By Shannon Williams
From early conversation, when my husband and I reconnected after 30 years, he talked of his dream of “going to Yellowstone.” This was about 15 years ago before the show Yellowstone and before going to National Parks became a thing to do. Once he retired, I told him to start planning and we would go when I retired. We talked and talked about it and by God, we needed to get it going and do it. I am the kind of person who often likes the planning of a trip as much as going, BUT… this kind of trip is not a lot of fun to plan. It takes a great deal of research. We changed our mind several times about how we were going to do it. We had a family cruise planned for this year. My parents had taken all of their children and grandchildren on a cruise to Alaska for there 50th Anniversary in 2002, so my brother, sister and their kids and us, planned to go on the same trip this summer, but my brother was to be a grandfather for the first time this summer, so that trip was put off.
We had initially thought we would go to Yellowstone after we took the cruise, but that cruise has now been put off till 2026. So, the next plan was to fly to Seattle and start out from there. The hubby did not do so good with the planning, so I jumped in this spring, which was way too late for getting good hotel reservations to the big National Parks during the summer. By the Grace of God, I found rooms where we wanted them and when we wanted them. Don’t ask about the cost for the Best Westerns! About two months before the trip we decided just to drive my SUV the whole way. I had never even thought about a road trip that long both in miles and how long we were be gone. It just made sense to get as much in as we could. One of the dances you have to do when you retire is to start doing your bucket list, while your health is still good. I put together a big red three ring notebook (yes old school) to backup all the reservations for rooms, tours and entrances to the parks. I changed it several times, after discovering that I had double booked us a few nights!
Now to start the process of being gone for a month. There were our little feral cats that have adopted us that would need to be fed. We had to find someone to water the garden and watch the house. We had to make sure all the bills were paid and that we had enough meds to last the whole trip. Packing became a major stressor for me. Since we were taking our own car, I thought I would do better packing in smaller bags that we could live out of instead of big heavy suitcases. Needless to say, I got a little carried away with what all I took. I guess I did not consider that there would be Walmart’s along the way that we could get what we needed, no I took it all with us! We needed to take three types of clothes, hot clothes for Grand Canyon, cool clothes for the Pacific Northwest and Cold Clothes for Glacier National Park. I don’t think there was an inch of room in the car as we pulled out of the driveway, but never fear, I managed to get plenty of souvenirs in the car along the way.
We started out and headed to West Texas. Since we were going to stay a few days with my son in the Pacific Northwest, I wanted to take him somethings from our storage in West Texas. After a few days with my sister and brother, we were off! Our first stop was Holbrook AZ, it was just supposed to be a pit stop, but we decided to go check out the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert. We are so glad we did, it was really neat. Since it was not part of the plan, we got to the gate at 8 am as we only were going to drive though and get back on the road. Well four hours later, we left the park and wished we had more time. The colors in the rock just are unreal, I have never seen such colors in stone. The whole concept of Petrified wood and how it is created is such a process. I love rocks and have them in my garden and on my stairs, I am good about following rules, so did not take anything from the park, but was able to buy a few rocks at the gift store and the colors are stunning. The trip had begun as we both were taking pictures like crazy and were like school kids saying “oh look over here.” We got back on the road and stopped in Reno on our way to see my son in Eureka, California. We stayed at the Nugget, which is an older hotel that has been there for years, but has been redone. We enjoyed some video poker and a nice meal, but most of all a good breakfast that am. By that time, we had already eaten the hotel breakfast a few times and were glad to have a real breakfast. We had packed some stuff for sandwiches and really enjoyed stopping along the way at rest stops for our little picnic lunches. We were very glad we had done this after a stop at Wienerschnitzel , where four hot dogs cost use $27 !!! In the next coming weeks, I will take you along on our trip with lots of pictures and stories. Attached are the photos from our morning at the Petrified Forest.
