So the long awaited trip centering around The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone national parks has begun. When I planned out the trip during Christmas break, I knew there would be a snag or two. What trip doesn’t have one? But this trip has been coming together like as smoothly as a Boeing 787………wait. Let me modify that. This trip has been coming together as smoothly as a Boeing 777, everything has fallen into place perfectly. Until about 11 hours before we were to hit the road.

Nik came down with 103 temperature and was not feeling well at all. The trip was now in question and may have to be canceled. Michelle was up at various times of the night with him. When I got up a little before 5am, Nik was hot to the touch and covered in sweat but he felt cold. His sheets and blankets were drenched. At this point I had accepted the trip was off. I would start making phone calls later in the morning to cancel reservations.

 But a miracle appeared. Nik, with great intestinal fortitude, refused to be sick and sweated out his fever. He was fine and bouncing off the walls with excitement to go! This was crazy, just hours before he was in terrible shape and thought a doctor trip and cancelation of the big trek was all but written in stone. After showers, we started to pack the rig up and make sure we had everything needed. We left the house about 90 minutes later than I had wanted but we were leaving, I could deal with it very easily.

Our trip took us east on highway 2, same as last year but this time we turned south on US 97 through the mountains to Ellensburg where we caught I-82 through Yakima and Tri-City.  Once we intersected with US 12 we followed that the entire way to Walla-Walla. We arrived to Whitman Mission national historic site with a couple hours before they shut down, perfect.

Whitman Mission national historic site was the first destination of our trip that involves national park sites along our way. We parked and started to dig out Nik’s Junior Ranger hat and his vest with all his badges on when out walks a national park ranger. He was so impressed with Nik’s array of badges from parks around the country he had to get a picture.

So off we went inside the ranger station to get our national park passport stamped and to learn about this place in history. It was very interesting and they have many artifacts from the site. Nik was able to earn a junior ranger badge for his collection and a good time was had. We even found a snake skin, no rattles though. One of the rangers thought it was really cool so we told him where to find it and he took off to check it out.

After we left the Whitman Mission we continued on to Walla-Walla to find our motel, of course we had no idea where it was so we called On-Star. Took us right to the place with no problem at all and after checking in and having a Subway sandwich for supper, we are resting up for our trek down through Oregon and into Idaho tomorrow to get to the Haggerman Fossil Beds national monument.

For pictures of todays events, look to the left one the home page and click on Grand Tetones/Yellowstone Day1.