  Let me begin by saying that this article&nbsp;sites&nbsp;no scientific evidence. As a&nbsp;honeymoon idea I thought it might not be&nbsp;a bad idea to drive clear cross the country&nbsp;in a rented car, stopping along&nbsp;the way&nbsp;at a few of our national parks and monuments. Leaving from Hartland, Wisconsin with aim to hit the coast in Washington. The route would have to be a strategic one to hit a good number of these national interests. It came down to the South Dakota Badlands N.P., Mount Rushmore N.M., Jewel Cave N.M., Yellowstone N.P., Grand Teton N.P., Craters of the Moon N.M., Mount Rainier N.P., Olympic N.P., Cascades N.P., Glacier N.P., and Theodore Roosevelt N.P.
How much time I wondered, more importantly how much time could I get. Workplaces tend to be slightly lenient to newlyweds so I managed to get 16 consecutive days off. With $1800 in wedding money from my loving relatives and friends Casey and I were off. It should also be noted that Casey is 24 weeks pregnant with our child Kali. Casey and I are reasonably adept travelers, in fact,&nbsp;24 weeks ago Casey and were exploring the Big Sur National Forest in California. I especially live for the traveling, I toil away hours planning and take great pleasure in exploring.
&nbsp; Our&nbsp;journey together began Saturday 6/26/04 our wedding day. The weather, in a dramatic change became very pleasant, 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We married and had the reception at my parents house in Eagle, WI. Marriage ceremony and reception went excellent. Got a somewhat late start on Sunday because a friend of mine demanded that we bet him to walk over the bonfire coals&nbsp;barefoot.
We all&nbsp;knew it was&nbsp;sheer madness and refused to bet him, but he did it anyway and&nbsp;was&nbsp;driven to&nbsp;the&nbsp;hospital&nbsp;$63 richer, but with severe 2nd burns on his feet. &nbsp;The drive to South Dakota is relatively uneventful. Minnesota gives your eyes a wonderful welcome crossing the Mississippi river, but soon glazes them over with endless miles of flat cornfields. Wind mills become tremendously interesting. Made it as far as Souix Falls, SD on our first day of driving. 505 miles.&nbsp; Day 3. The next morning a Monument to the Native American Cow god was the first thing I ran across. It is interesting that all the cattle that are penned in with it stay on the backsides of hills, careful to keep out of sight of the thing. Local gossip claims that the cows approach the monument at 7:00 am and 7:00 pm and they bow their heads in a strange prayer.
Very strange indeed.&nbsp;It appears that human life in SD is wholly dependent on billboards and that without them travelers might get the notion that the state is more or less devoid of motels and amusement. I got suckered into stopping at the worthless Corn Palace, the feature content of about 40 billboards. The Badlands take you by surprise, they appear to be giant sand castles grossly out of scale. All the spires and knife ridges, as far as the eye can see, have exactly the same red and tan color pattern and all the sediment segments line up perfectly over a huge expanse.&nbsp; Entirely logical when you think about it, but the brain stumbles at the sight of it.
Up close the first thing you notice is how incredibly fun they are to climb around and or on. At the first pullout kids are crawling all over the ridges. After exploring the nature trails and boardwalks I would recommend getting off the trails and search for fossils.
Search the yellow clay areas for the best chance of finding any. I searched&nbsp;but&nbsp;yielded no fossils. Casey and I hiked into the wilderness a bit with a blanket and watched the sun set and the acrobatics of some bats. There was a full moon and more stars than I have ever noticed, we had plenty of light to make it back to our little cabin inside the park. 790 miles. &nbsp; Day 4. After 1,247&nbsp;signs, finally we have arrived in Wall Drug. The ultimate&nbsp;setup job. Wall to wall junk, everything for sale. I considered myself lucky to leave only with a free bumper sticker.&nbsp;&nbsp;The first thing you notice coming into Mt. Rushmore is how goddamn pretty the Blackhills are. You don't get a chance to really walk amongst them inside the park.
