with two solid kid hiking days in the books, and the grandlidboms in town, it was the perfect day for me to ditch everyone and tackle a longer, harder, and maybe way more awesome, solo hike. i woke up early and went outside to get some water for coffee and discovered we had some friendly […]
derek
rocky mountain national park.day two. emerald lake.
i wasn’t kidding. after our 5.6 or so mile hike to mills lake on our first day, we turned around and hit the trails again on day two. the grandlidboms were set to arrive that night for a couple of days, so i wanted to cram in all the things i could before they were […]
rocky mountain national park.day one. mills lake hike.
when we came off the road in 2019, one of our regrets was that we never made it to rocky mountain national park. it was the one big park out west that we missed, but when we were in denver (in may 2017) there was a giant snow storm and most if it was closed. […]
custer, south dakota miscellany.
we did a LOT while we were in custer. i didn’t even realize how much we kept on the go until i was composing all the posts for the things we did. but i also have a lot of fond memories of the downtime. the kiddos loved the little campground we stayed at. there was […]
the black hills. custer state park.
when we booked our time in custer, south dakota, i knew it was close to wind cave, badlands, and mount rushmore, but i had only vaguely heard of the black hills. despite its gloomy sounding name, it turns out, the black hills are completely amazing. we got a little taste of them on our drive […]
wind cave national park.
about 20 minutes or so from where we were staying in custer sits the 7th longest cave system in the world. wind cave national park has about 156 miles of discovered “trails” to date. the tickets to wind cave are sold daily on a first come first serve basis for that day, and because of […]
badlands day.
our site in custer was pretty close to a lot of things, but badlands was still about a two hour drive away. thankfully, we had THE BEST neighbors, who also had a sweet pup, who offered to check in on ruby and take her for a few walks throughout the day, so we were able […]
mount rushmore, and the chronicles of carving heads in rocks.
after devils tower, we had eight days booked in custer, south dakota, which is sort of located in the middle of a lot of things we wanted to hit. one such thing was mount rushmore. when we were on the road, this was always on isaac’s bucket list. i have no idea why. but when […]
devils tower. one hit wonder.
fun story. the journey to devils tower national monument passes through the tiny, little, stupid, pointless, sad town of moorcroft, just off the highway. i’m normally pretty good about observing speed limits in these sorts of situations because i know about the racket these small towns cops like to run, but i must have missed […]
life after glacier, heading east.
we had a fantabulous time in glacier, but all good things much come to an end, or whatever it is they say. so, on july 5th, we began our long trip from northwest montana towards the black hills of south dakota, with a few stops along the way. first of all, in case you were […]