Mushrooms and Arches

I can’t believe I’m writing this post, but it had to happen eventually.

Here is a log of my trip back to Kentucky from Washington in all of its glory.

1. North Bend -> Missoula
2. Missoula -> Yellowstone
3. Yellowstone
4. Yellowstone -> Teddy Roosevelt NP
5. Teddy Roosevelt NP -> Fargo
6. Fargo -> Madison
7. Madison -> Chicago
8. Chicago -> Independence

North Bend -> Missoula

I started off my road trip in a bittersweet way by saying goodbye to all my roommates and tearing up in the process. I had such a good time with them this summer and I didn’t want to leave! I made sure I had everything I came with and left early in the morning to make it to Missoula at a reasonable time.

For a 7-hour drive, it sure didn’t feel like it. I’m learning that the earlier you start driving the better the rest of the day goes.

I made a stop by the mighty Columbia River at Petrified Wood state park and saw a few petrified trees on their interpretive trail. It was freaky being on the east side of the cascades again – it was so much drier and hotter. When I left in the morning it was in the low 60s but at the Columbia River, only a few hours away, it was pushing 80.

From there I drove straight through Spokane to the towns of Kellogg and Wallace, ID. For the unaware, Washington has the most expensive gas prices in the country with the most I had seen being in Seattle at $5.70/gal. but averaging around $5.30/gal in North Bend. Once I crossed the Idaho border it went down to $4.10/gal which felt like such a steal compared to Washington prices. 

The only thing notable about Kellogg was the historical sign I found along side the road near the gas station talking about the history of the man who founded the town. Otherwise, the gas station there was nice and had okay mozzarella sticks.

The real kicker was when I stopped in Wallace at the recommendation of my boss, Tim. And WOW was that a cool place. It’s an old mining town and they have a visitor area that lets you explore antique and contemporary mining implements. I had never seen this much work put into a historical exhibit and kudos really goes to Wallace for making that display. The town itself is really cool, too, since most of the buildings there had been built after a fire in 1910. They had a lot of huckleberry-themed items advertised on the side of the road and stopping to get them was very tempting, but I knew I had a deadline to get to Missoula!

The rest of the drive went just fine and I got to Missoula in the evening. I got to meet Tim’s roommates who were all super cool, and I got dinner with him and his girlfriend, and his parents, who were in town. We wandered around the city beforehand to wait for our table to open up and found a really cool alley-way art exhibit. Our food, though, was so good! We went to Zoo Thai in downtown Missoula, and every time I learn something new about Missoula the more I love the city. I think it’s my favorite place to stop now in the west outside of Seattle.

When we got home we played some of the many instruments in Tim’s house and just about fell asleep doing that because of all the carbs we had eaten. I got to sleep in the utility room, which sounds horrible, but it was on a really nice air mattress and I went to sleep pretty quickly.

Missoula -> Yellowstone

Today I got up early again to get to Bozeman in time to fix my phone. Amazingly they were one of the few places on my trip that would have my phone screen and would be able to fix it same day.

After a lovely breakfast with Tim and his girlfriend, and some even more lovely tea, I bid them farewell and went to Bozeman. Again, the drive went by really quickly and I was able to get all of the errands done that I needed to there. It seems like that’s what a lot of people do when they’re going to Yellowstone because there were so many people driving around with out of state plates at all of the places I went to.

The drive into Yellowstone was beautiful. I went via US-89 through Gardiner, MT, which I also discovered is an insane city. After driving in the middle of nowhere for an hour you suddenly appear in a town built to support the tourist industry in Yellowstone. When I got there, there was a party happening just outside of the park gates which looked cool, but I needed to check in to my campsite and I was extremely tired from driving so much for the past few days.

On my way in I stopped at Steamboat Geyser and some overlooks along the way. It was a very scenic drive and I saw plenty of wildlife, which I did not do a good job of photographing this day. The highlight for me was seeing the herds of bison along the sides of the road! Some people were being really dumb though and stopping on the shoulder to take pictures of deer and moose.

I was staying at Bridge Bay Campground, which is the biggest campground in the park apparently, by a single spot. The campsite was super nice and it was right next to lake Yellowstone, which had a beautiful pink sunset!