Getting off the lone trail is prohibited and strictly enforced. The monument was quite impressive, but my mind was preoccupied with the question of "Why are the flags still at half mast for Reagan? " and with the disappointment of being unable to really explore the land. Jewel Cave was a little more interesting. We took a tour through the cave. 723 steps that my wife was dreading and an hour and twenty minutes underground. Worth every penny and the pain of traveling with a group and tour guide. We continued west and called it a night in Moorcroft, WY. It was a cheap motel and I haggled the guy down 15 bucks on the room, but it still was not worth it.
Casey claims to have come away with flea bites. 1014 miles. &nbsp; Day 5. There are&nbsp;vast expanses&nbsp;of our country that are hardly worth opening your eyes for. The stretch between Moorcroft, WY and Yellowstone N.P.&nbsp;happens to be&nbsp;one of them. Right in the middle of this expanse, however, is the first taste of the mountains&nbsp;to come.&nbsp;The&nbsp;Bighorn Mountains rise like an oasis&nbsp;in the high dessert. Chances are you might even&nbsp;see moose or two. The Bighorn's also leave you with the big question, to take highway 14 or alt 14 through&nbsp;different passes. As it was explained to me, both routes are equally long and equally pretty. But, Alt 14 has a steep grade, 10%, and&nbsp;a larger number of&nbsp;switchbacks and one might&nbsp;infer that&nbsp;it&nbsp;would require a bit more road driving skill to negotiate. It seemed to&nbsp;me that alt 14 has a few more towns along it that will slow you down and generally depress you than hwy 14.
Getting&nbsp;past Cody, WY is when things begin to look up. The&nbsp;drive into Yellowstone is gorgeous and once your there you might as well hit every big&nbsp;attraction.&nbsp;It is not hard&nbsp;to take hundreds of pictures in Yellowstone, everyone there does. The thermal areas of Yellowstone rival the Badlands in strangeness and are probably unrivaled. However, there is a price to pay for witnessing this spectacle of nature.
Lots&nbsp;of people and lots of traffic. 600,000 years ago&nbsp;Yellowstone catastrophically blew up, unfortunately there were not many tourists there to experience it.&nbsp;Casey and I toured the east side of the Grand Loop road and stopped at the mud volcano area and&nbsp;at the upper falls of the Yellowstone river. The bison and elk are numerous along the roadways and care little for&nbsp;traffic&nbsp;or&nbsp;gawkers. We stayed&nbsp;two nights in a&nbsp;cozy little cabin in Mammoth Hot Springs. The hot springs area itself,&nbsp;consists of very unusual terraces, bone white and where the&nbsp;boiling hot,&nbsp;mild sulfuric acid solution runs&nbsp;a weird algae like organism&nbsp;grows. They are called&nbsp;thermophiles and they range in color from&nbsp;shades of orange and red to white. 1447 miles.&nbsp; Day&nbsp;6. Casey and I drove down the westside of the loop to check out the&nbsp;various geyser basins and, of course, to witness Old&nbsp;Faithful blast off.&nbsp;The Park is beginning to recover from the 1988 fire that&nbsp;burned most of&nbsp;Yellowstone and most of the lodgepole pines are only about 10 ft in height.&nbsp;The forests are littered with old skeletons&nbsp;that tower over the newly emerging forest.
But&nbsp;lodgepole&nbsp;pine forests never have compared with the mighty redwood and spruce forests of the western coast or the oak savannahs of the&nbsp;Midwest. Certainly it is not the reason anyone comes to Yellowstone. The whole&nbsp;westside&nbsp;is scattered with geyser basins each with an assortment of unique&nbsp;geysers, pools, mudpots and fumaroles.
The air stinks of sulfur and&nbsp;you can not&nbsp;help but&nbsp;think&nbsp;you&nbsp;are on some strange planet or visiting the planet in a much older time.&nbsp; The Old Faithful area&nbsp;has the most&nbsp;abundant and revered&nbsp;&nbsp;of the features and is subsequently the most packed with visitors. The trade off is worth it, but they do not call Yellowstone the Disneyland of national parks for nothing. After spending the day shoulder to shoulder on the boardwalks and bumper to bumper on the roads the most relaxing thing to do is take a one way trail into the wilderness and quickly leave that&nbsp;to go completely free style through the mountains. This is not allowed in the thermal areas and would defy common sense.&nbsp;But I guarantee you that you will not see another soul in the mountains though.
