I apologise for not posting this earlier.. I actually have had it typed up since the end of May but I've had a hectic summer and have not got around to sitting down at my laptop properly.
Forewarning, this is a long blog post! We spent 12 days on the road. So you can imagine the amount of pictures I took. I tried my best to keep this short and sweet! I debated splitting it into two but I thought people may not read it then :P So here ye go :)
Friday May 15th
So, like my previous post says, we stopped by my Missoula families house and Craig put the roofbox onto my car. This box is a lifesaver! It's made us so much more room it's insane! :D Siobhan helped us pack the car up before waving us off until we're all back in Cork next year. We got the car filled off and headed for West Yellowstone! All very excited to be finally facing into our roadtrip :D We had a scenic enough route on the way to West Yellowstone where we were staying for the night. On our trip there we saw plenty of birds on our way there which is always fun :P Since I was driving I didn't get to take many pictures (sorry!) We eventually got to our place about 5.30pm ish I'd like to say? We got checked in and unpacked some things out of the car to make some room for wildlife viewing on our evening trip to Yellowstone :D First though, we stopped at this restaurant called Outpost Restaurant, the food there was absolutely delicious, I got a Bison Burger cause I just love them :P We then took a drive to the park to see what we could get to see this evening. We were in the park 5 minutes and we saw some Bison - not unusual. But it was absolutely pouring down rain, and we were planning on going down to see the Old Faithful Geyser (which requires standing out in the rain in order to be able to see it) so we made a decision to turn around and head back to our Motel and come back in tomorrow! We were staying in the Holiday Inn Motel in West Yellowstone which is really nice.
Saturday May 16th
We woke up bright and early this morning to start off our day in Yellowstone National Park. I opened the door to see what the weather was like for the day and we were kind of in shock. It snowed this morning. There was snow EVERYWHERE! I was not impressed. I had to jump start our neighbours car cause it wouldn't start for them.. I rang up the national park and they got 12 inches of snow last night and one of the main roads was closed because the snow was so bad. GREAT! We quickly got planning our trip for the day - seeing as we now can't go into the park we had to go all the way around it. YAY! So we drove basically, down south around Yellowstone through Idaho and back into Wyoming. I drove for probably 9.5hrs today - not straight! We did stop off and grab food a couple times. We eventually got to our place in Greybull, WY. It was called The Wheels Motel - a nice place. Massive room and incredibly comfortable beds!
Sunday May 17th
We got on the road at 11am again this morning, our destination today was Mt. Rushmore! We were staying in EconoLodge in Rapid City afterwards. Mt. Rushmore was a lot smaller than I was expecting! Even though a friend told me it was tiny, I still expected it to be a small bit bigger than what it is :P But anyways haha, another thing off the bucket list! We had a nice enough day today thank god, no random snowstorms or thunderstorms just nice clear blue skies! We went to a place called Marlins for dinner today. Recommended to us by a guy in the place we were staying - the best restaurant in town apparently! And it was pretty nice alright! After eating here, we got back to our room and watched Game of Thrones in real time! That's always exciting :P
Monday May 18th
Today we made the drive through the Badlands National Park. Absolutely gorgeous! We took many mandatory pictures :P Our stop after the Badlands was Le Mars, Iowa. This town is the Ice Cream Capital of the world, the town where Blue Bunny ice cream was founded. We didn't arrive in until late because we spent a bit longer than expected in the Badlands. The motel we were staying in tonight was called The Amber Inn. They were completely sold out and have been for the last two weeks! The woman in reception rang us up today to see if we were still coming because they were so busy and had already turned away 6 cars at about 3pm today. Insane!
Tuesday May 19th
We only had a two hour drive today that brought us to Omaha, Nebraska. The sixth state on our journey so far: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska. We were spending the day at Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium! I was excited for this because they have over 30 cats here and it's been deemed 'The Best Zoo in the World'. But not long into our day here we had to disagree with this statement.. A lot of the enclosures were a bit small for the animals there, a lot of the animals were not on show and many of the animals were pacing (a sign of stress in captive animals). However, with the cats, the zookeepers deal with animals and they train them to stand or pose in different ways to get a good look at them and they used fake needles to get the animals accustomed to them also in case of medical attention. We got to see a young male lion being trained and also a male jaguar too. The zoo was closing up at 5pm so we got around and saw all the animals we wanted to before heading back to our room for the night. Tonight we were staying in La Quinta Inn in Omaha. Nice place to stay and comfortable too! This evening, we got dominos delivered to our door and got Fiona into Supernatural by watching some of season 1 :P
Wednesday May 20th
Our destination today was Bettendorf, Iowa. We chose this place because it was roughly a 5 hour drive today and so that tomorrow's drive to Chicago would be under 3 hours! This would give us a half a day of exploring and allow me not to panic driving through a city :P We didn't have an incredibly scenic drive through Iowa, a lot of flat land and land being farmed by tractors! Nice to see farm machinery doing work! Makes a change from Montana :P Tonight, we were staying in another EconoLodge. This one was different to the last one we stayed in, but also nice! Very comfortable. A nice relaxing night was had today. We watched some more Supernatural, a nice relaxing night - well needed!
