All posts by hannahviolin

I am a violinist. I also enjoy running, working out, reading, and hanging with my friends and cat.

Running Fall

I had quite the day on Saturday! I was out for a run, and really enjoying it. The weather was cool but sunny, perfect for outdoor exertion, and I was feeling good—really pushing myself on speed because my legs were feeling refreshed. I was about a mile from home, when I found myself falling…I guess I tripped on the sidewalk somehow, and landed part on the sidewalk and part in the grass. As I was falling I was thinking about how I had to play two Hello Dolly shows that day and I think I was trying to save my hands and wrists from getting hurt.

I sat there for a bit, first deciding if I could get right back up (no) and then deciding how badly I’d hurt myself. I decided nothing was broken or sprained and just some scrapes (pretty bad on the left outside leg), and then I remembered I had my phone, so I was considering getting a ride share back home. Louie was at work all day, so I didn’t have any help available there. I even saw somebody and just sort of smiled and they kept going, and I was also feeling a bit embarrassed and wondering how long I could sit there, and how I was supposed to wipe up the blood (use my shirt?), and that’s when a nice man approached me to ask if I needed help. I would have been a little more apprehensive except he was also with his wife and he was taking great care to seem not frightening, and I ended up first getting some napkins from them to dab off some of the blood, and then getting a ride back home—first I said it was only 2 or 3 blocks away, partly because I wasn’t sure I wanted a ride with a stranger, but also because I wanted to be self-sufficient. It was about a mile away, which isn’t bad in the car of course, but would have been a long walk (I think I would have called an uber or something, and I figured, well that’s a stranger too). Anyway, I got back and tried to figure out how to clean myself up and get bandaged. It didn’t seem super gross at the time, but that night when I got home and needed to change everything out it grossed me out more—I had a lot of “road rash” on the left leg and…well, this is why I’m not a doctor! (for starters).

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As I was sitting there trying to figure out the best way to stand up I did take a picture of my legs. I see here that I was sitting in the grass by the sidewalk…

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I landed a little on my hand. This was a good injury for violin in that it didn’t affect my ability to play at all!

My legs still hurt a bit, but things are starting to scab over. I’m tired of having large bandages on, but that’s how things go. People say you never regret a run, but I kind of wish I’d just relaxed Saturday morning instead!

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In other news, we finished the Hello Dolly run. I also finished an easy cross stitch project—I found the black cloth a bit difficult to work with though. I’ve started on a more challenging, Thanksgiving themed one next. I ended up having about 3 hours to stitch yesterday due to a bunch of students being sick, and it was nice. I barely made a dent in the project though, which means that it will take a long time. That’s fine with me, no rush.

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I ended up finishing the back by folding in the cloth, sewing it together and adding a piece of felt. I’m turning into a weird super crafty person.

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Muriel likes sitting on the printer too I guess. Lately she hangs out quite a lot on top of the router in my living room (it’s warm and maybe she feels the waves, ha) but I liked this printer cat pose. (Yes, that’s a guitar next to the printer. We still have a fair amount of organizing and decluttering to do.)

Well, that’s it for now. I’ve got some errands to run before a fairly light day of teaching (well deserved light day, if you ask me). Tonight we are trying a new restaurant down the street called Taco Circus.

I believe that Autumn is here!

Today is a bleary overcast day…it’s perfect! Unfortunately I’m stuck in the pit playing two shows today and can’t be inside looking out the window and appreciating it.

Yesterday was supposed to be a few things that it wasn’t. I did manage to get some good rest and “self-care” in and then had some stomach issues plaguing me the rest of the day. I took this morning off as well to make sure any lingering effects were gone, and I’m feeling pretty well back to normal. I’m sure you wanted to know that (then again, maybe you do!)

This weekend is incredibly busy as we finish off the second week of Hello Dolly. I’m glad that next week will have some earlier evenings and some breathing room…I’ve been managing to take some time for things that I enjoy, but I haven’t been able to spend much time with Louie or other friends, and that’s always something that gets pushed aside when work is really busy (as evenings and weekends are when many people are free to hang out). I also miss having a dinner where you cook something and then sit down and eat it off of a plate! Okay, I know, it’s only been about two weeks, and it’s been a fun show (I always wake up with tunes in my head) and I’m just saying…I’m a bit tired is all.

