Road Trip - South Dakota

We passed into South Dakota on a little road near the Enchanted Highway. My first impressions were: lots of bugs hitting the windshield and funny street names; Little Nasty Creek, Tickle Hill, Dead Broke Road and Renegade Pass. We saw weird salt patches in the fields and hay or sun flower fields as far as the eye could see. The hay was gathered into large round bales and then left in random places throughout the fields. It was absolutely beautiful.

We were miles from being out of gas and luckily happened upon a ‘town’ named Reva…which is apparently the home of the turtle races. This town, which was included on the map, only had 4 buildings, and only one of them looked like it was open. We stopped at the two pump gas station to fill up the tank. When I went inside to pay there was a gentleman on the phone (one of those old off-white phones that are mounted on the wall with a cord and everything.) When I showed the lady behind the desk my card she said, “Bill…we have a credit card”.  The gentleman said to the person on the line, “I’ll call you back in a few minute, we need the line”. I had forgotten about how this used to be the norm, I almost laughed out loud.

The first city we came to was Sturgis.  The city was completely asleep. The yearly biker bash had just ended a few days earlier, so it seems everyone was hibernating after their 3 weeks of crazy busy-ness. I’ve heard a rumor that many of the 3 level, hotel sized bars, make enough money during the gathering that they can close the rest of the year.  That’s just crazy.

Next up was Custer, SD where we would be staying for the night.  We had reservation for the Historic Lantern Tour at the Jewel Cave National Monument. The current discovered length of Jewel cave is 162 miles (they count every little inlet as length) and they estimate that they’ve only discovered 3%. It’s currently the 2^nd longest cave in the world!!

I’ve been fascinated with caves since I was 10 years old and we so extremely excited to be able to finally go in one.  The tour started with the park ranger handing out our oil lanterns, which turned out being really nice to have because it warmed your hands in the 40 degree cave. The portion of Jewel cave we toured was full of crystals, some parts were covered with a layer of 1 inch crystal….soooo awesome. There were so many ups, downs, twists and turns.  I’m totally hooked and will be looking for a caving club in Boston (hopefully they have one).

After the cave, we headed to Mount Rushmore and looked at the big heads in the side of the mountain.  It was pretty cool too, but not the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen J

The next morning, after camping, we made our way to Nebraska.  On our way, we stopped in Hot Springs, SD to go see the Mammoth dig site. This was really interesting.  Back during prehistoric times, this area was a sink hole that animals got caught in all the time.  So far, they have found over 120 mammoth skeletons and dozens of other types of prehistoric skeletons.  This was definitely one of the coolest things that I’ve seen in a long time.

South Dakota was extremely interesting and entertaining.  I have no idea I would love it so much there, but could probably spend about 2 weeks there and be completely entertained the whole time.  There were so many things that I wanted to do but didn’t have time!!   What a welcome surprise J

Road trip - North Dakota

 

North Dakota surprised me. I had a weird misconception that the moment we crossed the border from Montana the land would iron out and there wouldn’t be a hill in site.  Not true. The northwest section of ND is quite hilly and green.  It was so beautiful.

Our first stop in North Dakota was a little historic town called Medora.  Teddy Roosevelt spent a couple of years here before his presidency, and that’s still the small town’s main claim to fame.  The town was suuuper cute, and the brochure we picked up boasted that it is the #1 vacation spot in the state. After taking a little time to walk through the reasonably priced shops and adorable ice cream and fudge shop, we were on our way.

Shortly after Medora we pulled off the road to a look-out/rest area where we saw sedimentary hills that were formed into sharp-ish peaks. The landscape was absolutely beautiful. Next up was the town of Dickinson, where my good friend from college, Suzie Kay, grew up.  It’s a really small town, but is currently growing majorly because of new opportunities in oil. The town reminded me a lot of where I went to university in Ellensburg. We stayed with Suzie’s parents, Ray and Mary Pat.

