We left the hotel at 10:05, got breakfast, ice and gas. We then headed on to Glacier National Park. On our way, we saw this grain elevator. In order to get a picture of it, we had to turn onto a side road. On the side road, we found these old trucks.
It was a beautiful day for a beautiful drive to and through Glacier. I wasn’t sure about driving on the Going to the Sun Road. I am so glad we did!
We stopped and had lunch at this little waterfall.
We drove to Kalispell, MT, and spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express.
We checked out of the hotel at 9:35. It was 47 degrees and clear. A little cool but actually felt pretty good for the middle of August. We filled up the truck with gas and then went looking for a grocery store. We needed Dr. Pepper, DBs and sticks. We got breakfast sandwiches from CC’s Cafe. While they were pretty good, the food was not quite as good as dinner the night before.
These were in Circle, MT.
At Fort Peck we pulled into a parking lot to look at the lake. Tommy got out of the truck while Bubba and I stayed inside. When Tommy got back in he told me he’d seen something big fly overhead. We couldn’t find anything so got back on the road. Very shortly after that I looked up to see this osprey with his lunch at the top of a power pole.
I believe I’ve said it before…Montana is not all mountains.
Grain elevators and combines!
Much to my disappointment, we did not see many bald eagles on our trip. However, we did see these two sitting in a tree together.
We stayed at the Comfort Inn in Shelby, MT. Tommy went across the road and got dinner for us from Clark’s Family Restaurant. It was OK.
We checked out of the hotel at 10:15 so we could check back into a different room later. We had to fill up the truck, wash the windshield so we could see where we were going, and get ice for the cooler. Then we were off to hunt for sunflowers.
We drove around and saw millions of sunflowers. At one field we stopped at for photos, a local farmer stopped and asked if he could take a picture of us amongst the sunflowers. We declined but then he and Tommy proceeded to talk for a long time…while I fought off the biting flies. We then drove down to the river and found a place to eat our picnic lunch.
After lunch, we went back to the hotel. Tommy did laundry and then we sat out on our balcony and ate dinner.
We got on the road at 9:20. Our final destination of the day was Pierre, SD. But we planned to wander on our way there. The route we took was North Dakota into Montana and then back into North Dakota before finally arriving in South Dakota.
We traveled down the western border of North Dakota. The landscape was beautiful but there aren’t many people who live there.
Fort Buford at the confluence of the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.
Beach, ND There was no sign to let us know what kind of church this is.A cool old sign that I was able to capture as we passed through whatever town this was in.
We arrived at the Clubhouse Inn in Pierre at 6:25. We got dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel. It was good.
We left the hotel at 9:15 and filled the truck up with gas. We loved the cool mornings!
Thinking that we would find a cafe somewhere, we left Grand Forks and headed west on Hwy. 2. It was a long time before we found breakfast. We did find Penn, ND, though. We drove into “town”. Besides this old abandoned church there was the Buckhorn Saloon, which I did not get a picture of, and not much else.
Minnewauken Museum, Minnewauken, ND
Maddock, ND
Maddock, ND
Balfour Lutheran Church, Balfour, ND
Minot, ND
North Dakota is a pretty state with enough variation to make it interesting.
We got to the Ramada in Williston, ND, at 7:30. The Ramada is a large hotel that appears to cater to the oil/gas crews. Tommy loves to tell about the boot room where workers must go to either take their boots off or put paper booties over them before they walk through the hotel. There was a restaurant at the hotel and Tommy went and got us dinner. I had spaghetti which was OK and Tommy got pork chops which he said were good. People came and went all night long. We had thunder and lightning during the night that sounded awfully close.
We left the hotel at 9:00. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day–65 degrees and clear. Our plan was to take US60 to St. James and then MN4 north. Weren’t sure how far north we would go, it would depend of what we would see.
Norunga Lutheran Church
St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church
Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
We saw a LOT of corn and bean fields in Minnesota.
We left St. Joe at 8:55 and headed north on I29. We wanted to go to Squaw Creek and see what was there. Unfortunately, we were only able to go a short distance before the road was closed. We didn’t see any birds, but we did see thousands of water lilies. What a sight it was!
When we were done there, we headed north again on I29. At Hwy. 2 we turned towards Nebraska and crossed over the Missouri River. The whole area around there was still flooded. There was road construction on Hwy. 2 all the way to the river. A lot of the businesses on that stretch of the road had suffered major destruction. Sad to see. We went back to I29 and headed north again.
North of Omaha we turned onto Hwy. 30 and went into Missouri Valley, IA. Just outside of Woodbine, we saw this grain elevator again but the town had added a purple cone flower. Not far up the road we stopped to get a shot of this girl and her dog. The girl was about 8-9′ tall. Tommy said it reminded him of when Biscuit chewed on Amanda’s Barbie dolls.
We continued on Hwy. 30 to Denison where we turned onto Hwy. 59.
A barn in Denison.
We saw a lot of this–corn on one side of the road, beans on the other.
We stopped at this pretty little park in Cherokee and had a picnic lunch.
A few minutes down the road — this was a “slam on your brakes and pull a u-turn” shot!
A church in Alton.
St. Mary’s Catholic Church
I do love seeing all of the unique things we see on our travels.
We got to the AmericInn in Worthington, MN, at 6:00. Dinner was from KFC.
We had enjoyed our road trip in 2018 so much that we decided we would go on another one this year. We made absolutely no plans whatsoever on where we would be going or for how long. We didn’t even decide when to leave until about a week ahead of time.
We left the house at 5:50 Sunday morning. At that point we decided to stay our first night in St. Joe, MO. We got to the Drury Inn around 6:45. It was probably the easiest trip we’d ever had getting to St. Joe. Dinner was BBQ salads from Bandana’s. Yum!
On the side road, we found these old trucks.
