Month: July 2016

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Mount Rushmore

We only had one interesting stop today: Mount Rushmore National Memorial. It was pretty impressive.

Normally you can't notice it, but this shot shows Roosevelt (center) is carved as if he was wearing glasses

After that we headed east across South Dakota. Probably the most boring state so far in terms of scenery. Flat with lots of farms. Luckily the speed limit is still 80mph. I wanted to detour through the Badlands, but Yanmei vetoed it, which was probably good in retrospect because we didn't get to our hotel until after 9pm. We crossed into Central time zone, so we lost an hour today. We're staying the night in Worthington, Minnesota.

-David

 

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Travel Day

We didn't do much today except drive through three states, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota. We're staying the night in Spearfish, SD.

Wyoming

Montana had a lot more mountains and interesting scenery than I expected. I expected sprawling cattle ranches and open plains. We stopped in Billings, MT for lunch. Of course there was a steak chophouse next to the supercharger. I was tempted, but steak for lunch didn't seem like a good idea, so we went to a cafe instead.

After Billings, we headed south into Wyoming through Sheridan and Gillette, before crossing over into South Dakota to finish up in Spearfish.

We did make one stop at a place I've wanted to visit since I was about 7 years old.

Devil's Tower!
I didn't take that last photo, haha.

 

-David

 

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Yellowstone National Park

Today we spent most of the day in Yellowstone. Most of the park is in Wyoming, so we added another state to our visited list. Overall the park is very beautiful with mountains, trees and rivers. The weather was great too.

Our first stop may have been the most spectacular. It is called the Grand Prismatic Spring, and is a hot spring where microbes feeding on the minerals caused a rainbow effect based on the temperature of the water. Very cool.

 
You had to stay on a boardwalk for safety, but it was windy and there were several hats stranded out of reach of the boardwalk.

After that we headed to the most famous attraction: Old Faithful geyser.

We got tired of waiting for it to erupt and left early. Our next stop was West Thumb which is a giant volcanic caldera that has now filled with water from Lake Yellowstone. There are still some hotspots and volcanic pools there.

After that we had lunch and decided to head back. I still wanted to see Old Faithful erupt so we decided to give it another try. By some miracle we met Yanmei's friend Zhonghua from Berkeley in the parking lot!

And we finally got to see the geyser.

 

We weren't the only ones.

After that we headed back, but we made one more impromptu stop when we spotted some wildlife.

Finally we called it a day. Since we spent most of the day in the park, we didn't make much progress on our trip. We are staying tonight just south of Bozeman, MT.

-David