Mt. St. Helens

On our way to Mt. St. Helens

Tree stumps left from the volcano

We had a great lunch at this restaurant overlooking the river, we ate on the balcony.

Visiting the coast

  Our visit to Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach

Also went to the Portland Saturday Market, everyone enjoyed themselves!

Yellowstone

Our very expensive campsite

Finally in Oregon!

Badlands

Went to the Badlands today, there is no way to describe what an amazing place this is!

We also stopped at Wall Drugs.

Tonight we are staying at an Rv resort it cost more than 2 times what we usually pay for a camp site, but the hot tub alone was worth it!

Day 5

It has been a very busy day today!  We didn't get a lot of miles in but we did a lot.  We were driving down 90 and saw a huge metal steer head, so we got off the exit down a dirt road to Porters sculpture garden.  No one was around, but the sign said open.
http://portersculpturepark.com/

Next stop was the Corn Palace, it was interesting.

http://www.cornpalace.org/

 The picture above was taken for anyone that I worked with.

In the same city was a prehistoric Indian Village

http://mitchellindianvillage.com/

This is an archaeological  dig that we got to see.

A nice rest stop at the Missouri River

 http://www.1880town.com/

http://koa.com/campgrounds/belvidere/

I have no pictures of the town or the KOA, but do have a fun story.  Jack and I stopped at the town on our way to Alaska in 2003.  We stopped at the KOA on the way back from Alaska, but did not realize it was the one next to the town, it was late and dark when we pulled in.  In 2006 on our way to Washington with Kelly and Kate driving their own car we somehow stopped at the town and cooked lunch, we didn't go in.  Today we decided that we were going to stop at the KOA we saw on the billboard, as we got to the exit we realized it was the same 1800 town.  We went down the road to the KOA and as we were registering they told us we were in the computer, we had stayed there in 2003. Just thought it was strange that we have kept coming back to this spot.  

My Retirement vacation FINALLY!

TIME TO ENJOY BOTH OF US RETIRED

We are heading to Portland Or.  Don't know how long it will take or how long we will be there, just going to enjoy the experience!

Our first day we headed to Escanaba, Mi..  We got hit with a rain storm and high winds just as we got on the Mackinac bridge, there was already very heavy traffic due to the Labor Day bridge walk earlier that morning, it took us about a half an hour to get across the bridge, it was scary!

It was wet and rainy here and took us way longer to get here than we expected.

On to Oshkosh, WI to visit Jack's brother Larry, where he treated us to a nice lunch!

Night #2 we are camping on the Mississippi!  This is the view from behind our camper.

http://www.lacrossecountycamping.com/

I think we are going to stay an extra night here, keeping an eye on the weather there might be heavy storms tonight.   The view of the Mississippi as I am writing this.