This view is calling me.

Although I’d be seeing snow if I were sitting here right now (and I’d be bundled up against the cold), it’s time for the annual drive to Wyoming’s Big Horn mountains. This will be the last time I take the route that’s been part of my life for more years than we’ve been married (35 this September.) Driving from Arizona next year will show us new vistas and places to replace the ones I’ll miss.

As we have no phone service and very little internet, I’ll be enjoying the relaxation that comes from not being available all the time and online sometimes too much. I’ll miss you, but of course you’ll hear and see all about it when I get back.

See you in July and may you have a blessed rest of June.

Nothing half so much worth doing…

To paraphrase a famous quote from The Wind and the Willows:

Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply taking a road trip. 

Even though the weather was abysmal, as you can see from this one-handed phone photo, my spirits were high as I took to the road towards my first night’s stop in South Dakota.  Illinois had its usual wonderful combination of lots of traffic and toll roads with the rain and construction thrown in just for spice.  I whiled the miles away listening to a book on CD and wishing I could use cruise control.

I make two stops during the ten hour drive.  The first is always a combination cheese and fuel (and bathroom) stop in Mauston, Wisconsin where I stock up on cheese and a bag of fresh, squeaky cheese curds.  It amuses me each year that I buy cheese in a town whose first part of its name, Maus, means “mouse” in German, although the city’s website gives this as the origin of the name:

Mauston’s unique name originally was “Maughs Town,” named after its founder Milton Maugh.

See you soon!

Wyoming 2017, day 2

I know it’s a bit early, but we want to get on the road. You snooze while I load the van, then we’ll stop for breakfast at County Fair.

Can you believe that we got 2 eggs, toast, and almost an entire dinner plate of crisp-on-the-outside hash browns for $3!!  What a great place!  What? Yes, I dug in too fast to get a photo.  Sorry about that.  Into the van and fasten your seat belt. The rest of South Dakota and Wyoming await.

This part of South Dakota still looks like (and is) farmland, but when we get to Chamberlain and cross another wide river, the Missouri, the landscape will change to more grazing, although we’ll also start seeing fields of cheerful bright yellow sunflowers.

Whenever I cross the Missouri, I think of an American folk song we sang when the girls were little. I’d play “Oh, Shenandoah” on the piano and we’d all sing.  Here’s a version I like, although the lyrics are slightly different than the ones we sang.

Wyoming 2017, day 1

From our house to Sheridan, Wyoming is about 1,151 miles, just over 16 hours. Once I get there, I have to drive out of town and up into the mountains another 45 minutes or so. But my destination for Day 1 is Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the world’s only Corn Palace.  Are you ready to ride?

I realized this year that I’ve been going to this place in Wyoming for over 40 summers. When we drove from Cleveland, it was an additional 6 1/2 hours, so this drive seems fairly short in addition to familiar. I love seeing the country change, from the farmlands and cities of Illinois, to the more forested Wisconsin, where I make my first stop in Mauston to stock up on cheese from Carr Valley Cheese.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention our other tradition, listening to the BBC radio production of “Lord of the Rings”, 12 hours or so of living in a different, magical place.  Not long after we got married, I found a set of cassette tapes at Half Price Books for $25, quite a lot to us in those days.  I agonized over whether or not to get it for my husband as a Christmas gift.  You know what I decided.  We’ve listened to it every year since, going to and from the cabin.  One year, our younger daughter and I listened to it once on the way out and once on the way back.  We’re now on the CD version and it’s still wonderful.

Westward, ho!

By the time many of you read this, I’ll be in my van on the road to Wyoming.  So it’s the start of a three-week blogging break for me.  Our internet connection at 7,000′ is quite slow, which is fine, as I’ll be spending my time riding, reading, hiking, and relaxing.  My parents will also be visiting for about a week, although unfortunately, my husband can’t make it. But I imagine I’ll be popping in to Instagram from time to time.  In the meantime, have a wonderful time wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.  When I get back, I’ll have lots of information and photos for posts, although I haven’t finished with France yet.  Isn’t travel grand?  Blessings to all of you and I’ll be back soon.

Headed toward this view…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Satisfaction…road trip sunset

 

Happy Wednesday, the last Wednesday, if you can believe it, of July.  Where’s the summer gone?  But no matter how fast it goes by, each Wednesday brings a new Photo Challenge theme and today that’s “Satisfaction.” I guess that means we can get some satisfaction, right?  🙂

I love road trips, nature, and beauty, so a combination of all three gives me a great deal of satisfaction.  This South Dakota sunset was so beautiful that I pulled off the highway and took some photos, not content so simply see it in my rearview mirror!

11:35 am EST, Wednesday, July 26…Can anyone else see comments or pingbacks from the Photo Challenge?  I tried two browsers and I’m not seeing anyone’s entries, including my own.

 

The morning drive

I love leaving for a trip very early in the morning, when it’s cool, quiet, no longer quite dark, and most people are (hopefully) still in bed.

All glory comes from daring to begin.
~Eugene F. Ware

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
~Marcel Proust

The trip continues

Leaving behind the falls, we wind down the canyon to the flat land, heading towards Cody, gateway to Yellowstone.  Over-grazing in many places has left sagebrush as the main vegetation and it takes many acres for one cow to graze.  The top ten cash crops in Wyoming are hay, sugar beets, barley, wheat, corn for grain, dry beans, oats, marijuana and potatoes.   The country becomes much more open but in the distance, we can see the mountains that are indicators of Yellowstone.

Yearning for Yellowstone

The alarm goes off at 4:15 am and I fumble in the dark to turn off the unfamiliar clock. I’m forced to turn on the light eventually but Bill will have to get up soon, too.  After getting dressed, I load the cooler with lunch fixings and snacks, grateful for the list I wrote the day before when I wasn’t sleepy.  Then it’s time to wake the rest of our group and when our older daughter and her boyfriend arrive, we load ourselves into the van (most of us wrapped in blankets) and we’re off on a one-day whirlwind trip to Yellowstone National Park, America’s first national park and a unique place.

It will take us about 3 1/2 hours just to get to the park’s entrance, not because of simple distance but because that distance has many literal ups and downs and the first part of our trip is on an unimproved road.  For “unimproved road”, read “a road that you’re lucky to go 30 mph on.”  The washboard surface can slow you to about 5 mph and the effect of hydroplaning without the water.  Luckily, the road is relatively smooth this year and we can make good time.

We leave in the dark.