Welcome!!!!

Enjoy the pictures and short stories from our great Westward Ho vacation of 2008. Capturing the spirit and the vastness of the West is difficult to do in pictures, but I bet your appreciation for the beauty of it will grow as did ours. For future, more in-depth observations from our great trip visit me over at www.hoosierhappenings.blogspot.com

Sorry, you'll have to scroll to the bottom to begin your journey!

Day 12

Completely uneventful.........a long, long drive home with only one Starbucks stop. The kids were glad to be home and ran crazy through the house with their arms waving in the air.

Back to good 'ol river city.

Day 11

We briefly visited the small Lewis & Clark Expedition Interpretive Center along the great Missouri River where they have a keel boat suspended in mid-air. I took a couple pictures of the concrete ti pis South Dakota uses for their rest stops too before we hit THE CORN PALACE and did the brief tour.

From Mitchel, SD we headed north to DeSmet, SD of Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder fame. There we toured the homestead which was a nice break-then on to Walnut Grove, Minnesota for a visit to the Ingalls homestead site along the Banks of Plum Creek. This little tour made my wife very happy. We ran into an enormous bank of giant windmills between SD and MN. Amazing. We spent the night in Mankato, MN and ate dinner in the hotel restaurant all by ourselves and celebrated by son's birthday.

Day 10

We left Custer, South Dakota and headed to Chamberlain, SD via the Badlands again. The route we took out of the Black Hills wound through three stone tunnels and past these enormous presidential heads....yes, that's Ronnie, JFK and GW-say dubb'ya. We spent a little time in the Badlands where I dangled my daughter over a cliff and then ate dinner at the famous tourist stop "Al's Oasis" in Chamberlain-evidently even Al has gone high-tech.

Day 9

We just hung out in the Black Hills between Bear Country (traffic nightmare), Reptile Gardens and Custer State Park. We opted out of doing the Flintstone Village at Custer because they wouldn't let us mini golf-we did however mini golf at another location and I beat my wife by one stroke. At Reptile Gardens we spent time in front of their 1939 World's Fair Funny Mirrors and I visited with an old friend-Methuselah-at 127 years old it doesn't appear my riding him when I was 8 did much damage-although they don't let the kiddos ride him anymore. He's been with the park since the 50's. The kids pretended to be prairie dogs too.

Custer State Park in South Dakota is great for seeing herds of bison, wild burros and antelope. We enjoyed a quiet supper at the Blue Bell Lodge and then fireworks over Custer from the hotel parking lot.

Day 8

Thermopolis, WY, acquiring its name from the hot spring around which the town built its resort reputation, has an unusual tourist attraction-the ti pi geyser. Evidently at the turn of the last century the townsfolk constructed a stone ti pi with a pipe to create a fountain at the top, diverted from a hot spring. Mineral deposits quickly grew on the ti pi and the picture above is what developed over a hundred years.

Only my fellow "300" enthusiasts will appreciate the connection between Thermopolis & the Battle of Thermopylae-hence the bicep pic. I appreciate my wife humoring me-we didn't stop at Sparta, WI, however, for the same shot.

On to the Black Hills and Custer, SD for fireworks over Mt. Rushmore. The drive across rural Wyoming and into South Dakota was enjoyable. We stopped at the Powder River Pass summit and took a brisk and windy hike to the top. At Rushmore we joined over 30,000 other people to watch the fireworks. It was a mad house and our view of the fireworks due to the crowd was less than spectacular (half of George's head only). Also less than spectacular was the 5+ mile round trip hike to our car from Rushmore due to traffic and parking. Daughter on shoulders up the mountain and carrying her down the mountain on the way back at midnight our time. Ugghh!

Day 7

Our last day in Yellowstone-heading out of the park. Donuts and coffee on the road again. We drove and drove with our only planned stops to be the Hayden Valley area, Mud Volcano and Yellowstone Lake-all on the east side of the park.

We saw a couple of gray wolves near Hayden Valley (can you guess what that wolf is doing?), along with several bison-some up close. The mud volcano was a lot of fun........ahh, the smell of sulphur, smells like Yellowstone! We also saw and heard the Dragon's Cauldron-which bellowed out steam and sounded like a loud guttural kind of gasp. That was cool! Then it was on to Yellowstone Lake for some rock collecting. We saw another grizzly on our way out of the park too.

We stopped in Cody on our way through for a quick lunch and cowboy hats. I had to take a picture in front of the Irma Hotel, which Buffalo Bill built for his daughter. Then it was on to Thermopolis, WY for our next stay and a visit to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Didn't look like much from the road, but was a great stop-other than the community seemed a little strange.

