Category: Trips

  • St Mary, MT

    Over a huge breakfast at the Johnston’s Cafe we planned the day’s activities. Continuing high winds made us decide not to risk taking the Going to the Sun highway so we went horseback riding instead.

    Ruth rode “Smokey” and Martin rode “Larry the Cable Guy” for an hour and a half accompanied by two guides, Chum the cow herding dog and a white pony that left its grazing ground and followed us on our outing. The landscape was breathtaking.

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    By late afternoon the winds had died down and we drove the west part of the Going to the Sun highway to Logan’s pass. The landscape was just beautiful and at the visitor centre we encountered a big horn sheep and very curious Columbian ground squirrels.

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    We had dinner at a Mexican canteen run by Blackfoot indians and then spent a second night at Johnston’s Campground.

  • Culbertson, MT to St Mary, MT

    After a really stormy night with lots of rain and lightning that lit up the sky like daylight we set out early to cover the last stretch of prairie. We had gotten used to being accompanied by dozens of freight trains running parallel to Hwy 2 and the many grain elevators along the way.

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    Vast dry prairies were only interrupted by oasises near rivers and creeks. The small towns we drove past looked almost forgotten with a number of abandoned houses. We crossed several native reservations and learned that it was here that the natives lost their fights over their land.

    The only long stop we made was in Havre. We had lunch at Joe’s Steakhouse and our waitress Meagan gave us lots of information about the area around the west side of Glacier National Park.

    The most exciting part of Havre was the historical underground tour. Havre was a rough and tough railway town. In 1904, a large fire started by four vagrants who had had a dispute with the saloon, burned down most of the business district. The respectable businesses had no choice but to move into the basement underground with some of the less respectable establishments. Glass tiles in the sidewalks provided some daylight in the underground. On our tour we saw lawyer’s and accountant’s offices alongside a bar and brothel.

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    From Havre we continued along Hwy 2 to Browning and then Hwy 89 to St. Mary, our gateway to the Going to the Sun highway that goes through Glacier International Park. This section of the trip was a difficult drive with very high and gusty winds.

    In St. Mary we stayed at Johnson’s of St. Mary Campground and RV park where we had a sheltered campsite.

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  • Crookston, MN to Culbertson, MT

    In the morning we left Crookston for a brief visit of the Malmberg Prairie, one of the few virgin prairies left that have never been plowed.

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    A short drive later we were in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the site of a major flood in April 1997 where the Red River crested at 48.8 feet, flooding 95% of the city and causing an evacuation of all of the city. An obelisk shows the high water mark.

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    Lunch was at the fabulous Dakota Harvest Bakers and consisted of super delicious tomato-vodka soup, roast beef sandwich and black cherry pie. Pepsi made a lot of new friends.

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    Next stop was Rugby, the midpoint of North America and site of the Prairie Village Museum.

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    The western part of North Dakota has a construction frenzy as the result of an oil boom. Workers are living in trailers everywhere and pickup trucks are plentiful. Hotels cater to extended stay guests and even ghost towns like Ross are alive again.

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    It was difficult to find a place to stay, so we drove on and found a free municipal campground in Culbertson, Montana.

  • Wakefield, MI to Crookston, MN

    In the morning we had $0.25 and $0.50 showers, a nice in-RV breakfast, flushed tanks and then headed for the Wisconsin border on Hwy 2. Our first stop in Wisconsin was Ashland which is famous for the Ashland Soo Line Ore dock. Unfortunately this dock was torn down last year. Murals throughout the city depict life in the late 19th century and shows the dock in its glory.

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    Pepsi briefly made friends with a cat before scaring her off with a big “woof”.

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    We found the Gabriele bakery where we stocked up on gummy bears and cookies.

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    We then took a side trip to Bayfield on Hwy 13 and had a white fish lunch at the Greunke’s Fine Food Restaurant.

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    Bayfield is famous for its fisheries.

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    We booted through the rest of Wisconsin and stopped in Grand Rapids, Minnesota for dinner at New Grand Buffet Chinese restaurant across the Blandin Paper Company mill.

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    We made it almost to the North Dakota border staying in a Walmart parking lot in Crookston, Minnesota.

  • Gaylord, MI to Wakefield, MI

    An overnight stay at a Walmart parking lot is never complete without a coffee or tea at their McDonald’s in the morning. What a surprise – no McDonald’s! Instead we found a Subway and of course we had to sample their breakfast menu. According to tradition, this is followed by a brief shopping trip at Walmart store itself. This time, two T-shirts and a pair of cheap sunglasses found a new home.

    At 9AM, we departed for Harbour Springs. There we toured the very pretty town with beautiful gift, kitchen, clothing, fudge and ice cream stores. We resisted all temptations and moved down to their harbour for a stroll.

