The 2022 Summer Adventure Officially Begins!

This summer, we set out in Forest, our Jayco camper, having shed our rookie camper status, and with a grand itinerary.

Our destination: Glacier National Park and the Canadian Rockies. This beautiful spot stole my heart on a family vacation in 1995 and had a similar impact on Eli when he backpacked there with Jeff and Joel Pollack in 1997. To get there, we are making our way west by way of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota and a visit to my aunt and uncle in Billings, Montana. To return, we will cross Canada by way of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta before trekking through Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Finally, we will turn south into the Boundary Waters, now called Voyageurs National Park, in Minnesota.

We hit the outskirts of Minneapolis where Amy, my former college roommate, met us for dinner and brought donuts. As we were clearly not in the swing of things, I did the very non-21st century thing and managed to not take any photos during our visit.

But, we did manage to dress Toby up in his best road trip gear and also snap a shot of Ben drinking his beloved gas station hot chocolate at his favorite road-side pit stop, the Dino Mart.

The next morning, we set off early, staring down a long drive across North Dakota. We had a furious headwind and managed to tow at an atrocious six miles per gallon, meaning we had to stop for gas every 60-90 minutes.

Finally, about 15 minutes to our destination, as declared by GPS, a lone American Buffalo appeared on the horizon and then we knew we had arrived in the West, as we reached our first destination: Theodore Roosevelt National Park.