Vacation

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Paris Woot-Woots and Womp-Womps

Oh hi. Yes, we did go to Paris several weeks ago and I am only just now getting around to posting about it. We had a terrific trip and I am still basking in the glow of what really couldn’t have been a more perfect vacation. 

If you are looking for gorgeous photos of Paris sites, please refer to Elisabeth’s blog; she was in Paris right before we arrived, and in fact overlapped with us for one day, during which I got to meet her and her family in person!!!! (As with every blogger I’ve had the luck to meet in person or via zoom, she is both exactly like she is on her blog and also somehow more delightful and more beautiful offline.)                   

If you’re looking for some hot tips about what was good and what wasn’t good about our visit, you are in the right place. Below, I’ve lined up my landslides and letdowns.

Woot! Woot!s

My husband. Oh my goodness, my husband is a ROCKSTAR. He planned the entire trip, securing our plane, train, and Metro tickets; finding a hotel; researching when and how to obtain entry to the sites we wanted to see; planning day trips and booking travel to and from each city; creating an itinerary that hit all our must-sees without overloading us; securing tickets at the ideal times on the ideal days for each site; figuring out what to do about cell phone service while we were in Europe; and then getting us to each place in the most efficient and pleasant way possible each day. It was so much work and I did none of it. All I had to do during the planning stages was occasionally weigh in on things, suggest potential activities, and offer moral support. All I had to do during the trip itself was show up. It was fabulous. I don’t think I could ever have come up with such a well-planned vacation on my own. Oh also: his French is leaps and bounds ahead of mine, and at one restaurant, the server asked us where we were from. (I find this a difficult question to answer, by the way. I feel like we wear our Americanness like a glaring red-white-and-blue baseball jersey. I always want to respond with the name of our state, but my husband always simply says, “We’re from the United States.” That does seem to do the trick.) When he told this server we were from the States, she shook her head in disbelief and said, “But your French is so good! Your pronunciation is excellent.” Way to go, husband! 

On the train!

Carla. You guys, Carla was a superstar traveler. From the instant we left the house to the moment we returned to the States, she was excited, curious, eager, and game for anything. She loved all the museums we visited. She enthusiastically listened to a (quite long and somewhat boring) audio tour of Chateau de Fontainebleau. She put in 7 to 10 miles of walking, from about 7:00 am to 10:00 pm (on average), for eight consecutive days. She ate (some of the) food. She went into every church and cathedral I wanted to peek inside. We had occasional mother/daughter conflicts, but beyond that, she did not whine or complain at all and in fact seemed delighted by and interested in everything we saw. (With the possible exception of the churches. She was into them when we were inside, but when we expressed interest in yet another church, she voted against going in.) I want to go on all the trips with her. (She has suggested Australia as our next big vacation; my husband and I are less enthusiastic, simply because of the lengthy plane ride.) 

AirFrance. We flew AirFrance to and from Paris, and it was a fabulous airline. My husband found a ridiculously good deal on premium economy seats, and I was all set for American-style premium economy, as in, economy seating with slightly more leg room. But no! AirFrance premium economy is just a step below Business Class! We got to hang out in the AirFrance lounge before our flight. We got priority access to the security line and priority boarding. We got pillows and blankets and cute little dopp kits each way, we got Champagne just after each takeoff. We had nice roomy seats that lay back. It was one of the best flying experiences I’ve ever had. 

Our Louvre Tour Guide. We decided that we wanted a tour guide for the Louvre, because a) it’s so big and overwhelming, and b) we wanted to skip the line. My husband found a tour company online (don’t ask me how; he did a ton of research) who offered a three hour “Louvre highlights” tour with a maximum of six people. Our guide was so sweet and knowledgeable. He showed us a great mix of the heavy hitters (the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo, and others) and less popular but still impressive paintings and sculptures. Then Carla wanted to explore more of the Egyptian wing, which we’d glimpsed at the beginning of the tour, and we found a few other things my husband and I were interested in seeing, and then we were done. We got to skip the long lines to get into the museum, we got to see a nice mix of artwork, and we didn’t get overwhelmed or lost. I would totally do a guided tour again.

