Travel Day 4 - West Glacier, MT

Because of my plans changing Thursday night, on Friday I was only about 81 miles and 90 minutes from my campsite just outside the Apgar entrance to Glacier National Park. Unfortunately I had to leave by 10 AM Friday morning, and couldn’t check-in to my campsite until 1 PM, so I had some time to kill. Fortunately I happened to stumble upon a scenic turnout with a really nice view and ample parking for a trailer, so I just pulled over and read my book while enjoying this view:

South Dakota Air and Space Museum

Saturday was another day where I really felt pretty awful, so I wasn’t inclined to go do anything. I took an hour or so and planned out what I wanted to do during the rest of my time in Sturgis, and then basically the only other thing I did all day was read a couple more books.

Sunday I wasn’t feeling all that much better, but I did try and go to the South Dakota Air & Space Museum, unfortunately it was closed (for no apparent reason). Fortunately when I went back Monday morning, it was at least partially open, so I got to walk around the planes they had outside. They had probably 20-25 planes and rockets, mostly from the 1950s-1980s. Some of my favorites were this YT-38 Talon, the first supersonic training jet, the Y in the name indicates it was a prototype, and this was the second T-38 Talon ever built:

Mount Rushmore

Wednesday I woke up with a sinus infection that had really kicked in to high gear, so I did nothing but lay around, read a couple books, and cough up a lung all day.

On Thursday, I wasn’t feeling all that much better, but got up and forced myself to start checking off some of the things I wanted to do in the area. First up was Mount Rushmore. Not much to say other than it is hard for me to imagine doing this project with all the technology we have today, let alone how them completed it 80 years ago:

Duluth

On Friday, Matt and I made the hour or so drive down to Duluth. A lot of the iron ore from the Iron Range is taken by railroad down to Duluth and then loaded on to freighters to be shipped across the Great Lakes to other cities that take the iron ore and convert it to steel. The idea was to check out some ships coming and going, but it turned out that it was the weekend of Grandma’s Marathon, which is a pretty big deal for the area as there are more than 20,000 participants. Unfortunately for us this meant road and parking lot closures, so we had to park at Grandma’s restaurant, namesake for the race since they were the only business to sponsor the original race in 1977, go in and have a drink (bummer) and then race around to see everything in the Canal Park area before my truck got towed. One of the very cool things in Duluth is the Aerial Lift Bridge. There was a similar one in Houghton, but the whole time I was there I never saw it lifted. We got lucky enough in Duluth to arrive just in time to see the lift bridge coming down:

Travel Day 1 - Iron River, WI

I had a long enough drive between my last stop in Michigan and my next destination that I wanted to break up the drive over two days. Probably not necessary, but I do find driving with the trailer more fatiguing than just driving my truck by itself, even if it is not as bad as I originally feared. So you may be asking why Iron River? Well, it was about halfway between Houghton, Michigan, and my next stop in Gilbert, Minnesota and had a decently reviewed campground. So I made the little over three hour, 170 mile drive to Iron River. Not that it mattered much since it was just for one night, but I did get lucky and get a camp site right on Iron Lake:

Saturday

Yesterday marked three weeks on the road, and unfortunately I was pretty sad most of the day. Tracy left in the morning, it rained almost all day, and my friends at home were having fun at Dickmann’s without me! It was great to see Tracy and have someone else to explore with, and I am thankful for the help with writing some blog posts, photographing the sights (and me), and having someone around to help make some decisions. Most of the time I enjoy traveling by myself, getting to do whatever I want whenever I want, but it can also get tiring making every decision all the time. Fortunately the skies cleared up last night and I did get to enjoy another great sunset:

Montreal Falls

It’s me again, Tracy! It’s Friday, Friday everyone… well you know the rest of the song!

We started the day pretty lazy - got coffee, wrote a blog post, had breakfast, and finally got going for the day. We made the drive up to Montreal Falls. It was a pretty quick drive until we reached the dirt road that led to the trailhead. I don’t know about you but bumpy dirt roads make me a little sick. But we made it down the road in 30 minutes then jumped on the trail. Something interesting about this trail is you start off on private property. The property is beautiful! It seems unreal someone owns it…partially because it seems too beautiful for one family to own but mostly because I don’t know why someone would want to live in the middle of no where.

Travel Day

Monday was a travel day - moving on from Marquette, a very cool town that I really liked, to Houghton. It was a pretty easy 100.7 mile drive that took a little over two hours, with a 55 MPH speed limit most of the way, so I actually got significantly improved mileage, all the way up to 9.8 MPG! (More on this later, I am a few fill-ups behind on updates here). The camp site at Houghton is pretty awesome, right on a body of water (Portage Lake? or some canal that connects to Lake Superior on both sides of the Keweenaw Peninsula through Portage Lake, which I think makes it more of an island than peninsula?): Each site has a back porch kind of setup, with some of them right on the banks of the canal (that’s what a local bartender called it): The sunsets from the back porch have been pretty incredible: There is a city park attached to the RV park with a pretty intense playground: . There is also a nice walking path along the canal, and it is only about a mile into downtown Houghton.

Climbing Mount Marquette

Yesterday I did the Mount Marquette Loop trail, an approximately 4.5 mile (should have been about 4 miles but the trail wasn’t well marked and didn’t line up with AllTrails so I took the wrong turn twice) loop that takes you around and over Mount Marquette. It was a nice hike through the woods with a good amount of elevation change, but nothing particularly notable other than the thunderstorm that arrived about halfway through the hike. Two weather apps were telling me it was supposed to be sunny all afternoon, but somehow I could tell as soon as I opened my door at the trailhead that it was going to rain. Oh well, it was a good chance to test out my rain gear.

Whitefish Falls

I spent most of the last two days ignoring TLC’s advice. First up was Whitefish Falls, it was the first of three that I went to yesterday. This one wasn’t very well marked, and the trail needed some improvements. I spent a good amount of the walk having to bend over while walking because there were so many low branches. This marker for the trailhead was a little creepy, and I think the whole walk ended up being a little creepy because of it: