Our Two Week Camping Adventure to Montana and Back!

Playing in Joseph's hammock

Our first stop at Mormon Island 

Peek a Boo

Malachi wanted to hold Gideon in his car seat

At Mt. Rushmore with my sweetheart!

Mt. Rushmore!

Going down the stairs at Mr. Rushmore!

The family at the Mt. Rushmore museum

More of Mt. Rushmore

At the lake on the paddle boats

Malachi likes camping

Gideon thinks camping is pretty cool!

Just changing diapers, while camping.  Look over the van to see the top of our tent!

Looking at all the Indian names at the Battle of Bighorn Memorial

Indian doll I can relate too, although she had a few more children 

Getting ready for the water park!

At Johnny Carinos

Playing at Chuck e cheese

Caleb loves watermelon!

We switched babies

Travis, Gideon and his Grandma

Samuel playing with cousins

Malachi playing at the park

Gideon likes being on Daddy's back

Samuel was sharing Huckleberry sorbet with me

Gideon so happy with Daddy!

Travis and his siblings, (watch out for the cat hair)

Gideon with Grandpa Jim

Uncle Michael with his nieces and nephews

Malachi playing under the porch at Marlene's house

Gideon loves the big bears at costco

Gideon loves Grandpa Jim's deer

Getting treats at the parrot

All the cousins!!

Samuel got a fish hook in his toe at the lake

Joseph in the lake

Playing in the cold water!

Austin and the girls finally getting in

Little Malachi fell asleep

So did Gideon!

Watching all the crazy people in the cold water!

Travis got all the way in

Malachi is just not sure about this cold water

Girls got braver

I think I will just nap here in the sun

Such a cute baby!

yummy, watermelon

At the park

Happy Birthday Malachi

Joseph wrestling with his Uncle Michael

Austin making beautiful chalk murals

Maia, Gideon and I

Exploring Travis' old high school

Samuel can be scary

Malachi like to see in the dark

I think it is too big for Gideon

Eating Ice Cream makes getting stung by a bee on your birthday all better

Baking soda paste on the wasp sting

At the farmer's market

At the Carousel

At the library

OOoohh, pretty bird

Going down the pole

When Gideon is teething he sticks his lower lip out

Swinging on the swings at Cowboy church

Malachi riding the stick horse

Malachi got candy at the needle in a haystack game

Gideon with his Grandma

Walking the trails at Yellowstone

Old Faithful

Trying to keep warm, on a really cold night

Full Van!

Beautiful scenery

Travis helping Malachi wash the windshield at the gas station 

So, about a week after we purchased our new van, we put it to the test by driving over 40 hours over the next two weeks, traveling through five states.  (Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Colorado)  We had quite the adventures.  Travis started is vacation time on the 21st of July, so he was able to help us get all ready for our camping adventures.  I am so grateful for that, I never would have gotten us ready without his help.  I'm so glad we had a nice big 12 passenger van for our travels, it is very good for family vacations.
Day 1-
We left the morning of the 27th.  Travis was able to fill up all our nooks and crannies in the van and managed to fit everything in the van.  It was very crowded and every empty seat was filled with gear.  We drove for about 3 hours, and stopped at Mormon Island State Recreation Area (we liked the name, so we picked that spot to meet) to meet up with Travis' friend to get our base camp trailer.  It was awesome!  I didn't get any pictures, but if you google "base camp trailer" you can see it.  Joe (Travis' friend) showed us how to use the kitchen and put up the tent, and about the solar power.  We transferred a lot of our gear from the van to the trailer, so that we had lots of space in our van.   It was so much nicer.  While we were there, Caleb peed in his pants, because he couldn't open the bathroom door.  Not the best way to start a vacation, but oh well, we changed his clothes and put his peed on ones into a garbage bag, until we could wash them.  We drove the rest of the way to North Platte, Nebraska and stayed at a R/V park/campground.  There was a playground for the kids to play at full of sand, so they got very dirty, but there was also a swimming pool, so then they got very clean again.  They all had a blast swimming.  Travis and I did some laundry and we had sub sandwiches for dinner.    Joseph was holding the baby, and sidetracked by a squirrel or dog or something and dropped the baby on his head.  Not very fun!! He had a bump and small scratch on his head, but was okay. Joseph got his hammock tied to a tree, and Travis opened up the tent on top of our trailer, for the baby and us to sleep in.  The rest of the kids all slept in the van.
Day 2-
 In the morning we finished up some laundry (Samuel peed in the night too), had eggs and sausage (they were delicious) and packed everything back up.  We got on our way again, and drove to Custer,  South Dakota where we stayed at a campground called Echo valley campground.  We were staying there for 2 days, so we pulled out the 10 person tent, and got that set up as well as all our other things.  While we were unpacking and getting the food ready for dinner, I pulled out our cooler (it plugs into the van and keeps things cool while driving, then we put ice in it while in camp.)  I opened it, and started pulling out food, when I noticed it was all hot, and some of it was partially cooked or melted.  Somehow our cooler had turned into a heater!  Apparently our "cooler" can be a cooler or a heater depending on which way you plug it in, and we had plugged it in the wrong way, and had been heating our food instead of cooling it.  We had to toss some of the more perishable foods, but were able to still use some of it.  We decided that we would let Betsy, Caleb, and Malachi sleep in the trailer tent, and Travis, the baby and I would use one side of the 10 person tent, so we could set up our nice air mattress (there wasn't room for it in the pop up tent).  While they were checking out the tent Caleb fell out the side of the tent (they didn't realize it was unzipped).  Luckily the flap of the cargo trailer was up since we were pulling out luggage, and he landed on that, then fell onto a big piece of luggage on the ground, so he came away from that fall completely unscathed.  So grateful, that would have been a bad fall without all those things to break his fall.  Malachi started jumping from different rungs of the ladder to the ground.  Too late I realized he was jumping from the very top rung (it is above my head) and he landed on the ground, but hit his bum on the bottom rung, and boy did that hurt him.  He is amazingly resilient though, and after a few minutes of crying, sat up, dried his tears and ran off to play some more.  He did have two really big bruised on his bum though, but they healed quickly.  We made smores and hot chocolate that night before bed.  The entire trip, Gideon decided he was a newborn again, and woke up about every hour, making for a very tired Momma.
Day 3- The next day we made another fire and roasted sausages for breakfast, and had eggs as well.  .  We realized that this time Caleb had peed in the night.  Who knew our boys would have so many accidents during the night.  Apparently camping makes the boys not want to get up and pee in the night.  Joseph was our designated firewood boy.  He would take the ax and go chop wood for hours (I think he explored a little too) and bring wood back for our fires.  (he had permission from the campground)  Samuel was our water boy, he would fill up all our containers with water and bring them back.  Austin and Betsy were usually our helpers with entertaining the little boys and were very good at it. We went to Mt. Rushmore today, it was a lot of fun!  I had seen plenty of pictures and movies with it, but it is pretty amazing in person.  It was pretty hot out, but we still enjoyed the presidential trail, and it's many stairs.  The kids thought the monument was pretty cool too!  After we had seen the monument, we drove back to Crazy Horse (it was a mile from our campground), and explored that as well.  We saw some pretty neat things in the museum and a native dancing with lots of hoops that was cool.  The Crazy Horse monument is pretty amazing, and we loved the story behind it, of one family working so hard to make it.  We headed back to the campsite, and then I drove to town to pick up some more things from a grocery store (most of our food was spoiled from the cooler, so I had to buy more).  When I got back, Malachi had been running through the brush near our campsite and gotten stung with stinging nettle, so I put some stuff on him to help him feel better, and told him to stay out of there.  We made foil dinners on the fire, and hiked down to a little lake near our campsite with fishing and a paddle boat.  We had a lot of fun there, and then hiked back to make more smores.  As we were sitting there, we heard a loud roar, and Travis looking behind me at the sky said, "we need to get inside, now".  There arose a great wind (yes, I mean it just like it says), and we quickly threw chairs and loose items into the trailer, put out the fire, and got everyone inside their tents/van where they would be sleeping.  I have never seen our family cooperate and work so quickly and hard, as I did in those few minutes during that storm.  It was awesome!!!  Anyway, we all made it safely to our tents, most of us with partially roasted marshmallows still in our hands, and stayed safe from the storm.  The wind, rain, and hail was crazy and lasted for quite a while.  Thankfully we did a good job of setting up our tents, and we all stayed safe and dry.  Caleb was pretty scared, (he was in the big tent with us), but after saying a few prayers, was comforted.  The storm seemed to last forever, but eventually quieted down enough so that we could go to sleep.  Oh, and Joseph did not sleep in his hammock this night, he went to the van.  He was going to sleep in the hammock, but all the lightening scared him off.   It got pretty cold that night too.
Day 4-
I didn't sleep well at all, but what was really cool was that when I came out of the tent that morning to go to the bathroom (I had been holding it all night long), our fire was still going!  Great fire building Travis and Joseph!  I have no idea how it managed to stay lit during that storm, but it was really nice to have the fire going when we woke up, so we made sausages once again over the fire, and also had some cereal, before breaking down camp.  Everyone and everything survived the storm really well, except for one chair got a little singed from being blown into the fire, and one chair cover blew away, but other than that we were good.  Today it was a Sunday, so we had to get everyone ready for church before leaving our campground.  We were planning to stop somewhere in Wyoming to go to church.  When I went to go shower, I found a tick stuck to my knee, not very fun.  I was able to get it off of me without too much trouble, so I was relieved.  Malachi had diarrhea today, so that wasn't very fun, and he ended up showering with me to get clean, and we had more laundry to do.  Anyway we drove to Gillette, WY and stopped for church.  We got there during the sacrament, but the kind people of the ward there, blessed the bread for us after the meeting, so we could partake of the sacrament.  The kids all enjoyed church, they said the primary kids were crazy, even crazier than Sam!  (the YW and YM were teaching the primary for the 5th Sunday, so that adults could all meet together with the Bishop.  It was a really nice ward, with very friendly people.  It felt good to still be able to attend church while traveling.  We drove the rest of the way to Buffalo, WY and set up camp there.  It was really hot, and I think we were all a little cranky, and there was a bit of bickering and fighting.  There was a free city pool we were going to go swimming, that Travis remembered from his childhood summers with his Dad in Wyoming, but the pool was closed.  We did walk to a little shop to buy ice for our cooler, and sang songs while we walked, and when we got back to the campsite we played a few games.
Day 5-
