Our Trailerless Trip To Montana

After dropping Butch off at the new kennel on Monday, July 22, we loaded up the new car and headed off to Montana early the next morning.  Never having traveled in any of the states, getting to Montana was all new and exciting.

Iowa is nothing but corn fields.  

Our hotel reservation for our first night out was in Mitchell, South Dakota. Mitchell is home to the infamous Corn Palace - the only corn palace in the world!

The front and sides of this building are all decorated in corn.  Each year it is replaced with new scenes.  The old ones are displayed in  the gymnasium inside the building.

Yes, her sister did it.

We started off the next morning headed towards Deadwood, South Dakota.  Along the way, we found yet another infamous tourist trap - Wall Drug, in Wall, South Dakota.  We were so unimpressed that we only took one picture.  

We had intended on stopping at a couple of RV parks where we had hoped to host next year's Cedar Creek Rally.  Unfortunately neither of the parks were interested in our business so we decided to be tourists, in case we did not get back up this way.  

We first headed to Mount Rushmore.  What a great place.  

Next up was a cemetery in Deadwood where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were buried.

 The town of Deadwood

The next morning we got up and headed up to Mark's brother's vacation home in Big Fork, Montana.  The scenery along the way was beautiful. 

First we drove through Sturgis, SD.  It was early in the morning, and Bike Week didn't start for another week so there wasn't much to see.

Along the way we stopped at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the battlefield of Custer's last stand.  

We stopped in Bozeman, Montana for the night before arriving in Big Fork on the 4th day out.

 The view of the golf course from the deck of Pat and Mary Ellen's house.

Flathead Lake in Big Fork, Montana

We had a rental boat for the week while with the family.  Both Mark and I were able to get up on skis after not trying for almost 10 years.  Even though the water temperature was only 71 degrees, everyone thought it felt wonderful - the air was 90 degrees. (except for Mark - he froze.)

All the family.

After a week with the family, we headed 10 miles north to Kalispell, Montana for a couple of days with our friends, Steve and Carol.  They were our tour guides on our 8 hour visit to Glacier National Park.  

 St. Mary's Lake

A moose and her calf (Steve took this picture with his high powered zoom lens)

 One of many waterfalls in the park.

We came across a whole bunch of goats in the park. 

The second grizzly bear we saw.  (Again, Steve's photo I'm borrowing.)  This one was very close - within 50 yards of the car.

Steve and Carol told us we were extremely lucky to see all the wildlife that we did in one day.  We saw one coyote, two grizzly bears, the moose and her calf, lots of goats, and one grasshopper.

We stopped just outside the park at Johnson's for lunch.  The burgers were delicious, but the dessert was the best.

The four of us split two of these slices.  

We left Kalispell early on Saturday morning to start the three day trek home. We were anxious to get Butch out of the kennel - even though I called four times checking on him.

On out way south out of Kalispell, we came to this:

It's call an Animal Trail - grass is growing over the top so the animals don't get killed on the road.  I wonder who taught them to do that???

Once we started driving home, we got in a hurry.  Except for a fuel or food or hotel break, we just kept driving.  We spent the first night on Casper, Wyoming.  We went a different route home because it was "Bike Week" in Sturgis, SD, and we didn't want to be anywhere near all the bikers.  We avoided that, but we did not miss the tiny blip on the radar map - a hail storm.  The new car is now dented up with over $2500 damage according to the State Farm adjuster.  

Our last night was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and we got to bail Butch out at 4:00pm.  We were all happy to see each other!