Our hosts took us out to a nice steak dinner at Elk’s and told us all about Dickinson and the growing oil industry. Due to new technologies making it possible for oil companies to drill horizontally, as well as vertically, the Northwest section of North Dakota is now a major oil area. The little town of Dickinson, ND is bustling with new growth and traffic.  Some people are okay with this, because they are making big bucks if their land is on a well and they have the rights to the minerals, but some others are just not happy about their little town changing.

It was really nice to sleep in a bed after two nights of camping, and to have a hot shower. In the morning I got up early to take Soph on a little jog.  We ran around Dickinson State University, which educates about 2,000 students at any given time. After my little run, we sat with Mary Pat in the kitchen while she made us breakfast. After many hugs and saying goodbye, we made our way southeast to check out the Enchanted Highway.

The Enchanted Highway is a 32 mile stretch of highway where there are large metal sculptures along the road. There are Geese in Flight (which we didn’t get a chance to see), running pheasants, frolicking deer and others. Go ND, way to be awesome!!

Road trip - Montana

106 – number of dear we saw on our way to our campsite

5 – number of times we had to turn around because we couldn’t find our camp ground for the life of us (at 9pm in the pitch black of back country Montana

1 – number of incorrect camp sites we stayed at because we were sick of looking for our real camp site

197 – number of cows we counted driving away from our campsite before we decided there were way too many cows to count.

Montana was pretty great, and I hope to spend more time there in the future. The only thing we really had time for was to find the camp site at Cooney State Park after we got off the freeway. We headed in the wrong direction, then the wrong direction 4 more times before stopping to find a camp site that was not actually ours. Hahaha…failure of planning well on my part. But, to give myself some credit, the website was super confusing and then the lady on the phone with the reservation place wasn’t much help either.

On our way to North Dakota the next day we stopped to freshen up, as there weren’t any bathrooms at the campsite. Where we stopped was gas station/casino/McDonalds…preeeety intense. To fully experience the awesomeness of this place I got a hashbrown and OJ and McDs, played $1 of slots in the casino and then asked for directions in the gas station. Classy way to start my morning.

We also stopped by the Crow Fair, one of the biggest powwows in the US. Although the fair had not started when we got there, a lot of the teepees were already set up. We stopped for some fresh fry-bread with honey and took a quick look at the Little Bighorn Battlefield.

I’ve always been really intrigued by the Native American people and culture. Maybe someday I’ll be a nurse practitioner to one of the Indian Nations…you never know J

Road Trip - Idaho

Right when we got over the border of Idaho, we ate at the famous little roadside diner, Capone’s.  We then drove around Lake Coeur d’Alene looking for our campsite. The lake was way bigger and more beautiful than I had expected to see. Once finding our campsite (which was a stone’s throw from I90) we settled in for the night and started a fire.  Due to the dry spell the country has seen this year, we knew this would be the only option for a camp fire during our trip.

In the morning we went on a 3 mile run, not too bad for a couple of campers.

That’s about it for Idaho.  We didn’t spend much time there, but it definitely made me want to return in the future.  A vacation on Lake Coeur d’Alene would be pretty awesome…if I found a campsite further from the freeway J

Road trip - Washington

The trek across Washington was pretty basic. I’ve lived most my life here, so there weren’t any big surprises. After stopping in Ellensburg to say hello/goodbye to a good friend, we made our way to Vantage to visit the Puget Sound Energy wind farm.  A close friend of mine works there, and I wanted to take a look around, and say goodbye to her, before heading out across the country.

The wind farm was really interesting and beautiful.  The views weren’t as epic as they usually are, due to the fires in Cle Elum, but it was still pretty breathtaking. Andrea gives a great tour and I would suggest anyone stop by for a visit.

In George we stopped at a little Hispanic market for water and snacks. I saw the following sign advertising Aquafina…it was preeeetty fuuunny.