Strasbourg. One of our day trips was to Strasbourg, and oh, what a charming city! We had uncharacteristically sunny warm weather, and had a wonderful time seeing the cathedral and exploring the city via a Rick Steves guided walk. We stopped for an outdoor lunch alongside a canal where I had the most delicious spaetzle with mushrooms paired with a crisp and summery local Riesling. 

The Eiffel Tower. My husband and I were happy to take Carla to the Eiffel Tower, because it was her top priority for the trip. But he and I wouldn’t have gone without her. I wasn’t exactly dreading it, but I wasn’t looking forward to it either. (By the way, if you want to skip the big line without paying ridiculously overpriced fees for a “skip the line guide,” you have to get tickets exactly 60 days in advance, at midnight Paris time. I am very grateful to my husband for figuring this out and staying up to get the tickets!) Carla wanted to go all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and I’m not a huge fan of heights, and I already did the Eiffel Tower a million years ago with my high school French class. But oh was it ever worth it! I should have known by now that an experience completely transforms when I see it through Carla’s eyes. She was excited and quite nervous about the height and yet so determined to make it work. We had perfect weather, we had glorious views, and Carla loved it. The Eiffel Tower wowed again when we saw it from the top of the Arc de Triomphe at night. At dusk, the whole tower lights up, but then it also sparkles every hour on the hour for about five minutes. My husband took a video of the instant the sparkle started and he caught Carla’s face when she saw it and it was priceless. One of those moments I think I will remember forever. I hope she remembers it too.

Art!: I have had the immense privilege of visiting the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Pompidou Centre, and many other art museums in Paris and around the world. This trip, we went to the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay and I kind of expected the experience to feel a little “same old, same old.” But it wasn’t. I found the museums so moving. Some of the art we saw was three thousand years old! Can you imagine? That people so separate from us in time and manner and lifestyle felt the same drive to create? That other people saw these creations and deemed them valuable enough to save, over millennia? That still other people erected buildings for the sole purpose of housing these works? That millions of people flock to monuments to art to see these ancient and modern creations to this day? It feels so precious and human, this desire to create, to translate experience and emotion into marble or paint so that someone else might know it too. 

Our Hotel. We picked our hotel purely because it had a separate but connected room for Carla. The rooms were massive for Paris, giving us plenty of privacy. We each had a mini fridge that the staff refilled with complementary waters and sodas and juice each day. The beds were comfy, the rooms were pretty quiet. The showers had very decent water pressure, and very minimal temperature issues. The staff were friendly and helpful and the hotel and surrounding neighborhood felt safe. We were within easy walking distance of several Metro stops. The main floor of the hotel doubled as a breakfast restaurant, and we were able to use the tables and microwave in the restaurant space on the evenings we didn’t make it out to dinner. It wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t right in the middle of all the Paris action, but it was comfortable and spacious and suited our needs perfectly.

Paris Fashion. While I was arrayed in stereotypical American Middle Aged Mom Wear, I got to admire all the extremely fashionable Parisiennes strolling around the city. The in-style, insofar as I can tell, is something along the lines of wide-legged jeans paired with an ankle-skimming black trench coat. The coats have belts, but are rarely worn belted. I did not see a specific single type of footwear – there was everything from heels to boots to sneakers. I do think the sneakers were mainly white; I didn’t see a lot of bright colors. Hairstyles, as in the US, seem to veer toward the long and lightly wavy. Everyone was impossibly chic, which I suppose is de rigueur for Paris. I would have gladly sat at an outdoor café all day long, watching all the beautiful people live their lives. 

Rick Steves. I would be remiss not to give a shoutout to good ol’ Ricky, who provided many restaurant recommendations, pinpointed bathroom opportunities, suggested multiple points of interest, and created interesting, detailed walks for us to follow.