Day 6

We grabbed a quick breakfast (donuts on the road) and got into Yellowstone early to head toward the Grand Tetons. It paid off.....not 10 miles into the park we saw a bald eagle, not far from its nest. It was a long, uneventful drive to the Tetons, but we were in high hopes of seeing lots of moose. A short time into the Tetons we saw a grizzly near the road.......but we never saw a moose.

We spent a little time at Jenny Lake-which was packed as most places were over the holiday week. Then bought food for a picnic lunch at a secluded spot with a spectacular view of the mountains-I think I could spend all day in front of a view like that! We did some hiking, delaying our leave until after supper so that we might see moose in the early evening-no luck. Then, back in the car for a long drive back to West Yellowstone where we were delayed by construction but caught an awesome sunset over the mountains, and spent our last night at the Evergreen.

Day 5

Ahhhhh......waking up in the pine forests of Yellowstone. I could hardly believe it. We grabbed breakfast at an old time restaurant-the Timberline, although it is nothing like I remember. Then we headed into the park for some wildlife spotting. We were greeted pretty quickly by some buffalo along the road, sandhill cranes and an eaglet in a nest.

We drove up to Mammoth Springs, a small historic community within the park. The hot springs area was other worldly and the town like something from a story book. For whatever reason my dad would never take us up to this location..........are you seeing a trend here? A traffic jamb developed in Mammoth because a herd of elk had made their way into town, some even hanging out on people's front porches.

From Mammoth we drove to the high elevations in the park and took in a waterfall and hiked some tundra area known for bears, then down to canyon village and the picturesque lower falls of the Yellowstone River. The weather turned kinda gray. I've also noticed from the picture at the top that my 6 pack is verging on keg status.....I need to get back at it!

We drove back to West Yellowstone and since my son likes to check off states he's visited, drove on to Island Park, Idaho, about 30 minutes away. The plan was to have supper there.....Island Park is essentially an incorporated town along a highway stretching maybe 10 miles with only maybe a dozen establishments. We were fortunate to find a nice log cabin restaurant and enjoy a nice meal. Then we went on a wild goose hunt for moose in the Quake Lake area of Montana. Thanks brother.

Day 4

The fourth day saw lots of excitement as we went from Cody to Yellowstone. The drive into the park is breathtaking enough, but just a few miles in we were greated with snow (a fair amount for this late in the year) and a grizzly with a couple cubs.

We drove through the park to Old Faithful and the hot springs area, had lunch in the architectural masterpiece that is the old lodge........waited for what the kids thought was an eternity for the old guy to go off.

Then we made our way to West Yellowstone, Montana to stay at the Evergreen Motel.....ca. 1940. L-O-V-E-D it.

Day 3

The third day we left Gillette, WY and traveled over the Big Horn Mountains from Sheridan, WY. I made my wife stick in John Denver as we started our climb. Our low oil light went on, which took some of the fun out of the experience, especially as we began to descend. The oil was fine-they forgot to reset the gage when it was serviced. I had wanted to see the ancient native american medicine wheel on the top of the mountain, but decided another 3 mile climb for the car was not a good idea at the time.

The Bighorns are spectacular. The air so crisp and clean. We saw Mule Deer, elk and a moose-the only moose of the trip. The mountains were alive with color due to wildflowers-something I had never witnessed because our family trips would normally happen in the fall. We did a little playing in the snow, saw a cattle drive and mom gripped the armrest tightly as we descended the mountains. I woke up in a cold sweat that night from the descent-no gaurd rails and straight down 300' + cliffs.

We stayed in Cody, Wyoming that night-rodeo capital of the world. We skipped the rodeo and opted for the pool.

Day 2

The landscape changed quickly after we crossed over the Missouri River and entered the short grass prairie. Next came the beautiful Badlands (why my dad never let us go there, I'll never understand), Wall Drug - a lot of fun, a visit with a dinosaur in Wall I had wanted since I was a kid and Devils Tower. We saw plenty of prognhorn antelope or "bottoms up" as we called them as kids due to their bright white bottoms. I imagine this would apply to some of us humans too.

Devils Tower also included "dropping in" on a prairie dog town by my daughter.......her foot went down a hole and scared her pretty good. Nothing ice cream couldn't solve.

We spent the night in Gillette, Wyoming with some friends who moved from Indiana to start a church......and that included taking in a little league game western style. They solved any umpiring issues with rifles. OK, maybe not.......but I like to imagine that's how they do it.

Day 1

A long 13 hour day became a longer 15 hour day in the car between home and Chamberlain, SD due in part to the wreckage above. Mom is getting the kids' energy out at our dinner stop in Minnesota....only 3 hours to go from that point!