June 26 – Glasher Nashonal Park, Montana – I went fishing tonight. I cought a fish! It was a lake trout. We fished in McDonald Lake in the park. We went on the Red Bus Tour. We went up the mountons. And hiked Avolanch. We are going too Yellowstone next.

We finally had our first relaxing day on Tuesday! The kids slept until 9:00am, which was surprising even though they were up until 10:30 the night before.

After breakfast we hiked around camp to check everything out. Then we walked down to Lake McDonald to go fishing. We did not get any bites but had a great time (video below).

After lunch we drove to Apgar and found a relatively flat bike path through a beautiful forest. The peaceful sounds of birds chirping and Aspens rustling only interrupted by Kellan screaming out because he wasn’t the “leader.” He did great on his admittedly over-sized bike, but needed to be bribed with ice cream to finish the 4mi ride.

Finished up with a campfire dinner and a 9:00pm ranger presentation.

Posts will be delayed from time to time since we are moving often and Internet connectivity is predictably spotty. It is particularly hard to find the time to edit/upload a 220MB video like the one below.

The trip is going as we expected, for the most part. Breathtaking scenery, lots of driving, kids eager to explore and be on their own. A few things we have learned that may or may not be valuable to others:

1. Every stop takes 4x longer than you expect. We planned to quickly stop for 15 minutes to fill up and make lunch. One hour and 15 minutes later, we are cleaning up spills, finding a place to put the 4 lb of cherries we just bought and wondering how we are going to fix the chip in our windshield (turns out it was already chipped and fixed).
2. Four-year-old boys are crazy loud! They whisper at a volume you would think is reserved for a Seahawks game. We have told Kellan to quiet down 300 times and at this point it is clear it is not going to sink in.
3. RVs get really shitty mileage and everything breaks. We did under 6 mpg for the first 200 miles. In addition, we already have a broken storage latch, wood panel molding, and the fresh water gauge doesn’t work. We thought we chipped the windshield and spent an absurd amount of time trying to find a convenient place to fix it…but it turns out it was already chipped and fixed, and we just overlooked it on the inspection.
4. If you let the kids run off on their own they may not get eaten by bears (yet), but they will bring back some crazy stuff. Greta came leaping into the RV with half a deer rib cage and vertebrae. At least we think it was a deer.

We are now in Glacier and looking forward to not driving tomorrow! Here is the video from the first leg.

Are we ready? Not a chance. But what choice do we have at this point.

After a full day of packing we think we have planed for every contingency, every speed bump (we have FLARES for Christ’s sake), every weather condition. But I guarantee we are forgetting a ton of stuff.

The technical requirements were a bit extreme. We have at least 12 devices that require charging. And figuring out how to stream a video library to multiple TVs in a moving vehicle with no internet connection was more difficult than it should have been. But I believe we have cracked the code.

If you are thinking that we are “camping” and should be off the grid, first I would say, “If I was camping, I would not be dragging around a full kitchen and queen sized bed.” Then I would also point out you clearly have not tried to keep a four year old occupied on a 6+ hour road trip.

We also received our first windshield note today. One of our neighbors is very concerned about how our vehicle is bound to force them to hit multiple bicycles and cars as they pull out of their street and it needs to be removed immediately. I could explain how ridiculous this is but it would not be worth while. People simply hate large vehicles…another side benefit we will learn to adjust to over the next 31 days.

With any luck the next post will be from Coeur d’Alene!

We have officially taken possession of what we will call home for the next 4 1/2 weeks. All it took was a short walk through and a few signatures.

It was very interesting to hear how Kelly’s tone had changed since we walked in and agreed to rent the RV 3 months ago. I distinctly remember him telling us how easy it was to drive and that we should not be intimidated. At one point he asked me, “Guess how many calls I have gotten from renters broken down during their trip in the last five years?” My guess was twenty but Kelly assured me it was zero.

Fast forward a few months when the deposit is in hand and we are two days away from the trip. We sit down in his office to go over paperwork and during a lull in conversation he exhales and says, “I have to say [long pause], you two are really brave to be taking on this kind of a trip on your first time out.” I took this as a compliment but Hilary quickly corrected me that was not the right way to think about the comment.

Next came the dagger. “So if you are driving 5,000 miles, the chance of you NOT breaking down at some point are slim to none.” So apparently we have that to look forward to.

The initial freeway ride home was exhilarating and I’m proud to say I managed not to pee myself. After that ride I have officially christened our vehicle “Messi,” do to her stunning ability to shift laterally left or right without warning while moving forward at high speed. I actually called Kelly to ask if it was normal for it to feel so incredibly loose. He told me that was one of the fun nuances I will learn to get used to. My cramping shoulders and pecs sure hope so!

The good news is that at least for now the kids are SUPER fired up about the trip and the RV. They have picked out their beds and it was a struggle to convince them they could not sleep in the coach tonight.

Tomorrow is packing day! We plan to test the storage compartments. Ticket to any Seahawks game for anyone who reminds us to bring something we would have forgotten, hard to get/expensive to get on the road, and surely need on the trip (I am totally serious).