Home!

We left home before the apple blossoms were out and returned to full summer heat and humidity.





The flower beds - especially the weeds! - are flourishing....


...and in our absence, our hostas have been kept neatly trimmed by the local deer population.


We were blessed on our trip with great weather, happy visits with family and friends, and safe traveling. We've come away knowing firsthand just how amazingly beautiful and geographically diverse our country is.

We're happy to be home, but would repeat the trip in a heartbeat --- it'll hopefully be just the first of many more RV trips!

Thanks for visiting our BLOG!

- Chris, John & Gracie
Randolph, Vermont

Technical Difficulties

Hi - we're on our way home today, so I'll update the last 3 posts (Wisconsin, Chicago & Canada) with pictures after we get back. We're at a campground that has very poor WiFi connectivity and we keep losing our connection whenever we try to upload pictures.

O, Canada!

After spending a couple of days with dear friends and former Connecticut neighbors Margie and Charlie in Michigan, we chose the Canadian route for the final stretch home, crossing the border at Port Huron MI / Sarnia ON. (Yes, that's the price per LITER of gas that you see in the lower left -- well over $3 per gallon).

The second to the last day of our journey brought us through Toronto….



(Chris and Gracie enjoy a Starbucks treat)










...and up to the 1,000 Islands .

Chicago

While visiting John’s cousin Carol and her family who live in the suburbs of Chicago, we spent a great day in the city itself with Carol and her husband Tom.

We walked around Navy Pier...

...took an architectural boat tour ....



....and walked (and walked and walked) to the recently built Millenium Park and along Michigan Avenue:

Gracie had an exciting time with her newly-met cousin Tootsie....

Wisconsin

Saturday brought us all the way to Wisconsin, quite a change of scenery from that morning’s start in South Dakota. Some factoids:
- The highest point in the state is only 1,953 feet, but Wisconsin does boast several ski areas; we passed by one on the highway
- The center of Madison, the capitol, rests between two lakes – Mendota and Monona. Frank Lloyd Wright lived in the area and his influence is evident throughout. The FLW-inspired convention center facing Lake Monona has a rooftop garden memorial to Otis Redding, who died in a Lake Monona plane crash in 1967. (Ironically, “Dock of the Bay” came on the radio just as we left the area)
- Here is an example of Wisconsin building design that was NOT inspired by FLW:

The World’s Largest Birdfeeder

With the major National Parks behind us, we faced a long and potentially uninspiring drive along a desolate I-90 through southern South Dakota, so we decided to focus our attention on the less well-known American gems (such as yesterday’s Wall Drug). Further examples are the 1880 town in East Belvidere (population 57)

and the Pioneer Auto Museum in Murdo (population 612) which boasts a motorcycle once owned by Elvis Presley.
We started to notice billboards every few miles that were beckoning visitors to “The Corn Palace” in Mitchell. With typical east coast snobbery, we amused ourselves for miles with derisive comments about the place. But – since we were looking for a pit stop anyway, our curiosity got the better of us and we pulled off the highway to check it out.

As the brochure says – “It’s A-Maizing” (we’re not kidding here).



The outside and inside walls of the building are decorated with murals made from ears of corn; the exterior murals are re-designed and re-“corned” each year.


The first Corn Palace was built in 1892 as a showcase of all of the crops that could be grown in the area. For more information, we recommend that you visit http://www.cityofmitchell.org/palace/.
By the way, we asked the obvious question as to how they keep the birds from picking away at the building and the answer is that they don’t – hence, the nickname you see in the title.

We made our way into Minnesota; Austin MN (population 23,314) is the home of Hormel Foods. Since SPAM is the most widely known Hormel product, Austin is also known as "SPAM Town" and accordingly has a SPAM museum.

We took a picture of the Hormel complex as seen from I-90 but chose not to stop because we were disappointed to learn that it did not include any murals made of SPAM.

Badlands and Wall Drugs

The South Dakota Badlands are unlike anything we have at home....





.... and the same can be said for Wall Drug (http://www.walldrug.com/) which literally put Wall SD on the map back in 1931:

Mount Rushmore, Just Like in the Movie...

..."North by Northwest"; we half expected to see Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint climbing up over the faces of the presidents!









What we didn't fully expect was the commercialism that has sprouted up in the surrounding area, such as the town of Keystone SD which featured the "Executive Order Grill" and "First Lady Motel", etc.




The Mount Rushmore National Memorial itself is tastefully done and quite the sculptural fete, but a bit of a change from the natural resources we've seen in other National Parks. Our first reaction was that it's smaller than we thought it would be; however, just as a reference, George Washington's nose is 21 feet long - imagine 3 or 4 people standing on eachother's shoulders for perspective.




Next stop of course was the unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial, sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski's (1908-1982) dream:

The (Literal) High Point of Our Trip

We set eastward out of Cody this morning ... which is all about Buffalo Bill Cody (who Gracie met)....



and headed towards South Dakota and the Black Hills. As expected, the countryside changed to a more flat and desert-like landscape at first.

West of the town of Ten Sleeps WY, however, things changed dramatically as we started through Big Horn National Forest. We gained elevation from 4,500-ish and passed first through red canyons and then high meadows and pine forests, eventually going through Powder River Pass at 9,666 feet --- the highest point we’ve driven through since leaving home. (Sorry for the lack of pictures from our ascent - blame it on operator error!)


Forty or so miles later we were back in deserts and plains in the town of Buffalo, WY.


Outside of Gillette WY, we saw a huge coal mining facility adjacent to a huge, huge coal pit (strip mining) and a coal-laden train.....




P.S. We did not take the detour off of I-90 to Devil’s Tower (a round trip of about 50 miles), but could see it in the distance as we passed about 20 miles south of it.

Wi-Fi and RV Parks

It’s been a few days since we’ve been able to post to our BLOG. In general we’ve found that, while many, many RV parks boast “free Wi-Fi” in the Good Sam or AAA tour books which we use to help us find our campsites, the services are limited. An example is tonight’s stay in Cody, Wyoming: the advertised Wi-Fi service is limited to the campground’s office and front porch. So here we sit in the dark after hours, catching up on email and posting this entry!

Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks

Yellowstone is the oldest national park (1872) and arguably the most famous; we were afraid that this would also mean that it’s the most hyped and over-rated. Nevertheless, we had never been there and thought we’d at least go to see Old Faithful on our way to Grand Teton National Park. Within yards of entering the park, our earlier notions disappeared! Yellowstone has a great variety of features and something for everyone --- not just geysers, but snow-capped 10,000+ mountains, high meadows, canyons, waterfalls, lakes, streams, buffalo, eagles, and other wildlife.




(Note above the devastation from fires that hit Yellowstone back in 1988 -- 30% of the forest was destroyed.)


As you can see from the pictures, we were blessed on Tuesday with yet another beautiful day. It started at 31 degrees F (!) at 6 AM, but we were comfortable in shorts and t-shirts by 11. By the time we arrived in Jackson, WY at 6 PM, it was in the 80’s.


See also the pictures of the Grand Tetons.



P.S. More songs -- "Two Buffaloes" which Bob Steele used to play regularly (don't ask me why I remember that the singer was Rolf Harris); also -- "She Was Gone.....I Used to Love to Watch Her Dance that 'Grizzly Bear'; I guess she's gone to Frisco to dance it there")