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    A Harley-Davidson with a rifle pouch caught our attention.

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    Harbour Springs is one end of the Tunnel of Trees scenic route. This is a winding and narrow road with old trees on both sides meeting each other above you as you drive through. Beautiful glimpses of Lake Michigan and lovely houses along the route made for a beautiful experience.

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    The crepe stand about three quarters of the way up provided a place to stop for a savoury lunch.

    We then returned to I-75 and crossed the Mackinaw bridge.

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    We tried the traditional pasties and bought the local smoked fish in St. Ignace and then started our trip on Hwy 2. Our GPS routing suggested a short cut bypassing a number of interesting towns along Hwy 2 and replaced them with empty roads. We joined up with Hwy 2 again and made it to Wakefield where we are staying at a lovely community campground by a lake with ice tea coloured water caused by the amount of iron ore in the ground here. We had a wonderful swim nonetheless.

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  • Dundas, ON to Gaylord, MI

    After a frantic packing session, we were ready and left at 2:20PM. Our plan was to make Harbour Springs in Michigan but this wasn’t going to happen. We made it across the US border at Port Huron after following a horse trailer that had been tagged with contraband by a customs officer who was training their beautiful and talented sniffing dog who succeeded in finding it without any difficulty whatsoever.  The dog was enthusiastically praised by its handler. We were next in line and where waved on after answering a few questions.

    A couple of hours later we were getting hungry and looked for a place to stop and discovered we were near Frankenmuth. The German hearts began to beat heavily and we took the detour to check the town out. The town is pretty, touristy but has charm.

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    Our favourite store was the Woolen Mill, Michigan’s oldest operating woolen mill.

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    At this point we were really hungry and stopped at Zehnder’s Famous Chicken Dinners.

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    We had a great meal with raspberry lemonade cocktail. An endless supply of delicious relishes including a very special cranberry salad, cheeses and pate was followed by fried chicken, mashed potatoes, buttered noodles, stuffing, green beans and gravy. Needless to say, there was only a small amount of space left for a very small ice cream dessert. All this for $19.95.

    Frankenmuth cost us 3 hours and we didn’t make it all the way to Harbour Springs that day but called it a night in the Gaylord Walmart parking lot.

  • Bourbonnais, IL to Dundas, ON

    This morning Martin had a wonderful idea! Since we missed out on the Drive-In Movie Theatre experience on Route 66 he suggested to go to a 50s Drive-In Theatre on our way back home in London, Ontario. Therefore, the driving day home was not all desolate but had a great ending at the drive-in with hot dogs, fries, coke, popcorn and two movies. A lot of fun and early Saturday morning we will be home.

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  • Lincoln, NE to Bourbonnais, IL

    It was supposed to be a pure driving day again today, but as usual it didn’t turn out this way. Despite the fact that the highway driving was a bit labour intense due to high winds and lots of trucks we made good progress – 848kms. One good thing about the mid-west states is that there are no mountains and everything goes a bit faster.

    Iowa, as we found out, has great ribs. In Des Moines at Famous Dave’s we were looked after really well by wonderful future globetrotter Chelsie (aka Brittany if the service is bad) who explained the different kinds of ribs and sauce options to us in detail. We tried quite a number of them and they were all really good. We let Kevin, the manager, who came by our table know that Famous Dave’s is now our favourite rib place.

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    After chatting inside and outside for two hours we were back on route to try and still make it to the Polk-A-Dot Drive-In for another of the great strawberry milkshakes we had had at the beginning of our Route 66 adventure. We made it there at 8PM, the posted closing time, but the restaurant was still in full swing and the large milkshake dinner was at least as good as it had been 3 weeks ago.

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    No RV park was open by the time were were done, so Walmart parking lot is was, yet again.

  • Edwards, CO to Lincoln, NE

    We left at 6:45 in the morning after a quick coffee to make it as far as possible towards home today since we received already a couple of mails that expressed concerns that we would not make it home in time. We did 967km today despite the fact that we had to climb Colorado mountains with our 4 ton truck, had quite a few construction sites, and a so-so lunch in Nebraksa. We did not take one single photo for lack of time and after leaving Colorado really lack of opportunity. We found a very nice RV Park in Lincoln, Nebraska where we got the very last auxiliary spot on the ground. After a Pizza dinner, a nice swim in the outdoor pool made the evening quite nice.

     

  • Zion, UT to Edwards, CO

    After a nice farewell breakfast at Zion we left to start our fast track home. We covered 851km and had a breathtaking drive through beautiful rock formations in Utah and Colorado. A few quick stops were allowed to take a few pictures which really don’t do the landscape justice at all.

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    We slept with the big boys at a truck rest area with a “no overnight camping sign” but nobody accused us of camping at the rest area. We were just “resting overnight”.