Road trip across America… daily reflections by Ema and Elle.
By Ema ~ I awoke about nine even though I was up well into the early a.m. sitting by the fire. I had hoped to sleep in since we had a payed spot for the night, but the warmth of the morning sun woke me even with the tent on the van and a breeze. I was taking it slow and enjoying our camp. Made a breakfast since we had power, of Happy farm raised eggs and sourdough toast. After, I got all the goods out of the cooler, and Elle made us a smoothie which we thought we would be taking on the road, but we got lost in the sun. We played some music through the iPad and my water proof speaker and danced.
We decided to take the paddle board out on Mirror Lake where we were staying. It was my first time doing the electric pump to inflate the boat, but after a brief panic of whether it would turn off on its own once full, we got all our gear together, including our tails, and were ready to go. Down the river a bit was a beach, so we anchored off to the side and transformed into mermaids for a swim. It was rather full of algae and was quite difficult to flow through the water. I actually came up covered in it and decided it was time to board my little boat and carry on down the river.
Elle practiced paddling, and I got to sit back and let the sun kiss me. I soon joined in paddling again. I felt I would be back in the van sitting still for hours and I wanted to move while I could.
My adventurous Elle leapt into the waters along the way several times, once to join the ducks and once to swim through the green plant life filling the port. She was completely covered and looked like a little sea nymph.
While packing up our gear we met three lovely ladies that shared a wealth of knowledge of places to discover and wisdom for our meanderings, as the one lady called our sojourn. She is so right about taking the time to meander when you travel and avoiding the main roads as much as possible. She suggested a book called The Blue Highways. Something to dive into someday and be inspired by. She also gifted us with a towel to clean our paddle board, as we found a rinse was not enough to remove the pant life we had collected on the river. It even happened to be a white towel with blue and purple, which are my favorite colors, and if you know me, you know I love coordination. It was a blessing to meet them, a gift in itself, as it is with crossing paths of others along the way of any journey. After they meandered on, we finished loading up the van and decided we had to do the hike that the camp host suggested upon our arrival last night while we were getting our wood for the fire.
So off to Echo Trail we went. There were signs posted for poison ivy, so Elle had a little doubt, but soon we were on the trail. It was about a 0.6 mile hike, but we never stay just to the trail or go one direction, so it took us a couple hours, until around sunset to find our way back to the van. There were rock cliffs that seemed to be sculpted by time, jetting out towards the lake shore.
Elle suddenly appeared below the trail at the lakes edge and was on her way out over the waters on a fallen tree. It was quite long and rose upward over the lake at the top of the tree. She made it to the top before I called her back down a bit so I could create reflections of her adventurous spirit. Back on shore a crowd that had been watching from the waters edge cheered for her!
She stepped back on land and was up the face of the rock wall. Thankfully there was one place that sort of had natural steps and tree roots to grasp on the way up. Once atop we found a family that informed us there was a trail that lead to the top. They were quite surprised to have found us coming up over the ledge. Their son, who was about Elle’s age, wanted to join us, but I almost agreed with his mother maybe we should take the path back down, yet my little explorer was soon over the edge again and I followed.
We found a walking bridge over the river and laughed ourselves silly as well worked our bodies to exhaustion jumping for joy and trying to capture it on camera.
After our adventures we headed to the shower to cleanse and get fresh before the next part of our journey.
It was dark by the time we started off, but I had at least a few hours of driving in me and made it three hours and across a state border from Wisconsin to Minnesota. We landed for the night at a rest stop and found a place at the end of the lot next to a grassy knoll with some trees. I shaded the windows, cleared the bed of the ukuleles and my tech chest. Elle was already almost asleep in her seat, but her eyes cracked open when we parked. She was on the bed even before I had it clear, practically cuddling with her ukulele. I worked around her and got what we needed set up. Thankfully she had her pajamas on and all I had to do was pull back the covers and offer her to get in as it is a bit chilly tonight. She crawled in and was once again gone to her dreams. I will join her soon, just had to take a moment to sit, and send photos of our journey to our Mother Goose before I rest. She was suppose to be with us to caravan West, so we are keeping her updated so she can be here in a sense. Next trip West she must come along so we can soak in the hot springs of Bozeman, Montana together. Tomorrow we are on our way to South Dakota to see those guys with their faces carved into the rock, according to Elle.
By Elle ~ Today we woke up and sissy made eggs and sourdough toast it was yummy we did dishes and started packing up to soon go to the lake, but not before taking a moment to dance after finally getting all our stuff together. We got out the paddle board put on swimsuits and headed to the boat launch. Once there we got to work on filling water bottles and eating gummy worms while the board was blowing up after what seemed to be forever we were finally ready and headed into the river and soon realized the gopro was dead. Sissy said she told me to check both cameras but I only heard the big camera so we had a dead gopro which was unfortunate, but we lived. On the way there I let sissy do all the work while I looked around she paddled and we found a beach, yay! Sissy mentioned how we just paddled to a beach and that was probably the first time I had done that I agreed. I jumped in the water with my water shoes but that was when my shoes came unbuckled. I quickly got back on the board as i love my new water shoes and didn’t want to loose them. I buckled them and tried again. This time I went all the way under which surprised me. I came back up and put my tail on and swam. It was filled with seaweed and it covered sissy as she went under so we didn’t swim for very long and were soon headed back. I wanted to paddle, but sissy said she didn’t want old lady arms and started to paddle, so I tried to get ducks and snails and became green. As we started packing sissy met these old lady’s who gave us a towel to wipe off the board and many travel directions. We exchanged cards and headed to echo trail, a trail we were told by the camp host we had to do, but there were signs about poison ivy so after a moment of panic we headed to the trail. I climbed up the mountain and headed up a broken tree and got much applause by a group on the side. We took photos of us jumping and headed back. We took a shower and at 8 pm finally left. Sissy decided to do some night driving. I tried to sleep, but just ended up laying there with my eyes open looking at the view. We didn’t stop till 12 and when we did I went to sleep right away.
Leave a Reply