Originally posted by: Edso
To each their own. I like where I live. It's not the Redwoods, where I was raised, but it has afforded a comfortable living for myself and my family. Our house, which we have fixed up as we wanted, will be paid off the year I retire (2027), and when my wife retires in (2029), we will enjoy our modest lives in retirement.
One of our bucketlist trips is to travel up through Oregon and Washington, stopping at various towns along the way, eventually going to British Columbia. After that we want to head over to the Dakotas, stopping at Little Bighorn along the way.....since I am a history guy. Can't wait!!
Oh, and the trip over to the Dakotas is a long long long long long drag without a lot of decent scenery after you leave western Montana. Little Bighorn is surprisingly low-key, because of ongoing conflicts over who owns the site itself and how the battle was and is perceived. For the Sioux and Crow (it's federal/Crow land), it's the site of a great military victory. For the US, it's Pearl Harbor. So it's very sparse ..just walking trails and a small museum.
The high prairie, eastern MT and the western Dakotas is a big, empty land with very little settlement and quite frankly, not much to see. Mt. Rushmore is a tourist trap. I would go to Badlands NP, commune with the buffalo, and maybe visit Deadwood for some Old West kitsch. But you might wind up asking yourself, I drove 800 miles for this...?
I'd see Glacier and then turn south for Yellowstone and Big Tit. Then, since you like history, visit Virginia City in Montana, the Golden Spike site in Utah, and South Pass in Wyoming. There are a lot of Oregon Trail museums and exhibits to see.
