The Long Drive from Badlands to Seattle - Day Two

We woke up, packed up the rooftop tent, and were off by 7am. According to Google, it would be another 745 miles and take about 11.5 hours. Oof.

Here are some photos of our campsite in the morning.

View of the river from our campsite.

View of the mountains from our campsite. Not bad for a free spot for the night.

We drove until about 11:30am, when we stopped at a rest stop near West Fall, Montana. Sorry, no photos of the bathrooms or anything.

Made it to Idaho!

We drove a bit further and stopped for gas at about 12:30pm. The cheapest we could find anywhere around was $5.05/gallon in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. 

We drove and drove and drove. It started raining. It was gloomy. Tensions in the van were high. Traffic was bad. Google detoured us off the interstate to avoid traffic, but also detoured everyone else off the interstate to avoid traffic, so it was still slow traffic. The arrival time at Adam and Devin's in Seattle kept getting further and further away.

But we made it! We pulled in at about 6:40pm. Whew! Odometer reading: 168,107. Total miles traveled today: 758. Total miles traveled this trip: 2,658. Can't wait to explore Seattle and spend time with family!

Adam and Emmet welcome us to their playroom!

The Long Drive from Badlands to Seattle - Day One

Our original plan on this day was to wake up and drive straight to Seattle. There's TONS of cool places we could stop along the way, but on our 2019 trip we stopped at so many of them and that left very little time to spend in Seattle with family, so on this trip we planned to just book it and get straight there.

But.

At the Badlands visitor center, one of the volunteer fossil lab techs told us about a place where you could see tons of mammoth fossils that was really cool. Gram and Pops looked it up and definitely planned to go, and invited us along. We went back and forth on it - it did look pretty neat in the pictures and had good reviews, and only added about 1.5 hours to the drive time, which was already at about 18.5 hours. So we decided to go.

The new plan was to wake up at 7am and pack up the tent and everything and leave by 8am.

We actually woke up at 6am because it was so bright and sunny and hot. Today's forecast was the hottest yet in the Badlands - in the 90s. It was already hot at 6am.

I took a photo of our tent setup with the van.

This photo shows the hammock in the front of the van. Katy usually sleeps there - it's a child-sized hammock.

We all got dressed and went to the bathroom. I don't know why, but on this particular morning there were so many June bugs in the bathroom! It hadn't been that way any other morning. The sinks alone had about a dozen. Lily was trying to rescue them.

Katy counted all of them. Including hollering over into the shower stall where someone was showering to ask how many June bugs were inside (Answer: 2), for a grand total of 24 June bugs in the bathroom.

It was a good thing we got up at 6am because we actually managed to leave by 8am. Starting odometer reading for the day: 167,061. We had a lot of ground to cover.

We stopped at a nearby gas station called "Cowboy Corner" and got some gas. Not a full tank because the price was $4.96/gallon.

Check out these vintage pumps! Not digital!

We saw lots of mule deer and pronghorn antelope but I didn't get any good photos. It was about a two hour drive to the Mammoth Site. The first thing we did was watch a short video about the history of the site. Basically, thousands of years ago there was a sinkhole here that filled with water and drew lots of wildlife as a source of drinking water. However, the sides of the sinkhole were incredibly slippery and steep and it was over 50 feet deep, so often animals would fall in and be unable to climb out. In the 1970s while excavating for a housing development, a bulldozer uncovered a mammoth tusk. Scientists began excavating and so far have found bones from over 60 mammoths and the excavation is still ongoing! They have built an entire museum over the dig site and you can tour it. Here are photos, it is pretty cool.

View into the actual lab. The yellow sign at the top says "For Alex" - Uncle Alex, this one is for you.

Here's photo of pronghorn antelope! These are like the ones we've been seeing everywhere while we drive. For some reasons these ones were super easy to photograph.

We had a picnic lunch and said goodbye to Gram and Pops. From the Mammoth Site we had 1,211 miles to go to Uncle Adam and Aunt Devin's house in Seattle. Google estimated it would take us 18 hours and 11 minutes. Off we went!

I didn't take a lot of photos during the drive, so just picture our family in a van for hours and hours and hours and hours.

We stopped at about 3:30 to fill up with gas. The price was $4.39/gallon in Gillette, Wyoming. We had traveled 290 miles at that point. We started to see mountains. YAY!

We kept driving and driving. I downloaded an app called FreeRoam to help us find a free campsite. We selected the Otter Creek Fishing Access Site in Big Timber, Montana. Joe suggested we play the song "Timber" by Ke$ha but yell "BIG Timber" every time that lyric comes up in the song, so we did. It was funny.

