Montana

Road Warriors Six!

July 23, 2015

It's like old times in the back seat. — It’s like old times in the back seat. Only this time, Charlie has a gaming controller in his hand. God help us.

It is with bittersweet feelings that I am taking the step of abandoning my beloved hand-written journal for this: the cold world of electronic documentation. A tear rolls down my face as I type directly into my computer.

I know this is pure sacrilege. Don't judge me. — I know this is pure sacrilege. Don’t judge me.

I cannot stress enough how much I love looking at, and touching, and feeling my journals. I used to feel the same way about my calendar. But, sadly, I did move to an online calendar several years ago in order to save my sanity with Dave and two busy kids. We all share the online calendar and – in theory – it works great. There is apparently a very long learning curve though, because both Dave and Charlie still seem to have problems with it. As in: they don’t add events to the calendar, they never look at it, and continually ask me whether they are available to do A, B or C –and then can’t seem to figure out why things break down.

But I miss looking back on my paper calendars. I loved to page through them, reliving how busy I was, or reading little notes I jotted down. I even still have my weekly planners from college — they are like mini journals …basically reminding me what a total screw up I was.

Anyway. This is just a really sad process for me. This is progress, people. And we must adapt.

So I am abandoning the handwriting. I figure, since I plan to post it online, I’m really just doubling my work. Looking at it that way, my sadness is actually your fault.

Plus: handwriting is so damn slow. I usually only write when we are in the car and I just hate giving up my precious passenger-riding time to anything other than total self-absorption.

I know what my brother is thinking right now: what is more self-absorbing than a Road Warriors journal?

Touché Bennett.

Anyway, here I sit on my macbook air in the Woodbine Campground, drinking my first vodka tonic after pulling an all-nighter drive with Dave. I. Love. Camping!!

HERE WE GO!

We are in Montana this year. Dave said, “We’ve never really camped around the Billings/Bozeman/Red Cloud area.” As long as we get up into some elevation, I don’t really care where we go. I told him, “Just make sure I can wear sweatpants and a fleece at night and I’m good.”

But as we neared our destination, he’s like “We stayed there, remember that? …Oh, we’ve been there; we didn’t like it. …No, that was the campground that had all the burn-down; I don’t want to go there.”

???

But I am getting ahead of myself.

The real story starts about 3 weeks ago. When I decided to refurbish our old mountain bikes from – and this took me quite a while to determine – 1986. Though, I actually think we bought them in 1988. We got them during the tent sale at the old Hoigaard’s Roseville store. A Marin Palisades and a Marin Muirwoods. We’ve had them ever since – haven’t rode them or done a thing to them since the kids were super little.

I cleaned them up. Accidently found myself in a situation requiring re-packing the wheel bearings (hello internet). Ordered new wheels and viola!

Which got us talking about bringing four bikes on our camping trip. And how would we do that.

Hundreds of hours of online research later, we settled on a dual hitch receiver because the pros far outweighed the cons:

The Pros of a Dual Hitch Receiver for using a bike rack with a pop-up camper:

It’s cheap
Bikes can be easily transported to trailhead from campsite (vs if bikes were mounted on camper)
Bikes will not be sheared off by driving underneath a fast food awning (vs if bikes were mounted on car roof.)

The Cons of a Dual Hitch Receiver for using a bike rack with a pop-up camper*:

Bikes wiggled a bit much.

Solution: use a hitch tightener or anti-rattle hitch pin.

Several hundred hours of online research and several Amazon Prime and eTrailer returns later, I found a combo that worked. We tested the borrowed bike rack (that would hold all four bikes) and it fit! We were good to go.

We planned to leave at 5pm on Sunday and spent the normal frantic 10 hours of prepping and packing to leave. At about 4:30pm Dave started hitching up the camper and loading the bikes while I shut everything up in the house.

Two hours later we left.

Without the bikes.

It was very sad. It was very frustrating.

Basically, what we forgot when we tested it and determined that it would work was that, as opposed to driving in a perfectly straight line for 1500 miles, we needed to occasionally turn the car. Which pinched the bikes against the camper. We probably could have hauled ass to WalMart and found a hitch extender to push the camper back, but we weren’t sure we’d find one. Or that it would work. We cut bait and left the bikes behind.