It’s not as if my schedule is totally free after this—as we head into prime season things are heating up. I don’t have any particularly noteworthy events happenings, but there’s opera, random concerts, more weddings, and then we get into the Christmas season. I also have various student events. You know, the usual. Running around, feeling a bit stressed, making it all work somehow. As one does. I know it’ll all work out and I like to think that with experience I get better at it, but I’m not always sure.

This isn’t a terribly interesting blog post, I know. Life is often just a series of mundane events, isn’t it? And if a blog reflects life, perhaps many of the blog entries would be mundane. Paying bills, cleaning, trying to stay organized (my music collection is always out of control, for instance), laundry, meal planning and cooking, exercising, returning emails, phone calls, preparing for the next event, invoicing students, etc. The list goes on and on!

Book wise I’ve been reading Deborah Crombie’s books. I’ve finished the Outlander Books but want to re-read them as well (and I’m hoping to start the TV show when I have a little more time, ha!). I have been watching Succession and I’m up to date on it, great show! Maybe it’s intended to make us all feel glad we don’t have the issues of the super-rich Winking smile . What are you reading and watching lately?

Pumpkin Spice

I don’t mind the pumpkin spice thing. I enjoy the spices involved. That’s the thing though, they ARE spices, not pumpkin. The spices you use to make pumpkin pie! Which evidently if it comes from a can isn’t actually pumpkin, but is squash…and as if there’s a big problem with that? I’m just beyond caring about these things. I like pumpkin pie. Maybe I’ll make one soon. I even have a little can of something called “Pumpkin pie spice”. I won’t be angry to learn it isn’t full of pumpkin pie.

It’s easy to get worked up about things these days, isn’t it? And there’s plenty of important and terrible things to get worked up about. I feel like instead though often people get worked up about little things, like pumpkin spice lattes or straws, that aren’t as important in the big picture. I went out to dinner last night at a place that didn’t provide straws for their drinks except by request. Great! Sometimes I don’t actually need three straws per meal. They did provide unlimited paper napkins though, and also my drink was so full of ice that with every sip the ice uncomfortably hurt my nose. Not a huge problem, no, and I definitely could have asked for a straw but I didn’t. I don’t eat meat for environmental reasons (though I do eat seafood, which is probably not great) and I don’t have children…my personal impact on the world is less than many. It’s hard to know what to do, isn’t it? I know what NOT to do: vote for people who don’t care about the climate or who think man-made climate change isn’t real. But I don’t know what actually to do. Was it worth my annoying drink? Should restaurants use less ice in their drinks?? And I’m not going to carry around a straw…I know I probably should, and I should carry a small container for leftovers when eating out. It’s hard to do all the right things…and many of the wrong things…and then still feel like nothing matters.

That’s not why I sat down to write, but I think a lot of us feel the same: we aren’t sure what to do. We recycle, then evidently we are recycling wrong. We want to buy local, but we can’t find what we need and we don’t have the time. So we use Amazon, oh, and look, you can have everything shipped all at once on one day, great! and then oops, they decide to ship it all separately anyway, so each item is individually packaged. That’s okay, you’ll recycle the boxes, besides the cat loves them…and we just constantly feel like we are failing. I know we are just failing in our impact on the world, and I feel helpless to stop it. Maybe I need a support group!

So, lately I’ve been pretty darn busy with work. I’m playing a broadway which started last week and goes through this week, so that means I’m burning the candle at both ends. I had a variety of early morning activities last week as well, and a few later this week. My teaching load isn’t too bad generally, but I have three mornings I have to get up early to teach. It isn’t bad, and I know many people get up early for various jobs and then work out before as well, but how many of them then work until 10:15 pm? Would you believe some people think musicians and artists are lazy? (Well, to be fair, some are, but not the working ones). Monday was great because one of my colleges was on fall break so I got to sleep in a bit, go  for a long run, and then catch up on all the home and work related things I hadn’t been able to do for about 5 days. I also had time to read and do a bit of crafting and talk with my sister Leslie and niece over facetime.

