Epilogue...

Couldn’t resist sharing a few pics from our last day before really heading home. We drove five hours in the morning so that we could be in the Twin Cities before 1:30 PM. As usual, we were a bit sidetracked. We saw an exit on I-94 in Minnesota called “Sinclair Lewis Avenue”. Sinclair Lewis, the writer? Okay, we bit and took the exit to see what this might be about. The town was called Sauk Centre. Lewis was born and raised in this sleepy town. He unsuccessfully ran away from home at the age of 13, wanting to become a drummer boy in the Spanish American War. He eventually wrote books and plays and won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Elmer Gantry or Babbitt might ring a bell for you. He died at the age of 65, supposedly from alcoholism. It as his wish that his ashes be buried in Sauk Centre. His childhood home is now a museum. Back on the road, we figured we needed a couple hours to capture some images from both St. Paul and Minneapolis. According to Garmin, we needed to tackle Minneapolis first. Our destination was the Walker Art Center. We wanted to photograph the famous “Spoonbridge with Cherry” for which Minneapolis is known. In fact, it is considered the Statue of Liberty for Minneapolis. I don’t think I would go that far but it is an icon of the city. We photographed it years ago and wondered if the area would look the same. Not a chance. Trees and shrubs had grown around the artwork. Years ago it was a simple open area.
As usual, we tried to capture it from every angle. There was an elevated walkway that helped pedestrians cross the adjacent expressway. It offered a different viewpoint. While on the platform, we walked across the expressway and took some shots of traffic congestion. Dennis, always the athlete looking for ways to exercise (NOT!) counted 43 steps to access the walkway. We also took a few skyline shots of Minneapolis.
Once back in the rig, we punched in the capitol building which is in St. Paul. Garmin enabled us to deftly navigate busy roads, intersections and the like. What did we ever do without this technology?
Uh oh…we didn’t check in advance to see if there was any construction on the capitol building. Big mistake. We pulled up to the usually stunning and imposing capitol to find scaffolding, orange fencework and other paraphernalia. Silent scream. We did our best to photograph the structure. Dennis will have some work ahead when he begins working these shots in Photoshop. He will have to try to eliminate the markings of construction. We were able to access the interior, photographing the State Supreme Court, House of Representatives and Senate. It is an opulent edifice, to be sure.
We walked around the grounds and took in the memorials and monuments. We also had a couple vantage points for a skyline shot of St. Paul.
Back in the motorhome, we checked to see which way would be the best route to head home. Should we head south and fight the Chicago traffic or take the leisurely Upper Peninsula route? There was only five miles difference although the Upper Peninsula way would take about fifty minutes longer. We opted for leisure and headed north.
We drove through beautiful farmland hilly countrysides. It looked so clean and Midwestern. The farms along the roads were the kind we were used to seeing. They looked like homes rather than the corporate feel we had looking at the huge farms along I-94 in North Dakota.
We found our final Walmart “campground” in Shawano Wisconsin. We went inside for a few items and noticed Mennonites and Amish in the store. We also saw lots of cupcakes and cakes decorated with green and yellow frosting. On closer inspection, we saw that they were “Go Packers” items. Football is just around the corner and the Cheeseheads must be abundant in this neck of the woods.
We were on the road this morning at 7:00 AM Central Time, making the push for home. It felt good to see the “Pure Michigan” sign when we entered the state at Menominee. We stopped and ate our cereal near the shores of Lake Michigan and tooled along Highway 2. We paid $9.00 for the privilege of crossing the Mackinac Bridge. Yikes. We grabbed a shot of the bridge. It was very windy as usual, and when you are driving a high profile vehicle like a motorhome it is even stronger.
For some strange reason, the motorhome steered itself off the expressway and headed into Mackinaw City, stopping right in front of a bakery. Not sure how that happened but our lunch turned out to be an apple fritter and an almond bear claw. Yum. While Ilene was getting the treats, Dennis took a couple great shots of the beautiful bridge.
So now, these two “trolls” are under the Bridge and happy to be getting home.

