And we're back! After an isolated 2020 that lasted 84 long years, we're back on the travel train. Not literally a train, though, but a 2000 Ford Econoline Conversion Van!
Friends of ours (Guidebook and his wife, to whom Babs was flower girl in this post), moved to Oregon in the early pandemic days, then had a baby 8 months ago. Having not yet met our nephew, we scheduled a trip to visit them once we were all fully vaxxed up.
With Babs being 7goingon13, she is a delightful road trip companion. We gave her the responsibility of packing her own backpack of books, activities and toys. She packed mostly books, then found out immediately that reading in the van made her motion sick. Luckily we were prepared with audiobooks (Notorious RBG is a bit too dry for a 7-year-old, but anything by Neil Gaiman is great-- preferably also read by him).
I was excited for this trip-- the last time we road tripped to the Gorge in George, WA, the scenery in Western Montana, Idaho and Washington absolutely took my breath away.
We took a bit different route, looping down through Idaho to cut into Oregon and didn't quite get as much of the foresty, waterfally gorgeousness, but it was still nice to see mountains again.
We absolutely cranked the miles and blew past all of my pre-vetted rest areas, so I spent a lot of time using data to look up good places to sleep. One such place was the Silver Creek Campground in Idaho, essentially a dusty parking lot on the brushy banks of Silver Creek, a popular trout fishing destination. It just so happened to be trout fishing opening weekend on the day we stayed and so the lot was filled with fly fishermen. It was hot, dusty and also a bit buggy, we couldn't even see the creek, so we bedded down in the stifling van before the sun had set (driving West with the sun is the pits), and took off early in the morning.
I did a great job packing meals in the van, so we didn't have to stop for food a single time on the way there, which was part of our plan for keeping germ contamination low for baby.
Most of our 10 day stay consisted of playing with baby, as it should, though we did bike to a couple parks, walked around a volcano and drove into the mountains to Sparks Lake for a stunningly picturesque walk.
I brought my cake decorating supplies and made Guidebook a birthday cake, Mrs. Guidebook and I tag-teamed a paella dinner and I reveled in baby snuggles. It was a Very Good Time.
I remembered, suddenly, all the new baby things we went through with Babs. The exhaustion, the slipperiness of time-- days sliding one into another like countless years without any time passing at all, the wheel-spinning seclusion (made so much worse mid-pandemic), the constant worry about if you're doing everything wrong. Also the joy and wonder of a new life growing and changing and all yours.
We took baby in early mornings and sent parents back to bed, put baby down for naps to let parents Go Outside by themselves (I'm now convinced every baby in the world is a better sleeper than Babs was-- that girl hated naps), and cooked meals at home for them. We were so sad to leave and missed that baby (and his parents of course! just not as much) as soon as we left.
On the drive home, we stayed at a rest area, then at Mabel Lake campground in Minnesota, where the mosquitoes were so thick they somehow found their way into the van to torment us into leaving at 4am.
Six days of driving was a bit much on this trip. We only got crabby with each other once or twice, but I don't need to make that drive again. Minnesota, North Dakota and most of Montana is not real thrilling to drive through, especially when you're looking forward to playing with a baby, or getting home to harvest your garden, at the end of the road. It's a long time to take out of a trip, time we won't have as much of now that Babs is in higher school levels and won't be able to take quite as much time off.
This, and many other reasons, are why this was our last road trip in the van. 😢More on that in a later post!
