Wild Minds Wander

Phew. We did it. We are officially on the trip! It’s day three, and my oh my, do I have a lot to say. I thought I’d have time to blog at night, but dang, I’ve been crashing out! Tonight, I have a tiny window, so here’s the download on our first few wild and wonderful (and sometimes challenging) days.

Day 1: Trading Short Drives for Long Swims. Our original plan for Day 1 was a quick three-hour hop to Scofield State Park in Utah. But then, the promise of the epic pool at Lava Hot Springs started calling! The boys and I had a family pow-wow: skip Scofield and drive straight to Lava Hot Springs for a whole day at the pool instead of just a half? It meant a seven-and-a-half-hour drive instead of three. They voted to drive all the way through, and so we did! It ended up being about nine hours in the car after potty breaks, a Trader Joe’s stop, and a gas station visit, but they did awesome, and we all loved the decision we made.

The Lava Hot Springs “Lava Campground” itself was absolutely amazing. It was super cute and retro-themed, with an old-school playground that had all the “risky” toys people are afraid kids will get hurt on these days. My boys loved it! Our tent spot was literally feet from the river, with a cute little cascading waterfall. I got to listen to the water flow all night long, which was so nice and peaceful… almost. The campground was RIGHT next to a big highway, and we could hear cars driving by all night, especially the semis. I got used to it, and it was okay, but it definitely didn’t allow for the most peaceful sleep. It was clean though, and you couldn’t beat the location. We got camp set up in less than thirty minutes after a quick (and necessary!) trip to Ace Hardware because, of course, we forgot our tent stakes. 🤣 Rookie mistake number one!

Day 2: Pool Dreams and Hot Spring Nightmares. Day 2 started with breakfast at camp, then straight to the pool! And let me tell you, it was everything we hoped for. Olympic-sized outdoor pool with high dives, four different huge slides, two kiddie slides, plus an indoor kiddie area, a climbing wall, more diving boards, and a hot tub. We spent over five hours there. It was a total blast!We went back to camp for dinner, then headed back into town for a hot springs trip. And well… the hot springs themselves? Truly awful. I’ve been to a lot of hot springs, so I feel like I’m a qualified judge, and these were truly disappointing. There wasn’t a single pool cooler than 102 degrees. No one had their whole bodies submerged because it was just so hot, and there were no cooler pools to cool yourself down in. We stayed for less than twenty minutes and left. We had planned to shower there and were extremely disappointed to find out they didn’t have family showers, and the only option was to let the boys shower in the girls’ locker room in a community shower that had a bunch of little girls in it. No thank you! We left and showered at the campground, which I didn’t want to do, but oh well! Definitely don’t recommend the actual hot springs. We went back to camp, the kids played on the playground, and then we crashed!

Day 3: Bears, Bugs, and Bad Burgers in Butte. We woke up this morning and headed towards Butte, Montana! We found a really cool surprise at a rest stop called Devil’s Half Acre. It was a half-acre of land you could walk around, with informational signs about lava that burst over 4100 years ago, leaving scars and hardened lava all over the land. The boys thought it was so neat, and it turned into a fun little unexpected stop.

Then, we decided to take an hour detour to Yellowstone Bear World. And let me tell you, it was absolutely amazing!!! It started with about a twenty-minute drive-through, seeing bears, elk, bison, and more. They even had white elk, which are extremely rare – only about 1 in 6 million elk are white! The bears were so cool and were within feet of the vehicle. After the drive, admission includes a small amusement area with about five rides that the kids loved. They also had an area with three baby bears! We watched them for a solid twenty minutes and honestly could have watched them all day. They were playing and wrestling, and it was the cutest thing I have ever seen. They had a petting zoo where a deer walked right up to us – and the deer had just had babies, so we got to see two-day-old fawns! They also had a Jurassic area with animatronic dinosaurs, which the boys thought was really neat to walk through. It was about a two-hour drive to Yellowstone Bear World, and we stayed for four hours before another four-hour drive to Butte.

By the time we hit Butte, I was so tired. We hadn’t eaten out the whole trip, so we decided to splurge. We stopped at a burger and milkshake place. The food looked good online, but when my mushroom Swiss burger came with canned mushrooms, I knew we had made a mistake. That was a $55 regret! 😭🤣When I started booking this trip months ago, I could find nowhere to camp as a good middle ground between Lava Hot Springs and our next stop. I spent hours researching and couldn’t find anything worthy. So, a few weeks ago, I gave up and booked a super affordable hotel that looked super nice. And it came through! It is so nice. The boys swam in the pool for an hour. We took really good showers, and I even managed to wash all of our dirty laundry. The boys are watching TV, and I’m finally writing this blog post. It’s definitely a trip to see them zoned out on TV, especially after we’ve already spent over 15 hours in the car, completely screen-free! They’ve kept themselves entertained with reading, looking at activity books, coloring, games like finding all fifty license plates, Harvey reading us fun facts about all the states we see, a scavenger hunt game, taking pictures, listening to music… and, of course, some fighting!

The Realities of the Road (and What’s Next!)I’m so tired that I hope I sleep like a rock tonight because the next week doesn’t look pretty. Apparently, winter decided to come back to Glacier, and it’s only going to be in the fifties with nights in the thirties and raining all weekend, plus four inches of snow expected on Friday night. Glad I packed the winter clothes!

The kids are doing pretty good overall. Calvin, however, is definitely struggling. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I’d hoped he would level out, but we’re at the end of Day 3, and he has not leveled out; he has gotten worse. He is overstimulated and totally lost in his brain right now. I’m really hoping he realizes this is the new normal for a little bit and can come to relax. This is a lot, and I think I will write a whole separate blog post about his experience soon.In these first three days, there’s something I’ve been incredibly grateful for: the patience and help of Harvey, my oldest. He has helped me set up camp and tear it down and has really taken on a lot of responsibility. I am so incredibly proud of him. Something else that has made this trip absolutely amazing is the electric cooler. I felt bad for how much I spent on it and on the generator to keep it running, but OMG, that thing has been worth its weight in gold!

The next week is going to be interesting, and I may not have much cell reception, so this may be the last blog post for a bit. I’ll keep you updated as soon as I can! Until then!