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Day 12 & 13: From Heartland to Home

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 Good morning travel buddies! I decided to post days 12 and 13 together since the theme is very similar. We are covering what is known as America's Heartland - Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. Also called the breadbasket because of the sheer acreage devoted to cereal crops like wheat, corn, oats, barley and sorghum. Everything is lush, green and fertile. There is not a lot of variation in terrain as far as foothills or mountains, but there is a beauty in the crops that stretch on for mile after mile. (Reminder - farmland means bugs - bugs mean smudgy pictures.) After getting a not very restful night's sleep at the Wyoming rest stop, we picked up and headed out. We stopped briefly at a travel center to grab a pre-packaged breakfast and truck stop coffee. Sustaining, but nothing to write home about. The Cub's each called us to check in, which was a very nice thing. They assured us they were tending home base and looked forward to our return. After that it was pretty much hour a
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Day 11: Getting the Heck Out of Dodge

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 Today dawned bright and.....hazy. Womp, womp, womp. Sadness.  Today's breakfast was pure laziness. Papa Bear had a bowl of cereal, and I had left over mini-kolaches and a cup of coffee. Over breakfast, I pulled up the trusty ol' internet and started checking weather, air quality and talking with Papa Bear what our options could potentially be. The air quality throughout Idaho was even worse than it had been the day before. Outside activity was not advised at all so that meant that our planned trip out to to Shoshone Falls and Massacre Rocks was not going to happen. Sadly, air quality was just as bad around Jackson, Wyoming which nixed the option of diverting toward Grand Teton. So...what were we to do? We decided to get the heck out of dodge and try to get away from the poor air quality. We loaded up pretty quickly after breakfast and headed south toward Pocatello and then southeast toward Wyoming and I-80. Here's where I started burning bandwidth to try and figure out 1)
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Day 9 & 10: Eastern Idaho

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 I decided to post days nine and ten together as one was a travel day and the other was...well a bit of a wash.  If you've been watching the news recently you will have probably seen that the western quarter of the United States is pretty much all on fire.  Oregon, Northern Idaho, California, Nevada...all of them. The prevailing winds are blowing soot, ash and smoke across the region as far as Yellowstone National Park and nearly to the Kansas border. The AQI (Air Quality Index) across the entire west is terrible and I can say from personal experience, breathing is difficult - enjoying outdoor activities nearly impossible. Getting to Idaho So on Day 9 we left our campground in Coram, Montana and headed roughly southwesterly. It's amazing how quickly the terrain changes as you move from one mountain valley to another.  After the leaving the Glacier vicinity, the trees began to disappear, replaced by rolling hills and the gorgeous area around Lake Flathead. That is a very big lak
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