Before heading out, Aven and Aniya showed off their buttes in Butte, MT.

About 40 miles East we found the Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park along the Jefferson River. We found the name interesting even though Lewis and Clark never actually found this cave way up on the hillside, but they did travel through the scorching heat down below.

We started wondering what we were thinking as we took turns carrying Aniya up the steep trail for a mile in the unrelenting hot sun to reach the cave. On the way the cliff-side rock revealed many fossils from an ancient sea floor. It was fun to catch our breath while searching for them!

We welcomed the 55-degree temperature drop as we entered the cave mouth. There were stairs and railings built in the most difficult to navigate areas, as well as many electric lights.

The kids found it easier than we did to move through the sometimes low-clearance and tight openings between the stalagmites and columns.

We wound our way down inside the cavern for about an hour, seeing incredible mineral formations of every kind. We heard and saw bats hanging and flying, and a packrat skeleton along the way. We learned the average growth rate of the formations is a square inch every hundred years!

Is it Indiana or Dustin Jones?

Just after returning from the cavern exploring, our hard-working truck gave us a scare. A loud new noise coming from under the hood can’t be good. Just after completing 2,800 miles, had it had enough? The friendly bearded maintenance guy with a hook for a hand tried to help us figure it out. We eventually made it to the nearest town and the small-town mechanics guessed it was the power steering pump. Yay! We can make it home without servicing! Hope they are right!

Just a few hours behind schedule, we traversed the remainder of Montana, the handle of northern Idaho and made it barely into our home state. Uncle Steve and Aunt Debbie graciously hosted us for the night at their home in Spokane. Nothing against Best Western or Super 8- but after a week, it was a treat to stay in such a comfortable home with family.

Road trip stats:

• Total miles driven: 3,130
• Total days since we last saw our dogs: 10
• Total # of meals we ate out: 2 (Jackson Hole for lunch and Coeur d’Alene, ID for dinner)

We drove under the Montana big sky back down to Yellowstone for more wildlife & geological wonders. Aven’s wearing his snake around his neck in the pic below as we heard two rattlesnakes in the grass nearby!

It’s hard to describe Yellowstone due to its amazing size and diversity! We did our best to see as much as we could today, and included our favorite pics here.

Family shot at the Grand Prismatic Spring -we called it rainbow lake- although it looks like fiery lava behind us!

Buffalo, Bison, Tatonka – call it whatever you want, just don’t get too close.

These Geysers were screaming at us the whole time and Aniya couldn’t stand the sulfur smell!

Yellowstone’s Clepsydra Geyser- the most active one we got to see.

An aerial view of Yellowstone’s Painted Pots- we hiked way up above them.

Saw plenty of Elk! Especially on our way out of the north entrance to Yellowstone.

Here’s a shot of Yellowstone falls in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone – the picture hardly shows the real depth and magnificence! It was HUGE!

Finally got a great shot of a Pronghorn Antelope – we saw many antelope but this gorgeous guy was brave enough to let us get closer.

We also got to meet the world-renowned nature photographer/videographer Tom Murphy in one of the visitor centers. He was doing book-signings so we got to chat, ask questions and share stories for a while- that was neat!

We had a wonderful exhausting day and got to Butte Montana near midnight- stay tuned for a cave adventure tomorrow!!

Total miles driven: 2,720

After stopping to buy some bear spray – safety first – we started our drive north into Jackson Hole to eat lunch and wait out some rain. We drove into Grand Teton National Park, where gorgeous steep mountain peaks hovered over us as we came upon pristine Jenny Lake. We took a small boat ride across the lake and did a great hike up the mountain. The weather was sunny and 75 and the views were beautiful!

Just after summitting and starting to turn back, an ominous black cloud swirled over the peak (insert thunder boom) and huge raindrops started bouncing off the ground- ouch! That’s not rain! It was a flash HAILSTORM!

Sheets of hail battered down so thickly that at some moments we couldn’t see anything but white, and the noise was deafening! Katie and Aniya were lucky enough to be close to a tree for some shelter, but Dustin and Aven weren’t so lucky. Dustin the brave daddy shielded Aven with his body even though he was the only one without a hood! His head and ears took a beating for nearly ten minutes before it slowed. The storm delayed us so that we were in danger of missing the last boat back across the lake! Now we were in danger of being stranded in bear and cougar country after dark- no time to waste! We jumped icy hail piles and slid down mini mudslides as fast as we could down the  mountain. We made the boat, the sky was again clear, and the sun shone off Dustin’s raw, red ears. What an ADVENTURE!!!

