whelp. here we are. our final destination on the epic (not so) post pandemic summer road trip. after our time in st. louis, we rolled the lidbom rambling road show on over to kentucky, where we had a tour booked at mammoth cave national park. after wind cave and jewel cave, i was anticipating a […]
derek
STL non-arch themed happenings.(us grant, farmers market, city museum).
our last day in st. louis was a saturday, so derek was able to join us as we crammed in as much as we possibly could. (he took a lot of days off for the big things, but usually had to work while we did the smaller monuments and such). we started off with a […]
gateway arch *cough* national park *cough*
the lidboms are adamantly opposed to the gateway arch’s recent upgrade to national park status. we think its a national monument at best. but that didn’t stop us from planning a visit while we were passing through st. louis. the museum and visitor center is pretty impressive. and like a fortress. we had to go […]
rocky mountain national park.days four and five. low key. hike free.
our big planned rocky mountain national park event with the grandlidboms was a drive along some of trail ridge road, aka: the highway to the sky. the road crosses (winds) through the park, maxing out at 12,186′ elevation, with breathtaking views in every direction. we fired up one of the guided tour apps and piled […]
rocky mountain national park.day three. sky pond solo hike.
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 […]
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 […]