West Coast Here We Come

After leaving Devils Tower, we took a few days to make our way to Washington. We made one night stops in Billings, MT; Garrison, MT; and Spokane, WA. We saw some breathtaking scenery along the way. You really begin to understand why they call the area Big Sky. It seemed like you could see forever into the distance. We drove through areas that were brown, dusty and dry as a bone and then we would be in a mountainous area with lots of coniferous trees, rivers and valleys. What was really cool was watching clouds at a distance that you knew were part of a rain squall and watch it move through an area but not be near where we were driving. The geology of the western part of the US has always intrigued me. You can see the rock layers formed over thousands of years and in some places the folding that also took place to form the mountains.  Many of the areas we have traveled through have had fire bans due to the lack of rain. While driving, we could see where there had been forest fires.

 Getting ready to cross the Columbia River

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 We have seen many wind farms throughout our travels.

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 Big Sky panorama while on the road

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 Majestic mountains

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Rainstorm at a distance

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When we arrived just north of Seattle, we ended up staying four nights at an RV park in the town of Bothell, WA. While there, we toured the Chateau St. Michelle Winery and spent a day in Seattle visiting the Pike Place Market. We had an excellent tour guide at the winery. She took us through the winery where we saw the huge vats where fermentation takes place, we saw chardonnay being bottled and boxed. In fact, we were told that this year’s grape crop has ripened early and grapes are already being picked so the winery was going to be working around the clock to get the rest of their wine bottled so they would have space to put this year’s crop. We sampled several wines and purchased a couple bottles to bring home.

Chateau St. Michelle Winery

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Pike Place Market is a public market that overlooks the waterfront. It opened in 1907 and is one of the oldest public farmer’s markets in the US. There were multiple floors in the market place selling fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, cheese, flowers, crafts, clothing, bakery goods, candy, jewelry and many, many other items. We ate lunch at a restaurant that overlooked the market place. We had hoped to go up in the Space Needle and look out over all of Seattle, but when you purchase your voucher, you then have to show up at the Space Needle in the morning and they will give you a time that you can return to take the ride up the Space Needle. It could be anytime between 10:00 AM and 7:00 PM that day. We did not plan to be in the city all day and didn’t want to take the chance that we would not be able to get a time early in the day to go up the Space Needle.

View of Pike Place Market from our table at Matt's in the Market

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Holding a box of cheesecake pops and a $5.00 bouquet of 

flowers while waiting in line to purchase French pastry.

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When we left the Seattle area, we headed to Oregon. We found an RV park in Aurora, OR that was not too far from the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. This is where Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose is housed. It is something that Pete has been wanting to see for awhile and when we realized it would be on our way to the Oregon coast, we knew we would have to stop to see it.

Panorama of the Spruce Goose. The wing is not really bowed. 

My camera had to make "adjustments" to the image in order to fit

the whole plane into the picture.

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A view of the Spruce goose fuselage and engines

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The Evergreen Aviation Museum houses the Spruce Goose. You have to see it to believe it. Immense doesn’t even begin to describe how big that plane is and to think it is mostly made from laminated birch wood. I tried several times to take a picture of the plane but I just could not fit the whole thing into the viewfinder of the camera. The panorama function on my camera finally allowed me to capture the whole plane. Construction of the Spruce Goose began in 1942 and it wasn’t finished until 1947. Howard Hughes received $18,000,000 from the federal government and used $7,000,000 of his own money to build the Spruce Goose. It flew only one time and then was stored in a hangar that Howard Hughes had specially built for it. It remained there for thirty-three years. When Howard Hughes died the plane was sold, moved and put on public display. Eventually it was sold again, taken apart and transported to McMinnville, OR. We watched a video of the plane parts being transported down rivers and roads. It was mind-boggling! The aviation museum also houses many other aircraft.

A Flying Tiger aircraft

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The space museum exhibits took you through the beginnings of human space travel and ended with the ways that drones are now used in military operations. There was also an IMAX theater showing a movie about the training of fighter pilots.

View inside the Space Museum

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Northrop Grumman Chukar III Drone

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While at the RV park, we found out that there was going to be a Dahlia Festival in the town of Canby which was only about six miles away. The area is known as the Dahlia Capital of America. There were millions of dahlias of every variety and color imaginable on over 40 acres of fields at Swan Island Dahlias. They have been in business for almost 90 years and are the largest and leading grower of dahlias in the US. There were fields where you could roam among the 360 different kinds of dahlias and a building with probably close to 100 labeled displays of many of the varieties. They also had food vendors and wine tasting. It was very well attended on a very warm Saturday. The flowers were just spectacular and Pete is already thinking about growing some dahlias next year.

Just a few of the hundreds of dahlias we saw

at the Dahlia Festival

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Aircraft, Ancient Stone Tower, Animals and Aliens

On our way to Devils Tower, WY from Badlands, SD, we made a stop at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum located at Ellsworth Air Force Base. We toured the outdoor exhibit and saw over 30 military aircraft that were on display. Some of the aircraft we saw were the B-1 Stealth Bomber, a B-52 bomber and the B-1B bomber that eventually replaced the B-52, a Minuteman II Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), and a Bell H-13 helicopter that was in service during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, a period of about 25 years. Pete enjoyed looking at all of the military aircraft on display and remembering his days in the Navy when he worked on the avionics of Navy aircraft.

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Devils Tower was just as magnificent as ever. From our campsite, we had an incredible view of it. Unfortunately, we found out that we couldn’t take the full hiking tour around the base of the tower because the park service was doing maintenance on a section of the foot path. We were still able to take in the majesty of the tower and think about the forces of nature that created this geological wonder. While we were on the hiking trail we could see two people climbing one of the columns of the tower. They looked so infinitesimally small against the sheer size of Devils Tower.

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On our way back to the campground, we stopped at the Prairie Dog Town in the park. They are so cute!

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Simon and Rosey enjoyed all of their walks around the campground.

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One trivial piece of information about this stop on our trip was that the campground where we stayed was the set for scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The campground had an outdoor movie theater that shows the movie every evening. There is a plethora of “alien” merchandise in all of the gift shops.

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We are back on the road and taking a few leisurely days to travel to Seattle, Washington.

Hi Ho! Hi Ho! On the Road We Go!

I’m calling this the Third Time’s the Charm Trip because this is the third time that we are attempting to take this trip around the U.S.

Our first attempt was in the summer of 2013 when our Dalmatian, Simon, had seizures while we were in Wisconsin. After being diagnosed with epilepsy, we returned home to get Simon’s seizures under control.

Our second attempt was in the spring of 2015. I should have called this the three strikes and you’re out trip! We decided to take this trip without the pooches. During an overnight stop in North Carolina, our motor home was hit by lightning which destroyed an inverter and burned out electronic panels. Next, back on the home front, our Dalmatian, Simon ate a sock and had to have major surgery. The last straw was in Port Charlotte, FL when a microburst tore through the motor home resort where we were staying and our secured awning was ripped off the side of the motor home and tossed onto the roof. Three strikes and we headed home!

So here we are in 2016 with both of the dogs heading across the U.S.A. We began our trip with a couple of days in Lake Placid, NY. We enjoyed the area, its Olympic history, and plan to return again next summer.

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 From there we made our way to Illinois where we visited with our friends, Marsha and Art. We made lots of one night stops for the better part of a week and finally needed to stay in one place for a couple of days. We decided to stay in the La Crosse, Wisconsin area. According to local historians, when settlers arrived in the area, they saw Native Americans playing a game with a ball and a stick with a leather pouch, they named the game Lacrosse and gave their city the same name. We took a Segway tour of the city by the Mississippi River. The tour lasted two hours and took us through parks along the Mississippi River, bike paths and foot trails through marsh lands and back into the historic area of the city. We also drove up to Grandad Bluff which is a mesa that overlooks the city. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Minnesota and Iowa.

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We are currently visiting Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The geology of the park is incredible. It reminds me of Bryce Canyon.  We also visited the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site where we learned about all of the missile silos and missiles that existed during the Cold War era.

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Rosey and Simon have been fantastic travelers. Rosey is a pro at traveling and Simon has picked up on our routines and seems to be very comfortable with life on the road. They enjoy their walks and Simon has learned how to play with his Frisbee while on a long leash. When we get on the road in the morning, Rosey stretches out on the couch and Simon lies down on the floor between the two of us. Within five minutes, the two of them are asleep.

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Today we arrived at Devil’s Tower in Wyoming.