Its from a hotel in Milwaukee that I'm writing this and we still have one more day of travelling before getting to Ontario Canada. So whats happened since leaving Vancouver until now? well..
After having final drinks after work on Friday and then again at a friends place (where we stayed for the night because we didn't have a home to go to, thank you Sav and Allana) it was a tough Saturday morning to get up too.
We packed the car and started driving at least 2 hours later than we had planned, which we thought wasn't too bad....until...
We arrived at the USA border to a 2 hour wait, which didn't include the other hour we spent inside the office standing in line to fill out a piece of paper that took 2 minutes.
At the point when we finally got on our way we were then around 4 hours behind schedule, and yes i had a schedule although it wasn't a big deal considering we had time on our hands.
Washington was our first state to conquer, with a high mountain highway around snow caps and the feeling of driving through the clouds. Finally made it to Spokane (Originally a mining town in the foot of mountains) around 7:30pm and ready for bed. An early start the next day, after continental breakfast of course got us going across the beautiful area of north Idaho. It was a very easy mountain drive to enjoy including the very pretty town of Wallace (an old gold mine town) which is wedged in the middle of pine tree covered and snow capped mountains.
Kept the drive going all the way to Billings in Montana where we decided to pull into our favourite hotel chain Best Western. Billings Best Western was very nice, a clean fresh place clad with the look of an old fashioned mountain cabin. Monday became a full day of driving and sightseeing across 3 states all starting at 8am (after continental breakfast of course). The first pit stop was at 'Little bighorn' or 'Custer's last stand', a historical site located exactly where war broke out between the American 7th battalion and Native Indians in 1876. A monument stands for the fallen on both sides and grave stone scatter the hill side wherever a soldier or warrior fell. There is artifacts in a museum style building and a whole garden dedicated to the fallen American soldiers of the past. Want to know more?.....google it!On the road again with South Dakota in our sights and Montana and Wyoming soon to be a horizon in our rear vision mirror.
The South Dakota state environment with its forests and hills and grass high plains (some with snow still) reminds me of a classic old cowboy movie i cant put my finger on. It came to me later when i realized 'Dances with Wolves' was made in the South Dakota region. I'm going to have to sit through 3 hours of that story now so that i can reminisce about our drive.
30 Minutes off the highway from Rapid city we came to the quiet little tourist town of Keystone which sits at the base of Mount Rushmore (that place where the former presidents are carved into the side of a mountain). We had a tight schedule so the $10 entry fee didn't interest us considering we could view the monument and take a picture clearly from the car park.
We strayed away from our favourite accommodation choice that night due to the fact that the only requirement we had was to find a place with a water slide. Days inn provided our necessity with a 150ft tube of watery fun, which was well deserved after 13 hours on the pavement.
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