Road Trips and Hike Reports

I'm writing this almost a week after our trip ended.  We actually got home on Sunday the 28th around 4 pm but I've been dating the blog posts with the day I'm writing them which is usually covering the day or 2 before the writing.  To keep that inconsistently consistent I'm dating this entry for Monday the 29th which was actually my first day back at work. We left Madison fairly early Saturday morning.  Embassy Suites has a well known full breakfast with made-to-order eggs so we actually ate breakfast at the hotel.  The trip on I-94 to Milwaukee went well and we had a few hours to kill before boarding the ferry for Michigan.  We walked around the third ward of Milwaukee which was very charming. We had a treat at the public market , I bought sunglasses at Warby Parker and overall we got a couple of miles in walking around this very historic but gentrified section of town.  The public markets in big cities are kind of amusing to me.  Ostensibly they are...

After our great breakfast at the River District hotel, we headed towards Madison.  We had a nice loop hike picked out for the University of Wisconsin arboretum but it was pretty warm and humid by the time we got near Madison.  We ended up just going straight to our hotel with the plan that we could park the car and wander around town until check-in time.  Surprisingly, they let us check-in VERY early, about 11:30 am.  Our room was gorgeous with a floor to ceiling window overlooking Madison's growing downtown.   After dropping out stuff and using the bathroom etc, we headed out to walk around Madison and have lunch.  State Street is Madison's pedestrian shopping street that starts at the Capitol building and goes many blocks West towards the UW campus.  It was pretty warm but by preferring the shady side of the street we managed to avoid overheating.  We spontaneously decided to eat at Noodles & Company because we like it and there aren'...

Wednesday was a long driving day.  We started out heading South on US-385 through Hot Springs SD and then East on US-18.  It was a very desolate stretch of plains for several hours.  Later, following the suggestions of our friend Bob (who was born in South Dakota) we were on SD-44 East of Winner and saw some gorgeous ravines and very dramatic bluffs of the Missouri River. We overnighted at Fort Randall Casino which was not a winner nor a very nice place to stay.  The hotel wasn’t awful but it was VERY basic and old but it was cheap.  The next day we spent most of driving East through Ohio on US-20. US-20 makes a very direct and generally high speed journey across many miles of Iowa.  We made a brief tour to visit an Iowa institution, Maid-Rite , in Waterloo.  It wasn’t Brian’s favorite lunch but the strawberry shake we agreed was excellent.  We visited a state park in Iowa, Backbone State Park. I had previously stopped at this large state park, Io...

Since we'd both been to South Dakota before, we didn't feel any need to go to Mount Rushmore or Crazy Horse.  For most people, having been to Devil's Tower would fall into that same camp but I absolutely adore Devil's Tower and have been 4 times now.  So we headed out on that long drive first thing Tuesday.  Weather was gorgeous, much cooler than the day before in North Dakota.  We walked the Red Beds Trail which is about 2.8 miles and goes along a much wider and wilder loop than the very short paved trail that winds directly around the base of the rock.  Since the park ranger said parking was limited (it was busier than you might expect for a mid-September Tuesday), we opted to park at the picnic area at the very bottom of the entire area near the Prairie Dog village.  This added a stiff hike up the flanks of the butte before we could join the 2.8 mile loop and since we enjoyed it so much we went a little more than a complete circle on the loop to take the...

We were up very late last night and we had to do laundry at the hotel before we could head out so it was about 80 degrees when we arrived at the trailhead after driving south about 60 miles on US-85.  The sun was very intense and I couldn't find my sunscreen this morning so I used a hand towel from our hiking backpack as a cover for my ears and neck as best as I could.  We bought a big jug of water but should have had a third 'spare' water to supplement our ever present 27 ounce metal bottles.  We had to be very judicious with our water consumption throughout this hike.  Low humidity and a cooling breeze made the temperature and intense sun more comfortable but it was still a little rough for me for the first 2 miles. We chose to start the trail by crossing the scenic road immediately and doing the loop in that direction.  The trail worked its way up into a few of the many buttes found along the 16 mile scenic road that goes through the North Unit of the park. T...

The rest of our time in Central Oregon with family went well enough.  It's always tough when you just have 2 days since there is only so much that can be done in that time.  We ended up walking around Sisters again on Thursday (with my mom) and she had fun browsing and buying a few things. Friday we headed over to Portland.  The drive was ok overall but the pass over Mount Hood was crowded and annoying.  When we got the car returned at PDX airport we had to decide between transit or a Lyft to get downtown to the train station.  We ended up using Trimet and it was totally fine.  We got off on the East side of the Willamette river and walked across the Steel Bridge rather than walking from Old Town on the West side of the river.  There really weren't very many people (homeless or otherwise) around but it was quite warm. Unfortunately our inbound train was very late so we left about 2.5 hours late.  In the end the train made up half of that time on t...