Yellowstone encompasses 2 million acres and 2 million visitors spend their time on maybe 200 acres.&nbsp;Really getting away from the roads impresses you with the fact that Yellowstone is more than just geysers,&nbsp;pools, mudpots and&nbsp;fumaroles. Day 7. The drive south out of Yellowstone pits beauty and frustration in an all out slugfest that continues long past Grand Teton N.P. However, beauty lands a good blow to frustration when the Grand Teton peaks loom off to the west. The Grand Teton view almost puts every other scenic mountain view to shame. With no foothills the peaks climb from a flat plain to nearly two miles into the sky.
Pioneers who came into this valley on their way to&nbsp;California must have cursed their luck.&nbsp;This is actually how the town of Jackson was created, tired and smart pioneers who knew damn well they was no way in hell&nbsp;they were gonna make it over them mountains with a wagon. After leaving the park we&nbsp;drove on for Craters of the Moon N.M.&nbsp; The drive through southern Idaho demands the rational mind to question why anyone would like to&nbsp;live there.&nbsp;Very dry and very flat. In the middle of the dryness and flatness the&nbsp;Devil staked his claim and decorated&nbsp;his area with homely lava flows and black craters.
All quite recently too, right around the time Christ&nbsp;was born. Coincidence? Anyway, the Devil&nbsp;has a unique eye for&nbsp;landscaping that is worth checking out and spending the night in. Plus for those looking to check out&nbsp;all the wierd lava flow features, Idaho is a lot closer than Hawaii. Despite the illegality of rock collecting it is almost impossible not to take&nbsp;home just a little piece of hell. 1920 miles&nbsp; Day 8. From Craters of the Moon N.M. to Mount Rainier N.P., this shakes up to be a long drive. Luckily we gain an hour briefly catching up with the sun. Eastern Oregon is the only highlight of this drive Before arriving to the park. A short foray into the mountains&nbsp;with&nbsp;a different type of pine tree growing all over them. Once you finally get inside Washington a bit and Mt. Rainier first comes into sight it is imperative that you stop for fresh cherries, provided that they are in season which is about all summer.
The Wenatchee National Forest that borders Mt. Rainier is absolutely beautiful.&nbsp;In fact all of western Washington can be summed up quite nicely in three words; "Pretty damn pretty. " Mount Rainier towers over some other rather tall mountains and lush alpine meadows home to hundreds of species of wildflower. We stayed in Paradise, WA&nbsp;in an old&nbsp;chalet. &nbsp;I hiked up 1500 ft from the inn to where a thick fog had developed. The rest of the surrounding mountains were visible, but there was about 7000 ft of Mt. Rainier that was still shrouded.
Much of my climb was over snow and I passed a few downhill skiers on my way up. Supposedly&nbsp;at this time of year and especially because it was the Fourth of July weekend the park is supposed to be packed, even impossible to park.&nbsp;Thankfully,&nbsp;this was not the case and the neat old lodge we stayed in was relatively quiet. The crowd that this place gathers consists of mainly foreigners and classy Americans. Casey and I do not fit the mold, but are hardly ones to care. At the 'lounge' I demanded that the bartender stop playing godawful Sting music and I slipped in a Muddy Waters CD of mine. This greatly improved the atmosphere&nbsp;of the place and landed me free beers for the rest of the evening. 2554 miles. ....To be continued &nbsp; JD Brenny urlLink Wedding Pic.JPG urlLink Badlands.JPG urlLink Jewel Cave.JPG urlLink Mammoth Hot Springs.JPG urlLink Morning Glory pool.JPG G urlLink rand Teton.JPG urlLink Craters of the Moon.JPG urlLink Mt Rainier.JPG 
