The Munchkin's Notebook

Lake McDonald Today we discovered that the hotel does not have breakfast,  and the most useful breakfast place opens at 7:30AM. I personally would have liked to have been out already heading to the park at 7:30AM or in the park, since parking spots at popular trail heads fill up quickly.   We had breakfast at Glacier Highland Cafe, which was ok, and reasonably fast. From breakfast it was to the park, with the first stop being the visitor center.    For those that don’t know, Glacier NP went to a ticketing system for park entry, so unless you are staying at one of the lodges in the park you need a ticket, which is good for 7 days.  Tickets went on sale on May 28th;  we got ours that day and we were lucky to get one,  they sold out within an hour for all dates from June to September.   Entering the park was fairly easy, before the actual entrance they had three rangers/volunteers checking to make sure you had a valid entry ticket before you ev...

  Today started with an early morning trip to WalMart to pick up a flat of water and some juice to replenish our supply.  We will use refillable water bottles in the park; we didn’t use those on the drive because they don’t fit in any of the cup holders.  After our resupply stop at WalMart it was back on the road to the Belton Chalet , which is just outside of the west Glacier NP entrance.    The drive started out very clouded over and stayed that way for about 75-percent of the last 25-percent of the drive had rain.  We stopped twice on our 4 hour drive, once at a gas station about half way in and then again at Marias Pass which is a two-for-one stop because there is also a monument to Theadore Roosevelt as well as signs about the pass.  The monument, which is an obelisk, was constructed in 1931 in honor of the president who made forest conservation a national policy.  From there it was on to the hotel.   We arrived too early to ch...

Today was another long day, even though it was only a 7 hour drive.  We started the day at 0700 with breakfast at Taco John’s. I did not have a taco, I just ate the potatoes ole, which were basically tater tot crowns with some flavoring while Jim had the beef and potato burrito.  After breakfast we started the drive around 0730 to our first destination, the Painted Canyon Visitor Center of Theodore Rosevelt NP ,  which was about 30-minutes down the road. This area is basically the badlands of North Dakota, the less famous sibling of the Badlands NP in South Dakota.  We stopped here for about a half hour or so taking pictures and so I could get a stamp in my park passport. What is interesting about this first visitor center is it is also a rest stop, so it was easy for Jim to drive the CrossTrek around the parking lot to get a picture with the national park sign. From there we went down the road a little bit to the Theodore  Rosevelt NP Southern Unit Visito...

Today we started our journey at 0700 CST and arrived at our destination at about 1815 MNT, thus it was a long day.   The states are getting bigger now, we only covered about three states,  the rest of Wisconsin, all of Minnesota, and a good part of North Dakota.  While it was a long drive we didn’t do a whole lot.  We had a rest stop right before we got out of Wisconsin and a couple in Minnesota, those potty breaks are important.    Our longest rest stop for the day was in Fargo, North Dakota where we had lunch at the “Space Alien Grill and Bar” and stopped at the Fargo Visitor center.  The food was typical bar and grill fare, the only a-typical things on the menu were the super sized baked potato meals and the pickle fries. Our friend Christina got the half taco baked potato and salad combo while Jim got the pickle fries.  The pickle fries were a bit odd, while we have had fried pickles before but pickle spears were a bit strange, not really...

We started our journey out the last remaining bit of Ohio at a bright and early 0800, from there it was through Indiana and  Illinois, to our stopping point for the night in Wisconsin.   The journey through Indiana was a bit rainy and uneventful.  We also went through the time change from eastern to central time, which threw off our initial lunch plan, since when we planned to have lunch at 1100 EST became 1000 CST and places aren’t serving lunch then.  This resulted in us having a later lunch then usual due to having to make it through Chicago before finding a place to stop.  I must say that I was rather disappointed though with the crossing the border between Indiana and Illinois because there is no welcome to Illinois sign, it just welcomes you to Chicago.  The drive through Chicago was congested, construction filled, and all around big city driving.  Once we made it through the city,  we discovered Illinois doesn’t really like to identify...

  This year we are doing something a little different and road tripping about ¾ of the way across the country to Glacier National Park.  We decided on the road trip due to three things 1) the pandemic made getting flights and rental cars difficult since everyone is rebuilding capacity at this time, 2) our move from Ohio to Virginia made determine where to book flights out of difficult since timing of the move was in flux, and  3) we wanted Teddy (our dog) to be under as little stress as possible. So we wanted him to stay with family instead of a brand new pet sitter; we would have had to rush to find one.     These factors led us to just doing a road trip this year.     The first day of the trip I’m counting as “Day 0” because it is very similar to the first day of any of our air plane trips, by which I mean not very exciting.  We have done the drive from Virginia to Ohio several times so it is not new and different. The only difference ...

We recently moved from Dayton, OH to Sterling, VA for my job and it was not a fun move.  The first stressor was finding a home.  As most people trying to find a home right now are aware the market is extremely hot and it difficult to buy a “starter” house or just a house in general. Basically, the homes go up on Thursday or Friday and are gone by Monday while going for above asking price.  We also had the added complication of searching for a home virtually, because of the way the market is, a house hunting trip would have been pointless.    Thankfully we had a good agent through Redfin , who really helped us through the process and worked with our timeline and restrictions.  Also, Redfin made it easy for us to tour the homes virtually, which I think let us see more homes then if we had to drive to each one individually.   Additionally, the First Federal Bank we went with for the loan, was great to work with. The loan officer really detailed...