Womp Womps

Bruxelles. None of us had ever been to Belgium before, and Brussels is within my range of acceptability for day trips (two hours), so we decided to go. I had no preconceptions, and I’m kind of glad because I fear it would have been a disappointment. On the pros side, our train trip was easy, we had good weather, and the city is beautiful. On the cons side, I have never been to a busier, more crowded place in all my life. There is an adorable main square in the old town and it was crammed with people. CRAMMED. Everywhere was jammed with tourists. Even though our surroundings were lovely, I felt overstimulated and panicky and overwhelmed. I felt like I couldn’t let go of Carla for an instant, or she would be swept away by a tide of tourists. Even when we left the old town to explore some of the area up-hill, there were still crowds and crowds of people. The touristy sites weren’t particularly noteworthy, either. I mean, the Grand Place was impressive, but the Manneken Pis was tiny and dressed in a firefighter costume, the Royal Quarter was under construction, Jeanneke Pis was tucked into the end of a narrow alley full of drunk college students, the Atomium was too far away for us to visit during our quick visit, and the local food was both stressful and disappointing. I’m glad I’ve been there, but I can’t say I enjoyed it very much at all. The best part was probably the random cat we met, hanging out and accepting pets outside a restaurant. I know it was a highlight for Carla. Not just of Brussels, but of the entire trip.

My Skin. The combination of traveling, eating a bunch of restaurant meals, and spending all day walking and sweating was not kind to my face. I had horrible breakouts pretty much every day. 

eSIM. My husband and I decided that it made the most sense for him to pay the daily rate ($12, I think?) to maintain his regular phone service while we were in Europe. He had to be available in case of urgent work issues, plus he had all the details of the trip on his phone and he is hands down the better photographer. But we also decided that I would get an eSIM while we were away. It’s hard to remember why, now, because it turned out to be so useless. I think partly because we wanted to have a French phone number for Carla to keep on her person in case she got separated from us. In any event, it sucked. I had horrible service almost the entire time. It kept cutting in and out and even when it worked, websites took forever to load, if they ever did. We did use it twice, to make dinner reservations. (I called a French restaurant and made the reservation myself, in French!) But other than that, it was a waste of money. 

WiFi. Our hotel supposedly had WiFi, but it was both patchy and horrible. By this I mean that it was nearly inoperable the entire time I was there – I could not connect to the internet pretty much at all. On the rare occasion when my phone would show a few bars of connectivity, and I would connect to a blog or my email or a news story, it would quickly cut out. Some i-messages worked, but not all; WhatsApp worked occasionally. I could not send photos via text. Between the eSIM and the WiFi, I was usually able to jot out a quick email to my parents about our day, but that was all. I lost my Wordle streak. Oh well. I didn’t really miss my phone, except I would have liked to keep up with everyone’s blogs better. I still feel very behind!

When I weigh the highs against the lows, the highs win by a landslide. It was a wonderful vacation and I feel so grateful that we were able to make it happen, and that everything went so smoothly. (Once again, a major shout out to my husband for ensuring that our experience was so effortless and fun!) 

You may notice that I haven’t talked much about the food. Don’t worry (or, perhaps, do?): I am planning a whole post about the food wins and losses of the trip.

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Staying in Hotels

We stayed in eleven hotels over the course of our Road Trip! and so I feel as though I have some very recent expertise in What Hotels Are Like Lately. (By the way, because my husband is a Credit Card Rewards Black Belt, we stayed in nine of them for FREE.) (Or, as I like to point out, for points, which is not quite the same as free, although my husband vehemently disagrees with me.)

First of all, I want to acknowledge that it is clear the hospitality industry is struggling. The hotels we stayed at ALL seemed to have staffing issues, and I know this is a nationwide problem, and that it is affecting the hotels and the people who do work there much more than it is affecting me. Aside from one receptionist who stalked straight past me and another hotel guest without saying “I’ll be with you in a minute” or even glancing at us, the hotel personnel we encountered were friendly and helpful and doing the absolute BEST they could. 

Don’t get me wrong! I am glad hotels exist. I vastly prefer a hotel to, say, staying on the floor of a friend’s house or finding an AirBnB or sleeping in my car or renting an RV. But for all their benefits, they DO have deficits.

It seems to me that the people who design hotel rooms have never once stayed in a hotel room, or perhaps even A Room of any sort. They are all caught up in The Design – which I acknowledge probably helps draw clients – and not caught up enough in The Usability.

  • I Love Lamp: We had not one but TWO hotel rooms that had a dearth of lamps. In one hotel, we had a two-room suite. There was a bed in each room, with a nightstand near each bed… but only one room/nightstand had a lamp. In the other hotel, there were NO LAMPS AT ALL. Just overhead lighting. Both rooms had overhead lighting, but you had to extinguish the lights from the door, which in both cases was across the room from the bed. While I am aware that furnishing all the rooms in a hotel must be quite pricey, surely a lamp by each bed should have been part of the budget???? 

