Cage Free Family

After roughly 9 hours in the auto parts store parking lot we limped out of town in the direction of the border, newly filled with a gasoline additive to counter any bad gas that may have been the trouble, and armed with high hopes and will of steel.

Our engine miss-fired and back-fired the whole way, but we made it, sometimes keeping up a speed of 55 mph (always our top speed for gas conservation) and sometimes at a whopping 25 mph when the engine was really bogging down.
The trouble was intermittent and our spirits were high as we joked about racing the working Caterpillar...and lost. ;-p

Just over the border, in Baggs, WY, we stopped again to fill with higher octane gas and buy a new distributor cap. Another hour in a parking lot and we were all changed up and hit the road again.

I can't say that everything was fixed, but we were able to keep a nice 55mph speed the whole way to Rock Springs, WY.
Just shy of Rock Springs the kids woke up from their very late naps and we decided to pull over in the rest area to stretch, play and have some dinner.

Except for the big rigs in another area, we had the large rest stop to ourselves. Okay, we did share it will a small community of prairie dogs ;-)

Quinn and Neeka ran and played, and ran some more, while Jeff and I took a breather and built Quinn's kite. They spent the longest time playing some game that made them both fall down in fits of squealing laughter, but to us looked like a game of throwing a baby doll in the air and watching it crash to the ground.

Turns out it was a "fighter baby" who was protecting us from "Wood hauler hungclumhorn cows." I'm wondering if you're laughing as hard as I was when I got the story.

This week Quinn has had more education that I think I received in my entire school career.
We've had lessons in everything from civil war to food production, business to geology and geometry. I suspect the discussion about big horn sheep and long horn cattle had something to do with their funny game. At five years old, Quinn is reading, writing and explaining the difference between pastured, organically raised animals and feed-lot animals to strangers. A couple of weeks ago I got the opportunity to explain the process and necessity of multiplication to a five year old. The response: Can I learn multipliplation? Awesome. I'm feeling pretty confident in this homeschooling thing ;-)

After we had the kite assembled, I moved on to Furminating our yetis and Jeff went inside to whip up dinner. As the landscape was filled with 6x6 inch balls of fur and my doggies started to look more like dogs than yetis, Jeff called dinner.
The sun was going down and we began to appreciate the Wyoming landscape a little more as we ate a yummy meal of bison patties topped with huevos rancheros. Sounds weird, but it's so good! Broccoli and bell pepper hash on the side and you've got yourself a pretty filling, healthy, tasty meal on the road.

We cleaned up and the Quinn and Neeka went back to playing with the imaginary hungclumhorn cows who were now clashing with hunghorn sheep as the fighting baby had been defeated by a tumble from the top of a rock formation that Quinn had scaled. LOL
We never did get to flying the kite :-p

We buckled the kiddos into their carseats and hit the road toward Rock Springs. We thought we would try to push through while the kids slept, but exhausted as we approached Rock Springs we decided to camp for the night and re-supply in the morning.