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The Last Leg...

What a way to finish a blog…
Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Theodore Roosevelt became a conservationist after visiting the Dakota Territory in the late 1800's and seeing how the overgrazing of cattle was destroying the natural habitat for small mammals and songbirds. He also saw the destruction of some large game species. Although an avid hunter himself, he realized that land needed to be preserved and that species needed to be protected.
While President, he established the U.S. Forest Service, proclaimed 18 national monuments, had Congress appropriate funds for five national parks, 51 wildlife refuges and set aside land for national forests. When you have the opportunity to visit national parks and monuments you appreciate the foresight that leaders had in those days. Who would have imagined 110 years ago that we would have a population of 310 million people and that we would have to protect the vast land that was relatively unpopulated at the time? It is amazing, to say the least.
The land dedicated to Teddy has a north and south unit. The north unit has about 50,000 visitors per year and the south has 250,000 visitors annually. The north is not easily accessed whereas the south unit is found on I-94. Since we were coming from the north, we were able to visit both this trip. Sadly, the weather did not cooperate with the north visit. It was overcast and downright cold. Also, only six of the fourteen mile loop was traversable. Nevertheless, we captured some awesome landscapes. You can almost imagine Teddy Roosevelt sitting on a horse, looking over the bluff and the immense land below him. While we were taking pictures of the visitor center at the north unit, the grassy ground around it was mysteriously uneven with small craters. We went back into the visitor center to ask if they could be hoof impressions from the bison. Yes, they were. The ranger said the bison come right up to the door on a daily basis. While we were getting exit the north section, we noticed a bison standing right next to a park sign. The sign was probably four or five feet high. We stopped and watched, curious as to why the critter was standing so close to the sign. He began using the post as a scratching device, turning and twisting to scratch his back. It was hilarious.
We left the north unit and began the 63 mile trek to the south side. Along the way, we saw multiple natural gas pumps. This land is chockful of natural resources: oil shale, natural gas and beautiful soil to farm and graze.



The south is much larger and has a 36 mile loop drive where visitors are treated to wildlife, vistas and unusual rock formations. We saw black tailed prairie dogs (only living at TR National Park), wild horses and buffalo. The elevations varied so that you could see for miles at times. The Little Missouri River ambles through the park, providing added beauty.
At the edge of the park is the small town of Medora, named for the wife of a French settler, Marquis de Mores. He wanted to live in the area and built his New York City wife a 27 room chateau to persuade her. Hey, does that still work??? He convinced the railroad to run track to his town and he opened a meat packing plant. The town is now a tourist trap of sorts, combining history, eating establishments, hotels and gift shops.
Between the two parks, we probably spent 6 hours. We ate our breakfast overlooking one scene in the north unit and lunch overlooking another scenic in the south. What a country!
Once back on I-94, we punched Bismarck in the Garmin and headed east. Bismarck is an extremely unique capitol building. It resembles a skyscraper, towering over the city. The tower is on the right side and a rotunda of sorts is on the left. The grounds of the capitol are well manicured and because we arrived after 5 PM, there was little traffic to worry about. There were the standard statues and monuments on the grounds, including one dedicated to the military and another dedicated to a female Indian explorer named Sacajawea. She was only sixteen when she married a French explorer named Charbonneau. They had a child together. Lewis and Clark met them and wanted them to join them in their expedition west. Sacajawea knew the territory and landmarks and was invaluable when Lewis and Clark tried to negotiate with the Shoshone Indians and other tribes for things they needed, such as horses. The Indians realized quickly that the explorers were peaceful when they saw Sacajawea. She traveled with them with her baby in tow. She died in 1812, at the young age of 24. Incredible story. Imagine someone doing that today?
We left the capital city and punched in Minneapolis/St. Paul. It is 376 miles away and we know we won’t be there until tomorrow, but we wanted to get some more miles under our belt before the day was over. While driving on I-94, both sides of the road were filled with enormous fields of crops. When we say enormous, we mean enormous. It is not an exaggeration to say that we would see at least a mile of sunflowers in a field that was probably a half mile wide. The same could be said about corn, soybeans and wheat. While farms near us are large, they would be postage stamps compared to these immense, crop-filled properties. When you think of North Dakota, you think cold, period. The summer provides warm days and perfect soil for bountiful crops.
We also noticed the ravages of the spring flooding that occurred in North Dakota. We saw fields inundated with water. We saw trees fully submerged save, the top three or four feet. We saw fences lines disappear in the water. We saw electrical and telephone poles half way in the water.
We will close our story at this point. It has been a great trip and hope you have enjoyed traveling with us.
Tomorrow we will take a few shots in Minneapolis/St. Paul and then do some heavy duty driving through the Upper Peninsula, across the Mac and then home. We will have traveled 4,900 miles¸ visited ten states and six national parks (along with 500,000 motorcyclists!). Thanks for riding with us!

