Trip, Part III: Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

The beautiful Beaverhead River

Montana. It will always hold part of my heart. If you haven't been there to experience it for yourself, I think that you will understand why after you see my pictures.

We spent about eight days in Montana this year. The biggest change from previous visits is that my brother-in-law Brad now has his own fly shop!

Not only did we get some sweet deals on outdoor clothing and such, but the shop proved to be a very fun place to hang out and relax after a day just driving around, a day of nephew-watching, or a day on the river.

Colorful flies

Clyde (with ball) in front of the shop

We stayed with Brad on a ranch outside of Dillon, MT. Dillon is in the southwest corner of MT. We were lucky to have fantastic weather most of the time. It was warm, sunny and no smoke from wildfires was to be seen.

View from "Hotel Platt"

The ranch is surrounded by lots and lots of grass and farmland...and cows, and deer, and osprey...

The resident kitten - love!

Creepy/awesome tree

One of the best things about being in MT was getting to spend a lot of time with our 5-year old nephew Sawyer. He is a really good kid, a lot of fun to be around, and has more energy than any of us can keep up with!

Here are some pictures of a really fun half-day float down the Beaverhead River that Brad took me, Todd, Sawyer and the two dogs Clyde and Henry on. Talk about a boat load!

On the ride to the river, Sawyer makes sure Henry's sun-protection is in place

Sawyer 'kickin' it' while Brad prepares the boat at the put-in

Brad putting the boat in - Sawyer is ready to go!

Five Platts fishing - how cute are they?

Sometimes being with adults is just boring.

But, Sawyer did get to get out every so often and frolic around in the water with his two dog buddies.

Petting the fish

Me being a dork taking a picture of myself because Todd never takes pictures of me

I love this picture of Henry! The regal retriever.

Some other fun things we did with Sawyer - aka how to be the coolest aunt and uncle ever.

Took him to a Dinosaur Park in Bozeman where Uncle Todd gave him some rock climbing tips.

...He's a fast learner.

When Clyde and Henry heard we were going fishing, Clyde immediately packed himself into the back of the Subaru - Henry jumped into the back seat.

Clyde and Henry supervise as Sawyer helps Uncle Todd (aka Uncle Stinky Socks) reel in a fish.

The highlight of the day for Sawyer - by far - was catching and carrying around this poor toad for the afternoon.

Yep, the toad rode home with Sawyer and Henry in the back seat. (Uncle Todd is a softie.)

We also took him to the movies, bought him a new pair of tennis shoes for school (which he claimed made him 'really fast'), played 'I Spy' until we were blue in the face (...seriously, this is Montana, this game takes a lot of imagination!) and made a comprehensive count of all the stop signs in Dillon.

Todd and I did get away to do some stuff on our own - we went on a couple of very cool drives - cool as in scenic and to neat fishing spots we'd never been to. Unfortunately, a lot of the places we went to elevation continued to affect my breathing pretty significantly, so we were not able to be as active as we liked.

I love this picture of Todd walking down to fish a small strip of river:

Spreading the Ashes

A big part of our Montana trip was getting together with Todd and Brad's four aunts (whose own vacation to MT overlapped accordingly with ours) to spread Todd's father Roger's ashes in the Beaverhead River.

The day we picked to do it was perfect. We all met at the flyshop in time for cocktail hour (the unofficial time between getting off the river and the shop closing at 7). Jill (Sawyer's mom) and Sawyer put together a wreath of flowers - something visual to see float down the river. The aunts had put together a 'message in a bottle' that they hoped would find its way all the way to the Gulf of Mexico - Roger's final adventure.

The Beaverhead winds through this beautiful ranch that we got permission to be at to pour the ashes into the river.

Jill holding the wreath, Sawyer skipping rocks, Brad and John drinking Roger's signature drink (Bud tall-boys). The dogs are also swimming nearby. Keeping it real.

Roger's sister Nancy reading something she wrote for him.

Todd dumps the ashes (well, half of them - the other half are getting dumped in a river in Tennessee) while Brad and Sawyer look on.

The Best Day of Fishing Ever

The day after the ash ceremony, Brad, Todd, Clyde and Henry and I went fishing one last time on the Beaverhead. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the best days fishing ever for me. It wasn't because I caught a lot of fish - although that may be true for Todd! - but because the weather was beautiful, we were all relaxed and just happy to be together. (Sawyer had gone back home with his mother that day.)

