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Ok well that’s not confirmed I guess, BUT it is the biggest I have ever seen. This is in Casselton, ND. Bit tricky to find.

Beat that fish! This is in Wahpeton, North Dakota. More info here: www.realnd.com/wahpetoncatfishindex.htm

This was possibly the biggest surprise of the trip. On our last day, as we were about to leave Sioux Falls, SD we had a few minor things on our list to check out. A few more giant Muffler Men along I90 heading east and a small Museum kind of out of the way, the National Music Museum. We knew we had a long drive ahead of us, so we thought about skipping the museum sense it was about an hour or more south of our route. Luckily Isabel had the good idea that we should change out route to head down to I80 instead, so we could hit it on that way. I am sure glad we did! (more…)

So far on this trip we have stopped by a number of interesting, small local museums. Many I found on roadsideamerica.com, others we just saw, and decided to check out.
Sure you will see more headline history in the bigger more prestigious ones out there. But they will be missing the personal touch. They will feel like a history textbook and not have much meaning, at least not so nearly directly as the little ones. (more…)

I had mentioned earlier the how cool Bozeman was, but I also wanted to mention the fun more vacation oriented towns just outside of Yellowstone. While Bozeman would be a cool place to live, Red Lodge, Livingston, Cooke City and Cody were a blast to visit. There are a lot of other cool small towns right outside the gates too, but we spent the most time in these. All the towns have interesting well marketed histories, fun lively downtowns, and lots of fun things to do. The also all had good or interesting food. For example, in Livingston we got burgers at the In and Out burger place that has been open sense the 50′s, in Red Lodge we tried amazing Corn Chowder, and Buffalo burgers, and in Cody we tried the famous Irma buffet. (more…)

I have gotten rather behind in posting our progress. I still want to make a long post about all the cool stuff we saw in Yellowstone and talk about the cool “Entrance towns” we stayed in. So this is really just a quick update to catch up a bit. (more…)

POST by Isabel
I’ve been to London, I’ve been to France but never have I seen something so beautiful and gorgeous as Yellowstone National Park. I was there Wednesday, and Thursday and will be back tomorrow. We spent the first day driving from Red Lodge to Yellowstone. We took the famous beartooth highway! It is a gorgeous, honestly you can not see such natural beauty and not believe there is a god or a higher power. It is the most spiritual, enlightening zen place I have ever seen, I’ve taken over 1000 pictures but have not been able to upload them all because of lack of Internet, the mountains is a bit away from civilization. (more…)

We just spent the day in Bozeman, Montana. It turned out to be one of the cooler cities I have been in. A medium sized collage city, it is less then 2 hours from Yellowstone. You may have seen the historic downtown in movies like “A river runs though it” or “The horse whisperer”. It has a thriving art community and all the things you would expect in a college town, along with lots of tourism and the likes. Just a few cool things I found while here: Free public transportation. It’s very dog friendly, every one has a friendly dog and they are allowed to go into stores, they even have a doggie cookie store. Bikes and pedestrian traffic is well respected also. There are more high quality bikes on the road then cars I would say. They also have some cool bike shops in town. Great views, you can look outside in any direction and see mountains or wilderness in the background. Like most of the west, everyone is very friendly here too. But most importantly, I found two places to get great tea within minutes of being downtown. Over all it reminded me of Bloomington, IN only about 10 times better, and right next to Yellowstone.

One of our goals on this trip was to eat local specialties and favorites everywhere we went. We have had a great start to that. On the way to North Dakota we stopped and got a chicago dog(for completeness ) Then in Wisconsin we got some cheeses of course. We ate at a locally famous diner in St Paul Minnesota. In North Dakota we got sunflower seeds, ate burgers made from local beef, and later tried the famous and very delicious corn chowder. We also ate at a diner chain that is popular in the area. In Montana I had a local steak that was amazing! It was right from the open range and freshly butchered. Isabel was not as thrilled with me getting that. At the battle site of Little Big Horn we ate some fried Sioux bread with honey that I am going to have to try making someday. Today I had a buffalo burger. It was wonderful also. Yes we did more then eat! I will leave that stuff for another post though. (more…)

This is the rough route we will are planing… Because of the Sturgis Motorcycle rally, we are going North first to avoid the traffic. Two weeks of fun on the way! Any suggestions on where to stop are more then welcome!

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