For dinner I made boxed mac and cheese with peppers and mushrooms I got from the store on my way in, and it was SUPER good. I think I found a new camping recipe!

It was supposed to be the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower and I had a perfect campsite to watch the sky from, but it ended up being cloudy after sunset so I cleaned up, wrote some for this post, and went to bed for tomorrow, which will also be a very packed day!

Yellowstone

Wow! What a day. I somehow managed to fit in all the Yellowstone highlights while also doing a backcountry hike to a wonderful campsite to view the Perseid meteor shower.

One thing to note about doing a backcountry hike in Yellowstone is that you need a permit if you want to camp at a site. They’re not expensive (about $15/site), but they help the rangers keep track of who is staying where and prevent sites from being over-loved (a problem Yellowstone is VERY familiar with).

The backcountry office I was picking my permit at opens at 8, but I had gotten up at 6 to see the sunrise on Lake Yellowstone. So after I packed up camp, I decided to do a spontaneous hike to Yellowstone’s Natural Bridge. The hike wasn’t that long – only a mile each way. I got to see a really neat waterfall and a cool arch, although there are some at the gorge that beat it by a long shot.

After picking up my permit, I explored the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”, which I had seen coming in and had read about in the park newspaper.

As an aside, I will say that despite all of my gripes with Yellowstone, their park newspaper is one of the best I’ve seen from any park – detailing itineraries for what to see if you only have a limited amount of time, listing the ranger programs for major sites, and clearly laying out the rules for all guests.

I started with the South Rim because it was closer to the Bridge Bay area and on the way I got stuck in a bison jam! I managed to snag a few good pictures with my camera and got back on my way to the south rim.

If you’re planning to go to Yellowstone any time soon, I would definitely recommend the south rim. It has some really nice overlooks of the upper and lower Yellowstone falls, which are both easy to hike to and much more scenic than the ones from the northern rim. My favorite spot was Artist’s Point, which had some absolutely phenomenal views, and was not at all a spot I was picturing visiting when I was planning my trip. I always put geysers and buffalo together with Yellowstone, but not waterfalls for some reason.

I also got to spot a marmot(?) on my way down to the first overlook of the upper falls.

My only complaint I had about the area was the amount of people trying to walk around, but to be fair I was visiting on a Sunday.

When I got up in the morning it was super chilly in the low 40s, but by the time I left the canyon area it was already hotter than Hades (or at least it felt like it) and was in the 70s and sunny.

After taking a short nap, I made the drive down to West Thumb to see some thermal activity by Yellowstone Lake. There was a ranger program starting when I arrived but I was so hangry and irritated with the amount of people around me that I didn’t have the energy to go. Instead I walked around the West Thumb area and appreciated the views of the lake and of the thermal features!

After that is when I made my stop at Old Faithful. Luckily, I picked a perfect time to come and only had to wait about 10 minutes for it to erupt. It did some false eruptions when I got there but slowed down enough for me to eat my lunch, which was leftovers from camp last night. One thing I appreciate is that the NPS lists a prediction of when Old Faithful and other Geysers will erupt. Another way to tell is to see how many people are there when you arrive – and if there’s nobody that means it just erupted, but if there’s a lot of people that means it’s going to erupt soon!

It was interesting seeing how many people quickly cleared out of the area as soon as the eruption happened, though. One minute there were thousands of people and the next only a few dozen – and don’t get me started on the traffic on the way out.

Instead of dealing with that, I checked out the Old Faithful Inn, which is the largest free-standing wooden structure in the world. I don’t know and don’t want to know how much a room costs there, but the gift shop was nice and I got a ton of post cards and a t-shirt because c’est la vie.

Then I made the final haul to the fairy falls parking lot where I had to use overflow parking because there were too many people there.

My campsite was about 4 miles in from the road, but it was on flat ground so it didn’t take me that long to get there. I was the only person there, which really freaked me out the entire time, but it was certainly peaceful. As I was making dinner, a female elk bugled to me and I told her not to worry and that I was just a human. She ran away pretty quickly after that. Then I saw two more elk prancing across the field I was in at dusk.

