Update: 3 October 2016

Since we were in Dallas we checked out the memorial to JFK at the site of his assassination. Somehow this memorial doesn't seem quite appropriate. We were expecting a statue of him or something a little more dramatic.

The visitor's centre in Tunica, Arkansas, is a little unusual, to say the least. They consider their town “The Gateway to the Blues".

We are quite used to seeing bales of hay in the fields but the bales of cotton out in the fields was quite an unusual sight for us:

The fields of cotton look quite beautiful...

But the cotton blows everywhere. It builds up along the roads and looks like it has been snowing...

We like to visit the old cemeteries we pass in our travels. A lot of them are quite touching to read, but this one stood out from the rest, in Helena, Arkansas:

Downtown Helena is very interesting, but also very rundown...

A couple of other sites seen in Helena, while old, don't look quite so decrepit:

Nearly over...

We arrived in California yesterday, staying last night in Davis (a small town) and spent today in Napa Valley (the wine growing area) and the difference in temperatures from our time in Oregon is startling. From below zero two days ago to 36°C today in Sonoma.

We are glad that we haven't had to contend with the California temperatures for our whole trip. We would never have survived. The heat and the brightness of the sun is exhausting.

We are staying tonight in downtown Santa Cruz. Everything is open late so we had a great dinner at an Irish pub and wandered the shops amongst the many buskers, tourists, drunks, dogs and assorted strange/stoned people. The place has a nice vibe and I enjoyed the walk in the evening when the temperature had started to drop.

Tomorrow is our last day and we don't have any plans at all. We will just see what the day brings...

guns and booze

If there are two things that really do not go well together it's GUNS and ALCOHOL. In Crescent, Oregon, Ken sells them both conveniently in one store. No wonder there are so many bullet holes in road signs. 

huckleberries

Apart from tourism, the other major industry in this part of Montana appears to be huckleberries. Everywhere we went there were people selling fresh huckleberries, huckleberry ice cream, huckleberry chocolate, huckleberry yoghurt, huckleberry jam, huckleberry pies... you get the idea.

The owner of one store told us that in summer a lot of the population are employed picking berries. We felt obliged to try a punnet of fresh ones and they are very, very nice. Very hard to describe the taste as they are so different from all the other berries. We also tried the chocolate and a pie. Very nice!

aren't we going the wrong way?

We decided to visit the Glacier National Park on the border of Montana and Canada. We really should be heading south away from Canada, but I am sure we have time. We spent most of the day driving through the changing scenery of Montana passed lots of prairie and into the farmlands and mountains. At one stage we were on unpaved country roads but eventually got back to some decent roads near the Glacier area.

Tonight we are staying in a town called Whitefish which is near the Whitefish Mountain Ski and Summer Resort, and is quite close to the Glacier National Park. We will visit the park tomorrow morning and then start our way back to San Francisco. They are fighting fires in this area, but hopefully they are under control and won't hinder our trip south.

NOTE: Vyv reminded me to mention that she had a buffalo burger for lunch yesterday and enjoyed it but thought it tasted just like beef. We had a Ben & Jerrie's Red Velvet Ice Cream too and that was really good!

Quite a few of the farms around here have an interesting way of storing their hay. We are a long way from anywhere so it just maybe that it is too much trouble to get balers up here:

A hot and cold holiday

Since we have been on holiday we have had temperatures as cold as 7°C a week or so ago, and as warm as 38°C yesterday. We expect the temperatures to be pretty consistently high for the rest of the trip. Hopefully.

A few things we saw today during our drive through the vast flatlands of Minnesota and North Dakota

Seen on a farm in Todd County, Minnesota:

Outside a petrol station in Frazee, Becker County, Minnesota:

The big claim to fame of Jamestown, North Dakota, is the world's largest buffalo. It stands next to the buffalo museum (which is a lot better than it sounds), a collection of buildings from the 1800s, and a large protected area where a herd of buffalo (bison) roam free.

Jamestown's other claim to fame is that it is the hometown of Louis L'Amour, one of the biggest selling authors of western novels. I have read (well, listened to the audiobooks actually) most of his books over the last 10 years. The shack that he used to write in is preserved here.

Taylors Falls

Driving the country roads towards North Dakota we came across the small town of Taylors Falls. It was full of cafes, new age jewellery shops and elderly bikers (by elderly I mean my age, but reliving their glory days on huge Harley-Davidsons).

We did the boardwalk from the crossroads centre of town to view the waterfalls the town was named for...

and minutes later we got to view the falls in their full glory...

Magnificent aren't they? 

Coolest collection of pedal cars ever

Today (Saturday) while driving to Fargo, North Dakota, we came across a sign in Cameron, Wisconsin, for the Pioneer Village Museum. We needed to stretch our legs so thought we would check it out, although we weren't expecting much.

To our surprise we enjoyed the place and the best exhibit was a collection (can't remember how many there were but must have been close to 100) of antique pedal cars that had been restored by a local family. There also quite a number that they created themselves. It was an impressive collection and we could imagine our grandsons racing around the backyard on them

Here's a sampling of the cars:

They had even made a very large car hauler. Those are all full-sized pedal cars on the back.

This home-made trike with sidecar was particularly clever: