Coffee with a side of buffalo.

5000+ miles

On July 4 we officially crossed the US, Chesapeake to Pacific. We settled into Seattle for two (relatively) quiet days after our big push across continental divides. This comes after nine days of drives and one-night stops across the South and North Dakotas, Montana, and Idaho. This kind of travel brought us to some memorable places, but also begins to create a pattern where it becomes difficult to discern one day from another. Each day is wake up, make coffee, make breakfast, pack up, drive, have lunch, drive, set up camper, explore a little, have dinner, go to sleep, repeat. It leads to questions like, “How many states ago did we buy this sausage sitting at the bottom of the cooler?” and “Wait, we were having coffee with the buffalo just three days ago?” (more on that later). This kind of travel also doesn’t lend itself well to keeping touch on the ol’ blog, so again our apologies, dear readers. From this point on we will be easing our foot off the gas, covering less distance, and enjoying more time in our places. First we need to get the Betties out of Minneapolis and into Seattle! Here we go!

June 12 – 18: Minneapolis, MN

Odometer 2200 miles

We spent a week at Ione (K’s sister) and Gary’s place just outside of MPLS. We endeavored to help them with a basement restoration project, and we had a gig planned with niece Sophia’s band the Mill City Caravan. We also had a surprise for Gary – we helped fly young Jon from Seattle into town for Father’s day, and to join the band!

It was such a treat to sing four part harmonies and play some tunes with some amazing musicians in a real live band! Many thanks to Mill City Caravan for letting us crowd onto their stage!

June 19 -22: Storm Lake, IA

We had a brief stop in Storm Lake to visit Kayla’s dad. And, hot out of the Twin Cities, we had a lunch gig at the senior center.

On the To-Do list if for Matthew to rebuild Coleman stove. After carefully disassembling it and cleaning each part, he irrevocably broke it while trying to put it back together. Sigh. There wasn’t time to solve how to fix it, so we said the serenity prayer and moved on.

June 23: Mitchell SD and the Corn Palace!

Odometer 3184

Our ride to Mitchell turned out to be more by the skin of our tires trhan we knew at the time! There’s been heavy rain in the midwest for the past several days. Though our departure day is beautify, rivers are swelling across the midwest. We are turned around by the overflowing Little Sioux river just outside of Storm Lake, so we take an alternate route to cross the river at Correctionville, and then again on I20 at Sioux City. Later we learn that these passes were closed due to flooding just hours after we crossed those bridges! Whew!

In Mitchell we buy a new propane stove and then head to the World’s Only Corn Palace. From our journal: “a a hilarious combination of high and low art.”

June 24: Sturgis SD

No time to revel in the Corn Palace for another day, we have ground to cover. We drive through Woonsocket, Hunkpati, Ft Thompson, and Pierre (which had a nice library for a meeting Kayla needed to take) to finally reach Sturgis, home of the Sturgis Motorcycle rally. Let’s steal from Wikipedia here: Attendance has historically been around 500,000 people, reaching a high of over 700,000 in 2015. The event takes place over 10 days and generates around $800 million in annual revenue. In 2020, the rally provided 21% of the city’s annual revenue.

So, this is a town that is primarily built around a 10 day motorcycle festival. Far out. There are many facilities that are clearly designed to handle very many motorcycles and their drinking riders, including the campground we stay at, right the interstate. The temperatures are getting up in the 90’s, and we are dead beat tired, so we rent an air conditioned “cabin” for not much more than what it would have cost to park the trailer.

June 25: Roosevelt State Park ND

Alternating between bright yellow fields of canola, ranch land, and bad land, we followed Highway 2 north through Redig (while on the map, it consisted of three houses, one broken corral, and 100s of old vehicles parked on a grassy hillside), Buffalo (pop. 346), Ludlaw, to just across the line to Bowman, ND where the local diner had rodeo on the television, and then finally to the lovely Theodore Roosevelt State Park.

What a lovely park! The campsites are dry, but served by a wonderful, fully plumbed restroom with a great shower. The sites are by a wild meandering section of the Little Missouri River. There’s a 14 mile drive through the park to an overlook into the canyon, which we drove as the sun was setting. The park was mercifully cool, and we had a great night’s sleep.

The next morning we decided we would take a one-mile hike to “prairie dog town” with our morning coffee before breaking camp. We walked along a narrow brushy canyon path. The town lived up to its name, with plenty of those little critters popping up. When we had our fill we started the hike back when we saw two bison cows meandering the opposite direction on the path. We moved off the trail a bit and watched them go past. But not very far. Just past us they found a nice hollow where they began wallowing around in the dusty sand. OK, well, they were occupied, so we thought it was best just to scoot on past, but then, around the corner comes a bull. This guy clearly saw us between him and his two ladies, so we again move off the path. Only Mr. Buff needs to strut his stuff, so he takes his time moving down the path, huffing at us like a steam locomotive, before taking his place next to his two ladies, who are still kicking up a dust storm with their hooves in the air like they don’t care. But it is clear it is time for us to make our move down the path and out of the park.