Here's a sort of photo travelogue from my recent 'road trip'.
On my Monday drive to Salt Lake City the first thing that I managed to get a shot of was the solar farm, BrightSource Solar Project near Ivanpah, CA, just before crossing over into Nevada.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
After meeting-up with my friend Dennis, we headed out on Tuesday morning and our first stop was to visit the 'Union Station Museums' in Ogden, UT.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
One of the museums in the Union Station building was the 'John M. Browning Forearms Museum'. Browning developed, among other firearms, the BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle, of WWII fame.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Tuesday afternoon we crossed over the Continental Divide, entering Montana from Idaho.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
On Wednesday morning we toured the 'World Museum of Mining' in Butte, MT. The museum was developed around the headframe and hoist house of the 'Orphan Girl' copper mine.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Included on the grounds of the museum was the 'Memorial Garden', which honors the more than 2,500 miners and other mining industry workers who have died in accidents in the Butte area from 1865 to the present day.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Our last activity was going down to the 100 foot level of the 'Orphan Girl' mine.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
That evening we had dinner at Dennis' sister's house.
Thursday morning we headed East on I-94, stopping to take photos on what turned out to be a very nice, albeit chilly, day. One of our stops was near Livingston, MT where we got some good shots of snow-covered mountains.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
One of our best stops that day was at the 'Range Riders Museum' in Miles City, MT.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Where, among other things, they had an amazing display of the various types of 'barbed wire' which has been used across the Western part of the country.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
After a night's stop in Glendive, MT, we again headed East on Friday morning, with our first stop in Medora, ND, at the site of a 19th century meat packing plant.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
One of the reasons for this stop was that my wife's family had stopped here once some 50+ years ago and when I saw their photos, I decided that I would try and find this place and get some similar photos.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Our next stop was the 'Badlands Dinosaur Museum' in Dickinson, ND.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
On Saturday morning, we finally got to our destination, a nursing home in Mayville, ND, about 60 miles North of Fargo. We visited our old classmate Kim, spent a couple of hours reminiscing, as best we could, with him about our days back in school 50 years ago, and the few times that we've seen each other since then. Kim was admitted to the VA hospital in Fargo some time last year after a 'wellness check' by the local police found him dehydrated and delirious. While there, he appears to have suffered a mild stroke and fell, breaking his hip and his left tibia, which they had to fix using pins and screws as well as replacing his hip joint. After his recovery, he was moved to the nursing home where he's now living. We stayed for lunch and after about a four hour visit we left.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
After leaving Kim at the nursing home, we stopped to see the tallest structure in North America, the 2063 foot tall KVLY-TV antenna in Blanchard, ND, about 40 miles north of Fargo.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Our next stop was at the 'Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile State Historic Site, Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility' in Cooperstown, ND.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Not only did we tour the above ground support facility...
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
...but we were also allowed to visit the missile launch command center which was buried 50 feet below the support buildings, in a blast-resistant concrete capsule with 4-foot thick walls.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
This command center, which controlled the launch of 10 Minuteman III missiles, was manned, in 24-hour shifts, by two Air Force officers, 365 days per year, from 1965 until 1997 when this facility was decommissioned. At the height of the cold war there were over 1,000 Minuteman II, Minuteman III and Titan II missiles located in hardened silos spread across several Western states. At the moment, 450 of those missiles are still ready to be launched, which means that at any moment, there are 45 pairs of Air Force officers locked in underground missile launch command centers, like the one we visited in North Dakota.
We left Fargo early Sunday morning, heading toward South Dakota on I-29. One of the things that we've always done is that in addition to the planned stops on our trips, was to watch for the so-called 'Brown Signs' as seen along the interstate pointing out local points-of-interest. One of those offered something that should not have been unexpected, just something that we had never thought much about before. While I've crossed the Continental Divide many times, including several times on this trip, this was, of course, the East/West divide. But there's also a North/South divide, which neither of us had ever noticed before. Anyway, we found this divide, which is also referred to as the 'Laurentian Divide' near a small Minnesota town of Browns Valley (the only reason we even drove into Minnesota was to see this particular 'point-of-interest').
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Once in Minnesota we decided to continue for a ways, heading South and eventually turning to reconnect with I-29 before reaching Sioux Falls, SD, where we would finally turn West. As we drove past the town of Browns Valley we saw this historical marker on the side of the road and again discovered a truly unique site, where one of the oldest human remains were found in the New World, a skeleton of an early American Indian, Carbon-dated to nearly 9,000 years ago.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
After turning West on I-90, we stopped in Mitchell, SD, to see the 'Corn Palace'. Granted, it was a bit early in the season, but the outside of the building was still decorated with corn cobs and corn husks.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
As shown in this nearby display, the building is covered with cobs of corn using a sort of 'paint-by-number' scheme, created by the artists to be used by the workers, most of them local volunteers, to place the corn cobs.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
We then took the scenic route through the South Dakota Badlands, It was so cold and windy that we only made a few stops.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Upon leaving the Badlands, we stopped at one of the deactivated Minuteman III silos where you can actually see the missile thru a glass cover over the open silo. This was the Delta-09 Missile Launch Site located near Wall, SD.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
And what drive across South Dakota would be complete without a stop at Wall Drug (I have to admit that I've never seen so many open parking spots on Main street).
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
And after eating lunch in the Silver Dollar Cafe, we visited the 'Backyard' with it's enormous 'Jackalope'.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Our next stop was at Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City where the South Dakota Air & Space Museum is located. This allowed us to close-up look at both a Titan I ICBM...
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
...as well as a Minuteman II ICBM.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Also on display were many other missiles and aircraft such as this B-29 Superfortress.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
We stopped for the night in Rapid City with the intention of visiting at least Crazy Horse to see what progress that they've made since we were there nine years ago on our last drive through this area, however in the morning, this is what we found when we got up.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
Now when we left the hotel, while the streets were very wet and it was threatening snow, we still thought that we might still have a chance to stop at Crazy Horse, however, as we left town, the weather really turned sour and by the time we got to the road to Crazy Horse, we could barely see the sign pointing to the entrance let alone being able to see anything of the mountain. We decided to skip it and continue on toward Salt Lake City, still some 600+ miles ahead of us. And the weather continued to get worse, at times being a complete 'white-out' condition. However, we did make one more stop that day as the weather did let-up a bit when we got to Lost Springs, WY. We stopped there nine years ago when the population was listed as ONE and it was acknowledged as the smallest incorporated city in America and also the smallest with a full-service Post Office. Well, apparently as a result of the 2010 census, the 'city' has grown to a population of FOUR.
April 2019 (Sony a6000)
We finally made it to Salt Lake City well after dark and I left early Wednesday morning for SoCal while Dennis had a flight later in the day back to Virginia.
The drive back to SoCal was clear and dry, albeit still very cold. I was able to get some nice pictures of the snow-covered mountains driving South on I-15 across Utah toward Las Vegas.
May 2019 (Sony a6000)
May 2019 (Sony a6000)
After arriving home, I had just enough time to unload my car, change my clothes and for my wife and I to drive across LA to attend a spring concert at our granddaughter's school (that's Paloma, at the far left, in the first row, unfortunately partially obscured by the microphones.
May 2019 (Sony a6000)
The theme of the Spring program was Hawaiian music and culture, and Paloma was wearing the dress we bought her while we were in Honolulu this past September.
May 2019 (Sony a6000)
Anyway, I hope that my 'travelogue' didn't bore you and that you enjoyed the pictures of our 10-day, 4,300+ mile, journey 
OCU
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