Pandemic Diaries - Year 3 - Travel across country – New Jersey to Washington

7 June 2023

We originally planned three weeks to drive across the US, but were a bit delayed with the little car accident and the subsequent repairs.  We ended up with two weeks to drive some 2900+ miles, so we knew we needed to average at least 200 miles per day to get to Washington in time for our pre-scheduled appointments.  A rushed trip, but better than nothing.

 

The map at the end shows our route, a different color for each day of the trip.  A quick summary is below.  And the photos are pretty much all from South Dakota, because they had interesting rest areas.  Also, I think bison are really cute and it’s always thrilling to see them!  There are some prairie dogs in the photos, but they show up as light beige rocks or blobs since I do keep my distance from large animals like bison.

 

17 May – Linwood NJ to Breezewood PA – 256 miles

 

This was our first day using our GPS device.  It attaches to the windshield using a suction cup, and it fell off two or three times during the day.  When whoever was navigator would pick it up, it seemed to reset itself, or maybe just confused itself.  At any rate, twice it told us to exit off the highway, then it had us loop around in a giant square, and get back on the highway.  We finally learned to add some liquid (water or saliva) to keep it on the windshield.  We also learned to give it some remote address in a location several states away, so it would keep us on the highway and not keep taking us off the main interstates!

 

18 May – Breezewood PA to Kent OH – 218 miles

Breezewood was a cute little town of some 1400 or so people.  Tiny, but a major intersection of highways, so huge semis went rumbling down the main streets of town.

 

Kent, of course, is the site of the shooting of four college students by the National Guard in 1970.  Richard and I both remembered the incident, and it was just a very sobering visit for both of us.

 

19 May – Kent OH to Angola IN – 204 miles

 

Angola was a bit odd.  Four of the five hotels/motels in town were in varying stages of reconstruction or renovation.  One was totally closed, one had workers carrying around pulled up carpeting, one had buzz saws going in the lobby full of plaster dust.  We gave up and went to the no construction hotel, and had a quiet night.  I should add that the afternoon turned rainy, so we left the interstate a bit early, planning to find a hotel.  We spent an hour driving around town, in the rain, before we found a place.

 

20 May – Angola IN to Elgin IL – 207 miles

 

We had a quick trip to Michigan because it was only about five miles away.  Our route took us across Indiana on I-76 and I-80, then we were on I-294 which skirts around Chicago and heads northward.  Traffic around Chicago was quite heavy, partly because it’s a huge city, partly because there was so much road construction along this route.  So, we were slowed down more than we’d hoped.  But we were very thankful for Greta the Garmin, who guided us on a rather confusing route!

 

Apparently Indiana and Michigan are on Eastern Daylight Time during the summer, while Illinois is on Central Daylight time.  So, by our usual afternoon time (4:30 or so), we started looking for a hotel.  We found a place and settled in.  And then realized oh, it’s only 3:30 here.  We could have driven another hour!

 

Oh well.

21 May – Elgin IL to Onalaska/La Crosse WI – 243 miles

 

We had a fairly normal day for a change.  Greta Garmin, the GPS device, stayed on the windshield.  She has been guiding us to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and becomes quite insistent when we go to a town for lunch, or pull off the interstate to find a hotel for the night.  We managed to stumble on our current hotel chain, pure luck and nothing else.  But member rates, senior discounts, and quiet rooms keep us going with this chain of hotels. 

 

22 May – Onalaska WI to Brandon SD – 287 miles

 

We crossed the St Croix river today, which constitutes the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota.  The water looked quite high, no river banks to be seen, just islands of trees in a river that looked more like a huge lake.  We merrily drove along, listening to the radio.  One newscaster talked about second spring floods in St Paul, with several streets still closed.  That decided it, we weren’t driving north to visit my sister, who lives about an hour north of Minneapolis.  Richard and I experienced two hurricanes before we became a couple.  We were married during a week of record-breaking floods due to a stalled out storm system.  We seem to attract water, or maybe just weather events.  So no, with evidence of two regions of moderate flooding, we’ll just stay on the high plains.

 

We saw a mileage sign for the town of Blue Earth, and it sounded like a perfect stop for lunch.  Turned out to be a find, because we saw The Farmer’s Daughters Kitchen, a perfect place for lunch!  Really good food, friendly staff, and a worth the stop!

 

We both were a bit full from lunch, so my dinner was something from the vending machine (turkey, cheese, and crackers), and an orange.  Richard wanted something chocolate, so I put in money and pushed the buttons for the big chocolate chip cookie.  The big spiral wire holding the items in place spun and twisted, but the cookie package was caught on the end so nothing came out.  The machine refunded the money.  I figured okay, I'll try again, the package should come out this time.  Put the money in, and voila, that cookie package came loose and tumbled down.  But the wire spiral kept turning, and a second cookie package came down!  What a bonus!

 

23 May – Brandon SD to Murdo SD – 215 miles

 

Just outside Sioux Falls, we saw a herd of bison from the highway!  They were grazing on some grassy hills, maybe fenced in, maybe not.  Didn’t look like they would wander onto the highway – just hanging out, being bison.  Thrilling!

 

The other highlight was that we stopped at a gas station/snack bar, which had a tiny “casino.”  It was more like a dark room with maybe eight or ten slot machines.  I figured sure, why not – so I put a $20 in a “buffalo” machine, and walked away with $30.  Another highlight!