This is what it should have looked like. I neglected to take a picture during the tense and stressful time. I guess I’m out of practice of documenting our family at its worst — always the best material for Road Warriors posts…

The victory was in the fact that we never yelled at each other. Or the kids. I didn’t cry. This is real camping progress, people.

So we left at 6:30. And arrived in Custer National Forest about 9am.

And the only thing that died was the poor bunny I mowed down as my eyes crossed at about 4am near Miles City.

I hate Miles City. Did I ever tell you that story?

*Updated Cons List:

Bikes wiggled a lot
It doesn’t work

Back to the drawing board…. Someday.

Road Warriors Four. Day Three.

August 22, 2012

Sunday, 8/5/12

Charlie was the first up and had a fire built. I, of course, thought it was Dave out there. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I rolled over and he was laying inches away from my face, still sleeping. Yikes. A very odd occurrence, indeed.

Morgan, who went to bed at about… oh… 7:30 pm was the last to get up. I clock her at about 16 hours of sleep.

We lounged around most of the morning. Dave made some hash browns — the kind from Costco that come in a little milk carton you fill with water and then put in a fry pan. They apparently have an expiration date. yeah, yeah, yeah… THEY’RE FINE! That’s just a ruse. When is he going to start believing me?

Meanwhile, I got an egg and Charlie toasted a ciabatta bun, which might be a little too thick for his standard campfire technique, but do absorb an impressive amount of butter, which more than makes up for the thickness.

Eventually, we made some sandwiches and headed off in the car to the Continental Divide trail. It took us 20 minutes to drive three miles to the trailhead on the 4-wheel drive road, nervously testing the new Michelins. Dave was lamenting, yet again, the fact I hadn’t gotten the “big-ass knobby ones”. When I reminded him that less than 1% of my driving is off-road, he insisted that I still should have gotten the big ones and that the next set would BE the big ones.

First, don’t be telling me what kind of tires I’m going to be getting on a car I don’t even want in the first place. And, second, …there is no second.

I countered that there wouldn’t BE A NEXT SET. I reminded him of the deal we made a year and a half ago when we bought this Suburban: when Morgan goes to college, I get to kick my 16 year Suburban habit. Dave’s look told me a lot — like maybe he would be trying to, yet again, talk me out of our deal. No way buddy. We don’t need two huge SUVs, period. Correctly, he swallowed his words and instead asked, “So, what kind of car are you thinking you’ll get?”

“A small car. A wind-up car.”

He just stared straight ahead and pretended I hadn’t said anything at all — clearly perturbed.

Wait. That’s how he always looks. Never mind.

It was quickly determined that we wouldn’t be hiking the Continental Divide trail, since it was an 18 mile hike.

[Note the bag Charlie is carrying. For the LOVE of GOD, WHEN —when?— will Dave Menke stop making us carry fishing equipment on long hikes? At least now I have children I can force to do it instead of me.]

We headed instead for Rock Lake — a six mile hike. It was also quickly determined that Morgan wouldn’t be joining us. I began to suspect that she intenionally mutilated her feet to avoid hiking. I wouldn’t put it past her…

It was a hot and dusty trail. I don’t have much good to say about it, except that it made for some funny conversations with Charlie on the way up. We couldn’t help but comment about the absence of the Reluctant Hiker. We were certainly going a lot faster than normal (sorry Morgan!) and had some chuckles about that… The hot dust inevitably led to the a comparison with the Sperry Glacier trail that we did in Glacier Park several years ago. It was record heat there — in the 90’s, as it was today. That trail, too, was a horse trail with random horse poop and flies. (I’m making this sound worse than it was, but still.) Charlie said, “I HATE horseback riding. I hated every single horseback ride we ever went on.” —Seriously? “I hated every single minute of every single ride.” No way! Could Charlie be developing the exaggeration gene? When I told him I didn’t remember him hating it so much he said it was true.

Apparently, even when he was little he was “on edge.” and, “always stressed out” on “dangerous trails” worried when those “stupid horses stumbled.” I don’t know why it made me laugh so hard. The idea of Charlie being stressed out on a horse… it just made me laugh. –There was this time he almost got hit by a truck crossing the highway to get to a trail [a seriously bad deal of which he was completely oblivious at the time] which may have planted some deep-seated unease about the dangers of trail riding , but that’s a long story. [Maybe someday I’ll pull out all the journals and eventually post them all here. Like prequels to Road Warriors.]

