2024: Philly to Montana

A wonderful day. There is nothing like the raw electricity at the start of a big road trip. Everything is vivid and sizzling with anticipation and potential.

So far, most of this trip has been on I-70 through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The amount of farmland continues to increase. When you get out into forests, even if the woods look and feel like the Wissahickon back in Philly, the terrain changes. The light is different. Even the time zone changes.

Iowa just rolls like ocean waves through a sea of farmland (mostly corn, of course), and every time you peak you see the highway stretching like a ribbon to the western horizon. It is a place of quiet movement, a place of farmers, a place where maybe things don't move quickly but they never stop moving.

From a fishing cabin to a Minuteman Missle; from Wall Drug to a majestic campsite inside Badlands National Park... the West promises, and the West delivers.

Of all the many tens of thousands of miles I have driven in almost every state of this country, SD Highway 87 N tghrough Custer State Park, aka Needles Highway, is the most extraordinary drive I have ever experienced.

This route, a 47-mile road known as the Bighorn Scenic Byway, is another must-drive. You start out at about 3,500 feet of elevation and climb to 9,033 feet atop Granite Pass, and then drops down to about 3,800 feet on the other side.

There is a reason we take these trips, and that reason is Montana. This is where we wait all year to be. We'll settle in here for a few weeks before we pack up to, sadly, head back east. Now is the time for swimming, fishing, hiking, canoeing, board games, card games, exploration, and adventure.