The campsite was right next to Yellowstone River, which was really fast and I definitely didn't want the kids going in it. Joey kept trying to get close to it anyway. He found a "mammoth tusk" and heaved it into the river. He threw a lot of sticks and rocks into the river.

When we got there it was about 9pm and still light out. It stayed light until almost 10pm! There was a pit toilet and it was actually pretty clean, so that was nice. We popped up the tent and went to bed. Final odometer reading: 167,671. Total miles traveled: 610. Not bad.

Badlands Day Three

We had planned to get up early and hike a bit before it got too hot, and then cook breakfast, but by the time we all got up around 8am it was already pretty hot. Not everybody wanted to go hiking anymore, so only Pops, Dad, Mom, and Lily ended up going to hike the Cliff Shelf Trail.

The low point in the wall here is the 'notch' we were in last night on the Notch Trail! You could see some other folks standing up there this morning.

The trail passed through cedar groves. It smelled wonderful and there was some shade.

Spotted a mule deer!

After we got back, we cooked pancakes and venison sausages at the campsite. It was getting hotter and hotter and hotter. We debated just laying around all day and not going anywhere. Finally ended up deciding to go check out the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, as it's entirely indoors and air conditioned with no hiking involved. Everyone went except Mary, who opted for relaxing alone in the air conditioned hotel room for the afternoon.

On the way to the historic site, we pulled over at the Big Badlands Overlook and snapped some photos.

I didn't take too many photos at Minuteman Missile, but the kids were doing activities in the Junior Ranger guidebooks and earned patches, and the exhibits were pretty interesting. Here's one of Lily operating the missile control panel.

We headed back and it was super super hot and Joey and Lily and Katy were all super super eager to jump into the campground pool again. There was a bunch of other kids in the pool and they all played together for several hours. They invented a new version of Marco Polo where instead you yell "Honda...Civic!"

Then we cooked dinner at the campsite. I keep forgetting to take pictures of our camping meals but I remembered this one...it's a recipe called "Egg Roll in a Bowl", plus some venison sausage from Pops.

For our last evening in the Badlands, we planned to drive along Loop Road and stop at all the scenic overlooks. We hoped that by heading out near sunset, we'd be more likely to spot some wildlife.

The scenery is amazing at every scenic overlook. Here's one where the kids were each out on their own rocky outcropping. Can you spot all four of them?

It was at this point we realized we didn't yet have a photo of all six of us. Ta-da!

There were so many photos I can't post them all. Photos don't really do it justice anyway. But if you like climbing around on stuff, definitely go to the Badlands. Here's another random one of Joey off on a cliff.

At one of the overlooks we saw a group of people dressed in cosplay taking photos. Several of them were dressed up as Zelda characters. The kids thought it was so cool and they even let us take a photo.

At one of the overlooks we saw a couple of rabbits. They didn't seem very afraid of humans. The kids LOVED the rabbits and spent a ton of time taking photos and trying to coax the rabbits to come closer. I'm just now realizing that I should ask Joey and Mary to share the photos from their phones with me. I bet they have a ton of good ones I could add to these blog posts. 

You can see Lily in the foreground with one of the rabbits, and the other three are further back looking at the second rabbit.

Getting up close with a rabbit. You can see our camper van parked in the background too.

Here's some photos Joey took of the rabbit:

Here's some photos Mary took of the rabbits:

We saw lots of prairie dogs while driving on the loop road. I didn't get any good photos but in this one you can see one of them. Every sandy patch is a prairie dog tunnel entrance. You could hear them squeaking!

We also saw some mule deer and pronghorn antelope. I got a photo of some mule deer, but I didn't get any photos of the antelope, sorry.

The sun was starting to set, and I really wanted to hike the Fossil Exhibit Trail before we left the Badlands, so we ended up rushing and not driving the entire Loop Road. Here's a few photos from various scenic overlooks along the way.

Sun is sinking!

I really wanted to see buffalo. Thought this was maybe them, but turned out to be cows.

The Fossil Exhibit Trail is only a 0.25 mile loop, mostly boardwalk. It takes you past several replicas of fossils discovered in the Badlands. The sunset was amazing.

When we got back to the campground we hurried to set up the rooftop tent. Luckily it goes up really quickly. Joe and I were tired and ready to go to bed immediately, but we hadn't yet had a campfire and s'mores, and that was definitely on the kids' bucket list for things to do while camping this summer. So of course we did that.

Just asked Mary to send me any good photos she took from the day and here's her selection: