An Epic Journey To Yellowstone

Recently I was contacted by a couple of my “old” friends checking in to see what I am up to. The main reason was a long pause in my blogging activity. I was pleasantly surprised by the motivation – people read my blog and there is a level of appreciation since a two-month pause was noticed.

What have I been up to and why the pause?

This week, I came back from an Epic Journey, I traveled with my father from Raleigh, NC to Yellowstone National Park and back via the American roads, pulling an 18-foot travel trailer. I left Raleigh on June 1^st and came back on July 18^th. If you are a Facebook or an Instagram person, there are pictures that I posted tracking the adventure

Here are some statistics from the trip:
We drove 8800 miles this translates to about 232 hours behind the wheel and about $3000 in gasoline costs.
Our path went through eighteen states:  NC – TN – AK – OK – CO – UT – WY – ID – MT – SD – NE – IA – KS – MO – IL – IN – KY – VA – NC. (I had to look-up some of the state two-letter abbreviations for this exercise).

We visited seven National Parks:

We walked around four National Monuments:

We stopped by one National Memorial:
Mount Rushmore NM, SD

Crazy Horse Memorial, SD (The Ziolkowski family made a promise to the Indians to never involve the U.S. government in any dealings related to this particular memorial and they are keeping their word by refusing significant financial grants offered by the federal government to facilitate the completion of the memorial, est. 30-more years to complete).
Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, SD (I was looking for nuclear “wessels”)

During the trip I was not blogging but I kept a daily journal which is about 150 pages of notes. I am hoping to transfer these notes, my experiences, and observations into a book with the following concept:

Yellowstone an Epic Adventure (preamble)

My second inspiration is a series that I watched on Netflix, “Jack WhiteHall Travels with My Father,” premise of the show as the description states is “Jovial comic Jack Whitehall and his stuffy father, Michael, take unusual and amusing trips to foreign lands in an attempt to straighten their bond.” There are a few parallels in our stories: both trips include a father and child, both teams are non-American (Jack and Michael are British, my father and I are Polish), in both instances the groups will experience new scenery and unknown characters. But there are also major differences: I am not a comedian and my father is not stuffy, we do not have a supporting staff to assist with plans, research, and setup amusing appointments for us (we are on our own and every event will be non-staged impromptu happening), I will not go out of my way to make my father feel uncomfortable in life just to generate an amusement for anticipating audience. But I am hoping for comradery, I am anticipating that we will have obstacles in travel that we will need to overcome as a team and I am even expecting minor annoyances with each other. Living in an 18-foot traveling trailer together for six weeks cannot come without its fair share of mutual annoyances. When in Yellowstone, a two week stay in three different camp sites, we will be visited by my older brother, who will definitely serve as another character in this epic adventure story.

To make this an epic journey, I will leave North Carolina and I vow to return in about six weeks. My epic journey will include spectacular scenery of American lands, monuments, people, and wildlife. I will compose and narrate an epic tale with two brave heroes, my father and I. The two brave heroes will travel far, overcome obstacles, meet interesting people both friends and foes and at the end safely return home with stories to tell and experiences to remember forever.

Yellowstone an Epic Adventure (postscript)

Everything that I anticipated prior to the trip did happen during the trip. We had three mechanical issues; one major when the steel rim of the trailer mystically cracked and air was swiftly leaking out of the tire. Two minor issues: the electric jack on the trailer broke but we could use a manual handle to operate the jack, and a punctured car tire that was slowly leaking but luckily was simple to patch up.

My brother indeed visited us in Yellowstone after initially cancelling his trip because Yellowstone got flooded and was closed for a while delaying our entry by about three days. We were also visited by my friend Bettina who traveled with us from the Great Sand Dunes to Vernal, UT and left us after visiting Dinosaur NM and Fantasy Canyon.