A list of "Firsts"

A List of “Firsts”

We asked the people in each vehicle to make a list while we drove this morning of all the things they could think of that they saw or experienced for the first time on this trip. Seeing each of the national parks, monuments, and the different towns and states was a “first” for many of the people on the trip, so those aren't listed separately below. But, everyone seems to have found some thing or experience that was uniquely new to them on this journey

This was my first time….

To camp
To see a grizzly bear, prairie dog, elk, moose, marmot, buffalo, antelope, mule deer, pika, longhorn steer
To fish
To catch a fish
To climb rocks (at Badlands and the “Needles”)
To be “bear aware”
To smell a mudpot
To write in a blog
To watch the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”
To cook on an outdoor stove
To sleep outdoors under a shelter
To have a National Parks Passport book and have it stamped
To dunk my feet in Yellowstone Lake – 56 degrees
To ride a horse
To be in a campground that doesn’t have a shower or sink
To eat buffalo meat
To be away from both parents for 16 days
To cook stir fry
To use a “bear box”
To use a compost latrine restroom
To lose my wallet
To play in the snow, wearing flip flops, throwing snowballs, in July
To do laundry in a public, coin-operated laudromat
To do my own laundry
To wash dishes by heating water on a camp stove
To learn about other’s fears
To talk to people on this trip that I did not know before or even know that they went to school at Freedom
To go 16 days without TV or computer
To swim in a hot-springs-fed pool
To fall from a horse
To ride in a car for four days straight, stopping only for gas/restroom/to eat
To go to as many as 9 states in 16 days
To eat Frito-chili pie, bacon-cheese sandwiches, different flavors of fudge
To be in 32 degree weather in the summer
To step in buffalo poop
To see an active archeological dig
To see cornfields as big as the ones in Iowa and Kansas
To see “pigtail” bridge turns in the road where the turn is so tight a switchback would not work
To see a tall pole marker beside a fire hydrant so it could be found when the snow covers it up
To see an interstate exit/entrance ramp made of gravel
To see a geyser
To see a road being completely resurfaced, all at one time, by a series of machines that ground up the old road, recycled the waste into new surfacing, then laid it back down
To go through a tunnel as small as the ones on the Needles Highway
To pump gas into the car
To start a fire
To see a two-story tall piece of farm machinery
To see a crop duster in action
To see a crossing arm, like at a railroad track, installed to close roads in winter
To see snow drift barricades alongside the interstate
To see a coal strip mine with its own rail station
To peel garlic and slice onions
To see energy-generating windmills
To cross the Continental Divide
To see a Sinclair dinosaur at an actual Sinclair gas station
To see dried raccoon “privates” for sale
To be on Mountain time
To see a place, like the lake or Devil's Tower, that was actually in a movie
To do a hike, like to Inspiration Point
To see a "dirt devil" in a Kansas field
To see so much snow on the mountains in summer
To get some bison fur
To get so close to, and so scared by, bison
To eat fresh mountain trout right after it was caught
To see up close where the bison rubs against the trees to rid their winter coats
To see where a bison had bedded down in the grass
To see the other side of Yellowstone's upper falls


We'll continue to add more "firsts" and more come to mind...