It wasn't my intent to go the speed limit. A flat tire towards the start of the second lap and a magically unclipping left cleat made the day interesting, though. The senior ranks of our AFC team were hobbled by a number of mechanicals, but Jimmy Klose took 1st in the 18U and 16U races. It was beautiful in Hagerstown and several hundred racers made the most of it.
Watching Alec in the 16U race was my favorite part of the day. AFC represented well in the junior race, and it's nice to see racers and fans support the young riders. Cyclocross courses are the perfect place for new/young riders to have some fun.
It was warm and sunny today; the boys wanted to do a lemonade stand. We had fun in the kitchen (added a bit of fresh lime to the mix) and wound up with a tasty gallon. In the past, I've made the kids consider material costs and a proper pricing model. Cyclists always drink free at our stands, though, and we typically have lots of them passing our house on the weekend.
(The kids enjoyed Aunt Elizabeth's Lite Bright...)
We love visiting family in Minnesota. Every one we know from this neck of the woods seems especially friendly, and our kids a ton of fun with there midwestern cousins. We left Yellowstone a day early (at the kids' urging) to make sure we had time to see every one, but we would have preferred even more time.
Olympic fever seems to be everywhere, and it's been fun watching bits and pieces of the competition. The majority of our trip has been TV/Internet-free. We're thinking about hitting a sports pub on the way home so we dont' miss the Friday night action. :)
We've got 1100 miles between us and home. At this point in a vacation, I'm usually lamenting the trip home. In this case, however, I think we're ready to return. My coworkers assume me things are in good shape at the office (although at least one of them is an avid poker player...) The kids have a week before school starts, and Madi's favorite horses probably have a nicker or two waiting for her.
We're thinking about hitting Maine and the North East next year if any wants to join in. :)
To mix things up a little bit, I found a wonderful little B&B in new Ulm, MN. The Bohemian owner educated us on a bit of the region's ethnic and art history. We also enjoyed 3 big rooms and two whirlpool tub-appointed bathrooms. A great night's sleep and wonderful breakfast topped it all off.
Casey was happy to play with the owner's 1 year-old (I think she misses her baby cousin!) The kids were also eager to watch Olympic swimming and gymnastics, so they shared a pizza at the B&B while Madi and I hit the local steak/brew pub. (The kids had a cell phone with them, and we were only a couple blocks away...) My $14 'George's Steak' handily beat out Madi's $19 New York Strip. Chivalrously, I shared some of mine with her. If you're ever in New Ulm, stop by George's and enjoy some Shell's Firebrick Ale.
photos, navigation, reservations, and blogging during the trip. A PowerBook G4 talking PPP over Bluetooth via Blackberry provides Internet access in all but the most remote areas (and canyons). We download pictures from a Pansonic Lumix FX35 camera to the Mac via an SDHC reader. Since I'm not willing to risk losing a month's worth of photos, we run backups with rsync to Madi's iPod ever couple days. A simple, one-line script ensures than any new or modified files from my home directory are copied to a data partition on the iPod. iPhoto and QuicktimePro are used to crop and compress photos and videos before we upload them to Blogger, since I have no desire to empirically determine the upload time for the full-size 10Mpixel image files. For geocache updates, 'pocket queries' are downloaded from geocaching.com and uploaded to the Garmins via USB; this enables the GPS units to know where the geocaches are in each new town. The Sienna's 3 12v ports are in constant use charging the various gadgets. Madi wields all this tech geekery handilly, and it's really come in handy for our seat-of-the-pants trip planning. 
Some times I have to pull over and navigate...
when my navigator is busy. :)
Devils Tower was sweet. We watched two climbers work their way up a chimney on the West (the climber had both feet braced against opposite sides of a 5' wide gap). Would have needed a 300+mm lens to capture that shot, so we just enjoyed the show via binoculars. See if you can find the climber (and his partner) in the picture. :)
Hi! This is Alec. I'm writing today.
This is what today looks like in the car. BUT I'm not playing my DS. Because of that, I witnessed my dad killing his fourth animal victim. A bird. He has killed 3 birds and 1 squirrel. Daddy says wildlife 0-daddy 4. In Yellowstone today we got stuck in a buffalo jam. It's just like a traffic jam but it's caused by buffaloes and tourists.