This photo is a LIE. Straight from the hotel website, it features a DESK LAMP which was not present in our hotel! The lack of bed-adjacent lighting is true-to-life though.
  • Were You Born in a Barn: Hotels are obsessed with barn doors – OBSESSED. Maybe this is the Magnolia Effect in action (although I didn’t see any shiplap), but I am guessing that hotel designers drool all over themselves at this perfect intersection of Trendy and Space-Saving. The majority of our hotels had barn doors for the bathroom. They are lovely, but the thing is that barn doors are gappy. They do not shut as firmly as regular doors do. Which is something I MISS A LOT when I am sharing a very small space with other people and our collective bathroom needs. (P.S. This little marriage saver has accompanied us in Europe and now across the U.S. and I love it.)
One of many barn doors.

  • Party of One: Except for our very last hotel, all of our rooms were meant to hold at least two people. They each had two queen beds, and could have fit up to four people. Four! People! But the rooms are very clearly geared toward ONE PERSON, MAYBE TWO. The nightstands were inevitably between the two beds, so that the person on the outer side of the bed had nowhere to put his/her glasses, phone, watch, books, etc. etc. etc. Several of the lamps – which, when they were provided, were on the shared nightstand – were controlled by a single switch, so that both beds had to agree that it was time for lights out. In our last hotel, the one hotel where we had a king bed (and a sofa bed for Carla shudder), my husband’s side of the bed (he always sleeps on the left) had the nightstand and mine had nothing. Worse: His side of the bed had multiple outlets and mine had… nothing. Other nights, when I wasn’t the lucky one to have a nightstand, I was able to at least plug my phone in next to the bed and set it on the headboard or a window sill or something.

This is the most uncomfortable sofa bed known to man. The “mattress” was a thin layer of cloth stretched so tightly over the springs you could see every single spring. We had to put the couch cushions on top of the “mattress” and then put the sheets over the cushions.
  • Carry In, Carry Out: Hotel rooms have the smallest trash cans I have ever seen. At one hotel, the single trash can was divided into two identical sections – one for trash, one for recycling. The recycling side fit a single plastic water bottle. 

  • No Sleep Til Brooklyn: If you want to control your room’s temperature, you will not sleep. Not one wink. Because the air conditioner/heating unit will roar on at unexpected intervals all night long, clattering and moaning and blasting out air that is at least ten degrees hotter/more frigid than you anticipated until you give up and turn it off and succumb to the ambient air temperature. 

  • Form Over Function: One of our hotels had a beautiful armoire with an interior light that turned on when you opened the doors and a fancy teapot and a mini Nespresso machine. It had neither a refrigerator nor an extra roll of toilet paper. One of our hotels had a gorgeous little coffee station with three pouches of local coffee but it was the hotel with ZERO LAMPS. I would rather have lamps than local coffee. (Side note: the place without the extra toilet paper was also the place with the miniature garbage can. I called down to housekeeping, requesting more toilet paper and a garbage bag. The kind housekeeper showed up with two garbage bags, one mini-sized to fit the trash can, one an enormous lawn-and-leaf sized bag. I took the latter, thanked her, and shut the door… only to realize that I perhaps should have reassured her that nothing horrifying had happened to necessitate my odd combination of requests.)

  • And the SHOWERS. This should technically be part of the previous bullet, but it drives me bonkers enough that it deserves its own. So many showers now have the rainfall shower heads. You know – the ones that stand directly above you and drench you? I cannot STAND those stupid shower heads. You can’t get away from the water! If I want to apply shampoo to my head or face wash to my cheeks, I have to step completely out of the line of fire water and freeze my tuchus completely off to do so. I much prefer the standard shower head. MUCH. Also, hotel shower designers have never taken a shower before. They do not understand that most people need various accessories to help them get clean: soap, shampoo, conditioner. Maybe a razor. Maybe face wash. Maybe body wash. But no. If you shower in a hotel, you are lucky to get one tiny triangular shelf that can barely accommodate a bar of soap and one of the eensy hotel-supplied bottles of shampoo. Unless I am in a hotel that has a bathtub/shower combo, I never know how I’m supposed to shave my legs. My own at-home shower has a little ledge upon which I can rest my foot. But when I’m in a hotel, I have to balance precariously on one foot while I shave the other leg or try to prop it up against the questionably-clean shower wall or bend over and get a mouthful of water while trying to shave. Further proof that hotel designers do not shower: We had one hotel with a BEAUTIFUL shower – fancy stone tiles, rainfall shower head, glass door. Except that there was no door – just a glass panel that went half the length of the shower and then a door-sized open space through which all the cold air of the room could sneak in and shower with you. Perhaps marginally better than the hotels with shower curtains that billow into the shower while you’re washing your hair and play grabby-handsy with your upper thighs, but not by much.  
Rainfall shower head AND a half-panel of glass AND a barn door. The trifecta, achieved!

Other things I have noticed: Almost without exception, housekeeping services are on-demand now – if you stay multiple days and want your trash emptied or your linens changed, you need to call ahead (sometimes up to 24 hours in advance, according to in-elevator signage), whereas this was a daily service in previous years. (I never used to take people up on it – I don’t want housekeepers having to make my bed or tidy things up around my suitcases and toothbrush.) Shampoos and conditioners are TINY now, or that they come in big canisters that are permanently attached inside the showers. Probably an environmentally advantageous move, honestly. Shower caps, much to my enduring dismay, are no longer offered alongside your miniature shampoos and bars of soap.   

On the not-complaining-or-mocking side of things, the people at the hotels were ALL so nice to Carla. So nice. She loved to march up to the desk when we arrived and say, “We’re checking in” as much as she loved handing over the keys at the end of our stays and saying brightly, “We’re checking out.” The hotel staff invariably found her super charming. One receptionist asked me if he could give her a piece of candy and then allowed her to choose anything she wanted from the hotel snack pantry. Another person acted, with an entirely straight face, like Carla was the person who’d booked and paid for the room, and he asked her very seriously whether she’d enjoyed her stay, and then answered her multiple questions about the hotel (it was in an historic building) with such kindness that I was unable to bring myself to tell him that there had been NO LAMPS in the hotel room. I think it would be so easy, working in a hotel, to be bored or harried or both, but everyone (except for that one woman I mentioned above) was so kind. So kind. 

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Road Trip! Round Up

Okay, so now that I am feeling better, I am going to tell you about our Road Trip! It was truly a wonderful experience, except right there at the end. I do wish I could back in time and urge my family to WEAR MASKS even though we would be the only! people! doing so! but I cannot. 

We drove through so much beautiful landscape.

The best thing about the trip, by far, was spending so much time with my husband. He was so relaxed and cheerful and fun – all the things I love about him. All the things that the stress of his work chips away at on a normal basis. 

Madison, WI. Such a charming city. It’s very walkable with lots of cute restaurants and shops.

We had planned to take turns driving – we had six consecutive days of five- to seven-hour drives there, and five consecutive days of pretty-close-to-seven-hour drives on the way back. That’s a lot of driving for one person. And I DID drive. But my husband admitted that he spent the entire two hours I was in the driver’s seat staring at the speedometer, willing it to rise to the level HE is comfortable going. And we had multiple tense conversations where I expressed fear at passing someone and he would say that I should only pass when I was comfortable! and neither of us enjoyed that. So! From then on, he did nearly all of the remainder of the driving. 

Yes, we stopped to take a photo with the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN

We used pretty much every single thing I told you I bought in this post, and a few of the things that I was considering at the time and ended up buying. PLUS we also bought a fidget snake that mbmom11 recommended. Used and LOVED, I should say. The only thing that went unopened was the game of Loaded Questions, which my husband put into his backpack and then wouldn’t allow us to remove. So none of us even knows if we would have liked it. 

Sioux Falls. Also very walkable, and the Falls were lovely.

The one thing that I wished we had but didn’t was a travel laundry bag. We kept stuffing our dirty clothes into random shopping bags or those dry-cleaning bags that hotels clip to the hangers in the closet, and the bags filled up more quickly than I would have thought and the handles kept breaking and it would have been very nice to have a dedicated bag for it. (I am really weird about NOT mixing dirty clothes with clean clothes, so I recognize this wouldn’t be at the top of everyone’s list.) We were able to wash laundry at my parents’ house, for which I am VERY grateful.

