>As usual, I forgot some essential camping item, in this case it was a sweatshirt for Luke, so we had to stop somewhere and purchase a sweatshirt. We stopped at Walmart. Luke was really excited to be wearing all clothes from only two stores: Target and Walmart. I guess when he has on clothes from Savers, it just isn’t the same? Anywho, I suggested we do a photo shoot.
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| From Yellowstone |
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>One our long ago trip to Yellowstone, all the adults took turns making meals.
I made fajitas, served with guacamole, wine, and a side of ibuprofen. Actually the ibu was just for Luke and his potentially dead tooth, a story that I will post about just as soon as I can look back on it and laugh.
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Grandad made a pizza with with guac, chicken, chedder and salsa. On the grill. We have a friendly pizza making rivalry between the two of us.
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Grandad has to get creative after he insisted that I not continue to buy wine with screw top lids.
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Which inspired all sorts of resourcefulness:
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After our awesome hike, Grandmom made chili dogs.
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Pancakes are usually my specialty, but Dave developed quite the knack this summer:
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>Luke and Grandmom and I went to a Ranger talk about “The Predators of Yellowstone” the night before we took a 3 mile hike (one way) into the wilderness of Yellowstone. Have I mentioned my Bearaphobia? I also have a touch of Wolfophobia. But I tried not to let the extreme phobia get to me. The ranger said that a pack of wolves will circle and circle a group of deer and then all at once attack the same deer. (Side note – the deer are usually old and decrepit. Wolves cull the herd and prevent overpopulation.) Anywho, they attack the same deer all at once, almost as if they have the ability to read each other’s minds. Yes. I know what you are thinking, because I was thinking it too!!! Just like the Twilight Werewolves, right? So when I got to bed that night, I was not just worried about bears and wolves, but werewolves and vampires. Actual thought process:
OMG – Bears. Wolves. Vampires. Werewolves. But the vampires just attack animals, not people. Argh, that’s fiction! I am sure they prefer people. Shh. What was that? Did you hear something?
The next morning, we drove out to a place far away from the crowds and hiked 3 miles to a lake to do some fishing. I got sort of obsessed about the mushrooms we saw on the way in. I’ll never forget that Biology of Fungi class that I took, back in the day.
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Luke and Dave did some fishing on the way there.
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Jack took a little nap.
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We had a great day, and we made it all the way back without getting eaten by a bear. This may have been due to Luke’s bear bell, purchased for the low low price of $3.99. I wanted to buy the v. expensive bear spray, but Dave got the bell instead. I used that to justify an extra $27.00 in purchases from the gift shop. And really, using a bell to alert a bear to our presence and give him/her time to get out of our path is much better than trying to scare a bear away with pepper spray that shoots out 30 yards or whatever. Luke thought it was weird that 100% of the people we saw on the path said to him, “Oh good! I bet we won’t see any bears today!”
I set the timer on my camera for a group shot when we made it back to the trail head, and when it went off, we found out that it made a barking sound. Also, that it takes more than one shot. I like the second one better.
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| From Yellowstone |
>”Hard boiled eggs seem like the perfect food, and every time I go on a diet I try to make myself like them. But I just don’t like them. I try, but yuck. It’s the yolk, I just can’t stand it.”
I said something along those lines once, on a drive from Reno to Lake Tahoe, while my friend Jill was videotaping the scenery. When she played back the video, I was horrified. It was like a terribly boring time capsule from 5 minutes ago.
I had that in mind when I was recording the boys hiding from the “tiger” in their “house” at our campsite in Yellowstone. So I said, “I am about to run the video camera, don’t say anything boring.” Long story short, you won’t miss anything if you keep the volume down for this one. Love you, family! 🙂
>As promised, I am working through the items on my list of things to blog about, starting with what people will probably find least interesting: my Yellowstone Vacation Pedicure. I decided to try something new this summer, bee-you. It turns out that I am a little addicted to the color, because I just had to get it redone this weekend. Funny story, after my pedicure, I was sitting at the little counter with the uv lights drying my little piggies and reading a book. And then I heard this:
“HelllOOOOOO!”
And it was a very impatient hello.
I looked up, slowly, over the top of my glasses. And I slowly tried to figure out if I knew the man who was impatiently saying hello to me. The bearded man, who looked like he had just finished a run, and was maybe going to go home and mow the lawn, or scold his kids. I didn’t know him, so I didn’t say anything. He was sort of leaning over and looking at me with a bit of hostility. I was really enjoying my book, though, and I was not thrilled that he had torn me away.
