This one was particularly bad. I mean as vacations go maybe a 3/10. No one ended up in the hospital; no one died; we didn't rush home to a sick family member etc. But beyond that it could not have gotten much worse.
Hmmm, where do I begin.
About 3 years ago, I got the idea that it wold be fun to go to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks with the kids for a summer vacation. So once Jason got his vacation days for the summer, I looked into it. Problem was that everything was all booked for the summer by then (It was November). So, I found out that they start taking reservations 15 months in advance. So, come May 2017, I booked hotels for August of 2018 in both parks, as well as the Grand Tetons. Jason ranked those weeks highly and was lucky to get them off in his annual vacation lottery. I spent weeks beforehand planning out our days, choosing good hikes, things to do etc, etc. I was really looking forward to the trip.
We flew into Jackson, Wyoming 2 weeks ago, and were surprised to see, as we landed, that the Tetons were hazy. Really Hazy. But we shrugged it off. It was swelteringly hot in Jackson, and the motel that we booked was the only place left in town (yes I booked the national park places early, but did neglect this first night in Jackson) had "A/C" that was not really cold. We were up all night sweating. No worries, we were headed to the mountains the next day.
We spent 3 days in the Tetons--three days which would have been beautiful if not for the smoke, which obscured nearly every vista and overlook, especially later in the day. We did take several nice shorter hikes--and Jason and Ethan took a "real" hike--almost 18 miles and 4500 feet in elevation gain (I was very proud of Ethan, and he had blisters to prove that he did it) ...But the cabin in the Grand Tetons that we stayed in had a resident mouse that ransacked our picnic food, and also kept us up all night.
Sometime around then, my dad sent us an email headlined, "Glacier National Park on Fire". Hmmm. We decided to ignore it, hoping it might "go away" by the time we arrived. Ha Ha.
Next was Yellowstone. Yellowstone was beautiful, and less smokey, but oppressively crowded. Between 10am-4 pm every single parking lot had lines of 10-20 waiting cars. And since the park is so big, most of the sights are only accessible by car. This led to some serious road rage, both from my kids and Jason, who did most of the driving.
Sleep was not much better in Yellowstone. Even 15 months ago, the only room available in the Old Faithful Inn was a "historic room" without a bathroom. Not a big deal, I thought, when I booked. The website failed to mention that by historic, they also meant that the rooms were insulated in a historic manner, aka- not at all insulated. A screaming baby kept us all up the first night. The loud dinner of music and a crowded lobby didn't help much either. And the food? Well, lets just say that the hospital cafeteria that we have at work has food that seems gourmet compared to the slop coming out of the Old Faithful cafeteria. It was just gross.
We moved to the Canyon Village of the park for the second part of our visit to Yellowstone. There, the cabin was at least insulated, and cool, so sleep was better, but we were forced to consider our next plan---Glacier was still on fire.
We headed to Bozeman, MT to decide. Webcams of the park looked pretty awful, and half of the "Going to the Sun Road" was closed. The next morning we woke up in Bozeman to thick smoke that had obscured that mountains we could see the day before. We decided to call off the Glacier part of our trip. I was honestly devastated--I had been most looking forward to that week, and was so exited to visit.
But now what? We could head home, but that was a bitter pill to swallow. Some quick online searching revealed better air quality in Portland. I had never been to Oregon--why not head there for our second week?
We called the airline, pleaded a sob story, and got our tickets changed to fly out of Portland. We also returned out original car rental, and rented a new car to head to Portland. We got advice from Jason's brother Jeremy, who lived in Portland for several years, and decided to head to Hood River. It was a long drive, and we got a late start, so we anticipated stopping in Spokane for the night. As we headed west the smoke only got thicker. And thicker. By the time we were in Spokane, it was so thick that we literally could not see two cars ahead of us on the highway. Stopping (or really even getting out of the car) was not an option. We pressed on.
As we made the final leg of our journey, up the Colombia River Gorge, the air started to clear. We could see the moon! Even some stars! Hooray. We went to sleep, planning our next day in our minds. We awoke, fresh, ready to check out the region...opened our curtains, and ......SMOKE. It rolled in over night. And so did the heat. We headed out to do the things we planned--picking berries at the foot of Mt. Hood, visiting Lost Lake--everything was drenched in smoke. We could not see Mt Hood at all. Or really anything else for that matter. To add insult to injury, I checked the Glacier park webcams, and what do you know--blue skies. Seriously.
Defeated, we spent another night in Hood River and then headed to Portland. Portland was nice, though smokey. We did have some great food there, and our last minute hotel that we booked was quite a cool suite in a great area. But we couldn't see spending a whole week there--and most of the rest of the state was equally smokey, so we decided to leave early on Thursday. Never did see Mt. Hood, even from the airplane.
Now don't get me wrong, we did have some nice family time, some great moments and fun. But, it was largely a bust. I have no idea how or when we will get up to Glacier, but it is back on my list.
So it goes.
