Custer State Park

Custer State Park is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and it is a very scenic and popular part of the state.  Being a few thousand feet higher in elevation than the Badlands, and being mostly forested, the park was pleasantly cool in comparison to the punishing heat of the Badlands.  Custer is also extremely well-maintained and well-equipped (free showers!) for weary campers like us. There are lots of different campgrounds, lakes, streams, scenic drives, and trails to choose from here; it would take weeks to see and do everything that this park has to offer.

We decided to break up our time between hiking and scenic drives. First we checked out the Cathedral Spires Trail and the Little Devil's Tower Trail, both of which came highly-recommended for views of the pinnacles and spires at the higher elevations in the park.  Many of the rocks in this area are packed with huge chunks of mica, so as we hiked, the ground literally glittered under our boots.  Afterward, we headed over to Sylvan Lake to eat a picnic lunch by the water.

    
Along the Cathedral Spires Trail

The Badlands

The Badlands was the first stop on the final leg of our journey. The trip from Minnesota through South Dakota was one of the longer drives of the trip, and we made it to the Badlands by evening. The landscape in this park is alien and strange; after driving for endless miles through flat farmland, the Bandlands rise out of the horizon and dazzle you with bands of colored, rippling rock formations. The eroded buttes and pinnacles are punctuated with prairie grassland, which makes for a stark contrast. It can also be blisteringly hot in the summertime, and even though the sun was quite low, the temperature was still hovering around 100 degrees when we arrived in the evening. We pitched our tent and then went out to explore a little. We were only staying in the park for one night before moving on to Custer State Park, so we made the most of the light we had left.

Eroded buttes of the Badlands

Catching up with the Clay Coyote

Our next stop was Hutchinson, MN, to visit my aunt and uncle at Clay Coyote Pottery. We had a few relaxing days on the farm catching up with Tom and Betsy and resting up before the last leg of our road trip -- a whole month of camping in the west. Tom made us his signature sourdough pancakes for breakfast, we took a few walks through the corn fields and prairie, grilled out on the porch, browsed the gallery, and learned a little more about the pottery business. We left feeling refreshed and ready to tackle a couple of long-haul drives through to the Badlands.

Uncle Tom, hard at work

The Northwoods

After Chicago, we made a quick stopover in Milwaukee to visit a good friend from our California days, and then we continued on to Northern Wisconsin. My dad's family has been vacationing in the Northwoods, as they are called, for many generations, and we were lucky enough to be able to stay in the same cabin that my dad grew up visiting.

I'd been to the Long Lake cabin several times as a kid and then once again while I was in college.  I was excited to show Matt the area and happy that my parents were flying out to meet us for a week on the lake.  They arrived on July 4th to a tiny regional airport in Rhinelander WI, and we drove out to get them.  As we learned later in the week, Wisconsin has no restrictions on fireworks of any kind, so there were huge fireworks displays were going off all around us as we drove to the airport and back.  It was a colorful welcome to the area to say the least.

Our week at the lake was a great time relax, but we also managed to squeeze in quite a few activities. Some of the highlights included: walking through the woods on old sugar camp roads, making friends with the local animals, baking cookies, fly fishing from the dock, visiting Lake Superior and hunting for agates on the beach, getting a tour of Long Lake from our hosts, shopping at the local farmer's market, visiting Whataview Farm, and killing swarms of mosquitos with our new electric fly swatter. It was a great time for everyone!

View looking from the dock back towards the cabin

Hello Chicago!

After Ithaca and the Finger Lakes, our next stop was Chicago.  We didn't have nearly enough time to explore all that the city had to offer -- all-in-all we had about a day and a half -- but we did our best to see as much of the city as we could.  We started out in Millennium Park, where we walked through some of the gardens, visited Cloud Gate (the bean), and strolled along the Lake Michigan waterfront.

Welcome to Chicago!

Finger Lakes, NY

After Acadia, our next stop was Trumansburg, NY. I wanted to show Stacey Cornell's campus, as well as the surrounding area of Ithaca and the numerous gorges and waterfalls. Before we could get to Trumansburg though, we had a two day drive from Maine. Burlington, VT was about equidistant, so we made our stop there. We were treated to a beautiful sunset as we walked around on the shore of Lake Champlain after dinner.

Sunset over Lake Champlain, Burlington, VT

For our 4 days in Trumansburg, we found a chapel from the late 1800's that had been fixed up and was now for rent on AirBNB. It was billed as an "artist retreat" - it featured high ceilings, three movable walls to divide up the large open floor plan inside, and abundant art supplies and paintings on the walls.

Maine

Maine marks a kind of apex to the trip; here we reached our farthest point east and paused for a week before turning back west again, toward our new home. We planned a longer stay in Acadia, knowing that we'd need as many days as possible to enjoy the sparkling lakes and gorgeous coastlines. It was a place to rest and relax, to celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary (albeit slightly early), and to reflect a little before launching ourselves westward in the last leg of our journey.

We spent our first night in Maine with Matt's sister and brother-in-law, Alissa and Steve, who just happened to be on vacation in Maine, too. Steve's family has a house right along the coastline in New Harbor, and we arrived in time for a late-afternoon walk along the coast before dinner.

An afternoon walk along rocky Maine coastline