Skip to main content

Day 3 - To Montana

Today was another long day, even though it was only a 7 hour drive.  We started the day at 0700 with breakfast at Taco John’s. I did not have a taco, I just ate the potatoes ole, which were basically tater tot crowns with some flavoring while Jim had the beef and potato burrito.  After breakfast we started the drive around 0730 to our first destination, the Painted Canyon Visitor Center of Theodore Rosevelt NP,  which was about 30-minutes down the road. This area is basically the badlands of North Dakota, the less famous sibling of the Badlands NP in South Dakota.  We stopped here for about a half hour or so taking pictures and so I could get a stamp in my park passport. What is interesting about this first visitor center is it is also a rest stop, so it was easy for Jim to drive the CrossTrek around the parking lot to get a picture with the national park sign. From there we went down the road a little bit to the Theodore  Rosevelt NP Southern Unit Visitor Center just so I could get a stamp from there.  (Each visitor center has their own stamp.)  After those two little excursions we started the long straight drive to Great Falls,  Montana where we would be spending the night.   (Note: I switch over to my DSLR for photos as to my phone which I used for past on the road photos)

There isn’t much to see we exited the badlands about the same time we exited North Dakota, which is about 40 miles, then you enter the grasslands and Montana.  As a fun side note exit 7 on I-94 in Montana is the exit to “Home on the Range” but there are no services at this exit.  There are a lot of no services exits once you really get in plains and grasslands.   There also isn’t a lot of cell service with data, so I made sure I had an old fashioned map, which was helpful to find rest stops and towns.  We ate in the small town of Jordan at really the only restaurant in town, The Summit Corral.  The food was ok, but I never had a grilled chicken salad that seemed greasy.  It upset my tummy slightly, which is never good on a long road trip nor on a road with few rest stops.  Overall I was ok.    Other than a couple potty breaks and a gas stop we rolled right on through, which got us to Great Falls by 1800.  
Now tomorrow we only have about a 4 hour drive to Belton Chalet, which is right outside of the west entrance of Glacier NP.  This means we will cross the mountains tomorrow. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cobwebs Everywhere

On October 7 th , I did a studio spooky session with Coralinx Cosplay .   The central theme of this shoot was a pretty goth girl who had a fondness for spiders and decorating with cobwebs, making it a perfect Halloween session.   Note: Cobwebs are defined as abandoned or old spiderwebs that have collected dust.   Many cobwebs are the result of comb-footed spider (i.e., black widows) that make irregularly shaped webs.   Spiderwebs are active structures built to catch prey.   (Source: Western Exterminator Company) For these sessions, I used: Photography Equipment Other Equipment Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Westcott FJ400 2 Phottix Strobes 2 strip boxes 2 rectangular soft boxes 2 c-stands 3 light stands Backdrop stand Black seamless 2 Westcott silicon gels Tether cable Laptop Laptop holder Sandbags A-clamps Spyder Color checker Fake cobwebs Table ...
Post a Comment
Read more

2025 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2026

This year was a bit interesting especially since during the day, I’m a government employee, which resulted in a lot of stress and a 42-day furlough.  I didn’t attend as many cosplay events with the D.C Cosplay group, now Costume and Camera, as I normally would have, due to schedule conflicts.  However, I traveled up to Poughkeepsie, New York for two photo events, one of which I was a featured photographer.  I attended two conventions, one of which didn’t turn out as expected and the other just confirmed my decision to take a break from it.  Though happily I did a lot of studio work this year, which I enjoyed.  But on the other hand, I lost my dear “studio supervisor”, my dog Teddy.  He liked to great clients and then “supervise” while lying/sleeping in his bed. I also started to work on the business side of my photography work, by investing in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) site to manage bookings, schedules, and payments. No more trying to juggle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moon Goddess

On September 11, I did a fantasy moon goddess session with Emma. The inspiration for this shoot was the moon and all the fake cloud tutorials that were flooding my feed.   For these sessions I used: Photography Equipment  Props/Miscellaneous Cannon 80D Trigger 2 strobes 2 speedlights 3 c-stands Bell reflector Beauty dish 2 flags 2 gels (blue & magenta) Grid (5-degree) Backdrop stand Fuzzy white backdrop Printed backdrop A-clamps Sandbags paper mâché moon 2 pillows 8 DVD cases 5 pounds of fiber fill (aka. fluff) silver dress Ewa Jobko silver circlet This session revolved around the love of the moon, and I wanted to make sure the model had a moon to love, thus I made one.   To make the moon, I bought one of those 24-inch round balloons, blew it up, and covered in three layers of white tissue paper using a standard paper mâché technique.  When covering th...
Post a Comment
Read more