 

Other than that, it wasn’t an exciting day.  We finally decided to go to the next sizeable town, find a place, call it a day.  However, we’re more than halfway to our final destination, so that’s another plus for the day!

 

Turns out our sizeable town, Murdo, has a population of about 450 people, according to the woman who runs our motel!  TINY!  Not sizeable, flat out tiny!

 

24 May – Murdo SD to Sundance WY – 262 miles (by way of Hwy 240 through the Badlands National Park) – though only 212 miles closer to our final destination

 

We drove westward, and passed a sign saying "you are now in Mountain Time."  Suddenly we had an extra hour in our day!  So we took about an hour side route to drive through the Badlands National Park.  This is one of those unique and other worldly places that truly looks as if we’re driving around another planet!  Really!  Amazing geological formations, with some grasslands between all the soaring rocky pyramids and spires.  These rock formations were layers of colors ranging from dark grey to beige to terra cotta reddish orange, and from yellow ochre to an earthy purple.  Each color represents a different geologic era, with different layers of rock forming from the climactic and flora/fauna changes.  And then tectonic plates pushed up the rock, water and wind eroded and weathered the shapes, and they are still changing to this day. 

 

Humans inhabited this seemingly inhospitable region for more than 11,000 years; the first people here hunted mammoths.  Eventually, the Lakota (or Sioux) people lived in this area, hunting bison.  As European settlers moved west, the Lakota were displaced, although there are now parts of the Badlands that have been returned to the Lakota nation.

 

As we drove around, I started seeing round sandy patches in the grassy areas, and realized those are prairie dog homes or towns, with all the sandy soil they dig out when making their burrows!  These were my first prairie dogs!  They definitely look rodenty, sort of like large and very chubby blond squirrels.  Really, they’re sort of a golden beige color, almost the same color as the sandy soil they dig up.  They also make sort of chirping noises, first sounding like birds and then almost similar to little yipping dogs!  They didn’t seem very afraid of us, just standing outside their burrows and watching people watching them. 

 

Finally, all the way at the very end we found a small herd of bison, about twenty-five adult bison, just nibbling grass or lolling in the warm sunlight!  Some would flop over onto their backs and roll around in the dust, perhaps scratching an itchy shoulder, or maybe just enjoying the warmth.

 

It was such a treat to do something touristy, rather than driving and driving much of the day!  Even if it was only an hour doing something other than driving.

 

Tonight we're in Sundance, Wyoming, population 1450ish or so - this is the town where the Sundance Kid robbed the first bank in 1887.  We drove by the bank after dinner.  He later joined Butch Cassidy and the Hole in the Wall Gang, and became known as the Sundance Kid!  The group started the longest crime spree in American outlaw history!!!

 

What an exciting day!  We’ve missed days like this, given the delay to this trip.  So much fun to enjoy wherever we happen to be!

 

25 May – Sundance WY to Hardin MT – 247 miles

 

Population 3685 people.  After Sundance, this was a big town, but not too much happening.

 

 

26 May – Hardin, MT to Butte, MT – 272 miles

 

Continental Divide!  As in we drove up up up, to almost 7000 feet elevation.  And then we drove down down down.  Always exciting to cross the continental divide, because that feels like we’re 75% of the way to the west coast.

 

27 May – Butte MT to Wallace ID – 235 miles

 

Another time zone, so we’re finally on Pacific Daylight Time.  We drove through the mountain pass (I guess through the Rockies), and then along the long twisting road full of switchbacks as we head downhill on the other side.  We encountered some very heavy rain, so heavy Richard insisted we pull off the road.  At that point, there weren’t any real exits nor rest areas, but I found a “fishing access” road and pulled off the interstate.  I parked on the uphill side of the road beyond the river, just in case the rain was enough to cause a flash flood – I thought we might need to make a hasty exit!

 

We spent the night in Wallace, a cute 1880 silver mining town, very picturesque, nestled in towering hills and fog-filled valleys.  Old buildings, trendy cafés, and traditional taverns.  We stayed at the Stardust Motel, a very quirky and colorful place – if you make it to Wallace, stay here!

 

28 May – Wallace, ID to Yakima, WA – 283 miles

 

Loooong drive including a bridge across the Columbia River!  It’s a long and winding road from the panhandle of Idaho into the flat western part of the state, and then on into Washington.  One of those serpentine and downhill roads as we wind down from the mountains (and maybe the Colorado Plateau, or something).  Pretty, but whoever is driving basically concentrates on that and not the scenery.

 

We stayed two days at our chain hotel, comfortable and affordable.  Put some things in our storage unit, picked up several months of mail and medications from my brother.  We also had dinner with him, and his wife.  Sometimes this is our once a year family time, though occasionally we see them a second time before we head onward. 

 

30 May – Yakima, WA to Ferndale, WA – 234 miles

 

We drove on the interstate through Snoqualmie Pass, which is in the midst of the Cascade Mountains.  It’s always cold up there, but it was bright and sunny and gorgeous.  Rarely have we seen such a pretty day up there, where the majestic mountains stand bold and rocky, with occasional gleaming beds of snow and ice.  One of my favorite parts of the drive.

 

We spent two nights at the casino hotel in Ferndale, just north of Bellingham (our home base).  We’ve never stayed here, and it’s quite a comfy hotel.  We had a free night from our online hotel website, so we thought it would be nice to just take a break from travel and relax.

 

June 1 – Move into rental house – I’ll blog about our house separately, but it exceeds expectations!  SUCH a pretty location for our summer!!!