Living with the Monster (mile that is)

This was one of those days….you've know those days. They start out really badly and go downhill from there. I got up early this morning and quietly tippy toed out to the dinette and logged onto the computer to pay bills. There was something wrong with the wifi (it kept bouncing in and out) and I should have given up after the first 8 times it logged me off in the middle of trying to process some payments and trying to get a good zip code to have the Dover tix sent. In one hour, I set up one new bill and paid it. This was the first wifi we had seen in over a week so I wanted to make the most of it but it was not in the cards. After suffering to get some work done, I spilled coffee all over the table, myself, the computer and the bills. Nuff said! It wasn’t pleasant. We drove into St. Louis and easily found the Westward Expansion Park. It is right off I 70. Easy in (but not out). We went in and found that there were numerous packages. We picked one that included an IMAX film about Lewis and Clark and an ascent of the arch. One nice thing about going after Labor Day is that there are few people and only the smallest of children. We moved a bit faster than most of the other retired people there. The Children were under school age. Nice mix. The movie was interesting and opened with a new THX intro. I kind of miss the old one but the new one had a great animation package. (THX is the George Lucas designed sound system for theaters. This is the best sound system!) I think anything filmed in 70 millimeter is great; I am a fan of IMAX. I have not seen any of the commercial films in IMAX but I will, I think it would be fascinating.

The trip up the arch was interesting. It was nice to get there and not have to fight everyone to see out one of the windows. The Cardinals were playing an afternoon game against the Astros. Busch Stadium is right in the shadow of the arch. The windows on the other side look out on the Mississippi River. I get such a wonder at seeing the Mississippi River. History has never been of the least bit of interest to me but since I have been traveling around the US, I have seen so many places that have stirred an interest in the historical events that made these places household names. The Mississippi river and the riverboats and the importance of that river to the opening up of the middle of the country. The Missouri River and the Lewis & Clark Expedition that spent 2 years getting to the Pacific Ocean. The West Fascinates me. We visited several Indian Cultural Centers in Alaska, Canada and the western US. These centers strive to teach us about the Indians and their culture as it was before the westerners came. They had great leaders.

But I digress. After the sweeping panorama of St. Louis, we toured the museum. A good visit. They had a store that was set up much as a turn of the century store. They had some things to eat and drink. One of these was Scotch Oatmeal cookies. They were an oatmeal cookie with the texture of a ginger snap. The woman said they were the kind of cookies they grew up with in St. Louis. They were delicious but certainly not like the oatmeal cookies of our childhood.

We returned to the camper determined to make some miles. We had been at the museum much longer than we had planned. Well, like the extra time we spent at the museum, we were destined to spend some additional time trying to get out of St. Louis. Right in front of our camper, there was a sign pointing to I 70. We followed the sign very carefully. You know you don’t want to drive a 35 foot motorhome around the city (any city) any more than you have to. When we got to I 70, the only direction we could go in was West! Not likely, so we headed out on our own to find the Promised Land (east). We saw a lot of the city including some slums and the wrong direction on a couple of other Interstates. Finally, in despair, I turned the beast around and tried to find my way back to our starting point. This is a good place for that. The arch is pretty visible from most of the city. Eventually, we found an interstate and got on it in the wrong direction figuring we can fix that which we did within a mile. Once we got going in the right direction, we found the junction with the road we wanted and once again back on I 70 we headed east…into the rising sun. At this point, the motivation was to drive and put on a bunch of miles. Not too much interesting. We tried several times to find somewhere to change the oil but failed miserably. We drove well into the dark wishing for some of that Alaskan evening daylight. It is hard to believe that we cooked and ate supper at 10:30 in broad daylight that we went to bed in the daylight and woke up in the daylight. We never did see the darkness in Alaska. It was there, we just slept through it.

