I’m still journeying down memory lane with this post but, I’m also telling on myself. I had what is probably the biggest brain fart of my life while driving through South Dakota.😂 There are a couple of places you see a lot of signs for: one is Wall Drug, the other is 1880 Town (which is where the brain fart came in).
I was driving when a small town came into view on the horizon. Kenn said, “Oh, that must be the place we’ve seen all the signs for.” Additional signage confirmed that he was correct; we were approaching 1880 Town. My response was “Oh, it’s eighteen eighty town!” I then had to explain that for the entire drive I had been reading each sign as “1-880-Town”; I had even gotten a little annoyed, wondering why they didn’t just put the name of the attraction on the sign instead of a phone number. (Yes, I know that’s not enough numbers for a real phone number but that’s still how my brain was interpreting it.) *facepalm* Kenn got several miles of laughter out of my revelation. I hope you get a good chuckle too.
It’s hard to believe that our last big road trip was in July 2019.😮 Our post-retirement plans were to have 1-2 “big” road trips every year in addition to our smaller trips. Our 2020 road trip was to culminate in Maine with a variety of stops up and down the eastern coast of the US. However, COVID had other plans so, not knowing which states and campgrounds might be closed, we canceled our much anticipated trip and rescheduled it for September of 2021. As the time for this year’s trip draws tantalizingly closer (and life throws in potential roadblocks) I’ve been looking through my photos from our last trip and decided to share some of my favorite memories with you.
The ultimate destination of our 2019 trip was Glacier National Park. However, on the way, I fell in love with the entire state of South Dakota. Seriously, I was ready to pack up and move. (Kinda still am.) One of the first things we learned is that Oklahoma is not the only place where “the wind comes sweeping down the plains.” The wind started blowing when we crossed the Iowa/South Dakota border and didn’t stop the whole time we were in the state. At some point we lost one of the little plastic rain shields Kenn had installed over the windows and we had to pull onto the shoulder of the interstate so I could remove another one that had started flapping in the never-ending “breeze”. One of our first stops was at the South Dakota welcome center where a very friendly woman whipped out a map and marked several things we should see while we were in the state. This is where we learned that there are actually falls in Sioux Falls South Dakota. Who knew?🤦♀️ (I know, I know. It makes perfect sense, my brain had just never put two and two together.) We hadn’t been planning to visit Sioux Falls but we changed our plans and I’m so glad we did.
Sioux Falls
I was instantly in love. Kenn gets a kick out of the fact that I love rocks and Sioux Falls had them in spades. (I think I should have been a geologist.)
My favorite photo from Sioux Falls was a happy accident. I took the picture just as foam from the falls splashed up.
It was an overcast day and rain threatened the whole time we were at the falls. Fortunately, other than a few drizzles, it held off. There was a small gift shop and a few buildings to visit but the actual falls were my favorite part. I also liked the buffalo sculpture named Monarch of the Plains. It was difficult to get a good picture of the sculpture because of the construction going on behind it; I wasn’t crazy about having all of the cones, etc. in the background of my pictures. On another note, I loved all of the different colors that began appearing in the local rocks once we reached South Dakota and continuing all the way to Montana. Some of those colors are apparent in the Monarch.
Monarch of the Plains
Thank you for joining me on my trip down memory lane. Be sure to join me again next week for more. Until then, stay safe and happy trails!
I didn’t get to travel much when I was young so Kenn and I wanted to make sure our boys had a chance to see a little more of the world. We couldn’t afford to take them on cruises or jet off to international locations but we could at least get them out of the house and introduce them to the sort of places that we love. (They would probably say we took them hiking far too many times, LOL.)
Time and money management were always important on our trips so I planned everything down to the nth degree. I researched the locations we were planning to visit, booked the hotel rooms/cabins, and planned out our activities for each day. Looking back, I may have occasionally over-planned, but it was a labor of love.
Keeping up with details, planning, and organizing are just a part of me and have served me well both at home and at work. However, I think the last four years of my day job sort of burned me out. I enjoyed what I did but it required an extreme amount of organization; my days were ruled by a schedule that was usually booked at least a week in advance. Now that I’m retired, I’m enjoying having flexible days without having to account for every minute of my time.
Somehow, without our even discussing it, Kenn came to my rescue because he is now the one doing most of the planning for our trips. We decide together where we are planning to go and when and he handles making the reservations. I’m still the money manager but I’m happy not having to deal with all of the details.
We cancelled our road trip plans last year due to the pandemic but this year we are fully vaccinated and ready to hit the road. We’ll be taking a trip up the east coast this fall. This will be our first time traveling long distances with our travel trailer so I’m sure we’ll be learning many lessons along the way which, of course, I’ll share here. 🙂 As proof of his new role as Chief Trip Organizer, we already have reservations at a campground in Maine. Go, Kenn!
Last year my husband and I began what we hope to make a yearly tradition – a road trip to visit parts of the country we have yet to see. It was also supposed to be our first long-term trip with our camper but that changed due to concerns over rising gas prices. (My husband’s truck only gets 8-9 mpg when towing so that’s always something to take into consideration.) Our ultimate destination was Glacier National Park. It was when we began researching and mapping out our route that we realized we were thinking like Southerners.
What do I mean by “thinking like a Southerner”? We initially planned our trip to coincide with Memorial Day weekend to reduce the number of vacation days my husband would need to take. (I had retired at the end of April.) However, when I began doing some research on Glacier I discovered that the Going To The Sun road through the park may not open until late June/early July depending on the amount of snow to be cleared. Snow? In July? As a life-long native of the South the thought of snow on the ground in July is unfathomable. Heck, we barely get snow in January and February. But, with that useful tidbit in mind, we rescheduled our trip for July.
Honestly, I’m glad we decided against taking the camper. We travel slower when towing so we wouldn’t have been able to see as much as we did if we had. Not to mention the fact that towing a camper through some of the mountain ranges we traveled would have probably made me hyperventilate. So, instead of taking my husband’s Toyota Tacoma, we made the trip in my then 14-year-old Toyota Highlander in order to take advantage of the better mileage.
Bonnie, my Highlander, got stickers to commemorate our trip
Was it a good trip? Absolutely. Did we learn a few things to implement in future trips? Definitely. In 17 days we covered 6048.5 miles, 13 states, and 6 national parks/monuments.
Badlands Mount Rushmore Devil’s Tower Glacier Yellowstone Grand Tetons
I’ll go into more detail regarding lessons learned in a later post but the biggest lesson we learned was to build more downtime into our schedule. We kept to a pretty grueling pace and only had a couple of days where we didn’t have anything planned. As enjoyable as the trip was, we were exhausted by the time we got home.
Linda Lou's Life 