#22-Generators, crisis, and caves

Well it’s now Thursday night and I just couldn’t post last night. Yes, it was another crisis, and it seems like my emotional reserve is drained so I’ve been having some regular mental breakdowns.

Last night started well. We moved rather slowly through the day so started looking between Butte and Bozeman for some camping. It’s actually turning colder and there is snow on the mountains, so we tried to stay at a low elevation and found Lewis & Clark Caverns state park, that is wonderful. But it had no electric. So it was time to finally pull out our new generators. (Something we needed to do before Yellowstone so we can figure out what we need for camping there.)

Stacy filled one of them with gas, oil and tried to start it. After a couple of pulls with the cord--it jammed. And it didn’t un-jam. So she tried the second one. The exact same thing happened to it! By now, all I could think is that we bought them on e-bay and we finally got screwed. I had bought brand new ones and checked on warranty, but realized I probably didn’t have a leg to stand on to try to get warranty—because I bought them on e-bay--eighteen hundred dollars worth. I cried again. And then everyone gets upset--so it turned into an even bigger crisis!

But the morning dawned with the buzz of generators. Stacy had called a dealer in Bozeman and found out that she had put too much oil in them and it must be a safety feature.

So after the three of us discussed all our issues, the morning was good and we decided to stay in this park another night. It has some caverns that gave tours so after a leisurely lunch we drove up to the caves. It was a 2 ½ hr tour that was wonderful—Yuliya has never been to a big cave before so it was a picture extravaganza for her. We were the slowest ones in the group.

Not as big as Carlsbad Caverns, which both Stacy & I had been to, but still a good one. And it is one of those off the road places we just happened on to, so the camping has just a few neighbors and the tour was small.

After the big walk of the caverns, Yuliya and I decided to hike down the 2 more miles to the campgrounds. It was the original path they used in the early 1900’s for tours of the caves. although we cheated and went down. It was very steep and just amazing that people had hiked up it and then did the cave hike. Obviously they weren’t the out of shape Americans we now are—even downhill it was still a challenge.

But life is looking much better tonight then last night and my hands are starting to even feel a bit better. Ironically Yuliya must have gotten into something because she started getting hives tonight. But since I have experienced about every skin ailment in the last few years (my stress seems to manifest itself through my skin) we were able to start to doctor her and hopefully it won’t be a new crisis. But at least it is happening to someone else!

Tomorrow we will get to Yellowstone and hopefully the weather will hold—snow has been starting and I’m not quite ready for that yet. But we have several craft projects to do in case we get stuck in the trailer and it would almost be nice to just veg for a few days.

I think the ordeal with my sister took more out of me than I would like to admit and it’s time to regain my balance. Eric’s smirk when he picked up Kelly made it so obvious it was so personal—and it’s still hard for me to believe that people I use to love and trust would go so far to hurt us. But I guess we all live with the consequences and the fact we still don’t understand it almost makes us feel better. It would be scarier if any of it made sense…