Yellowstone or an East Texas Walmart?

So I know I haven't written about Yellowstone yet, but I've been trying to figure out what to write. So I guess I'll just jump right in and give you my impressions as a native Texan/current Coloradoan/former Beijinger:

1. It's really big. So big, in fact, that there was tons more driving than I thought there'd be. We'd drive to see "this" then get back in the car and drive to see "that". As a current Coloradoan I couldn't believe we were out in nature having to drive around, as a native Texan it seemed totally normal.

2. Yellowstone is not the place to go be Grizzly Adams. People here in Colorado just go out in the National Forests and camp, hike, raft, ski, snowshoe, ect. There's none of that allowed at Yellowstone (and the stuff that is allowed is highly monitored...the hardly let you fish). They definitely don't want you off the marked paths. The whole place is almost like a zoo for nature. You can look, but don't get too close, and definitely don't touch!

3. Continuing along those lines, I was thinking our camp site would be this beautiful, natural, picturesque spot. I imagined the kids just running around free and wild...Um, not so much. Our camp site was a big parking lot, a parking lot surrounded by pine trees. We were laughing that we might as well be camping at any Walmart parking lot in East Texas.

4. Of course the campsite wasn't all parking lot. We did have our own little patch of dirt right in front on our RV. It seems the babies love picking up rocks and sticks to chew on, and that their food tastes much better after it's been dropped in the dirt. Our RV was actually very nice, and as a former Beijinger, I'm quite used to sandstorms, so the dirt patch wasn't an issue at all. The kids hosed off nicely in the RV bathtub each night.

5. Yellowstone is not a drive-thru safari. There certainly weren't any animals sticking their heads in our car windows! We saw lots of chipmunks and squirrels, 2 bison, and a coyote. But no bears (grizzly, black, or ones wearing a hat and green bow tie). We did get up close and personal with tons and tons of mosquitoes. The Coloradoan in me couldn't believe we had to endure such a nuisance as swarming mosquitoes, but the native Texan and former Beijinger in me could swat those things like nobody's business!

(That's a bison.)

In actuality, we really did enjoy ourselves, I just had to make fun of the few things I wasn't expecting. I'll be back with a Yellowstone checklist of sites and JR highlights soon.

Tourist Traps

I love a good tourist trap, and of course, a good photo-op. And if those two go hand-in-hand, well, Woo-Hoo! Thankfully Jason loves tourist traps too. I did have to school him in the art of the photo-op though. He would come home from his business trips with a camera full of photos of landmarks. I finally told him, "I don't like pictures without people in them." Needless to say, I now have albums full of Jason standing by himself in front of every Asian landmark imaginable. So here are our fun non-Yellowstone side ventures/tourist traps/photo-ops (SLC excluded since it was in the previous post).


Wilson's Arch-24 miles south of Moab, Utah. I about made Jason have a wreck when I spotted this one, but it was just too good not to slam on the brakes for. 46 feet high with a span of 91 feet.


More rock scenery around Wilson's Arch. JR stoped stomping fireants just long enough for me to snap his picture.


It's Wyoming. And it looked just like I thought it would.



Unfortunately it was raining in Afton, Wyoming as we drove under the World's Largest Elkhorn Arch. So we had to settle for a picture with a much smaller version in Jackson Hole.

Raise your hand if you've been to Idaho. I have! I have!

Of course we had to stop at the World Famous Hole N" The Rock in Utah. Not only did we stop, we went on the 12 minute tour! Albert and Gladys Christensen blasted and drilled for 12 years to carve out a 5,000 square foot home for themselves, which them moved into in 1952. It has 14 rooms and remains exactly the same as it was when Gladys died in 1974. I don't have any pictures since they aren't allowed on the tour, but you can see most of it here.

Albert's memorial to FDR to the left, and one of their doors to the right.

