It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. And though it does suggest this has not been a wildly eventful year, it does not mean I’ve not done anything at all.
As the title suggests, I took a road trip. And it was fantastic! This was at the beginning of July, and no, it was nothing like the legendary road trip from the 1978 film Animal House. Though I will confess to have had a few like that when I was much much younger.
I have a friend from high school, and his family have a vacation cabin in Montana. I was invited out last year and had an amazing time. Montana is beautiful! When I got an invite for this year, I eagerly accepted – Then I started looking at my budget. I already knew I had multiple plans for later in the year, in September, with a wedding (possibly two) and a hiking trip, not to mention the Christmas trip. So I hedged on following up on the invitation to Montana.
Finally in early June my friend reached out, asking when I was going to visit. I explained that my budget was tight this year so I might have to pass. What played out, over one evening via text messages, was the planning of a great little adventure. And it was a good deal less expensive than flying round trip.
The first part of the plan was for me to take Amtrak from Atlanta up to Spartanburg, SC where we would meet. From there, we would drive the 2,373 miles (3,819km) to western Montana. This was my first experience with Amtrak and aside from the entire trip being in the wee hours of the night I actually enjoyed it. I boarded around 11:30PM and arrived in Spartanburg at 3:30AM. Interestingly, what amazed me the most were the number of people at the small station in Spartanburg when we arrived. My friend said some of the people on the platform were just train watchers.
We loaded up the car, and snapped the obligatory selfie:
Then after a quick stop for coffee and doughnut at Krispy Kreme, we were off. The plan for the first day was to get as far as possible so that the second day we could do some sightseeing along the way. (I’ve never been out west on a road trip, though my friend has done this many times over the years.) It was a long day, but we covered more than 1200 miles (~1930 km), finally stopping in Chamberlain, SD, mainly because the bugs on the windshield made it too hard to see.
Along the way, we passed through Asheville, NC, Knoxville, TN
St. Louis, MO
And a few other places before driving into the sunset in South Dakota. It was beautiful, but did not mix well with the squashed bugs on the windshield
We were up and ready early the second day, and our first stop was to see Dignity, and beautiful statue of a Native American woman in dress traditional to the plains. She stands on a hill outside Chamberlain, SD with the Missouri River down below:
We then had a long drive across the southern part of South Dakota:
Finally by early afternoon we reached the Black Hills National Forest for a quick stop to see Mount Rushmore. To be honest, I wanted to see it solely because it is such a iconic piece of Americana – But I did not feel the need to stop at a visitors center. So I searched around on Google and found a cemetery a couple miles away from which you have a great, though oblique, view:
From there, it was a quick drive to the Crazy Horse Monument, still under construction:
Then we had a two hour drive to Devils Tower in Wyoming (known by various other names to the Native Americans, with “Bear Lodge” being the most common according to my quick Google search):
Finally we had a few hours drive to Cody, Wyoming. Our plan, as it fell into place throughout the day, was to stay in Cody since it was close to East Gate of Yellowstone National Park.
We stayed the night at The Big Bear Motel in Cody, and it wasn’t bad. It was, however, a complete throwback to the mid-century. I happen to love that stuff. For dinner we had to drive around a bit and I happened to like the town enough to pull up some real estate listings on Realtor. Different topic for a different blog post.
The next morning we left early for Yellowstone. This was my first time to Yellowstone, so my friend prepared me letting me know the route we were going to take through the Park was not the most scenic. He was correct, and I will do a separate blog post on Yellowstone another time. We basically passed through the Park east to west. The east side of the Park was cleared some years ago by a large fire and it has not yet regrown. We did see a couple bison, and that was the only wildlife we saw. We checked out a thermal area, and also sat and watched Old Faithful. Seeing Old Faithful was absolutely worth it, to me. I think that was finished around 12:30 so we headed out – We had a 5 hour drive to our final destination near Polson, MT.
Five hours sure sounds like a long time, but it flew by. The scenery out west is amazing. It is absolutely amazing how huge this country is, and how it is mostly empty! But absolutely beautiful. We finally made it, and proceeded with opening the cabin for the season.
I absolutely enjoyed this road trip. In fact, I loved it so much that I’ve added doing a road trip around Iceland as one of things I want to do for my 60th. I’m also eagerly thinking about my next domestic road trip.
So my advice to you – Take a road trip. This country is beautiful, it is vast, and there are endless routes to take.
Anyhoo, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about this. A side note – I’ve been editing my pics with square fit so they wont be cropped when uploading to Instagram. I don’t like how they appear on this page, though. So from here on out I will not add to this page pics that have been edited thus.
Cheers.
Will's GenX Adventure 