I stayed up for a while because I was scared to go to bed and because I wanted to see if any wildlife came out at dusk. Not much happened so I went to bed, but because it was so quiet, I woke up at every sound fearing for my life. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep that night.

Yellowstone -> Teddy Roosevelt NP

I finally got up at 5:50 before the sunrise so I could make the nearly 8 hour drive to North Dakota in a reasonable time. When I got out of my tent I discovered that it got below freezing during the night, my rain fly was completely frozen, and my tent footprint was completely wet. It was a struggle taking everything down with bare hands but I managed and left later than I had anticipated.

While I was packing up my tent, a wolf decided to start barking at me from about 100 yards away. This was my first true wildlife encounter and I was actually not as nervous as I thought I was going to be with something like a bear. It sounded like the wolf was trying to see if I was a threat, so instead of barking back or interacting I just stood there like it didn’t bother me. I also had my bear spray and pocket knife out in case the situation got bad. Luckily after about 5 minutes of barking the wolf ran away and I promptly got the hell out of dodge and booked it to the parking lot while singing at the top of my lungs on the way out.

Because it had gotten so cold the previous night, the entire valley was fogged up which provided for some amazing views. So that was a bonus!

Overall, I would say that my trip to Yellowstone was something I’ll never forget, and it was truly amazing! I have some issues with the park – mostly with the visitors, but the rangers are doing their hardest to make a good experience for everyone and I can really appreciate how much work is involved with that. If I were to come back again, I already know what things I would be interested in seeing, but I’m glad that I got the highlights out of the way now so I can say that I did them!

The drive today was long but it felt like it went by fairly quickly. I didn’t stop for lunch anywhere – I just snacked on hummus and carrots, cliff bars, and peanut butter pretzels and listened to podcasts and music for nearly 8 hours.

It was exciting knowing that the hardest part of my trip (Yellowstone) was now behind me and I could relax the rest of the time. It’s also hard to believe that it’s almost over! Bismark is the midpoint for me, and I’ll be passing by it tomorrow.

I’m also excited to be on I-94 finally since coming out here in May I was on I-90 the entire time. I never realized how large Montana was until today, but boy is it huge. The views from the road ranged from scenic badlands to flat crop rows, so gorgeous peaks. I passed the time by counting the mileages between exits.

When I got to North Dakota the first thing I did was get myself a road map! I really want to have one from every state I’ve visited and I’m building up quite the collection.

I finally arrived at Theodore Roosevelt National Park at around 5:30pm and took my chances on a first-come-first served campsite being available. If it wasn’t I knew a free spot operated by the forest service, but honestly after the drive and the morning I had, I just wanted to be off the road and at a campsite.

Luckily there were plenty of sites to go around and I snagged a spot by the river next to a lovely retired couple from California who was nice enough to chat with me and gave me some free ice!

I made dinner, planned my day for tomorrow with the road map I just got, wrote some entries for this blog, then went to bed. I was so exhausted that I needed the sleep.

Teddy Roosevelt NP -> Fargo

It was another long day of driving. I got up early to beat the sunrise and do the 36-mile scenic loop around the park and I saw a lot really amazing things that made me fall in love with this park. I definitely want to come back here again someday!

 I visited the southern unit of the park, but there’s a northern unit and a tiny middle unit that also seem interesting, and if I had more time, I would check them out but today I was confined to the southern unit and it was not disappointing!

There are a bunch of tiny trails you can do as you make your way around the loop, so that’s basically what I did all day. I started at a prairie dog town, but I got there too early and the prairie dogs hadn’t woken up yet, so I saved them for last! I saw all kinds of crazy views and wildlife along the loop including buffalo, deer, and wild mustangs.

I went early in the morning to all of these so I had the whole place to myself, essentially. It’s important to know that I went on a Monday morning. You’d think that being in North Dakota in the middle of nowhere that this park receives little visitation, but it actually gets about 200,000 more visitors than Mammoth Cave annually (700,000 vs 500,000), which I was surprised to learn! I guess I timed it right with an early start on a weekday towards the end of the season.

By about 10:00am I had seen most of the scenic loop and was really satisfied with the views, the information I learned, and the experience of getting to see this wonderful park.

