Life isn't Pinterest Perfect, even in Yellowstone

Guys! I have a story for you!! Bahaha. 

So for those following on our Facebook or Instagram accounts, you probably know that Cameron and I (and Darrow and Ione of course) are all on a long family vacation road trip. Well yesterday was Yellowstone Day, and things definitely didn't go Pinterest Perfect!

Let's start at the very beginning. 

(Bonus points if you then just sang "a very good place to start") heehee

On the way up a small whine in our car got worse. We were planning on getting up early in the morning on Friday and heading to Yellowstone, but decided to take the car in to get it checked so we didn't end up with a dead car in the mountains with no cell signal. Well, by the time they checked the car, let us know it wasn't anything in need of fixing, and we got packed up to go, it was 3pm. We hemmed and hawed and finally decided that we'd go over, get a camping spot and then do the park all day on Saturday. 

So we ask Siri how to get to Lewis Lake Campground, the one the website said is usually the last to fill up. Siri shows up the regular route up through West Yellowstone, but then she also shows a route that is half the miles, and only 10 minutes longer which would spit us out right below the park and Lewis Lake Campground rather than traveling down through the whole park. The shorter route seemed like the good idea because I hate backtracking. 

So we get going on that route and end up on a 30 mile stretch of mountain dirt road, bumping along.

But no biggie, we can do that. And we actually shaved 15 minutes off the estimated arrival time Siri gave us. Shorter and Quicker! Hooray! We pull up to the southern gates of Yellowstone only to see a sign that says "All Campgrounds Full". Great. It's 6pm, and we had nowhere to stay. We then had to decide if we were going to try and find a way overpriced hotel for the night or not. We opted for making a very fast tour of Yellowstone, only stopping at two spots and briefly, and then going back to Cameron's uncle's house to sleep.

So we drove through trees. And more trees. And more trees. Let me tell you, the southern part of the Park is not that exciting. 

And finally we got to Old Faithful. I'll be honest. I wasn't super excited about Old Faithful. I wasn't uninterested, but I didn't feel like I HAD to see it or my life wasn't complete. But we were there and the geyser app showed that we happened to get there just 10 minutes before it was supposed to go off. Can't pass up that awesome of a coincidence. So we pulled in, got the kids out, and ran over (me in my sandals, no backpack carrier for Darrow, just the cell phone for a camera, and only the sling for Ione...because we weren't planning on staying long). 

We sit and wrestle Darrow (who doesn't want to sit and wait...he's 2), and finally Old Faithful begins to "erupt". It was neat, but kinda anti-climactic to tell you the truth. I expected a good roar, or a higher column, or something. It went off, and after the initial "oohhhhh" of the crowd it went silent. And that was it. Cool. 

So before it was done we got up to let Darrow run around and decided to just see where the boardwalk went to try and get a little energy out of Darrow before we went back in the car. We started around to the right side of Old Faithful and ended up on the greater geyser trail. It looked like there was a little loop we could do, so we set out. 

And then things got cool! Not all of the geysers are super predictable, and some take hours or days between eruptions. Somehow we just happened to get there when so many of the eruption times coincided and things were going off all over the place. That was awesome. 

And then we got to the Beehive Geyser that went off 15 feet in front of us and it was exhilarating and so cool!!! 

We were pretty excited after that and decided to go on and take a longer route to see the other geysers that we could see going off in the distance. It was pretty spectacular! 

But as excited as we were, Darrow was getting done. So at a T in the path I told Cameron to just run up the trail to the right to see the Morning Glory pool he was dying to see and that I'd start down the trail to the left back to Old Faithful with the kids and we'd catch up. 

This is where things turned. 

I got going down the trail with both kids and Darrow finally got to the end of his rope. He was D.O.N.E. But I knew Cameron had to just be a few minutes behind me, so I picked him up on my hip and carried him (with Ione in the sling). Well you can imagine how well that went. It didn't. So I tried to carry him piggy-back style. Well, that didn't work either. So Finally I got him up on my shoulders and started down the trail, a mile and a half back to Old Faithful with both kids hanging off me...literally. But I figured any minute Cameron was going to catch up and pull Darrow off my back and we'd be on our way. 

Well he didn't catch up and he didn't catch up, so I kept plodding along. In my sandals. With both kids. I'd had my hair all pinned up, but Darrow spent the time picking the bobby pins out of my head one by one releasing the Kraken hair. By the time we're nearing Old Faithful the teenagers and young adults are making a wide berth around the crazy lady with Kraken hair and two crying kids, and the old ladies smile at me and say, "Oh, I remember those days! How cute!" and I tried my hardest not to growl at them. 

And then I got back to Old Faithful (in time for the next eruption an hour and a half later). And then I realized that I'd just done a mile and a half with two kids on my back. And Cameron hadn't caught up. I started to wonder. But surely he'd just spent time pondering at the pool. 

And then an hour went by, and he didn't show up. 

It was 10 o'clock, dark, and my husband was off somewhere in Yellowstone Park. I was getting pretty afraid. Headlines of a man eaten by a bear went through my head. I borrowed a cell phone from a nearby family to try calling him and it went straight to voicemail. So I finally decided it was probably past time to call the Park Rangers. 

So I went into the Inn, the closest building to Old Faithful, and explained the situation to the concierge. He called the Rangers, gave a brief explanation, and then handed the phone to me. 15 seconds into giving my report, Darrow went dead weight, pulling his hand out of mine and took off running down the hotel hall. "Hold on, I have to catch my 2 year old!" I dropped the phone and went and caught Darrow again (with Ione in one arm). He then of course starts throwing a royal tantrum. So I set him on the floor and pinned him between my legs and pick the phone back up. The next few minutes I'm trying to pay attention to the Park Ranger and the questions he is asking, while also trying to wrestle Darrow with just my legs to keep him from running away. Eventually I end up sitting on the floor, with my legs pinning Darrow down as he screams, with the cord of the lobby phone stretched as far as it will go. 

But finally I get the report made and tell the Ranger that I'll stay put in that hotel lobby until either the Rangers or Cameron comes. So we then go hang out on the couches and work to get Darrow calmed down. This poor kid was way way done. So I sat and sang songs to comfort him, and myself. He was out there. He'd come back. I wasn't going to be a Yellowstone Widow. 

And then finally the Park Ranger pulls up in front of the building, and in comes Cameron through the doors at 10:45. "Hey! I didn't get eaten by a bear!" Best sight of the whole entire day! 

So now let's jump back to Cameron. On the map the paved biking/walking path is marked in black and the driving road in gray. Cameorn had thought from a glance at the map that the road went to the morning glory pool, but once he was there he found it was the bike path, not the road. So he looked at the pool, and then decided it was time to head out. 

He's not sure why now, but in his head then he then thought, "Well shoot, I need to book it down the path to the road and wait there for Marquette." So he ran in the opposite direction as I was going. He got to the end of the path and waited and waited and I didn't show up, so he decided he's just cut the time down and start walking on the road back towards Old Faithful. 

So he starts running down the road in this heavy fire fighting boots (after working as an emergency wildland firefighter one summer with the Forest Service, he fell in love with those boots), hoping I'd drive up. Well, I didn't. And it was dusk and getting darker and darker quickly, and he was running down the road. Suddenly he realized that he was along in Yellowstone, no one knew where he was, and he was running. If there was a bear nearby he was totally going to wake up the bear's predatory response by running, and he'd get eaten. So he kept his eyes on the woods and walked quickly along .

He got back down by Old Faithful, but didn't know where he was in relation to the geyser, or where we parked. So he went into the first building he found. He figured at this point that I'd probably called him in as missing. As much as he felt like a goober for having to report himself as missing, he figured it was time. He went in to the lady at the front desk and explained the situation and she was a little odd. "Oh, that's horrible! I wish I could help. I can't call anyone for you." OKay. So Cameron went back outside and went running around looking for someone who could help him. 

He finally saw a Park Ranger driving up and started waving his arms to flag him down. And the Ranger drove right by him. Luckily though, someone was driving the wrong way down a one way street and the Ranger pulled him over. So Cameron ran and caught up and stood off to the side waiting to talk to the Ranger. 

"Do you need me?" the Ranger asked. "Yes sir, I do." So the Park Ranger told hi to go sit on the steps and he'd be with him in a minute. Cameron turned and walked a few steps and the Ranger turned around and called after him. "Wait. Are you looking for your wife and kids?" 

"Yeah. That's me." The Ranger chuckled and had him wait. After he was done with his business he got Cameron in the car and they headed off to the lodge. They went in the lobby all excited to reunite a family and I wasn't there. They asked the lady at the lodge and she had no idea what was going on and there wasn't anyone there looking for a missing person. That confused them until they remember there was the new Old Faithful Inn, so they drove over there. 

They hopped out, Cameron came in the door and Darrow shot over to him, "Daddy!" 

"Hey...I didn't get eaten by a bear!"

And with all the cool geysers going off that we saw, him coming through that door was the best sight I'd seen all day. 

We got to pack up in the car, passed out the cinnamon rolls we'd bought for breakfast the next morning, and drove (in the dark) through the park (dodging Elk), back to Cameron's uncle's house to sleep. 

So there you have it! There's our Yellowstone experience. It was crazy then, and kinda scary, but now we're laughing! 

National Park Free Days: Tuzigoot and Montezuma

Did you know that the admission fees to all National Parks are waived this week?! Get out there!

In my "Living a Life You Love" series I talked about why we feel so strongly about exploring where we live. It's such a special part of our relationship as a couple and a family! So this past Monday Cameron took his last day of leave for the school year and we went exploring some new sites in Arizona. And we had a ball! Nothing fancy, but it was fabulous! 

We started our trip by heading down through Oak Creek Canyon and Sedona. We didn't get out to play in the water, but we still loved the green and the gorgeous canyon.

Our first main stop was Tuzigoot National Monument. After spending 2 summers working for the National Park Service at Fort Bowie National Historic Site, we have a special spot in our hearts for the National Parks. We just bought our 2nd America the Beautiful Pass and plan on using it fiercely this summer. It's great! We don't feel like we have to spend hours and hours at the park dragging around cranky kids to get our admission fee worth. We can just go and spend 30 minutes to and hour and be done because we're not trying to get $20-$40 worth of an adventure out of the experience. Pretty much we just have to hit up 4 parks with a fee entrance and we've make our pass pay off. We plan on hitting way over that number this summer!

But I digress.

Tuzigoot!

This was a great park! We LOVED it! Darrow could run the trail easily, which meant that he loved it too. 

 Of course he's picking his nose. Thanks child. 

 It was soo cool to get to go up on top of the ruins! The view was so pretty! They sure picked a great spot to live!

Darrow is into jumping now and spent a good chunk of the day jumping along the trails. Man he was worn out by the end!

From Tuzigoot we made a detour up to see Jerome. It's a cute town up on the hill!  

From Jerome we went over to Montezuma's Castle. I remember seeing the sign for this as a child and the images I came up with in my head were spectacular! The ruins didn't end up being as cool as my little kid mind made up, but it was still neat to go see them and, again, a perfect place for Darrow.

It's been too long since we were somewhere with trees! Darrow couldn't get enough of watching the shadows go across his arm. I'd almost forgotten that he did that!

Our last stop for the day was Montezuma's Well. We almost skipped this, and we would have regretted it. I think it was our favorite stop of the day! It's amazing to see this bowl in the desert. The water pours into the bowl from the bottom, and then there is a small natural tunnel off on one side that the water spills out of, traveling through the hill and out the side, keeping the water fresh instead of getting stagnant! It's really something!

Here's where the water comes out of the hill on the other side. It's really amazing! 

We thoroughly enjoyed our family day together exploring the state! Winslow is perfectly situated with all the National Parks around. We have so many day trips to choose from! This gave us a taste of summer, and now we can't wait for school to get over so that we can get to all the upcoming weddings and hit as many National Parks possible!

5 Favorites and 5 Thoughts from a Weekend on the Road

This past weekend I made what will probably be my last trip down to southern New Mexico and Arizona before the baby comes (we'll see...that chocolate festival in Silver City really is tempting...and I'm not even a chocoholic!). I love being out and about. I don't have aspirations to travel the world, but I do love going and seeing friends and family and exploring our small corner of the world.

This weekend held photo shoots, shopping, time with my family, 19 hours in the car, card games, and good food. Rather than just give you a run down of "Here's what I did. The End." (because it really wasn't a super exciting weekend as far as reading material goes, even though I thoroughly loved it), I thought today (while I'm actually driving home...hooray for the scheduling feature!) I'd give you 5 favorites from the weekend and 5 things I'm probably thinking about right now while I'm driving.

5 Favorites from the Weekend: 

• Favorite hot beverage:
• White Hot Cocoa! I already wrote about this one, so I won't go further into that right now. But it's becoming a problem. Yum!
• Favorite cold beverage! 
• Route 44 cup of ice water from Sonic. Perfect size and perfect ice! Mmmm!
• But this all causes a problem. I used to have an iron bladder. As in I could make it from southern NM to central Utah without having to ask for the driver to pull over. Now I sneeze and I have to pull over. The baby karate chops my bladder and I have to pull over. I drink a thimbleful of water and I have to pull over. This makes it hard when all I want to consume is Sonic water and white hot cocoas! But looking on the plus side...I've found a very effective way to stay awake while driving!!
• Getting to meet a longtime blog follower! 
• As far as I can find, our first contact with Rachel (not Rachel who writes here occasionally, but Rachel-a fellow Pinstrosipeep) was in early 2013. Perhaps there were comments earlier than that, but that was the first email. We even featured one of her projects back in 2014! Well, this past weekend I got to meet her in person. Not only her, but her whole family! And I loved every bit of it. It made me realize even more how much Pinstrosity has changed my life for the better. I've gained some amazing cyber friends through the blog, and was so ecstatic to make one of those cyber friends into a face to face friend. Rachel, you and your family warmed my heart so much. Thank you for such a fun afternoon photo adventure in the park!
• Favorite game of the weekend: Hand and Foot! 
• This is quite similar to Canasta, but not quite. It has become the national sport of the Richins household. It's not a true visit to my parents without a game or two. Normally my Mom beats the socks off of all of us, but this time for once I sneaked in and took a win! It's fun to get to visit while we play, scheme moves, and just be together! 
• You can find instructions on how to play here.
• Favorite Darrow moment: 
• There were quite a few to pick from this weekend, but my favorite hands down came the last nigh when our Muggins domino game came to an end and we started building domino runs and towers for Darrow. To say he LOVED them would be an understatement. He was so excited each time he could hardly contain himself. I don't know who was more entertained, him watching the dominoes fall or us watching him.

5 things I'm probably thinking about while driving: 

• The supplies sitting in my trunk from Hobby Lobby and JoAnne's for the baby's corner decorations. I am SO excited to get started on those!! I can't decide if I want to share in progress photos along the way or just a wrap up post or two with what I did and how I did it once it's all done. Hmmm....
• The photos from the two photography sessions I did. They were so different from each other, but each were with fabulous new friends and faces, and I loved that!
• Sorting through the bag of baby clothes from a friend! She had a girl a few months younger than Darrow and now is having a boy. I had Darrow and am now having a girl. So, since we both have baby clothes in the opposite gender as what we're having we thought we'd swap clothes and help each other out! I can't wait to go through the bag she brought me and then to pull out our baby clothes from storage to send her some!
• Sonic Ice Water...and the fact that there are only 2 spots along the 6 hour drive where I could get one.
• Dreaming up ideal ways I'd like to redo areas in my home. Adding color to the back of the bookshelf. Painting the kitchen cabinets. Curtains. Bedroom wall decor (oh Hobby Lobby gave me some great ideas!!). Organizing the laundry closet. And what to do with The Yard. 

And of course getting back to this guy. Darrow's been asking for Dad since we left! Cameron had a weekend where he could have the house be his Man Cave, but I think we're all about ready to hit life together again!

Getting the Most Out of Our Short New York Trip

We aren't your normal vacationers or tourists. We do enjoy seeing some of the touristy locations, but for us we really love to see the "real" side that a place has to offer. Having friends out in New York that could take us around and give us "insider info" was perfect for us. 

We definitely wanted to see the city, but wanted to do more than just go down the checklist of "must see" spots. For only having 2 real days in New York (1 day flying out and arriving at sunset, 2 full days, and a fourth day flying back home), I feel like we got our time's worth!

So let me show you a small snapshot of what we did, with "tips" (not sure what else to call them) on how we vacation and get the most life out of our trips! 

We flew into Newark on a Thursday evening and our friend picked us up at the door and then drove us down through Jersey City to Liberty Park. I didn't get pictures of Jersey City because I was too busy loving just sticking my head against the window and looking at everything I could. For this Southwest country girl, even the side roads in Jersey City  were fun to look at!! Tip#1, which is weird coming from a photographer, don't try to document everything. Sometimes you just need to enjoy! 

We got to Liberty Park just after sunset and got to watch the light change on the sky line. Honestly, I think that was my favorite view of the city! It's spectacular!! 

We stayed until dark and then drove to their home in New York.

The next morning we were on our own as our friends had work and their kids were in school. Some of our favorite vacation memories over the years have been the times when we've been on our own and had to wander an area on foot. You get a whole different feel and taste of the area!
So, Tip #2...hoof it for a few hours just exploring!

After wandering a bit we were hungry and decided to pick a restaurant at random and go eat. And here's Tip #3. We go for the "Mom & Pop" looking places, the local dives, the un-advertised. Those are usually the best places and have such a fun atmosphere to them! Those are where you get a true flavor of a place! Chains and the norm are good, but following this tip has helped us make some wonderful memories on our vacations. Eat somewhere and/or something you can't back home!

