We are SO home!

OK, it happened, we made it home. Drove like a bat out of, well you know where. We were lucky, we didn't hit any rain in Nebraska and we headed out making good time not stopping too often. We did stop back at our little grocery store in Mound City, MO and bought more lunch meat and bread for lunch and Mike and Tate wiped out the supply of Taffy at the little store. It is the old fashioned kind, the long strip of thin taffy made at McCraw's in Famersville, Texas and at this point, they fought who had how many pieces. We drove, and then we drove some more, finally.............home was in sight. We went directly in the bottom door to greet the very unhappy bulldog, who has now completely disowned us. He walked out the door and never looked back, could have cared less that the people who abandoned him had returned. Up the stairs Tate ran, so excited, then I hear "WHOA!" from the top of the stairs. Well, WHOA had something to do with the temperature when he came into the living room. It was a sweltering 91 degrees. A far cry from the upper 40's in the mornings in the mountains! Yep, you guessed it, the air conditioner was DOA!!! We spent the evening trying to get fans out and stay cool as we unpacked. The morning wasn't much more pleasant. Finally, our hero, the air conditioner repair man from Poorman's appliance made it out last night and finished fixing it at about 8:30 last night. At last, cool enough in the house, we were able to answer all the messages on the recorder and pay bills...........AH, home again, home again! Time to start planning the next big adventure. Thanks for joining us on our travels, I hope you had as much fun reading our blog as we had writing it. Now that we are home, I will try to add some more pictures that it wouldn't let us post on the road, so be sure to come back and check it out on the blog.

The traveling Hammers.

Saturday night and we are in Nebraska

Not much to tell today. We have been in the car about 12 hours pushing it pretty hard down the interstates. We have made it as far as Grand Island Nebraska and we are still about 7 hours from home (best we can figure out anyway). There is a good sized storm coming in behind us with heavy rain and hail, so we decided to get a room before everyone else had them gone. There is a water park directly behind us so Tate got to go swim and slide for about 1 1/2 hours. I think he had a good time, at least it looked that way from our vantage point watching from the car. We did get to see Chimney Rock today which looked pretty cool and about the most exciting thing we saw was a very cowboy town where one of the high school aged boys was driving his tractor right down the middle of the highway. That's about it for tonight. Tomorrow we should be home! I think we are ready.

The trip back has begun

Since we got in late last night, everyone slept a little later this morning. Had a nice breakfast and back in the car. There wasn't much to report, just traveled the highways heading south. We did get close to Yellowstone and saw 2 college kids on bikes (riding the opposite way) that we had talked to and loaned binoculars to while we were in Yellowstone a few days back. Wow, what athletes to be able to do that. When we talked to them they had been traveling with their bikes and gear for almost 9 weeks seeing the sights.

We decided to go through Billings (thought that was appropriate since we occasionally end up with our mail being sent there) and then down through Wyoming. Well, once we hit a road we hadn't yet seen, we got sidetracked. We found the Little BigHorn Monument and listened to a Native American Crow woman give an account of the battle of Little BigHorn. We toured the museum there and drove the grounds looking at the sights were all the battles occurred. It is part of our history and felt it would be a good learning experience for Tate.

On our trip back out, stopped at a gift shop that had a lot of Native American art and looked through it. Really nice stuff. Some of the paintings and loom work were extraordinary. Tate at this point was doing every trick possible to convince us to eat at their restaurant, we kept saying NO until Mike spotted an Indian Taco that was being served. He folded like a cheap chair! We had a super meal and settled in at Sheridan again for the night. Hopefully we can get back on track tomorrow.

Going-to-the-Sun Road

It finally happened today, we hit the wall and everyone became cranky! I think Tate has been a trooper but 7 days in the car and it finally happened..........I think we are on the verge of calling this adventure to an end.