I’d say my favorite thing I did on the loop was the last part of it, which was the coal vein self-guided nature trail. They had a small pamphlet that you took around with you to learn about the natural process of coal vein fires in the area. When I went there was apparently one active already, but I didn’t see any evidence of it during my drive. They can fluctuate to having little activity to moving entire hillsides by making them collapse!

As I was leaving I saw the prairie dog town in full force and it was super amazing! When I pulled up the barked at me but then stopped when I got out and stood there for a while.

Then I finished up my trip by going to the visitor center and checking out the Maltese Cabin that Roosevelt lived in with some of his artifacts. It had apparently been reconstructed and moved all across the country before finding its home back in North Dakota.

I’ll spare you with the Teddy Roosevelt biography, but if you want more info on the history of the park you can check out this great resource here!

After that I drove through the town of Medora, which features a full-stage musical production of Teddy Roosevelt’s time in North Dakota complete with fireworks, horses, and dancing 6 nights a week during the summer! I really wanted to go but they don’t do performances on Mondays, which is when I was staying. That just means I’ll have to come back again in the future!

Then I finally hit the road and drove all the way across the great state of North Dakota to get to Fargo, stopping at a Walmart along the way for some groceries and to get check-in instructions for my Airbnb.

I finally got to Fargo at around 6:30pm, where I cooked dinner, wrote some for this blog, took a shower, did laundry, and went to bed. It was really nice to be able to recharge and sleep in a real bona fide bed! I wish I had enough time to play some of the GameCube games that my host had available but I was so beat that I didn’t.

Fargo -> Madison

I got up early this morning to get on the road with enough time to make it to my campground before sunset. I wanted to see at least some of Fargo, so I stopped at two street murals and got photos with them!

After that it was nothing but road for the next four hours. I stopped occasionally to stretch and get gas, and twice to get my final two state maps that I’ve been collecting this trip! They’ve really been helping me out with navigating and figuring out my timelines, plus I love how each state has a different design for each one. Expect a review of each state’s map that I’ve been to when my road trip is over, and I have some time during the semester.

Also in case you were wondering, those highway signs that tell you mileages to cities on your way alternate between Minneapolis and St Paul every other sign so as to save space and not prefer one over the other! I thought that was an interesting touch.

My midpoint stop today was in Eau Claire, WI at the Wisconsin Logging Museum. I had heard about this place because Johnna was in town for a conference last semester and stopped by but unfortunately, they were closed. I knew when my route was taking me through the area that I had to stop and compare how they do logging in the northwest to how they do it in Wisconsin!

I was really impressed with the museum and all of the exhibits. They mostly talked about things from the loggers perspective, which makes sense because it’s the LOGGING museum after all. But the biggest thing I learned was about how they had to float logs down the river and it was someone’s job to make sure that the logs didn’t jam. To do that they had to float down with the logs by standing on them and poking them with sticks. This is the origin of log rolling! Eventually people just decided to do it as a sport.

They also had an amazing display of a modified train (you should click that link) that people used to use to haul logs around. It had a steering wheel and apparently, they invented caterpillar tracks for this machine, which then got applied to tanks and other equipment.

I spent about 2 hours there and then went to a nearby park on Half Moon Lake to eat lunch and get back on the road to Devils Lake State Park.

Today it was super windy so my car was rocking back and forth throughout the entire ride. There’s a storm that’s supposed to hit tonight and I’ll be in my tent so hopefully it won’t be too bad.

Devil’s Lake State Park has some of the strangest policies I’ve seen at a campground so far. They charge you more if you’re from out of state to stay at the campground, which I get. But when you check in they don’t give you a map, and they also charge you for a day-use sticker which is $16 on top of the camp site fee you already paid! So be aware if you plan to stay here at any point in the future. Once camp was set up, I relived my routine of making dinner and writing for this blog, then going to bed. Like I said, it’s supposed to be extremely windy tonight, so hopefully I’ll have an easy time sleeping.

Madison -> Chicago

I ended up sleeping in my car last night because of the wind! It got so bad that a small branch landed nearby my tent and I decided to call it quits before anything more serious happened. I moved my car to an area where nothing would fall on it and actually slept pretty well. The car was quieter than I was used to but it was comfortable and safer than being outside in the wind.