I’ve been working on a few projects with cross stitch and needle felting lately. I got a needle felting project last Christmas as a gift from Leslie and had been avoiding it because I didn’t know how. I finally dived in a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. I am planning a few more things after I finish making all the hedgehogs. I am trying to spend my random bits of free time during the day more productively than simply scrolling on my phone. I find I’ll have 15 minutes here or 30 minutes there and I would like to have more hobbies than simply “read” (which I adore and is my favorite thing). I have spent time in the past by practicing, but sometimes I don’t want to do that either or my body needs a break. We’ll see how this hobby lasts…I am often picking up and dropping new hobbies but in the meantime, I’m enjoying myself, and stabbing a small hedgehog all over with needles is rather satisfying.

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Since I’m used to working on things on a slow scale, that didn’t take very long at all: two weeks maybe? But I thought it was funny enough to start with. I’m doing a Halloween stitch right now, and have two more on order, one for Thanksgiving and one for Christmas. I’ve been getting kits from Etsy for now.

I do feel like I mostly come here on the blog to sort of clear my head and complain about random things. The truth is that right now I’m feeling pretty good about my life and how things are going. I don’t have too many things I want to change overall, and I feel good about the direction my career and finances are going: I am teaching fun students, many of whom have been with me for years. I’m playing interesting jobs with many colleagues who I genuinely like, and though I’d love to have more time off, my schedule right now works with Louie’s schedule as he is also very busy during the school year. So down the road I will look to downsize and to cut back, but right now I’m working hard, saving money, and staying organized.

And can you believe it’s October already? The Arch Cup is almost here for my students…I was a little hard on one of them yesterday and feel a bit bad about that. Louie’s birthday is at the end of the month and we have some fun stuff planned, and then it’s Halloween and all. I love fall and (honestly) pumpkin stuff and so I’m happy.

Tuesday Thoughts

Often, Tuesday is my day to catch up on emails and errands and such. Since Monday is a very busy day (basically I teach from 9:15 am to 7:45 pm, and that includes some driving) I have a bunch of emails left to respond to on Tuesday. I got most of them done pretty quickly this morning. Wednesday is another good catch-up day, and then Thursday and Friday are very busy teaching days again, most weeks. This semester I have a couple “every-other-week” students so that means every other week is slightly busier.

Last week I had a little free time, and I’ve been mostly reading during my free time. I had a few craft projects I had been avoiding so I thought, well, why not. I made a little felt hedgehog and started a needlepoint project.

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It was nice to do something different! I’m farther along now on the needlepoint, but I already had that picture and didn’t want to get up, find the project, and take another. I spend too much time scrolling my phone when I have a short break, instead of doing something more productive. I try to keep magazines with me while I’m off teaching so I have something longer to read, but sometimes something more mindless is better. We’ll see how this goes.

The other thing I’ve been doing is making one meal over the weekend to have for lunch about 3 times during the week. This past weekend’s was fantastic! I made this recipe for red curry lentil stew with butternut squash and kale. My only “beef” is that the recipe says 5 minutes prep time…what’s with recipes underestimating the prep so much? It took me about 30 minutes to prep…probably that was longer than it should have, but there’s no way one can gather all the ingredients and chop everything in 5 minutes. Blue Apron does a similar thing: they will advertise that their recipe takes 30 to 40 minutes, and I’ll look at it and notice that one step requires preheating an oven to 450 then roasting something for 30 minutes, which is already MORE than 30 minutes. Or they’ll say 20 to 30 minutes, but then tell you to cook one thing for 12 minutes and then follow that with another 10 minutes of cooking, which adds up to more than 20 off the bat, not counting prep! I’m aware that recipes always take longer than they say, but it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. Nonetheless, I am happy with that recipe, which I put over rice, and also added the entire bag of kale I’d purchased which might have been double what the recipe called for.