Thursday May 21st
Today we made our three hour drive to Chicago! I actually didn't panic driving through the city, it was actually nice and easy! We got to our hostel before the check in time, but we were still able to park the car out the back so that was nice! Our plan was to arrive a little bit before the check in time so that hopefully there would be some parking spots out the back where I could park up my car. Yay! We hung out in the lobby for roughly 20mins before we were allowed to check in and then we got to our room. Way too cute! We saw that the zoo in Chicago was free so we said we'd wander in and have a look and we were very pleasantly surprised! The enclosures were really nice and we got to see animals straight away! Chicago is a beautiful city! So clean! We eat Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza today - recommended to us by so many people. We each got our own personal pizzas which are recommended for 1 person and they were fab! We didn't sleep that well our first night here, anytime someone used to move in the bed, it used to wake up everyone else.. And our blinds were shite too :P They left in way too much light!
Friday May 22nd
Slept in a bit this morning before heading off our for the day. My first day not having to drive and it was lovely! First we went down to Millenium Park and had a wander around here for a while. Got some lovely pictures of the Chicago Skyline and whatnot. We got to see the Bean - also known as Cloud Gate. Today we did a boat tour that brought us through the river in Chicago and we had a tour guide who told us about the architecture of the buildings in the city. They're gorgeous! We grabbed a subway sandwich for dinner and then headed for the Willis Tower. We had bought our tickets this morning in the hostel, they sell them cheaper than at the building itself so why not?! We got up and it was packed! Then we saw the line for the ledge and lined up ourselves for it. It was SO COOL!! 103 floors up and I got to stand on a glass ledge above the ground outside. Insanely cool experience!
Saturday May 23rd
Today we were making the journey from Chicago to Leamington, Ontario - CANADA! Entering Canada was nice and easy, especially since we were only staying for a few days. We were only travelling to Leamington as a pit stop to stay over. Canada is a little different to the states (no duh!) they use km/hr in Canada and their money is kinda weird. It's plastic :/ But so colourful! :P We staying in a nice Motel tonight! Except we had a really weird neighbour.. Everytime we used to open our front door and go out to the car for something she used to open her door and stare at us.. Weird :/
Sunday May 24th
We made out journey to Niagara! We were staying on the Canadian side in a hostel called Hostelling International. A really cute room! Same type of bed as we had in Chicago but this one was a lot comfier and we also had black out blinds in this place too - always nice! We heard when we were checking in that there was a fireworks show on at the falls tonight so we said we'd just wait until then to go down..so we just chilled out for a while before getting some dinner. The firework show was amazing! We decided we would make a quick stop here again tomorrow morning before crossing back into America.
Monday May 25th
So we headed on down to the falls and my God are they 100 time prettier in the day than in the night time! Absolutely gorgeous! While we were up on top we could see a lot of boats down below going right up close to the falls.. So we checked them out and they were only 19 canadian dollars so we decided why the hell not?! We went on the Hornblower Cruises which I would 100% recommend! and according to many reviews, it a better tour than those on the American side. We got absolutely soaked!! But we had an absolute blast! We essentially spent the whole entire thing in fits laughing while struggling to take pictures :P We crossed over into the American side around 3 or 4pm, I'm not 100% sure. We decided we would take a look at the falls from the American side for a comparison, and they were not as nice at all. The whole area was filthy dirty with rubbish everywhere and you did not get a nice view of the falls at all. Disappointing! Today we were supposed to be driving straight back to Queens but 7hrs would have been a long drive for the very last day of the roadtrip.. We made a sensible decision to stop and stay halfway, and just as well we did because we didn't get to Binghampton in NY until 9pm, this is 3-4 hours away. Tonight we stayed in the Red Roof Inn, which despite the name, does not have a red roof!
Tuesday May 26th
OUR LAST DAY ON THE ROAD!!
We checked out and then headed for home! On our travels we stopped by Fiona's cousins in upstate NY who she stayed with over Christmas time. We had some lovely chats and then made the 40min drive to my Dad's house. We arrived home about 5.30 pm and Dad put on a BBQ for us while we unpacked the very full car. We had everything out in no time so it was nice! And this is it... This is the end of our roadtrip and the end of my year abroad in Montana..
I would like to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read my blog, even if it was just the one time and I bored you too much to come back and read more :P In the last week, I have got some more viewers from other parts of the world which is absolutely insane! Two weeks ago, I hit over 2,000 views on this blog and that is something I NEVER thought I could get. So thank you!
This past year has been an absolute blast and I honestly would do it all over again in a heartbeat. I've made so many good friends from many different parts of the world. I found a second family in Missoula and I'm way too excited to see them in Ireland in July!
A special thank you to all of you again for reading this. But most importantly, a special thank you to my Mom and Dad because without their support, I wouldn't have been able to have the best year of my life. Without them, I wouldn't have ever even thought about studying abroad. Way back in second year it was them who suggested it to me and this whole incredible experience began so fast. I didn't do much research into Montana and what it was like. But I wasn't disappointed, this place is just so beautiful and my pictures do not do it enough justice! I did know someone who went out there last year, so another thank you to Sinead for all the help, advice and information she provided for me and also my friends who were going to Montana too.
I'm not sure if this is the end of Shannen's Travels or not. We'll have to wait and see what the future brings. What I do know, is that I'll be leaving this open for all to read when they want to. Thank you again for supporting me on this incredible experience.
Until next time,
- Shannen.
