Our Adventure Out West This Summer Part One of Three

We started our journey early on Monday, July 24th and drove all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in plenty of time to check into our hotel, enjoy a meal, and swim. The next morning we made a quick stop in Mitchell, SD to visit the famed Corn Palace, which is a real place and worth the slight detour on our way to Badlands National Park.

Badlands was beautiful but, like most of America that week, scorching! We went on a few brief hikes but mostly just enjoyed the scenery from the comfort of our air-conditioned vehicle while listening to our enthusiastic tour guide. (JaLana had wisely downloaded an App that offered insight as we traveled through multiple national parks.)

We stayed in Rapid City, South Dakota on the evening of the 25th, which gave us a great start for exploring the Black Hills region for most of the next day. We visited the Crazy Horse exhibit and drove through the winding roads and narrow tunnels of Custer State Park before checking out Mount Rushmore. Because all of this exploring wasn’t quite enough, though, we then headed west again for another six-hour trek to reach our hotel in Cody, Wyoming.

The logic behind driving so much on Wednesday was to give us time on Thursday to explore Yellowstone, the Disney World of the National Park System. Despite the crowds, though, we enjoyed a few of the “must see” attractions:  the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, the Grand Prismatic hot springs and, of course, Old Faithful.

Thursday evening was spent at a hotel in West Yellowstone, a town just outside the park across the border in Montana. On Friday morning the 27th, after a delicious but overpriced breakfast, we returned to Yellowstone to look at more gurgling earth vents and other amazing geological phenomena. The day took a turn for the worse, however, when a rental RV backed into and shattered our left tail light! Fortunately the driver was from Mattoon, Illinois, believe it or not, and so we got along just fine and quickly discovered we knew the same person.

Small world, huh? Small parking lot, too, especially for a giant rental camper! I guess that’s why God invented taillight insurance. (We had borrowed my dad’s extended cab Silverado pick-up truck for the journey, as it sat all five of us comfortably and offered plenty of easily accessible cargo space. I like to think dad would have appreciated his final farm truck making a journey to parts of America he had visited during his lifetime. I also think he would appreciate the small irony in me once again finding a way to damage - even inadvertently - one of his vehicles, just like old times.)

Or maybe not.

Regardless, after finding some lens tape to Band-Aid the tail light damage in the short term, we continued making our way north and spent the evening of Friday the 28th in Helena, Montana. The next morning, after our fifth hotel breakfast in a row, we packed up and took what we thought would be a relaxing visit to their state capital building just up the road.

It was a Saturday, so the building was mostly empty. We explored the inside rotunda area for a short while, then decided to go get pictures from the outside. We kept hearing squealing tires from the other side of the building, but dismissed the noise as a hurried motorist. As we walked around, however, we realized the squealing was coming from near the entrance itself. Some excited Montana citizen was trying to climb up the state capitol steps in his truck!

 

A confused guard came out to investigate and then began to shout. As the driver began his “escape,” - squealing, struggling and then snapping through security chains - we realized that we were in the potential area of his likely-inebriated path.

“Get out of the way!” the guard shouted, so we began to scamper toward the side of the building like startled chipmunks. Before our heart rates got too high, however, we realized the moron was driving away so we slowed down and quickly tried to make light of the unexpected drama.

The rest of our drive north was relatively calm and scenic. Despite packing a crazy amount of food and cooking gear for Annaka - a toaster, for example; an air fryer; a griddle - we had scheduled a pickup at the Kalispell Wal-Mart to get even more food and supplies. Adequately prepped, we made the final leg of the journey to our rental cabin in Coram, Montana, just outside of Glacier National Park.

The cabin came with two bathrooms, three bedrooms, and about a dozen animal faces hanging on the wall, welcoming us to their home.

“This seems creepy right now because you’re tired and it’s new.” I wisely explained to my nervous children. “Twenty four hours from now, that elk will look completely cool.”

This was a lie, as it turns out. That elk never did look cool because it was dead, but the cabin itself was perfect and the kids slept just fine, which was important, as the next day we would begin exploring the “Crown Jewel” of the National Park System - Glacier National Park!