Tag Archives: vacation

Made it home. Stop.

Sorry for the telegram-style post. Busy @ work. Made it to Sioux Falls by 1AM Monday. Forgot that it was bike week, South Dakota overrun w/ bikers. Don’t like Sturgis. Deadwood seems kind of neat, if not for 3000 Harleys parked in a 6-block downtown area.

Rapid City likewise overrun. No bikers panning for gold, so that was OK. Met a western film vet/quick-draw record-holder. Accidentally saw Mt. Rushmore in passing. All heads intact. Rapid City-area is marketed almost as heavily as WI Dells. Drove through Custer State Park in SD, but had a hard time enjoying it w/ very heavy motorcycle traffic/noise. Saw a herd of buffalo. Bikers not very conscientious of their highway crossing.

Wall Drug same as ever. Michelle bought souveniers. We ate ice cream. Motel 6 in Sioux Falls cheap, adequately comfortable. Minnesota boring. Played a lot of the Yes & Know book games on Monday.

Also went to state fair on Monday night back home, consumed the following:
– two 20-oz. beers
– corn, 1 cob
– bratwurst, 1 (with sauerkraut)
– spiral-cut potato chips (one heaping plateful)
– half a thing of cheese curds
– a few bites of Michelle’s elephant ear
– half a cream puff
– butter pecan ice cream cone

Hardly a Hotel to Be Had

We really need to keep better track of when that bike rally is going on in Sturgis if we’re gonna keep making these western road trips.

There wasn’t a hotel room to be had for about 300 miles around Sturgis, SD on Saturday night. We wound up with a campsite in Hardin, MT, where we slept in the car. At least there was a no-limit, no-coin-op shower and the bloody Internet!

I put up a post I wrote while we were off the grid from a few days ago (precedes this one). Glacier was pretty awesome, and we had a good time. I will try to write more about it when I have a little more time.

Last night we got a late start coming out of Bozeman, as we had stopped there for dinner and Michelle wanted to do a bit of shopping. We wound up taking a 1-hour tango lesson, so our quest for a hotel got a late start, and you know the rest.

Today we’re going to stop off in Deadwood, SD, probably Wall, and then hope to make Minnesota at least by the end of the day.

It’s gonna suck to go back to work.

Stage Three

We’re into the third segment of our vacation now as I write this from I-15 about 30 miles south of Great Falls.

The part of Montana is just as gorgeous as the rest. Michelle and I agreed that it feels more remote than the cities along I-90, even though it doesn’t look that different, mile to mile. We attributed this feeling to the fact that neither of us have ever been to this part of the state before.

The last few days at Storyhill Fest were a lot of fun. When we got there, I had this warm feeling of coming home. A lot of the same folks made the trip, but I thought that the overnighters might have actually been a little fewer. I have no actual data to back that up.

We camped in the same spot, and our new tent slept pretty well. Michelle was warm enough with her new sleeping bag– in fact, both of us got a little sweaty the first night. Overnight Monday into Tuesday, it rained off and on throughout the night, and there were a couple times I was woken and lied awake worrying about the fly blowing off in the gusty wind. This was irrational, of course, because the fly was tied to the tent which was staked to the ground and contained two sleeping people to weigh it down. The wind was blustery enough that a little rain did sneak under there and get inside at one point, though.

The performances themselves were great. We bought CDs from The Get Up Johns (a bluegrass brother duo), Meg Hutchinson (folk-pop singer-songwriter), and Edie Carey (see Meg Hutchinson). Aaron Espe and Justin Roth performed again too, but we already have all those CDs. Interesting development in the personal life of one of the artists– last year, Aaron Espe met a girl at the SH Fest, and two weeks ago, they got married. Kinda neat. Chris and John were great in their typical fashion. We heard a couple new songs, but I don’t remember them really specifically. Each of them played a new song that they admitted were works in progress.

As a sidebar, I asked Justin Roth if he had his house concert dates for Wisconsin in October filled up. He said he still had a Tuesday open, but since Milwaukee is so relatively close to his home in Minneapolis, I should just write and let him know if Jen wants to host a show at her house. Might try to do that.

On Tuesday, we skipped out on the daytime Fest activities in favor of a rafting trip on the Gallatin River. There was a place we found online that did a 2-hour trip for a little less than 50 bucks a head. We had a really good time. Our guide was this fun older guy named Jim. He was born in the U.P. and said he spent most of his adult life in Lansing. He knew a lot of Yooper jokes. We shared a boat with a group of four people from Houston who were in the area for a conference of some kind.

The river itself was a bit less challenging than what Michelle and I had hoped for. I think we were both hoping for something that would be a little harder than the trip we took on the Wolf River at home last August. I got the impression from the guides that this is simply a time of year when the river is pretty low and the rapids are not that rough. Maybe we should try coming back earlier in the summer, or specifically try to find a trip that’s tougher.

So with the rest of today we have to make it Glacier and get our tent up. That’s the extent of our plan. Tomorrow, we’re going on a horseback ride mid-morning, and on Friday I want to try to do some hiking and photographing. We’ll be leaving the park again on Saturday, and we’re shooting to take the “low road” (I-90) all the way across to Wisconsin. We’ll have stops back in Bozeman and in South Dakota along the way.

Til then…

Days In Stillwater

Michelle reads the blog pretty religiously, and since she wanted to be surprised on our trip this weekend, I couldn’t talk about what we had planned.

We’re staying in Stillwater, MN, with no particular plans– just thought it would be nice to get out of town to someplace where we could relax and have fun. We didn’t really get to bed last night until almost 2, so we were both really tired and slept late.

At the moment, I’m watching the start of the WI-Penn State game while I wait for Michelle to finish getting ready. We’ll go get something to eat and have to make a quick run to Wally World cuz we forgot a couple bathroom items.

I’ll let you know what goes on…