The alarm goes off at 4:15 am and I fumble in the dark to turn off the unfamiliar clock. I’m forced to turn on the light eventually but Bill will have to get up soon, too. After getting dressed, I load the cooler with lunch fixings and snacks, grateful for the list I wrote the day before when I wasn’t sleepy. Then it’s time to wake the rest of our group and when our older daughter and her boyfriend arrive, we load ourselves into the van (most of us wrapped in blankets) and we’re off on a one-day whirlwind trip to Yellowstone National Park, America’s first national park and a unique place.
It will take us about 3 1/2 hours just to get to the park’s entrance, not because of simple distance but because that distance has many literal ups and downs and the first part of our trip is on an unimproved road. For “unimproved road”, read “a road that you’re lucky to go 30 mph on.” The washboard surface can slow you to about 5 mph and the effect of hydroplaning without the water. Luckily, the road is relatively smooth this year and we can make good time.
We leave in the dark.
This, that and the other thing 