Epilogue

We drove a total of 8,140 miles in 30 days and visited 16 states and two Canadian provinces:

Maryland

West Virginia

Pennsylvania
Ohio
Indiana
Illinois
Iowa
Nebraska
South Dakota
Wyoming
Montana
Idaho
Washington
North Dakota
Minnesota
Wisconsin
+
British Columbia
Alberta

We camped all but the last two nights in a total of 14 campgrounds, including three US and two Canadian national parks, and three state parks, and visited an additional four national park units.

The most important question is: how did this experience change us? Well, we have a renewed appreciation for the “everyday” luxuries of life, namely air conditioning, electricity, running water, flush toilets, a large house with seperate bedrooms and Internet and TV service. At the same time, we have a fresh understanding of the importance of family relationships and that keeping relationships healthy requires spending time together and shared experiences. Perhaps Frank benefited most from more time with his family. At home he frequently doesn’t get inside jokes, but after spending three weeks together, he now knows why things are funny!

We also came to realize that the creature comforts of modern life require moderation. We all agreed that we will limit our TV viewing and time on computers in favor of more personal interaction and physical activity. We have been home nearly 24 hours and the TV has remained off.

We have a fresh perspective on how huge America is. It'a an ocean wide. There is so much open land in the western US! And it’s not just Wyoming. All of the states are, for the most part, empty. We may run out of natural resources, water and money, but America will NEVER run out of space.

We have a renewed respect for the foresight that American leaders exhibited by establishing the National Parks. We also lament the fact that so few Americans will get to see our national treasures. Even the best video, even 3D, doesn’t do the real thing justice. If you don’t stand on the meadow before the Tetons or at Artists’ Point at Yellowstone Canyon or on the shore of Lake Louise or drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road and the Icefields Parkway, you are being shortchanged.

Frank was impressed with Seattle and Chicago; he thought both were great cities. He also was impressed with the Icefields Parkway, the hike to the Peyto Lake overlook, the passing herd of buffalo at Custer State Park and Mount Rainier’s Ohanapecosh Campground. Elliot liked climbing up to the overlook at Lake Moraine and the Willis Tower in Chicago. Sessy liked Lake Louise and the cool, comfortable temperatures (not the too cool temperatures, but the ones that were just right). Emily liked seeing the natural environments, open spaces, and wild animals, and visiting Mall of America and the Apple Valley pool.

We know better than we did before how special Howard County, Columbia and Clarksville are. Until you drive across this great nation of ours, until you see and talk to the people, until you buy gas and shop for groceries alongside Middle America, it’s hard to remember how good we have it here. It’s one thing to know on an intellectual level that Howard County is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation. It’s another thing to traverse a continent and realize what being at the top of the heap really means.

Would we do it again? Yes. Actually, we began this morning planning a camping road trip to New England, including Acadia National Park, for next summer…

Wanderlust exercised

Day 30
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Des Plaines, IL to Clarksville, MD
726 miles

By consensus, we decided it was time to go home. Much like the scene in the movie Forrest Gump, where after four years of running, Forrest announces to his disciples, “I’m going home,” we decided this morning that it was time to make our way back to Clarksville. Bugging out of a hotel was much less complicated than breaking down a pop-up trailer. We were on the road by 6:15 AM, only 30 minutes after we got up. We drove as far as we could on the gas that we had and then stopped for breakfast and a fill-up in Gary, Indiana.

We really didn’t hit any rain again today, which was amazing. Except for a few storms early in the trip and an overnight deluge in Apple Valley, we were very lucky with rain, especially given how much rain the Midwest received this spring.

In central Ohio, near Sandusky, we exited the turnpike and briefly toyed with visiting a water park and spending the night. After a family discussion, we decided to get back on the highway and continue on. Much of the way was flat or rolling hills until we crossed into Pennsylvania and encountered the Appalachian Mountains. Although there were significant ups and downs over many miles, our concept of what constitutes a mountain had been altered, and, as Elliot noted, “These aren’t mountains.”

We were amazed by the number of UPS and FedEx trucks on I-80/90 today.  Of course we noticed the full-sized doubles and triples since they seem odd to us.  There were huge parking lots in eastern Ohio where extra trailers are dropped before trucks cross into Pennsylvania.