The payoff — the lake — was very pretty.

We were so hot and sweaty.

Incredibly, Dave was the first to go in the water. [I have the pictures to prove it, but am forbade from posting. I’m sure they’ll show up — unintentionally — on the AppleTV, which auto-syncs from my computer. And that will be a grave day indeed. However, about damn time there are a couple incriminating ones of Dave, since there are plenty of me, which pop up at the most inopportune times and which I cannot find in the thousands of photos on there to delete and which torment Morgan to no end.] I followed, while Charlie freaked out on us. We couldn’t talk him in to the skinny dip club though. We lingered at the lake for about 45 minutes

[with our clothes on. it was all very tasteful.] and then headed back down.

At the start of the hike I had told Dave to, “Go at a good clip so we get a workout.”

Seriously, I didn’t know the guy with the bad hip could walk that fast. He’s certainly never done it with me on the gravel road at home. I was spent. He hasn’t ever out-hiked me before, but he did. And it made me pretty crabby to be bested. We power walked, even running at times, all the way back down to the bottom. Charlie and I tripping and stumbling to keep up with Ibuprofen-Enhanced Dave Menke.

Morgan welcomed us back to the car well-rested, well-feed, well-read and well-movied. Not well-networked though, because there is no cell service here. Ha!

I couldn’t figure out why she jumped at the chance to ride with Dave to Jackson for ice. I thought it was so nice of her. But then I realized it was to retrieve messages and get a few of her own out to the world beyond. [We later learned she also talked “daddy” into an ice cream cone.] While they were gone, Charlie and I split some Cambozola and ridiculously good Rosemary Raisin crackers from Trader Joes while I nursed my crabby with both a Bud Lite and a vodka tonic. Dave had handed them both to me as he left.

He’s a prophet.

After a proper amount of sulking and snacking, I started chopping stuff for tacos. I had realized we forgot to bring shredded cheese before Dave and Morgan left, so they were picking some up. Only Jackson didn’t have any shredded cheese. Just blocks. So I chopped it, which worked surprisingly well and made the natives very happy.

After a disproportionate amount of ribbing directed at Charlie for being “dramatic” about injuries and life in general, we finally tipped him over. It took about two hours to get the old Charlie back. During this time, I reflected on my own character flaws and came to the conclusion that I’m pretty mean. This isn’t new information, of course, but there is no sugar coating it. You gotta have thick skin to share a table with me. Charlie — bless his heart — still doesn’t meet the grade. I want to be clear that this is a virtue rather than a flaw.

I am happy to report that by sunset, Charlie had returned to his happy self. My job is done here. There will be plenty of egos to bruise tomorrow. I will need my rest.

Road Warriors Four. Day Two. Part Two.

August 19, 2012

Continued from previous post: Saturday, August 4, 2012.

[very few pictures. but I promise. it get’s better after today.]

It was warm, but not ridiculous hot, and after sitting around for a while snacking — why, after 20 hours of driving does sitting down feel so good? — we walked down to the lake. [I know. I fooled you in the previous post by saying “I started dinner.” But that was a typo. We actually walked down to the lake.]

Wait. I remember: we walked to meet Morgan on her way back from a run and THEN we walked to the lake to check it out because she was going to take a lake shower. Dave and I got there first and waded around a bit admiring the views.

Just when I thought, “Oooo. Nice. We should swim, too,” I looked down and saw a 4″ leech attached to my ankle bone. Trying really hard not to freak out, I swooshed it away. Only it was stuck on and wouldn’t swoosh away. Still trying not to freak out, I gritted my teeth and pulled at the free end that was waving around in the water. I don’t know why I can’t allow myself the simplicity of being a normal person and come out of the closet on my distaste for leeches, but there is a small part of me who still tries to impress Dave. I know, I know. It’s been 23 years. He’s on to me by now. But you know? Maybe he’s not. He’s not all that perceptive.

And Dave seems to like the fact that I can bait my own leech on a hook. So I assume he also would like it if I can get my own damn leech off my own damn ankle.

BUT I COULDN’T GET IT OFF!

They are slippery and squishy and just sick.

I finally got it off, stood up and casually — I imagine also very cooly — said — with a debonair chuckle, “Huh. I just had a leech on my ankle.”

