roadtrip part1

okay, i think i've got hubby's computer figured out-we'll see. anyway, when we arrived home i was shocked at how much the chickens had grown. here's hazel with her babies. she is such a good mother hen-she is teaching them to be chickens and has tons of new and different sounds to communicate with them.

one of them is hiding. the teens really grew-wow! i love the barred rocks feathers!

now i'm gonna try real hard not to bore you with too many photos of my trip as i don't want to be like some old fart with a vacation slide show-yawn yawn bore bore, i know!

meet our trip mascots-abel the shepard, stinky mcfee and i think the sheep's name is prious-gads, i've forgotten already.

the trip got off to a pretty shaky start. we drove up the driveway at 5:00a.m.-right on schedule! but then after driving for about 15 minutes i see smoke all over the road(it was still dark) i'm thinking my god it's a fire. the smoke cleared as i was in it. it was not a fire it was a car accident. i couldn't stop- i had to plow thru all the debris-pieces of metal,glass and stuff that was in the back of the pickup. it was a one car accident-he hit a tree-must have fallen asleep. his truck was totaled he was a bloody mess. i pulled over and neighbors began running out of their homes-it was surreal. 911 was called-and it took forever for anyone to show up- we were trying to keep other folks from hitting the stuff and to slow down. it was a real wake up call for carey as he is learning to drive right now. i was picking things out of my tires and trying to see if the underside of "pearl" was okay. i almost turned around and went home. i was shaken up-if we'd been there 10 or 20 seconds earlier-we probably would have been hit head on. going 55. ugh! we hung around for about 30-45 minutes till all the rescue folks got there and things were under control. my tires were still inflated so i decided to continue on with our journey. not to mention, i stopped every 10 minutes to check my tires and underneath "pearl" to make sure things were in order before crossing nevada.

i drove 14 hours that first day-all the way to Blackfoot idaho-the longest i've ever drivin in one shot- i was exhausted. i actually had blisters on my hands from gripping the steering wheel. i was happy to be in the land of sinclair gas stations though-fond childhood memories as i loved the smell of gasoline and the big green dinosaur-but none of them had the statures anymore. when i was a kid i had a plastic blow up one from a station.

the boys were NOT impressed with blackfoot or the motel 8. here's a picture of our beautiful view from our motel window:

we woke early and split! bye bye blackfoot, hello yellowstone national park. in 2 days we went into 5 states: california, nevada, idaho, montana and wyoming-yeehaa! the boys thought that was cool.

right after we entered yellowstone we saw a good omen:

we headed to grant village campground as that is where we would be camping for 3 nights with my 2 "bonus" sisters and bonus niece(remember i hate the word "step")-they were driving from minnesota. the mascots were happy to be chilling after such a long drive.
after being given the "bear" speech from the ranger we set up camp and explored; waiting for sharon, kim and elle to arrive. i still couldn't believe i was actually in yellowstone. when they arrived kim made us all a smashing dinner-rice noodles with edame, pine nuts, basil, kale, parsley, fresh garlic and olive oil-yum! we hit the hay as everyone was pretty tired from all the driving-except for carey-luckily he has his own tent and lantern so he can stay up to the wee hours reading. next stop-the grand tetons-one of my favorite mountain ranges of all!