Frank was amused and pleased to hear the rural western Pennsylvania accent at a rest stop near Pittsburgh. After hearing so many varied and unfamiliar accents, it was nice to hear one that we associated with our region of the country. It wasn’t quite home, but we were getting close.

It was after we left the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Breezewood that we saw brown, drought-stricken vegitation for the first time.  Even in Pennsylvania the grass was green and healthy looking.  It seemed odd to us that the Midwest had water standing in the corner of just about every cornfield while Maryland was suffering from a profound lack of rain.  Maybe the farmers in Maryland will have to buy hay from Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and Ohio.

The kids cheered when we saw the exit sign for “Clarksville.” There really is no place like home.

Chi-town in a day

Day 29
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Sightseeing in Chicago

Add Chicago, home to 2.9 million people (city) and 10 million people (metro area), to the list of great American cities. We were very impressed. Of course beautiful weather like that which we had today always makes a better impression on visitors, but aside from that we experienced a vibrant, exciting, vital city that people live in not just commute to. We found Chicagoans to be sophisticated yet folksy. Worldly yet unpretentious.

We rode the “L” Blue Line from O’Hare Airport to the Washington stop, located in “the Loop” a few blocks from Millennium Park. Chicago’s downtown area is known as “The Loop,” which refers to a financial and business district of skyscrapers encircled by elevated (L) train tracks.

Our first stop was Cloud Gate, a shiny, mercury-inspired sculpture made of highly-polished, mirror-like stainless steel that inspires visitors with reflections of people, sky and buildings in Millennium Park. Known to locals as “The Bean,” The underside is concave, allowing underneath access for additional perspectives. Actually, this sculpture serves a wonderful purpose for tourists. It solves the perpetual problem of how to get a photo that includes everyone in a sightseeing party.

Next, we walked up Michigan Avenue’s Miracle Mile, taking in a array of boutiques, shops, department stores and structures sporting world-class architecture. After a quick pizza lunch near the Hancock Tower, we walked along Lakeshore Drive down to the Navy Pier where we took a ride on the 150-foot-tall Ferris wheel. We learned that the world’s first Ferris wheel was established in 1893 on the same sight and was even larger than the one that is there today. From the top of the wheel, we had fantastic views of the lakefront and skyscrapers of the Loop.

We then took a water taxi up the Chicago River to the vicinity of the Willis Tower. In 1900, public works officials successfully completed a massive and highly-innovative engineering project that reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that it emptied into the Mississippi River instead of Lake Michigan. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the river’s banks were developed to encourage mixed use of the riverfront—successfully in our observation. Each year, the Chicago River is dyed green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

After disembarking the boat, we walked a short distance to the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower), rode one the fastest (and smoothest, we might add) elevators in the world up 103 floors in sixty seconds to the “Skydeck” and took in spectacular views of the city. Topping out at 1,450 feet, the tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere. From on high, the city’s scale was more impressive than it was on the ground. Elliot said “This is a huge city, huh?”

The tower featured several Plexiglas boxes that had been installed on the west side of the building to provide a greater degree of thrill to jaded top-of-the-world tourists. The boxes included clear floors that were cantilevered outside the building, providing a view straight down more than 1,000 feet. Frank and Elliot posed for a photo that others advised us would be more dramatic if we sat on the transparent floor.

On the way back to the Blue Line station where we joined hundreds of commuters headed from the Loop district back to O’Hare, we passed the origin of Historic Route 66, which begins in Grant Park on Adams Street and stretches to Los Angles. The people on the train were a polite and patient lot that could teach us East Coasters a thing or two about practicing civility. As far as we could tell, “Midwest Nice” had not suffered by a high population density.

Chicago friends Paul and Sherri and their daughter, Jessica, whom we met in a campground in Colorado Springs four years ago, picked us up at our hotel and took us for a wonderful meal at Nonno Pino's Italian Kitchen, one of Chicago’s more than 7,300 restaurants. It was great to see them—wonderful people. If you don’t get a great meal in Chicago, you have no one to blame but yourself!

All in all, it was a great day of sightseeing and socializing in the manic style that Hazzards are famous for.

