A Little Road Weary, But Up For The Adventure

Three weeks on the road with a family of five is a lot of fun, but it's also a lot of work. Preparing meals, setting up and breaking down tents, navigating new terrain, and processing the tons of information that come from putting ourselves in brand new environments every few days--it takes a while to recover and rejuvenate between activities.

Here I am napping in the middle of the day on concrete steps next to Lake Washington in Seattle--a little road weary, but up for the adventure.

Pearls: Things of Beauty Born Out Of Irritation

In 1993, Cora and I decided that we wanted a new last name. Somehow, the names we grew up with were not fitting anymore and we wanted everyone in our family to have a shared family name. We searched for a name that was both meaningful to us and related to our family history (Pearl comes from my great-grandfather's last name and was Cora's great-grandmother's first name.) This decision was one of many endeavors of balls out creativity and self-determination that has characterized our marriage and life together as a family. Each day the name becomes even more relevant to my life experience.

This photo is a rock pearl sculpture made by Eli while we were in Yellowstone.

He found a little translucent stone and put it between two halves of a rock that had a perfect break in the middle. Isaac and I shined a flashlight on it after the sun went down and snapped a few photos of Eli Pearl's pearl.

As I was admiring Eli's vision and resourcefulness, I couldn't help but think about how fitting the name Pearl is for our family. A pearl starts as a microscopic piece of sand that is trapped inside an oyster, creating a discomfort and an irritation. From this rub, the oyster creates a gem.

Although this trip has led to a lot of fun and adventure, much of this family odyssey grew out of irritation and discomfort.

We needed change. We were no longer feeling "at home" in our house. I was no longer feeling creative forward motion in my studio. Some friendships and family relationships were beginning to feel strained.

So we decided to start again--getting rid of many material belongings and stirring up change.

It has been a beautiful journey so far, but the rub of feeling misplaced is well within reach of my memory. I remember this irritation daily and appreciate its role in creating forward motion-- especially when it's time to create beauty out of a new irritation--when I hear kids fighting in the back seat or somebody got too tired or hungry while driving for too many hours or one of us feels stressed out about the uncertainty of where we will end up living. I look to these momentary irritations to provide us with the bit of sand that we can grow and polish into a gem.

When we took on the name Pearl, about 16 years ago, we were saying 'yes' to this aspect of nature that creates beauty out of irritation. We decided to take the irritation of our pasts (of which there will always be an abundance) and create beauty out of it.

May we continue to find that clarity as our travels progress.

More Glorious Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington

Our current main home. This version of it is in my favorite campsite so far, near Cody, Wyoming.

Pools of hot sulfur water steaming out of the earth in Yellowstone.

Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park erupting. Boiling hot water shoots out of the earth every 90 to 125 minutes. I don't know the guy in red. He was one of the many awestruck geyser watching audience members. I like how his red shirt adds to the composition of the photo.

It was a long and gorgeous drive across the rest of Wyoming into Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone has acres and acres of natural miracles. The whole park is situated on the most active volcanic activity on the earth. The last time the whole thing blew was 500 million years ago. No one knows when it could blow again. When it does, it could take out all of North America. Seeing the earth boiling around me was very impressive. It reminded me once again of how small I am and how big and powerful the earth is. In a strange way I find that comforting, remembering the forces that are way bigger than me.

Although I loved the beauty and strangeness of that place, it was really quite the tourist attraction. There are several major campgrounds with as many as hundreds of sites each. We were situated among several RVs and a tenting family that seemed to have at least half a dozen small children under the age of 8. They had a baby that was howling incessantly as I tried to fall asleep. It was like being in the middle of a small city, in the middle of a forest. When I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth the next morning, there were women in there with makeup bags and blow driers who had a whole beauty regimen going on. I even saw one gal with high heels on! I realized then that I had turned into Camper Girl, much to my surprise. At that point, brushing my teeth was my big effort toward extra personal beauty.

Upon leaving Yellowstone we had a beautiful drive through the southwestern portion of Montana. We stopped in Bozeman at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. First we used the bathrooms, then we bought some books. Isaac found a great book about colleges which is helping him figure out which schools he would like to visit on our journey. When I bought the book, the saleslady was moving at a pace that to me, felt like slow motion. I became aware of my fast talking, fast moving, east coast ways. I noticed my own impatience with her lack of speed and realized that faster is not necessarily better. What was my big rush? Did I have a plane to catch? Montana in general was laid back in its energy and every person we met was so nice and helpful.

We also stopped in Butte, which used to be an old copper mining town that now feels like a bit of a ghostown, and we also stopped in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which was a lovely lovely place that we thought we might like to visit again. Idaho was very beautiful and mountainous and had its own special character. It is amazing how each state really has its own personality, and even in just the panhandle of Idaho, I found that to be so.

We continued on past Spokane, Washington (which for those of you who don't know is pronounced Spo-CAN) and drove all the way to a Shilo Inn at Moses Lake, Washington. Moses Lake wasn't too exciting, but being in a hotel sure was! Swimming pool, kitchenette, internet access, beds, SHOWERS. So many good things. So much deep appreciation for all of them. We enjoyed full use of our hotel experience and were renewed by freshening up after a full and intense week of camping.

