Our final state capitol was Indianapolis on our penultimate day of travel. Now on a tight time budget, we were fortunate to secure a parking place for our over-sized vehicle directly in front of the capital. Remarkable, considering the challenges we’ve had in other capital cities.

Indiana is a prairie state, a no-nonsense-let’s-get-the-work-of-the-government-done state, and one of the few that had both legislative chambers open to visitors. Security was at a minimum, too, and the guard who greeted us was utterly delighted we had come to visit. What more could you ask?

The halls are elegant in their decoration. There isn’t the slavish homage paid to the Victorian era found in some of the other capitals, but a great appreciation for the beautiful workmanship and materials that was chosen back in the 1800s.

Usually off-limits for visitors, the guard at the Supreme Court chambers opened it up to show us some rare volumes in a showcase next to the judge’s chairs. As I’ve never had the opportunity to stand at a podium facing five Supreme Court justice chairs (thank heavens the justices weren’t seated in them) I stood for a moment just to get the sense and, even in an empty chamber, it was awe-inspiring. Of the rare volumes they had on display, the most interesting was a tiny one from the 18th century that contained the trial and execution documents related to Marie Antoinette. The law librarian couldn’t explain how it happened to be in the capitol, but, to compensate I think, she directed me to another rare volume, the original charter of Pennsylvania that was printed by Benjamin Franklin. Amazing to find out he spelled Pennsylvania as “Pensilvania.”

I couldn’t take any photos of the books, but the picture below is of one of the half dozen or so stained glass windows in the Supreme Court chambers.

In no other state or city have I seen the recognition and reverence given to a leading citizen as the state of Illinois and the city of Springfield toward Abraham Lincoln. After a brief stop in Galena to see the home of Ulysses S. Grant and the great celebration they make of a place Grant had lived in for only a brief time…

…I should have expected the honor Illinoisans would give their most notable resident. (Not native son–Lincoln was born in Kentucky, but Illinoisans easily overlook that detail.)

Lincoln’s Springfield home, where he lived for 17 years when he was raising his family and practicing law in Springfield is preserved along with a substantial amount of the surrounding neighborhood in a manner that rivals the historical accuracy and charm of Williamsburg, VA.

And you can envision him walking down the few blocks of cobbled streets to the Old State House where he argued in the courts.

Of course, the Capitol has the most Lincoln statuary, starting with a nearly life size statue of him as a young man found in front of the Capitol entrance. It makes him appear as an ordinary man, accessible to everyone.

The Capitol is grand within, especially now that one can view the stunning glass dome constructed of 9,000 pieces. In 1886, when it was first built, it was lit with 144 gas lamps. The carbon from the lamps blackened the glass and it wasn’t viewed in its original state until  it was cleaned in 1986 for its centennial. In the rotunda, statues of Lincoln and Douglas stand as if perpetually in debate.

The final honors are found a few miles north of the Capitol at Oak Ridge Cemetery, where Lincoln’s Tomb now holds the bodies of Lincoln, his wife and three of their sons.

Minnesota’s state capital is a special one. Not just because it is grandly constructed with marble from Italy, France, Egypt, Sicily and Greece, as well as Georgia, Tennessee, and Vermont. Or because it is the only capital building with an inlaid band of pipestone jasper, a stone quarried only in Minnesota and used by the tribes of the Northern Plains Indians for ceremonial pipes. It was special to us because Minnesota was Roger’s home for many years and because Hubert Humphrey is a man we both highly respect and we wanted to see how the people of Minnesota chose to honor him.

Minnesota military heroes dominated the exhibits and statues of the first floor, and we were surprised at how much Minnesotans participated in the Civil War. They were present at Gettysburg where, in one battle, a battalion lost 82% of its men. It was up the beautiful marble staircase to the second floor where the House, Senate and Supreme Court chambers are located that we found a bronze bust of Humphrey, recognizing his many years in Congress representing Minnesota and his years as vice-president.

I was disappointed not to find a full statue until we realized that a 7 foot bronze statue of Humphrey had just been dedicated the previous year as a memorial located on the southwest side of Capital Mall. Bill Clinton and Walter Mondale helped dedicate the memorial.

Wall Drug is an institution, a Mecca, a South Dakota marvel. If you ask someone if they’ve been to Wall Drug, you get either a blank look of confusion or a gleam in the eye of recognition and a big smile. Wall Drug is Americana at its finest. A Horatio Alger story now well into four generations of a highly successful business and of corporate management within one family that treats its staff as family too.