Sleeping in the Windy City

Day 28
Monday, July 12, 2010
Apple Valley, MN to Des Plains, IL
407 miles

We spent most of the day passing family dairy farms in Wisconsin’s rolling countryside. Before reaching Wisconsin, we rode on some of the worst highways we’ve endured anywhere. Minnesota seems to have a serious problem with rough expansion joints. We literally bounced every 75 feet or so for 100 miles. There were stretches of US Highway 52 and Interstate 94 that could make a joey kangaroo puke in the pouch! At one point, we pulled over so that we could check for loose fillings and blood in our urine.

We headed south as much as east today to get to Chicago. Minneapolis is really far north. We were surprised to learn that Minneapolis (latitude 44.59) is farther north than Bangor, Maine (latitude 44.47). Baltimore is at latitude 39.10.

When we took rest stops, we enjoyed listening to Midwest accents with their characteristic long vowels and alternative word choices. We found it particularly amusing when small children and minorities spoke with thick Minnesota/Wisconsin accents. Elliot said that even the recordings on the rides at Mall of America had the Minnesota accent.

With few good options for camping in the Chicago area, we decided to stay in a hotel. We picked a Radisson near O’Hare International Airport because it was both in a neighborhood where we felt safe parking the van and trailer, and it offered good access to Chicago’s transit system (known as “the L”). A standard hotel room seemed palatial to us after living in a pop-up for a month.

When we crossed into Illinois on I-90, we paid the first highway toll of this trip. Because we were towing a trailer with an extra axle, we were charged three times what a passenger car paid. Bummer!

After a steak dinner at Longhorn, we settled in our room to watch the first TV since we hit the road. It was good timing as the all-star homerun derby was being televised from Anaheim.

Our (summer only) surrogate home

Day 27
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sightseeing in the Twin Cities

It absolutely poured down rain here last night. Beginning around midnight, the winds blew and the heavens opened up and it rained HARD all night. Elliot checked online and determined that we received two inches of rain. Fortunately, we stayed dry and safe in our little wheeled abode. We suppose this was technically a thunderstorm, but it was anemic by East Coast standards. The wind blew and the rains fell, but there was almost no lightning and thunder. We felt sorry for the Midwesterners. Two inches of rain was the last thing they needed.

Emily woke at 10 AM and we asked her if she heard the rain. “What rain? Did it rain last night?” Good to see our power sleeper hasn’t lost her knack for slumber. We swear she could sleep on a clothesline in a hurricane.

We cooked a hot breakfast and then headed to the Mall of America, which can only be described as retail Mecca, for a day of shopping and thrill rides. The mall was four stories tall. In each corner was a department store. Connecting the department stores were four sections, each lined with stores on each of the four levels. The entire center was an amusement park, four stories high and covered with a glass roof. It was nice that the kids were old enough that we didn’t have to accompany them on the rides. So…Elliot and Emily rode the rides, Sessy shopped and Frank surfed the web and read magazines. The only bummer was that Frank couldn’t find a TV to watch the World Cup final and the Wi-Fi didn’t have enough bandwidth to support live streaming. Nonetheless, everyone was happy! We thought that this would be a cool place to spend a day during a snowstorm!

We left the Mall of America with our credit cards smoking and unparalleled bounty. It was all Frank could do to carry the shopping bags to the Odyssey. They really should have rickshaws here! The added 300 pounds of cargo will probably cost us $50 extra in fuel by the time we get it to Maryland. We might need a second trailer. Frank has a CDL with a doubles endorsement, so it could work.

After the Mall, we returned briefly to our campsite so the kids could change into their swimsuits and then drove a short distance to the Apple Valley Aquatic Center. We discovered this outdoor pool four years ago and Emily (more than Elliot) insisted that we revisit it. We arrived at 6 PM and it was due to close at 7, but they made the most of the hour they had. We used to say that this pool was one of the nicest pools we’ve been to anywhere (including some very nice ones in Iceland). When we arrived today, we discovered that the City of Apple Valley had added two new slides and a lazy river, making it the best pool anywhere in our opinion!

With only 7 minutes to go before 7 PM, a brief spring shower brought 5 minutes’ worth of gentle rain. It was just enough to wet the pavement. Then, almost as if on cue, with only 2 minutes to go, the sun shone brightly, producing a “farewell” rainbow. The Chamber of Commerce could not have scripted it any better!

