Courtney's Blog July 29th, Day 24 of the Epic McFarland Journey!

I must admit this it the part of the trip that I wasn't looking forward to as much. Parks and animals and "earth" are more Adam's thing. Not that I don't enjoy them, just less me. Adam already told you my way to describe this. When I was young, there was a show called "Captain Planet". There were 6 heroes on the show who all worked together to save the planet from ultimate destruction by these greedy, gross, fat men. The six heroes were made up of five planeteers and 'when their powers combine' they summoned Captain Planet (he's our hero! gunna take pollution down to zero!) Anyways, the planeteers all had different parts of the earth they really cared about. There was one for Wind, Fire, Water, Earth and ...Heart!? My point is, if Adam and I were planeteers, he would be Earth and I would be Water. This part of the journey was more for Adam than me. Of course, I just came off of my 4 days on Water (the PCH).

The first thing we do every, single day is to stop at a gas station, fill up and buy ice. We've spent roughly $60 on ice on this trip. (to put this in perspective, we've paid $60 for cold water) Well today, I was feeling lucky and bought some scratch tickets. We scratched them in the car and when I realized my lucky feeling was wrong, I passed them back to Gideon to re-scratch. We start driving. All of a sudden I hear exclamations from the back seat!

"I won the money!I winned 40 numbers! I got all the dollars on dis carwd! That's a wong time! I got 7600 dollars, Woohoo!!!"

I guess I was wrong. We were lucky.

We head out to the Tetons. I was expecting to be in awe of the beauty of the land again, but overall, be "ok" about it all. Boy, I was wrong. As I am driving, all of a sudden to my left, I see the Tetons. They are big, beautiful, cold mountains covered in snow on their peaks. The clouds dance around the tops like a little mountain-side nutcracker performance. They are so gorgeous and mysterious and they are so close to us. I was overwhelmed that they were so tall and grand, and they were so close to us. I pulled over almost immediately and we begin flashing pictures. Again, I have no idea why. I cannot capture the beauty of these mountains, but I'm going to try. When I get back in the car, I ask Abby what she thought. Again, she tells us they are "majestic" (like the Grand Canyon). Adam and I start talking about why we feel like we are going to cry when we look at them. I don't know what emotion they conjure, but I know we both felt it. Abby told us it was the Majesty of them. Well, mystery solved I guess!

Adam tells me he remembers a big lake that rests at the bottom of the mountains and we find the trail that leads us to the lake (remember, I am water). Here, we stop and get more beautiful pictures. Seeing the mountains reflect off the water was relaxing and exhilarating all in one. The colors are blues, greys and light purples with a little bit of green trees. It seems bland, but it's not. It's vibrant. Now at this point, I guess the Majesty wore off. I looked back to see how the kiddos liked the view and see this:

Gideon finds a pack of crackers and asks to eat them. I tell him "no, it's too close to lunch, but you can have them later". He throws a fit, per usual for this trip. The fit ends, the crackers are not eaten. (keep this in mind)

There are lots of hiking trails in the park, but not as much wildlife as Yellowstone, so we decide to keep driving through the Teton park and into Yellowstone. These parks are connected and easy to traverse via car. We get into Yellowstone for lunch and try to stop at a lodge to grab food. They had nothing for the kiddos so we head out. On the way out, Adam spots a deer about 40 feet from our car. At this point, Gideon is throwing a fit because he doesn't want or like something (I can't keep track anymore). So I turn around and tell him to shoosh before he scares the deer. Which in Gideon speak was "If you don't be quiet I am going to murder you in your sleep because I have never liked you even a little bit", because after I said it, he went HYSTERICAL. I grab my camera and slowly move towards the deer while Adam closes the van door and tries to calm the now completely inconsolable Gideon. I use my best ninja skills and slowly creep towards the deer who is munching on some grass. I get as close as I think the deer will let me and snap a few shots. Then I slowly creep a little closer, and shoot a few more shots. Then I get closer, and ....you know what...this deer doesn't give how close I get to it. For goodness sake, I could have walked up and posed her for my picture and she would have just sat there. We quickly learn Yellowstone wildlife is not camera or people shy. I come back to the car and realize...most of my shots are blurry. I guess my ninja skills interrupted my photography skills. But I did get this sweet shot of her itching herself.....how beautious, right?

