Bathroom Time Out #1

Around about the time they were getting ready to rip the roof of my bathroom, I took off for a little road trip across the upper Midwest/West.

One of my best friends found herself in the dubious position of being what boils down to the regional president of our historical group. Part of that job required visiting other regional management to discuss stuff. This is what led to her telling me that she needed to drive to Montana in June. I offered to go to keep her company. And thus she, her sister-in-law, and I set out to drive from Cleveland to Butte and back in a week and change.

It was a heck of a time, and I'm so glad I went.

Taking off in the homemade camper.

At some point we crossed the Mississippi. It rained like crazy right before.

We stopped at "Dignity of Earth and Sky" in South Dakota.

It was really quite beautiful.

We got off at Wall Drug for dinner. (We sort of felt like we needed to.)

I saw this really cool truck in the parking lot.
I can only shudder to think what the gas mileage is like.

Lots of driving.

The trailer (and we) made it to Rushmore!

If you get too close, all you can see is up their noses.

Cleaned our palates with a stop at the Crazy Horse memorial and Art Museum.
Really nicely interpreted, I would highly recommend it.

Things started to get plateu-y

The colors were super pretty.

Trailer made it to Devil's Tower!

Also referred to as "Bear's Lodge" but the local Natives. We got a really good hike in here.

Hiking!

More driving. So much driving.

Becky and I decided to go check out the local Pictograph Cave State Park.
(https://fwp.mt.gov/pictograph-cave)

It was an interesting place, but one riddled with cautionary tales about how *not* to protect historic sites.

The trails around the caves were super short, so we went and did 4 miles here afterwards. Good hike.

Oh Yea - there was a historic event too - Didn't really get many pictures at the actual event though.

On the way home, we stopped and saw the world's biggest Bison.
It was silly and fun, and I loved traveling with these two (Becky center, Erin far right.)

But my travel agent really sucked, and I wound up on a red eye out of Cleveland to Boston in order to get to Framingham in time to go to work rather than take a extra day off.
Terrible planning.
It's me. I'm the worst travel agent ever.

When I got home, all kinds of work had happened to the house while I was gone.

Next: Bathroom Photo-dump Part 2!