Look at all the textures & colors!
Of course, a trip to South Dakota means stopping in the town of Wall and gawking at the famous drugstore, Wall Drug. Amazing! The best things were the freshly made donuts!
Being the history buffs, we had to make a stop in Rapid City and visit the museum at Ellsworth AFB. Nice collection of aircraft; however, the really interesting part was going into the missile training center.
This is a B-52 doing a touch & go with a B-29 posing on the ground.
This is inside the missile silo. Yes, we went down several flights of stairs to the training center. Many, many hours of boredom with surges of sheer adrenlin during drills!
We spent a fast week-end with some karate friends in Billings, MT. We were able to help with his karate tournament. Watching the young competitors was simply inspiring!
On our trek back to the Pacific Northwest, we stopped at the Bozeman Museum of the Rockies. We promptly lost 2 hours looking at the exhibits. This museum is well known for its on-going dinosaur research.
Catch that dino with feathers!!
Our next stop that was at Lewis & Clark Caverns. Mother Nature does some wonderful things with a bit of water and minerals and lots of time!
Virginia City, MT is an historic hoot! Over 90 percent of the buildings are original! Had a blast on the History Tour which was conducted on an antique fire truck that drove us around the area.
Of course, not to be outdone by Virginia City, Nevada City (not too far away) has a very unique outhouse. Check this out!
It's a 2 story outhouse!! YIKES!!!
From the caverns, our next stop was Missoula, MT. Took a really interesting tour of the Smoke Jumpers Base & Aerial Fire Depot. We didn't realize that most of the smoke jumpers are seasonal employees!
This is a parachute folding table - not a bowling alley! Each smoke jumper is responsible for packing their own chutes.
We had a real roadside treat on our drive from Missoula to Coeur D'Alene - a moose (cow) was running alongside the road heading towards the trees! Unfortunately, no photo! Just a memory! We "glamped" (that's glamour camping) at Blackwell Island RV Resort to celebrate our anniversary. Even had the RV washed! Of course, it rained after the RV was all clean! Who says Mother Nature doesn't have a sense of humor? After a very indulgent dinner at Beverly's, we planned our escape from Coeur D'Alene. The Iron Man competition was scheduled for that week-end; lots of competitors and sponsors and people, people, people!! Time to leave!! What about the rain?? It followed us all the back from Idaho to Spanaway, WA!
Hmmm; what happened to my first comment?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, these were two good posts. And, good decision to leave the Midwest with those storms.
We look forward to seeing you two in WA.