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So long, Montana...

We were on the road by 8:00 AM, continuing our long trek home. The weather is not picture perfect today and maybe that is good. If we want to get to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota this evening, we have to stay focused. Beautiful weather makes it tempting to stop and stop and stop along the way.
Highway 2 will be our course today. It is a road that runs about 30-40 miles south of the Canadian border and we could actually take it through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Traffic moves slightly slower than the freeways, but you see more and enjoy more on this road. We know that we will continue to see huge farms and ranches along the way. As they did yesterday, the train tracks also parallel this route.
Some of the towns have names that you have heard before. Kremlin, Zurich, Harlem, Glasgow, Dunkirk and Malta. Not sure, but it is possible that some earned their moniker from the places in which the immigrants came. The Glasgow area looked like a links style golf course could easily be built.
Not much photography with the crummy weather, but we did take a couple shots in Dodson. There was an old Cowboy Bar. The sign was weathered, worn and the business has long been closed. Dennis peeked in the window and saw a cowboy hat hanging on a hook. Probably lots of memories in that place. The road, Hwy.2 was called “Montana” in one town. It also follows one of Lewis and Clark’s Trails.
We saw a long line of oversized caravans today, carrying poles and fan blades for a wind turbine farm somewhere in the area. They are unbelievably huge.
We ended our day in a little town called Watford City, North Dakota. The town had a little park called the Watford City Tourist Park. They had two campsites for “overnight” campers and twelve regular campsites. It was an honor system for payment. The little park also had a nine hole disc golf course, a badminton net, horseshoe pits and picnic areas. The town has about 1,700 but in a short while this town will swell. There has been successful oil shale exploration there and workers are moving into the area in droves. The highways are being widened and entrepreneurs are licking their chops to open a business and ride the wave. Dennis spoke with a couple young fellows. They are both moving here on a hope and a prayer. One of the guys plans to open a truck car wash. With all the trucks we have seen in the area and the amount of dirt from all the construction, he will probably do very well.
Tomorrow we visit Teddy Roosevelt’s playground. It has two units, north and south and we will drive through both. We plan to be in Bismarck tomorrow night to photograph, you guessed it, the capitol building.