The Badlands National Park in South Dakota was spectacular, although we didn’t see any wild animals. We did see a lot of idiot tourists going off the well-maintained paths and climbing onto precarious perches to take photos for the ‘Gram, though.

Carla loved the road trip journal and the travel atlas. I’d say that she loved the atlas a little more than the journal – it seemed to have more easy breezy activities and fewer essay assignments. If I were a better planner, I would have allowed Carla to open the journal a day or so in advance of our trip, and talk it through with her. But oh well. 

The Dignity statue on the Crow Creek Reservation was breathtaking.

Even though we didn’t play Loaded Questions, we did try to find license plates from all 50 states. My husband made the rule early on that semi-trucks do NOT count, which made it really tough. (One of the last states we got was Maine, and SO MANY trucks seemed to be from Maine!) In the end, the only two states we didn’t get were Delaware and Hawaii.

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse were SO worth seeing.
We arrived at about 7:45 am, which meant NO crowds.

We DID get a cooler and we did USE the cooler, but only because we had it, not because we really needed it. In fact, for the first few days we didn’t use it at all and I kept asking my husband WHY we’d bought it. On the way home, though, we stopped at a little bakery and got some cute little cakes and put those in the cooler for two days before we had a chance to eat them, so it did come in handy in the end. 

Deadwood was fun to see. We spent about an hour there, and caught one of the free re-enactments they offer. It was exactly the right amount of time to spend there.

Speaking of food: I didn’t try to stick to the keto diet. Not even a little. (Note: It would have been fairly easy to do so if I had wanted to, I think. Most of the gas stations had Quest products and Whisps and little packages of meat-and-cheese and sometimes even Keto cookies. The reason I didn’t try was that I didn’t WANT to.) (Also, I weighed myself when I got home and I weighed EXACTLY THE SAME as I had when we left, which was highly disheartening.) I found that I often opted for the little veggie snacks when we stopped at gas stations – I ate carrots and ranch as well as a little tray of carrots, celery, and spinach dip with great gusto. But I also ate lots of chips. I unintentionally went on a Ruffles kick and tried several of their new (or new-to-me) flavors: Spicy Dill Pickle, Lime & Jalapeno, Flamin’ Hot BBQ. I don’t know that I LIKED any of them, but nary a chip crumb was left in any of the bags, so… I didn’t NOT like them. I drank a LOT of Diet Mountain Dew. One day, on a whim, I got a bottle of regular, full-sugar Squirt which was MUCH too sugary and only tasted of childhood for the first few sips. Yuck. I ate at my all-time favorite fast food place THREE times (I get a large potato oles with a side of nacho cheese, and I ask for a second little empty nacho-cheese cup to fill with hot sauce, and then I dip the oles into the hot sauce and then the nacho cheese. HEAVEN.) and ate fries from multiple McDonald’ses and Arby’ses. I would be okay if I never see a Subway Spicy Italian sandwich again. My husband found THREE Super Mega Candy Stores on our route, and he and my daughter had so much fun ogling all the candy and choosing what they wanted to buy. I forced Carla to eat some lettuce one night and tried to get tomatoes and fruit into her at least a few times, but mostly she subsisted on chicken nuggets and fries for two straight weeks. Her favorite gas station food stuff (besides morrrrrrrre candddyyyyyyy) was Babybel cheese. Oh! The Trader Joe’s popcorn I got before our trip was… not my favorite. No one really loved it, sadly. And I had bought a second bag in a fit of panic about not having enough if it turned out to be the best thing ever. Oh well. Fun to try.

Devil’s Tower in Wyoming was nothing short of a geological marvel. Stunning and bizarre and totally cool. The little walk around its perimeter was a great way to stretch our legs, too.