And now for the piece de resistance of tourist traps: The Four Corners. I was thinking this would have been highly commercialized, but it wasn't at all. I think part of the problem is that it's so hard to get to. It is quite literally in the middle of nowhere. And sadly, this is the best picture I have. It was our turn to take pictures, but as you can see, the people to the right wouldn't wait their turn or get out of our picture. My idea was to just let the Rude Nonwaiting In Line People go on ahead and then take more pictures after they left, but Kyle had a major meltdown about wanting to climb the stairs leading up to the platform marker, so that was it for pictures. But after carefully looking, it does seem to appear that all the states are being touched.

Reed is clearly standing in both Utah and Arizona.

Kyle is in Arizona.

Jason is in Colorado and Utah.

And in the process of trying to make sure he was in Colorado, I do believe JR's back left heel is in New Mexico.

I was able to get JR to pose for my again, and I do believe his thumbs are barely touching New Mexico and Utah, putting him in all 4 states at once.

Just Get on with the Pin Trick!

We're home from the great outdoors of Yellowstone! I'll be posting some of those stories later, but today I wanted to post about our stop in Salt Lake City. We thought SLC would be a good place to spend the night since it's about half way, and I wanted to see "some Mormon stuff". Well, we definitely got to see The Mormon Stuff. I don't know why, but I honestly thought we'd just be able to take the tour where you get to hear the pin drop in the Tabernacle without anybody trying to convert us. (As my friend, JD, put it....I "wanted to go on the Samantha Brown Tabernacle tour".) The second we walked in the visitor's center I realized what I had gotten us into. I put on my "don't look at me, talk to me, or mess with me" face and breezed right passed the two "greeters". Jason, of course, strolls in and starts acting "interested". Next thing I know, Jason's standing there with 2 girls who are happily going to take us on a private tour. (Our girls were from Canada and England, but I heard plenty other "tour guides" speaking in every language imaginable.)

Our "tour guides" were as nice as could be. Happy to let us take pictures of whatever we wanted, and more than happy to tell us all about their founder, Joseph Smith. Now, if you know me, then you also know I have no poker face. And since Jason had us on a private tour, I tried my best to keep my sunglasses on as much as possible as to not completely give away what I was really thinking.

So here's the Temple, which is what I thought we were going to get to tour since I thought this was the Tabernacle. Nope. And this is as close as we could get to the Temple. The Tabernacle is way smaller and more nondescript than I thought it would be. I guess it's so nondescript that I didn't even find it picture worthy since I didn't even take a picture of it.

Finally, they let us actually go in the Tabernacle. They didn't do the pin trick, but the kids got to echo their voices all they wanted...which is why JR is so excited in the picture. And you'll also notice Reed is none too happy about being in the Tabernacle. My mom would say that's because Reed wants to be a Presbyterian. (Reed picked my mom's Catechism off her book shelf and carried it around with him for half a day, hence his desire to be Presbyterian.)

And here's JR with the 15,000 organ pipes. Again, I can't believe how small it was!

And even though Jason acted "interested" as he walked in the door, I think they pretty much figured out we weren't and we only got the soft sell. My badgering of one of the "tour guides" about her use of the word "prophet" to describe Jesus was probably a big clue. Oh, and BTW, the homes outside of Salt Lake City are enormous. I'm just sayin....

Inner Mongolia

*If my calculation are right, we should be home soon. But since I haven't mentioned Jason much, I thought he deserved his own story. This is about Jason's trip to Inner Mongolia in the summer of 2005.

