The Dog and Baby Show Takes to the Road

We were told by more than one person that the idea was crazy, but we did it anyway and loved it. Eleven days on the road again, this time with the Dog & Baby Show. We went as far north as Glacier National Park, camped out a few nights and visited with friends. It is nice to know that our traveling days are not over.

 

Our first stop was in West Virgina where our friends from Capitol Hill, Tom and John, lent us a lovely cabin in the woods.

Our second night we stayed in Cincinnati at one of the most amazing houses I have ever seen where we had a lovely dinner with Lynne and her son Nick. Later that evening we were joined by Lynne's husband, Bob, who treated us to wine and the perusal of his amazing collections of taxidermy, rare books, and beautiful knives. Unfortunately I was too busy being spoiled to take any pictures, but we promised to stop in on our way back. Lynne, however, took this wonderful picture of Sophie Lee:

The original idea for the trip was to follow the Lewis and Clark trail and we did follow the Missouri River for quite a bit. We saw several historic sights and museums. Later in the trip we went by Traveler's Rest, the place where Lewis and Clark prepared to cross the Bitterroot Mountains, one of the most difficult parts of their journey. We stopped at the Lolo Pass for one of our frequent nurse the baby/walk the dog stops.

We visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the North Dakota badlands, where TR spent much of his time ranching, hunting, and exploring while trying to recover from the sudden death of his wife and mother (they died only hours apart and only 2 days after his first child was born). It was fantastic country. Exactly the kind of place you would want to be if you believe in the vigorous life to hold off the sadness of the world.

Unfortunately just north of the TR's national park the sadness, or at least the degradation, of the world takes center stage. It is the heart of North Dakota's fracking boom. In the middle of nowhere there were traffic jams, work crews furiously tearing up road and building more of it, prefab dormitories and cheapo housing developments were being slapped up all over, and random fires burned here and there in the haze. One minute we were driving through a paradise of grasslands, canyons, and hoodoos, the next minute we were surrounded by the worst of the Jersey Turnpike.

In the middle of that there was a tremendous explosion like overhead thunder, loud and scary. Just when I had chalked it up to natural causes, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a fireball like I haven't see since Tom Winkler's last airshow, where one of the performances featured walls of what appeared to be flaming napalm.  It was horrifying. We saw black smoke billowing into the air for miles as emergency vehicles screamed past us in the opposite direction. We got out of there as fast as we could, not resting until we made it to a quiet little reservation town in Montana where we could do the dog and baby duties in peace.

We got very close to Canada and I thought for a minute of making a detour to Medicine Hat because, well, it is called Medicine Hat. I thought better of it and instead we went to Glacier National Park were we took the well named Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Sometimes the best places are unknown to you before you see them. Our best camp spot by far was on the edge of Flathead Lake, the biggest lake in the west. Imagine Lake Tahoe, only in Montana and with much less development. Crystal clear and refreshing, Hilary and I enjoyed swimming in it almost as much as Celeste did.

The next day we took a two hour driving tour at the National Bison Range and saw bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, and deer, as well as bison. 

Our last stop was in Coos Bay, Oregon where we stayed for an extra day with our old friends the Robinsons (who we also visited a few days after we got engaged). Jake and Stephanie have wonderful boys, Wiley and Caelan who were great with Sophie Lee and gave her a lot of their old clothes. The Carhartt overalls have become a staple of her wardrobe, and we are thinking of getting her a little hammer to hang off the side.

Our final day of the trip Sophie Lee and Celeste saw the ocean and redwood trees for the first time. Finally we made it to San Francisco where Sophie got to meet her godfather, Mike Grafton.