We giggled at the prospect of Morgan heading down for her bath in the lake. No way were we going to tell her about the leech. She has none of my issues at being a normal person in regard to leeches.

She’s soaping up and screaming about how COLD the water is and she asks me to hand her the shampoo. So I wade over to the rock where the shampoo is and walk a few steps over to her and squeeze some in to her palm. I’ve got the towel draped over my head because the deer flies are just ridiculous. I turn around to walk out of the water, looking down because it’s slippery and see ANOTHER FLIPPEN’ LEECH on my leg!

Now I CAN’T be obvious, because if Morgan finds out, I seriously don’t know what will happen. For SURE she will run out of the water, full of shampoo and create a lot more work for us to get her rinsed out. So, I very casually bend over and begin my lame attempts to get the damn thing off. Only then, the end of the towel on my head– and our only bath towel — flops in the water and both Dave and Charlie start yelling at me. I’m busy trying not to freak out about the leech. And they are all yelling at me, “HEY, HEY! Hey!” And finally, I stand up and say “SORRY.” And they are like, “WHAT THE HECK?! Now the TOWEL IS WET.” And I let it slip, “I had to get it off.”

Immediately, laser-ears-for-bad-news-Morgan pops out of the water and says, “What? WHAT?! Get WHAT off?”

Usually lies just bubble up out of nowhere for me. I am seriously a great liar. But nothing. Nothing at all came to me. I just tried to act dumb. And she’s yelling in my face, knowing in her heart what I’m about to say, so I finally just say it: “A leech.” She just kept staring at me with her laser-blue eyes

trying to hypnotize me or something. Probably trying to unnerve me into telling the truth. So I say, “Yes. Yes. I’m serious. A leech. But it’s gone.”

We had to physically restrain her from exiting the water. I talked her off the cliff by assuring her they were only over by the big rock where I got the shampoo. As I looked down, I saw another one, bunched up and looking like a little stone, by my foot. I nudged it, not quite believing my eyes, and it swam away, looking for another leg to latch on to.

Thank goodness Morgan didn’t see it. I turned her around, she rinsed out her hair as fast as possible. She used the wet towel and is officially done with Miner’s Lake.

It should be noted that Dave stood in that water, in that same spot, for about 30 minutes fly fishing later that same evening. He never saw a one. I think his hairy legs must be a protective armor.

After getting back to camp, Dave went to help an elderly couple who had driven up to the campground to reminisce. They used to come here and spend whole summers camping. As he was backing in to their old site, he went over the top of one of the satanic concrete markers that rim the road and pads everywhere. He blew a tire (it literally exploded) and was actually hung up, on top of the marker, unable to move forward or back. Dave pulled him off with a strap and then helped him change the tire. His good deed for the day.

While that was going on, Morgan was nursing her wounds — big, quarter-sized water blisters on the bottoms of her feet and bloody older blisters on her heels. All from her lovely and stylish Sperry Topsiders, worn two days prior. When she told me the shoes were hurting her feet, I told her to change in to different shoes. She said, “No. I like this outfit.”

Today, she can’t even walk. But she wants it noted that she isn’t sorry. She still likes her outfit from that day and wouldn’t change anything. What a moron.

So then, I started dinner.

Dinner was decided to be the rib eyes with big bakers, green beans and garden tomatoes. Super yum. I was nervous about having any ripe tomatoes for the trip, but several came ripe right before we left, so I am happy to report we have plenty. It’s extra cool that they are our first tastes of garden tomatoes of the year!

Everyone was tired. Morgan was in bed I don’t even know what time. Charlie made a couple s’mores and we called it a night. We went to sleep before the sun even set.

Road Warriors is Back!

August 13, 2012

I been saving myself for the past two months. Gearing up for Road Warriors.

No. Not really.

Actually, if you want the truth, writing here is a luxury. I love it. But it feels…irresponsible, somehow, when all Hell is breaking loose elsewhere. So, it becomes a luxury I can’t afford. Is that the long-lost catholic guilt in me? I don’t think so. I think it’s the good ‘ol Aksteter martyr in me. Regardless. Something had to give, and as much I’d like for it to have been soccer, it was the blog. Summer is coming to a close, though — just this morning, Morgan trooped off to her first dreaded “two a day” soccer practices. –The start of school sports. Blech.

