Mississippi to Montana Road Trip

My flat horizons of sea and sky on Easter Island gave way to the mountains in Montana for just a few hours and then were replaced again by over 2,000 miles of flat cornfields between Mississippi and Montana.

36 hours after I landed in Bozeman from Easter Island I took off again from the same airport to Memphis, TN, with a connection in Minneapolis--it'll make since in a moment why I mention that.  

Lena was starting the 5,000 mile journey to Alaska so I joined her on the first half back to Montana.  To continue the rushing around, she gave me a quick tour of the all-too-hot-and-humid Memphis and then a quick jaunt 30 minutes south to Hernando, Mississippi to pack the car, nap for a few hours and then we were on the road about 13 hours after I got there.  After a 14-hour drive we got to Minneapolis (a 1.5 hour flight from Memphis) to visit her sister.  With almost half our driving done we could breathe for a bit.   We had a wonderfully relaxing day playing corn hole in the yard and took a boat ride across Lake Minnetonka for dinner.   

As many of the best laid plans go the trip didn't go exactly as we had planned.  The slow laid-back trip with lots of stops for photos ended up much more rushed than we had hoped, but was still plenty of fun.  And the obligatory stops such as the world's only corn palace, Wall Drug and Mount Rushmore were made along I-90 in South Dakota.

 We did get to spend a little bit of extra time in the Badlands of South Dakota.  This area, along with the Black Hills, deserved more time than we were able to give it.  It was beautiful to spend time there nonetheless.

After some great sunsets and days exploring the Badlands and the poet's table (see next blog) in the Black Hills we headed to Devil's Tower, but with fog at ground level we continued on to Montana.