FEATURED PLACES: North Dakota's Enchanted Highway

By Stuart Mahoney

Photo 200073604 / Enchanted Highway © Thomas Williams | Dreamstime.com

Like everyone here at Everything Road Trip, I enjoy a good road trip. But even I have to admit that sometimes the scenery can get dull, which can make the trip less fun. Yes it can be pretty neat seeing some farms with cows in them, but if that is all you're looking at for hours straight, it can get a bit old.

Thankfully there are people out there from time to time who will take it upon the themselves to go out there and make something unique and memorable for people to look at while they drive. One of these people is Gary Greff.

Gary Greff and His Enchanted Highway

Gary Greff is an artist who specializes in scrap metal sculptures. In the late 1980's, Greff saw a decline in the economy of his hometown of Regent, North Dakota, and decided to do something about it. Being over 30 miles from I-94, Regent wasn't a place many wanted to visit, and Greff wanted make the town thrive again. An idea that would bring in people from places all around to Regent.

He wanted to build a series of massive scrap metal sculptures along the road that leads to Regent from I-94. 

The idea was that if the sculptures were awesome enough, people would get off the freeway and drive down to Regent in order to see all the sculptures, and then hopefully spend a lot of money while they were there. And thus the Enchanted Highway was born

So in 1989, Greff started working on his miles-long art project, which is still ongoing to this day.

Traveling Along the Enchanted Highway

When travelers get off at Exit 72 along I-94 in Gladstone, North Dakota, they are greeted by a massive scrap metal sculpture of some flying geese. Head south from there, and you will officially be on the Enchanted Highway!

There are currently seven sculptures for you to enjoy as you drive along the highway to Regent. There is an eighth one under construction in the town of Regent itself.

When you travel along the Enchanted Highway from north to south, you will encounter these statues in the following order: 

1. Geese in Flight
2. Deer Crossing
3. Grasshoppers
4. Fisherman's Dream
5. Pheasants on the Prairie 
6. Teddy Roosevelt Rides Again
7. Tin Family

All of these sculptures have road and parking access to them, although I gather from reading through Google reviews that not all of them (if any) have any form of public restrooms, so keep that in mind if you plan your own road trip down the Enchanted Highway. 

When you are done looking at the seven sculptures, you will have arrived at the town of Regent. There you can find an Enchanted Castle that you can spend the night in.

The Enchanted Castle of Regent, North Dakota

Now that you have finished your road trip down the Enchanted Highway, you might be thinking it is time to find a place to stay for the night, particularly if it is also a place of enchantment. Well, as it turns out, Gary Greff is also the owner of The Enchanted Castle, a medieval-themed hotel, as well as the Excalibur Steakhouse, a similarly themed medieval restaurant. As mentioned above, Greff is in the process of building an eighth scrap metal sculpture, located next to the Enchanted Castle. Appropriately, when finished, the sculpture will feature a knight defending the castle from a literal fire-breathing dragon! It is planned to breathe fire every hour, on the hour, to make it easier for people to check out the pyrotechnics. 

Conclusion

The Enchanted Highway is a must-see for anyone who likes seeing unique things in their roadside scenery, so if you happen to be going on a road trip through Southwestern North Dakota, you should try to make time to check out the Enchanted Highway. 

BEFORE YOU GO: Do You Need New Tires?

When you are preparing to drive somewhere, how often do you check your tires before you leave?

If you're like me, virtually never. Frankly I don't think about tires at all unless a mechanic is telling me straight up I need to get tires...

...or worse yet, while I am stranded on the side of the to road, trying to change my tire to while cars are speeding by me in the rain.

Don't Let This Happen to You!

Every year, hundreds of motorists are severely hurt or killed while trying to change a tire on the side of the road. It is important to do whatever you can to prevent being stuck roadside. 

While it is impossible to guarantee you won't have a flat tire while on your road trip, if you are regularly checking for tire wear, you can greatly increase your odds of not being stuck on the side of the road with a flat.

Checking for Tire Damage

The easiest way to check for tire damage is to actually walk around your car and look at the tires once in a while. This may seem to obvious, but many people, (myself included), don't really think about their cars to much until it is too late.

When you look for tire damage, you should take a close look at each tire individually. Look for spots where the rubber has holes or is peeling away from the frame. Also look for anything stuck in the tires, like nails, spikes, metal shards, road debris, etc.

While you are at it, you should check your tires for tread wear.

The Lincoln Method

"What in the world is there Lincoln Method?" 

This is probably what you are thinking right now. You are probably wondering what this has to do with tire wear. 

It has to do with our friend Abraham Lincoln on the penny:

See, the idea is that you're going to use the penny to figure out how much tread you have left. 