And, we just returned from our annual camping trip. It was HEAVEN to get away. *Spoiler alert* And nothing BAD happened. Which, I will admit in advance, makes for dull reading, but makes for an awesome trip.

As always, I will write directly from the journal. If anything needs to be explained further or clarified, I will use [brackets].

So, without further ado!

ROAD WARRIORS FOUR: ON THE ROAD AGAIN.

Prologue

Morgan tried, with no success, to enlist travel companions again this year. Seems she rather enjoyed the Kooistras last year. Not that I didn’t. (I did!) I just knew, from our own ridiculous schedule, that it was pretty unlikely that they would be able to go during the only week that we would be able to go.

And, as usual, I was right. [If you are new here, please note: this is a major theme.] Only, it took a few weeks for me to be able to say “Aha! I was right,” because, also as usual, it took Jan and Wes several more calls and texts — and weeks — to get back to us with that information. Once I delivered this devastating news to Morgan, the search was on for a new camping family. I, of course, knew that this was a virtual impossibility, but ahhhh the naiveté and hope of the young! So sweet.

And in the end, she was crushed like a bug.

But really. Who are we? Dave, Charlie and I? Are we chopped liver? Buck up, little camper. We are going to have SO MUCH FUN together!

CHAPTER ONE, DAY ONE.

Friday, 8/3/12, 5 pm

So. Much. Work. I really had it good this year. No panicking. No 9 pm rooster attacks while I frantically made the spaghetti. [El Señor has left the area. He is, as we refer to it, “on walk-about”. aka: dead.] I was pretty organized. I made and froze the spaghetti and tacos on Monday. Made and froze the banana bread over the weekend. Planned to — horrors! — BUY a rotisserie chicken instead of frying one. Had been setting things out in the laundry room for over a week. But today? Still ten solid hours of prep. TEN FLIPPIN’ HOURS! That doesn’t even count the stuff leading up to today.

Why is that? I seriously want to know. [Chris: this means you. I was at your house the day before you left for the week with five (or is it six? I can never remember) kids and you were playing checkers — CHECKERS — with Maili the night before you were to leave at 9 in the morning. And! Charlie was sleeping over that night! I would never let my kids have friends over the night before we left. God forbid they see what a freak-out bitch I can be! *breath* *breath* Can you see how hysterical I become? Does this happen to anyone else?] What the heck?

The meal line-up is: spaghetti, flank steak kabobs, tacos, green curry and rib eyes… I feel like there is one more, cuz that is only 5 meals… but I can’t remember. The garden, for all its issues this summer, was good to us in all areas except edamame. Which is a serious drag. — and also a first, if my bad memory serves me. In its place, I am lugging along a suitcase of cambozola. [Camembert/gorgonzola cheese, like a creamy blue. Worth dying for.] A delicious substitute that involves a 1500% uptick in fat grams and serves no nutritional purpose whatsoever.

Perfect.

Well, after telling everyone we were heading to Colorado again, we are currently headed west on I-94 towards western Montana and northern Idaho. That’s about all I know. So it’ll be as much a surprise for me as for you. I know this much:

….never mind. I guess he doesn’t really know where we are going either. I guess the plan is that we decide once we get to Bozeman. Which is a serious head-scratcher, really, since the guy has been pouring over maps every night for the past week. And he really doesn’t know where we are going? It isn’t like I care. I just find it… odd.

The plan is to drive through the night. We shall see…

[sorry. no photos from day one. I forgot to take any pictures.]

Road Warriors 2010 Day 5

August 20, 2010

Day Five

8/2/2010

No Signature Toast this morning. Charlie slept later than everyone. Another FIRST for 2010. Dave made bacon. Not bacon and eggs. Just bacon. I had granola and this new brand of greek yogurt I got at Cub Foods. It was so disgusting looking that I could barely eat it. It looked exactly like gloppy tofu. And I LIKE tofu! Pretty sour too…

Oh, who really CARES about my stupid yogurt?!

Our campsite was pretty humorous, since we were almost sitting on the road in our chairs, due to the fire pit placement. We felt like that sad-but-happy couple from the Montana campsite mentioned earlier in the trip. The place was packed, too, though we overlooked the indignity since we liked all the dogs.