Jason was getting bored in Beijing while JR and I were still in Texas, so he decided to take a weekend trip to Inner Mongolia. Knowing I would have no desire to go along, he took the opportunity to go see "miles and miles of grassland". As soon as he landed in Hohhot he figured out it was going to be an "interesting" trip. Upon arriving, he learned he was the only Western person that had ever been on this specific tour, and that his tour guide wasn't actually a tour guide. He was just the only person in town that could speak English and would agree to go along! So a Chinese driver took Jason and the English speaking non-tour guide about 3 hours outside of town to a Mongolian camp. The first night in camp they slaughtered a sheep that they would eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the rest of the trip. Jason also figured out that the water situation was going to be a problem...the only water they had was warm and tasted like dirt, not a good sign. He spent the first night in a traditional Mongolian tent called a Yurt (which was one of the things he wanted to do). The next day they rode horses that were "about as big as dogs" into the grasslands to a neighboring village. Jason swears up and down that the people were about "3 feet tall" and had some "serious inbreeding going on". They then rode back to camp to watch horse races, traditional dancers, and Mongolian wrestlers. The wrestlers had also never seen a Westerner before, and they wanted Jason to wrestle them. Of course he did, and although the wrestlers "only came up to about his armpit" he still couldn't beat any of them. Which they thought was hilarious. The next day he was getting pretty dehydrated and sick of mutton so he told the tour guide, "I'm done. Take me back to town." Now you might be wondering why I don't have any pictures of Jason with Mongolian wrestlers or horses the size of dogs. Well, while Jason was visiting a museum in Hohhot his Ipod and camera were stolen. After two hours with police who had also never seen a Western person, Jason gave up and came on back home to Beijing. And I'm pretty sure Jason won't be taking c eevb2weekend trips back to Inner Mongolia any time soon...or ever!

Mrs. Rainbow

*We're still on vacay. Here's another Mommy and Me story taken from an email I wrote in 2005.

JR did the funniest thing at Mommy and Me today. To begin with, he HAD to wear his Bob the Builder house shoes. I told him to go get dressed and he opened the drawer and picked out those and his Elmo sandals. I told him he had to pick, and he picked Bob. Nana tried to get him to wear tennis shoes, but he threw a fit...so he wore Bob, which everybody thought was really cute. When it was art time they had to make a "Mrs. Rainbow" (I think that was her name, they said she is a character in a book). So JR painted Mrs. Rainbow and then they gave him a cut out of a dress with pink paint on it. He was supposed to finish painting the dress pink and then glue it on her. He stewed around a bit with the pink paint so I finally said, "JR, paint the dress pink." Well, he was having none of that. He took that dress, wadded it up, and threw it across the table. He really is all boy! After the dress fiasco they gave him eyes, a hat, hair, and a mouth to put on Mrs. Rainbow. JR got the hair in the right place, but he put the hat over her whole head. He then glued her eyes on crooked and put her mouth above her eyes! After he finished I went to pick it up so we could hang it up to dry, but JR got excited and accidentally ripped half a leg off. You should have seen it, all the other "perfect" Mrs. Rainbows hanging next to JR's naked, half legged, mouth above her eyes Mrs. Rainbow. And you can only guess what Jason was most excited about... JR not wanting anything to do with the pink dress!

And here she is...JR's infamous, naked Mrs. Rainbow. I'm still not sure how that one lone sequin got on her. There must have been sequins to glue on her dress. The big red thing where her face should be is her hat, the purple part is her hair, and I guess her mouth (that was above her eyes)got lost in one of our three moves since then.

The Crocodile Hunter

*As we enjoy our vacay in Yellowstone, please enjoy this post about JR's first day of Mommy and Me. This is taken from an email I sent to my mom and Sherry, and was written sometime in January of 2005, which would have made JR about 20 months old.

