Helena, MT

July 9, 2012

We drove west out of the Black Hills on I-90 to the town of Sundance, WY. Sundance is the town that gave an outlaw and an actor the famous name. It all started when Harry Longabaugh broke out of the local jail. We stayed at a nice owner-operated park for 2 nights. The owner recommended that we take the loop through some beautiful country instead of just the out and back trip to the Devil’s Tower.

The legend of Devil’s Tower is that some Indian girls were playing when a bear surprised and chased them up a large, flat-topped rock. The gods heard their prayers to save them so the rock grew up to the heavens as the bear scratched and clawed at the sides of the mountain-sized rock. The girls went directly to heaven; the bear was just out of luck. The eroded columns of the tower lend credibility to the legend. Once scientist thought it was a volcano core, but it is now considered an igneous intrusion. The columns are in a continuous, if slow, state of deterioration as evidenced by the boulder debris at the base of the tower. Kids veer off the mile-long hiking path that encircles the tower to climb and play in the boulders. More experienced kids scale the sides to ascend straight up the face. On the loop back to Sundance we stopped at the town of Alpine, population 15; but passed on the sink hole at Vore. The pre-horse Indians would stampede a herd of buffalo off the cliff into the sinkhole.

 I-90 heads west and north out of Sundance towards Billings, MT. We are into our 4^th trip to Montana. It is really a beautiful state. Our first stop was to revisit Little Big Horn. We happened on an archeological documentary of the battle on the evening prior to our visit. With that info and a CD that we purchased to guide our tour, we really did enjoy the stop. Custer is proof that arrogance just can’t be cured.

 The drive from there to Helena is 300 miles of beauty. We crossed over and followed along the Yellowstone, Jefferson, and Missouri rivers numerous times. What Lewis and Clark would have given for our ride!

A truck stop parking lot was a pretty good place for lunch, views of snow-capped mountains from each window. We had plenty of Weight Watcher (too many steaks and desserts!) frozen dinners to choose from due to a stock-up the previous day. So we went in the c-store to buy drinks and ask about the off-freeway road just ahead. The nice lady verified a good, easy road so off we went.

Ammonia. It is a very distinctive smell; not bad, clean, fresh, and totally out of place in an RV. So I began searching for the source. Russell suggested the refrigerator workings might be involved. A Google search confirmed his fears. A hole rusted through spewing ammonia gas from deep in the guts of the ‘fridge.

 The road was not the gem promised. Assorted sections of construction, at one point a gravel road, had been sprinkled along the way. So we were bouncing along trying to figure out how to take care of the refrigerator problem, how bad is it, and how much will it cost. We called ahead to the RV park in Helena and the owners offered to let us put all of our frozen food in their upright in their garage. When they take a trip on Wednesday, they will leave the back door open for us to have access. The office carries block ice for us to fill the cooler we have been totin’ around in the car. Today we found a service shop that can take us on Thursday and it will cost less than expected. Not a bad outcome! It is amazing that every time we encounter problems, nice people are there to help, where ever "there" happens to be.

 We have hopes of seeing some of the town in the intervening days and leave Friday for Kalispell. At least that is the current plan.

Black Hills, SD

July 4, 2012

 The Black Hills are in the southwest corner of South Dakota, famous for the natural wonders and a few man-made ones. Mount Rushmore and Chief Crazy Horse monuments are in a loop that encompasses monuments, caves, lakes, rivers, amazing rock formations, and some wild roads. The only major town in the area is Rapid City to the north. Hill City, Keystone and Custer City are tourists’ towns touting their historic roles in the ol’ west and selling t-shirts.

To me, the roads are a story in themselves. A man named Peter Norbeck was a water well driller in the early 1900’s who saw the need for a road through this beautiful wilderness. He spearheaded a group who devised the best path through the mountains, creating the Needles Highway. Needles are the best way to describe the rock formations that are found among the pines. Norbeck built towering bridges to support roads that wind over and on top of one another. He blasted rock out of mountains to create tunnels of varying height and width. The shortest tunnel is 10’7”. The narrowest is 8’4”. There are a total of 6 tunnels, each different from the last. There is one where you enter with Mount Rushmore framed in front of you. Understandably, each tunnel comes complete with cars, motorcycles, and tourists with cameras dodging one another. The best was the woman who followed their car on foot so she could film the process! (Russell found it more irritating than funny.) So at each tunnel the driver stops, honks, waits and carefully comes through to find a parking spot to join the crowd.

 Peter Norbeck went on to become a state representative, governor and US senator. His committee presided over the investigation of Black Friday of 1928. Quite a man!

 We have stayed in 2 RV parks in this area. The KOA is very close to the monuments on the western side of the loop. It is huge, family oriented and expensive. Short Stay. Wolf Campground is small, personal, retirement oriented and reasonable. Long Stay!  The owners have 2 wolves and give each visitor an education about the animals while you are free to pet them through the fence. They had a pot luck dinner last night providing the ribs and corn on the cob! We look forward to leftovers and more visiting tonight. This park is on the east side of the loop just miles away from the well-known Custer State Park.

We did drive through Custer State Park, saw a few animals, had a picnic and took short hikes. It is very pretty, diverse and sprawling. You drive in and out of the park to several lakes and along the Needles Highway.

 We leave in the morning for the area around Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.

South Dakota

June 28, 2012

We arrived in our newest state to get colored in on the map on Monday. We traveled west along I-90 from Minnesota and stopped for the night just over the SD border after driving over 400 miles from Duluth, fairly tired.

The drive south began on I-35. With our previous trip to Grand Marais, we drove most of the eastern length of the state. We talked about stopping at Mall of America in Minneapolis, but decided to conserve the time for later stops. At that point the glacial lakes of northern Minnesota had given way to rolling farm lands, looking much like Wisconsin and other states at the eastern edge of the Great Plains.

I-90 intersects I-35 just north of the small town of Aurora Lea, MN. The drive west skirted most all of the farm communities along the way. The most interesting we saw was Blue Earth, MN, home of the Green Giant of vegetable fame. The town constructed a 65 foot monument to the big fellow. Big enough that we expected to see him from the highway, but no such luck. From the Internet pictures, he looks just like the one you see on all of those cans and frozen packages, so we called it done and drove on.

We stopped just shy of Sioux Falls, SD. We took time for laundry and a dip in the hot tub. We met some folks who were returning from Mount Rushmore who gave us some good pointers about the place.

We stopped the next day in Mitchell, home of the world’s only Corn Palace. We enjoyed the huge arena that is decorated with murals of corn, wheat, and other local products. The palace is the brain child of 2 businessmen in 1910 who were concerned about the lack of growth in the town. The corn festival has been held in August every year since except for interruptions like drought and war. Volunteers were working the day we were there on the 2012 theme of Sports. It was interesting to watch them prepare the wheat and then staple it to the wooden mural bases. The corn work, in 12 different colors, appeared to be finished. Inside this modern arena, not the original building of 1910, we saw a film of the history of the palace and its town. A souvenir shop is set up on the basketball court. Corn murals are high up on each wall surrounding the stage. This building serves the community in many ways!

We continued west, the land getting more flat, producing more hay and cattle than corn. We were entering the Badlands of South Dakota. We spent the night at the National Park. I’m hoping that the temp of 110 was a record high, but maybe it gets that hot on a regular basis. Just before sunset the temperatures dropped to only 90 so we went for a walk in the formations. The area consists of dried up mud beds and eerie sandstone peaks that erode at a rate of about an inch per year. We didn’t know that the first dinosaurs were found in this area. The science of paleontology was born and continues in this area.

Yesterday we started out with a drive through the remainder of the loop through the Badlands. We enjoyed the 30 mile drive and were rewarded with getting to see bighorn sheep at Pinnacle Point. It is weird to see how the grasslands weave in and out of the parched hills.

The famous Wall Drug of Wall, SD was our next stop. The line here is, “free ice water!” This simple small-town drug store of the 1940's has become an iconic tourist stop due to the cleaver advertising of the druggist’s wife. It is now 76,000 square feet of photos, food, t-shirts, hats, restaurant and even some drugstore items. Wall and Mitchell prove that a little ingenuity and hard work can pay off for everyone in a community.

