Cross Country Chaos Read online

  Never taking a trip like this at all. This was for the boys, she constantly reminded herself. And so far, so good. They wouldn’t remember their dad canceled his promised trip with them—they’d remember their mom drove them across the country and showed them a damn good time.

  It was better than the bastard deserved, but the boys had been through enough already in their life. There were plenty of years ahead of them to discover their father’s truths. At least she could fill their childhood with happy memories.

  Kelly used some of the time to think about Mart. Maybe she could ask him out to dinner in Spokane. Just dinner. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that, right? It would be nice to spend time alone with an adult who wasn’t a blood relation.

  Hell, it’d be nice to spend some time alone with anyone.

  Or some time alone.

  Maybe she’d rethink that. She might need a rubber room and a straight jacket by the time she rolled across the Washington state line. Only two days from home, and while her nerves weren’t totally frayed—yet—she missed her alone time.

  This is for Denny, she thought. And Paulie. They’re counting on me, and I can’t let them down. I have to do this for them. That was enough to keep her going a few more miles.

  Around two a.m., she pulled into a rest area alongside several RVs parked under the security lights. She used the facilities, grabbed her pillow from the rear hatch, and tipped her seat back far enough she could wedge the pillow between the door and her headrest. An hour later, she opened her eyes and freshened up before hitting the road again.

  Her mom looked up. “What? We’re going already?”

  “I don’t want to do more than nap, or I’ll be totally out of it.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “I’m okay.”

  She wasn’t okay, but Sharon was too tired to argue or notice and went back to sleep.

  * * * *

  Dawn kissed the sky as they turned west in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Kelly filled the tank and double-checked the map. Rousting Denny and Paulie, she made them take a bathroom break before they hit the road.

  The routine was tedious. Either Kelly or her mom confirmed the bathroom was one, accessible, and two, not nasty, in that order. Then Kelly unlocked the trailer, cautiously bracing the door so anything that had shifted since the last stop didn’t fall on her. Push back the coolers. Untangle Denny’s everyday chair and wheels, put the wheels on. Then untangle Denny from inside the car.

  Reverse the process to load.

  After the first few times, it got old, and her back was killing her.

  “Load and unload,” her mom chanted.

  “Shut up, Mom.”

  The inky blackness on either side of the asphalt faded into deep purple light, revealing rolling, rocky, grassy nothing broken by fences and the occasional house or barn or billboard. Kelly never imagined this much nothing still existed in the continental United States. It made the Everglades look positively crowded by comparison.

  They saw the first signs just outside Sioux Falls. “World Famous MitchellCornPalace.”

  “Mom, I saw that on the Food Channel,” Denny said. “Can we go?”

  Kelly looked at her mom. “Want to?”

  “Why would I want to miss a world-famous cultural landmark like the MitchellCornPalace?”

  “No sarcasm before breakfast, Mom.”

  “That wasn’t sarcasm. I was being corny.”

  Kelly fought the urge to beat her head against the steering wheel while the boys roared with laughter.

  It wasn’t quite nine when they finished refueling and sat down to breakfast in a Mitchell fast-food restaurant.

  “I’m sick of hash browns,” Sharon said, dropping an unfinished patty on her tray.

  Paulie eyed it. “Can I have it, Grandma?”

  She nodded and pushed it over to him. “Be my guest.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said, “but we can’t spend three hours a day eating in sit-down restaurants with better food. I can drive over two hundred miles in three hours. We have to make time if we want to spend two days in Yellowstone.”

  “At this rate, we’ll sleep through Yellowstone,” Sharon groused.

  Denny looked glum. Or maybe it was exhaustion.

  “What’s wrong?” Kelly asked.

  He shook his head, but she pressed him. “What if I don’t win?”

  Paulie elbowed him. “You will, Squirt. Don’t worry.”

  “But what if I don’t, Mom?”

  Kelly shrugged. “So? What if you don’t? Paulie’s teams don’t always win. Only one person can win each event, honey.”

  “But we’re driving all the way out here.”

  Kelly leaned forward and touched his hand, far too exhausted to have a Hallmark moment. “Denny, listen to me. We’re driving out here to have fun.”

  “We are?” her mom quipped.

  “Hush, Mom.” Kelly focused on Denny. “Fun. Got it?”

  He nodded. “I want you to be proud of me.”

  Paulie, God love him, threw his arm around Denny and tousled his hair. “We are proud of you, Squirt. I’ve never been to a national anything. I think that’s cool.”

  Kelly and Sharon exchanged smiles. “Paulie’s right, honey,” Kelly said. “We are proud of you.”

  Denny didn’t look totally convinced. “Really?”

  Kelly nodded. “Really.”

  Downtown Mitchell was a neat place. Even the light poles bore corn motifs. The inside of the WorldFamousCornPalace smelled like a bag of popcorn. Denny and Paulie studied the exhibits, fascinated by pictures of former displays.

  “Makes me hungry for a corn dog,” Sharon said.

  Kelly shook her head, too tired to reply. She took pictures of everything and looked for coffee. Now that it was daylight, she knew she could stay awake.

  If she poured enough caffeine down her throat.

  They stopped for gas in Murdo, South Dakota, around two. The hot breeze scoured them with sand carried across the parking lot. Not a cloud in the sky.

  “Okay, forget what I said about St. Louis,” Sharon groused. “This is the southernmost quadrant of Hell. My God, how can people claim Florida is hot? Isn’t Murdo the blizzard capital of North America or something?”

  Kelly sweated over the gas pump. “You’re thinking Fargo, and that’s in North Dakota. Mom, please. Go buy a couple of bags of ice for the coolers.”

  She was tired but didn’t want to stop until they reached Rapid City. Then she could take a shower and collapse for the night. As tired as she was, the espresso shots weren’t keeping up with her exhaustion. She supplemented by snacking on chocolate-covered coffee beans. Kelly didn’t even want to think about sleep, or she’d doze off over the low-grade fuel nozzle. And she didn’t have the energy to deal with her mom’s constant grousing, which was getting worse by the mile.

  But Kelly agreed it was damn hot.

  Chapter Twelve

  They made Rapid City before dark and found a small motel south of downtown on the way to Mt.Rushmore. The next morning they were on the road before seven. The time changes worked in their favor, getting them started early in the morning with few complaints from the boys. It played hell with Kelly’s sleep, however, and she was wide awake by four.

  Sharing a bed with Denny didn’t help. Kelly laid there, her mind racing despite her exhaustion. About the time she’d fall asleep, Denny elbowed her in the back or stuck his foot in her face. Denny was a natural pretzel due to low muscle tone in his legs. He could, literally, stick his feet in his ears.

  There was nothing like being awakened by your child’s foot slamming into your nose while he snored in your ear.

  Kelly had always imagined Mt.Rushmore as a mountain in the middle of nowhere. Instead, it was hidden in the Black Hills, and as they wound through Keystone toward the park entrance, the mountain played peek-a-boo. Seeing the mountain sparked the boys’ enthusiasm. They were delighted, yelling every time they spied it and squabbling over t
he digital and video cameras to take pictures.

  They arrived just after eight. Kelly took two spots on top of the parking garage. There were few other cars yet. The mountain was large, no doubt, but somehow she thought it would be bigger.

  Or maybe she was on the edge of exhaustion.

  Kelly had an idea, got the boys to pose, their fingers held in the air like they were testing the wind. She sat twenty feet from them, the camera steadied on her knee, giving them directions. She wouldn’t tell them why.

  “Did you lose your mind?” Sharon asked.

  Kelly glared at her mother, but didn’t answer. Finally, Kelly had the boys posed just right and snapped several pictures. She looked at the screen and laughed.

  “What?” Sharon asked.

  Kelly stood, showed her the camera, and Sharon roared.

  “What, Mom?” Denny flapped in irritation. She held the camera so both boys could see.

  It looked like the boys were picking George and Tom’s noses.

  Both boys laughed and turned to look at the mountain. As they walked to the entrance, Sharon smiled and shook her head.