(For the record, I got this idea for checking for tread from the folks at Firestone. Thanks, Firestone!)

The idea is that you're going to take the penny and put good ol' Honest Abe head-first into your tire's read in several different parts of the tire and see if you can see Lincoln's head or not. If you can see Lincoln's full head, then you need to get a new tire.

You should put Lincoln's head in each major tread that goes the full length around the tire, as pictured below. This will help you determine not only if your tires is wearing out, but also if it is wearing evenly.

Checking your tire's wear in several different locations will help you figure out if your tire is wearing unevenly.

And that's it! With this cheap simple method you can figure out if you need tires without wasting time sitting at the shop!

Be Safe and Have Fun!

As always, we here at Everything Road Trip are here to help you have a fun and enjoyable trip. Be sure to check those tires and be safe!

FEATURED PLACES: Seattle Space Needle

The Seattle Space Needle and surrounding area. 

The Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, is one of the most iconic landmarks in the Pacific Northwest, if not the entire United States. Today we are going to find out what the Space Needle is all about, and if it is worth your time (and money) to stop by for a visit.

Background Information

The Space Needle was built as part of the Seattle Center, which was built to host the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. At the time of its construction, the Space Needle was the the tallest structure built west of the Mississippi. Since the end of the World's Fair, the Needle has continued to be a popular tourist attraction. It also includes a rotating lounge near the top of the Needle, giving patrons a 360 degree view of Seattle and nearby Puget Sound. Even if you don't want to hang out at the lounge at the top of the Needle, you can still enjoy all the view from the observation deck as well.

Plan Your Visit

There are several things you should know while planning a road trip visit to the Space Needle. From a logistical standpoint, your biggest problem will probably be parking. Unfortunately all the most convenient parking options around the Seattle Center cost money. Actually getting admission to the Space Needle will be a bit costly as well.

Since the Seattle Center is located just north of Downtown Seattle, parking can be a challenge, although for a fee you can park in one of three main parking lots.  There are also a few EV charging stations available for $2/charge. If you don't want to mess with parking near the Seattle Center you can park somewhere else and take public transportation to the Seattle Center campus, such as the famous monorail, or King County Metro.

Once you get to the Space Needle, if you want to actually go to the top, you need to buy tickets for the elevator. They are a bit pricey, as you will need to pay anywhere from $25-$37.50 per person, depending on what age you are and when you go. If you want to visit several of Seattle's main tourist attractions while in Seattle you can get discounts if you buy the City Pass. The City Pass provides admission for the Space Needle, the Seattle Aquarium, The Museum of Pop Culture, The Woodland Park Zoo, and the nearby Chihuly Garden for a fraction of the cost if you were to pay for admission to each separately. Buying a ticket to the Space Needle will give you admission to go up the elevator, and also to check out the sights at the observation deck near the top.

The Loupe Lounge

The SkyCity Restaurant closed in 2017 when renovations began on the Space Needle, and even though the renovations are done, the restaurant remains closed. You can, however, enjoy the Loupe Lounge. One neat feature added to the Space Needle as part of the 2017 renovations is the glass floor. The Lounge still rotates like the old restaurant did, but now features a glass floor so you can not just enjoy the views around you, but you can also see what is going on right below you at any moment. This is a pretty neat feature, although not something I would enjoy if I had a fear of heights. (Although lets face it...if you had a fear of heights, you probably aren't going to the top of the Space Needle in the first place.)

Reservations for the lounge are available for up to two weeks out, with a new batch of reservations being released every Monday.  If you are interested in learning more about the Lounge or making reservations, you can find them here. 

Conclusion

Having been there, I can tell you, in my opinion, that the Space Needle is worth visiting once or twice, but the price of admission is too expensive to do all the time. If you have the time and extra money to spend, it is worth it, but if you are sightseeing on a budget, there are many better and cheaper options to spend your sightseeing time on than the Space Needle.

ON THE ROAD: The Many License Plates of Montana

Most state have license plates to support their state universities, but Montana takes it a step further and has license plates you can buy to support some local high schools as well. (Image courtesy of Montana Department of Justice)

If you have ever spent a significant amount of time driving through the great State of Montana, you probably have noticed that Montana has a lot of different license plate designs. If you haven't, I am going to do my best to change that!

First, I feel the best way to introduce this topic is by explaining my inspiration for writing this article in the first place. As part of my job I take many road trips, and I typically go to Montana a few times a year. During one trip a couple years ago, while my co-workers and I were waiting at a busy intersection in Billings, we noticed that out of 12 Montana license plates we could see on cars, we saw eight different designs. After that we started paying more attention to the license plates on Montana cars the rest of the trip, and I still notice the seemingly endless variety of designs on every road trip I have taken to Montana since then. 