The beautiful drive through the park didn’t disappoint regarding wildlife viewing. We watched a black moose and it’s little brown baby walking through a distant large meadow. A black bear strolled by us and got within 3 feet of our truck! Later a herd of elk grazed peacefully beside the road.

The sun lowered as we drove into Yellowstone National Park. The silhouetted clouds of rising steam from geysers and fields of hot springs were strangely beautiful against the sunset. We peeked at Old Faithful for a few minutes before we had to move on- maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see it blow tomorrow! We had to make it to our hotel in Big Sky Montana. More adventures await!

Road Trip Stats:

• Total miles driven: 2,388
• Highest altitude on road: 8,600 (in Yellowstone)
• Possible Sasquatch sightings: 1 (see picture below)

As part of the family reunion we toured the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, where the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy served time! The kids enjoyed the cells

Then it was time to say goodbye to the extended family and head east through Wyoming. We came upon wild horses near Rock Springs, WY. The state environmental agencies round up groups of horses on a regular basis to adopt out to ‘control the populations’ on the desert hills. We viewed a large group of these beautiful, playful wild creatures with many babies in a corral.

Yes we are die-hard dark chocolate fans- this bar survived 105 degrees, more than 2000 miles, and Aniya. It was mostly unharmed and tasted delicious!

Road Trip Stats:

• Total miles driven: 2124
• Full days spent at altitudes above 7k feet: 3

Our only travel-free day started with Aven losing another tooth! He was happy to hear that the tooth fairy can still find him in Laramie, Wyoming.

We got to spend some time with a lot of extended family at the Lindberg family reunion- the last time we saw most these people was 8-12 years ago. There is a whole new generation we got to meet!

The local Jubilee days festival in downtown Laramie was fun- rides, games, music, cowboy everything- yee-haw! We even got to see cousin Andy’s band playing at the festival in the evening, and while dancing we managed to maneuver the sea of inebriated townsfolk without injury.

We had no idea that there are drive-through liquor stores in Wyoming! Couldn’t resist trying one out.

Today we drove SE from Price to Arches National Park near Moab, UT – the world’s greatest density of natural rock arches. Our jaws remained dropped the entire time we drove and hiked around the larger-than-life red rock formations. Our favorite was scrambling up to the huge double arch. A double rainbow has nothing on the double arch!

We ventured a little north from here through an old ghost town and saw a young antelope grazing alone. We were told there were some petroglyphs and pictographs (not to be confused with pictoglyphs and petrographs) on the cliff faces just past town. There indeed were both- the oldest from 9,000 years ago! It was so silent and a bit eerie looking at the many areas of ancient art. Some markings were pretty recent though- crazy that some people find it funny to deface these old treasures. Many think the proof of alien existence lies in one of the pictographs. Hmm, maybe.

We were in for our longest stretch of driving yet- 7.5 hours from here to Laramie, WY. Our  mission changed to finding enough gas stations and avoiding hitting any night creatures in the Utah and Colorado wilderness! We barely succeeded on both accounts. We saw two foxes, several rabbits, and many deer: our deer sighting count rose to 18. One of the deer was a freshly killed prey, which a large mountain lion was dragging across the street with his teeth!! He wasn’t afraid of us at all as we gazed at him from just a few yards away. The long drive was worth that experience alone!

Cumulative Stats:

• Bags of ice purchased from gas stations: 9
• Aniya’s total use of emergency potty: 4
• Total # times we’ve eaten out: 0
• Total Miles Driven: 1,776.5

We flew out of Idaho and through a few hours of Nevada before crossing into our 5th state: Utah, making a bee-line for the Bonneville Salt Flats!

It felt a little other-worldly being surrounded by the nearly-blinding acres of white salt crust. There wasn’t much relief from the 95-degree beating sun but we were inspired to frolick and flaunt our superhero powers. Next came stick-horse races and donning of bird and butterfly wings, and other general tom-foolery.

The frolicking fortunately only resulted in one bloody nose (Aven’s first- from the hot dry air?), but no bloody knees or elbows or other body parts amazingly (how I don’t know!). Aniya even tried out gma’s travel potty in the isolated emptiness which she seemed to enjoy.

Sorry (but not really), we couldn’t help ourselves with more perspective opportunities:

After seeing the Great Salt Lake and heading through Salt Lake City, Katie got a surprise visit to her childhood home in Sandy Utah! She was overwhelmed by the flooding happy memories of walking where she learned to ride a bike, made bike jumps in the culdesac, and remembering racing the flash thunderstorm rain across the neighborhood…flashing back nearly 30 years is quite a trip!

Road Trip Stats:

• Total Miles Driven: 1,199
• Total construction sites driven through: 16 (two times we sat for 20-25 minutes to get through).