Here are a few pictures from that day:

Todd catching another big fish.

Henry and Clyde keep a close eye on the end of Brad's line.

Me, happy to catch a fish.

My Montana story would not be complete without mentioning the awesome Anderson & Platt Outfitters store manager Josh, who led us to some great fishing spots, had a super awesome and very smart dog named Summer (who kept Sawyer entertained when we had all been worn out) and who was just a really great guy to get to know. (Unfortunately only Josh's arm made it into this picture.)

Summer dog

And finally, a brief nod to my underrepresented but not under-appreciated traveling companion, oxygen. Without you, I wouldn't have been able to do half of what I did out West - at least not without my body paying the price for it.

To be continued...

Trip, Part II - Great Plains Adventures

Crossing the Mackinac Bridge from lower into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

Leaving our awesome cabin and 5-toed cat in Manistee, we had a very long day of driving ahead of us. And an awful lot that we wanted to see along the way!

We traveled north through Petosky and Traverse City (souvenir stop for local fudge - Traverse City Cherry was the specialty, a delicious mix of cherry and dark chocolate fudge - cherry salsa and a Petosky stone necklace!) and crossed the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We stopped for a picturesque picnic lunch on the other side of the bridge.

Our drive through the U.P. was nice. The highways are relatively small and not very crowded. We took a road that followed a lot of Lake Michigan's shore, so we got to see a variety of interesting and beautiful shoreline. There were tons of signs for "pasties" which intrigued us but we never stopped for one, having just eaten lunch.

Eventually we made it around the lake to Wisconsin, at which point we cut inland on some very confusing letter-named country roads that made no logical sense, and made our way down to Interstate 90 - the road we would basically take the rest of the way to Montana. We spent the night in a small town right on the Mississippi River (our hotel was actually on the river) called La Crosse, WI.

Crossing the Mississippi and onto the Great Plains 

 

The next morning we crossed the Mississippi and spent many hours driving through Minnesota and then most of South Dakota. It was pretty early on that day when we started looking ahead to which town we wanted to stay in that night, finding places surprisingly booked up and/or more expensive than we expected. We also started to see a lot of motorcycles traveling west on the highway...

We finally realized that we were heading right into the madness that is Sturgis Bike Week - an annual Harley Davidson festival of over 500,000 bikers from all over the country. (Literally, for the rest of our trip, all the way back to North Carolina, we saw signs telling drivers to be extra alert of motorcycle traffic.) We were hitting the Badlands of South Dakota during the ONE week of the year that hotels fill up and are probably double their normal rate!

In any case, we found a place in Hot Springs, about 1.5 hours away from the Badlands - and the bikers added a certain something to our trip that wouldn't have otherwise been. We got to the Badlands in the late afternoon - we wanted to do a quick drive-through that day in the time that we had. It turned out to be a really pretty time with the sun bringing out the oranges and the shadows created from the angle of the sun. We drove a loop through the park that took us about an hour or so and then headed to Rapid City (about an hour) to find some dinner before driving on to our hotel (another hour) in Hot Springs.

Our first look at the badass Badlands:

 

Todd scampering on the rocks

My First of Three Favorite Days

Me at Wind Cave National Park, bison in the background

Of course it's hard to pick which days were the best on our trip, but the following day is one that really sticks out for me. We went to Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore before heading back to the Badlands. Our day started out with about an hour of driving through a smaller national park called Wind Cave. We ended up making a couple of stops there and it was so serene with rolling green hills and hardly any other people. I loved it - and I would love to go back.

We first stopped to observe a large herd of bison (spot pictured above). We noticed that they were making some weird sounds at each other...very guttural and serious. We thought some of the males might be gearing up for a fight, but no such luck. They were definitely sorting things out with respect to the females, though. (We later learned that their mating season starts soon so that's probably what was going on.)

A bit later, we came across some big horn sheep grazing their way up to the edge of the road. We sat and watched them - I had never seen so many big horn sheep that close up, there were six or seven - eating grass and making their way wherever they were going. Later we saw an even bigger herd - more than 25 in all - of females and there were some very cute fuzzy awkward looking baby big horn sheep amongst them!

Big horn sheep

This large herd of big horn was quite a sight!

