Wallace Family Hits the Road, Part 2

Behold the Waffle Iron

Our plan was to hit Grand Coulee Dam on Wednesday, but our late departure called for a schedule revision. We had non-refundable hotel reservations in West Yellowstone and motivated by our mutual cheapness, John and I decided to make the long haul eastward. We lost an hour to Mountain Time and several hours to rest stops and running last minute errands in Spokane, as it was the last major city for days. We collapsed into our hotel room around midnight; sure we’d lost our minds for driving that far.

The next day everyone’s disposition changed, however. For it was the first day of Carbon’s Golden Malted waffles. If you’ve not road-tripped in a while, you’re probably unaware that some sales genius hit every family style motel in the country with a killer dealer on a do-it-yourself commercial waffle maker. Now hotel proprietors can boast an expanded hot continental breakfast. Throw in some hard-boiled eggs and you’ve got yourself a full American breakfast. Samuel quickly became the resident waffle-making expert. Within days, he was teaching puzzled vacationers the secret to a perfect waffle.

Did I mention Yellowstone is absolutely beautiful? We toured geysers, mud pots and waterfalls. We saw bison, deer, bald eagles, a bear, even a baby moose and his mother. Enjoy the pictures below.

Wallace Family Hits the Road

Note: As of July 15, we are spending time with family in Atlanta but here are some highlights of the last month.

Getting Out of Dodge

Could it be true? We closed on our house, no hitches. God is good.

OK, we did hit one bump – packing. We bought the sales pitch - hook, line and sinker. Don’t rent a moving van. Try the convenient portable storage container approach. Here’s how it works. Some guy drops five (Five! Surely we won’t need that many. . .) storage containers on your driveway. For the next four days, you pack all your earthly possessions into the five (How on earth did we think we could fit all our stuff into five boxes!?) plywood crates. Now there are a couple of rules to keep in mind. No container can hold more than 2,000 pounds. Question: How many boxes of books constitute a ton of books? Answer: Far fewer than will actually fit into the storage container. . .bummer, guess we can’t put the kitchen table in that empty spot after all.

When packing, it’s important to remember that a truck/forklift driver with no particular attachment to Grandma’s china will lift the crate onto a flatbed truck, drive it to a storage facility, tuck it away onto some storage shelf three stories in the air, forklift it back onto a flatbed truck and then drive it 3,000 miles to another storage facility and . . .you get the picture. Needless to say, packing to prevent load shift is critical. Of course, I became far less concerned about our grill knocking into the television about 1 AM on our final night of packing. Thankfully, John persevered and strapped, cushioned and padded the final crate to withstand any kamikaze truck driver (we hope).

The next morning I realized I had inadvertently packed Samuel’s retainer. Where? In the very first box that went into the perfectly strapped, cushioned and padded crate, the one with bicycle tires jimmied to wire shelving bungeed to the grill which shielded the vacuum cleaner. We decided to make an orthodontist appointment when we got to North Carolina.

While waiting for the moving truck, we discovered several items we forgot to pack causing John to scrounge for space in the only two crates not pushing the weight limit. It’s probably best I had to make an emergency visit to the dentist for a tooth that really needs a root canal (we did a temporary fix) so I can continue to live in blissful ignorance regarding our wonderful packing job.

We had to call charity to take away several items we couldn’t fit, make a run to FedEx to mail the stuff we need but missed until the final sweep and beg our neighbors to take the remaining items, including our overflowing garbage. Never in our wildest dreams did we think it would be a problem to vacate our home by 9 PM. We pulled out of our driveway at 8:50 (a full ten minutes to spare).

Exhausted from the previous evening (three hours of sleep on the floor), we did well to drive to Ellensburg (about 90 miles east) where we crashed at the first hotel off the freeway. What a way to start a vacation!