"Many Glacier" and a Neat Red Bus

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We were up before sunrise so that we could drive to Many Glacier in morning light. We were surprised at the number of cars on the road. Maybe that’s because the ranger stations aren’t manned that early so you can get in the park free. lol
We parked the rig at the Many Glacier Lodge parking lot. While the sun was up, there was a slight cloud cover so we had to wait awhile. We decided to have our gourmet cereal breakfast. We then left the motorhome, heading different directions, each thinking that he/she is going to get the better vantage point. With nature photography, there is often a lot of wait time for the perfect picture. True nature photographers develop much patience to sit hour after hour, waiting to “click”. We only needed to wait about 45 minutes for the sun to shine through the clouds and bathe the glaciers in sunshine.
There was a glacier tour boat docked and boarding passengers. Once it left land, it navigated across Swiftcurrent Lake towards Many Glacier. Most of the passengers were donned in hiking apparel, carrying walking sticks and backpacks. Looked like they were going to have a great day.
I spotted two Adirondack chairs on the balcony of the lodge. Neither was occupied and so I arranged them as if they were inviting someone to sit and enjoy the view. Looked like the kind of photo that might be on a brochure cover.
We reconnected and walked around a bit before heading back to the motorhome. We needed to be at St. Mary’s Lodge by 10:00 AM for an arranged tour in one of the park’s red buses. They are 75 years old and are a cross between a station wagon, bus and jeep. The roof of the vehicle is canvas and it rolls back for summer use. It enables the passengers to stand up like “jack-in-the-boxes” to take pictures on the extremely narrow road. Twenty some years ago we could drive the Going to the Sun Road ourselves. Now, you can’t be over 21 feet. We are two feet too long.
The drivers of the buses are called “Jammers. The name comes from years ago when the buses were equipped with a standard transmission and folks could hear the drivers shifting gears. The buses were built in 1936 by the White Motor Company of Cleveland Ohio. Ford Motor Company helped the park restore the engines in 2001 and they are running great. 17 people with the driver can easily be accommodated.
“Gus” picked us up and quickly began entertaining the group. He knew the answer to just about any question you had and he instantly figured out who the problem child of the group might be and had the person sit next to him in the front of the bus. Could anyone guess who that problem child might be? DENNIS. Actually, Dennis was pretty well behaved but bantered with the driver to keep our trip interesting. He even assisted the driver to remove and fold our canvas top so we would have an open air ride.
Our first stop was St. Mary’s Lake at the Goose Island lookout. This is the iconic Glacier National Park image and if we had to quit the trip after that moment, we would have been okay with it.
We stopped at a waterfall, learned about rocks and how this portion of the Rockies was formed. We took the narrow, winding road all the way to Logan’s Pass. At that point, we stopped to look around. Some folks went to the gift shop. There were big horn sheep grazing in the snow still on the mountainside but they were too far away for pictures of any consequence.
Gus explained to us that if we continued on the Going to the Sun Road past Logan’s Pass, the road really narrows and when two of the red buses pass each other, there is only six inches between them. That is the road we remember from years ago. It was truly a white knuckle drive.
We retraced our steps, stopping at a couple more turnouts on our way back to St. Mary’s Lodge. We learned that our fellow passengers were from Seattle, Minneapolis, Cleveland and of all places, Lapeer Michigan! The young couple from Minneapolis had taken the train to Glacier. It took them 21 hours. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves and didn’t even rent a car. They even planned to head up to Waterton, which is the Canadian side of Glacier National Park by bus. We have been there before and really didn’t have the desire to go there again. They have a beautiful lodge nestled in the mountains called the Prince of Wales Hotel. It looks as though it is out of a storybook.
Once back at the lodge, Gus bid us farewell and drove off with the remaining passengers, soon to be returned to their starting point. We headed south for one last spot in Glacier before we left. The spot is called Two Medicine. When we reached the turnoff point called MT 49, a large roadway sign bellowed,” No vehicles over 21 feet allowed to travel on MT 49”. Great. As we said earlier, our rig is 23 feet. Sadly, we turned the RV around and took a look at the map. There was no other way to enter the park to Two Medicine so we opted to start traveling east. 1,900 miles ahead of us, so we might as well get started. We looked for a spot that we could reach by about 6:00 PM. Turned out to be Havre, Montana, 187 miles due east on Hwy 2.
On the way to Havre, Dennis had a field day photographing wheat fields, silos, grain elevators, trains and wind turbines. The train tracks run right through enormous fields and in every little burg you will see the grain elevators right next to the train tracks. There were actually three tracks in some areas and we saw quite a bit of train traffic. Dennis was in his glory, even singing something about “motorhomes” every time he would see one tooling down Hwy. 2. Scary.
We found a couple campgrounds, one in town and one three miles out. The one in town didn’t offer internet. The one in the country did but when we got there, it was literally someone’s backyard and they were going to run an extension cord for us. All for the low, low price of $25. We passed on the “incredible” offer and made the brave decision to find a Walmart. We joined five other rigs. One couple was sitting outside their RV, drinking glasses of wine. We kid you not. It was 94 degrees at that point so probably getting sloshed wasn’t such a bad idea but we just can’t picture ourselves in a Walmart lot drinking wine in a canvas chair. Gives a whole new meaning to redneck tailgating. Lol
Settled in for a peaceful evening, we heard a familiar sound: a train track runs behind Walmart and remember how we said there was a lot of train traffic? You can figure out the rest.

