Wow we’re really getting close to all 50 states! Just Alaska and of course Washington! The plan has always been to end with Washington, for obvious reasons! To include Oregon without going into Washington was a little tricky, but we did this by going into eastern Oregon from Idaho, spending the night in Baker City, then returning to Idaho to travel north through Canada to Alaska.

We obviously needed to include Oregon on this trip, but we weren’t too worried about how much time we spent there. We go to Oregon quite a bit, some of my favorite people live there! So, the MINI and us will be back! 🙂

We had wanted to check out Baker City’s history, especially with regard to the Oregon Trail. We were able to see and read a few signs, Baker City was an important stop on the trail and a place where the travelers would get supplies and rest up for the rest of their journey. There is an Oregon Trail Interpretive Center that we thought would be fun, but it is closed until 2023 for improvements and renovations. We need to put it on our “return to” list!

We have always heard about Sun Valley but had never been. This was a good opportunity to check it out. We stayed two nights in the town of Ketchum, Idaho, which is right next to Sun Valley Resort.

Ketchum is a nice little town with shops and restaurants and bike rentals! We had wandered around the resort at Sun Valley, which is a beautiful place with lots of green grass and pretty landscaping. And one thing we noticed was a really nice bike path that connected to other bike paths that ran through the resort and through Ketchum too.

After having lunch in Ketchum, we went to one of the bike rentals shops to rent ebikes. We went out for a couple of hours and enjoyed the beautiful scenery from the nice paths!

Our next stop is in Oregon, but to get there we went through Boise! More capitol pictures! We also wanted to stop by the potato hotel, which Larry had looked into booking for us on this trip. After reading it had no bathroom in the potato, he knew I would not want to stay there! 😅

As we left Yellowstone to head to Montana, there were a few more sights we wanted to see, so we stopped amidst snow flurries to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and Yellowstone Falls. Both were beautiful sights, through sun, snow and wind! I have included a few of these pictures even though technically they should have been in the Wyoming post and not Montana. That can happen when I’m trying to be efficient and post too early!

After seeing these sights we headed to Bozeman, Montana where we were going to get an overnight visit with our nephew Kirk and his family. A big thank you to the Daniels family as we had a great time playing games with the boys, having a home cooked meal, visiting, and even going to the World Museum of Mining in Butte! This tour included going down 100 feet into the Orphan Girl Mine.

Butte is an old mining town, with over 100 mines, some of which have been preserved, which is great for learning the history. Copper was what was mined the most, but some silver, gold, manganese and zinc were mined there as well. We also went on a Kawasaki Mule tour of the biggest mines and historic neighborhoods. The last underground mine shut down in the 1980’s, in favor of much safer above ground open pit mining, which is still being done in Butte.

As mentioned above, first a few Yellowstone pictures…

Our first overnight stop in Wyoming was Rawlins, mostly because it was a good halfway point between Denver and Jackson, Wyoming. And on the way from Denver to Rawlins … well there’s another state capital, Cheyenne! We stopped for lunch and were able to take some pictures of the Capitol.

On our way again, we made a few more stops, at Laramie Regional Airport, airport code LAR, which Larry thought was cool, and Buford, Wyoming, the smallest town, population 1. While I was driving, Larry was reading about Rawlins and what to do there. The number 1 attraction in Rawlins? The old Wyoming State Penitentiary! The reviewers said to take the tour, it’s creepy but very interesting and well done. Larry called to see if the tours the next day were full, etc. He found out that we could take a tour at 10:30 am the next morning with about 40 school age children. This did not seem like a very attractive option; joining school kids on a field trip in a creepy prison. We also wanted to be on our way earlier than that to get to Jackson which was our next stop. We did stop by the prison and looked around just the museum part, which fulfilled our creepy quota for the day. We didn’t get to see cell blocks or gas chambers as advertised on the tour. But we saw ropes that held down various prisoners while they were electrocuted, and homemade knives the prisoners made to stab people. We were wondering about the kids on the field trip, like how old they were, etc. But we didn’t stick around to see. We had places to go and things to see!

We have been to Jackson before and really enjoyed the resort feeling of the town. And having another stop before Yellowstone was needed. We got to Jackson in plenty of time to take a walk into town, look at some shops and have dinner. It was a beautiful afternoon and evening.

Next stop was Yellowstone National Park, but first we drove through Grand Teton National Park. We really lucked out with mostly sunny skies, and with there still being so much snow on the mountains, the scenery was spectacular! The Tetons are so rugged!

We arrived at Yellowstone and were a bit surprised by how cold it was, 36° and windy! Old Faithful was true to it’s name though and would spout about every 90 minutes. We were able to watch it erupt a number of times, and it’s just so amazing. The oldest national park, Yellowstone is 150 years old this year. Old Faithful has been doing it’s thing for a very long time!

After leaving our pretty place in Taos, we were going back to the big city – Denver! We were staying right downtown so we definitely had a fun change of pace.