This is the last calm week for awhile. I’m looking forward to this weekend as well, which contains a DAY OFF. (You all know how I love my days off). Next week is a crazy mess of work so I’m trying to embrace today by catching up on busy-work and find time for relaxation as well. After this I plan to go for a run, then maybe do a load of laundry and make arrangements to go to see the Symphony this weekend (we subscribe but I always end up having to move our tickets to different dates, which is easy to do but requires a phone call, and I’m close enough to being a millennial that I try to avoid phone calls) and also figure out if I need to do anything to prep dinner tonight. I’m also considering making banana bread (we have several frozen overripe bananas…it happens so quickly) and of course, practicing.

How is your week going?

The weeks just keep on happening

I guess it’s almost fall now. It seems like summer was a long time ago, yet it’s not quite fall, so that doesn’t even make sense.

This week was a busy one. I felt like many of my students were tired and grumpy and that made my job a bit harder and now I’m tired (and a bit grumpy too, to be honest.) We are in the full swing of things and worried about preparing for things like the Arch Cup and various recitals, so that means I have to bug people about practicing (gosh they hate that the most, can’t they just be GOOD at violin) and that means more grumpiness.

I was reading something the other day complaining about people using the phrase “adulting” and how it’s a way of avoiding responsibility. I might disagree. It’s a way of trying to feel like an adult: when we were kids we thought adults knew everything! And now as adults, it often (even now) still feels like we are acting, and doing things like paying bills, going to the BMV, taking care of insurance and banking things, etc., feels like acting and like playing a part. At least to me! Maybe our parents (and I speak to all of you) actually felt like adults, but maybe they also just felt like they were making it up as they went along and that they were pretending to be real adults, perhaps unlike those other people. Hence, adulting. Also it encompasses all those annoying tasks you never knew existed when you were a kid…we thought adulthood was ice cream for breakfast and getting to control the remote, and while it IS also those things, it’s mostly paying taxes, comparing insurance rates, meal planning, and vacuuming.

I often go through the week thinking, oh, I should blog about this or that. Or, I should start a podcast! There are a lot of people doing podcasts, or mini blogs about how to have success as a freelance musician. I often wonder…1) should I do this or 2) are they really giving any helpful information. On the one hand, I often feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m a failure, and I’ve done everything wrong…alternately I am fairly successful and blessed (#blessed) in my career and I’ve done a lot of things well and been pretty lucky. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle and that I would have some valuable information to give to those just starting out, but I’m not sure that my life looks like the picture of success those just starting out want to see. I live in a modest house in a modest neighborhood. I drive a modest car. I work a lot. Most of the work I do has fairly low visibility, and isn’t always as musical satisfying as I would have thought when I was younger, but I do enjoy many of my colleagues, and many of my students. I don’t travel the country or the world playing music, I don’t have students winning competitions…but I do travel in my own vacations, and I have students doing really cool stuff, not always in music, but I feel honored that I get to spend time with some of these cool people. But it’s not the sort of thing that gets you written up in alumni magazines or on podcasts about “success in the music world.” It’s just in the ditch daily work like many people do all the time.

There’s nothing glamorous about my life, generally, and I just work a lot of hours. Maybe that’s the true lesson I have to offer: that a musician can just work and make a living, and not everybody will become famous, but it doesn’t mean that a life in music isn’t possible?

Deep Friday morning thoughts Winking smile Okay, I’m off to teach 3 students at the college, then back for 4 more (and 2 are already done for today) so…it’s a normal day.

Part 7: These lands don’t seem so bad after all

You guys! This is it. The final recap post about our July/August Road Trip. I’m excited but sad…kind of how I felt at the end of the trip: happy to get home, sad to be done with vacation.

It’s always hard leaving the mountains. We left off on Day 18 of the trip, and Louie and I had just left the Canadian Rockies. I’d been a little worried about the next segment of our trip, because we still had 4 or 5 nights left before we would be home but the most spectacular scenery was behind us. Would the rest of the trip be terribly anticlimatic and boring in comparison to all the amazing things we had already seen?

