NORTH DAKOTA !

 Here's our journey so far. As you can see, we're way behind in the blog entries as we're up in the NE part of Wisconsin - Door Country. 

Going into North Dakota, we saw Theodore Roosevelt National Park, had a terrific hours-long lightning storm, Dakota Zoo in Bismark, went to the Peggy Lee Museum, took some walks, went kayaking and saw great vistas.

Years ago, we went to Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce and Arches in Utah/Arizona. The colors and majesty were spectacular. So, when we came here for the first time, we were underwhelmed. But, this time, we decided to forget all that past and just enjoy it. Sure glad we did because it is gorgeous!

If you're into geology, this place is fabulous!!

Close up of the layers of soil deposited over millions of years...some thin, some thick.

We call ourselves Dr. Kim and Dr. Steve....eminent doctors of geology

Some scary looking clouds arriving but how bad can it be?

We are right in the center here

A closer look. Each of those yellow things are lightning strikes. Notice the 0.1 miles was the closest strike. This went on for 3 hours! Fortunately, it was mostly cloud-to-cloud lightning and it moved north of us so we could watch it from a distance.

We took in the small Dakota Zoo in Bismarck. Cute place. You could go through it in a little over an hour. Of course, we took more than that...until the heat drove us back to our air-conditioned car.

Fleet-footed pronghorns are among the speediest animals in North America. They can run at more than 53 miles an hour, leaving pursuing coyotes and bobcats in the dust. Pronghorns are also great distance runners that can travel for miles at half that speed. We see these all over the west.

Here's four Pronghorns in the wild with one young one.

A couple of Marsupials...very cute

Some male bonding going on here in the TR NP.

Free range is all over North Dakota

What? I'm not going fast enough for you?

Kayaking outside of Bismarck, ND. Clouds are just so neat to look at. I belong to the Cloud Appreciation Society. Check it out sometime. 
https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

Love the colors of the pollen on the water

It seems that we never think the kayak day will be memorable...just another getting-out-on-the-water trip. But....then...a couple of Canada Geese families and a bunch of singles too come into view.

We'll do Peggy Lee Museum and more on the next entry.

Hope you like all of North Dakota. Great state.

The obligatory Katie photo. Every morning ...and I mean every morning, Katie comes over to get scritched on my lap. Then she lays down on my legs to take a nap while I check email and read. Think she likes it?

steve/kim/katie

MONTANA !

Been tardy on posting...sorry about that.

I made the photos extra large. It messes up the Popular Posts column to the left but..hope they view okay for you.


Rather than break up Montana into several blog entries, I'm going to just post a lot of photos with captions. We've seen so many places that's it's difficult to put them all in. So, an overview....

Windmill in the Museum of the Great Northern Plains, a mostly agricultural historical museum in the very small town of Fort Benton, Montana. We stayed about 2 hours poking around.

Also in the museum are these bison (mistakenly called Buffalo) that were in the Smithsonian before being situated here. Notice how the small Bison does not look like the parents yet.

Our RV park outside of Havre (pronounced Have Her), Montana. LOTS of room around us...and some gorgeous sunsets.

Took our kayak out for a couple of hours in the local reservoir...pulled up along the shore for some lunch. The lake is like glass. 

This is just one of the houses along the side of the reservoir. The water is waaaay down because a small dam broke upstream so the water has been stopped from coming down into here. You can see how the ladder should be in the water...not that I would want to come down that ladder!

Had some terrific clouds come over us in Havre.

We put the cockpit top on to protect the kayak from the rain and Katie decided she likes it here...zzzzzz.

Bear Paw Lake for some more kayaking. Isn't this a gorgeous spot?

Bear Paw Lake from above...what scenic surrounding hills...so green this time of year.

One of our favorite birds because of it's calls. Red-breasted Blackbird (male). The female is all brown and this red you see is when they're in mating season. Trying to look their best to attractive the female. Nothing every changes.

A couple of white pelicans. They look so ungainly in the water but, when they fly, they soar and are magnificent.

Canada Geese (it's Canada Geese, not Canadian Geese). Mom up front and Dad in the back.

Our spot in Glasgow, Montana for a couple of nights. Went to an old movie house where we saw Shrek on the big screen for $2 each! 

One afternoon we went to the Busted Knuckle bar to try out the local brews. Place used to be owned by a mechanic who got tired of...you guessed it...busting his knuckles fixing cars so....why not open a brew pub? Good choice by our taste buds. Nice beers.

This is a Sears Roebuck's house. You bought it out of a catalog...remember catalogs?...then, it was shipped to you in pieces and you put it all together yourself! Hopefully with some friends and family. Pretty cool.

Inside one of the many, many rooms in this local museum in Glasgow. This happened to be full of taxidermist animals and bar paraphernalia. Sometimes these museums are too much to take in in one visit. We get overwhelmed.

When we're allowed to Katie in with us, I put here in this front-facing pouch. She loves it, as you can imaging...getting carried all over the place.

This is Montana. Personally, I never get tired of the wide open spaces. I could drive for hours like this (and usually do!) and never get bored. It's so peaceful.

Well, I hope you like this one...kinda different, but a small overview of some of our stops.

Keep in touch!

kim/katie/steve

Glacier National Park, Montana

We've been to Glacier National Park at least four times now (not bragging). This time we took our new kayak early, early in the morning on Lake McDonald. You will see, from the photos, that is was a bit colder than we expected, but it was still magnificent.

ready to launch....

Katie loves being out on the water with us!

You'll have to look very closely to see the mom and her babies...a few of them like to jump on her back while she swims. We watched them for about 15 minutes.

Isn't that a gorgeous view !!??

Brrrrr...both Katie and Kim are all bundled up from the brisk morning wind.

On our way back to the dock...in the middle of the lake looking north. The fog has lifted.

We took a short drive to a bridge where the river flows out of the lake...

okay...caption...river flowing out of the lake

...and saw these two deer across the bridge. The ranger told us they're quite used to us two-legged creatures !

After about 10 minutes, they leisurely headed off into the forest.

One last view of the lake....

If you're interested in a video of this gorgeous lake....

https://youtu.be/ndAenc7cZI4


steve/kim/katie

6/30/2020

Gorgeous Montana Countryside

We left Hungry Horse, Montana (outside of West Glacier NP) the other day and decided to go the back roads south to Helena, Montana. Little did we know that we would come across vintage western United States beauty. You can see why they call Montana "Big Sky Country".

Heading east through the Glacier NP and the Rocky Mountains.

Here's our route. You can see the Rocky Mountain range running south to north.

It is so difficult to photograph a bird flying above but Kim got this Bald Eagle just right.

Now...onto the Montana vistas....

Road, roads, roads

See the cloudburst in the horizon?

And...more roads

We only drove 55 mph to enjoy the vistas

Love how the clouds parallel the mountain range in front.

The roads and scenery was like this for 75 miles...never got tired of it.

A gathering of the horses. We saw lots of them along the way. Wonderful animals.

...and, of course, our obligatory Katie photo...

...still trying out combinations for Katie on the kayak.

Short one this time...sure is hard to pick only a few photos...there are so many. Plus, the photos can only convey so much. You really have to be there to fully appreciate the beauty.

steve/kim/katie