The Muddy Brook Cafe was perfect. We had no idea when we picked it at random that it was a little Irish Cafe!! It was delicious and we couldn't get enough of the accents of everyone in there (workers and clientele).

Being Southwestern Desert Rats, the fall colors were spectacular. At least to us. We missed the peak week, but still they were pretty awesome to us! Darrow thought the piles of leaves were just fabulous!

And, oh my gosh...the water! So much water! Everywhere! We went out to Piermont to the old Ferry landing in the middle of the river. This was the view back to the close side of the shore!! We have lakes out here that aren't that wide! And that's a RIVER! It's just amazing.

Just driving around and seeing the country side was so fun. Beautiful homes, fun neighborhoods, great old buildings. It was fabulous!

Probably one of our favorite stops was the Rockland Bakery in Nanuet, NY. We've never seen anything like this! You grab your bag and your gloves and can go get fresh bread of the racks and racks and racks they have lined in there. Or, even grab a hot loaf straight from the conveyor belt! The smell was indescribable. Why don't they make candles that smell like baking bread?!?!

 Hehe, I just noticed the typo on their sign. 

So Tip #4 would be to not just stick to the normal tourist locations. This place isn't a tourist stop, but it should be!

In preparing for this trip, Cameron read and listened to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Of course at that point we had to go see Sleepy Hollow. We did, but pulled into town just as the cemetery was closing, and it all still felt quite touristy and done up. Just beyond though was farm land and old estates, so our friends took us out to see those. It was beautiful! And it gave us so much more of a feel for the right setting for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow than the actual town did with the tours, and over priced entry fees to the mill (which we didn't do because of time).

On the way home we stopped for some authentic New York Pizza. Again, you find a place that isn't packed with tourists. You want to find a place the locals go. We definitely had locals. Locals as in I swear it was an Italian mob boss that came in and sat down and got immediate service and extra care. It was great! The pizza sure hit the spot, but the atmosphere was just as much a part of the fun. So, Tip #5 is similar to tip #3, but just enough different that I'll state it out: Eat where the locals eat!

We hit up the Rockland Bakery on the way home to pick up an Italian Cheesecake for the adults and some cupcakes to celebrate Darrow's 2nd birthday. Not that this really has much interest to you all, but it's a Mommy Milestone and I think he's pretty awesome. He won't remember his 2nd birthday, but we will!

Trying to blow out the candles. 

The next day was New York City day! Think of all the normal places people hit up when they visit NYC...we probably didn't stop and visit them. Mostly that was just out of sheer lack of time. How do you do NYC in half a day?! You get a driving tour! Our friends drove us down the west side of the island, and back up the other side. We got to see a lot that way, and they gave us so much awesome information about the different buildings, areas, and sites. Things we would never have learned just going on our own! That was really fun!

Just a few shots from the car as we drove around:

I LOVED all the little shops we passed. They were simple but seemed so artistic compared to our grocery stores here.

We did get out to see the American Museum of Natural History, and then went to Central Park to take family photos of our friends. This of course was Darrow's favorite place that day.

Well, it was his favorite until Cameron let go of the balloons on accident and they flew away. Oh the face of a kid when they lose balloons for the first time! 

There was just so much there in that little corner of Central Park that we could have looked at for days. The trees, the paths, the colors, the statues, the architecture, all of it! Tip #6 would have to be, take time just to look and soak it in. Too often I think we try to cram so much into vacations that we don't get time to actually take it all in.

That night was Halloween, and once again Cameron, Darrow, and I were on our own. Our friends were given some tickets to a sold out event, so they very understandably went to that and had a good time. So we got Darrow dressed up and went Trick-or-Treating around their neighborhood. We didn't know if Darrow would get the idea at all or not, but it only took the first house giving him a full size pack of M&M's for him to realize how it all worked. "More Trick-or-Treat?!"

His Buddy the Elf costume my cousin helped me make was a huge hit, and he had a ball. Still today if we ask him what we did in New York he says "Trick-or-Treat! MMs!" That was a pretty awesome thing in his mind!

And that was our vacation! We flew home the next day, bummed we had to leave and bummed to come back to real life. But as soon as we started seeing the mountains in the airplane window, and when we stepped out into the beautiful Southwestern air, we were glad to be back home as well. But, our appetites have been wet. We want more of New York!

Darrow and I "argued" all the way over and all the way home whether that is a wing or a cloud. He has declared it is a cloud and there was no convincing him otherwise. Only 2, and we already know we have our work cut out for us with this one!