I’d decided our next stop would be Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. By all accounts neither of us had ever been to North Dakota so it seems like a good detour—and it wasn’t much of a detour. It was about 16 hours or so drive from Jasper to TRNP, but another 17 home from there no matter what, and it was about the same distance if we took another route. I made a reservation for two nights at TRNP and then we wanted to hit up the Badlands in South Dakota one more night as well (again, this added at most 1 hour of driving to our trip) since we were already so close.

Okay! So on Day 18, con’t, we just drove. We drove through Calgary, through lots of construction, and through ridiculous amounts of bugs. We killed so many bugs with our car, it was ridiculous.

The views aren’t as beautiful as Banff, but they are still very different than St Louis. The older I’ve gotten, the more I appreciate that.

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We stopped in Medicine Hat (still in Alberta, Canada) for the night at a place called the HomeStay Inn. It was perfectly fine, and had a very nice bathroom IN THE ROOM, which, after 10 nights camping, was the height of luxury. We had a late dinner at a bar/restaurant called the Local in downtown Medicine Hat. Medicine Hat seemed to call itself “Gas City” because there were a lot of oil companies and such there. I’m not sure that’s something I would be so proud of, but…we did use a lot of gas on the trip so I suppose I can’t be judgy!

Day 19: We got up and had the free hotel breakfast. During breakfast the Canadian news was on and we heard a story about a wolf attack at a popular Banff campground and both sat up very straight! It seemed a wolf had attacked a family at a campground off the Icefields Parkway a few days prior. Terrifying! I remember driving by that campground and seeing the sign that it was closed, but I figured it was due to just too many bears being around (during this time of year the berries are ripe and the bears want them—in fact, evidently a grizzly bear can eat 200,000 berries in a day!).

The day was mostly driving. At one point during the morning we had to enter the United States, which was bittersweet—we had loved our time in Canada! The customs official was less nice than the the Canadian one a week prior, and gave us a hard time about forgetting that we’d bought a few beers in Canada and had those in the cooler. They don’t give you a form or anything to fill out like they do on the airplane, they just ask a few questions and then act tough. They let us back though and we continued on our way. This day we drove on quite a few small roads, but all were paved, and it was pretty scenery.

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We had lunch along the way from the car, and tried to just keep going so we would get to our campground before dark. We had been spoiled with some places staying light (I’m looking at you, Jasper) until close to 10 pm and suddenly we were looking at sunset before 8 pm! We got to Medora around 6 pm and filled up on gas and ice before entering the National Park. Right away we saw a bunch of wild horses, which was a pleasant surprise!

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We had a walk-in site at Cottonwood Campground, which meant there was a walk from our car to the campsite. It was a very nice site, but the walk makes set up a little more challenging. We also had to walk awkwardly close to another campsite but there wasn’t anyway around it! We set up our tent, and then decided, what the heck, let’s go back to Medora and eat dinner at a restaurant. I think we were just getting tired of cooking on the campstove and Louie was tired of camp food.

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The campsite overlooked the Little Missouri River and was absolutely beautiful. The campground had decent bathrooms but not a very good place for washing dishes…another reason I was glad to not cook, ha! No showers though, and no firewood for sale though you could make a fire in the grill, so we decided to buy some in town again.

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Medora is a very small cute town, with a few different restaurants, a gas station/general store, some motels, and a few other things. The park is important because Teddy Roosevelt had a ranch there before he was president, and when he was president he started the National Park Service, so really, this was where it all started.

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We decided to eat dinner at what looked to be the fanciest place in town: the Rough Rider Dining Room. I had a butternut squash ravioli which was tasty but a bit too rich…I won’t say more, but it did give me some stomach issues. I probably shouldn’t have eaten so much of it! Anyway, after dinner it was already dark, so we headed slowly back to the campground (about 5 miles drive) and then made a nice fire in the firepit and relaxed for awhile before hitting the hay.

Day 20: Since it gets dark early, it also gets light early in North Dakota, and I remember waking up, thinking it was full daylight, and realizing it was not even 6 am yet. Also at 7 am some guy started singing and playing guitar at our neighboring campsite—to add insult to injury, it was an empty campsite, not his own, which in my mind meant he didn’t want to play guitar near his own traveling companions (unless he had already alienated them all and they were gone) but instead came to torture me. Luckily, shortly after that a huge storm came through so that scared everybody away and I went back to sleep for a bit. I can’t remember which day it was, but one of the mornings we heard a bunch of “whoops” from a lot of coyotes…in my sleepiness I first decided it must be a pack of prairie dogs, but then I remembered they aren’t real dogs!