Crazy Horse

Our first scheduled stop of the day was the Crazy Horse Memorial and museum. I remember distinctly, this is when I first started wearing my oxygen. The elevation there was a surprising 6,000 feet! (The rest of the Black Hills area we'd been in was closer to 3,000-4,000; Raleigh, by comparison, is about 400 feet above sea level.) I knew elevation was going to be an issue at some point, and this was it!

Memorial in progress

Model of memorial

Really colorful collection of beads at the museum

The monument itself is not finished; it has been in the process of being sculpted since 1948! The museum was pretty cool, and the model of what the finished sculpture is supposed to look like is really neat.

Rushmore

Our next stop was Mount Rushmore, a mere 20-30 minute drive away. Traffic going into Mount Rushmore was briefly a little crazy...remember, bike week, motorcycles everywhere! (Same at Crazy Horse.) We parked in a garage type structure and followed a walkway up some steps...then there is this long stone sidewalk that goes past a restaurant and gift shop on either side and then starts through this "hall of flags" sort of thing (all 50 states) and spits you out at this big open area where everyone stands to take and pose for pictures of Mount Rushmore behind them.

My picture, turned black and white by Instagram

The place itself was alright...  I'm not sure if it was because of the bikers or not, but they had a kiosk set up selling beer and wine - somehow it was better to walk around with a beer. I don't know...  I'm not a very patriotic person. The reason we decided to go at all was because we had recently watched Hitchcock's North by Northwest, which has an amazing climactic scene with Cary Grant being chased around the faces of the monument. How disappointed was I that there was not a single reference to this movie on anything in the gift shop!

However, we did forgo our picnic lunch that day for lunch in the cafeteria there - the same one in which another scene from the movie was shot. So that was pretty cool.

The famous Rushmore restaurant from North by Northwest

Back to the Badlands

We finally made it back to the Badlands in the afternoon. There were a couple of things we wanted to see and a couple of short hikes we wanted to go on. Even at the "lower" elevation of the Badlands, I was still more short of breath than usual, so we took it easy, but we were still able to do almost everything that we had wanted to do.

At the top of one of our short hikes

That evening we ended up back in Rapid City for dinner. We stumbled upon this great bar! We were just going to stop for a drink because all they had for food was pizza, but the pizza looked amazing, so we ended up quite happy with our good beer and pizza dinner. A great ending to a wonderful day.

If You Thought Yesterday Was Busy...

If you haven't noticed, there were a lot of things we wanted to see in the Black Hills - there was a lot more than we thought there would be - so we ended up staying very busy, and also seeing a lot of incredibly cool stuff.

We had a 10-hour drive ahead of us to Dillon, MT - our final destination. Dillon is in way southwest Montana, close to the Idaho boarder, which meant we had to get out of South Dakota, cut through park of Wyoming, and drive basically the entire length of Montana in one day. A sane person would have gotten the drive over as quickly as possible, but as you can see, we are a little insane when it comes to traveling...and there were a couple more things that we really wanted to see!

Deadwood 

The exit to Deadwood, SD

I really wanted to see the town of Deadwood. We had been watching the Deadwood TV series in anticipation of our trip west. However, when the time came, Todd was reluctant to sit through more motorcycle traffic (Deadwood is very close to the Sturgis madness) so we decided to see how it looked as we went...we ended up getting pretty close to town without too much trouble, so we went for it.

The main street of Deadwood

Our short time there can be summarized as: a visit to a souvenier shop; a beer in the Golden Nugget Saloon; Todd losing $20 on two spins of roulette at the Gem Saloon (from the Deadwood TV show!!); and me posing for a picture on a copper Wild Bill Hickcock's lap. But in reality, the town is much more memorable for the number of motorcycles - which completely lined the main street on both sides - and bikers walking around enjoying themselves.

Devil's Tower

We got on the road out of SD and into Wyoming before the next stop we wanted to make - Devil's Tower National Monument. Not only is Devil's tower very cool looking and featured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it is also home to a very un-camera shy population of very cute prairie dogs! We saw a lot of prairie dogs in the Black Hills, but I was able to get the best pictures of these ones.

Prairie dog cuteness

Me standing in front of Devil's Tower - we made it!

There is a person climbing there!!

