Rex and Nancy's Travels - "ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST" - JRR Tolkein

Saturday night this area had tornado warnings out and the sky was looking pretty ugly.   Luckily, all we got was more rain. Sunday we went to the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary and took a 2-hour guided bus tour to see the wild horses.   This sanctuary was established to save the horses rounded up by the BLM and are deemed “un-adoptable”.   They also provide a home for wild horses that are adopted from the BLM and then returned for various reasons.   These horses spend the remainder of their lives here at the sanctuary running free on the property.   There are currently over 500 horses on the property.   The bus tour stopped a couple of times and let us out so we could get near the horses.    We had a lot of fun watching this adorable colt. We enjoyed seeing all the horses and learning about the sanctuary.   Our horse lover, Mariah, especially enjoyed this tour.    We had a great time once again in...

Thursday was another nice with the sun shining.   We crossed the Columbia River on the Astoria-Megler Bridge.   The bridge is 4.1 miles long and stretches from Astoria, OR to Point Ellice, WA.   When opened in 1966 the bridge completed U.S. 101 as an unbroken link between the Canadian and Mexican borders.   The day the bridge opened to traffic the ferry service across the river stopped. We stopped at Fort Columbia State Park Heritage Site.   Fort Columbia was constructed between 1896 and 1904 to support Fort Stevens and Fort Canby in defense of the Columbia River.   In 1945 the U.S. military declared the fort surplus and transferred it into the custody of the state of Washington.   It is a lot smaller than Fort Stevens but all of the buildings are still standing and are in good shape. Battery Murphy is the main battery at the fort. We drove on to Cape Disappointment State Park.   In 1788, British fur trader John Meares named t...