America the Beautiful

For any of you have not yet traveled across this beautiful land of ours, put it on your bucket list!  The very interesting thing as we travel west through state after state, is that truly, each state has a feel of its own.  It is very hard to put into words the feelings as mile after mile passes by.  You might think that it would be boring looking out at all those fields of corn, sunflowers, soybeans.......and it is a bit.  But it is also very peaceful.
To put it in perspective:  on several occasions, both Mike and I have spontaneously broken into song; America the Beautiful or God Bless America or This Land is Our Land or Home, Home on the Range.  Now this may sound hokey, but the beauty that surrounded us inspired us to sing........so we could definitely understand how it inspired others to write the songs in the first place.

A real surprise was just before we left North Dakota.  We decided to stop at the South Unit of the Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  The first part of this is the Painted Canyon........part of the badlands of ND.  I have been to the Badlands in South Dakota, and this was very, very different!  Both are ruggedly beautiful, but the ones to the south are more red, yellow and orange in color.

We decided to tour his original cabin and heard so much about what led him to create this national park.  As with Herbert Hoover, Teddy Roosevelt, although born to privilege, had much sorrow in his life.  His wife and mother died hours apart on Valentine's Day, and this is where he came to heal his soul.

The first time he came and stepped off the train, people knew instantly he was not from around there, all decked out in his "dude" clothes custom-made for him by Brooks Brothers!  But he gained their respect as he hunted buffalo for ten days in blizzard conditions, and never once complained.

The badlands are the most interesting and unusual terrain that I have ever seen.  As we drove along the loop road, every corner seemed to bring yet another breath-taking view.

We did take a little hike up Buck Hill, which gave us a 360 view, which was magnificent!

The biggest surprise of all came as we were nearing the end of the loop road:

As we headed into Montana, there was yet again a very different feel to the state......more evergreens everywhere, and just somehow, it seemed different.  We even wondered if that is how they determined state lines so many years ago when the territories were just being formed.

You can really see why Montana is called the "Big Sky" state.

We traveled over 600 miles on this journey today and pulled out one of our audio books to help the time pass away......Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation".  We could not believe our ears as he started speaking about growing up in South Dakota.  How perfect was it that as we traveled the Dakotas we listened to just this tape?

Finally, finally, as we left Billings toward Bozeman, did the Rockies start to appear:

Next we are off to Glacier National Park, where John Muir once said there was the "best care-killing scenery on the continent".

~Karen