Hey Guys! Well, in true 2020 style…something went wrong.

We had three weeks left of the 2020 travel loop and Jerl’s right retina started to detach.

We were in the middle of exploring Yellowstone National Park when he started to notice some light tracers…which are the first signs that something isn’t right. Fortunately (I guess) this wasn’t his first experience with a detaching retina, so we knew what to expect and what needed to happen.

We ended up cutting our Yellowstone adventures short by a couple of days and start the long 1300 mile journey back to Missouri. Which…wasn’t our first experience with that either. During the last week of 2017 we were in Phoenix, AZ and had to make a similar trek. You can read about that adventure here if you missed it.

Before I get into the drive back to Missouri…let’s talk foodies from the West Yellowstone area. We found a couple of tasty spots! One was a food truck called Taqueria Malverde…it was really good Mexican food. Big portions, great food and nice people. The other place we found was The Buffalo Bar. We had some great burgers! We highly recommend both of these places if you’re ever in the West Yellowstone area.

There are a few different ways we could have left West Yellowstone and made our way back to Missouri. We decided to head south in Yellowstone National Park to the John D Rockerfeller Jr Memorial Parkway. The day we left was really smoky from all of the wildfires raging in the west.

This route let us drive through Grand Teton National Park one more time…and Guys, we saw eight grizzly bears! Eight!! The first three were hanging out on the road. We think they were juvenile males…possibly siblings. They were so goofy and unimpressed with all of the cars.

Right around the corner we ran into Mama Bear 399 with her four murder minions. Y’all know I wanted to see these bears sooo bad that while we were in Grand Teton earlier in the year, we’d gotten up at 4am to try and get a glimpse of these famous danger floofs. We never saw them during that trip, but Guys!!! We finally saw them! It kind of took some of the sting out of our situation.

To give you an idea of how smoky it was…the picture on the left is what the Tetons looked like when we were there back in early July of this year. I took the picture on the right as we were driving through Grand Teton NP in September this year.

Between the smoke from all of the California and Montana fires and then the smoke blowing up from the many Colorado fires, we saw really smoky skies for the first two days we were driving.

We made it to Missouri late that third day. While it was good to see family, it was still disappointing to miss several National Park Units and anxiety about upcoming eye surgeries was starting to set in.

We got back to Missouri on a Sunday and Jerl had eye surgery that Thursday. Everything went well. He had to lay face down for three weeks while his eye was trying to heal. It wasn’t his first eye surgery experience…and this one seemed to go smoother for him with less pain.

But now what?

We had to cancel the rest of our travel loop for 2020 and figure out what we wanted to do for the winter. With the whole virus thing still an issue plus all of the civil unrest/violence plaguing the country and the upcoming elections…we decided it might be a good idea to stick close to family this winter. Which means…we’re mooch-docking in my (Jennie’s) parent’s driveway until we head out again. We’re not sure when that will be. Like the rest of the world, we’re waiting to see how the whole virus thing plays out and how this coming election ends. By the time this post goes live, we will hopefully know who the next President will be and will have a better idea of what the heck we’re going to do with our 2021. Do we travel more? Do we buy a house and settle down?

You just never know with us.

See y’all down the road!