The first thing I found out as we pulled into Glacier National Park is that Mike had misinformed me, it wasn't Road to the Sun, it was Going-to-the-Sun Road. Whatever the name, it was probably the most stunning scenery anywhere I have ever seen. We pulled into the park and there had been fires close by so there was a lot of smoke in the valleys. I can't even tell you how beautiful it must be when it is clear. The cliffs were not only breath taking, they were just on the verge of being frightening as you are driving right on the edge of the bluff looking down. There is a river in the bottom of the canyon and the trees in the canyon are huge. There is a weeping wall with water just running out of the rocks and waterfalls and glaciers everywhere. Breathtaking!!!! There is no way to describe it, just know that we will go back again! We had lunch on the side of a bluff and Tate played in the spray of a waterfall. We continued our quest and did see 2 big horn sheep while we were traveling.

On the other side of the park, you go out and then back in and we went to a more remote area with a lake and an old lodge. It too was beautiful and ha such an awesome view. The old woodwork in it was rustic and larger than life it seemed. We continued for a while in search of some alleged bears in the area, but never spotted them. Just Grizzly signs and warnings not to get out of your car.

The trek then took us to the Canadian border which we had intended to cross, but the border patrol we spoke with was such a Peach, we decided we might just cross and then never get back. We even asked how long it normally took and he informed us that it could be "Who knows how long, if everything is in order" or we may be days if it wasn't, again "who knows" so we turned around. We decided we had been far enough and it was time to start back.

Our quest back began with needing to find gasoline. Well, we ended up finding a station right in the center of the Blackfeet Reservation and couldn't get the pump to work. We had just come from incredible beauty just miles back to incredible poverty. It makes my heart sick to see such poverty and know that in some way your ancestry had something to do with it. With no gas, we traveled on seeing a few towns within driving range only to find from the farm boys on the side of the road by the bar, with their dog chasing cars in the middle of what was supposed to be a highway that there wasn't any gas for at least 36 more miles (any direction). So once again, we pressed on hoping and praying that we would make it somewhere, anywhere with gas and finally we pulled in on fumes (coasting downhills with the AC off to save fuel) and filled up with less than 1 gallon to spare. We have once before when we were first married ran out of gas on a Reservation and I feared it would be a repeat. The only difference is we were younger then and hiking out wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds now at our age. By this time, we started looking for a room and once again, the Inn was full. There were so many fires in the area and all the rooms were full of firefighters. So once again we pressed on, full tank of gas and on our way to Great Falls. Then the darnedest thing happened, our highway became gravel! There was road construction and a gravel road for 2o some miles. By this time, it is nearly dark, there are no people on this road and even more rarely a house! By the time we made it to a town, it was so late and we were so pooped that we were beyond excited to find an overpriced place to sleep. Tate made a mad dash for the pool and had a swim and visited with a girl from California out visiting family. We were so glad to settle in for the night. Everyone slept very well.

Exciting day, but too pooped to type tonight.

Well, all is well with the traveling Hammers' but we just got to the motel after a very long day in the car and boy do we have stories to tell................but they are going to have to wait until tomorrow. Goodnight!