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Since this was the first National park we had hit up in awhile that wasn’t super crowded, we didn’t see a need to get up super early to beat the crowds, so we didn’t get going until after 10 am. The rain had stopped by then, so we figured we’d go drive the scenic road and then do some hikes along the way, nothing too intense. One of the main features of the park seems to be that at least 50 percent of the land is settled by prairie dogs. Over the course of the day, we saw a ton of the prairie dogs, wild horses, a few pronghorn, and towards the end of the day we finally saw the bison herd and had our last “bison jam” of the trip!

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We visited various overlooks to the Little Missouri, watched a couple from the St Louis area ford a river, saw a bunch of amazing cool features, hiked a few miles down the Jones Creek Trail into the middle of nowhere and then hurry out to beat the rain, saw an area where there used to be a coal vein fire, and learned as much as we could about geology and the history of the area.

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This was a random stop along the road.

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That’s the Little Missouri River (above)

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A picture with the trusty Subaru.

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Wild horses couldn’t’ drag us away from Teddy Roosevelt National Park.

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A really gnarly tree!

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Long shot of the park. The landscape is really bizarre.

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Louie got some great pictures of the prairie dogs with his zoom lens. This was one of them in the middle of a warning for the other dogs—they would kind of jump and flop into the air while making a high pitched sound. The danger was…us. There were just vast areas populated by the little dogs…would be quite annoying in your own backyard but out here, it’s amazing.

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It seemed like the bison in TRNP were smaller than the bison in Yellowstone, but they still seemed to enjoy blocking the roads.

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That’s a pronghorn. It’s one of the fastest animals in the world.

I’d love to show you another dozen prairie dogs, but you’ve probably seen enough! Louie and I fell in love with the little critters.

We explored the area until close to 6 pm, and then we decided we’d better get dinner…we decided to be lazy one more night and went to the Little Missouri Saloon. The bartender was also waiting tables and we felt a bit rushed and him to be a bit rude in our deciding which table to sit out, but the beer was cold and the fish and chips were hot.

After dinner, yep, you guessed it. We made a fire and relaxed.

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Day 21: We packed up, and since we hadn’t gone to the Visitor’s Center yet, we stopped in on our way out of town. They had a nice shop and some nice displays.

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Such as this odd wooden sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt on a horse.

Our next and last stop would be the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. As we’d been a few years ago, we were only staying a short period of time, but last time the campground in the park didn’t take reservations so we stayed elsewhere to be sure, and this time it did, so we were looking forward to staying in the park.  We got to the Badlands around 3:30 and first put up our tent (always a good idea, so that you are done with that!) and took a quick tour of the campground.

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Then we hit the loop road, which isn’t really a loop. We drove out to the Sage Creek Road which had been too muddy on our last visit and saw MORE prairie dogs and a couple of bison (no jam). Then we headed back and enjoyed some awesome views, and were lucky enough to see more bighorn sheep and then finally, a MALE bighorn, which we hadn’t seen on the trip.

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Oh, more prairie dogs Winking smile By the way, don’t feed them. They are still wild animals and you should never feed them.

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A bison, just chilling.

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Female bighorn.

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A young bighorn sheep, just starting to grow horns.

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Beautiful view of the badlands.

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The sun was starting to set.

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We almost didn’t stop at the turnout where we saw this guy—such good luck we decided to! So much of animal sightings involve luck, being fairly quiet, and moving quickly. And just being out there.

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Odd thing, there was a woman getting her picture taken and playing viola at one of the stops. There were actually several parties that seemed to be doing some professional style photography, carrying light shields or whatever they are called. It was kind of strange, honestly.

