Cross-Country Drive/Fly June 18 - July 3, 2010

We left early on a Friday morning and drove through Washington, northern Idaho and finally settled in Butte, MT, 700 miles from home on our first day of driving. The next day we drove 650 miles and found ourselves in Bismarck, ND. It didn't take quite as long since the speed limit is 75 mph through Big Sky and Prairie country. After a relatively short drive, we stayed in Minnesota visiting Dan's family for several days.

The fly part of the trip was from Minneapolis to Albany where we spent several days with Nancy's family. On the way back to Minneapolis, our 6 a.m. flight left Albany 55 minutes late and we had only 5 minutes (in theory) to make a connection in Detroit. What fun it was to run from Gate 67 to Gate 15 carrying luggage. But we made it! It felt really good to get back to our car, which was waiting for us in Minneapolis.

The third leg of the trip took us through, SD, WY, and Idaho before we got back to Oregon. Along the way we did "touristy" stuff in western South Dakota, which is very nice. We found Rapid City to be almost as nice as Bend. Mt Rushmore and Yellowstone had all kinds of tourists, but they were both fun to see. However, Bend really looked good when we got there; but maybe not quite as good as it did two and a half years ago when we drove across the country to move here.

The photos in the slide show are essentially in chronological order and capture what I wrote above.