Yellowstone and the Tetons Parks are so huge, it takes hours and hours to drive through them. We decide which paths we are going to discover in Yellowstone and make our way first to Old Faithful. At this point, we are planning this as much as we have planned anything for this trip (meaning we haven't). We have no idea how often Old Faithful erupts. We have no idea when the next eruption time will be. We have no idea what the parking is like...we just go. God is with us again, because we get to the parking area and find this spot in a completely over-crowded parking lot. We mosey on towards the crowd and realize it is scheduled to go off within 20 minutes!!! We got a great vantage point with only seated people in front of us. Basically, 5th row seats to the concert!!! We wait patiently (most of us, Gideon whined) and are teased every once in awhile by a small spurt of water. I look around. There has to be hundreds of people here waiting to see water shoot in the air. I'll say it again, there are HUNDREDS (see below) of us sitting around waiting to see WATER shoot in the AIR. We put Gideon on our shoulders for the best view and get our cameras ready. All of a sudden the spurting turned into a huge eruption of water. How long did you think this would go on? I figured about 10 seconds. I'd estimate that the water shot up for about 80 seconds!!! I was taking pictures like crazy and watching the kids reactions. I kept shooting and shooting and....wow...this goes on forever!! Eventually, you realize you can only take so many pictures of water. You instead just watch and enjoy. As suddenly as it started, it ended and we all dispersed. We didn't even stay for an encore.

After the falls, we stop at some cascades and waterfalls. At one point, I hear Gideon pipe up "Can I eat my crackers, now?" Just as I am about to say "yes", I turn around and see Gideon pulling the crackers out of the stuffing in the back of his carseat. He hid them. He is hoarding food. Desperation has set in. Maybe he thinks this is the Oregon trail. I hope we don't get dysentery.

The next stop is the Prismatic Spring. It is a hot spring with beautiful colors all caused by things Adam can explain in his blog. The air is hot and steamy (weird at a hot spring) and you get shivers standing in 70 degree weather, with a 60 degree wind and 90 degree steam. The colors are so intense it feels like you're looking at painted ground. We meander around and oooo and ahhhh at the colors. We see a sign on the ground that says "Grand Prismatic Spring":

Gideon: What does the sign say?

Me: It says "Gideon was here"

Gideon: Oh, ok, Gideon was here.

Random Foreign Tourist Next to Me: (speaking to his family) Did you hear that? It says "Gideon was here"

I can't wait till they translate that one at home. Per usual, Gideon doesn't "yike the smell" of the hot spring so he spends a good portion of the walk holding his nose. We leave the spring and decide to head back to the hotel - we are three hours away.

When we are leaving the park, Gideon pipes up from the back seat. "God, Thank you for making this beautiful place"

What a sweet and honest moment. It was followed by "Boy, it's been a yong time since I have watched Egg Videos on this field twip" (the roadtrip is called a fieldtrip). We finally cave in and let him watch Egg Videos. Only to find out later that guess what, the Egg Video addiction is NATION WIDE and was on the Today show! (Thanks to Jackie for cluing me in on this)

Gideon isn't the only one with an obsession, though. I think Abby has gotten 10 new stuffed animals on this trip. Everywhere she goes, that's all she wants. Today, I heard a panda and a lemur get engaged in the backseat. They met that morning at 10am, and were engaged by 4pm. I hope she doesn't follow in these footsteps.

We pass a town called "Butte" on the way back to the hotel. I jokingly tell Abby that it is pronounced BUTT. She tells me that it is correctly pronounced "BEWT". I ask how she knows. She says "well, that is a King 'e' on the end. I say..."wait, what?!" She says "a King 'e'! I look at Adam, he looks at me. We bite. "Abby, what is a King e?" Abby says, "a King e is at the end of words and it tells the vowel to 'SAY YOUR NAME'" I think the 3 weeks of the car has gotten to us, but Adam and I have a good fifteen minutes of laughter after realizing our daughter has been taught about dominatrix E who forces people to scream their own name. Anyways, this King e thing makes the "u" in Butte say "YOU" instead of "uhh". We then tease Abby for a good 20 minutes (who am I kidding, we are still teasing her a week later) telling her we can't wait to get "Bewter" for our rolls the next morning. She shouts at as "King e has to be the last letter!!!"

We stay in a fancy schmancy hotel (lodge) for the evening in Jackson Hole. There are cute bear statues all over the hotel including hanging on the balconies and looking in the hotel rooms. Gideon loves them. We find it to be the nicest hotel we've stayed at yet. The rooms smells great, has a ton of space for us and is comfortable temperature wise. We get everyone tucked in bed and turn out the lights. It is dark and quiet. We hear a voice from Captain Super-Smeller "Uhm, I love you Mommy, but I don't yike the smell in here". "Gideon, I can't change the smell". The last tantrum of the day ended with me assuring Gideon he would get used to the smell. I laid on my pillow...actually...I don't 'yike" the smell either. The pillow is very strongly scented....I assure myself I'll get used to it and go to sleep.

Summary:

Gideon is still on a milk strike, but got to watch egg videos. Abby is replacing friends with stuffed animals and creating soap opera episodes in the backseat. Mommy and Daddy learned about Majesty and King E.

Ended the Day at the Lodge at Jackson Hole, Jackson, WY

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