We also ate at a LOT of restaurants. More than we have eaten in over the past two-ish years combined, I think. Part of my husband’s in-depth planning for this trip involved researching fun places to eat, and it paid off. We went to a lot of breweries. I really grew accustomed to my nightly pint of local craft beer, to be honest. By the end of our trip, I was DESPERATE for something other than brewery food. I love burgers and fish and chips and salad with grilled salmon and whatever else you get at every brewery across the country, but I started craving enchiladas smothered in hot sauce or chicken vindaloo with a side of chana masala or red curry with shrimp or Brazilian braised pork with avocado crema. FLAVOR that is not Grilled or Fried. We went out for a LOT of breakfasts. I don’t LIKE breakfast, so I got tired of that in about the time it takes to scramble an egg. The last place we went to was not my kind of place – cramped, order at the counter, bus your own table. The silverware was in big canisters in the little cramped space between the tables and kitchen, and several of the forks I pulled out had crusted food baked into them. The mug they served my husband’s coffee in had multiple chips around the rim. My husband thought it was CHARMING and had CHARACTER but I hated it and I hated my artisan avocado toast and I was kind of a brat. But it was just the one bratty morning, and I think I pulled myself out of it okay, so I am going to give myself an overall rating of Good Breakfast Sport.

These were the ONLY wildlife we saw, and they weren’t even “wild,” because they were hanging out behind a fence with some longhorn cattle. Well, I did see a mountain goat on the side of the road, chewing some grass. But I didn’t get a photo and no one else saw it so it doesn’t really count. Oh, and we saw a ton of antelope, so many that the novelty wore off and they seemed as unexciting as cows.

We listened to two books on the drive. When Carla was watching her iPad or listening to her own collection of audiobooks (I think she was re-listening to Socks and to the Gooney Bird Greene series, both downloaded from our local library), my husband and I listened to There, There by Tommy Orange. It was, overall, a compelling and eye-opening read/listen. The audiobook was well done, with a multi-reader cast to help differentiate between the multiple narrators. But the subject matter was so very dark and sad. And there was SO MUCH cursing, which I don’t love but don’t normally mind too much – but it made me uncomfortable with Carla right there. Not that she doesn’t know most of the curse words. Not that a few overheard curse words can hurt her in any way. We FINISHED the entire book, which felt like quite an accomplishment. When Carla was taking an iPad break, we listened to the fifth Harry Potter. I wish we had listened to more of it; I don’t think we even made it halfway through. We listened to a lot less music than I thought we would. Mainly, I think, because we were so often in areas with no cell service, so our music choices were limited to a downloaded playlist on my husband’s phone. It’s a good playlist, but he’s heard it a million times, and honestly there’s only so much Drake I can deal with. Next time, I will suggest making a playlist in advance of the trip.

Ah, the prairie. Makes my heart sing, but I am only posting one photo of sagebrush and endless plains for your viewing pleasure. If you want more, I have MANY.

And there WILL be a next time. It went so well that we all agreed we want to do it again. We may not go on the road for two weeks straight again (just taking the time off is tricky for my husband), but we definitely are no longer fearful of lengthy, multi-day car trips. Maybe we’ll go to Canada, next time. 

Snow in Glacier, MT.
And lakes, also in Glacier! Montana has everything: plains, badlands, mountains, lakes, forests. Postcard views everywhere you turn.

The best days – even those that included the most time in the car – were those where we woke up early and were on the road between 7:00 and 8:00 am. That way, we could get to our day’s destination before dinner, even if we ended up stopping a couple of times along the way. I also found it most useful when we could walk around for a bit before or after dinner. Despite being in the car for up to seven hours a day, I still managed to get in 10,000+ steps most days. 

My favorite state to drive through was Wyoming. I’d only ever been to Jackson Hole before, and that was in the winter. Well, wait – I did go to Yellowstone some years ago; but I can’t remember if that was the Wyoming part or the Montana part. I think Montana. Anyway: the geology of Wyoming is stunning, and so changeable. We would be driving through plains, and then suddenly mountains would loom up around us. And then we were in a canyon surrounded by jagged rocks. And then rolling badlands. And then plains again. The Wind River Canyon was spectacular – everywhere a breathtaking view. Plus, the highways were fast and crowd-free.

We went to the Cody Nite Rodeo, which was a lot of fun.
None of our photos of Wind River Canyon do its staggering beauty justice. We kept pulling off the road to take photos, it was so gorgeous.

We went to a rodeo. We saw Mount Rushmore. We bathed in hot springs. We fished. We spent a LOT of quality time together. I got to see my best-friend-since-sixth-grade and my brother and my niece and BOTH sisters-in-law and my parents. 

We stopped in Des Moines for lunch. It was cute.

We covered nearly 4,900 miles. My poor car announced that it was due for maintenance somewhere along our journey home, and I understand exactly how it feels. But it was truly a wonderful, beautiful experience.