Interesting (and freakish) is that speed boats can go on this river. And they do: roaring up and down on a fairly regular basis. It’s so weird! You look at the river, with all the swirls in the the current and the shoreline and you just don’t think it can be possible because it looks so shallow!

We were on the road at 10 am. We headed back in to Thompson Falls to pick up a prescription for Charlie’s new affliction: swimmer’s ear. (Not a first, btw). I was so thankful that we were staying in a place close enough to a town with a pharmacy AND that I actually had a cell signal to call Curt Whisler and Catalyst Clinic in Watertown. Thanks guys!

While I milled around the drug store waiting for the ear drops (what in HEAVEN’S NAME takes so long at pharmacies?), I managed to spend another $30 on: magazines, lip balm, and three different products for Morgan’s toxic feet. (I think I just answered my own question.)

Dave drove north on Hwy 200 about 30 minutes before we blew another car tire.

Simply inexplicable.

And, we had forgotten to buy more of the magical Fix-A-Flat. (Not inexplicable.)

We did a 180 and headed back to the town of Clark Fork to a Chevron Station where they said they could work us in in about an hour. We ambled off to do errands (like buy more Fix-A-Flat). We went to a feed store and met a cross-eyed cat (I swear it is true) and went across the street to dine at Mom’s Cafe.

The cafe garnered mixed reviews from the tough crowd. I thought it was fine, but Dave didn’t like his “baby burger,” declaring it, “cooked to annihilation and barely edible.” Such an elitist. Maybe he should stop ordering kid’s meals.

The car was ready just as we arrived, so the timing was perfect. And the cost? $10.

We’ll take it.

How is that even possible, $10?

In the car again at 3:30 and Dave is saying we won’t make Banff by nightfall. I say he’s wrong. It’s Canada or bust.

We drove by Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho and it was AH-MAZING. Insanely beautiful. We had no idea. And it’s a REAL LAKE and not a reservoir! It’s over 1000 feet deep. Truly beautiful. Now we are thinking the lakeside campgrounds in Coeur d’Alene Idaho might not have been as lame as we thought, if it is anything like this lake.

I bet you would assume I would post a picture or two here, right?

Nope. It’s CANADA OR BUST, remember?

**** R E C A L C U L A T I N G ****

One hour delay at the Canadian border customs station…

**** R E C A L C U L A T I N G ****

Yah, so it was a total delay of about 3 hours when you added the tire and customs together, so it’s true. We didn’t make it to Banff.

It was a seriously sad car full O’Menkes. [editors note: do I even need to say anything about “car full O’Menke’s? I don’t think I was even drinking.] Honestly, we are better Road Warriors than this journal portrays. Four days from Wyoming to Banff?

Unacceptable.

Making matters more precarious was the fact that our trusty Rand McNally Road Atlas seemed to give up its accuracy after crossing the border. Either that, or these Canadian’s are messing with us by moving major landmarks around. We missed the two campgrounds we planned to stay at about an hour south of Banff. Of course, I am too cheap to have the data roaming turned on for my iPhone so I can’t consult my maps there, and everyone knows how bad Blackberries suck(Dave’s phone). We did have a GPS with maps of Canada along that we had given to Dave for Father’s Day, but Dave absolutely loathes it. And since I was driving, I couldn’t consult it myself. –Oh believe me, I tried, but I have to concur that the GPS is a frustrating little device when you are used to the touch screen on an iphone.

After some (very) terse words. (I mean, for LORD’S sake, just turn the damn thing on and look at it! Maybe we’ll be able to find the fricken’ CAMPGROUND). I finally fumbled around with it myself enough to seriously freak him out and make him look at it and lo and behold it took us right to the last provincial park on the map before Radium Hot Springs and the entrance to Kootenai.

The only problem was that the last provincial park on the map did not have any camping. It was a picnic grounds.

Excited eruptions from the back seat immediately followed (I forgot they were even back there) along the lines of “Yea! We get to stay in a hotel!” You’d think they’d know us better than that by now.

The plan now was to cross our fingers and bomb it for Banff and take the first site we could get. However, along the way, crazily enough and like a mirage, Dry Gulch Provincial Park Campground appeared unexpectedly out of nowhere about 5 miles later and we snagged one of the last sites. It wasn’t pretty, but we weren’t complaining.