Next stop.....Bellingham.

Wyoming Is Heaven on Earth

Joshua and the kids walking up the mountain at over 9000 feet elevation to touch some snow.

Paradise.

Can you tell just how BIG everything is in this part of the country??

Sage and mountains and big sky everywhere you look.

Some of the rocky mountains had more trees than others.

There are miles and miles of roads that look like this. Stunning.

Rock formation at Big Horn National Forest.

Wyoming took my breath away the entire time we drove through it, from one end of the state to the other. Every mountain pass awakened the cowgirl in me, and I didn't even know I had an inner cowgirl! I could easily imagine riding a horse through this land, with wind blowing in my hair and not a care in the world. Even in our Honda Odyssey, I felt a deep connection to the mountains, rocks, lakes and big sky all around us. It was a magical place. If you want to experience heaven on earth, drive through the Big Horn National Forest. My heart sings just thinking about it.

More South Dakota

Joshua playing a piano from Deadwood at The Bay Leaf Cafe, a restaurant with a healthy and delicious menu in Spearfish.

On the way to Spearfish, SD.
The location of Joshua and Cora's first fight on the trip.
(May it be the last.)

Deadwood, South Dakota.
The real town that was dramatized in the HBO series a few years ago.

From the Badlands we drove to the Black Hills of South Dakota to the town of Spearfish. On the way we had our first fight--just a misunderstanding and release of built up tension spurred on by a dramatic phonecall from my grandmother. The loud stream right next to us helped move the energy quickly. It was a sudden burst of extreme emotion that ended with some good hugs and a return to love.

We did another hour of driving after the fighting incident and we stopped by a campground that I remembered staying in twenty years ago. We got to view a spot near there where a key scene in "Dances with Wolves" was filmed. It was hard to imagine a whole movie crew in such a remote location. We considered staying at that campsite, but it was our nineteenth wedding anniversary and we had reservations at The Bay Leaf Cafe and really wanted to go there. The choice was to stay in a beautiful campground and skip the restaurant or stay in an RV campsite that was not as nice but close enough to the restaurant that we would still be able to eat there. Food won out over campsite and it was a good thing too, because the next day rain overtook the whole place. The amenities of the RV park were very helpful in those conditions. I spent hours in a white cinder block laundry room doing laundry with Fiona and Eli while Joshua and Isaac cooked breakfast (!) and broke down camp in the pouring rain. I did an extra load of laundry with the clothes they had been wearing as well as everyone's soggy sneakers. A woman who worked there, who had a voice scratchy from lots of cigarette smoking, heard all the banging from the shoes and said, "I hope that doesn't dent my drum." It took me a while to realize that she meant the round thing that holds everything and spins around in the machine. There were no dents in the end and there was a load of dry shoes, much to everyone's delight.

We didn't exactly fit in with the RV crowd at Elkhorn, but it was fun talking with a 64 year old man from Texas married three times, with a few near death experiences and an artificial heart valve that you can hear pounding away if you are standing next to him. I asked him how those experiences changed his life and he said that they made him realize that it is best to enjoy life, and live it to its fullest, because you never know what can happen. He was certainly living his dream of getting away from the Texas heat, driving around in beautiful places and motorcycling with his honey here and there. He said that the only time he loses awareness of the somewhat painful pounding of his heart is on his motorcycle--something about the vibration of it and getting lost in the experience of joy. I always like seeing someone live their dream and am fascinated by all the ways in which each person's dream is truly a reflection of who they are.

The Badlands

The actual jail in Interior, South Dakota just outside the Badlands. Population: 71

Plains that stretch out forever.

Brothers at the Badlands.

The beautiful Badlands as far as the eye can see.

Eli waking up in the tent at the Badlands. He was very sweaty. The tent got hot in the morning.

I'm backing up a bit now since I had very little internet for the last week or so. We were in the Badlands around July 27th, which at this point, feels like about a thousand years ago. We have covered a lot of territory since then, but for now I will just say that I didn't remember the Badlands being as stunning and beautiful twenty years ago as I did on this trip. I loved the absolute abundance of these stony mountainous shapes stretching out in every direction with colorful plains in certain parts dotted with prairie dogs popping out from nowhere.

We all loved our campsite at the Badlands. We had wind, rain, and hot sun in the short time we were there. We devised a makeshift shield for our rainy windy picnic table using a plastic tarp and bungie cord. I held the tent in place will all my strength to keep it from blowing away while the rest of the family was climbing mini mountains. And we all woke up sweating in the morning from still having sweat shirts on after a cool night.

If you ever go to the Badlands, make sure you take the scenic drive all the way through them. Twenty years ago we neglected to do that, and so, did not get the full awesome experience of having our minds blown in the way we got to this time. As we drove through all we could say was "Whoa!" and "Wow!" No other words would really do.

West Yellowstone, Montana

We're in a parking lot of the Best Western in West Yellowstone, Montana, after the most amazing few days in Wyoming.

So much to say, so little internet.

More posts to come as soon as we have internet access beyond sporadic level.