Craters of the Moon and Into the Grand Tetons

 Day 2

We got up and around in a timely manner, despite the hour time change. I was proud of Desmond, and the good attitude which he had when I showed him one of the things he needed to do was take the sheets off his bed and put them in the laundry basket in the garage, per the Air BnB check out instructions. After energetically agreeing to do so, and inviting his friend to do the same, I heard him saying to her mom in the other room as he went about the task, “Debbie, I have a question. Which part of the bed is actually the sheets?” Travel is such a great way to broaden one’s vocabulary and learn new things! 

We ate an easy breakfast of Costco muffins and bagels. Desmond and Bryan got out the atlas and traced our route from the day before with a highlighter and talked about where we would be going today. When Desmond learned we would “only” be driving five hours today he did a little fist pump. 

All told, even with Bryan and I taking a quick trip to the local Walmart for a few forgotten items we didn’t want to do without, we got out of there before 8AM and were on the road. 

The kids once again rode with Debbie and Jamey. We drove along and took in the scenery, reading unfamiliar signs encouraging us to watch for stock, rock and game. While none of these things ever crossed into our driving path, plenty of little  ground squirrels did. 

A ways down the road we stopped for gas and a bathroom break and were informed that Desmond wasn’t feeling well. We took him into our car and helped him get to feeling better again by taking a break from screens, taking it easy, and shutting his eyes for a bit. It was fun to have him in the car to talk to. I pointed out how the hay bales looked like Minecraft cubes of resources and there were various comments relating the scenery to Zelda video games, as well.

He was alert, noticed things about the passing scenery, and asked some good questions like, “What’s a reservoir?” 

It was fun to hear his point of view on things. As we passed by farms he exclaimed “Sprinkler fields! That’d be fun to play in!”

We were on the Peak to Craters Scenic Byway which took us in about two hours to Craters of the Moon. 

This was our first opportunity of the trip to get stamps for our National Park passports, and a sticker for the cruck. 

Another thing that we have wanted to do on this trip is for Desmond to have the opportunity to become a Junior Ranger at the various locations. He was all over it (when it had been mentioned over the atlas this morning as an option he had said emphatically “We’re dunna!”) so when we got there we visited the visitor center for the kids’ Junior Ranger activity booklets. 

We did activities in there and took little hikes at Inferno Cone, and Devil’s Orchard. 

When we hiked up high to take a look around, we introduced our friends to the  panorama trick where everyone runs around and gets into the photo multiple times. That was, as always, a crowd pleaser. 

Desmond took pictures with the camera, and used the binoculars to scan the lava flow landscape. 

Later, as the kids were getting sworn in, a girl in a ranger hat and vest, with a lot of Junior Ranger Badges was behind us in line. We asked her how many she had. “Twenty-two” she answered modestly. That was pretty cool. Her parents said they had been working at it for five years. 

As it began to get warm, we hopped back in the cars and began a little side quest. While talking about our upcoming trip with Bryan’s family, we had been told that we needed to go to Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers for their amazing burgers.  Finding one along our route for the day, we planned to drive a bit out our way to eat there for lunch. When we got there we had burgers, shoestring fries and frozen custard concretes, which were like Blizzards only softer, smoother texture. Desmond liked how they would call your name like you had won a prize on a game show when your order was ready. We were hungry and ate way too much food. It was yummy, and we happily texted photos to Jenni, Aston, and Dylan to prove we’d made it there. 

When we left, Jamey and I switched vehicles so that the men were in the cruck and the rest of us were in the Williams’ Passport. 

We played the license plate game for a while. Their family has a cool wooden board that you flip over wooden rectangular beads for each state you find. Easton has made herself a goal to memorize the state capitals, so if I called out one they already had, she would quiz herself on the capitol of that state. 

Desmond felt a bit queasy again, and was pretty quiet. As he took a screentime break, and the oncoming traffic was going much too quickly for us to decipher the states of the various states, I decided to provide some old fashioned entertainment. Pulling out a large book my Aunt Lannie had gifted our family before the trip, I began to read aloud. It is a story of a boy going on an enormous scavenger hunt across the National Parks.  The story was a pleasant diversion for the kiddos, I looked up frequently as the scenery began to drastically change as we climbed up and up crossing the Rocky Mountains, with steep cliffs off to the right (“Turn right, Mom!” Easton joked) and sweeping views of Jackson’s Hole valley below. 

The Car Play navigation display showed the time until our destination. Easton watched the time counting down with anticipation. Two minutes left. She was ready to get out of the car. Only, suddenly our route ended and Siri brightly welcomed us to Grand Tetons National Park. The mountains on the left were beautiful. And we drove on. I had stopped reading, and the natives began to be a little restless. We had driven more than two more minutes, after all. 

Without much cell service to speak of, we couldn’t update our screen to display the true destination. Ah well. We kept driving until we arrived arrived at the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center. It was busy, and took us a bit to find parking. It felt good to get out and stretch our legs. Unfortunately, we had arrived just as it closed. Bewildered, we looked at our watches. 5:02. We aren’t sure why it closes at 5PM, but it does. We ran quickly to the restrooms while Bryan grabbed us Junior Ranger packets and a map. I would have loved to explore this visitor center as it was large and had a museum feel to it. Next time. 

Not too much further down the road we pulled off with some other cars for an up close look at a herd of Bison. Desmond reportedly was exclaiming “This is like a once in a lifetime thing!” And after he had taken some photos with the camera, “That was so rare…I’m so glad I saw that.”

All along this drive to the campground, the views were breathtaking. Flat green land right up to the base of jagged, mountains speckled with snow on top. It was hard not to pull off the road repeatedly. We did pull off once and got some nice pictures. 

As we continued, it began raining. The skies were dark and ominous. I consciously decided not to worry about all our stuff potentially getting wet on our very first night of camping. Because, what can you do? We arrived at Lizard Creek Campsite around 6:00. We set up camp, rushing against the rain, and raising a great big Costco canopy to shield us from the rain which never really came. 

Bryan got out the Ooni, our new portable pizza oven. Gosh we love that thing. It is fueled by wood pellets and gets up to about 900 degrees. You can fire a pizza in 90 seconds wherever. I smirked when I read an advertisement in our camp brochure that urged us to visit the local pizzeria if we tired of camp food. They clearly don’t know what our camp food is. My phone battery was dead so I didn’t end up taking any more pictures of camp or pizza night. No worries, we have a couple other pizza nights planned over the course of our ten day adventure. 

With no pics to prove it, you will have to take my word for it that there was a campfire, we set up my new hammock for the first time, and skipped dessert as we were all so full of pizza. 

He has a tent, but Desmond decided to sleep in the backseat of the cruck since we are in bear country. Can’t say I blame him. We got him set up with a little Thermarest sleeping pad that fits perfectly back there, and he rolled out his sleeping bag and got snuggled in. 

I was tucking him in and saying prayers when the gusts of rain started and it began to rain big drops. I told Desmond hurriedly that I needed to batten down the hatches before the storm came. He agreed and urged me to go get stuff put away quickly. The impending storm never really materialized. But it did give me some excitement right before bed.  

Tomorrow we will be exploring the Grand Tetons in earnest and the kids will get to earn their Junior Ranger Badges. Good night!