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It was really getting dark then, so we headed back to the campground. We decided to shower first—there were pay showers and we both felt really gross as we hadn’t showered since Medicine Hat. We showered (it was an adventure as the shower curtains didn’t quite cover the stalls, plus the water didn’t shut off until your money ran out, but you had no idea how much time was left…I showered quickly, got finished, and then had to wait a really long time, but I was afraid to like, soap up again, so I just stood there being wet and bored!), and then immediately had to put on more bug spray as the bugs were out of control. We made dinner and enjoyed the darkness. No fires are allowed in the Badlands.

Day 22: We packed up and like in TRNP, went to the visitor’s center next. We wanted to do a short hike called the Notch Trail that went up a big ladder, (which I’ve actually done three times now: once as a girl, which I forgot, and then our previous time, and now this time. Perhaps my last) and then wanted to hit the road, and maybe get back home that night.

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And that was it. We finished the hike, changed our shoes, and hit the road. We stopped in Chamberlain, SD for lunch at Taco John’s, and dinner in St. Joseph, MO at Cracker Barrel (it’s become a road trip favorite). We hoped to get home but had to admit defeat near Columbia, Missouri and got a hotel. We drove the last two hours the next morning, far more refreshed and safer.

We drove about 5000 miles on the trip, and were gone over 3 weeks. It was amazing. I spent 10 months planning it, off and on, and for the most part my planning paid off. It’s nearly impossible to plan enough for these trips, and there is always a bit more I wish I’d made notes of, but really one can also just wing it. You don’t have to start planning that far in advance, but I did have to make some of my camping and lodging reservations far in advance. In January I made all of the Canada National Parks camping reservations on the first day each opened, and some places did fill up quickly. I also felt good about the sites I’d chosen, for the most part, so I was glad for that.

Our biggest issue this trip was figuring out how to deal with the luggage in the SUV, as we are new SUV people and just couldn’t get it sorted for awhile. We’ve seen people who seem to have drawers in their vehicles and have some ideas for next time, but plastic bins help a ton. We also tried traveling with a smaller cooler which mostly worked out well, but putting it behind the driver’s seat was a tight fit and ended up being a bit awkward, so we’ll need to reconsider that. Sleeping wise, having the blow up air mattress topped with a foam topper couldn’t be any more comfortable unless it were on a bedframe. I slept better on this trip than I had on any camping trip! But clothes ended up everywhere, and shoes too, and sometimes it was hard to find what you were looking for. I wished I had a nature field guide I’d forgotten to bring as well, and perhaps one guidebook I didn’t have, and a road atlas might have been a better idea than a few maps which ended up not including the area we did need once…but it all worked out.

As far as eating: we have had a two burner Coleman stove that uses propane for awhile, but this trip we also brought a one burner butane stove because it was handier. I thought we might use both, but we didn’t really need it. I liked the butane stove better because set up was much quicker and the flame could be better controlled. The Coleman is more either on high or off, which can be challenging. We do a lot of mac and cheese, or beans and couscous/rice and beans, grilled cheese with a “toast-tite” and soup, or a few other random things. We end up eating a lot of canned veggies too, and apples and string cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, and trail mix, sparkling water and beer and other sparkling beverages, and make coffee through a pour-over filter.

As far as keeping in touch and electronics charging: we have tons of car charging options, including a little device that you can plug regular plugs into. Louie would charge a battery that he would have in the tent to charge his watch overnight, and whenever we were driving places we had all kinds of things charging. We also had a free trial of Sirius XM and listened to so much classical music, a free trial of Apple Music, and made the car into a wi-fi hotspot, which sometimes worked better than our phones (ATT for the car, Sprint for the phones). It’s nice to unplug, but 3 weeks is too long, plus we were dealing with some family health concerns and wanted to be in touch in case we needed to change our plans.

So there you have it. All those National Park, all that driving, and now it’s all just a really wonderful memory. I am so grateful to have met Louie and found somebody who encourages me to explore and is willing and able to take the time to have a long road trip. We really cherished our time, and had so much fun hiking, hanging out, taking pictures, and watching wildlife. If you have any questions about planning a trip, let me know! Or suggestions about packing a car for a very long road trip!

I hope you enjoyed reading these posts. I’d love to hear from you via a comment if so. Thanks for stopping by!