Wall Drug was started in 1931 in the midst of the Depression when Ted and Dorothy Hustead used all of Ted’s $3,000 inheritance to buy a pharmacy in a failing town just north of the Badlands. It had a good school and a Catholic church, and was a good place to raise children. On the downside it was desolate, still reeling from the failing economy of the late 1920s, and in the middle of nowhere, although just a few miles from the highway that carried tourists to the Badlands. They gave themselves five years to make a go of the business. In the summer of the fifth year, business was still too meager to merit continuing.

Then they came up with the idea of giving away free ice water, of which they had plenty, and placing Burma Shave style signs along the highway like the title to this post and the picture above. There was immediate response and by the end of summer a trickle of tourists had become a flood. The next year they hired eight women to give away water, sell ice cream cones and other tourist paraphernalia.

Today they employ 250 people during tourist season, including a number of international students. One helpful young Irish student from the University of Dublin directed me on to a fellow from Macedonia to pay for my purchases. Hospitality Spoken Here is another Wall Drug slogan, and it’s evident throughout the dozens of stores in the complex.

Wall Drug has literally taken over the town and in high season is the antithesis of Sturgis: good, clean family fun with a huge park for the kids of all ages while the shoppers in the family can explore the extensive shopping mall that extends an entire block. Main Street is filled with cars, and a lot of motorcycles and RVs too, that carry the people to dine, browse (they have a beautiful art gallery filled with Western art), and get their fill of souvenir shopping. Oh, they still have a pharmacy and employ a full-time pharmacist too.

This was my third time visiting Wall Drug. I smile too whenever I think of it and I look forward to the next time when can find a reason to be close enough to stop by.

The Capitol buildings of North Dakota and South Dakota couldn’t be more different. One is caught in the 19th century, the state having just restored it to the 1890’s decor in celebration of its centennial. The other embraces wholeheartedly the more contemporary style of the Art Deco Period. The first is filled with tons of Vermont white marble to create a stunning staircase as its showpiece. The other glistens with columns and ceilings of stainless steel and glass chandeliers fashioned to appear like heads of wheat. Spawned as they are from the same seed, the Dakota territory, it’s amazing how dissimilar the two capitals are.

We stopped first in Pierre, the state capital of South Dakota. Minimal security to enter the building was a surprise, and we wandered freely. There had been considerable controversy about where to place the Capitol in the state when the decision to create a separate state of South Dakota was made, and that history was captured in several exhibits. Pierre won hands down due to its central location. Overall, the feeling in the Capitol was a reverence for its history which emanated from the wood paneling and wall coverings, the original roll-top desks, all of which have been restored to their 1890’s state of newness.

The following morning, and 250 miles later, we drove up to a sleek skyscraper (well, the tallest building in Bismarck–18 stories) that looked completely unlike the majority of the Capitols we’ve seen that mimic the architecture of the Capitol in Washington DC. Security was non-existent here, so we perused completely alone the gallery of notable North Dakotans, and then explored the two legislative chambers with just a few other tourists. The modern decor is a beautiful example of contemporary architecture that draws from the importance of North Dakota’s farming and mining industries. I was most impressed that the Governor’s Office was the first door to the right of the front door.

Little Bighorn National Monument is like a magnet for me–there is no way any vehicle I’m in–car, motorcycle or RV–can choose not to make the turn into these grounds that are as meaningful to our national history as Gettysburg. It is just as impossible for me to enter these fields without cheering the Native Americans for their defeat of the likes of Custer. The warriors and their tribes were duly punished for their victory with expulsion from their homeland, starvation, and death, and even today the tribes are struggling to regain their culture and self-sufficiency. I am glad they have at least one major victory to look back on.

This was my third time to Little Bighorn, so I wasn’t surprised this time by the hushed awe that flows from the ground, broken only by the rustle of grasses. It is so quiet that it is hard to imagine the hills filled with all the human sounds of the 7,000 Indians that were camped along the Little Bighorn, much less the cacophony of men in battle, the war cries of the Indians punctuated with rifle shots from both sides. The Battle of the Little Bighorn was tragic all around: 260 U.S. cavalrymen died, almost half of the U.S. troops engaged in the battle, and 60-100 Indians from five tribes.

Recognition of the bravery of the Native Americans defending their way of life has been slow in coming. When Roger first visited in 1994,some of the signage still described the Indians as savages and cited Custer as a fallen hero. Now, Custer’s command of the battle is held in question by many, and the history is told by NPS rangers in conjunction with Native American interpreters. Red markers like this one now mark the places where the Indian warriors fell in battle as the white markers do the fallen cavalrymen in the picture below.

Our next stop was like turning the page to the next chapter of the Native Americans story. St. Labre Mission, located about 60 miles east, is the site of a Catholic school that Roger supported while working at the Patent Office. It was started more than 125 years ago by the Church to address the miserable state of the Indian population that had returned after years of exile in Oklahoma. What they have achieved during those years is a remarkable campus from K-12 that prepares students for advanced education and meaningful participation in today’s economy while stressing and preserving their Native American cultures and the values of their faith. I toured the campus with a delightful 16 year old student, Devin, who hopes to go to Johns Hopkins and become a medical doctor. One of the primary goals of the mission is to develop self-sufficiency of their people. Devon is a fine example.

Our last stop of the day was a drive through Sturgis, South Dakota, where the annual Sturgis motorcycle rally takes place. A sleepy village the rest of the year, tens of thousands of motorcyclists from all over the country converge there for a week in the summer to ride, eat, ride, shop at motorcycle tents, ride, drink beer, ride, sleep, and ride some more. The town takes it in stride, with some people renting out their front lawns for tenters for $25. We were there on the 4th day of the rally, and according to the evening news the bikers’ behavior was better than previous years, with only 171 DUI arrests, 147 drug arrests, 986 total citations and $11,900 cash seized. Those biker attorneys must stay pretty busy. I took my photos and we left quickly to the quieter streets of Wall, SD.

I have yearned to see Yellowstone National Park ever since we watched the “Christmas in Yellowstone” PBS documentary several years ago. Of course it was attractive to imagine seeing Yellowstone when crowds were minimal, but the best we could do was to visit in early August, one of the most popular months. Knowing we had every intention of returning someday to do the entire park, we opted for just an “appetizer” and chose to take the northernmost route through the park from west to east. Even though we did not enter the caldera where most of the exciting volcanic activity resides, including Old Faithful, there was still plenty to see.

The Roosevelt Arch is at the north entrance of National Park in Gardiner, Montana. Constructed under the supervision of the U.S. Army at Fort Yellowstone, its cornerstone was laid down by President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt in 1903.

Our first stop was at the Horace Albright Visitor Center, located where Fort Yellowstone was first established. It is named for the first Superintendent of Yellowstone. Compared to some of the rough and primitive forts that were built across the west in the late 1800s, Fort Yellowstone was considered a very comfortable and prized assignment by the officers. The buildings are all made of salmon-colored block bricks, and they have weathered the years admirably. The original fort buildings are surrounded now with hotel and shopping facilities.

It was in Yellowstone that we saw the most wildlife, notably the herds of buffalo that covered the roads from time to time. They appeared non-threatening, but numerous park service warnings forbade approaching deer, elk, and buffalo. There were also rattlesnake warnings throughout the park. As we stayed within the safety of our vehicle, the buffalo below was nearly close enough to touch. In the other picture, all the black specks extending far into the distance are buffalo. Considering the buffalo was nearly hunted into extinction, it’s a beautiful sight to see them now thriving.

Yellowstone is huge, impossible to take in in one visit. We knew this in advance, so as we left the park that afternoon we were already discussing plans to return. But in our abbreviated drive through the park we took in many beautiful mountain vistas, waterfalls, and lakes, and we followed the Yellowstone River through much of the park. All of it is incredibly beautiful.

Our trip from Yellowstone to Billings was breathtaking in a different way. Rte 212 is a collection of large hairpin turns that carry you up to 11,000 feet before taking you down to the valley again with as many turns as can be fit into the road in between. It’s a white knuckle ride with 6,000 feet drops just inches from your wheels when you’re in the outer lane. The picture below was taken holding my camera upside down out of my window. No, I wasn’t looking through the viewfinder.

There’s no way around it. You have to drive through many miles of open prairie, fields of wheat and hay, valleys full of grazing cattle peppered with some goats and antelopes, and cross many winding rivers when you’re crossing the state of Montana. So the first half of our second day out of Seattle was spent viewing all of those for several hundred miles. Our destination was Helena, the capital of Montana.

We arrived around four in the afternoon, a bit uncertain whether we’d be able to see the entire capital in just an hour. We were successful. This was one of the rare state capitals were security was at a minimum. I think we surprised the security guard when we approached him. The tour was self-guided. Both House and Senate chambers were locked, so we had to view through the windows the murals that covered the walls.

The most impressive things in the Capitol were two bronze sculptures. The first was Jeannette Pickering Rankin, the first woman in the United States Congress, elected in Montana in 1916 and again in 1940. After being elected in 1916 she said, “I may be the first woman member of Congress but I won’t be the last.”

A lifelong pacifist, she was one of fifty members of Congress who voted against entry into World War I in 1917, and the only member of Congress who voted against declaring war on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Both votes cost her her seat in the next election. The second bronze was of Maureen and Mike Mansfield. Mansfield served in Congress from 1943 to 1977, and afterwards served as ambassador to Japan for 11 years. Their statues stand in a place of honor on the second floor landing facing the rotunda. Beneath the statues is a quote from Mansfield: “IfI do not forget the people of Montana, the people of Montana will not forget me.”

We left the Capitol at 5 o’clock along with many of the Legislative staff. We drove on to White Sulfur Springs, where I discovered we had forgotten to go grocery shopping. Dinner was interesting mishmash of the dregs of my tiny pantry and refrigerator: rice pasta, a half empty jar of spaghetti sauce I’d carried from Virginia, mixed together with some carrots and tomatoes. It’s amazing what you can find yourself eating when you’re camping. But anything tastes good when there’s ice cream at the end.

Well, we’re still three thousand miles and eight days away, but it feels like a different trip, now that we’re heading East instead of West or North and our own home is at the end of the road. We left Seattle around 9 on Monday, and by 10 the city was well behind us and we’d entered the mountainous terrain of Eastern Washington.

In the Northwest, it seems every major road follows a creek or river, and Route 2 hugs the Wenatchee River most of the way. It’s a beautiful river with all shades of personality: an overgrown brook gurgling over rocks turning to enthusiastic whitewater in a broadening river until it reaches the Columbia River just north of the town of Wenatchee.

We ate lunch in Leavenworth, a town that, faced with extinction in the early 1900s when the mining and logging industries dried up and the railroad literally pulled up its tracks and left, completely reinvented itself to be a Bavarian village. The helpful woman at the Visitor Center was dressed like a character out of Heidi.

“There’s no German heritage here'” she said. “It’s all Walt Disney. A couple of creative developers saw the potential of building a tourist industry on the Bavarian nature of the surroundings and sold it to the city council. The business community bought into it as well and created what we have today.”
What they have is a thriving winter sports industry, as well as a busy fall Octoberfest and March and April bring tourists when the snow is melting. From what we observed, the summer season is well-attended too.

Shortly after heading out of Leavenworth, we met up with the bicyclists who had signed on for the 2013 RAW (Ride Across Washington) 15: “Pines to Vines.” They were well into their third day of the ride traveling 65 miles from Lake Chelan to Leavenworth which included 2,972 feet of climbing and 2,920 feet of descent. We agreed they were made of sturdier stuff than we, and we especially cheered on those at the rear, a good 30 miles or so behind the head of the pack. Fortunately they had a day of rest to look forward to at Leavenworth.

Making time and miles was the agenda for the rest of the day, except for a brief detour through Spokane, a city we’ve skirted several times on convenient bypasses to avoid the town traffic, to see their Riverfront Park. The river was less than notable, moving sluggishly along the park, but the park sculpture was delightful: a huge wagon for the children, and an inspirational crowd of runners in metal.

We spent the night just across the state line at a campground in Post Falls, Idaho. Tomorrow, we’ll spend a brief time crossing the panhandle of Idaho and head on into Montana.

I’m a Detroiter. Field trips in my youth included tours of the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan to watch the assembly lines in action spitting out new cars every ten minutes. The mechanics of large vehicle production are no mystery to me. But none of that prepared me for the awesome scale of the Boeing Everett Factory just north of Seattle, Washington.

In a building that is the largest in the world by volume (its footprint covers 98.3 acres) dozens of airplanes are being built on an assembly line that moves along at 1.8 inches per minute. All of them are green, coated with a protective film that is easily removed when its time to paint them. Some are made from as many as 6 million parts.

The stats are staggering, and our guide, who had once been “on the line”, dropped them liberally throughout our one and a half hour tour as she took us on a brisk mile and a half walk through tunnels and around catwalks, and up and down freight elevators painted to look like the interior of a cargo plane.

Fore example:

The 747 has logged more than 42 billion nautical miles, equivalent to 101,500 trips from Earth to the moon and back.

The 787 Dreamliner has approximately 70 miles of wiring.

Each of the hangar doors (there are six of them) is more than half the size of a U.S. football field.

It takes 21 days from start to finish to complete an airplane. Several days of that are required to cure the final paint job, the majority of which is done by hand.

She saved the best for last, the assembly line for the new Dreamliner. Scheduled to be launched in September, this plane of the future provides an environment that mimics your destination by subtle manipulations of the lighting so that jet lag will be minimized. Some seats are constructed like mini-cubicles for maximum privacy and comfort, and it’s designed to use 20% less fuel and be substantially quieter because of the chevron design on the covering of the engine. The neatest innovation is the window shading, accomplished with the push of a button that will lighten or darken the window automatically. The windows are larger too, which make the interior feel brighter and more open. No puddle jumper, this plane is an ocean hopper, designed to get you from Hong Kong to New York with maximum comfort in minimal time.

While I highly recommend the tour, the Visitor Center is worth stopping to see as well. it has several good exhibits on the walls and two great shops with a huge collection of airplane models to choose from almost as awesome as the factory itself.