Doing it live [from the Wild Wild West]
July 24–26
Well I’ve certainly been putting the “road” in “road trip” [cue laugh sound track]. Since leaving Corrie’s house we’ve put in around 1500 miles, in just three days. My car is a CHAMP. He’s even been handling rough terrain. While I’ve been speeding through the west, let me get you up to speed on what I’ve been up to the past couple of days! (Don’t worry I’m done)

July 24: I left pretty early from Pullman, WA, and went back through Idaho (I know, I just can’t get enough!) and all the way to Kalispell, MT, where I picked up my mother. On the way I passed the immense Flathead Lake. So many of the lakes out here are so, so blue. We made our way about 20 miles to the west entrance of Glacier National Park.

We spent most of the day going from the west end of the park to the east end on the 50 mile long “Going-to-the-Sun” road. It weaves in and out of the mountains, sometimes going straight through, peaking at about 6500 feet. We saw snow caps, waterfalls, streams, lakes, big mountains, littler mountains, some cows on the side of the road, and lots and lots of trees!
While the drive was the main attraction, we did manage to explore the “Trail of the Cedars” and the historic McDonald Lodge. A whirlwind afternoon and evening, but a very fun one indeed. We had a little trouble finding a place to stay (it’s not super populated out there), but eventually found shelter for the night at a casino in Browning, Montana. I spent $2 and won $0.32 so I’d call the stay a win.








July 25: We drove from Browning, Montana, to Dickinson, North Dakota. The prettiest parts, to be honest, were as soon as we crossed the border into North Dakota. We passed through the historic town of Medora, and through the Badlands, stopping at the Painted Canyon. Apparently Theodore Roosevelt used to frequent Medora, even stating that he would not have been president if not for his time in North Dakota. It was a pretty small town, but had a very nice touristy appeal to it. The real treat, however, was at the Painted Canyon. We had a great view at dusk of the red and grey and yellow rocks of the canyon in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. There wasn’t much wildlife until we walked back into the parking lot and a man directed us to the bison grazing in the lot! He was completely undisturbed by the people nearby taking pictures, and even looked up as we passed by in our car. And no, my mom would not let me pet it.







We had a great night’s stay, in a very random chain of events. On Sunday, I met Jessi, who’s dating Travis, who came to dinner, who asked about my trip, when I said I was going through North Dakota, to which he responded that he’s from North Dakota, and why don’t we stay there. Fast forward to tonight, and we had a great place to stay! Doug King very generously welcomed us into his home, and provided us with company and snacks for the road. Plus, we got to play with his 1 year old Bichon mix puppy named Skittles. According to Doug, she watched for us out the window, and now we are part of “Skittles’ Pack.”
July 26: The title of today should be Girls Gone Wild by the amount of crazy adventures we had! First we talked to some hunky men [who changed my oil at Jiffy Lube], took a spontaneous detour to a lake [next to a dried up spring], and even picked up a few passengers along the way [who splattered on our windshield because apparently there are a ton of butterflies in North Dakota]. If the sarcasm isn’t apparent, it’s been a pretty tame day. Tame, but productive. We needed to cover about 800 miles, which we did. We drove from Dickinson, ND (about 1.5 hours west of Bismarck), through Minnesota, and into Madison, Wisconsin. And we even had time to stop for lunch at Dawson’s Cafe in Dawson, North Dakota. The owners were quite eccentric, having us compare figures of speech and telling me that I could definitely take a job in Dawson, as long as I didn’t care about making much money. Also from what I could tell, most people there were transplants. Not sure if that is a Dawson thing or a North Dakota thing.
Also, I know Kristine is wondering, my mom and I started (and finished) The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher, and are now on to My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Still have to get back to VA so I’m taking any last minute suggestions.
Again, some observations from the past three days:
- I didn’t think I could skip stones, but apparently I can! I did it several times at Glacier, sometimes even three skips in a row! You can ask my mother if you don’t believe me. Also, if you don’t think this is big news you can leave now because this is huge for me.
- We were at the Continental Divide at Logan Pass in Glacier. Cool!
- Lots of towns with a small population. Example: “Rudyard, MT. A town of 596 nice people and one sore old thumb!”
- Huckleberries and cherries are a thing out here in Montana. Mom and I had huckleberry shakes, her for the first time, and me for the second 😎
- Seeing tractors on the road is normal out here. So is seeing oversized tractors. And oversized trucks. Today we were lucky enough to witness two oversized trucks passing each other on the highway… they both had to go into the shoulder, and I was waiting for a collision.
- There’s been a lot of road work, including when I had to come to a dead stop because part of a truck had flown off into the lane next to it… Aka any driver’s biggest fear when passing a truck.
- We saw a Hungarian Partidge, rare to see and native to North Dakota. Not to be confused with the popularly seen pheasant.
- I passed a dog riding an ATV with his owner. I just thought this was funny.
- In Montana we got to use an old fashioned gas pump. You had to zero it out with a lever before you pumped it. And yes, of course we figured that out on the first try, duh! No we didn’t ask for help [thank you Jim the owner].

- We saw a large hill on the side of the road that was advertising for… something. They advertised by posing large synthetic dinosaurs and other assorted animals on the hill in the hopes (I guess) that you’d be intrigued enough to pull off the road. My mother called it “artistic expression.”
- Speaking of wildlife, we have seen a lot of prairie dogs (or whatever their cousin is out here). I’m bringing one home for Olivia.
- Scenery: cows, hills, trees, cows, a few sheep, billboards, some plateaued mountains, cows, horses, grains, fields, cows
- And sadly: If you go to Jiffy Lube, they might restart your trip on your odometer, even if you’ve been tracking your miles since you left home three weeks ago… RIP my miles:(
I don’t think I’m sad that the trip is coming to an end. I still am exploring and seeing places I haven’t been to before. Plus, I think that when we hit the final stretch to Virginia all I’ll be thinking is “get me to my bedddd.” It’s been an awesome experience so far, and I still have a few days left. We’ll be picking up Thaddeus from the airport tomorrow morning then have the rest of that day and the next to #tear #it #up in Chicago! Again, if anyone has any suggestions, please let us know before we get into the city!
One final thought: this has been very unique experience in a lot of ways, and I know my friends and family have enjoyed following along via this blog. If anyone has any questions that they feel like they want answered on this forum (it can be anonymous don’t worry), please send them to me!! I can never have too much inspiration to write. It can be anything, describing a day, a ranking of states so far, where the best hotel has been, which state has the worst drivers, etc. I will try to do a post like that to recap and wrap up, but would love to know what people want to hear about!
Cheers from Madison, Wisconsin!
Catherine (and Deb)
