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I-90 highway closing gates?

Dain Arns said:
North on I-90. I-25 stops at Buffalo, Wyoming. (Sorry, used to live there) :icon_lol:

PRB, the Little Big Horn Battlefield is just south-east of Crow Agency. Head east on US-212, short ways up the hill out of the valley. You can see it up on the top of the hill.
Have the time, take the drive from the monument south on the Interior Department road to the Reno-Benteen Battlefield.
It's beautiful in the spring.

From Sheridan, WY north on I-90, all the way to Billings, MT you'll be in the area I used to live and patrol for quite a few years, oh about 20 years ago now.

From Billings, MT all the way to Spokane, WA enjoy the view.
Bozeman used to home. :crybaby:
Click to expand...


A guy I was in the service with lives in Basin,WY.I rode my Motorcycle out there from upstate NY in the 80's.We have the gates in parts of MN also but I have never seen them closed in my travels.:d
 
PRB said:
LOL, I saw all these “Wall Drug” signs for miles and miles before I got to the city where it’s actually located. Never heard of Wall Drug before, so the signs were bizarre. “Wall Drug, as told by The New York Times!” At some point I gathered it was some sort of general store. I didn’t stop by and visit the place. I didn’t stop by any of the “must sees” across Montana, suffering, as I always do, from “getthereitis”. I did stop by the South Dakota Air & Space Museum though, outside of Ellsworth AFB. Airplane nuts! You take ‘em anywhere! Lookout Pass was awesome. I’ve stopped in Coeur ‘d Alene, Idaho, for the night. Spectacularly beautiful here.
Click to expand...

Haha, Wall Drug is the "city" of Wall. Takes up a whole city block. Not much else there. :icon_lol:

Well, sounds like you're crossing the 'Basalt Flats' of eastern Washington today.
Not much to look at when you leave Spokane, WA until you hit the Columbia River. :isadizzy:
But from there on out to Seattle, well, I'll envy you today. I think you'll like Snoqualmie Pass.
 
well Paul, you should be here by now.
time to get some rest

I completely understand "getthereitis”
they used to say getting there is half the fun,
I always thought it was all the fun.

so what did you think of Snoqualmie Pass?
the transition from the bare and dry eastside
to the lush green of the westside always amazes me.
then the rapid decent into the city is a kick.

are you going to Whidbey Island?
did you take a ferry or drive around?

Welcome
 
I am at Whidbey Island now. I drove across the bridge at Deception Pass. Snoqualme Pass was indeed quite a ride. Fantastic. East of the Cascades, WA looks like Mars! Amazing. Between Coeure D'Alene and Spokane is forrest, but between Spokane and the mountains there is not much to see. Is that what it is, basalt flats? That's awesome! Love geology. I bet it will really be awesome when Mt. Rainier lets go... :icon_lol:
 
PRB said:
I am at Whidbey Island now. I drove across the bridge at Deception Pass. Snoqualme Pass was indeed quite a ride. Fantastic. East of the Cascades, WA looks like Mars! Amazing. Between Coeure D'Alene and Spokane is forrest, but between Spokane and the mountains there is not much to see. Is that what it is, basalt flats? That's awesome! Love geology. I bet it will really be awesome when Mt. Rainier lets go... :icon_lol:
Click to expand...

the Cascades, pretty much block the moisture from going to the eastside
so it's mighty dry.
wide open spaces, mostly wheat fields and such,
with out outcroppings of basalt.
I would imagine from Cascades volcanic flows
did you notice that Missoula was surrounded by mountains?
way back when, it was a lake, plugged at the west end.
eventually, the plug broke and caused a major flood all the way into eastern Washington.
or so I've been told.
glad I missed it, just like I want to miss Mt Rainier going off.
that ain't going to be pretty
someday, I'll tell you my Mt St Helen's Eruption story.
if you want.

glad to hear you made it safe and sound.
 
Bjoern said:
Ah, shut up guys! You're making me wanna go onto a prolonged holiday through the States. :icon_lol:

Then again, I wouldn't know where to start and what to see anyways...meh.
Click to expand...

pick a spot, any spot,
the chances are pretty good
that there is something of interest there.
be it scenery or history
climate or culture
the diversity of this place is boundless.
 
Hey All,

As a native Montanan who grew up pledging allegiance to the flag followed by singing the Montana state song from grades 1 through 7 I've avoided posting in this thread as I don't like to advertise how great Montana is :d. Brings too many people to the state.

But when you start talking about eastern Washington and especially the great floods Smilo mentioned as a former resident of Spokane (5 years) I had to chime in. Those floods have always absolutely fascinated me. The snake and willamette rivers flowed backwards there was so much water blastin across the prairies of eastern Washington and hitting the Columbia. Dry falls not far from grand Coulee Dam was the largest waterfall to have ever existed on earth - spilling 10x more freshwater than all the rivers on planet earth combined today. The tricities (for those who know where they are) were under a few hundred feet of water - you can see the waterline on the buttes above the cities. Biscuit scablands (for you microtopography experts) were formed by water and occur all over eastern Washington. But before the great floods were the magma flows that resulted in layer upon layer of basalt - so yes it is pretty much of volcanic origin. One area you missed Paul was south of Spokane and is one of the absolute treasures of eastern Washington and that is the Palouse prairie - windblown soils from the west created an absolutely beautiful landscape. Here is a photo

http://thepalouseguy.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/_gmh2438-view-from-steptoe-butte-w-border1.jpg

It pains me so much that people who drive from Spokane to Seattle seem to breath a sigh of relief once getting across that vast wasteland to the base of the Cascades and begin the climb to Snoqualmie have almost no appreciation of what they just drove through. For some totally odd reason to me as a prairie person people seem fixated upon mountains and water - especially where they meet.

-Ed-
 
PRB said:
East of the Cascades, WA looks like Mars! Amazing. Between Coeure D'Alene and Spokane is forrest, but between Spokane and the mountains there is not much to see. Is that what it is, basalt flats? That's awesome! Love geology.
Click to expand...

Then you missed a real treat Paul... that barren land from CDA to the Columbia is known as the Channeled Scablands
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/geology/publications/inf/72-2/sec5.htm
http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/projects/geoweb/participants/dutch/vtrips/Scablands0.HTM
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Channeled_Scablands
and contains a very good interpretive center at Dry Falls:
"In central Washington, on the opposite side of the Upper Grand Coulee from the Columbia River, and at the head of the Lower Grand Coulee, exists a three and a half mile-long scalloped precipice known as Dry Falls. Ten times the size of Niagara, Dry Falls is thought to be the greatest known waterfall that ever existed. Geologists speculate that during the last ice age catastrophic flooding channeled water at 65 miles per hour through the Upper Grand Coulee and over this 400-foot (120 m) rock face. At this time, it is estimated that the flow of the falls was ten times the current flow of all the rivers in the world combined."
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Dry_Falls?qsrc=3044
It looks barren and desolate until you stop and explore.. and then you see why it's one of my favourite places in the world. Of course, you could also have stopped at Moses Lake (Grant County Int'l) where Boeing has their flight test and training facility. There are a few old planes lying around if you get time on the way home... Let me know when you're heading east

Rob
 
Well, hopefully I won't be returning east anytime soon, as this is supposed to be a permanent move! However, I do see myself driving over that way again soon to check it out more closely. Here's a couple of Montana kodaks from the journey!
 
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