Let me just start by saying JR was the only boy in the class, so that should say a lot about how the class went. We got there about 10 minutes early so JR got to play before class started. They have this big, deep table thing that they've filled with beans. The kids dig in the beans with shovels and are supposed to pour them in buckets. So besides JR trying to pour the beans on his head, he handled that fine. When everybody got there we were supposed to get on the mat in a circle (here comes that pesky circle time again). All the little girls circled up in their moms' laps and I brought JR over to the mat. JR sat in the middle of the circle. Honestly, I was just glad he was on the mat. Apparently these teachers are used to girls who listen and behave because they tried to get JR to sit in my lap. JR, of course, was having none of that, and ran off to play with the toys across the room. The teachers would try to get him to come back and engage him so finally I told them, "he won't sit on the mat at Gymboree, and he's not going to sit on the mat here." He finally came back over for the sleeping bunny song since it involved jumping, and then he was quite excited about the crocodile song. But at the end of the crocodile song he really came to life. They brought out a big (as big as the kids) stuffed animal crocodile for the kids to touch at the end of the song. All the little girls looked at it and barely stuck their hands out, one was even crying she was so scared. JR jumped on its back and started wrestling it like Steve Irwin! At one point JR was laying with his head in its mouth kicking his legs like he was being eaten. I was just sitting there laughing thinking he's hilarious while all the other moms look at me in pity. Next they gave the kids little umbrellas and told them to use their umbrellas to keep from getting wet. They started blowing bubbles on them and all the little girls stood under their umbrellas while the bubbles fell on them. JR looked at the umbrella like it was useless, threw it down, and started trying to catch the bubbles. Thankfully snacktime was uneventful and we moved on to art. Their craft was to paint a sled and then glue it on a little snowy mountain. JR took his paintbrush and went to town painting that sled...of course he also painted the table right along with it. The teachers just oohed and ahhed since they'd finally found something to ooh and ahh over JR about. I felt like he was a professional artist the way they went on and on. Finally class was over and I got JR all cleaned up (paint was all over him). Needless to say he loved it, and was asleep on the back of my bike by the time we got home!

TCM

*While we are vacaying at Yellowstone, please enjoy this post on Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Okay, so I pretty much know next to nothing about TCM. But with a history of over 3,000 years, I'm convinced some of it has to actually work. And since it was so cheap, (in China, not here) I gave most of it a try, including taking herbs that tasted and looked exactly like dog food. Truth be told, I only took the Dog Food Herbs for a few days...and by all accounts they probably were dog food. Those were "prescribed" (and by 'prescribed' I mean the receptionist handed me a baggie of herbs as I walked out the door) by a TCM doctor my friend, Anita, found. He was the doctor that told us if we would squat for 15 minutes a day we would loose 30 pounds. Always happy to be the guinea pig, here are some of my experiences with TCM:

Acupuncture

Best I understand, acupuncture works to "reprogram" your Chi energy. You can get acupuncture for just about any ailment you might have, including weight loss. I had a "doctor" come to our house when one of my knees was hurting. I told him my right knee hurt so he started by putting needles in my left elbow. He then did "something" back there (I'm still not sure what he did) and I felt like a rush of air. It was enough to make me squeal out a little (not in pain, just an odd feeling) and he said, "That's your energy." Well, whether it was my energy or not, it did seem to make my knee feel better. After the elbow stick portion, he loaded my legs up with needles. You can see they were just about everywhere, but it didn't hurt a bit.

Yes, I had blue toenails that day...when you can get a weekly $5 pedicure it's okay to be "cool" every once in awhile.

Foot Reflexology Massage

Needless to say, this is the one I miss the most. I've written before how we'd get the full body massages which included "butt flaps". We called those massages the "Shuka-Shukas" since that's the sound the bottle would make when the masseuses would shake and squeeze the lotion out. Foot massage or Shuka-Shuka? Such a tough choice. I do think there really can be health benefits to foot massages. And those that have studied Foot Reflexology can at least make you think they're diagnosing your ailments. When my dad had a foot massage his masseuse told him "bad stomach". Maybe he tells that to all his Western clients, but he had my dad convinced that he knew he (my dad) was diabetic.

Cupping

I had seen cupping on TV and really wanted to try it. I was scared it would hurt, so I always badgered any of my friends that had done it to show me their backs and tell me about it. Cupping is supposed to make you feel better by drawing out your impurities. The "blacker" your bruises appear, the more impurities you supposedly had in that part of the body. Or as Jason says, "No, they just got a better suction there." When I finally got up the nerve to try it, they put alcohol inside a cup, lit it on fire, then stuck the cup on my back. Obviously it didn't burn me, but I could definitely feel the heat. They left the cups on for about 10 minutes, and although I wouldn't say it hurt, it sure didn't "tickle". Now to be fair, I didn't try cupping when anything was wrong with me, but all I can say it did for me was make my back sore for about 3 days. It took about 2 weeks for all the bruises to all go away. And, yes, that's me...the most naked I ever hope to be on the Internet!