I had been doing some research on where to hike and people really recommended doing the Eastern Bluff trail, which seems to be the most popular (and one of the only) trails at the park. It’s for good reason, and it was nice being able to reacquaint myself with the ecology of the region – even if it was in Wisconsin. I got to see some nice overlooks and rock formations, and luckily for me the hills stop inclining a lot sooner than they do in Washington, so climbing up was almost easy mode for me.

Hiking was a lot of fun, and I can definitely see the appeal of the trails here! I spent a good 3-4 hours hiking before I headed to Chicago. I am staying with one of my friends and picking up my room mate, Jenry, who just got back from Berlin today.

Getting to Chicago wasn’t that bad but avoiding the toll was a bit tricky. I got there though in a reasonable amount of time with a good spot on the street close by to my friend’s apartment. I didn’t do much in the city except unpack slightly and reorganize my stuff.

When everyone got to the apartment after flights and work, we went to dinner at a Thai restaurant that was really good! Then we mostly hung out for the rest of the night. I slept on the floor but I was used to camping at this point so I actually got a decent amount of sleep!

Chicago -> Independence

It was an inadvertent long day of driving. The original plan was to drive from Chicago to my parents’ house in Independence, KY. However Jenry needed to go to Lexington early so we drove from Chicago to Lexington, then I drove up to Independence.

We started by taking the day easy though. We went to a boulangerie in the city and had some macarons and croissants before driving to one park Jenry wanted to check out and another park I’ve really been wanting to check out for a long time.

We stopped first at Steelworkers Park, which formerly was the site of a steel mill run by US Steel. It was the largest employer in the country peaking at 20,000 employees. Now the mill has shut down and the remains of it are divided into this park and Park 566. There’s a rock wall and some prairie restoration along with the ruins of the walls of the mill and various implements scattered around the park.

After our stop there we drove to Indiana Dunes National Park, which I’ve been wanting to check off my list for a long time! It’s about a 40 minute drive from Chicago and on a clear day you can see the skyline of the city.

There’s a lot of history about the dunes, which I encourage you to look up, but the most interesting story I’ve heard is the one of Alice Gray (aka Diana of the Dunes) and her two years spent living at the dunes in the early 20th century. We ended up doing a hike named after Alice, Diana’s Dare, which gets you a sticker and a nice view of Chicago! Unfortunately when we went it was a dusty day and we didn’t get to see much of the city. But we did get to see the gasworks, which we could also see from Steelworker’s Park.

The hike itself was pretty easy and I’d love to come back here one day to hike more and see the wildlife! My only regret is not having enough time to spend here. I also would have liked to have gotten in the lake for a bit, especially since it was so hot.

So we did our hike, got our sticker, and headed back on the road to get to KY before dark. We took a pit stop in Lafayette, IN for lunch. Purdue just so happened to be having their move-in the day we stopped in so we were inundated with traffic and people.

Lafayette reminds me a lot of Lexington, if Lexington was instead in Indiana and UK was replaced with Purdue. The city is a bit bigger, but still is similar enough that I could almost convince myself I was home.

After lunch we finished the rest of the drive and we made it back to Kentucky around 7pm.

I didn’t see any “welcome to Kentucky” signs but hopefully these photos will suffice!

We didn’t stop until we got to Lexington and only then it was for a short enough time to drop off Jenry. Once we did that I made the hour-and-a-half-long trek to Independence to see my parents, which at this point felt like a 20 minute drive.

But at 10pm I finally made it back to Kentucky! After 4 months, and 8500 miles my trip was over for the time being – until next summer. I truly cannot wait to go back to Washington next year and go on even more crazy adventures!

Thank you to everyone who has been reading this blog throughout the summer! I’m not done writing entirely, but I won’t be updating this as often throughout the semester. I hope you enjoyed tagging along with me virtually throughout my travels! This summer was absolutely unforgettable, and I’m glad you got to see a part of it.

I’ll leave you with a photo of my cat, Max, who immediately came up to me to say hello when I got back.

I’ll catch you all on the flip side!