Now almost two months have passed since this week in our road trip. So it is with the small pleasure of reliving it that I post these pictures. It was so hard to choose, and I know I probably chose too many pictures, but really these are only a few of the ones I have!
After leaving Mackinaw Island, we drove across the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, then Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where we stopped for lunch with the Haacks who now live outside of the Twin Cities, and on to Sioux Falls, South Dakota where we got to spend a night with these wonderful folks: Christian, Nathan, Z, and Eden. It was fun to see their round river house, their rabbit, and their river.
The next morning Nathan kindly took us to Sioux Falls Seminary so Steve could have a Skype conference with 50 pastors he'd been meeting with once a month for several months. That successfully done, we headed west again.
Our destination that day was the Badlands, and this picture gives you just one glimpse of some of the rock formations that are unique to the national park. I had always thought they were called Badlands because outlaws hid there to get away from lawmen. Maybe they did, but this is a more plausible reason:
The next day was a big one. As we drove out of the Badlands, we got a little more flavor for the area.
A parting Badlands shot featuring my foot next to a buffalo chip. I didn't get any good pictures of the prairie dog towns, but they went on forever with (they said) a population of 5000 or more. The little creatures were popping up and down next to their holes continuously as we drove through "their town."
On our way to Mount Rushmore we went through Wall, SD which is famous for its drug store. So of course, we had to stop. Nothing so amazing there, but we later found out when we met Randy and Shirley VanOsdol in Yellowstone that their daughter Sharon and her husband own the Dairy Queen in Wall. We wished we had known so we could have stopped there!
It was very satisfying to use our National Parks Golden passes (they call them something different now) to get in to all the National Parks free and to camp for half price. From Wall, we headed to Mount Rushmore. It was amazing, especially to read the story of who made it and why and how.
Now on to the Black Hills, which are essentially in the same area. We had reservations to stay at a "camping resort" after driving through a portion of the Black Hills and before we headed on to Wyoming. Below our a couple of sights in the Black Hills. Our camping resort featured very civilized camping spots with nice bathrooms and showers, a swimming pool, games of various sorts, and lots of RVs. That night it rained cats and dogs with much thunder and lightning. It was our new tent's first trial, and it passed with flying colors. We did not get wet at all! Yay! Morning brought the sunshine.
Black Hills water fall.
We saw bison both in the Black Hills and in Yellowstone. Yellowstone has a population of about 4500, so they were very common to see. This was a fellow in the Black Hills right beside the road.
ON TO WYOMING...one of the most beautiful places in the West and the place we spent the most time.
As soon as we crossed over into Wyoming we had to stop and take some pictures of the already beautiful terrain. The air was heavy with a sweet smell coming from these fields and fields of yellow clover.
We stopped for lunch in Buffalo, WY, which Steve felt was the quintessential Wyoming town. (The TV show "Longmire" supposedly is set there.) We went from place to place trying to determine the most authentic western atmosphere and ended up in a Mexican cafe. But we were excited to see "The Virginian" as a featured dining spot. We hadn't remembered that Elliott had actually spent an externship there in Buffalo working with a veterinarian, so he knows the town much better than we do and says it has the same problems many remote rural towns do with drugs and unemployment. Sad :(.
Leaving Buffalo and heading towards Yellowstone, we went through breath-taking scenery of the Big Horn Mountains. This panorama is just a sampling.
Welcome to Yellowstone! A dream of a lifetime come true for me. I didn't even know that a huge lake is the center piece of Yellowstone. Our campground was very near the lake. Here's another full moon (or I guess it's the same one) over Yellowstone Lake.
Indian Paint Brush in our campground. I have to stop and take a picture for Grammy, who loved these flowers and always commented on them in Colorado. They are particularly hardy in Yellowstone.
Lakeside sunsets above.
At the top of Elephant Back Loop Trail. Just three weeks after this, a man of our age who worked in the park was killed and partially eaten by a grizzly with two cubs just off of this trail. So sad.
Here is one of the brightly colored hot pots throughout Yellowstone. They aren't all this beautiful blue color. Many are simply boiling mud. I have a great video of Old Faithful going off, but I can't get it to load here. (Refer to YouTube!) At one of the book stores in the park we bought a book which is journals of the early white explorers of Yellowstone. We read aloud a number of their stories--really amazing. Their descriptions were very accurate and picturesque of what we see today without the tourist walks, signs, and fences to keep us from scalding our legs.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was another gorgeous area I'd never known about. The pictures below are of the two falls in it. One of the early explorers described perfectly the rainbow formed by the mist of the lower falls just as it still looks now--175 years later.
We walked down 350+ steps welded into the cliff side to see the bottom of lower falls and this beautiful rainbow. We met a couple there (pre-arranged meeting) who we'd been at camp with at Cedar Campus, the InterVarsity camp Steve/Dad spoke at during the first week of our road trip.
Upper Falls
Have a nice warm experience next to a boiling lake. Supposedly man or beast can break through the muddy crust at any moment scalding feet and legs.
On our fourth day in Yellowstone, we had arranged to meet Randy and Shirley VanOsdol, old friends from our early married days who later moved to DC for a time and now live in Bozeman, Montana where he pastors a Christian Reformed church and they run a real estate business. They are very outdoorsy and often come to Yellowstone to hike. It poured rain on the little hike we took with them and these two of their grands (two who live in Wall, SD). It was very special to see them!
On our way back to the campsite (a long drive of over an hour), we finally saw a grizzly off the side of the road in some bushes. I was so glad to see one since that had been the big impression as a child--bears everywhere. I think that used to be more the case when feeding bears was not so frowned upon so they often came to areas where people were.
And finally, our last morning. Here we are packing up our campsite. It had been a great place to be. That was our last night of camping on this trip.