We set up and had the most anticipated meal of the trip for everyone except for me: Spaghetti.

I made the “seasoned toast” and pretty much ruined it. I added way too much Lawry’s. It’s true.

I’m damned near perfect, but I’m honest, too. And I screwed up. Which makes me realize I didn’t document my worst camping screw up in years: I forgot to stow the pop-up crank handle when we left the last campsite. I left it attached to the outside of the camper as we drove away. Luckily it was discovered in Thompson Falls while I was in the pharmacy spending Dave’s hard-earned money.

OH THE SHAME! The potential DISASTER! I hang my head. What more can I do but confess it here.

…and move on, pretending it never happened at all.

So the spaghetti was fabie. I still brought too much, though. My notes said to bring exactly “4 cups of sauce.” But as usual, it just didn’t seem like enough! The kids are bigger! Hell, I’m bigger! And how much did we eat?

Four cups.

We had to throw the other cup and a half away. It pained Dave greatly. But there are to be no leftovers while camping. It was a lot harder for me to throw the extra green curry from last night.

Mosquitos were a significant factor again, which we just don’t understand, never having run into it before.

Tucked in and lights out by dark. Lightning in the distance.

…that brewed into a full blown thunderstorm an hour later. It poured! I had to crawl over Dave to zipper-shut the screens on the kid’s side. He did give me a loving pat on the butt as I straddled the gap. And I wonder what would happen if I hadn’t gotten up. Would the kids wake up and shut them? Would Dave? I just don’t think so. I crawled back over him and back into my sleeping bag, stewing about the rain and how it complicates the packing of the camper in the morning and then…

I REMEMBERED ALL THE SHOES OUTSIDE THE DOOR!

I grabbed a flashlight and crawled back over Dave to try to fish them into the camper without actually having to go outside in the downpour and getting all wet. I rescued the shoes, but I also had a pretty wet head.

And then I crawled back over Dave and into bed and stewed some more, trying to just enjoy the rain. Eventually it stopped and I slept like the dead knowing the shoes were dry and that we were close to our destination.

Road Warriors 2010 Day Four

August 18, 2010

Dear Bennett,

While you ridicule my blogging efforts all 11 other months, you are — as you said, yourself — “seriously for some reason fascinated by and want to hear more” and are impatient for the next post, saying, “and the fact that I have been reading for 4 days now and you are not yet to august is pissing me off!” I must take issue with your impatience for a few reasons:

I have a life other than this blog and don’t have time to write more than 3 or 4 times a week.
And, if I may remind you, for every other post I have written you have said something like “What is the point?” or “Who wants to read about Meatless Mondays?” and “Why are you doing this?” etc., etc.
In my opinion, the desire to read about our Road Trip, makes you even a bigger loser than me for even writing about it in the first place.

Thanks for your patience, everyone other than Bennett. But I’m sure you understand the need to skewer my brother publicly at every chance possible. We may be nearing our 50’s, but I never fail to delight in the sibling bickering with my brother that I despise so much when witnessed in my own kids.

Day 4

8/1/2010

Charlie’s Signature Toast for breakfast (have I really emphasized how good this is? Please, don’t buy one of those “camping toasters”, borrow my son and his marshmallow fork instead) and a quick camp pack-up, made much more difficult by all the dew. It got down to 42 degrees last night and that makes for lots O’dew, after all. [editor’s note: I cringe at writing “lot’s O’dew”, but that’s what it says in this-here journal and integrity prevents me from edits.]

We were on the road by 9 am though, and that’s pretty good. The kids seem more predisposed to actually helping put-up and take-down camp this year — a big change from just being in charge of the chairs. I remind you, these “kids” are 13 and 15, not 3 and 5, like you might imagine at reading that, prior to this year, they were only in charge of the chairs. I’m thinking that if I play my cards right, I might be sipping a cold beer shortly after pulling into a site by the end of this trip! [editor’s note: Not.]

We drove out of Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest and through the Pioneer Mountains. Really, really badly damaged from the Mountain Pine Beetle. Very sad.

We drove east to I-90 and hopped on the highway headed north, stopping in Missoula for lunch at the kids’ now favorite hamburger joint, Five Guys. (Dave and I quickly decided not to tell them there is a Five Guys in Edina, or they will be nagging us relentlessly to go there every time we are within a 20-mile radius of the cities).

