13 States To Go

We had an all St. Louis Blues weekend that started with Haley’s practice. Then Tom, Chase and I went to a Blues game. Then all of us including Brandy, who was out here for a dog show, ran the Blue Note 5K at Forest Park. Finally, Chase had a hockey game that afternoon. This Blue Note was special because the had the Stanley Cup there. It was a fun event for the first one that Haley did with us. Both Chase and Haley ran really well.  On top of all that hockey Stacie started playing. Just learning so far, no team yet.  😄

It’s obvious that I didn’t take the most direct route from Oregon to St. Louis and now I’m at the reason. Racing in states #38 & #39. The main reason for this trip was getting a chance to watch both Chase and Haley play hockey and if it worked out all of us running our first 5k together, three generations! But since we didn’t have hockey schedules yet and Stacie and Tom weren’t going to be home from their trip until after I arrived I got on my favorite race site, Running in the USA and found races that were doable to continue my 50 State quest.  The first was a homecoming event at St. Cloud State in Minnesota and keeping with the hockey theme of this trip it started and finished at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on campus. It was a fun event that included the band, cheerleaders and mascots. It was their 150th homecoming.  That’s about the time that the national weather map was showing I had come through at the right time to miss all the snow that was coming behind ...

I mentioned earlier that I deliberately chose to drive shorter distances each day and take a little longer on the trip because I wanted to have time to enjoy places along the way. Yellowstone certainly didn’t disappoint and my plan for shorter days proved to be a good one there. I made a couple of stops and side trips that I wouldn’t have if I felt rushed and because of those I experienced two of my highlights. I saw a wolf, my first ever in the wild and even watched it stalk and catch something. While I managed to get a couple of pictures they don’t show much unless you know exactly what you’re looking at. The second thing was seeing a geyser that was erupting and it only erupted every nine hours. The entire drive through Yellowstone was beautiful. I couldn’t have asked for better weather and one employee told me I was just a couple days ahead of the snow.  Hopefully I’ll return to Yellowstone in the future. After Yellowstone I made a stop at Buffalo Bill Dam. I had no idea it exi...