We had done some more laundry (the laundry never ends, even while camping) but had to hang it all up to dry, since the dryer did not work well.  Then in the night it was a little windy, so some of it had blown around, but Travis had gotten most of it put away.  We packed up and drove on to our next destination.  We stopped at Custer's last stand memorial, and enjoyed seeing the battlefield of the big horn, and memorial of where all the soldiers and Indians died.   The kids loved looking at all the Indian names, there were some pretty interesting ones.  We did have an incident where Samuel kicked Austin with his hiking boots, so Travis took Samuel's hiking boots off, and he had to walk around in his socks, he was pretty mad about it.  But, he didn't kick Austin again.  Travis dropped me off at the traders shop and went to get gas.  Neither of us was very interested in taking all our kids into the shop and chasing them around, and telling them "no" a hundred times.  So Travis was a sweetheart and let me look around all by myself while he got gas at a nearby gas station.  It was nice to look around all by myself.  They had a lot of fun things to look at.  I could've spent a lot of money for things for the kids, but ended up buying nothing, it was all a little to pricey.  We drove the rest of the way to Billings, MT and set up camp there at a KOA campground.  Then we drove over to an indoor waterpark in Billings, and had a great time swimming and playing for several hours.  Joseph and Travis kept competing against each other and who could jump across the lilly pads best.  I got to go with Samuel and Betsy a few times down the slides, and go in the wave pool with the baby and little boys.  They had a lot of fun playing in all of the toys and fun.  After we were done, we went to dinner at the Johnny Carinos, and had a delicious meal!  We went back to our campground.  We met a couple nearby, and they said they found a bunch of little cars, and wanted to know if our boys wanted them.  They loved having some cars to play with.  I got out our travel chess set, and played with Joseph.
Betsy took Caleb and Malachi over to a sand pit, and they played happily getting covered in sand.  I took them to the showers and got them cleaned up.  Then we went to bed.  When Joseph got into his hammock , it broke and he fell to the ground, poor kid.  I managed to fix it, where it tore with a needle and thread, but he didn't want to sleep in it again, so Samuel slept in it.
Day 6-
We had some sausage and cereal for breakfast, and broke down camp as quickly as we could, and drove over to the temple, so that Travis could attend a session at the Billings, MT temple.  While he was in a session, the kids and I drove to a nearby chuck-e-cheese and had fun playing there.  They had a good time.  We picked up Travis when he was done, and drove toward Helena, MT.  We stopped at the Wheat Montana store and had some delicious cinnamon rolls and salad.  We realized when we arrived in Helena, that we had accidentally left the diaper bag there, it was full of the baby's clothes, diapers, wet wipes, toys, immunization records and all sorts of things.  We had also left the bread we bought with the diaper bag.  I called the store but they said no one turned anything in, and they didn't see it there any more, so someone must have taken it.  They said we we were driving home we could pick out some more bread, so we said we would do that.  After arriving at Travis' Mom and Jim's house we got busy unpacking and setting out the camper they had out front for the kids.  We had only been there a few minutes when Malachi tripped on some uneven brick, and hit his eye on the side of a log, he got a nice cut there, so we put ice on it and a butterfly bandage.  Then a few minutes later he tripped going up the wooden stairs out front and hit his chin on the step.  It cut a little, but didn't split it this time.  Poor kid was having a rough time.  We drove into town to a park and had a pizza picnic with all of Travis' family in Helena.  It was a lot of fun to see everyone, and the kids loved playing with their cousins, and Uncle Michael.  There was  a fun playground area for the kids, and the adults had fun talking.  Maia (Travis' sister) was able to get a 5 generation picture with her Grandma, Mom, Her, her daughter Mayra, and her little baby, Asher.  It was pretty neat!  It was getting late so the party ended and everyone went home.  We drove back to Travis' Mom's house and went to bed.  Travis and I, and baby Gideon got to sleep in a spare bedroom, the bed was wonderful to sleep in.  Austin slept on a couch downstairs, Betsy, Caleb, and Malachi slept in the tent, and Samuel and Joseph slept in the camper.