We got back on the road with me (Jennie) driving — which reminds me — we finally determined, after much pain and suffering, that the Virgin Mobile MiFi does NOT roam on the Sprint data network, contrary to the information given to me by that boneheaded BestBuy saleswoman. ARRrrrggh. Very simply: NO coverage west of Minnesota, AT ALL (until SPOKANE). Extremely disappointing, but then again, also kind of nice to have a really good reason for not answering all those pesky emails. I guess I’ll have to decide if I will keep it when we get home.

Anyway, it was still up in the air as to where we were headed: Coeur d’Alene or stay on the Montana side in the national forests to camp. Coeur d’Alene was inviting, but campground descriptions pulled up on my iphone sounded pretty lame to Dave who was doing all the research riding shotgun (and cussing and fumbling and freaking out about “where did it go?! I didn’t touch any buttons! I swear! I hate this phone!” and so on — and on and on…). I had pulled up website listings while in Missoula, where I had a strong 3G signal, and pasted them into Notes and emailed them to myself for Dave to study on the road where I knew I would not have a strong 3G signal — which he did for about 3 straight hours.

At the very last minute (and when I say that, I mean, slam your brakes on, cut off the guy in the right hand lane, and shoot across the solid white line), he had me exit Hwy 90 in Henderson to take a road marked on the big road atlas that would bring us north in a fairly straight line to Thompson Falls, Montana where the camping sounded better. We’d be lying if we didn’t admit that when it comes right down to it, we have a prejudice against Idaho campers and campgrounds from previous experiences — that being the general belief they come in pre-formed packs of 20, each with their own ATV, pack of cigarettes and case of beer. Oh, and one loud boom box per set of campers.

The plan was all well and good, except for the fact that the road on the map did not reflect the actual road on the ground. Again, no exaggeration here, which I really do need to say, given my natural flair for the conversational dramatic. This was the most fun road I have ever had the pleasure of driving on. It reminded me of the rollercoaster called ‘The Mouse’ where there were little stomach-loosing dips and the nose of your car would go off the edge of the rails before you made your turn. The road was: twisty, turny, dippy, and very pretty. Up one side and down the other of a mountain. The fastest I went was 25 MPH and that felt like we were flying. I can’t say that we weren’t nervous, driving over long stretches of large, sharp chunks of rock that passes as gravel though, not particularly wanting to blow another car tire…

I also can’t say that it was fun for the passengers. Perhaps more telling than my description of the road is the fact that I managed to make both kids sick in the backseat — a FIRST for the Menkes! No puking, but much spit production and groaning and Advil consumption.

And NO FLATS!

A true success, all the way around.

We emerged out of the dark forest (much greener and healthier than those at the start of the day, by the way) right into the town of Thompson Falls, Montana. We stopped for gas at a station with a disturbing mural on its bathroom doors where the heads of these people are painted on the glass, so that when you are inside the bathroom, their faces are staring at you:

and twist ice cream cones (a shocking indulgence Ok’d by the Granola) and proceeded to stay at the first campground we came to — another shocking event. Not just for the decisiveness of it, but for the fact that it was a State Park which is not usually our cup of tea. This park had one strong and undeniable attraction for us on this particular day: the large and inviting Clark Fork river.

No, not because it was hot and we wanted to swim, but because it was day 4 with no shower. Well, I did wash my armpits in the sink of a gas station early the day before, but that doesn’t count.

We set up and headed to the river. Spoiled from our warm pool at home, the river was colder than we wanted it to be, but warmer than we expected it to be. Well worth it for a clean head of hair that doesn’t ache from my ponytail anymore.

We enjoyed the first vodka tonics of the trip and ate — always my favorite — Thai Green Coconut Curry with chicken and all kinds of good stuff I brought with from the garden.

Dave caught a small mouth baby bass after dinner

and I — thank the Lord — finally had a reason to visit the outhouse.

As the sun set and darkness approached, we observed and made up stories for all our neighbors (always close quarters in state parks) that trolled in and set up late in the day, making us feel like we had been transplanted into a sort of campground suburbia. There were several dogs that made Morgan and Charlie happy. And there was a family that included four small boys under the age of 8, that made me happy not to be the mom in that camp…

Another night early enough to not require the lantern put us in the camper around 10pm — a new 2010 record!