At the end of June, Laura and I took a road trip from Portland, OR to Grand Rapids, MI. We sent Harrison ahead as he is 9 and still gets car sick and is generally not his top self in the car for 10 days. It gave him a great chance to spend even more time - and coveted alone time - with his 2 sets of grandparents that still live in Michigan. It also gave us a chance to finish moving into a storage unit and finish up general housekeeping in Portland before our trip.

This time driving across the country we decided to take the upper route instead of the lower route. The northern route follows a fair amount of the Oregon Trail which is pretty cool if you are into history or dies of dysentery while playing the game when you were younger. We went through northern Oregon, southern Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and finally Michigan. All in all, we spent 10 days on the trip and here are the highlights from each state:

Oregon:

• One last trip to Multnomah Falls! Being the favorite child of the Oregon Columbia River Gorge it felt wrong to not stop for 5 minutes to grab another picture with her.

• The National Oregon Trail Interpretive Center! A pretty good interpretive center, even if it is more dusty calico dresses on mannequins as they cry over their dead child (a common trend in western-themed museums).
  Pro Tip: In my opinion, the best part of this area is the actual path and wagon ruts right next to the interpretive center. The museum has a cost to it but the wagon ruts are before you get to the gate and technically are free to check out.

Idaho:

• Shoshone Falls! I hear these are about 45ft taller than Niagra Falls which was crazy to think about. It felt like we were driving through cornfields for way too long to get to these but it was worth it. Good job earth.

• Idaho Potato Museum! It's not every day that you get to stand in front of a mighty potato. When Laura and I were originally looking for lodging in the area we came upon an Airbnb that was actually in a potato...crazy. It was sadly expensive enough to get the cut but not a day goes by that I don't regret it, the museum slightly made up for it.

Wyoming:

• Yellowstone National Park! Yellowstone is one of those places that you can hear and see all of the stories and pictures but honestly, they wont ever do it justice. Just go, go right now. We camped for 3 nights and had not put the elevation in our minds so while it was quite pleasant during the day it got frigid at night.

• Devils Tower! We got a camping spot with a fantastic view of the nation's oldest monument. While we didn't go into the actual park - a bit pricey - I feel like we enjoyed it. The KOA even has a special screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind at night...every night. It was a fun setup but short-lived as the mosquitoes were out in full force.

South Dakota:

• Deadwood! I'm a bit mixed on this one. I had been watching the show quite a bit leading up to the trip so I wanted to spend a night there, plus we wanted to go a bit slow through this area. While I enjoyed the history, it was a town ultimately not made for us. Think...biker Vegas. There were a bunch of casinos and bars but most of the stores were selling the same stuff. We did go to a pretty cool old mine and get a tour which alongside the Wild Bill Hickok stuff made it a highlight.

• Mt. Rushmore! What really can be said? For a very reasonable admission, it gave us our money's worth. Do yourself a favor and go on the trail loop to get a much closer look at the president's. Otherwise, you will just sit there for a moment and say, "cool...what's next?!".

• Wall Drug! I love a good tourist trap. As a child, I'm sure to my family's annoyance, I would collect brochures. Seriously, I would keep them for years and look them over. I'm a sucker for tourist marketing! They can make even the most disappointing mundane place look AMAZING (I'm looking at you Ft. Hays Old West Town). Wall Drug, however, meets the mark on the marketing they are doing. I love everything about it and it even got Laura's seal of approval (which is not easy).

• 1880's Town! This is another one that we were skeptical about but since we had time we thought we would try. While the admission was a bit steep I would say it was worth it. They had quite an impressive collection of Dances With Wolves props (South Dakota sure is proud of that movie) and real buildings that have been moved to the site from other towns. It was very cool to walk through these old structures and imagine how life must have been like not really that long ago.

Minnesota/Wisconsin/Illinois/Indiana

• Visiting a friend! We visited our friend Rob at his place in Madison, WI. It was great to see him.

Sadly, what tends to happen on road-trips for us is we race through the first part of the last part...generally the boring parts of the midwest. We did that again this time.

What I would do differently

• Not spending more time in Yellowstone. We ended up leaving a day earlier from Portland to spend more time at Yellowstone but I feel we could have spent even more. I probably would have done that instead of spending 2 full days in the Black Hills.
• Not going on the Badlands circuit. I wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that you can get on a road at the Wall Drugstore exit and drive through the Badlands and then exit back onto the highway all without backtracking. At the time I was researching I thought it was a full loop we would have to take. You live and learn! On to our next adventure!!