The rest of the day was very long and not very eventful. We made it to Bozeman, MT in time for a late dinner and made it to Dillon, exhausted, a little after midnight.

To be continued...

Trip, Part I: Good Times with the Smith Family

After weeks of preparation and days of packing and planning, we left on our great road trip on the morning of Friday, July 26. As you might imagine, it was quite an ordeal to get all of my medical stuff in order: prescriptions refilled, oxygen stocked up, and gathering an arsenal of "just in case" medicines for if I were to get sick on the road.

In addition to our two giant duffel bags, my two bags of medical stuff, oxygen concentrator, cooler,  box of food for the car and back support pillows, we were taking a rather large toy chest (my dad made it for me when I was a kid), a kid's rocking chair (that has been in my mom's family for several generations) and various other presents for our nieces and nephews.

I tried not to make a big deal about saying goodbye to all of the animals, but I did start crying when petting the last kitty goodbye.

Finally, we were all set to go. Todd turns the key in the car and the battery is dead. Fortunately, I have jumper cables so we pulled up my car next to his and gave it a quick jump. We really should have thrown those cables into the car, but we were thinking it was just a light left on or something benign that had caused it.

 

The First Leg

Everything was going smoothly. We made it out of NC (what a feeling with all of the BS in the legislature recently to feel the beginning of a long break with all of that) and through most of VA when we decided to stop for our first picnic lunch. We had decided to do peanut butter and jelly for lunches to save money. We stopped at a rest area, the weather was great...we get back into our car to leave and the battery is dead again!

After about 15 minutes we finally found someone to jump us. It was a family from Charlotte who, incidentally, was also on their way to Cleveland and had also had a dead battery when they first started their car up that morning. After several nerve-racking miles of stop-and-go construction traffic (not what you want to go through with a weak battery) we stopped in Bluefield at an auto place and the guys were very nice to install a new battery for us, even though they don't usually do installations.

All and all we thought, for car trouble, we got off pretty easily. Hopefully we got all of our car trouble out of the way on the first day!

 

Cleveland

Amazing cheese tortellini in Little Italy

We got into Cleveland a little before 8 that night. We were staying downtown at the Marriott for one night, so we checked in and then walked a few blocks to an amazing dinner in Little Italy. The next day, we went to see my dad and Mary Ann. Mary Ann and I quickly snuck off to our two favorite shopping haunts. We had a great dinner with them and then went over to my step-sister Amy's place where we were staying along with my three little nieces and their very sweet dog.

Grandma lights the candles on Elena's ice cream cake

On Sunday, the weather was great again and we grabbed tickets to an Indians game. After that, dad and Mary Ann came over to Amy's for a birthday celebration for my (now) 7-year-old niece Elena. She loved all of her presents (as did her twin 5-year old sisters who "helped" open almost everything) as well as the ice cream cake.

 

Michigan

The next morning we set off for MI. I wanted to stop for lunch in Ann Arbor to show Todd my old university town. We were anxious to get to Mt Pleasant to see my brother, but he had texted me that he was still not feeling well and was going to the doctor that day so we were waiting to see how that turned out. Ended up his doctor thought he had the flu (I'm not sure if this is right, but it was definitely the end of some kind of bug), but told him that if he wore a mask around me it should be okay. With everything going on with my health lately, I just knew that I couldn't take any kind of chance. So we took our time walking around Ann Arbor and then had an early dinner at Arbor Brewing Company. Then we drove on to a hotel in Mt Pleasant while we figured out what to do.

We decided on a half-day outdoor visit the next day with my brother, sister-in-law and nephew in a park where Simon could play and we could watch him be cute from a 3-foot distance.

Simon swinging...

Climbing the stairs for the slide

Going down the slide holding mom (JoEllen's) hand

As nap time approaches, Simon gives his just received fat kitty birthday stuffed animal an extra big hug

Sad, but it was the best we could come up with. We had lunch (delicious take-out sandwiches) back at their house outside and then left to drive to a cabin we'd found in Manistee.

 

Our Cabin in the Woods

Manistee is on the west coast of MI about 3/4 of the way up. We chose the location for its proximity to Sleeping Bear Dunes, which I had really wanted to see.

