Last minute kind of trip…… Part 1

by Kayla · Published August 15, 2019 · Updated June 7, 2023

a lot of the pics are with our phone but some are with moms camera… : ) click on pics to enlarge but use back button to return 🙂

So mom had been wanting to go to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone (mostly Grand Tetons) for a while now and the past few months she has been seeing photos from another photographer making her want to go even more. So one Thursday – late Thursday and Friday morning mom thought about going the following week. She looked into the weather, prices, budget, etc and my, Miss Kayla’s schedule (my schedule is so full most of the time) and decided its a good possibility we could go. Yay, finally a road trip, a big road trip! So mom got the car oil change and checked out Friday morning (she still wasn’t 100% sure we were going just yet) and then worked on hotels. By late Friday she decided we would go since hotels were available to meet our needs and at a reasonable, actually good prices. We left that Sunday morning. Wow, that soon mom… Yay! So mom finished up all the details of the itinerary (hotels and route) and started the packing process.. I woke up Saturday so ready to go that I didn’t want to be on my playbed watching TV like I usually love doing on a Saturday morning especially since I hadn’t been able to in a while. Mom was surprised that I was that way and kind of ruined her thinking of how Saturday would go, but I spent the time in my chair (happier and very content) helping mom get ready for our trip. I have to help so my input counts, ya know! We had so much to do and not much time. A trip like this usually takes a few days to pack. We also ran to Target – yay, that was so much fun! Did you know that Target is MY FAVORITE STORE??? It is! We had to get some food for our trip and I needed to pick up some more of my face wipes. Mom and I finally finished packing very late Saturday night. I was so excited.

Sunday morning came and I woke up very happy and all. I was so ready to just get up and head right out the door, but mom needed to pack up the car (both top rack and inside) and get us both ready to leave so mom thought I would want to watch my typical morning programs on my playbed while having breakfast and while mom gets us ready to go. Wrong! I watched Mickey Mouse and that was it. That was all I wanted to watch – not even 30 minutes of tv. I wanted up in my chair to head out on our road trip.

We were out the door by 0900.. I was very content in the car and slept off and on. I played, vocalized, laughed some too while looking out the windows. It was a rainy but very humid morning making 50-60 degrees feel like sticky sweaty 90 degrees. You would think we were on the east coast. Our typical weather here…

Driving through Cali up the 15 freeway from South Bay San Diego to Riverside to Las Vegas was very stressful. Lots of cars which is usually fine but this morning so many crazy drivers and mom felt like a turtle going 75 in a 65 mile zone. People were racing down the freeway in and out of traffic, people were using the shoulders to pass others at high speed almost going off the freeway into ditches or hitting the railing that would all of a sudden appear. Crazy drivers and it didn’t end when we hit Nevada either. It didn’t end until about 30 minutes after going through Las Vegas. Finally, it calmed down and was more of a relaxing drive the rest of the day. It drizzled off and on the entire way and temps never did get higher than 70. Very windy in some areas. We made two stops and even though mom made me get out of my chair, I just didn’t want out of my chair even though I had been in it for almost four hours. Needless to say I didn’t take a very long break out of it. 🙂 It’s a road trip! Plus I don’t like laying down in my car – its not the best.

We drove through Cali, Nevada, Arizona and we ended up for the night in Utah. Ya know, mom didn’t realize we would go through Arizona but it was only for not more than 30 minutes probably. Very short. Kind of weird. And we are staying in Cedar City, Utah so we were only on the road in Utah maybe 30 minutes as well. So today with 7 hours of driving, two stops totaling 30 minutes we drove in four states. Pretty cool for that short amount of time. 🙂

There was some snow on the mountains in Utah and the temp was mid 50’s and very windy in areas making it feel colder. Like really cold! We arrived at our hotel and got into our room. I was ready to get out of my wheelchair so mom put me on the bed and turned on some programs for me to watch on TV. After about an hour, surprisingly I was wanting back in my chair to go for a walk. I wasn’t going to lay down the rest of the evening until bed. Nope, I wanted to go for a walk despite the chilly and quite breezy weather. So mom put my blanket over my legs and my sweatshirt on that went with my outfit I was wearing and we went for a walk, a long walk and I loved it. We even stopped at KFC to get me some mashed potatoes and gravy and mac n cheese but with very little noodles, mostly just the cheese sauce as I love it! Yay, mom got that for me. I was so happy. Got back to the hotel, had some of my mac n cheese and mom kept the mashed potatoes and gravy for me for tomorrow along with the rest of the mac n cheese. 🙂 Yay, I now have my own food and its yummy for a few days. Mom was concerned about me going for a walk in this weather but it was so much fun and I am fine! She made me do an extra treatment tonight, so I was like, ok, fine mom I will do them. She is worried about me due to the cooler temps on this trip and high elevation. I already struggle with cooler temps and to add elevation on top of it, well. Cedar City is just over 5000 feet and I am doing great.