Duluth, MN

June 2012 will long be remembered in Minnesota. The 24 hours immediately following our arrival saw at least 10 inches of rain from a storm that included thunder, lightening, wind and hail. There has been sporatic rain since then and many repercussions; road closures, raging rivers, cool temps, and a very red hued Lake Superior.

Yesterday we left a rainy Duluth on MN61 northeast up the North Shore to the touristy village of Grand Marais. This town is much larger than the others we passed along the way and it sits right on the shores of Lake Superior. Most towns sit back off the shore. On the 100m trip we drove through 2 tunnels whose mountain cliffs drop straight into the lake. We stopped at the Split Rock Lighthouse and after the docent led tour browed through the fog horn house, lighthouse and one of the three homes built for the families who made this rock their home for a number of years begining in 1910. It was Kid Day which was really fun to watch. There was more staff, all costumed in 1920's attire, and they had games from the period going on. the lighthouse sits atop a huge cliff, which didn't have road access at the time. All goods and people arrived by ship.

We crossed numerous rivers. As we moved north and gained elevation, the rivers got wilder. We stopped several times to watch the water tumble down moutains, crash onto rock shores and foam muddy red. One such place was perfect for a picnic.

We arrived in Grand Marais on a clear crisp afternoon. We shopped and walked around a bit. We poked through the most upscale Ben Franklin's I have ever seen, a far cry from the sleepy shop I worked in San Marcos. We walked on a rocky shore and picked up a souveigner rock. Kids were trying, with mixed results, to skip them across the water.

We headed back to the car when the rain caught up with us. We had escaped it just north of Two Harbors managing to stay just ahead of the front for most of the day. But here it was, so it was time to head back south.The rain had continued north and east, so we had a nice drive home with only one stop at Two Harbors for dinner. We found an Irish pub for fish, chips, and beer. Perfect. We then walked the pier at the lighthouse that we had seen several days before, but rain, wind and fog had stopped any idea of walking on a long pier.

On the Road: St. Louis to Duluth

We left Missouri on Sunday, heading east through Illinois, stopping somewhere north of Springfield. We don't remember the name of the town or park, but it was nice enough and we met a couple walking their dog. They had just left Wisconsin headed to St. Louis as we were doing the opposite. We told them we were headed to Duluth, what should we do along the way? He said he didn't have any idea, however, "if you're going to Duluth, you have to go to Two Harbors just up the road!" He had spent summers there growing up and remembered it fondly.

We drove through miles of corn fields, through Rockford, IL, Madison, WI and the Wisconsin Dells. It is all beautiful country, lush and rolling farms with amazing rivers. It is one picture post card after another. We stopped Monday at Osseo, WI at Stone Creek RV Resort, an amazing place. The sites are huge with large concrete picnic pads and picnic tables, beautiful trees that don't interfere with your ability to park and function. It really was a gem to discover. The Wisconsin chapter of Escapees was having a rally there starting today, but the early birds were there yesterday afternoon. That was a nice coincidence and we met some of those folks.

Today we continued north to see the state become more wooded and roughed. We crossed into Minnesota and Duluth in time for lunch. Our location is absolutely perfect. We are at a marina on an island, connected by a short bridge, that is within walking distance of the harbor and an area called Historic Canal Park. It is an old warehouse district that has become shopping and restaurants to the tourists. We got lucky arriving and setting up between cloud bursts and began looking at what to do in the rain in an area well suited to walking. We'll drive to TWO HARBORS!

We headed north on I-35 which emptied onto MN-61. Now this is a major thing to a girl who has spent a large amount of time traveling the state of Texas on I-35. I have been on that road through original construction, and various re-construction projects. I've been to Laredo and Gainesville and all points in between. I've driven 80 and hopelessly mired in standstill traffic. The worst is driving near 80 just trying not to be run down on the stretch between Austin and Dallas after a UT game. And now I have been to its most northern point in Duluth, MN. I have been to the headwaters of I-35! Amazing!