"Papa" warmed right up to you-know-who

The cabin ended up being really great. It was so nice inside - everything was there that we needed. It was furnished in typical "cabin" fashion with wooden walls and such. It is mostly used as a hunting/snowmobiling cabin, I think, but there is also good fishing nearby in the summer. It's kind of in the middle of no-where in Manistee National Forest. The best part (of course) was the resident cat! He was a small, orange, super-friendly tabby with five toes! We named him Papa and he kept us company throughout our stay.

 

Sleeping Bear

Hiking path at Sleeping Bear National Seashore

The next morning, Todd went fishing while I slept in and then drank coffee with Papa on the porch. After a nap, Todd and I set out for Sleeping Bear. It was about a 1.5 hour drive - we took some really scenic back-ish roads up there that wound through beautiful fruit orchards.

The park itself was really neat. There is a loop drive that we took, which took a couple of hours, that took us through lush forests, historic lighthouses and of course the gigantic amazing dunes of Sleeping Bear. We did a short hike along the way that was the only hike I've ever done without shoes!

Me demonstrating "hike without shoes"!

The craziest thing was literally being on top of this gigantic dune that fell I don't know how many hundreds of yards into Lake Michigan. I've never seen anything like it! Poor souls who got caught in the excitement of running down it without thinking about how difficult it would be to climb back up. I think it would take a normal person an hour or so to climb. Hard work!

Old lighthouse on Lake Michigan

A look down the massive dune at Sleeping Bear...yes, those dots are people!

The day was winding down, but we stopped in the abandoned-feeling old port "town" of Glen Haven. There was an old hotel, blacksmith and canning factory that they have kept up. Very cool. At last, we took the short jaunt to the town of Glen Arbor, a very small, summer-only, old school tourist destination, where we stopped for dinner before heading back to the cabin.

Really old building in the historic Glen Haven

 And here are some other pictures...

Sampling some Cajun fish bites in Manistee, with Michigan beer of course!

No trip to Michigan in the summer is complete without cherries!

A peak at the inside of our cabin

Some Quick Bits About Our Trip

Wind Cave National Park, SD. Trust me, this is as close as I need to get to a herd of bison!

In the last three and a half weeks, Todd and I traveled on a big looping cross-country road trip to visit family and see some incredible sights. All of the driving went smoothly. We only had car trouble once, the first day, with our battery dying. Fortunately we were able to jump it (twice) and then get to a place to buy a new one fairly easily.

The coolest part about the trip for me? Todd and I getting to see all of our immediate family in one swoop. The second coolest part? Seeing two new awesome national parks (Rocky Mountain in CO and Badlands in SD) and one very cool national monument (Devil's Tower in SD).

The biggest disappointment was having to change our MI plans to stay three days with my brother, his wife and my adorable two-year old nephew Simon because they were all fighting some kind of bug.

In any case, I have been assembling in my head some interesting facts about our trip that I wanted to share with you while they are still fresh in my head. So here goes!

• Number of miles driven: well over 7,000
• Number of states visited: 15 (VA, WV, OH, MI, WI, MN, SD, WY, MT, CO, KS, MO, KY, TN, NC)
• Number of hotels stayed in (plus one cabin): 9
• Number of State and National Parks and Monuments/Memorials visited: 7 (Sleeping Bear (MI), Badlands (SD), Wind Cave National Park (SD), Crazy Horse Memorial (SD), Mount Rushmore (SD), Devil's Tower (WY), Yellowstone (MT/WY), Rocky Mountain National Park (CO))
• Number of post cards sent: 46 (I sent one home every day to myself to record our trip, and got in the groove and sent a bunch more to friends and family while I was at it)
• Types of wildlife seen: black bear, grizzly bear (3, mom and two adolescents), deer, pronghorn, elk, big horn sheep, bison, eagles, osprey, hawks, lots of other cool birds, badger (only Todd), muskrats, picas!, marmots, prairie dogs!, chipmunks, armadillo, frog, rabbits, but STILL NO MOOSE!!
• Number of serious rain storms that we drove through: 0! We were really lucky with the weather. But we did see one really cool massive storm in Kansas about 30 miles away from us.
•  Highest altitude reached: over 12,000 feet! (Rocky Mountain National Park)
• Most unexpected thing to happen: accidentally coordinating our stop in South Dakota with the annual Sturgis Harley Davidson festival which attracts over 500,000 bikers.

More to come soon, promise!