Day 21—Saturday, June 9, 2018
Today we slept in—the kids slept until past 8AM and the professor and I read and journaled in the tent so as to not wake the children. We had a leisurely morning at the campsite. The kids climbed up the hill behind the campsite and played on a huge rock. Once again nature was a superior playground! I followed them up the hill to see what I could see and I saw a lovely view of Long’s Peak.
We then set out to find a place to hike—but as Rocky Mountain National Park is a very crowded park it took a while to find a place to hike. First, we tried the Beaver Meadow for about half an hour and then drove up to the Lawn Lake Flood waterfall. It was a short but steep, rocky trail, but the waterfall was lovely. The girls and I put our feet in the water which was quite cold. T found it to be too cold.
I especially liked the aspens quaking beside the stream with their airy cages. We then drove around a bit to find other places to hike but parking was all full. Afterwards we went back to the campsite and had tuna and apples for lunch. The professor took the kids to Fern Meadow where they played in the stream for a while and then looked at a herd of elk including a mother elk and her fawn.
I stayed at the campsite to catch up on my journal and have some quiet alone time. It was quite refreshing. When they returned, we dressed and went to Mass at Our Lady of the Mountains for the anticipatory Mass where we sang all of the classic songs I sang as a child when my father was the music director. For supper I made “pizzadillas” in a frying pan (tortillas sandwiching pizza sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni) and we had ice cream for dessert. Then we had the last campfire of the trip.
Day 22—Sunday, June 10, 2018
We woke early to break camp making it out in less than two hours from wake up to departure, which was a record for us. The tourist town of Estes Park was traffic-free for once as we made our way over US-36 and followed the North St. Vrain Creek through a mountain canyon. We came out quite suddenly onto the endless flat plains of Eastern Colorado. They went on the rest of the day.
The land got greener and greener as we went further east approaching the lush Mid-West spring. All was flat and all was green.
We listened to Return of the King as we went along and made lunch at a rest stop. About 6PM we arrived at our Omaha Embassy Suites where we checked in, hauled out things upstairs, and then went down for cocktails and appetizers. Still hungry, we ordered Dominos Pizza and ate it while taking turns showering off the last dirt of our trip. We went to bed tired but clean.
Day 23—Monday, June 11, 2018
The Embassy Suites has by far the best hotel breakfast a person could ask for. The kids ate from the hot breakfast buffet but the professor and I both had omelets made to order. They were delicious and filling. We then headed back out for one last day on the road. The plains gave way to the soft, rolling cornfields of Iowa, which we asked whether they were Heaven. They were just Iowa.
We came after a couple of hours to Des Moines where we picked up lunch from a deli and brought it to my sister and her new baby. He was a sweet newborn with red hair whom the professor put right to sleep. We had a nice visit and then got back in the car for our last leg of the trip. The fields of Minnesota had rows of little green plants where they had only plowed rows of dirt three weeks before. The warm, green summer had fully arrived while we were away and we were happy to be back home.
Ending odometer: 175453
Total Trip Mileage: 6258.1
At the top we parked to climb a stair to the top of the tundra. It was a very breezy spot and had giant rocks for climbing which the kids took advantage of. We had a spectacular view from the top. T hopped down each step—one-by-one—all the way back to the car. We then savored the mountain top views with their snow-streaked peaks, and I remembered my fondness for Long’s Peak from all those years ago.
Second, we had a great
We then drove 13 miles up Wheeler Peak to the trail to the Bristlecone Pine Grove. The trail was nearly 2 miles up hill with rocky pathways and snow along the sides. We threw snowballs at each other the whole way up. At the top we met the Bristlecone pines—trees thousands of years old. I loved their grotesque beauty as they twisted around for millennia holding on to the rocky mountainside. Living parts coexisted with dead parts and it was hard to fathom that these trees lived before Christ became incarnate and still live now.
I then fill in the details of the trip. This involves considering what we want to see between home and the main destination. There are lots of places out west I’ve always wanted to see, so I examined, on Google Maps, various routes that could be taken to reach the main destination and saw which of these places would be reasonable to visit en route to that main destination.
There was a stark change as soon as we crossed to the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevadas. The wooded magnificent domes were now rocky, shrubby mountains as we took a long road into a desolate valley filled with Lake Mono—a salty lake with volcanic rocks sticking up out of it. We then came to a road that went up and down like a roller coaster for miles and miles as we went through a red-brown mountain land. There lived wild horse which we saw grazing in the distance.
