We left from home on June 12 for our 3 week, 15 state road trip to Bend, Oregon. 1 week to drive out. The second week to visit. And the third week to drive back. 

On Sunday, our first stop was to the store “2 Chicks and a Hammer” in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is an HGTV show called ‘Good Bones’. On Monday, we drove to Casey, Illinois, which is home to many Guinness record humongous objects which are displayed throughout the town. From there we drove to Kansas City, Missouri, where we visited a bar/restaurant called Vignettes, which had a pop-up store based on the Schitts Creek TV show. On Tuesday, we drove to North Platte, Nebraska, where we visited the Golden Spike Tower, and the largest railroad yard in the world, which is home to the Union Pacific Railway. 

Traveling north on Wednesday, we visited Carhenge, in Alliance, NE which has cars with the look of Stonehenge. From there, we drove up to South Dakota, and visited Wind Cave State Park. There was not much to see, unless you wanted to pay for a guided tour which you had to crawl on all fours through caves. We did see a lot of bison and a prairie dog. From there, we headed over to Custer State Park which we thought would have a lot of wildlife. It was a long drive, but no animals. We spent the night in Rapid City, SD. The following day, we drove 600 miles to Evansville, Wyoming. On Friday, we visited Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho and spent the night in Boise. We arrived in Bend on Saturday…. Finally!

While in Bend, Chris had a Father’s Day BBQ arranged on Sunday. On Monday, Amanda brought out a 1000-piece puzzle which me, Kelly, Amanda, Chris, Alexa, and Cooper worked on for the next few days. Monday and Tuesday we took Alexa to her dance recital practices in the afternoon after spending time visiting places with Cooper and Alexa during the mornings. On Wednesday, we all went to Old St. Francis Pub at McMenamins Hotel for dinner. On Thursday, we took the kids to Compass Park, finished the puzzle, and enjoyed Alexa’s big dance recital in the evening with Papi Barry and Papi Neil and Neil’s family. On Friday, we all went to brunch with Papi Neil, Bev, Judith, and Gordon before they headed back to Portland and Vancouver, Washington. On Saturday, we went to a yard sale before we came back to say our goodbyes and headed back home.

As we headed home, our first stop was up in Washington, and we visited Mt. Rainier National Park. We did some hiking, but there still was a lot of snow up there and many of the roads were still closed with 9 feet of snow covering some of the roads. On Monday, we drove to Anaconda State Park in Montana, which has the worlds largest smelter (not Schmelzer) stack. On Tuesday, we walked the Painted Canyon Trail in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. On Wednesday, we saw Salem Sue, the worlds biggest cow in New Salem, ND. We also visited Rugby, North Dakota which is the exact geographical center of North America. From there, we drove to Alexandria, Minnesota and spent the night there. On Thursday, we woke up and visited Big Ole in Alexandria and drove the next 14 hours to make it home just after midnight.

In total, we traveled 6177 miles through 15 states, and recorded 46 of the 50 states in the McCarty Metro License Plate game. We did not get Hawaii, Delaware, Rhode Island, and West Virginia.