Missouri became Illinois became Indiana Became Ohio became West Virginia and then became Pennsylvania. We hit Pennsylvania in the dark and in the rain. The driving was hard because the rain absorbed all the light and it was hard to see. Here we finally stopped at a rest area near 10:30. We were beat and it was too late to find a campground. We stopped at the last rest area before our exit. There were trucks to the right of us, trucks to the left of us, trucks to the rear and trucks in front of us. Just a few feet away, there are trucks going by at 65 mph (or more). All of the trucks are running providing us with a cacophony of truck sounds and air of quite dubious quality. Such is the life in that microcosm we call the highway truck stop. Every (truck) parking space is full (we got the next to the last one and before we were inside, the last one was taken). No oxygen molecule exists that does not have a diesel exhaust fume attached to it. We did another 600 mile day and have nothing to show for it but our dot on the computer has moved through quite a number of screens and Mary (we fired Sam) has only gone bezerk twice. We have learned to deal with the eccentricities of the navigation program and when she has a hissy fit, we just let her blow off steam and wait. Most of the time, she will come back on route after telling us we are off the route and showing us on the map that we are driving through rivers, fields and airports. Eventually, she will pull the line back in and place it back on the correct route (which is where we were all the time) and proceed like there was nothing wrong. Once, we had to reboot the program. Tonight, we discovered another problem. Once it got dark, the darker setting on the computer (which normally tells us that the power is not working correctly) seemed just as bright as it should until the computer went into hibernation once the battery no longer had any life to it. It took a few minutes to straighten that out. Well, time to try to get a couple of hours sleep amongst the jungle of things bigger than us (but not too much bigger). We hit the road and soon Pennsylvania became Maryland and now we have arrived in Delaware. Not too much to report here either. We finally found a Chevy Garage that had the time to change the oil. We got the tickets via overnight mail (can you believe that the tickets that I bought a year ago didn’t arrive until 3 days ago (at my mother’s) for a race that is next weekend). Then we filled up the propane, gasoline and dumped the sanitary tanks before heading to the track only to find out that they wouldn’t let anyone in until tomorrow. The sheriff was nice though and told us where we could camp (Wallmart) and what time to return. So here we are. Camped in the Wallmart parking lot in Dover, Delaware. Tomorrow we shall work our way into a campground. A week of relaxation. Not too much to write about but who knows what may happen before the week is over. Catch ya later.

Well, we are here in campground # 9. It was, of course, not nearly as easy as it should have been but then I am a race fan and should have realized that a lot of people would show up early this morning. The Wallmart was pretty full as the evening wore on. We had other campers all around us. It didn’t matter what time they came in, they had to burn off energy before crashing. The fact that other people had been there long enough to take care of that and were in bed didn’t matter. At 2 am, we had kids on bicycles riding around us and yelling. We apparently were the parking lot of choice for people visiting the condos or apartments next to the Wallmart and they brought with them a different kind of noise. The people next to us were complaining this morning. Most of the time, we were sleeping through the whole thing so only the bicycles bothered us and we just turned up the radio and they went away. The campers started disappearing at 6 am. So many in fact that we were afraid that campground management had gone back on their word that no one would be allowed into the staging area before 8. At 7:15, I just couldn’t stand it any more and we headed out to the track. 80% of the campers at Wallmart (and Sam’s Club) were gone. I had to check it out. The traffic around the intersection of Leipsic Road and US 13 was thin. As we turned down Leipsic, we saw that no one was in the staging area. The parking lots on the side were all full of campers lined up and ready to pounce once the gates fell open. We calmly drove on by feeling that maybe they would live up to their word and hold the gates until the proscribed hour of 8:00. Knowing something of the roads after 25 years of coming here in September, I continued down to route 8, took a left and then another left heading back out to 13 below the track but on the side where I wouldn’t have to cross traffic. We drove slowly pulling over for traffic with more of a purpose than we. We still were a little early so we pulled into a mall and watched all the people arriving for work. They looked askance at us sitting in the middle of their parking lot with our motorhome and our cowboy hats. At 5 minutes to 8, we pulled out and headed for our rendezvous with destiny. Well, they couldn’t keep it n line till the end so when we got there at 3 minutes of, the street was full of campers 2 abreast and they were letting them in. It took about 30 minutes but we too finally made the staging area where we were told to pick between lots 8 and 9 and to get into the specific line for the campground we wanted. We chose 9, our old favorite, were given a form to fill out and parked just feet from a huge soft grassy water filled area. The tracks going out the front of our parking space were rutted about a foot deep in mud. I voiced my concern (calmly) and was told that I would be given a chance to swing wide once the 5th wheel beside me went. We sat there with our paperwork made out for another 30 minutes (conservatively) and were finally sent with the next group to the lot. We arrived and howdied the group of people managing the gate of lot 9. We were immediately told that the hats didn’t fool anyone, as soon as we said the word CA(R), they all knew we were from New England. After we processed through there (forms and $$) we were turned over to the “parker” (or “parka” since we were from New England) who drove us to the other end of the lot. We said we wanted to park along the road in the front but were told that all those spaces were taken (3 campers). I said that I thought no one could reserve space in these lots. He said nothing but took us to the end of the lot and turned us over to his buddy who immediately tried to put us by the porta potties. When I asked if we could go somewhere else, he said sure and gave us a spot parallel to the road with road frontage the length of our camper. Truly a great space!!! (PORTA POTTIE INDEED). We set the stabilizers and ran out the slides before anyone could crowd us. Then it was time for breakfast (finally). Now I am sitting in my chair outside the camper writing this and watching everyone else arrive and set up their sites. Most are leaving as soon as they achieve a minimum of organization but a few will stay the weekend. By Sunday night, we will pretty much have lot 9 to ourselves. We will name it Little Maine and elect ourselves King and Queen of Little Maine. We will write a constitution and a bill of rights and then celebrate until all the crumb grabbers return and burst our bubble.

