June 29 & 30

Drove to the Lake of the Ozarks area in MO to rest a day before starting our trip West.  We saw a number of Amish on the highway in IA and MO, and saw a couple in the Hardee’s restaurant we stopped at for lunch. 

We had hoped to stay at a cabin on the Lake of the Ozarks, but found a motel in a resort area near Truman Lake – a few miles from Warsaw, MO and a few more miles from the Lake of the Ozarks.

June 28

Not much to report today.  We drove south and a little west to Altona, Iowa just east of Des Moines.   We had downloaded the audio book of Dan Brown’s new novel – Inferno.  Listening to this and a number of lectures made time pass quickly.

June 26 & 27

On to Colfax Wisconsin to visit with Dave & Sue Haake.  Colfax is at little NW of Eau Claire which is around an hour’s drive east of Minneapolis / St Paul.  We greatly enjoyed Sue’s cooking and conversations with Dave and Sue.  Much time was spent going through papers and pictures of family history.  Rob spent hours using his portable scanner!

These four pictures taken by Linda are for brother Wayne.  Dave had some WWII Army Air Corp items that had been our Uncle Bob's.

 

 



June 25

We drove on east through green fields and long straight roads in South Dakota to the small town of Vermillion. It’s on near the Missouri River – which defines the northern border of Nebraska.  We spent that night with Marianne, a cousin of Rob’s.  Her home since 1948 is filled with memories.  We enjoyed a dinner out with Marianne, her son & his family.  We enjoyed lots of good food and great conversation.

June 24

We returned to Mt Rushmore in the morning for more photos and the (for us) mandatory browse in the bookstore. 







Then we proceeded to the Crazy Horse Monument about 12 miles away.  This monument is very impressive as well.  Just the face and a start of the arm are done and the head alone is larger than all of Mt Rushmore! 







This is all the work of one man and his family, with no government help. There is a large, beautiful complex, with a museum, restaurant, gift shop and local Indian crafters with jewelry or other crafts for sale.
 

June 23

A special day!  The weather and the scenery were magnificent through Montana and the NE corner of Wyoming, but the highlight of the day was seeing Mt Rushmore at night.  We left Bozeman at 8:30 AM and pushed to arrive at Mt Rushmore at 9:00 PM – minutes before their last evening ceremony.  They light the four presidents up with spotlights at the last of the ceremony and the audience sings the National Anthem—very impressive.

June 22

The following entry was written on June 22nd, but because of a Windows Update to Internet Explorer that has prevented us from using WiFi for the last two days, it is not until today June 24 that we are able to post to our blog.  Pictures will added later.

From Spokane we drove through the Coeur d'Alene Idaho area on I-90 – beautiful.  We then drove into Montana.  Our previous trips thru Montana have been on a train during the night, so we greatly enjoyed the scenery – reminded us of Germany.  We appreciated not having rain until we got close to Bozeman – our second overnight stop.

We packed for seven days of clothes – figuring we’d only need to do laundry twice.  The downside of this decision is the number of bags we are moving from car to room and back.  No doubt we will refine our system a number of times.

June 21

Happy 1^st day  of summer!  We left home at 9:30 AM under cloudy skies & arrived in Spokane about 8:00PM.  The cloudy skies became mostly sunny by the time we reached Portland & continued mostly sunny all day.  Traffic was light for the 1^st day of summer.  Even though we didn’t have time for more than one photo, we enjoyed our first day.