Sometimes You Just Can't Plan Everything

June 17 - Days like today are why I told people I just couldn't plan too much. Things come up, plans change.

Last night I made the call to camp 60 miles earlier then I had intended for 2 main reasons: they weren't forecasting tornadoes (in fact, they didn't even have any wind) and that really cool little establishment called 1880 Town. It was a solid call. Waking up this morning I was eager to get an early start on the day because if we wanted to make it to Bozeman by tonight, we had 641 miles to cover including a stop at 1880 Town and Mount Rushmore.  First, I had a decision to make, make our breakfast, or have the KOA make a nice breakfast for us. I shamefully took the latter.

We made our way the whopping .2 miles to 1880 Town. This place was super cool. If you ever happen to find yourself cruising I90 with kids, pull over and spend an hour (we could have spent several hours but flew through the place) checking this place out and pretending this was your life. It's crazy to see the existence of 1880 and then take a picture with my phone and send it 1700 miles in a text to my husband.

Sierra seemed especially in to 1880 Town after her class had done a week studying the colonial days and walking around Amherst seeing what life was like. Lots of pictures of this place....

Scrub-a-dub

Chillin' at the saloon

Time for a little checkers

Sorry girls, I don't have the key

Working at the hotel

I swear this wasn't staged

Where 1880 and 2015 meet

Who will save this damsel in distress?

Sierra especially thought of her 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Bellipanni as we walked around. She thinks they should come here next year for Colonial Days.

 I really could have posted the 30+ photos I took here but figured I'd save you. The owners have painstakingly reimagined what life looked like with original artifacts, some original buildings, and a lot of movie set items from Dances With Wolves.

Next stop was Mount Rushmore, 230 miles away. It didn't seem like it should be a challenging task, I mean, we've already covered 1000 miles. There were a few things I really didn't want to have to deal with on this trip, and one of them chose this precise moment to rear it's ugly head. A migraine. It came on fast and furious and by the time we got 3 miles away from Mount Rushmore I was desperate for a little privacy because I knew I was going to be sick. The town was flooded with tourists getting ice cream, buying rocks and taking pictures. I needed to find a quiet place, fast. We pulled in to a hotel that had an open back lot and this was where we called home for the next 2 hours as my migraine took over my body and ceased any normal human behavior. At this moment, I have never been as grateful for car dvd players and while the girls were amazingly complacent during my outage, I knew inevitably they'd have to go to the bathroom and wondered how we'd make this work (when I get my migraines I can't talk for much longer then 5 minutes without being sick). As quick as this migraine came on, it did it's damage and moved on, which is an anomaly for me as they usually last at least 12 hours.

Onward we must go! At the first sign that I was coming around we drove the final 3 miles to mighty Mount Rushmore. I'm not sure what to say about this masterpiece. I've been once before on one of my trips back to school and didn't think I'd be back, but this trip isn't about me. The engineering aspect of it is impressive. That's really all I have to say about that.

At this point, we're about 3-4 hours later then I "planned" to get to Bozeman, MT (thank you migraine) to stay with my dear friend from college Dana and her family. I wasn't sure I was going to pull it off with still 400+ miles to go. Montana threw it's big winds and heavy rain as we passed through the southeastern part of the state.

Trying to capture the beauty of the clear sky to the left, the impending storm on the right and contrasting yellow flowers along the road. Don't worry, it was a long, straight, empty highway.

I had naively thought this morning that we would be in Bozeman for dinner and hadn't planned anything. Once we hit 212, the only open for business building we'd find was a saloon. Perhaps not super appropriate for dinner.

What I learned today: don't just follow the gps. Take a look at a map and know the roads and what you can expect before you're stranded with no food (or gas, which didn't happen, but very well could have). The bottom line, we made it to Bozeman. We pulled in around 11:30pm and I flopped. It was a long, long day and I was super thankful that I had a bed to sleep in this night.