The Road Scholar trip finished and we left the area, heading back to the Dakotas. My hubby just loved the badlands of South Dakota so we headed to Wall, South Dakota, to hang out for a couple of days. We wandered around the Wall Drug Store (if you are ever in the area, you must stop). We spent some time in Badlands National Park and then headed east. We took three days to get home, stayed overnight in eastern South Dakota, Iowa, and Ohio. We arrived back in Blossburg PA all safe and sound. Another adventure a success!
Month: August 2021
Six Days in Yellowstone National Park
Old Faithful 
Mudpots 
Artist Point 
I had heard about and seen pictures of Yellowstone for my entire life, but being there, standing on the land was an amazing experience. I was standing over a supervolcano! All the hydrothermal features just proved that fact; it was quite chilling. We saw all the features. We saw many hot springs, geysers, travertine terraces, fumaroles, and mudpots. You might recognize the names of some spots- Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin, Old Faithful, West Thumb and its mudpots, Yellowstone Grand Canyon, Hayden Valley, Lamar Valley. Other feature names include Obsidian Cliff, Canary Spring, Sulphur Cauldron, Mud Volcano, Artist Point, Grand Prismatic Spring. We spent three nights in the park at Canyon Village and Grant Village. The animals in the park were another experience. I believe we saw almost 600 bison in one spot – I think the estimate of bison in the park now is near 4500. We saw deer, pronghorn antelope, big horn sheep, elk, blue heron. We were not able to catch a glimpse of bear on this trip, but that is okay, because we see them at the cabin (of course, not grizzlies). We also were unable to see wolves. We did a short wolf watch, but the report was that the pack was taking a morning nap. All six days were amazing, and we had a group leader and an expert guide who made the whole trip extremely interesting and without stress.
The Adventure Continues in the Dakotas
It was time to pack up the car again. We drove for three days to get to the Dakotas. The first night was in Wauseon, Ohio, second night in Deforest, Wisconsin, arriving on the third night in Fargo, North Dakota. Nothing of any note on the trip out, except the heart-stopping trip through downtown Chicago at midday. We missed the bypass road. Suffice it to say, I don’t enjoy driving in cities- enough said. The next day we drove across North Dakota to Bismarck, where we toured the Oscar Zero Missile Alert Facility and the Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historical Site November 33 Launch Facility. We were reminded of the 1960s and our memories of growing up during the Cold War.
From Bismarck we went to Fort Mandan, the first winter’s camp (1804-05) of the Lewis and Clark expedition, on their way to the Pacific. This replica of the camp is on the shore of the Missouri River. The original site is assumed to be under the river. We finished that day at the Dickinson Museum Center. Much of the museum was given to dinosaurs- dinosaur bones, dinosaur teeth, dinosaur replicas; also, crystals, minerals, precious stones, fossils. It was an amazing collection. My grandson would have gone wild at the dinosaur displays. Yes, lots of pictures and postcards for him. The next day we headed to Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit, and saw the Maltese Cross Cabin, where Roosevelt stayed while he oversaw the initial cattle operations. The next year he started a second ranch, the Elkhorn. Those buildings no longer exist, but stones mark the foundation. Our final stop on the North Dakota piece of our trip was at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site in Williston ND. This is where John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company set up a trading post so that his company could more easily trade with the Northern Plains Tribes.
The smoke from the California and Canadian fires was absolutely awful the entire time we were in the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. For a few days, if you looked up the conditions on the Weather Channel app, you didn’t see “sunny” or “cloudy”, what you saw was “smoke”. I have never seen that before.
On to our Road Scholar trip in Yellowstone National Park!
Retired and on the move... 