Things are quieting down. There was more rowdiness at the Wallmart last night than we have seen here all day. Night has fallen and there are more people left than I would have imagined. The family next to us was also next to us in the line in the staging area. They have 2 small children and a yellow lab (that won’t be back next weekend) and the family across from us has 4 children and come from just down the road in Georgetown, Delaware. Their wife/mother died 3 weeks ago. She had been sick for some time. She was diabetic and had high blood pressure and high cholesterol (hmmm). She was 35. She lay down to take a nap and passed in her sleep. They were racing fans and went to the races here as a family every year. They are here carrying on. They buried her in her favorite Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhart clothes.
We took a long walk this afternoon. We walked over to the track and watched the driving school for a while (or whatever it was). Then we walked down to the mall and walked around there. We were looking for a communications card to go into the computer. It provides a DLS type product through the cell towers. We almost bought it but we are nearing the end of our trip and there was a 2 year commitment (I think we already have one of those on our DSL at home). They wanted $200 for the card (with half back on a rebate) and $60 a month. We could save some on restructuring our plan but the money up front was the killer. Thinking about it never hurt (well almost never) and it is an expensive alternative considering our imminent return home. We decided to wait and headed for the food court. Boardwalk Fries beckoned. This was food from my past. We used to come here and on Saturday Night after the Busch race and would always have ribs and beer at Bull on the Beach while we watched the late college football game. At some point, Stu would head out into the food court and return with a large bucket of boardwalk fries. The closest thing we have at home to boardwalk fries are the fries at the Well Dressed Hog near the Strand in Dover.

Following lunch, we continued to walk around and visited the Dover Downs Slots. That is a much bigger place than I would have expected and there were loads of people in there playing. They had a large collection of penny slots (1, 2, 5 and 10). Cheryl played for a while but lost her $5 rather quickly. We continued to walk around and ended up watching the cars on the track again then headed back to the camper. We watched the continuation of campers coming in and observed a neighborhood horseshoe match. Now we are listening to music and contemplating turning on the TV for a while. It is nice having no where to go. We have had a couple of days of relaxation. Yesterday we went for a bicycle ride through the countryside. Last night we spent the evening watching TV. This morning, we got up bright and early. We packed up the camper and headed over to lot 10 where they have 5 dump stations. We emptied the camper and then filled up the water tank, came back and set up again. Then we gathered up the laundry into our backpacks and set out on the bicycles to find a laundamat. We had been told we could take Leipsic road out onto route 13, take a left and there would be a laundramat just down the road. We ventured out onto 13 and headed south A woman sent us down a side road and halfway across town where we did eventually find the laundramat. We did the laundry and headed back via a different route. We apparently made a turn one street too soon because we ended up in an office park dead end. We recovered and found the right road which dumped us out right across the street from the track. Lunch at Applebees and a little grocery shopping at Acme Market (really, there is an Acme Market. No road runner, no Wiley Coyote). Now we are back at camp. Cheryl is making scrubbies and I am doing pretty much nothing.

