Cross Country Day 8: Yellowstone and Bears

Ok, I'm going to have to truncate some of these posts, because seriously, I have a crap-load of back posts I need to get up and on this blog!

Yellowstone! We saw a mamma grizzly and her two babies! Adorable, but dangerously adorable!

We saw lots of steaming volcanic geysers and hot springs and buffalo! Baby buffalo!

And, we crossed the continental divide! West coast, here we come!

Cross Country Day 7: We survive Exit 88, only to hit... SNOW?

So, we push off from Buffalo to head over towards Bighorn National Forest.  It's raining, and we're pushing up into and through a mountain pass, and..

it starts snowing. 

In the middle of June.

WONDERFUL.

We drive through about an hour of snow, which at it's peak, was about 4 inches of accumulation (we saw a snow plow go past us in the other direction), and it finally starts clearing back up into rain.

After stopping for lunch and discovering 10 pounds of packed ice and snow stuck up in the undercarriage of the van (took us an hour to figure -that- one out, why our accelerator was sticking in idle), we finally (FINALLY!) reach Cody for the night, and check into a KOA with a hot tub.

We needed to melt off the Exit 88 incident, and the snow filled- mountain pass adventure off our bodies!!

Cross Country Day Four: Wisconsin Chedder and Spam Museum

Our fourth day cross-country started out with rain, and we drove north up into Wisconsin and then headed west into Minnesota...

In Wisconsin, we saw that yes, they love their cheese! We saw a store advertising "Cheese, Fireworks and Gifts." I think that says it all right there. We also drove past Wisconsin Dells, which looked really neat- they have the largest concentration of waterparks anywhere in the world, plus some really beautiful natural scenery along a river.

After crossing the Mississippi, we made it into the long stretch of southern Minnesota. We went by where they make Spam and have the Spam museum, but alas it was too late in the evening to actually explore the inside! At least we got a photo with a giant Spam can. Ha!

Cross Country Day Three: Chicago and beyond

Early in the morning, Damon and I hiked down to the lakeshore to check out the scenery before heading out to Chicago. I got a little pocketful of sand to go with my sand/rock collection I have...

We then dropped the car off at a mechanic to have a check-up, and took the train into Chicago, where we had lunch at the Billy Goat Tavern, walked around downtown some, went by the Bean and zipped by the Art Museum. Alas, again a case of not enough time; would love to return and give it a few days to explore!! (PS- I totally dug seeing the Bean in person- I had seen so many photos of it before!)

That evening, we picked up the car and made it an hour or so outside of Chicago to set up camp. We totally impulsed purchased some chocolate, graham crackers, and marshmellows, and had ourselves the incredibly healthy dinner of hot dogs and S'Mores  ; D