Going to the Sun...Glacier National Park

Which state is the Treasure State? Montana. The population is 967,000 which isn’t much more than Detroit was in the 2000 census. It ranks 44th in state populations BUT 4th in land mass. The state is three times the size of Michigan. They don’t call it “Big Sky Montana” for nothing.

We arrived in Helena near 7:00 PM, just enough time to capture some images of the state capitol building. Helena’s dome is not exactly what you would call beautiful. The fashion police would call it “olive drab”. The grounds are immaculately manicured and we hope to come back in the morning to take some interior pictures if possible.
We found the local Walmart Supercenter for our parking spot for the night. We joined over twenty other units. We went inside to spend some money on groceries, feeling less guilty about using the lot. We were able to get a free wi-fi signal that appeared to be coming from the nearby Chamber of Commerce building.
Morning brought more sunshine and we quickly headed back to the Capitol building. More pics with different lighting were taken and they we headed inside for a few interior images. The interior of the building was as nicely cared for as the exterior. Montana didn’t become a state until 1889. They have statues honoring different people within but one that caught our eye was a full length sculpture of Jeannettte Rankin. She was one of the original suffragettes. She was also the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. One of her first votes was against the U.S. entry into World War I. It was an unpopular vote and so she only served one term before getting the boot. She continued her opposition to war and even protested the Vietnam War. She lived to be 93 years old. Homage was also paid to Mike Mansfield and his wife. A life size sculpture of the couple adorns the third floor balcony. Mansfield was a well-known U.S. Senator. We photographed both the House of Representatives and Senate Chambers before leaving.
Once back outside, we located the Supreme Court building, the old Governor’s mansion and the stunning Cathedral of St. Helena. Once finished taking pictures, we hopped on I-15 to begin our trip north the Glacier National Park.
We went across enormous farmland, ranches and through itty bitty towns. One was called Augusta, named for a founding father’s daughter. It went through rough times during the Great Depression and then was revitalized to some extent once rail track was laid, bringing train traffic through town. The main street was dirt. Reminded me of Hyder Alaska but a bit classier. As we were driving through town, the volunteer fire department was driving a fire truck down the main drag, spraying water with a fire hose to stop the blowing dirt. Can you imagine having a business on a road like this? A nearby town of Gilman had become a ghost town and the only remnant of it was an old bank building.
We traversed through open country with mountains in the distance. Dennis spotted a large collection area for honey bees. Each collection box was painted a different color, making the stack of boxes bright and attractive to honey bees. We turned the motorhome around. Dennis climbed on top of the motorhome to get a better vantage point. Thankfully, he stayed far enough away from the swarming creatures.
The Rocky Mountains on our left are becoming more and more prominent. We are going to enter the park from the east side. We plan to hit the visitors’ center, find a campground in the town of St. Mary’s and plan our day for tomorrow. We remember this park as simply beautiful and are looking forward to giving it a second look shot. Looks like it will be an early morning if we are going to photograph the glacier and then catch the red tour bus which will take us on the “Going to the Sun” road tomorrow morning. When we were here over twenty years ago, we were able to drive an RV on the narrow road. Since that time, they have stopped any type of RV from traveling any distance on the road. We remember it as treacherous and are not surprised that they have made it limited access. The road will take us to Logan Pass and back.
We capture some folks canoeing on the Swiftcurrent Lake, accidentally captured a line of horses being led back to the barn and one of the red tour buses we will be taking tomorrow.
Glacier National Park is a long way from home (1,900 miles) but oh so pretty.





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