The relaxation part of this break is over. Wednesday night and Thursday, the crush of people hit. There had been a steady trickle since the weekend but on Wednesday night, it started to get serious. Thursday, there was a steady line coming out of lot 10, down the road and up Leipsic Road. There were small gaps along Leipsic Road but a steady line nonetheless. Campers that had lain lifeless began to show chairs, flags, banners and satellite dishes. Instead of us being the only bikes in the campground, there are bicycles, scooters, motorbikes and all manner of conveyances. This has been like watching a spider’s egg sack. You see nothing but the sack for days on end and all of a sudden, there are little spiders teeming all over the sack.

Friday dawned like no other day. Life was teeming everywhere. Even the people who had been here all week broke out their racing shirts, hats and jackets and the world became a sea of red, black, yellow, white, blue and green. Flags fly everywhere. Racing provides scenes that you don’t find everywhere. At a football game, you will see the crowd divided into the colors of the 2 combatants but here at a NASCAR race, there are 43 teams representing every color of the rainbow and a few that rainbows have never dreamed of. NASCAR campgrounds at the tracks are a sea of flags showing a wave of color that offsets the drab look of the campers themselves. On race day, the 43 cars wrapped in their palates of color, descend as one giant rainbow toward the starting line. A sight that brings shivers to a race fans heart.

We went through the souvenir village yesterday. We looked over each of the trailers and checked out all the myriad shirts, hats, flags, jackets and various other items. We came away with only one new shirt. Since we didn’t bring Cheryl’s lucky Mark Martin shirt, we felt that we had to pick up a new one. They had a gorgeous deep red special shirt made just for the “Chase” (championship series). Mark is supposed to retire at the end of this season (from cup) and race in the truck series (much less pressure and fewer races). This will give him a chance to get more involved in Matt’s developing career. He is fairly well positioned in the Chase but only time will tell. We bought a Mark Martin shirt for Cheryl the first time she came to Dover and he won the race. She continued to wear the shirt and he won the next 2 also. We are both hoping for him to win the championship but wonder who we will have for a favorite when (if) he really retires.

Dodge had an exhibition in front of the casino. They closed off part of the main parking lot and built a small road racing exhibition course. They had a variety of models carrying the SRT designation (their top street performance designation) and took passengers for a ride on the course…..did I mention that the drivers were all instructors at the Bob Bondurant racing school???.....I probably forgot to mention that the cars were a Viper Roadster, a Viper Coupe, a Charger and a Ram (truck), all SRTs. The Charger and the truck were hemis and the Vipers were V10s. What a ride!!! They hammered those cars through the course, drifted (slid) the cars through the corners under full acceleration. It was a ride I will not soon forget. Cheryl rode in the Charger and I rode in the convertible Viper.

The thrills were just starting… Then we went to the track and watched the Nextel Cup qualifying and the Busch East (the old busch north) race. Afterwards we met Diane at the casino. She had called to say she was in the casino on the 4th floor that overlooked the track. QVC was setting up for a live (for Race Fans Only) broadcast that was by invitation only. Jeff Gordon and Rusty Wallace were going to be the guests. Diane had found a slot (penny slot) that she had been doing well at. We had drinks and talked to her while she played and eventually, I drifted over to the QVC broadcast to see if Jeffie had showed up yet. While I was watching QVC, I noticed that Cheryl was playing the machine and Diane was gone. Pretty soon after that, Cheryl got my attention and I noticed several people around her machine. She had won $1,600 on a penny slot machine. She was beside herself (as well as in front of herself and behind herself). Excitement reigned! She was unable to do anything but babble! It really was exciting and they made a big deal out of it. The payoff person showed up with a fist full of cash protected by a guard. Everyone watched. As the South Berwick Chronicle used to say: “A good time was had by all!” Cheryl took Diane and I out to dinner. It took a big plate of ribs to calm her down. (We wanted to go to the Lonestar Steakhouse but it seems that they were afflicted by a one business power failure. The building was totally dark and there were several power company trucks and multiple cherry pickers up in the poles at the front of the restaurant. What a time to have a problem. The Friday night of the second of the 2 biggest weekends of the year. This place is always mobbed on race weekends. It is even worse now that they sponsor a car.