MN-61 is one of  "THE AMERICAN HIGHWAYS" you read about in Life Magazine and the tour books. It hugs the north shore of Lake Superior all the way to Canada. The portion in Duluth is in a neighborhood and therefore 30mph. But with the houses on that strip(called London Rd), 30 is too fast to take it all in. I really want to go back to the Congdon Estate, Glensheen. I saw a program about it in a series, America's Castles. All the houses are beautiful, several are mansions, and this one is open to the public.

We drove on out of the city through hamlets but mostly just lush vegetation that breaks out to show glimpses of the lake. At one point, we could see the lake with a fog layer just on top that grew and climbed over the trees to completely engulf the road ahead of us. It was really eerie, like this cloud bringing water out of the lake onto the shore.

Our first stop at Two Harbors was a visitor center. A very vivacious lady gave us the full scoop on MN-61. We have to go back for a full day to take in all of the cliffs, waterfalls and towns that are further north of today's destination.

We did go to the Two Harbors lighthouse and enjoyed the only continuously working lighthouse on the North Coast. We watched a ship pull up to the docks for off loading. It was just across a small channel and we could see it in full detail just before it completely disappeared into a fog. One second, it was gone! It takes more time to tell about it than it did to happen. It was time to head back.
The drive south was complete with rain, lightening, fog and hail.

The afternoon ended with fish and chips in Canal Park and a walk through the Corps of Engineer museum next door. We are back home for basketball finals and more rain. It is suppose to clear by the morning. We certainly hope so.

40 Miles Southwest of St. Louis

I just read an earlier blog about arriving in St. Louis. I said southeast of the city. Wrong. We are southwest, which means we are in Missouri, not Illinois.

The park is great, proven by the many campers who came here for Memorial Day weekend. Since I was here by myself, there was no need or motivation to venture out. I enjoyed movies, basketball and sewing. Russell was driving across the Northwest Territory to Niagara Falls and then to Montreal with Kyle. He had never been there before and really did enjoy the trip.

The area is beautiful; rolling hills, trees, rivers. I can understand why the earliest pioneers would leave this area and be put off by the flat plains of the midwest. We are far enough out of the city that we are beyond the suburbs, in the farmlands of Missouri.We are in the area where Louis and Clark planned and provisioned their historic trip. This is where Jesse James hung out before he was so well known. Every hamlet is "historic."

We have ventured into various parts of St. Louis and it's suburbs. I really enjoyed the genealogy libraries and was able to find an address for my great-great-great-great grand parents, 7th at Hickory. I drove there looking for a building that could have been there at the time, 1860. I did find one built in 1818 but further research showed that it was built at that time, but not in that location. I'm sure the founders of The Old Rock House never envisioned a move. Seems the original location flooded in 1840, was stored, block by block, and then rebuilt some decades later at its present spot.

Just like any home, our RV has been in need of some maintenance. I don't know how we always seem to find so much work to do, but we do. Since we are here for a month, it seems like a good time before we start hopping across the plains.

We leave here June 18 and will stay for a night in Rockford, IL, just south of the Wisconsin border. Then we head for Duluth, MN to see Lake Superior. We will be staying right on the Lake at a marina. From there we will swing through North Dakota to South Dakota for Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. There is no time frame yet. We are anxious to see a part of the country we have never been to.

THE ARCH

It is the focus of all things in St. Louis, and for good reason. There it is just off the banks of the Mississippi, on a bluff that the city is built on. It is a simple design, used by the ancients, an arch. There is a park all around the base that stretches to each side and through downtown in the form of an esplanade. This boulevard has sculpture, gardens, fountains, playgrounds and walking paths with old business buildings and modern skyscrapers on each side.

The people watching at the Arch is great. Everyone has a camera. Just like us, folks from all nations are standing, sitting, lying on their backs to get the right angle, trying to get the whole thing in a single picture, adjusting the sun's angle. I really liked capturing the sleek stainless steel structure framing St. Louis Cathedral, built centuries before. Also am proud of the reflection in a nearby glass skyscraper. Watching the sun reflect in various angles could create a whole book of photos, as I'm sure someone has done.