How Many Varieties of Montana License Plates Are There?

According to the Missoulian, as of 2016 there were over 230 different official license plate designs for the State of Montana! It is no wonder that it sometimes feels like no two license plates are the same while you're driving around in Montana.

Why So Many?

There are three reasons why there are so many Montana License plate designs. This article from autotrader.com goes into more depth than I'm going to here, but the three main reasons for the abundance of license plate designs are as follows:

First: When you register for a "basic" license plate, there are five options. There is the current standard plate, but without any kind of additional fee you can also pick to have one of the last four standard plates issued by Montana. 

Second: In addition to the five "standard" plates, you can also use antique license plates for your classic car. In other words, if you have a classic car from, say, 1938, and you happen to find some license plates that were originally issued around 1938, you can put them on your car and have the number on those old plates registered to your car. 

Third: This is by far the main reason for all the different license plates from Montana. Basically, Montana allows non-profit organizations to create their own license plate designs and Montana will issue them for an extra $40 dollars, giving the non-profit a $20 donation. If the person wants to keep their specialty plate on their car, they have to keep giving the non-profit an additional $20 every year.  As you can imagine, this is can be a significant source of revenue for some smaller non-profits in the state. You can check out some of the designs for the non-profit plates here.

As you can see, with all these different options for getting a license plate in Montana, it is no wonder you see so many around while going on a road trip there!

But How Many Are Too Many?

While researching this article, it was kind of surprising to me how hard it is to pin down an exact number of different available license plates there are in Montana. In my research before writing this article, I was getting figures varying from 230 to 289, depending on who wrote the article or when it was written. This seems to me to be a bit excessive, and apparently the Montana state legislature agreed with me, and legislation was passed in 2019 that tightened up the requirements of which organizations could have license plates, and also implemented a minimum number of plates a non-profit had to sell each year to stay in the program. 

 

How Many Plates Are There Now?

This is a good question, as it will be interesting to see how many plate designs will be eliminated as a result of this new legislation. During my research I failed to find any articles that listed numbers regarding how many specialty license plates there are in Montana since this legislation was passed. As far as I can tell, from looking at the list of specialty license plates that are currently being issued by Montana, there are *only* 153 specialty plates available as of the end of June 2021. 

Even with the selection being so limited, it still leaves Montana with literally about 140 more license plate selections than any other state I know of. If I'm wrong on this, please let me know in the comments, because frankly I'm too lazy to actually research this myself! This still leaves a lot of plates to pick from, and I was thinking about doing a personal top ten list of Montana license plate designs in a future post here at Everything Road Trip!

Introduction to 'Everything Road Trip'

My Backstory

I created this blog because I generally love going on road trips. I have been going on road trips virtually my entire life. I took my first road trip when I was 13 months old. My family was moving out of state and my grandparents drove me from Salt Lake City to Seattle. Need less to say, I don't remember anything from this trip, but I have many fond memories of road tripping over the years, with my family as a kid, and I continue to enjoy a good road trip, even now as a father of two kids of my own who I get to share my love for road trips.

Why I am Creating 'Everything Road Trip'

I am creating this blog for a couple of main reasons:

First, I want to be able to take more road trips for fun with my family. 

I currently am blessed to have a job where I get to frequently go on road trips that are fully paid for by my company. This includes providing a vehicle, fuel, and paid hotel rooms. On the other hand, the downside to this arrangement is that I have no say in where or when I am going on these trips, and I typically don't get to take any family members with me. As much as I like taking road trips, I find them much more fun when I can have a say of where, when, and who I am traveling with. I am hoping that through this blog I can make some extra money that I can use to take more fun road trips with my family...on my terms.

Second, I haven't been able to find another blog that quite matches my vision of what I want this blog to become. 

When I was looking into making Everything Road Trip, I spend quite a bit of time looking at other blogs that tackled road trips for subject matter. I noticed that most blogs about going on road trips were basically travel logs, and not about the actual road trip itself. This itself isn't a problem; after all, there isn't really any joy in a road trip if you don't actually stop and check out some of the cool stuff you are driving by. I'm planning on having some travel-log kind of stuff in this blog, but I also wanted to include more general information and tips for having a successful road trip, wherever and whenever you're planning to go.

Enjoy Your Journey!

I hope that you enjoy Everything Road Trip as much as I enjoy making it. From humble beginnings to great things, I enjoy the journey, and I hope I can help you have fun road trips, and help you and your family create some fun memories!