Madi here-now the first picture is correct as Alec has given up typing and is playing his DS. At least typed something on the blog. :-)
So, yesterday we drove towards Beartooth Pass. It was out the NE entrance to Yellowstone and up 212 towards Red Lodge. We slept in our clothes for the next day and woke up at 5:15 am to have coffee and got on the road by 5:45. We got some neat pictures, many more in our minds as we simply don't have the equipment/aren't good enough with the camera to capture what we see. We got to see some stunning elk with gigantic racks and many many buffalo. We got a video of a buffalo rolling. If you haven't heard buffalo, they make some weird noises. Grunting/growling/gurgling. I walked out toward some and scared the carp out of my kin as one of the bulls decided to stand his ground. I knew to keep my distance. He was just checking me out. He's not used to blondes I guess. ;-) Ben also saw the elusive and much desired bear. We think it was a young grizzly but aren't 100% on that. He was very excited and far from exasperated. The animals left on my bucket list are mountain goats and moose, and not the chocolate kind.
The local grocery store sells this stuff, so we'll have to give it a go this evening. For now, however, it's 60 miles of driving (each way) for an urgent grocery run... :( I'm just not prepared to deal with 'wet' cushions in the camper... The good news is that we'll get to see West Yellowstone, which wasn't originally in our plan. We can also say we've been to Montana now!
Wow, have we been remiss in our blogging. Never fear, Madi here, I'll catch you up. Sitting in traffic yet again. How we can be in wild Wyoming, the least populated state in the country and sit in traffic every single day, and more than once a day, is beyond me. But I'm on vacation so where do I have to be?
Then we pedaled to the metal to the dino park to look for real bones. It was hotter than Hades up there. We touched all the bones we could before taking the bus up to the top of the trail to search for real fossils and bones. We hopped out of the air conditioned bus into the arid 115 degree desert to begin our search. Our skin immediately turned bright red and we all drank all of our water by the end of our 3/4 mile hike. We did see some prehistoric clam fossils, some small dino bones and some ancient petroglyphs mingled with some 2005 petroglyphs probably left by hominids, subspecies idiot. Sigh. We missed the huge dino bones labeled with white arrows probably because we were suffering from heat stroke. I think you need a geology degree to find those. We all agreed that this was the least exciting part of our trip so far, and the furthest drive for the least reward.
Oh well, upward and onward. We went into Vernal, Utah (gotta love that name) to find dinner. Casey was thrilled as we found the 4th book in the Stephanie Meyer's series and bought it. Neat cause Ms. Meyer's is Mormon and we actually bought it in a Mormon book shop. The Cobblerock Brewery unfortunately didn't have their liquor license yet so there was no beer with dinner, but it was still yummy. And there was a geocache right next to it. We tried to find a hotel that night but everyone in Rock Springs, Wyoming was booked so we stayed at the KOA, got up early and left for the Grand Teton National Park.
The Tetons are beautiful. Jackson Hole, or Jackson as it apparently wants to be known as now is very touristy. I hear everyone runs into at least one person they know out there, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We camped in Colter Bay which is about 30 miles north of Jackson and right on Jackson Lake. We walked down to the lake from the campground and the kids and Mike swam in the lake in the shadow of the Tetons. What a gorgeous setting. Simply stunning. The next day we went in to town and did a little of the touristy thing. Spent too much money, signed up for a whitewater rafting trip and had lunch. On the way back to our campsite we went to Shadow Mountain as per our friends in CO and took the minivan 4-wheeling. Oddly enough, there was a geocache up there so we left a "Dick Cheney Skis in Jeans" sticker there for you Sean. Got a cool magnet of the Tetons naming each mountain in exchange.
Note - this is a draft from www.snakeriverphotos.net; unfortunately, they don't sell digital images for download - only physical packages of 5. Since they took only one passable photo of us, I'll have to work out some kind of fair compensation with them once we get home...
We had just gotten back into Jackson and were walking back to the car when someone started honking and waving to someone. I was looking around to see who they were waving at. It was us!!!! Guess who we saw???!!! Adam Driscoll and Tracy are in Jackson for the weekend and drove right by us on one of the main streets. UNBELIEVABLE! Alec says that's the most random thing that's ever happened to him. So we got a pic to show you all. Mike bequeathed Adam his vacation hat now that we are out of the really hot weather (hopefully). It looks smashing on Adam imo. Adam and Tracy (forgive me if I'm not spelling your name right Tracy, please?) were looking for a trail to go for a run on so we sent them off to Shadow Mountain but told them to avoid the buffalo. Hope you guys have a great weekend and a safe trip home.
So, now we are in Yellowstone and almost to Grant Village where we actually have reservations for once. Ha, can you imagine? The kids are still singing Hawk Nelson. " Come on if you're feeling, if you're feeling allright..." I'm just hoping we don't have to eat chicken noodle soup for dinner.
