma & Granddad's House: Our penultimate stop and certainly our most extended--the girls at least got to spend about a week! (Daddy and I left for a couple of days in the middle to close on our new house and buy boring things like a fridge.) Aunt K and her son H were also able to drive in for a visit, so they got to see both their cousins on this trip! The week's activities included: exploring all the old toys and Aunt K's old dance costumes, playing on the playset and around Grandma's little pond, harvesting dandelion greens as an addition to dinner, helping Granddad plant a tree, decorating and eating a belated Easter bunny cake, going for walks along the River Walk, exploring the local science center (including getting to release the new butterflies into the butterfly garden! Grandma's got connections!), and exploring the trails in Grandma and Granddad's woods (they identified lots of plants including wild grape vines and blackberry bushes, found beaver-gnawed sticks and tiny river clams, watched preying mantises hatch, and spotted minnows in the creek). We even got to visit their church on Sunday and see more college friends! Last, but not least: Bug donated 12 inches of hair to Locks of Love! She was so excited and loves her new do!

She was very hesitant about touching butterflies, but look at that sweet little smile!

Aunt K has the best dress up clothes!

My outdoorsy girls LOVED exploring the woods with Granddad.
(And, yes, that is indeed Granddad's machete Monkey's holding.
Proper safety precautions were discussed.)

 Just for the record: For homeschooling purposes, these were not wasted vacation days. I actually counted most of our days as school days. By my count we covered the following subjects: geography, art, reading & literature, math, life skills, Bible/religion, character building, geology, natural history, biology, physics, history, civics/social studies, and music. And chances are good I missed a few!
On to the next adventure!