So that pretty much sums up our first day (Sunday) on the road and how we got here. We are getting up somewhat early the next morning (Monday) for another days drive. We are heading to Idaho Falls, ID. Mom wanted to go the more direct way to Grand Tetons National Park but there weren’t any towns with hotels that would meet our needs (mostly mine) and Jackson was possibly going to be too far, so we decided to go the other route that is just a tad longer (no more than 15 minutes) and stay in an actual town. 🙂 Mom also wanted something no more than 2 hours on Tuesday to Grand Tetons. 🙂

The next morning (Monday) I slept really well and woke up at 0600 Cali time. Well a few minutes before… My typical time.. 🙂 I was so ready to get up and go but mom had me get my treatment and I watched Disney Jr while having my breakfast and getting ready. I actually enjoyed it and fell back asleep. Mom said I was out for a little while until she woke me up to finish getting dress so we can get on the road.

Mom went outside to go get a cup of coffee at the breakfast lounge and it was raining but more like rain snow sleet. After 15 minutes or so, that turned into large snowdrops which were sticking to mom and our stuff and the car but not the ground. It was a wet snow rather than a dry snow. It was also 37 degrees, but it wasn’t cold like one would think. Definitely not like 37 degrees in Cali. Mom wasn’t even cold in jeans and short sleeve short.

Mom got our stuff all packed up and we finally got on the road. By then it had stopped snowing and was a light drizzle.

Weird weather but so cool!
So we left Cedar City and headed north with our destination being Idaho Falls, Idaho. We had a lot of rain with some breaks in it.

We reached a point in Utah where there was no more rain and the sun was out with just light breezes and kind of warm.

So we stopped in Ormen at the mall to take Cubby to get a new music piece and some more filling so she had surgery. I really enjoyed our outing and finally getting Cubby a new music piece. Mom let me use my gift card that I actually got for our upcoming cruise (yep, there is a Cubby store on the ship) to get Cubby her music and I got her a new outfit and bow. I know, Cubby has more than enough outfits but this one was just too cute and its been so long since I have gotten her anything so. We also went to Claire’s and mom let me get some new chokers (necklace that fits perfectly around the neck). They are perfect for when I go to my Adult Day program and camp. Mom has been wanting to take me to a Claire’s to shop for them, but its not easy going to the mall where I live. So I was very excited to get several. I am going to let Cubby wear one tomorrow. 🙂 I did so much shopping that it wore me out as you can see in the lower right the photo is of me asleep in the car right after shopping.

Mom saw so many photo opps so she just took a bunch of neurochrome photos so we wouldn’t be delayed any longer. Neurochrome is taking a picture with your brain and store it there to remember. 🙂 However, she did take one photo on our route today…

Mom wanted to get to our hotel well before dark and semi-early so we don’t have to rush. And she wanted to limit the amount of time I am in the car as it’s not one I can really take a break out of my chair from.

Mom also tried really hard to find a rainbow as conditions were perfect several times but she thinks the rainbow was too high for us to see it. She isn’t all that great with finding rainbows unless they just appear right in front of her.

Here are some road pics:

I took a long nap after shopping. When I woke up I was higher than a kite and totally rocking out to the music on the radio in the car. Mom was scanning through the stations and I really liked one of them so mom left it on. Not sure if she regretted that or not, but I loved it. 🙂 We did stop so I could take a break which I opted out of and so I could have some of my food. I was too excited to be on the road and outside so I opted out of that too for the most part. Two bites were all I had time for. I was busy enjoying the nice weather.

It hadn’t rain since before we got to Ormen, but it started a mile away from our offramp to the hotel tonight. Ugh, mom had to unpack the car and me in the rain and it was large raindrops of heavy rain, but on a cool note, right across the street is a huge river with cascades – large cascades. Mom took a couple of photos before it got dark once it stopped raining. It stopped about 10 minutes after we unpacked the car.

I am doing well with the elevation and change of weather/climates. Sometimes the symptoms don’t hit though for a few hours to a day later. My symptoms are usually delayed but mom is good knowing why a symptom comes on so she will know how to treat it and know what kind of protection I need in the future to prevent it. Mom is staying up on my treatments (adding in an extra one or two) to help and I am not minding it. Oh and today I didn’t sleep much either, not like yesterday. Although, today is a weekday which I don’t sleep as much as I do on the weekend anyway. Mom was really pleased to see me awake a lot. 🙂 She hopes I remain that way the rest of the week in Grand Tetons NP and Yellowstone NP. 🙂
Well, its almost time for bed and mom wants to get up extra early tomorrow to get to Grand Tetons early. I love it when she likes to get up and GO.

