On The Road

Madison

Before we left on our road trip last week, we spent a few weeks in Madison to see some of our friends that we hadn’t seen since moving out of our apartment in April. We arrived on a Friday afternoon and immediately got a group of friends to meet us out at some of our favorite bars that evening. We spent a lot of our time in Madison reading, much like we did during our downtime in Cincinnati while everyone else was working. However, we were also able to hit up the Saturday morning farmer’s market, check out a biergarten that opened on Lake Monona since we left, drive to New Glarus for their Oktoberfest, see lots of people for a wine party thrown by our generous host, Anshu, see the new buildings at Epic that were finished since we left, visit the mustard museum, meet our friends Rose and Loren’s new baby, Dawn, who arrived shortly after we left, and visit with our friends, Stephani and Trent, and their 1 year old son, Henry. We had a great time visiting our old hometown and were glad to see some of our friends.

Olbrich Biergarten

A friendly Epic deer

New Glarus Oktoberfest

Mustard art

We also spent the last weekend before we left in Chicago so we could see Hamilton! We had a great time since we met up with my parents and Will’s mom and sister for the show. My brother and sister-in-law also came into town for the weekend, so we were all able to spend some time together. My friends, Liza and John, were in town to see the show the day after us, so we got brunch with them on Saturday morning. We also met up with Will’s cousin, Jacyara, and visited the new bar she is working at in Chicago. All in all, we got to see a lot of people before hitting the road the following Wednesday.

The whole gang with George Washington!

Sioux Falls

We left Wednesday morning to start our long journey toward the west coast. We stopped overnight in Sioux Falls, South Dakota since it was a fairly good middle point on the way toward Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We stayed in an Airbnb and were able to check out on of the local breweries downtown, Woodgrain Brewing. We had an interesting visit with a bipolar cat that seemed excited to have us staying in her home for a while but suddenly decided she didn’t like us very much.

Woodgrain Brewing

Mount Rushmore/Crazy Horse

The next morning, we left early to drive to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. We spent a good portion of the day driving but had enough time to see both Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse that evening. We spent about an hour at Mount Rushmore walking the president trail reading about Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Then we headed over to Crazy Horse. The monument at Crazy Horse is unfinished and has been in progress for more than 50 years. It is definitely an impressive undertaking, especially considering they have no federal funding. They have plans for a whole campus of buildings to be completed in the shadow of the monument, which I think is more important than the monument itself. I can’t help but be a little disturbed by the motivation to build a monument larger than Mount Rushmore solely for that purpose alone. The other projects being undertaken on the site are much more honorable and respectable in my opinion, including the education initiatives they are funding for Native American students in the area and maintaining an understanding of the culture that inspired Crazy Horse in the first place. I suppose the publicity drawn by the monument is important to the mission, but I couldn’t help but question the motives of the sculptor and his family.

Will being presidential

Crazy Horse model with the mountain in the background

That night, we went to check into our campsite to find an office that was being cleaned for the last time for the season and a sign on the door saying they were closed. We were confused since we already had paid for a reservation, there were other vehicles parked at some of the sites, and there was a kid in the office sitting at the desk. We ended up calling the phone number I got with my reservation email and there was a message saying they were closed for the season, even though the website said otherwise, and they would check messages a couple times a week. At that point, we weren’t sure what to do, but luckily ended up running into the general manager as he was picking up his son in the office. He told us they were closed for the season, but since we already paid, we were welcome to stay anyway. Happy to have a place to stay, we camped out at one of the sites, but decided not to set up the tent after getting everything straightened out. We made a quick dinner over a campfire and prepped the car for the night so we could get some sleep in the back and leave early the next morning since we would have a long day of driving in front of us. We watched a couple deer munch on some grass just across the drive while we ate dinner, which was an exciting way to end the day.

Yellowstone

The next day we had about 10 hours of driving to do to get to our campsite in Yellowstone. We decided to drive through Belle Fourche, South Dakota since we learned through our license plate app that it was the geographical center of the United States and we wanted to visit the marker. We drove through Deadwood, which looked like a cute western resort town snuggled in the mountains and arrived to find a “Center of the USA” visitor center. It turned out that the actual spot was about 20 miles north, but we were satisfied with our visit after we found a cute little coffee shop a couple blocks away to grab breakfast before continuing our journey. Our route took us through Montana most of the way, so we were able to check off Montana from our visited states list as well.

We entered the park and made it to our campsite around 6:30pm after a quick stop in Mammoth Hot Springs to take some pictures of the springs and see some elk wandering through town. We made a quick dinner and settled in for the night.

The next day we toured the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by visiting the south rim and the north rim and checking out the upper and lower falls in the canyon. Once we had hiked around the canyon enough, we headed toward Tower Falls to check out that area. We saw a field full of bison that were very close to the road and were able to get some good pictures of them grazing.

Before leaving town the following day, we made sure to go check out Old Faithful. It had snowed overnight, so we enjoyed driving through the snowy park and checking out the scenery with a fresh layer of snow. It was like Christmas morning! We made it to Old Faithful about 5 minutes before it was predicted to erupt and ran around the visitor center to make sure we didn’t miss it. After watching for about 10 minutes, we saw a few small spurts, and were convinced that it was done, but as soon as we started walking away, the real show started. We got to see it in all of its glory after all. We had the best timing since we wanted to hit the road and we would have had to wait another 90 minutes or so until the next eruption if we had missed this one. We grabbed some coffee from the general store across the street and hopped in the car for our drive to Boise.

Boise

We made it to Boise in the late afternoon, so we were able to get settled in our Airbnb and find a place to get some dinner. Will found a place called the BitterCreek Ale House, so we drove into the city center, about 5 minutes, to get some food before calling it a night.

The next day, we drove into town again to get some coffee to start our day and headed over to the capitol building so we could get our photo for the state of Idaho (we have a map where we place a photo of the two of us from every state we've visited together). We walked over to the Basque Block in town where there is a cultural center with information about the Basque culture that has a presence in Boise. The center was closed, but we read a few plaques on walls about the buildings and the society that contributed to the establishment of the area of downtown. After our parking meter ran out, we drove to a parking lot just off the Boise River Greenbelt, which is a walking path that follows the river through town. We enjoyed the peaceful scenery for a while before heading to Payette Brewing to try some local beer. We grabbed lunch at Tin Roof Tacos, a recommendation from our friend, Katie, and we had some delicious tacos and chips and guacamole. To end the night, we visited a brand new brewery called Clairvoyant Brewing which hadn’t even had their grand opening yet and enjoyed chatting with some of the other patrons about our travels and gathered some tips about some other places to visit later in our trip.

Our next stop is Portland, Oregon, and we will spend three full days in the city. We have been interested in visiting Portland for a while, so we look forward to telling you all about the fun things we find in the city.