Home tomorrow

Tonight we're only 4 hours from home so tomorrow noonish we ought to get home. Yay!

This may well be our last significant driving trip. It's gotten so it's hard for us. It's been great fun and we've really enjoyed the trips we've taken. We've seen more of this country than most and we'll still take shorter trips. We're tentatively planning Olympic National Park for next summer.

At any rate, we had some extra time today so we stopped at an antique shop in far Western Montana. It was an outstanding shop. Lots of great old furniture and cast iron cookware. All in good condition and well presented. An antique toy truck was priced at $2450 (yes, no decimal point).

Tom

Butte, MT

Butte is a miining town that looks like a mining town. As you drive past on I-90 you can easily see the old headframes dotting the hill. At least a dozen of them. When we first visited you couldn't get decent photos of any of them.That's gradually changing as they continue with the super fund clean up of the surrounding propery.

The photo today was a bit of luck. As we drove past this one the workers had opened the gate so I could get an unobstructed view. They gave me permission to take a few photographs before they closed it off again. This headframe still has the old winch house standing nearby. I think it makes for a lovely photograph.

Tom

Head'n Home

We've actually been on the road for a couple of days. Extra photos today since I missed yesterday completely.  :(

Back when we started out I mentioned that I like to photograph the old grain elevators. I also like the windmills. While some of them are the old wooden ones, others like this one, are contemporary.

Over time, to remain viable, the size of farms has grown over the decades. A side effect of small farms being merged into larger more profitable ones is that many of those farmhouses were abandoned. We passed several every day.

Finally, a scene from US Rt 12 in Eastern Montana.

Festival

So the Sasha Festival, the whole reason for this trip, began Thursday and closes tomorrow.

We've been able to visit with friends we've not seen for two years as we didn't attend last year.
When I went into the hotel to register Thursday afternoon there was Karen from the Portland Sasha group and Dawn Law from England.

This is a special group of very early hand made dolls from before the commercial production began.

Tom

Little Falls

Driving toward Bloomington we crossed the Mississippi River a number of times. Every time it was bigger than previous and by the time we got to Little Falls which is in the middle of the state it was already quite a river. It's been rainy so somewhat swollen.

There is a dam at Little Falls. Not a high dam; 20 ft perhaps but it surely does stir up the river....

Northern Minnesota

So today we drove across Northern Minnesota. Specifically we were on Rt US 2 from North Dakota to Grand Rapids.

Rt 2 runs about 20 miles North of Itasca State Park.

Itasca State Park contains Lake Itasca which is the source of the Mississippi River. This is one of those storied places everyone has heard about so of course we had to visit. They have placed large stones to define the boundary between lake and river. I was surprised by the sheer number of people in attendance. There were about 50 people there looking at the headwaters of the Mississippi and several children working across the stepping stones and back.

Well, see for yourself....

More Plains

Driving into North Dakota we're in oil country.

When you drill for oil, natural gas is an unwanted byproduct and is simply burned off.

High Plains

Once out of the mountains you're on the plains.

Flat, sparsely populated, Many of the small towns are now just spots on the map.

We had a shorter driving day today. A bit over 5 hours and no time change.

Iy rained most of the morning and we had several miles of construction where we were on gravel road rather than pavement.

On the plains the most visible structures are the grain elevators. Many of them, like today's photo of the day are abandoned and derelict.

Montana Mountains

Today we drove US Rt 2 across Northern Idaho and the Montana Rocky Mountains past Glacier National Park. One of my favorite drives through some of my favorite country.

It was another fairly long driving day and we lost an hour when we entered the Mountain Time zone. We arrived in Shelby MT around 5:00. Our new GPS lost it's way in Shelby. It took us past our motel, muddled around random blocks in downtown Shelby and finally sent us on East. Definitely not the behavior we want in our GPS.

Anyway we're (finally) here and settled in.

Today's photo is of the Kootenai River

We're off again :)

This is our first night out and we're in Sandpoint, ID which is on Lake Pend Oreille.

A needlessly stressful day. We have a new GPS unit and I Have the whole trip programmed into it. Our old GPS showed distance remaining, time remaining and ETA. This new one just shows ETA and to my dismay it was showing an ETA corresponding with 9 1/2 hours of driving time. I had planned for 7 1/4 hours and I was totally dumbfounded by that extra 2 1/4 hours and I feared I'd messed up the plan and set us up for a dauntingly long driving day but instead of 5:20 we arrived at 2:50 so we were fine. Apparently it was giving us our arrival time at Bloomington. Our hotel is right on the lake but the wind was blowing at 40mph or so. When I was out trying to take pictures I had to literally hang onto my hat or I'd have lost it into the lake.

Tom

Photo of the day...