Mom woke up before me on this Tuesday morning. I actually slept a good 30 minutes after mom got up – thats a first. We woke up to about 35 degrees with high humidity here in Idaho Falls so it definitely didn’t feel like 35. Humidity doesn’t bother me like it does you and mom so it was chilly for me. Oh and we were greeted with this Canadian Goose.

We got dressed, packed up the car, mom grabbed a cup of coffee and then we strolled/walked along the river and over the bridge. It is such a cool place that we really want to return to spend more time here exploring.

By then it was about 40 degrees but still quite humid. I was bundled up, but mom was in a short sleeve shirt and pants. Mom really liked this one scene from the bridge, so we strolled/walked back to the car to grab her camera gear so she could take a real photo of the scene.

Mom was quick so I could get out of the cold and the breeze that just started to pick up, plus we really needed to get on the road to Grand Tetons National Park.
It was an interesting 2 – 2 1/2 hour drive to Grand Tetons NP driving through areas with fields, rolling hills, mountains climbing as high as 8,000 feet and descending back down to 4,000-5,000 before even reaching Jackson, WY. At the higher elevations, there was so much snow. It was a gorgeous sunny day out.

The next few nights we were staying in Jackson, WY, a small tourist town just outside of Grand Tetons NP. It was 10:30am when we arrived in Jackson – too early to check in to our hotel so we decided to go to the park to start our sightseeing. We headed down towards Kelly to see what we could see along the river as back in 2011 that was a common area for wildlife – Moose, Pronghorn, Buffalo but we didn’t see anything. We looked really hard too. The whole area has changed so much since the last time we were there. They had a lot of flooding so it caused some damage and whatnot, but still. Mom couldn’t believe that we didn’t see any wildlife. We then drove over to Mormon Row and there were a lot of people – tourist there so we continued on heading back out to the main highway that goes through the park. Still seeing a lot of changes and no wildlife – strange compared to our previous three visits. Mom decided to drive to the other end of the park to Oxbow Bend, one of her favorite spots. On our way there we did see a few Buffalo in the distance, a couple of deer and Elk and one Grizzly bear that was far up on a hillside. It actually looked like a dog; a lab since its so far away. You need to look really close to see the adorable bear (probably best to click on photo to see full size) 🙂

We hung out for a few minutes to see what direction it was going but after talking to a few people we realized it more than likely was going away from us, further up and out into the trees so we left to continue on to Oxbow Bend which was just a quarter of a mile down the road. We got out of the car to stroll/walk in the area which was so much fun!

We are getting good at selfies! 🙂

It was chilly but not too bad and the sun was out. Some small sections, especially towards Kelly and Jackson, had some rain. Throughout our drive, in the park, some areas were very windy with other areas no wind not even a slight breeze, temps varied in the mid 40s to low-mid 50s. It just depended on where you were at.

It was time to head to our hotel, get checked in and chill out for a while before heading back out into the park. We found a small motel/hotel (Four Winds Motel)

to stay at very reasonable that is owned and ran by a family (a few generations). They are so nice and accommodating making sure we always had everything we needed. It was nothing fancy, just very basic but very clean and comfortable. We will definitely be back. People in Jackson are very nice. Mom called one hotel about availability on the ground floor and they couldn’t make it work (so nice of them to try as they really did) so suggested we call this hotel.
We had a nice break, got settled in and then headed back out into the park to see what we see – hopefully, some Moose… We went to a few places and got out to stroll/walk around to see what we see. It was so much fun, I loved it.

We saw a few Buffalo but not like previous trips. This is a whole new experience for us. Our previous trips were all very similar, but this one is playing out to be very different.

We decided to drive out to Oxbow Bend and search that area, maybe see the Grizzly again but we didn’t. However, while we were out there we decided to drive on the other side of Oxbow Bend to see what was all out there as we had never been very far down that road before. We drove it to the very end and what a beautiful peaceful area. There were quite a few other people. Some of them were there early in the morning and saw bears. So cool! We didn’t see any and mom and I got out and strolled the area to see what we see.

After enjoying the area for a little while we headed on back the way we came down the main park road. We found one Pronghorn Antelope,

Elk, Deer and finally as we were ready to head back to the hotel (give up for the night) we saw one Moose in the riverbed below the cliff.

Mom and I got out of the car and she pushed me down the trail along the cliff to the area that overlooked the riverbed where the Moose was. I wasn’t too keen on this as I was ready to head back to the hotel, but I let mom get a few photos before the Moose headed back into the brush out of sight.

Oh, the weather was so nice out this evening – no rain, wind and mild warm temps.

It has been a really long day for us, especially me so we headed back to the hotel for the night. Mom was trying to decide on our schedule for tomorrow. Do we stick to the original plans or???