  “Ought to send that to Mart. He’ll get a kick out of it.”

  At lunch in Custer, Kelly did. She dumped all the pictures from her camera onto her laptop’s hard drive and used her air card to send him and Patty an email.

  We drive across the country to pick the presidents’ noses. How classy is that? :)

  Her phone rang a few minutes later. Mart laughed. “That was funny! That’s the kind of thing I’d think of.”

  His call thrilled her. “Well, I’m the mom of two young boys. Disgusting comes naturally.”

  Denny flapped, reaching for the phone. She handed it over. He happily yelled at Mart for a few minutes, telling him about what they’d seen, and hung up before she could get it back and talk to him.

  They gathered the boys. Sharon helped Kelly break down Denny’s chair and put it in the trailer.

  “Load and unload,” her mom chanted. “Load and unload.”

  * * * *

  Kelly drove north and west through Wyoming to I-90, then from Ranchester south through the BigHornMountains.

  “Why are they the ‘Big Horn’ Mountains—two words—but it’s the ‘BighornNational Forest’—one word?” Sharon asked.

  Kelly suppressed a groan. She thought she heard Paulie snicker in the backseat. “I don’t know, Mom.”

  As they ascended, the day turned grey and damp. While it wasn’t raining yet, Kelly didn’t relish the thought of negotiating steep, wet downhill mountain roads for the first time with the trailer and two-wheel drive Element. Her mountain driving experience was limited to this trip.

  The boys were amazed by their first “real” mountains of the trip. Sharon’s eyes were fixed on the steep drop-off on her side.

  “That’s a long way down.”

  “Don’t start, Mom.”

  To Kelly’s immense relief, the weather improved as they descended and crossed into drier, flatter land. They grabbed dinner and fuel from a convenience store with a grill counter in Greybull. Then they drove through rolling flatlands bracketed by foothills on either side, into Cody, Wyoming, just before sunset.

  “How much longer, Mommy?” Denny asked.

  “Not too much, sweetheart.”

  Sharon looked at the map. “A couple of hours. After dark, but we’re almost there.” She looked at Kelly. “You want the miles, dear, or can I guess the time?”

  Kelly stuck her tongue out at her.

  Deep shadows blanketed the Buffalo Bill Reservoir as they drove through. Then Sharon spotted a sign.

  “Wait, that sign said we’re in bear country.”

  Kelly glanced at her. “Yeah, so?”

  Sharon turned, trying to see the sign, but they were past it. “It was a warning sign, like for rock slides and stuff, except for bears.”

  Kelly was more worried by the variations of falling rock signs she’d seen along the way. From innocuous circles bouncing over a car, to craggy boulders denting the tops of vehicles, she never knew the yellow and black signs could instill such foreboding. Her nerves were frayed from hours of intense vigilance as they snaked through the mountains.

  “What’s your point, Mom?”

  “Bears! They. Eat. People.”

  Kelly looked at her mom. She was serious. “Mom, it’s Yellowstone. They have bears. But we’re not hiking or camping in a tent, so we don’t have to worry.”

  Sharon didn’t look relieved.

  “And we have pepper spray,” Kelly joked. Sharon shot her a withering glare.

  Kelly pulled over to get a shot of a vista before the sun completely set.

  Sharon’s face paled. “You’re getting out?”

  Kelly put it in park and unbuckled her seat belt. “Uh, yeah. Why?”

  “Bears!”

  Kelly stared at her mom. “You’re kidding?”

  Sharon grabbed her arm. “You can’t! It’s almost dark. They say that’s a bad time. I told you, I looked it up on the Internet.”

  Kelly looked around the open parking area. Not a bear in sight—grizzly, black, polar, or otherwise.

  “I don’t see any bears, Grandma,” Denny said.

  Paulie caught Kelly’s eye in the rearview mirror. He smiled, shaking his head. She tried not to laugh.

  “Mom, it’s okay.” Kelly gently shook her mom’s grip and stepped out of the car.

  They reached the east Yellowstone entrance a little before nine. The ranger looked at their park pass and handed her information and maps. “You have reservations?”

