Friday, July 2, 2010

West Trip Day 18: Travel Day to North Dakota

Thursday, July 1

Overnight it rained which made our packing up a little more time consuming. I got up early (around 7:00) and started toweling off the camper while Jen packed the inside. The Halls were packing up to go too so we tried to help them dry, take down and bag up their tents. We were taking a lot of their gear with us since there wasn't room to take everything with them on the train.

The plan was to eat on the road so we could get an earlier start. We had the camper hooked up and ready to go around 8:45. We said our good-byes to the Halls and wished them well on the rest of their trip to Salt Lake City. (Greg e-mailed us when he got there that they had converted to Mormonism, he had added several wives, and they had joined the choir.)


There's plenty of me to go around, ladies!

We were sad to leave Yellowstone but didn't feel like our vacation was done quite yet. We had about a 10 hour drive to Bismarck, ND. The GPS took us through the north entrance of Yellowstone through Mammoth Springs. The northern part of Yellowstone is actually in Montana. We almost missed the very small sign that read "Entering Montana. We had to do a very rushed "We are in Montana Right Now!" cheer.

Montana was a very pretty state to drive through. It is hard to describe it in a way that makes it sound different than Wyoming or South Dakota, yet somehow it was different - different rock formations, different colors, different roads, different speed limits (75 mph). Most of the land looked like it was for farming and ranches.

I can see why the dinosaurs liked it here.

The other interesting thing I noticed about Montana was that a large percentage of the men there wore large moustaches. And I mean, large as in they could be extras for an old cowboy movie. I mean large as in Tom Selleck would say, "Whoa, that's a big moustache!"


Now, that's a man's moustache.

While McDonalds was only 70 miles away from our campground, because of a slowpoke in front of me I couldn't pass, I had to haul a$$ just to make it there at 10:31. Even though it was a minute late, we were still able to order breakfast. Even though my sample was small, the people seemed very friendly in Montana.

We drove through Montana and on into Noth Dakota. North Dakota was less mountainous, but a lot like South Dakota. North Dakota seemed interested in creating some of its own roadside attractions as we passed the World's Largest Holstein Cow and the World's Largest Bison on the way.

No, we didn't stop to take this picture.

We didn't stop for this picture either. Notice its the same couple. (Thank you google image search!)

We arrived at the Ramada in Bismarck, ND around 8:00 PM. We had lost an hour with the time change in the middle of the state and hadn't eaten, so we were starving. We ordered a pizza while the kids watched AFV. Then we all showered and got ready for bed. The showers felt great since it had been a couple days. I blogged while Jen and the kids slept. We had one more chunk of driving tomorrow to get to Karen and Carl's wedding in Minnesota.

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