Well, here we are sitting in a motel in Polson, Montana getting ready to enter Glacier Park early in the morning. Today was a pretty laid back day. We got up and then went over to the Rocky Mountain Museum in Bozeman before we left town. It was wonderful, we got to see all kinds of exhibits but clearly the family favorites were the dinosaur exhibit and the King Tut exhibit. Tate had a ball going through all of the dinosaur info and bones they had there. It is supposed to be one of the largest since Montana is known for their dinosaur digs. They were actually even doing a live feed to England and were on a show there (we think about like our PBS) filming from the museum and from a dig in eastern Montana. It was very interesting and pretty exciting to listen to. I got several pictures of Tate in front of about every dino we could stand in front of! Mike loved going through the King Tut exhibit. It was beautiful with tons of gold everything. Then off to the planetarium to watch a film about dinosaurs. Ok, soft comfortable seats with it super dark, I knew we would have a challenge just keeping Mike awake and we were right. I am really thinking he didn't see much of the dino film. There was also a Picasso exhibit with his pottery. I am not thinking that it looked much different than most of the pieces of pottery my kids came home with in elementary school. Maybe I just don't have a good appreciation for abstract art. The BEST part of the museum was a old homestead house that they moved and set up out on the property. It was complete with all the outbuildings and such that you would have found in 1900. There was a huge garden being worked by two men in period clothing and about 4 or 5 ladies in the house. The wood cooking stove was working in the kitchen and it smelled like heaven in there. They live in the house from 9-5 daily and work the garden, chicken house, etc. All the furniture was period furniture and they were cooking foods that were grown there and also venison steak that the people of that time in the area would have eaten. Tate loved it and pitched right in helping pump the water from the well and going out to gather eggs out of the hen house. In turn, I did see him getting a fresh tomato to eat and told us that he got a hot roll with butter and sugar right out of the oven thrown at him to eat. He says it was the best ever! He wanted to stay forever and they wanted to adopt him. I think he would have been a very happy boy if we had left him. Mike and I sat out on the back porch and talked to Jack. He had been working in the garden and was coming in for lunch. Jack was a wonderful story teller and we could have spent the whole day there with him. He grew up in northern Missouri and moved to Montana. He talked about raising mules and walking horses as a boy and leasing them out to work. He was so interesting and a very young 80 something. You just can't get information like this from a book.

We finally (sadly) left Bozeman. We all liked this town better than any so far. There were plenty of arts downtown, people dinning out on the streets, and just wonderfully friendly people. We stopped to eat on the way out of town and discussed that we could have easily stayed another day or two.

We crossed the 2,000 mile point today while driving. We weren't in the car as long as normal, but it seemed like a long day today. At one point, I needed to make an emergency bathroom stop. Let me tell you, that is a difficult thing in the middle of no-where. When we finally found an exit the first thing I noticed while pulling off was the "NO SERVICES" sign. Well, that wasn't really an option at that point. I was afraid we were about to the find a tree on the side of the road point, but that isn't much of an option either...............there aren't many trees where we were. I had noticed a sale barn out in the middle of no-where about a mile back. My instructions were simple.............take me to the sale barn. Mike looked at me like I had 3 heads! I figure growing up working at a trail ride where we were always going to the sale barns that I would be able to find a bathroom there. Well, I jumped out and asked the brand inspector and he said sure. Problem solved and boy did I feel better. I must confess though, when I walked in I once again was looked at from the boys working the cattle like I had 3 heads again! I am sure they rarely see strangers, let alone strangers asking to use the facilities! Oh well, problem solved and we were back on the road.

At yet another bathroom break (this one at a roadside park and not for me!) we saw a sign that we were directly across the road from the creek that they first found gold in Montana in. Of course Tate had to go. There were gold flakes everywhere that you could see. Nothing big, but tons of flakes. Tate also spotted large trout in the creek. We finally had to start the car as if we were leaving him. I am not sure what pained him more, not getting to fish or not finding a chunk of gold. He did leave with a pop bottle full of silt and gold flakes though.

As we traveled, we came over a hill to see and smell smoke everywhere. A sign was on the side of the road that said do not get out of car next 10 miles. Missoula had forest fires burning right before you get into town. It was scary to see how much had already burned and they were still working on getting it put out. They are thinking there is a chance for rain tonight, I hope it gets there soon.

Well, as I said, we made it to Polson, had Mexican outside on the patio of a restaurant overlooking Flathead Lake. It is huge and stunning to see with mountains all around it. Tonight we are all settled in, windows open right at the lake side. We have a cool breeze and can hear the water crashing at the shore line. I can't wait to see the Road to the Sun first thing in the morning.

Good Wednesday morning

I thought I would try to add a few pictures while everyone was still sleeping. Happy hump day all.