Pining for the Fjords

Back when we purchased Arlene the travel trailer, almost one year ago now, we knew that while we'd likely spend most of our time taking her on shorter, closer adventures, we also wanted to do a big trip  someday.  Not only would a big trip  (this is in bold since that's how we always referred to it amongst ourselves - this was BIG, so it needed the appropriate amount of EMPHASIS) get us somewhere further away and feel like a real vacation, but it would also help us learn if the travel trailer lifestyle was something we'd like to continue once the pandemic passed and we could safely hop on an airplane again.  After the turn of the year, and we could see our vaccinations on the horizon, we started planning in earnest; after some discussion, we settled on a week-long trip to Yellowstone National Park and back, and we picked the week before Memorial Day to go, figuring we'd have a few extra days on the back end to unpack, run 800 loads of laundry, and go grocery shopping be

What about Part 2 ?  You should read that first. Thankfully, the noisy bird that woke us up on Saturday left us alone on Sunday morning, so we slept in a bit more - until 7am or so (layabouts, that's us). Taken from the Jerome State Historical Park - that's the old smelter in the background We eventually dragged ourselves out of bed, made coffee and chai, and started the shower cycle.  After getting ourselves dressed and hopping in the truck, it was time to make a pilgrimage up the hill to Jerome.  Jerome is a really neat place - it was founded as a copper mining camp back in the 1870s, and although the mines went bust about 50 years ago, it's now populated by artists and other cool folks, and there's all sorts of neat galleries and restaurants and whatnot to visit.  As I mentioned in the last blog, Jerome is perched on the side of Cleopatra Hill, and it really shouldn't be there at all - no history of Jerome is complete without stories of buildings just giving up t