My route to Montana

This entire roadtrip was centered on Montana. I simply took a "small" detour to Indiana for a few weeks.

I feel better today mentally, ready to brace for yet another cool and grey day. I felt the frost at 4am when Sadie went outside for her pee break. I'm still at Carol's in yesterday's clothes sipping my coffee and going over websites of interest for me.

I may even take a daytrip to southwest Michigan and walk around the dunes of Warren Dunes State Park while I am still here and the weather warms up next week. Southwest Michigan's coast is pristine and beautiful. The water is colder there but the coast is clean and free of lake debris.

One thing I know I will be doing is driving US Highway 30 west in Illinois. It's the Lincoln Highway, and what better way to honor our 16th president than by driving on his namesake road? There are plenty of scenic towns along the way, especially as one gets away from the Chicago area. I plan on stopping at most of them to look around. Northern Illinois was crucial for the Union during the Civil War and the railroad brought the Army important supplies before Grant's road south toward Vicksburg.

One state park I'm excited about is the Mississippi Palisades along the Great River. I've never been there but want to hike the bluffs down. Nearby in Iowa are the Effigy Mounds, more prehistoric Indian mounds from the Mississippian era. Dubuque, although further north in Iowa along the river, is allegedly a worthwhile visit as well. I will camp at the Pallisades state park that first night.

What whereto after that? I'll have to cross Iowa but have no idea what to see and do there. It's a pretty state with rolling hills and farmlands. Parts of the state were settled by Danish and Norwegians, making it the last state with an operational windmill. John Wayne was born in Winterset, IA. Hubert Hoover was born in West Branch. Mason City gets good reviews in the latest Mobil Guide of the Midwest but that town's rather north along my route. And state parks are few and far between.

Bill Bryson, the Iowa-born expatriate who moved to England to avoid the Vietnam War wrote disparaging comments about Iowa in his book "The Lost Continent." He came back to the United States for his father's funeral in 1989 and decided to tour the county in an old rental. It wasn't a very good book and anyone unfamiliar to the places he wrote about would think that the entire country was laden with fat, ignorant, uncultured people by the comments in his book.

"Iowa women tend to be sentationally fat" he wrote in the beginning of his book, but added that the young girls are quite pretty before marriage. I think those comments are rather satirical because Bill Bryson is a rather large man himself. Although I enjoyed some of Bryson's other books--"In a Sunburned Country" was especially well-written--this book was mean and shallow. He was very unkind to the small towns across America, as if he wanted to get even for the people and the land he left behind. The tone of his book was more of a reminder for him for why he left the United States to live in England now that the Vietnam war is over.

I'll probably just "go with the flow" across Iowa without racing through it. I always do find interesting things to see and do. Some of the most interesting people can be found in our small towns, which makes shunpiking all the more adventurous.

I'll continue to research tourist stops in Iowa. Anything of historical or natural interest is always a plus. Sometimes even a plastic Elvis outside a diner is just as interesting as limestone canyons.

What I won't do is drive 540 miles in one day like I did across Texas. That was insane! Once I get to South Dakota I will focus on the Black Hills and spend a few days there before taking backroads into Wyoming and then into Montana. Once there, I will take my time in the canyon mining towns
that sprang up after Lewis and Clark came through. I'm still a few weeks from all that and plans could change. ESPECIALLY if a wicked storm blows through the region.

I'm still making plans to meet up with Lindie and Michael. Michael wants to go canoing down a creek near his house. How will Sadie stand for that? She seems afraid of dark water. I will also try to hook up with another friend of mine, a retired Special Forces colonel now living outside Indianapolis. He's approaching 70 and still hikes, bikes and canoes across Indiana. Now that's a spirit!