Dagmar Bound! The adventures of Mo & Jen.

Well, Mo and I are dual blogging again! We hope you enjoy the tales of our adventure! :) We decided to head up to Dagmar, Montana, for one of our church conventions this year. It just seemed like the year to do it, so we packed things up and away we went!

Needless to say, we had a wonderful time and would LOVE to go back up there, so we look forward to a future trip. We also managed to remain friends during the trip and we're both glad for that. :o)

So, let's begin. Our first destination: Billings, MT. Those Montana folk are sure welcoming! They even put a sign up for us!!

But wait! As we're heading towards MT, we find out that a few of our friends are in Casper! We wanted to stop and see them and during our visit, we managed to get Mo & Marylee to sit still for a few seconds and get their picture taken! It was a nice little visit and it made our day to see them.

So, after our friends left Casper, Monique & I decided we should have some lunch at the mall's food court. Of course, before we started driving again, we wanted to make use of the facilities, but there is something you should know about Jen. Jen does NOT...I repeat, does not...like using public restrooms. Unfortunately, a 12 hour trip is not so accomodating for such a person. That means that Jen just had to get over it and be brave. She was doing quite well until she saw this sign on the way to the restroom:

"780,000 restroom visitors?" she asked. Yeah. Enough said.

So here we were again, on the road to Montana. As we were navigating our way out of Casper, Jen exclaimed, "Mo! Look at this sight!" What a PERFECT invention for those of you out there who want six children, two dogs, and still have room for company!! A six-door suburban!!

That was quite a site, I tell ya! We were just in awe! So much so that we almost ran into one of the orange construction cones. No, just kidding! We did successfully get out of Casper and began our journey up to Buffalo and Sheridan. From this point on, Jen had not seen any of Wyoming, so it was all quite new to her. She says she enjoyed it and wouldn't mind even moving up to the Buffalo area! We spent a little time shopping in Buffalo and we were privileged enough to even get a stop in at the local coffee shop. :o) As we were heading out of town, Mo stated that some of her friends owned a business here, so we made a stop and were able to see Michael M. for a few minutes. It was nice to catch up with him, although we missed seeing Darla & the kiddos!! Maybe next time...

But wait! As we were finishing up our conversation, Jen said, "Hey! We need to take a picture of this aspen tree for Kate!" So, Kate, this pic's for you!! :o) The picture does not do justice to how lovely the aspens looked, Kate, but hopefully you can enjoy it a little bit like we were able to! :)

Finally...we made it to Montana (refer to first picture) and safely made it to Billings where we were to spend an evening with Pauline. What fun! It was great to have supper with her and to visit. :) We look forward to visiting her again! Thanks, Pauline!

The next morning, we enjoyed a nice breakfast with Pauline and then we hit the road to northeastern Montana. Dagmar or Bust! :)

A few miles down the road (okay, maybe a bit more than a few!), Monique decided to take a short nap and then take over with the driving. It sounded fine to me! But Mo had a warning for me: "Now, Jen, just remember that Sydney has three different roads going out of it, so make sure to stay on Highway 16." "No problem," I said! Mo proceeded to relax for her nap and I was careful to watch the signs. All was well until I saw this sign:

Mo explains that she awoke to me sighing and rustling around for the map. She sat up just in time to see the sign as well. All I said was, "Mo, I did pay attention!!!" Oops. Obviously not good enough. We managed to find a cut across road that took us BACK over to Highway 16 and 20 miles or so later, we were back on track. *sigh* What drama.

Eventually we found our turn off to our church convention. However, we had some extra time and since all of our friends in Plentywood, MT have had so many good things to say about their town, we decided that we wanted to see it and take a peek for ourselves. What a cute little town! Just a nice, quiet community nestled among green rolling hills. They, too, greeted us with Welcome signs. Here's one to remember our visit by. :)

At this point, we still had some extra time and we figured out that we were ONLY 16 miles from Canada! Neither Monique or myself had ever been to Canada, so what better time to "visit"! Off we went! We drove up to the border patrol and told them that we wanted to just go into Canada to say that we had been there and then turn around and come back. :o) Yes, they did look at us like we were nuts, but it was fun for us and that's what counts!! Hello, Canada!!

And...Good-bye Canada!! :) It was a short visit but we feel good about being honest when we state, "We've been to Canada!" So, back to the USA it was and off to convention!

We had a wonderful four days of convention and were thrilled to meet up with three of our friends there, Nancy, Alli and Suz (all from ND). They introduced us to some of their friends from Dagmar and we had a great time visiting (and laughing!) and getting to know them. We also enjoyed meeting up with old friends that we hadn't seen for awhile. We're glad for the memories! :o)

Alas, the time came when we needed to head back to Wyoming. We stayed in Miles City the first night and made the rest of the trek the next day. We did stop in to Billings, though, for a quick lunch with Pauline and then were on our way again!

In Sheridan, we had another nice stop to check out some of the local shops and see a bit of the downtown, but were shortly on the road home. We got to Laramie around 9 PM last night and were glad to be home. We both feel that we had an excellent time and were glad for the rich days! We hope you've enjoyed hearing about our trip and we look forward to hearing about your's throughout the summer!! :o)