Missed Family Funeral Part of Our Summer Long Journey
Carl and I crossed the Continental Divide multiple times on our '76 cross-country bike trip, including this ascent into Montana on our way to Yellowstone National Park. Check out his fashionable socks.
A cold, rainy day during one of our days in Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks in June 1976
Shorts and sandals weather on a family visit this week. The boys are the same age Carl and I were on our bike trip.
My family had the rare treat of watching Yellowstone's spectacular Bee Hive geyser erupt within minutes of Old Faithful. Both are within easy view of each other.
The grandeur of the Grand Tetons Mountains can't be beat. They are every bit as majestic today as they were during our cycle tour.
MORAN, Wyo. _ People used to ask me if I was ever homesick on our cross country bike trip.
There were stretches I wished were over with. And circumstances I wanted badly to end. But never really a feeling of homesickness. The closest emotion to that occurred in Yellowstone National Park. We had just come through all that horrible devastation from the Teton Dam collapse and pedaling those hundreds of miles of nothingness through central Oregon and western Idaho. The one time I journaled a yearning to be home was from Yellowstone N.P. It was June 21 - nearly two weeks into our journey after leaving the Pacific coast. We'd had a lot of bike trouble that day and a big hail storm followed by a huge drop in temperature, A nice elk sighting and a stretch with an eagle flying overhead offered a reprieve from a very rough day. After settling in to a camp site, we set out on foot for a pay phone. Carl and I had made an agreement with our parents to call home (collect, of course) every 4-5 nights for them to mark our whereabouts on a map. Here is a diary entry from June 21 hat summer: "It got dark pretty late last night in Yellowstone campground. After the storm was over, we walked to a telephone about 1 1/2 miles away, not thinking to bring a flashlight, to call home. Both my parents had gone to Detroit to comfort my grandmother because my grandfather had died unexpectedly from a heart attack. It's really a shame we are stuck out here not being able to go to the funeral. My big sister said they'd be home in a couple of days, though. It was 11:30 here mountain time and we got lost trying to find our campsite. It took almost two hours of walking back and forth and somehow, we passed it. We heard grunts coming from the woods that sounded like a bear. When we finally found our tent. We got all the food out. put it in a plastic bag and hoisted it up in a tree to protect us from any bear that may tear down our tent to get something to eat. It's very cold now. We're at about 7,000 feet and that rain last night soaked everything. I'm cooking breakfast now and just finishing up a cup of coffee before we take the tent down and ride around the park," I thought about that pay phone call and our feeling of helplessness when revisiting Yellowstone with my family. We had our Garmin to navigate our way through the park. The boys buried themselves in their cell phones between stops. Emily and I used our smart phones to access online information. We live in such a fast-paced, interconnected world today. I'm not sure we're that much better off, at least when it comes to slowing down to connect with people and to enjoy God's blessings all around us. The Grand Tetons are absolutely stunning. We rented a small boat at Colter Bay and motored across Jackson Lake to take it all in. We beached the boat on a small rocky island where we picnicked under some trees. Emily and Trevor caught lake trout, which made for a fantastic dinner back at the campsite. On a visit to Yellowstone, we hiked past geysers and thermal pools and got a great closeup view of a moose. The canyons and waterfalls of Yellowstone delighted us just as much as they did for Carl and I when biking through here years ago.