We had ideas of things we wanted to see in Denver, first up, a Rockies baseball game at Coors Field with our nephew Matt and his daughter Dylan. I think we talked as much as watched the game, but it was very nice to catch up with them! Before the game, we walked over to a baseball museum that had cool memorabilia from past stadiums and teams.

The next day we went to Red Rocks Amphitheater, a very picturesque venue we had heard about but had never seen, another transportation museum, and of course another Capitol building! You didn’t think we’d stay in a capital city, and not go to the Capitol, right? Transportation has definitely been a common theme on the trip, old cars are pretty fun to look at. It always strikes me as amazing (like air flight and airplanes) that after the concept gets invented, and it works, it doesn’t take long for people to figure out how to make them more useful, safe, and comfortable.

We rounded out the day with a trip to Costco for more snacks, vitamins, and wine. We did not take pictures of this glorious trip, but I decided to document the behind the scenes activity. And we hadn’t been to Costco since Hawaii, but that does NOT mean that we hadn’t bought wine since Hawaii. 😉

My last post about New Mexico was in early March. We’ve covered a lot of ground since then, and now we’re back. We had planned to visit Taos in February, but when the opportunity to watch Ben play UW baseball in San Diego appeared, we wanted to do that instead. Fortunately we were also able to change our accommodations to May, and it was more on the way at this point in our trip.

Taos is a beautiful little town in northern New Mexico. It’s known for its artists and historic adobe buildings. We have been so lucky to have had near perfect weather. We did some looking at the cute shops in town and also went to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

We have been staying at a small beautiful bed and breakfast here in Taos and the scenery is amazing in our courtyard. We’ve had some time to just hang out in the Adirondack chairs and admire it.

I should start out by saying I have a pretty bad attitude about Oklahoma. I mean, the musical is fun, but the state is not one that I’ve had any real desire to explore.

So when planning the trip, when we had ourselves only going through the panhandle and not spending the night, I was good with that.

Turns out I was right. There was not much to see, just fields of brown grassy stuff. Really this is a state I probably should have suggested we see more of so we could give it a chance to charm us. Maybe someone reading this can give me a good story?

So from the admittedly limited exposure we had, I am not putting it on my “want to return” list. Also, Oklahoma City stole the Sonics, and I’m still holding that grudge. We did buy some water and bananas for our lunch at the grocery store, and the people were very nice. Then we continued on our journey. 😊

Missouri was a side trip, that was in the middle of our time in Lawrence, Kansas. While Jeanene had to check on a few post-op patients, we headed over to Kansas City, Missouri. We hadn’t been in Missouri with the MINI yet, but we had a plan. There is the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in KC that we had read about and wanted to visit.

We headed over to the Missouri side of Kansas City and had a BBQ lunch, then went to the museum. It was an interesting and well-done museum about the black players not being allowed on the white teams, so they made their own teams and leagues, which were quite successful. Most of the Major League Baseball owners were reluctant to put a black player on their team, but there was no denying the talent that should be brought over to play in MLB.

After the museum, we came across the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. We didn’t have time to go through the museum, but we did walk around on the grounds and enjoyed the viewpoint. The very windy viewpoint. 🙂

After leaving the University of Nebraska, we started heading south again to Lawrence, Kansas. We had a short side trip to take when we read about the world’s largest baseball in Muscotah, Kansas.

One thing I had been looking forward to in Lawrence was to see Jeanene and her family. They had moved there 3 years ago. We have stayed in touch, but being able to see them in person was very fun. Jeanene was great showing us around the University of Kansas, and Lawrence. Also making sure we had an opportunity to buy Lawrence t-shirts, because, Lawrence. 😊 We had dinner both nights with the whole family, which was very fun. Homemade margaritas and Mexican food was an added bonus.

On our way to our next stop in Dodge City, Kansas, we went through Topeka. We have been to quite a few state Capitals on this trip, so it was fun to check it out and add another. We also stumbled upon another cool civil rights site, Brown v Board of Education National Historical Site, also in Topeka. It was located in Monroe Elementary school, which was one of 4 segregated black schools in Topeka. In 1951 black student Linda Brown tried to enroll in one of the white schools, when she was denied, she went to Monroe Elementary. But her and her father became plaintiffs in the legal battle over segregation.

In Dodge City we went to the Boot Hill Museum and learned about how buffalo hunters from the east came and killed the buffalos for their hides, which sold for big money. It made Dodge City a booming town, but the population of buffalos went from millions to about 1,000!

We started out Sunday morning (Mother’s Day) from Pierre, South Dakota to Lincoln, Nebraska. It was a bit longer in the car than we thought it would be, but it was good. At least there’s no traffic on the roads we take! 😊

We arrived in Lincoln just in time to have a nice talk with Carly! Sam was on his way to Australia for business so we missed him. Then after dinner we were able to talk with Cameron and Maddie! It was a great Mother’s Day catching up with the kids.

The next morning was as forecasted… sunny, hazy, windy and a record breaking 90°! We feel like we went from winter to summer in one day!

We went to the capitol building and were able to go to the observation deck on the 14th floor, so that was cool. Then we went to the University of Nebraska campus to check that out too!