On Saturday, the three of us went back to the scene of the crime and gave back some of the money (not a lot of it). We decided to head down to the beaches, get something to eat, have long showers in Diane’s inn, do some shopping and relax. Well, we were hit by the rerun stick. The electricity in Lewes was out. None of the restaurants were open. We did hit some of the shops but didn’t buy anything. No one knew when the power would be back on so we drove down to the next town and ate. We headed over to the inn again to take showers but the power was off again (it had been on for a few minutes). When we got there we realized that there was no light in the bathrooms even though there was hot water (gas water heater). We headed back to the track. You wouldn’t recognize the campground. Just in the few hours that we had been away, the place had filled up; not with campers but with cars. It seems that every camper had 6 cars parked around it. There was a band playing on the next road over and people driving around from campground to campground looking for the big parties or having them in the back of the trucks: a typical Saturday night race party.

Race day dawned bright and clear but the clouds rolled in early. Diane showed up bright and early to avoid the race day traffic and we sat around drinking coffee and watching the early shift head over to the track to do some shopping. It clouded over soon and sprinkled off and on. The weather report was for 40% chance of showers with a possibility of T-storms late in the afternoon. We walked over to the track about an hour before the start. I think more and more people waited until the last minute due to the impending rain (it was sprinkling off and on before the race). Everything was mobbed. There were great long lines at the elevators (to the tower seats) and constant lines of people cutting through our line to get to the gate. It took us a half hour to get to the elevator but finally we got to the mezzanine deck and shortly thereafter to our seats. We were there in time to hear the National Anthem (Hulk Hogan’s daughter – good job) and the Gentleman Start Your Engines by the Hulkster. The race was kind of slow developing. A typical Dover race is 150 laps of pretty good racing to sort out the field and then 100 to 150 laps where they just seem to be trying to get laps out of the way and then the last 100 laps are the best part. Not to belabor the point but the last 50 laps were spectacular. The battle between Jeff Burton and Matt Kenseth could be the best battle ever. As soon as the checkers fell, the sky got black and opened up into a torrential downpour. Of course, it was over by the time we got back to camp but we got out a bottle of bubbly and sat and watched everyone else return. Many people stopped and talked about the race. It was a good day. The race was saved by the last 50 laps and everyone had a good time. Mark Martin had a tough day but is still just 75 points out of the championship lead. Burton (no wins since 2001) is in the lead by 6 points and there are 8 more races. They race in Kansas next week but we have the week off and will meet back up with NASCAR the week after in Talladega. Well, time to send this puppy off the net (first internet we have had in about 2 or even 3 weeks.

Later

C2

I'm going to Kansas City, Kansas City here I come!

Back again! We took the tour through the Badlands National Park today. We got up late. We didn’t exactly have a full day’s activities. The weather was still cloudy and grey and the colors of the Badlands didn’t put on their best show. When we couldn’t get the mail on Saturday, we planned to wait until Sunday morning and get another day in the campground we were in. After we had breakfast, we figured that since the Park Loop Road went from basically our front step and wound through the park ending up in Wall, we should stay in Wall tonight, pick up our mail in the morning and hit the road rather than drive back to the campground and then have to drive the 25 miles to wall just so we can drive 21 miles back since we are heading east anyway. As we were driving through the park, the clouds began to break up and lo out came the sun! We made a quick stop, ran back into the bedroom and changed quickly. The wool shirt and sweatshirt and long pants had suddenly become overkill and even though we could regulate it within the truck with the air conditioner (boy aren’t we glad we had that fixed before we left) we still had to get out and walk into the badlands. You wonder what people thought when they came across the badlands. It is not an easy place to get through or around.

