The morning was frigid but the skies were clear. Our first couple hours of driving were spent navigating around the southwest side of Chicago until we got to I-90. From that point, the way back to Seattle was all interstate; we’d be on I-90 or I-94 for the rest of our trip. We stopped for a late lunch and to stretch our legs in Madison, Wisconsin. We found a cute little Asian place on State Street named Chin’s Asia Fresh and split a plate of noodles. After lunch, we walked a bit before deciding we were freezing and it was time to be on our way. The rest of the day passed uneventfully and we spent the night in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Tuesday, the weather continued to hold clear and very cold – good weather for driving with the heat blowing full blast. It was an exciting day – we made it to North Dakota, which for each of us was the last state that we hadn’t been in before. Brian had claimed when we got to Vermont that he had seen all 50 states, but in talking to his father over the holidays, he’d determined that he hadn’t actually ever been to North Dakota. There’s not a whole lot of scenery driving across most of North Dakota in the winter. It was pretty flat and windy. Nonetheless, we were excited to complete our lifetime tour of the U.S.
Since Tuesday was a short day of driving, we stopped for several hours in Bismarck. Our first stop was the North Dakota Heritage Center. The Heritage Center is a sizeable (and free) look at North Dakota’s history, from the Cretaceous Period through the early 1900s. Some of the most interesting exhibits were about the various Indian tribes who once inhabited North Dakota and their way of life as well as the exhibits depicting life for the early European settlers. The museum was light on exhibit cases and instead had numerous full-scale recreations of scenes from various eras. It was quite fascinating.
We’d worked up an appetite while at the museum, so we asked at the front desk where we’d find restaurants nearby. We were excited to discover a BW-3. We got our last good wing fix for a while (Seattle doesn’t have any great wing places like BW-3) and eventually continued on our way to Dickinson, where we planned to stop for the night.
We choose Dickinson because it is conveniently located just east of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Since the park is practically on the highway, we figured we’d stop for one last national park visit of our trip. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for the next day didn’t look as nice as the previous couple of days had been.
The next morning, we were up bright and early and the skies still looked good, so we decided to chance it and stop at the park despite the ominous forecast. We got to the visitors center in the South Unit of the park just as it was opening. The place was deserted except for a couple of rangers who pointed us to the 13-miles of the south scenic drive that was open.
The best light of the morning was while we were still on the highway, but as we drove along the scenic loop, the sky still had hints of pink.
Here’s Sarah, fiddling with her camera and freezing:
We saw lots of buffalo along the drive.
And some more snow-covered badlands:
There was also a field full of elk.
This bird was perched by the road. We couldn’t identify it, but had fun watching for the few minutes he stuck around.
Near the end, we saw more elk just barely visible on a hill. It took a lot of zoom to tell them from the trees.
Though much of the park was closed, it was fun to experience it in the winter. We saw a grand total of two other cars our entire time there, which is practically unheard of for a national park. The scenery was good and the wildlife was abundant. Grudgingly, we left the park behind and continued west.
Shortly, we cross the border into Montana. At that point, the weather deteriorated rapidly, which was particularly unfortunate since we still had a long way to go for the day. The wind was howling and snow was blowing – not much fun for driving. It definitely made for slow going. Eventually, visibility improved but the roads remained snowy for the rest of our trip into Missoula. The mountains in Montana are stunning in the winter, but you don’t really want to be driving through them during or right after a snow storm.
It was early evening by the time we finally reached Missoula and we were both beat. We checked into the accommodations for the night, which were significantly nicer than the unexciting cheap chain motels we’d been in the previous couple of nights. We were happy to discover that there was a MacKenzie River Pizza place just a few blocks away. We’d eaten at a MacKenzie River Pizza in Bozeman earlier in the year and had hoped to stop there on the way to Missoula. The weather had deterred us though and we’d continued driving straight through to Missoula.
Refueled with pizza, we headed back to the motel where we discovered that massive storms and flooding had turned Seattle in to a virtual island. Of all the aspects of our trip back across the northern U.S. in the middle of the winter, Washington had not been the part we were concerned about. Eventually, we decided that we’d better get some sleep and we’d check conditions again in the morning and figure out what to do then.
The next morning, all reports were that both east-west passes were still closed due to flooding, mudslides, and avalanches. Nobody seemed sure of exactly when they’d reopen. We decided that we should cover some ground early in the day though, in the hopes that at least one pass would open in the afternoon.
We got to Spokane in the late morning and found a Starbucks so we could check the conditions. The passes were still closed, so we spent a couple hours hanging out there then went to Applebees for lunch to use a gift card we had. Still unable to get home, we decided to go shop the REI super-clearance sale. That was good fun – we found a couple of new three-person tents and some other random stuff. Periodically, Sarah would call the traffic hotline and hear that the passes were still closed. We’d driven 1750 miles from Chicago and were now stuck in Spokane with a mere 250 miles to go, over 100 miles of which was closed highway.
Eventually, we decided to get a place to stay in Spokane for the night. When we arrived at the motel and checked in, we discovered Highway 2, over Stevens Pass, had reopened a couple of hours earlier. We were annoyed that the website had been updated but the phone message hadn’t, though it was probably for the best anyway because it would have been quite late by the time we made it back to Seattle if we’d left when the pass opened.
The next morning, we got up around 4 AM, hoping to beat the rush of traffic we expected over the pass. With both passes closed since Tuesday, it seemed like traffic could be a nightmare. Surprisingly enough, traffic was good until we hit the Monroe area, where it came to a grinding halt. It took us an hour just to get through Monroe. Ugh.
Finally, we arrived back home in Seattle. Our fifteen months on the road was at an end. All in all, we drove 38,648 miles, making nearly two complete loops around the country. We saw 32 National Parks, 14 National Monuments, 44 states, and countless National Forests and lands of assorted other “national” designations. What an amazing adventure it was!
