I thought it would be easiest for sharing purposes to put everything into one tidy little blog. If you've been following along entry by entry, then the only thing you'll get out of this is seeing my very subpar photos and the pictures of my fridge and stamp book. The sexy stuff. But if you HAVEN'T been keeping up, this is everything you could want, all in one place. Links! Images! An ending! The gang's all here.
It wouldn't feel right to not start out with our newly refreshed magnet collection. Here's where we were at before we left:
Kind of crap, if I'm being honest.
But I am no longer a chump when I travel, it's magnets all the way down. So we had a bunch to add from this trip.
BAM!
We were weirdly inconsistent to the magnet for each place you travel party? Like we have a lot from places we've been, but we're missing a lot a lot a lot. I actually have an ebay cart full of magnets from places we're missing, so I fully intend on having a fully updated fridge in the next year. People charge a lot for magnets, it's weird. Moving on!
First thing's first: the prefaces.
Next thing's second: the trip
First stop - Badlands
My stamp book after having to tape my stamps in there (booooooo):
Yes those are my sheets, yes they are awesome.
And here are all of the images I hated the least and am willing to put up in my blog:
One medium aside about Badlands:
I did promise Derek I would add more about the rockhounding we did in Weta. When we stopped by the Prarire Dog Ranch, we spoke to the tchotchke wrangler about where to find fairburn agates and prairie agates in the area. He told us about the "in the know" spot for local rockhounders in Weta, about 45 minutes away. I skipped writing about that, not really for any particular reason other than I didn't take pictures of where we were, so I didn't have images to jog my memory and prompt me to add in the activity. It's why I take so many photos when we travel, I know I'll be blogging and I need to recall a moment, an activity, a thought, a feeling, what have you, and proof is in the forgetful pudding here that I really and truly need those visual reminders.
We drive out through the middle of just like, the most barren acreage I've ever seen before arriving at old cow pastures with massive rock piles. We were told this was a great place to look for fairburns, prairie agates, bubblegum agate, petrified wood, and I think maybe...quartz of some kind? Rose quartz, maybe? We had talked about bringing our spray bottles with us (we usually have those when we rockhound), but didn't bring them, so Derek created makeshift spray bottles by fillung up a bunch of spent water bottles with tap water at the hotel, and poking a few holes in the top so we should squirt water on the rocks and see what they really looked like. We bought these great mesh bags for rockhounding before our summer trip to Wisconsin, so we grabbed those for our rockhounding adventure and set off to our own places. I think we were rockhounding for two hours total. It should have only been an hour and a half, but Derek couldn't pull himself away. I know I found a ton of bubblegum agate...which looks upsettingly like chewed gum...and I found an absolutely dynamite piece of petrified wood. I found a couple of fairburns, more than I expected. I think Derek did, as well. I am almost positive Derek he found a prairie agate or two. It's been awhile since I looked at the rocks we got, we really came home with way more rocks than I anticipated (which was none. I anticipated one. So even coming home with ONE rock would have been more than I anticipated). I'm not sure how Derek thinks this period of time is best written about, I tapped out long before Derek did because I started feeling faint and like I was overheating, so I went back to the car and cooled down while he finished checking out his area of rocks. Unfortunately, someone has to be the adult in a pair of two neurodivergent people doing an activity they really enjoy but are also on a somewhat tight schedule, so I had to be the wet blanket reminding Derek we had to leave, we had to leave by X time if we wanted to make it back to Pinnacles for sunset. It took 30 minutes of me telling Derek we had to leave before he came back to the car.
We did investigate our rocks that night at the hotel, but I think I recall Derek being mostly disappointed in his rocks. I had to go toss a bunch of them out on the lawn of our hotel. Anyway. That was rockhounding in Weta.
Second stop - Yellowstone
Billings, Laurel, and Yellowstone day 3
Here is my stamp book, expertly done with no taped in stamps on paper:
and here are all of the images I hated the least and am willing to put up on my blog:
Third Stop - Grand Teton
Yellowstone and Grand Teton day 6
Grand Teton's page is low key my favorite one in my book so far, I'm not sure why:
and here are all of the photos I hate the least and am willing to put up in my blog:
Fourth and final park stop - Rocky Mountain
Rocky Mountain National Park day 10
Rocky Mountain National Park day 11
It was well worth the effort driving up and down a mountain to get all of these stamps!
and here are all of the photos I hate the least and am willing to put in my blog:
I DO want to say that almost every photo I shot of the bare blue sky, I used my circular polarizer on. So a lot of my photos with blue sky look over processed or like I tweaked the sky in some sort of weird way in post. I didn't. I just had on a circular polarizer. Overall, I'm really disappointed in my images this trip. I usually luck into one or two really dynamite images, but this time, I was just taking travel photos, apparently. I was hoping for something worth framing on the wall, but it may just be my moose photo that wins the trip. I had an amazing time, it isn't like I'm sour about the trip, I just put myself at a really high standard when it comes to photography and I'm not even reaching my barest of low bars. Well. Better luck next trip!
That's all she wrote for photos! Derek hasn't gotten to process his, but I definitely want to put up a milky way image when he's done with all of those.
Oh, just in case you're invested in what the getting home was like:
The journey home, days 12 and 13 (with bonus booze we bought!)
And there we go! I think this will be my final travel blog entry style for each upcoming trip we take. It's a much easier way to share everything, and a much neater way to keep everything organized.
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