Frank put Apple Valley's weather on his iGoogle desktop for a year after our last trip here just to see what it might be like weatherwise to live here. There was a 2-week period when it didn't get above zero. At all. For TWO WEEKS the daytime HIGHS were subzero. Fahrenheit. Scratch it off the places where we might live someday. Too bad.

Lewis, Clark and Hazzard

Day 26
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Bismarck, ND to Apple Valley, MN
442 miles

Q: Why did the Hazzard Family cross North Dakota?

A: To get to the other side.

There’s a reason you’ve never been to North Dakota.

The temperature went down with the sun last night, creating the best sleeping weather we’ve had on this trip. We took advantage of it and slept for nine hours—just what this band of weary travelers needed.

Speaking of weary travelers, Lewis and Clark were on our minds again today as we were reminded of their incredible journey across the northern U.S. to the Pacific Ocean beginning in 1803. Our route during this trip crisscrossed theirs several times and renewed our understanding of how hard it must have been to go where they went with almost no support and very little knowledge of the geography. Heck, it has been hard enough to cover the same ground on Interstate highways at 70 MPH! Frank and Emily said that they would have joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition if given the chance. Sessy and Elliot? No way.

After gassing up and buying ice, we headed east on I-94, leaving behind the land of engine block heater cords hanging out of car grills. Within seventy miles of Bismarck, we started seeing dozens, if not hundreds, of lakes along both sides of the interstate, and this continued all the way to Minneapolis. If Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, North Dakota must be the land of 5,000.

We stopped for lunch in Fargo, just west of the Minnesota border, and we must report that Fargo was a bit of a letdown. Because of our fondness for the movie by the same name, we had high expectations for Fargo. What we found was a cluttered, ugly, working-class prairie town with few redeeming qualities except for some trendy condos and restaurants right along the Red River in the center of town. Actually, the part of Fargo that we liked wasn’t technically Fargo—it was in Moorhead, on the Minnesota side of the river. All in all, Fargo, like Winslow, Arizona, is better left a fantasy.

We passed more bales of hay today and even saw places where grass in the median and ditches was being baled.  We also saw many lakes and fields that were obviously swollen and muddy due to the excess of rain the Midwest has received this spring (see the top photo).  We also passed numerous grain silos, most of which were sited along railroad sidings. 

We arrived at Lebanon Hills Campground in Apple Valley, a suburb a few miles south of the Twin Cities. Some readers may recall that we camped here four years ago on our last cross-country trip and were very impressed with it. Of the many places we’ve been thoughout this gigantic nation of ours, Apple Valley felt the most like home to us, so, naturally, we built it into the itinerary for this journey. Apply Valley is an upper-middle-class community in Dakota County which reminds us a lot of Howard County. Actually, the people here remind us of people at home, but Apple Valley looks just like the Wheaton and Kensington sections of Montgomery County, right down to the signs they use to denote regional and community county parks.

We are back in humid air. Actually, we felt the onslaught of wet air just after we crossed into Minnesota. The clear, blue desert skies gave way to overcast skies at about the same point. And as we have noted on past trips, corn started appearing along the road within only a few miles of the “humidity line.” The temperature on arrival was 84 degrees, but it wasn’t really that humid. We know that it will take a day or two to reacclimatize and then we’ll be fine, even with sleeping outside without air conditioning. The thing that we learned on this trip is that you feel warmer in cold weather as well as cooler in hot weather when the air is dry. Frank said that “some day” he was going to live at least part of the year in a dry climate.

Meanwhile, overnight thunderstorms were predicted for the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. “Bring it on,” said Sessy. We have definitely toughened up a bit over the past couple of weeks…

Crossing an ocean of grass

Day 25
Friday, July 9, 2010
Billings, MT to Bismarck, ND
424 miles

It’s amazing how many clothes we needed to stay warm at Glacier National Park as recently as yesterday morning and how few we needed by the time we set up our trailer in Bismarck, North Dakota, this afternoon. It’s partly testimony to how far we’ve driven, but probably more to do with the effect that elevation has on climate.

When we crossed from Montana into North Dakota at lunchtime, we had driven more than 700 miles in Big Sky Country since we crossed into America from Alberta on Tuesday, and that’s counting only our through miles, not those racked up sightseeing in Glacier. This is more impressive when you consider that we didn’t start at Montana’s western edge! Montana is HUGE!