  “In CanyonVillage tonight, then Old Faithful tomorrow.”

  “That’s a good trip. Be careful for the next few miles, there’s construction, but the road’s safe. Take your time. The check-in desk is open all night.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are there bears?” Sharon asked. Kelly fought the urge to groan.

  The ranger smiled. “Yes, but I doubt you’ll see any tonight.” He was apparently used to soothing nervous tourists.

  “Thank you.” Kelly drove off before her mother could embarrass her again.

  Kelly drove carefully, glad there were few vehicles on the road. She didn’t want a caravan to build up behind her, and she refused to speed. She couldn’t see anything beyond her headlights. The boys had fallen asleep, sparing her from answering their excited questions about the park.

  Eventually the road angled downhill. She knew they were closing in on FishingBridge, where they would find the main park road. She slowed as the shoulder completely disappeared. Suddenly, a huge black shape turned and moved on her side of the road.

  Kelly jumped, startled, and jammed the brakes.

  Sharon panicked. “What? A bear?”

  Kelly watched the bison disappear in the dark. “No, Mom, not a bear. A buffalo.” Now that Kelly knew to expect the unexpected, she slowed further, unsettled by the lack of a shoulder and the spooky mist drifting across the road. At first she was afraid it was smoke from a fire, then realized it was steam from hydrothermal features unseen in the dark.

  She made the turn north onto the main park road, following it to CanyonVillage.

  Check-in was fast, finding their wheelchair accessible cabin easy, but parking was horrible.

  While Sharon fretted Kelly would get snatched and eaten by a grizzly, Kelly was more worried about where to park the rig without getting towed, stuck, or blocking someone else. She had to be careful in the dark, because sometimes she forgot the trailer was behind her. Luckily, she hadn’t hit anything.

  Yet.

  She double-parked behind a row of cars to unload their luggage, then circled the area three times before she eased into a spot, halfway off the asphalt, where she wouldn’t block any cars.

  After breakfast, they spent a couple of hours in the CanyonVisitorEducationCenter, where the boys wondered over the volcano exhibits, including the 3D model. Then they headed north to see TowerFalls.

  Sharon blan
ched from her passenger vantage point as the ground steeply fell away, in some places only inches from the edge of the road. Denny and Paulie were engrossed taking pictures and video and trying to keep an eye out for bison. Surprisingly, they hadn’t seen any yet.

  “There’s no shoulder. Or guardrails,” Sharon whispered.

  “Shut up, Mom.” Kelly took her time, frequently using pull outs so other vehicles could pass. She had to downshift the automatic transmission several times to negotiate the steep, winding switchbacks. She was glad it was an automatic.

  “I’m glad it was dark when we came in. I would have had a cow seeing this last night.”

  “You’re having a cow now, Mom. What difference does it make?”

  “I’ve had coffee.”

  Sharon spotted a group of hikers heading down the side of a hill. “Where are they going?”

  Kelly shrugged, trying to keep her eyes on the road. “Who knows? Out for a hike.”

  “What? What about the bears?”

  “Mom—” Kelly took a deep breath. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

  “They’re crazy. Wouldn’t get me out there with bears around.”

  Kelly bit her lip and drove. It wasn’t worth getting into a discussion with her mom that bison and elk and hot springs and other drivers were far more dangerous than bears. Her mom had enough freak-out material already.

  * * * *

  Since they were used to sea level, the high altitude was a killer. After a few stops, the women worked out a finely choreographed routine. Kelly went out her door with the digital camera, and Sharon went out the other with the video recorder. They scouted to see if Denny could access the site, and if so, unloaded him. Otherwise, it was capture as much as possible with the cameras, then back to the car and drive. Every stop left Kelly and Sharon gasping for breath and thankful for their large cooler full of bottled water.

  After her third bottle of water in thirty minutes, Kelly needed a break. “This is ridiculous.” It was also hotter than hell, something Kelly hadn’t anticipated.

  “We brought the heat with us, apparently,” Sharon joked. “We’re hell on wheels!”