Sage’s Random Road Trip Thoughts

Rating the Parks
As you may recall, in a blog last year I ranked all the National Parks I’d been to so far in order of most favorite to least favorite. After visiting Bryce Canyon last year, that park easily moved into first place. This year, after visiting six more parks, you might be surprised to find out that Bryce is still holding first place. However, recent events in Yellowstone (bears) have definitely put that park in serious contention. Stay tuned to see where all the parks fall on my list when our road trip is complete!

Wildlife Viewing
Watching wildlife was probably the activity I was looking forward to the most on this trip and I have not been disappointed. After just two days at our first National Park, Rocky Mountain, I was very pleasantly surprised to have encountered so much wildlife - elk, deer, moose, and bighorn sheep. We saw plenty more moose and elk in Grand Teton and now that we’ve entered Yellowstone we’ve had such great luck seeing grizzlies (see Doug’s blogs for more information), black bears, bison, moose, elk, and coyotes. Once we hit Glacier I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for a few mountain goats as well.

Desert Southwest Potpourri
While in the desert southwest (Mesa Verde, Arches, Canyonlands, etc.) the air smells wonderful – a combo of sagebrush, juniper, and bristlecone pine. They really should make a potpourri and sell it.

Hiking Attire
It amazes me what some people will wear while hiking. For starters, I’ve seen a lot of people wearing jeans on the trail. I cannot imagine being comfortable walking in jeans for miles on end, the effort to bend your knees must take double the effort. I’ve seen a fair amount of women in flip-flops or sandals also, what’s that about? However, the winner for most inappropriate hiking gear goes to the woman on one of our cliff dwelling tours in Mesa Verde. This tour required several ladder climbs (including a 32-foot monster), a crawl on hands and knees through a tiny tunnel, as well as rocky trails right next to the rim of a canyon. The woman on our tour was wearing HIGH HEELED flip-flop style sandals! What was she thinking?

New Gorp Recipe
We have discovered a new and delicious way to make gorp by happenstance. We had combined peanuts, m&m’s, and peanut butter chips to make a standard gorp. While hiking in the heat of southern Utah, we discovered some of the peanut butter chips were melting. We would then simply put the gorp in the cooler and viola – gorp clusters! Delicious.

Useful Items
I’ve found that there are three items I could not have lived without on this trip. The first is anti-bacterial wet-ones. We’ve gone through almost two containers of these handy wipes already. The second is powdered Crystal Light and Gatorade packets. These come in tiny useful sizes – just add to 14 oz of water and you’re laughing. Makes that nasty campground and hotel water taste much better. The third useful item is all-natural Badger mosquito balm. I had my doubts how this stuff would defend against Yellowstone mosquitoes but it works like a charm. By the way, I’ve been using all natural Badger lip balm for a while now also, and I highly recommend checking out their products -- good stuff.

Huckleberry Mania
Apparently in Wyoming there are lots and lots of huckleberries. The gift shops are full of huckleberry merchandise – syrup, BBQ sauce, hand lotion, soda, chocolate, candy, candles, etc. It smells fantastic so I got myself some huckleberry shampoo. Printed on the bottle it says “do not use in bear country”! Apparently bears can’t resist huckleberries either and since their sense of smell is so keen, I’m not interested in smelling like a huckleberry popsicle. Needless to say, I will be waiting until I get home to try out the shampoo.

Patch Collection
I’ve been collecting patches from all of the National Parks we’ve visited. I actually started my collection a while ago and so far have 12, plus one each for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Antelope Island State Park. However, I’ve been to two other National Parks in the past for which I have no patches. If anyone is planning to visit Death Valley or Acadia in the near future, how about helping me out?