Enjoying Our Dash

From Belle Fourche, we continued east to Wall, SD. About the only thing in Wall, is Wall Drug. If you have never heard of Wall Drug, you can read about it here walldrug.com . For those that have travelled I-95 on the east coast, approaching Wall was like approaching South of the Border! For 40 miles, there were signs announcing all the great things that you need, just waiting for you when you got to Wall! The best part about Wall, but seemingly a little known one, is that it makes a great base camp to see the numerous National Parks, Monuments, state parks and other areas of interest within an hour or so drive from Wall. The map below shows the options of areas to see around Wall. The Minuteman Missile sites (Delta 9, Delta 1 and the Minuteman Missile Visitor Center) were really cool to see. Looking at the missile still in the ground, was very eerie. This feeling was heightened when we looked at the map that showed where these silos were. The number of them was staggering to m...

By the first part of July, we made it to our farthest point north. Our trip to Lewis & Clark State Park in Epping, North Dakota had beautiful scenery and the campground had some beautiful surroundings. As we headed to South Dakota, it was amazing how flat and wide open the roads were. For much of the time we had the road to ourselves. We did see quite a few Pronghorn along the road as we traveled out of North Dakota. Our first stop in South Dakota was in Belle Fourche. This is designated as the geographic center of the nation by NOAA. We stayed at the Rocky Point Recreation area. The campground was beautiful. Our site backed up right to the water. The views and the sunsets were absolutely gorgeous. While were were in Belle Fouche, we took a ride over to Devils Tower in Wyoming. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower as the first national monument on September 24, 1906. Able to seen from a stretch of 50 miles in any direction, its summit towers at an impres...

If you missed the post for part 1, you can read that here. https://enjoyingourdash.com/?p=1093 After the Mid Geyser Basin and the beautiful grand prismatic spring, we headed toward the Canyon Village. We made a stop at Gibbon Falls, number 3 on our map. The view here was just beautiful. The drop of the Gibbon falls is about 84 feet. Next we continued on our way to Canyon Village stop 4 on our map. The drive was fascinating. We would go from climbing up and down mountains, to being in open plains for as far as we could see. Just as we passed by the visitor center for the Canyon Village area, we saw a pair of vehicles on the side of the road. We didn’t know why they were stopped, but soon realized that they were looking at one of these! We found our way to the North Rim road and the lower falls area. This area is called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone for good reason. The lower falls has a drop of 308 feet, which is almost twice the drop of Niagara Falls. We also stopped...

While staying at Henry’s Lake State Park in east Idaho, we were only about 20 minutes away from the West Yellowstone, Montana and the west entrance of Yellowstone NP. Can’t be that close and not go, and boy are we glad we did. The campground and the views from our site were great, but they were nothing compared to Yellowstone. Below is a map of Yellowstone. The entire north loop is currently closed because of all the flooding and road damage that occurred in early June. We stopped in the visitor center the day before we went and got some great pointers from one of the rangers on areas that we shouldn’t miss. We spent and entire day there and only had time to see the five locations that we numbered on the map. Our first stop was Old Faithful. We saw a lot of bison on the way there. Having just been at the bison ranch and up close and personal with them, we were hoping to see other wild animals. There were cars pulling off the road all over the place to look at th...