Day 7-It was very hard staying at Travis' Mom's house because it is not kid friendly in the least.  There was absolutely nothing for them to play with inside or out, so the only thing they could do while we were at the house was watch T.V. so they did get plenty of that in.  They tried to play a little bit outside, but there was just too many things they couldn't touch, so we tried to spend as much time as possible somewhere else.  We had to de-louse the girls hair again, since we had to repeat the treatment 7-10 days after we did the first treatment, so we had to spend some time doing that, luckily we didn't find anything so I think we got rid of everything.  We got ready and went swimming in town, the bigger kids had fun, but it was a really cold windy day, so Caleb and Malachi were not having fun, they were too cold.  I tried to keep them happy for a while, but they finally took them back in the dressing room and they hung on in the warm showers for a little while, and I got them dressed.  After I got the baby and got him dressed as well I walked them over to the park area and let them play until Travis and the older kids were done swimming.  Travis and his brother Michael had fun seeing who could throw Samuel further across the pool.  (Samuel loved this game).  After everyone was done swimming we drove over to the Parrot ( a candy store), where we were supposed to meet all the other adults.  The kids loved picking out some candy and trying some samples.  I liked their Huckleberry sorbet.  They also had a juke box that was fun.  We went to Wal-mart on the way home to restock our baby supplies that we lost, then went back and went to sleep.
Day 8-
After everyone was ready for the day we drove over to Costco for some food, the kids loved being at Costco!  Samples are good, and their produce is wonderful.  We met everyone in the parking lot and drove to Travis' Mom's friend Marlene's house.  We has a very nice place and the kids had fun playing around her place for a while, and we had a BBQ.  The kids sure love playing together.  While taking some pictures of Travis and his siblings together they all sat on a couch.  After that both Travis and his sister Maia, who are both allergic to cats both started having trouble with their allergies.  I guess Marlene has cats that sit on that couch all of the time.  After they both took some allergy medicine that helped a little.  Travis' Grandma was having trouble with her eyes, so Travis was able to give her a priesthood blessing.  After everything was cleaned up, we all drove to a lake, where everyone played for the rest of the day.  Caleb and Malachi loved playing in the rocks, the water was a little too cold for them.  But the older kids and Travis and his brother all went in and had fun.  Gideon was pretty miserable with his teething, and was chewing ravenously on watermelon.  Another fun filled day!
Day 9-
We were having a birthday party for Malachi and his cousin Julan at the park today, so I got up and made some gluten free cupcakes for everyone.  We took it to the park and brought games and toys to play with, we had fun playing games together and drawing sidewalk chalk murals and eating cake and food.  Malachi got a truck from his Grandma that he loves!  I called and talked to my mom for a little bit while following the kids around, and told her how grateful I was that our family doesn't have a lot of drama.  Every time Travis' family gets together their is always a lot of drama, especially between his mother and sisters.  I love them all dearly, but it certainly adds a little stress to everything.  After the party finally dwindled down we drove to a nearby Burger King for dinner and to use their wifi.  Travis and I really needed to use the internet to plan our trip home.  His Mom didn't have internet at her home.  The wifi didn't work very well, so after awhile we finally gave up and drove back to go to bed.
Day 10-
Today was actually Malachi's birthday.  He turned 3 years old, my sweet little boy has grown so fast.  Travis, Jim, Samuel, and Joseph went fishing for the morning, so we didn't see too much of them.  Poor little Malachi was trying to play outside and got stung by a wasp.  I put a baking soda paste on it, and that helped.  After he was feeling better, Betsy, Caleb, Malachi, Grandma and I all went to town to go to the farmer's market.  (Gideon was taking a nap, so Austin stayed home with him)  We picked up Travis' sister Karina and we walked through the farmer's market.  I bought some fresh peas, and snow cones for the little boys and we had fun walking through and looking at everything.  Then we walked over to the carousel and the boys got to ride that.  I think Malachi had a fun time.  After we got back, the older boys had returned from their fishing trip, had caught fish and even picked up a roadkill deer on the way home.  The kids were having a hard time staying out of things, so we packed them up into the van and just started driving.  We ended up at the library, and used their wifi for a few minutes before they closed, then walked a little bit around downtown exploring the shops.  After we got plenty of walking in, we drove back to the house for dinner.
Day 11-
Sunday arrived, and we got everyone ready for church, and went to Travis' Mom's ward in Helena.  We left after sacrament meeting and drove back to the house and changed into jeans and went to Jim's church, Cowboy Church.  Their church was having their annual cowboy round up, which was a lot of fun.  They had a BBQ, and all sorts of fun activities for the kids.  Caleb got to do mutton busting!  He grabbed onto that sheep, and they kicked it until it ran, and Caleb hung on as long as he could.  He did a great job!  Malachi got to ride stick horses.  The little kids had a needle in a haystack game, where they had to find candy in a bunch of hay.  They had the kids trying to catch greased pigs, and so many other fun things.  We made it back, just in time to make dinner for the whole family coming over.  We had a nice Sunday dinner, and got to visit with cousins and everyone one last time.  I ended up going to bed early, because I had a headache.
Day-12
We got up and got everything packed back up, apparently Malachi (at least we think it was him, since no one saw him) scratched the hood of Grandma's car, probably with one of his little cars.  She was pretty upset about it at first.  We offered to pay to fix any damages.  It didn't look too bad, so hopefully it won't be too much.  Then we were off on our adventure home!  We never had wifi long enough, so in Travis' words we were being "spontaneous," I was very nervous about it, as I am a planner, and love to have things planned out.  My motto is "if you fail to plan, you plan to fail".  Anyway, after a few hours we realized we had gone the wrong way to stop at the Wheat Montana store, so no bread for us.  We stopped near the West Yellowstone entrance and met up with the guy we borrowed the trailer from and took everything out of the trailer.  We gave it back (we paid the guy in MREs and Travis' old uniforms) and looked to put all of our things back in the van.  We were not very happy about having to stuff everything in our van, and I will say this was one of the worst moments of the trip, no one was listening and most everyone was grumpy.  We finally got everything in the van, and it was so stuffed the in order for Joseph to get into his seat in the back, he had stick his feet through a little hole Travis had left for him, and then squish and back himself into the seat.  Samuel's seat was almost that hard to get into as well, but since he is smaller it wasn't quite that bad.  So we drove through Yellowstone and got to see all of the beautiful sights.  We stopped at Old Faithful and walked around the trails a bit, and then watched Old Faithful erupt.  It was pretty neat to watch!  After that we drove the rest of the way through Yellowstone and out the south end.  It was beautiful scenery.  About dinner time we stopped at a gas station somewhere in Wyoming(I don't remember the name of the tiny town), and noticed they had campsites behind it so we decided to stop there for the night.  It was a pain to set up camp, because all of our stuff wasn't very accessible, we really missed our trailer/tent, it made things so much easier.  It took until after dark, to finally get our tent set up and everybody ready for bed.  It would have been faster, except the kids were playing with some other kids they found, instead of helping.  It was a really cold night.  We had to pile on the blankets, and layer the clothes.  I was still cold, and Gideon did not sleep well at all.  That was a pretty miserable night.
Day 13- We broke camp in the morning and once again just had snacks for breakfast, (same as the night before, we didn't have time to cook anything).  It seemed to take forever to get everything back into the van, but Travis was able to pack it in a little bit better.  We drove until lunch time and stopped at a McDonalds and let the kids play and get some energy out.  After a few more hours of driving we stopped at a Library in Rawlins, WY and used the wifi and let the kids wander around and look at books.  I found a cheap hotel to stay in at Fort Collins, CO so I booked two rooms.  It was our 16th wedding anniversary, and I told Travis that I really didn't want to camp again, I was so tired!!  We arrived at the Hotel and I was so relieved to have a hotel to stay in!  Austin watched all the kids (well they all watched T.V.) while Travis, Gideon, and I went to a restaurant for our anniversary dinner.  It was called Maza Kabob and had middle eastern food, it was fun to try the food, and it was delicious to have a warm cooked meal!  We had ordered the kids pizza for dinner, so they were pretty happy too!
Day 14- We went swimming in the morning at the hotel pool.  It was a lot of fun, we had the whole pool to ourselves and we brought our pool toys, and had a lot of fun playing with them.  We got everything packed back up, and kept going on toward home.  We stopped for lunch in Limon, CO at a truck stop.  They were having a kids eat free deal, so we took advantage of that and got some food and break from the car.  They also were selling some salt water taffy that we purchased.  We kept on driving, we were tempted to camp or stay at another hotel, but instead we just kept driving, and stopping at gas stations and rest stops.  We finally made it home about 10pm!  We had made it!!  We had listened to 2 Harry Potter books, 1 Five Kingdoms book (by Brandon Mull) and driven over 40 hours together in the car.  We had many wonderful adventures together and had a great vacation, but boy were we exhausted.  We brought in the most essential things, and went to bed in our beds!!!!