On our road trip Out West, while we made some of the stops efficient, we purposefully determined to not always make efficient stops. We took the trip for the whole experience. On days we only had a few hours to drive, we stopped at overlooks on a whim. We stopped at tourist traps occasionally. We grabbed food to go as a treat. Though on days we had 9 hours to drive we went back to our normal efficient travel schedule–sometimes stopping to blow dandelion seeds.
We took a short trail to the lower Yosemite Falls which were so pretty as white water poured over the gray rock spraying our arms and faces. We sat on large rocks facing the falls and just felt the view. Then we took a trail to the visitor center and bought a new water bottle and some postcards. We ate a snack lunch of popcorn and fried chick peas and carrots before looking at the Ansel Adams gallery and purchasing a few prints to frame.
Unfortunately, half of us suffer from motion sickness making car-reading difficult. Because of this we do a lot of audiobooks. Books are better than movies because they give our imaginations room to illustrate scenes in our minds. It has been fun to share favorite books with our kids and discover new ones. Now, the littlest kids do not always like a long audiobook, so we take breaks with music along the way as well. Our favorite books have included: all of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder read by Cherry Jones, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Tarzan and the John Carter books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and The Lord of the Rings, which we listened to on our three week trip.
Our road led us up into the Sierra Nevadas along windy roads until finally we reached Yosemite. The roads were lined with various pine trees. Though in some places the trees stood empty and blackend providing us with a beautiful mountain view. We parked at the trailhead of Tuolomne Grove, ate lunch at the car, and then hiked down the Old Big Oak Flat Road to an ancient grove of sequoia trees. They stood tall, thick, and noble. They like fog and forest fires. The bark was soft and springy as we hugged and smelled their woody-pine scent. I was sad to leave the grove—but we had more things to do.
A note about hotels and kids. I am not sure what most people do to keep their kids happy and quiet in hotel rooms, but we could not convince our kids to sit around and look at books. There are no toys, no friends or relatives, a fairly small space, and lots of bouncy furniture. This was the only time on the trip that we caved to the entertainment of screens. For some reason none of our hotels had Netflix available on their televisions so the children all squeezed around my 4-inch phone screen and watched a movie. I do not trust normal TV stations to show my children anything worthwhile or considerate of their innocence.
When we departed the woods we took a detour to the Muir Headlands—which was the furthest west we are going on our trip and our last view of the expanse of the ocean. Once we looked at a map we went back towards San Francisco and crossed the iconic Golden Gate bridge. We then went to Baker Beach for a last touch and smell and feel of the ocean and its air. We hiked up a sandy slope back to our car and met Samantha and her children at Mod Pizza where T had his birthday dinner early of a whole mini pepperoni pizza. The rest of us had modifications of the family favorite while sauce pizza with bacon adding lots of toppings and pesto drizzle. Back at the house we made ice cream sundaes and chatted a bit before we all went to bed tired.
Once everyone was ready for bed, the professor would run the dirty laundry to the car to keep any food smells out of our tent. In campsites with bear boxes (metal containers with an anti-bear handle) we would load all food containers, any scented soaps, bug sprays, sunscreens (basically all our toiletries), and dirty laundry into the bear box. This was to prevent bears from trying to break into our car since they recognize food containers, especially the plastic tubs and coolers.
Our next step was the Santa Clara mission on the campus of the university of the same name. There was a lovely, fragrant rose garden where we overheard a student advising a friend, “If you are going to smoke, smoke a pipe.” From this we concluded that all university students are the same. In the church at a side chapel under a grotesque crucifix was buried Padre Magus Cataler O.F.M., a missionary who has a cause for canonization.
On mornings we broke camp we all got up early. After we got dressed, we all rolled the sleeping bags and pads together and put these items and suitcases in the car. The professor swept out the the tent while I took down the clothes line. He would break down the tent on his own while the kids got water, we refilled water bottles, combed the girls’ hairs, put away the tablecloth, and folded up and packed the chairs. When the professor was ready to roll the tent up, I would sweep off the dirt and leaves while He did the rolling. When the tent was rolled we put it in its case and put the tent in the car. The professor did the finished touches of packing the car and I made sure everyone made it to the bathroom and brushed teeth. When we were ready to go, I would hand granola bars and cups of milk for breakfast. We would purchase coffee and gas on our way out of camp.
We then met my friend Bobbie at the Carmel Mission where St. Juniper Serrra is buried. We lit a candle—F lit it—to Our Lady of Perpetual Help for our family. There was a side chapel to Our Lady of Bethlehem that Pope St. John Paul II visited in 1987 with an inscription from the address he gave: