By Wayne Brew | September 18, 2017
Day 5 & 6 – The 48th State
I was very fortunate growing up to have traveled widely in the United States. My family went to Atlanta, Georgia twice in the 1960s in cars that were not very road worthy. In 1968, my father decided that it would be cheaper to visit the 1967 Expo in Montreal in 1968. It was cheaper, it was closed! In 1969 when I was 11 my parents and I went on a long bus trip across to U.S. to California. In 1973 we took an even longer loop across the country. In 1974 I went by bus to the Boy Scout camp at Philmont, New Mexico. My father lived in Los Angeles, California for 10 years (1944 to 1954) before he married and he used to visit his family in Pennsylvania by hitch-hiking across the country. His stories inspired me to have my own adventures on the road. In the summer of 1979 between my junior and senior years at PSU I got a job as a coal geologist in Craig, Colorado. At the end of the summer I hitch-hiked to Los Angeles and then up the west coast to Seattle. I hitch-hiked from Fort Myers, Florida to Houston, Texas in the summer of 1980.
A long story to get to the present. By the time I was 21 I had already been through 43 states. In 1992 work brought me to Michigan, New Hampshire, and Maine. In 2005 I traveled through Rhode Island on my way to Boston. Arizona is the 48th state to join the union, but for me South Dakota is my 48th state and I spent days 5 and 6 there on my trip.
The Black Hills of South Dakota are beautiful and I got to visit Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. The Badlands are spectacular! I look forward to sharing my photos with my Earth Science classes. The first day at was at Rushmore it was clouded in so after my visit to the Badlands I came back the next day to clouds and rain obscuring the sculptures. Check out whereiswayne2 on Instagram for more photos.
Day 7 – Back to Route 2
I continued my journey on Route 2 and crossed the border into Montana which is over 600 miles across. Just across the border a sign informs the traveler that each highway fatality is marked by a white cross. It is common for friends and family to set up a vernacular memorial along the road marking the demise of a loved one. In Montana, it is done with a standard marker and I encountered so many that I soon stopped counting. Most are single crosses, but I found four at one location.
Towns are few and far between in North Dakota and Montana on Route 2. I found an old gas station in Saco that may date to the 1940s or even earlier. Many of the early gas stations used what is referred to as a ‘cube and canopy’ design that was replaced by many gas companies by the 1940s. Based on the price per gallon on the pumps ($1.17) that this station went out of business in early to mid 1990s.