Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Continuing the trip west


It is time to continue the travel log of our trip west this summer. The second day we left Cooks at noon. For me it was hard to leave Lake Michigan behind. Because of a south wind driving the warm surface water to shore it was as "warm as bath water" compared to the usual bone chilling cold of the Great Lakes and I was disappointed that I did not get a chance to swim in the unusually warm water. There is a beautiful sandy swimming beach at Thompson between Manistique where my husband was born and Cooks where our relatives live in their retirement.

From Cooks it is a three hour drive to Iron River where our Nephew, his wife and our two God Sons live with their three dogs. We spent two nights camped in their driveway. After waking the trails on their property which is adjacent to a national forest, they took us to a lovely waterfall. We walked a trail up along the series of falls to the lake which had been created by a dam above the falls.




We set out early then next morning as our next destination was Wall South Dakota. The rest of the distance across the UP of Michigan and Wisconsin passed quickly. We crossed into Minnesota from Superior Wisconsin to Duluth on a beautiful bridge spanning the tip end of Lake Superior.

The drive across Minnesota was the part of the trip I least enjoyed. I do not know why but it seemed to go on forever with not a single rest stop. We drove through northern hardwood forests with lots of small lakes interspersed, it was not unpleasant but also not very interesting country. Once we crossed into North Dakota at Fargo we entered a landscape I had never before experienced. It was like going through a gate, the landscape changed abruptly.

The rolling prairie with its pot holes and the huge rolling fields of grain and hay along I -94 were fascinating. There were huge round bales of hay stacked or just lying randomly along the right of way. What an idea the right of ways were planted to hay and it was harvested - no land wasted. We observed that practice all over the west. I-94 is a beautiful road with numerous rest stops by Prairie Pot Holes. There were white pelicans, Canada Geese, Cormorants, grebes and numerous small water birds that we could not identify because of our distance from them. The prairie is not flat it ROLLS like sea billows with large and small pot hole lakes tucked in the hollows. Many of them are designated as wildlife areas and have acres of wild grassland surrounding them. At the rest stops the trees were full of pretty medium sized birds with nests tucked into crotches of branches up against the trunk. Each tree had several nests. They were a King Bird much more colorful than our eastern variety, with lovely soft yellow breasts and white chins. I could not see the outer white tail feathers so at first identified them as Cassin's Kingbirds. But they they were more likely Western Kingbirds, which we saw all over the west with their white outer tail feathers. I would have to go back with book in hand and a better pair of binoculars to be sure.

I have posted, in my Picasa photo album, some of the pictures I took on that stretch of road along I-94 to Jamestown North Dakota where we spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. When my husband asked the manager for permission to park in the lot overnight, he was warmly greeted with "Oh Sure" when the question of what kind of trailer we had was answered with "Airstream".
The next morning we decided to avoid the construction at the highway entrance ramp which made for very narrow lanes, tight turns and lots of orange barrels to maneuver around. So on the way out we followed cars whose drivers we figured knew where they were going and went out the back of the parking lot. We wound up on a prairie soil, BLACK DIRT lane between farm fields with corn growing right up to the edge. WOW!! but we finally reached a graveled road and made our way back to I-94.

We continued west and then turned south toward Wall South Dakota. As we traveled south the Prairie Pot holes disappeared, the prairie became drier and the temperatures rose into the 100s - 101*- 104* Thank goodness for AC in "White One". We crossed the Missouri River on US 212 and drove through the Cheyenne Indian Reservation. As I write this, I just realized it was the same highway we drove from Red Lodge Montana, up into the Beartooth Mountains near the end of this trip. But more of that amazing drive later.

We arrived in Wall South Dakota in time to explore the famous Wall Drug. We were glad to find a small private RV park where we could get full hook ups and enjoy our Air Conditioning for the first time in the trailer. The next day was to be our trip to Badlands National Park. The prediction was for a high of 102* with thunderstorms in the afternoon. As it turned out they were right on!

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