Today’s drive was mostly boring in spite of varied terrain. As we headed east on I-94 from Billings, we went through bands of hilly country interspersed with flat lands. All were basically treeless and much greener than we remember seeing the desert on past trips. Then, just after we crossed into North Dakota and entered the Little Missouri National Grasslands, the terrain changed dramatically. Rugged-looking mounds of eroded stone approximately 2,000 feet in diameter protruded up through the ground as high as 500 feet. Their surfaces had a dry, sandy appearance and they were multi-colored with horizontal bands that ranged from grayish-purple to tan to nearly white. Elliot said that they reminded him of the rock formations in Capitol Reef National Park (Utah) except that they were smaller and less red.

Throughout the day, we saw farmers cutting a bumper crop of hay following more spring rain in the high dessert than anyone can remember. We imagine that hay will either go to waste here or it will be trucked many hundreds of miles before it could command a market.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at the North Dakota welcome center where only one other person stopped during the 30 minutes it took us to eat. We all thought it was one of the nicest welcome centers any of us had seen.

Soon after we got back on the road, we saw an exit sign for a town named “Home on the Range.” It had exactly the look we had pictured in our minds when listening to the song. Although we didn’t see any buffalo roaming or deer and antelope playing, it wouldn’t take too much imagination to picture them in that environment.

We saw signs for Theodore Roosevelt National Park and were briefly tempted to veer off the highway for a look, but when you are facing three 400-mile days in a row, you have to forgo some things…

We arrived at the Bismarck KOA Campground at about 5 PM local time. We lost an hour today because we crossed into the Central Time Zone. We were pleasantly surprised that Bismarck wasn’t humid, but it was very warm (high 80s). After living in the northern Rocky Mountains for the past two weeks, this sudden resumption of summer was a little harsh.

We did five loads of laundry, took showers and ate a steak dinner before reading the last two chapters of Sasquatch.

Headed home

Day 24
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Saint Mary, MT to Billings, MT
402 miles

In our minds, today marks the end of our sightseeing and the beginning of our journey east to Maryland. We do plan more sightseeing in Minneapolis and Chicago, but they seem more like waypoints between Glacier National Park and Clarksville than destinations.

Our planned early launch hit a bit of a SNAFU this morning when we forgot to install the linchpin that fastens the tow bar to the receiver. After hooking up, when Frank pulled forward the bar and ball pulled loose, dropping the tongue of the trailer on the ground with a hideous grinding bang. Fortunately, a twenty minute delay was the worst of the damage. Frank, Elliot and a neighbor man from Florida jacked the tongue up using a piston jack and cribbing high enough to get the dolly back under the tongue. We then reinstalled the bar properly, hooked up the trailer, and started toward Great Falls.

After more than a week in the wilderness without electricity and heat, during which we experienced overnight lows in the thirties and a frustrating lack of grocery stores with wholesome food, we were delighted to find a Wal-Mart Supercenter where we purchased, among other things, fresh meat, a wrist watch for Frank, sundry dry goods, fresh fruits and vegetables, propane, and ice. The best part was that we paid normal prices. We spent the rest of the afternoon traversing the cattle ranches of central Montana by way of Routes 87, 191 and 3. We appreciated the “big sky” country with its cloudless blue canopy and brilliant sunshine. It was very uplifting to shed the cloudiness of the northwest in favor of the desert high plains.

We reached the Billings KOA at about 5:30 and set up in a cottonwood grove on the bank of the Yellowstone River. We learned that this Billings KOA was the world's first, established in 1962, and it was quite nice.  Unfortunately, today was the height of seed dispersal for cottonwoods and we now know firsthand how they got their name. The volume of seed puffs floating through the air and piling up on everything around was astounding. As prolific as they are, we can’t figure out why cottonwoods haven’t taken over the world.

After eating a barbeque dinner in the campground, we decided to drive the short distance to Dehler Park to see a Pioneer “rookie” League game between the hometown Billings Mustangs and the Missoula Osprey. This is the lowest level of professional baseball. The Pioneer League is made up of 8 teams from larger towns in Montana, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming. The bus rides must be brutal!