Then he said, “Do you WORK HERE?”
Still looking over the top of my glasses I said, “No.” And then I continued reading. And that was it. No apology, no embarrassment. He just got his nails done and then stormed out to his subaru and drove off.
Anyway – on to my pedicure photo essay.
Here we are just a few days into our trip, and the polish appears to already be a bit chipped, like our windshield. We were following the RV from Cody to Yellowstone, and we had been in the car for a very short time when Jack started saying, “Down Mommy. Down. Mommy, Down!”
I was pretending I didn’t understand him, because we had been in the car for less than an hour and there was no way he was getting down. It turns out I didn’t have to pretend that hard at all because I actually didn’t understand what he meant. Until he elaborated. “Mommy! FOOT DOWN!”
When we were at Old Faithful, we spent a bunch of time entertaining ourselves at the picnic area while Dave worked. That is the subject of another post, but one of the things I did to pass the time was to take a picture of my foot.
Then on the way out of the park, we stopped at one last geologic feature, and I took a picture of my foot over a bacterial mat.
Possibly coming soon… Pictures of geologic features that do not feature one of my feet.
>
I am going through the pictures and I think I am going to organize them into the following categories for blog posts:
1.) Wildlife
2.) Mushrooms and Wildflowers
3.) Jack getting dirty and dirtier
4.) Food
5.) How my pedicure faired
6.) Other
7.) Luke’s ad campaign for Target/Walmart
8.) Core Mountain Sports
Possibly not in that order.
AND – school starts on Thursday, so I’ll have to post about that too. I have plenty of material, I just need to get back into the blogging routine. I have a feeling I’ll be doing a lot of work for the next year or so, so hopefully I can squeeze a bunch of blog posts in too!
>MetaMegan is camping/vacationing and sort of checking work email and sort of checking personal email. But I’d prefer not to be doing either…
So as I try to limit my computer time, please feel free to check out MetaDave, as he is a blogging fiend this vacation.
>Last year I had a cute picture of all the comments before we drew a name out of the hat. But this year that was impossible as I am 90% unpacked from our trip last week and 10% packed for the trip we are taking this afternoon. Long story short, the camera is missing, and even if I had it, I couldn’t take a picture of the process because my name picker, Luke, is for some unknown reason, not wearing any clothes.
But without further ado…
Family of Weebles! You are the winner! I wasn’t too surprised because I think they had the most comments over all. I will be purchasing a souvenir for you in Yellowstone next week and I’ll mail it when we get back!
Congratulations!
In other news I had planned to have a bunch of new posts appear while we are out of town, but that looks unlikely at this point. However, I have agreed to be on call, and if I find myself working with a geyser in the background, I’ll be sure to share that.
Hopefully I will be more of a consistent blogger soon. Did I mention I’ll be sleeping in the van with my family for the next 8 days? I should come back with some good material.
>Another year, another camping dessert competition, another silver medal. Well, the judging was a lot less formal this year, so this is pretty much self awarded. I suppose I could have fought for a tie for first, but MB’s strawberry shortcake was realllllly good. Dave and I made the Rainer Cherry Crumble from the June Cooking Light, and it was also really good. We borrowed MB’s cherry pitter and Luke pitted cherries, almost faster than Jack was eating them. Then we pawned Jack off on MB, so we could finish pitting cherries and actually end up with enough for the crumble. Actually, instead of angling for first place, I should be sharing my second place with MB, since she helped so much.
The picture makes the Silver Medal Cherry Crumble look sort of disgusting, I blame my phone, since I was still camera-less at the time.
Fortunately, other people brought cameras, so we have these pictures of the boys:
>I’m thinking of starting a new category of blog posts that I will label TMI. Maybe not, depending on how this one is received… But I have exciting news! Jack peed on a tree this weekend while we were camping! He saw Luke do it, and then several times over the course of the weekend he said, “Potty. Tree. Pee.” After it stopped seeming like a fluke, and started seeming like he was peeing after he said that (we could tell from the far away look in his eye) we started to try to rip off his diaper and give him an opportunity to pee on a tree. And he did it once! I think this is major news on the potty training front. It is a very, very exciting development.
MetaMegan 