As it turned out, it was a perfect night for baseball and the game was very exciting. After the sixth inning, the Mustangs were down 3-1, but managed to come back and score one run in the eighth and one run in the ninth to tie the game. After holding the Osprey scoreless in the top of the tenth, Billings came up and scored the winning run on a fielding error by the Missoula first baseman. It was clearly a lower level of play than other minor league games we’ve watched in Frederick and Bowie, but that really didn’t matter. It was a beautiful stadium; we parallel parked on a residential street across the street from the right field fence; we were given three free tickets by a kind man who asked us if we needed them and then refused any money; we paid $3 for the fourth ticket and then sat in the third row even with first base. There were probably 2,000 people there—providing excellent chances of getting a foul ball, although we didn’t catch one.

Dehler Park is new and very nice. We had no idea that rookie leaguers played in such nice places. Outside the main gate (behind home plate), we were pleasantly surprised to find a statue of Dave McNally wearing an Orioles uniform with number 19 on it. We asked an usher and he said that McNally was a native of Billings and one of two local boys who played in the Major Leagues. The other, Jeff Ballard, also happened to pitch for the Baltimore Orioles.

We slept MUCH more soundly in the warmer conditions. It was ironic that once we finally got electricity we didn’t need heat. Such is life.

Tomorrow: North Dakota

Going to the sun

Day 23
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sightseeing in Glacier National Park

Montana was just as cold last night as Canada has been. The only differences were that we were freezing in Fahrenheit and it was more humid so condensation inside the trailer became an issue. Life is tough without electricity (and therefore heat)!

In spite of the overnight chill, we awoke to a beautiful, cloudless blue sky. The sun warmed our skin and souls! We cooked breakfast on the picnic table outside our trailer and then set out for a day of sightseeing.

We drove west toward Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Road. The road was under construction and we encountered several half-hour delays. At the summit, elevation 6,646 feet, there were deep snow drifts in spite of the 51 degree temperature. We spent a few minutes in the visitor center and then continued westward. The section of road between Logan Pass and Lake McDonald was wild and wonderful. Forget Needles Parkway, forget the highway from Ouray to Silverton, forget the highway up to the hot springs in Jasper; this road is the number one engineering feat of any road we’ve ever driven on. The lanes were exactly eight feet wide with sheer stone cliffs on the uphill side that hung out over the road in places and sheer drop-offs on the downhill side save an eighteen-inch-thich, knee-high, stone retaining wall that might keep you from falling over the edge in an accident. And the road’s grade was significant at the same time. Needless to say, the odor of hot brakes going down into the valley was strong. We suppose that this road, built in the 1920s, would never have been undertaken in modern times due to safety and environmental concerns. It is truly something special.

The really special thing about Glacier, however, isn’t its famous road. The mountain peaks are the draw. We contemplated together over lunch why Glacier was different and worthy of national park status. Although Glacier has peaks, ridges and lakes that are no more spectacular than those in Teton, Mt. Rainier, Jasper and Banff, at Glacier you feel as if you are among them more than in those other places. The alpine features appear to be steeper and closer together making them more dramatic and awesome—and the road has a lot to do with that. Sessy also noted that its remoteness and the difficulty associated with getting here have something to do with its appeal. We took 154 photos today, second only to the day on Icefields Parkway, which is an indication of how beautiful Glacier is.

Once down on the valley floor, more than 3,500 feet below the pass, we walked up to Avalanche Lake, a total of 4.6 miles roundtrip, with a thousand feet of elevation change total. On the way, we walked through an old-growth cedar grove that included some specimens that were more than five hundred years old. Almost the entire walk was through very heavy wood—trees growing as close together as we’ve ever seen trees. Along the way we saw purple and green stones that we later learned, from a ranger, to be argillite, similar in composition to copper ore. Sometimes, on rare occasions, the purple and green can both inhabit one rock. Emily spotted one with duel colors and we photographed it.

We drove to a KOA campground and paid an exorbitant price to use their showers. We then cooked a simple but hardy meal and joined camping neighbors from California, England, Minnesota, and Alaska for a community campfire complete with s’mores.

We decided that we had seen enough of Glacier and will move on tomorrow, mostly because after more than a week without electricity we felt it has been long enough. Life off the grid has been okay—fun even—but it’s been difficult, too. We love being able to say that we have a tiny carbon footprint, but this may be a bit too small for the Hazzards.