We rolled into wall and found a campground (Sleepy Hollow) that advertised itself as a Good Sam park except that they refused to give us the Good Sam discount (not personal, they didn’t give it to anyone else either). They take advantage of the Good Sam Club to advertise their campground and then refuse to give the discount to the Good Sam Cardholders. Its only 10% but still its 10%. I should have stuck to my principles and gone to the other campground but I didn’t. It was a gorgeous afternoon and we hooked up, put out the awning (for only the second time) and had lunch outside. After lunch, we sat outside and just enjoyed the afternoon. Later in the afternoon, we went back to the western shop at Wall drug. Saturday when we were here, I spent quite a bit of time in the western shop looking at boots and hats; things I have never bought before and have always wanted. They are also things that I have always talked myself out of. Like Mickey Mouse shirts that look in place when you are at Disney World but seem to be out of place in Maine, I have always wondered how I would feel about cowboy boots and hats once I return home. That usually ended up by putting everything back on the shelf and leaving. I never get a second chance at these things so I was determined to make the best of this second chance. I still didn’t know how I would feel about this but I was determined to give it a good chance. We also wanted to have a piece of the famous Wall Drug fruit pie ala mode.

Cheryl reminded me that when we first met 53 years ago, she remembered me in my Hopalong Cassidy Cowboy suit. Cowboys were “THE” thing when we were kids and I had my suit and she had a Dale Evans outfit (after all, when we met, I was 7 and she was 5 (of course that was 1953 and the western was BIG). Well, I looked at boots for an hour. Finally, I must have looked serious and lost at the same time and someone came over to help me. I told them I was from Maine and had no background in choosing boots and had even fewer places to find them at home. He went over the finer points of cowboy boots and looked at the ones I had out saying that none of them fit. Eventually, we found some that not only fit but met my requirements. Then it was off to hat land. That was traumatic because any cowboy hat I have ever tried on met with gales of laughter. I have come to realize that it wasn’t the way the hat looked but just that those who laughed were not used to seeing people around them with the hats. I have held myself to buying western shirts and seemed to have gotten away with them. I guess it is time to move on. So far on this trip, I have not found any hats that fit me. They were all too small. Well, I found one I liked and several that fit so I even had a choice of styles shapes and colors. I always wanted a black hat and I found one. I liked the fit but the clerk at the store said that it was too big. It sat right on my ears. I went back and tried the next size down. I stood in front of the mirror for what seemed like forever, shifting from one hat to the other. Finally I took the clerks advice and took the smaller hat. After wearing it for a while, it felt good while not settling down on my ears. I then went through the shirt racks. I found on that I really liked but decided that there truly wasn’t anywhere I could wear it (not even Spring Hill). It was really bright and cheery (and loud). It was teal on top with brightly colored cowboy boots around the middle and a light teal (almost white) on the bottom. I left without a new shirt but with new boots and a hat. I stepped out onto the street with my new hat and not one person laughed or even looked unbelieving at me. More people said hi to me and several people actually stopped and talked to me (usually they stop and talk to Cheryl but now it was my turn). This happened to me one other time. I went to the Bahamas and was talked into getting my hair braided with beads. I was amazed at how many people who had walked by me without a glance stopped and talked to me. I did wear them home and wore them to work one day before I took them out.

We did get our pie (tall and loaded with fruit) graced sumptuously with ice cream (vanilla) and several cups of the famous Wall Drug 5 cent cups of coffee (caffeinated since once again, we were unable to get decaf, a common theme of this trip). We were unable to find a grocery store so we walked back to our camper in time to catch a little football, some Emeril Live and Iron Chef America (a little taste of home for people who have had about 4 days of TV in the last 2 months). I kind of like the TV when all of the shows come on early (2 hours here and 4 in Alaska).

Mail’s in! Considering Newton’s laws (second I Believe) for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The mail is in and we are out on the road again. We are heading down Interstate 90 in an eastbound direction. Our first stop (planned) of the day is Mitchell, SD. Cheryl, being a support person to the farmer’s of NH, needs to see The Corn Palace. It won’t take long but it is a cool place. The Corn Palace is a gymnasium, probably a regional one (you know basketball court and a bunch of seats). What is special is the outside. There are pictures on the outside of the building that are made from corn and corn products. They are really neat. Hopefully, they are not in a post Labor Day reconstruction phase like lots of other things around here are. Shortly after Mitchell, we will come to Interstate 29 (the upper end of which we hit on our trip out) and will head south towards Kansas City. We hope to partake of the fountain of bbq that is Kansas City. Then we head east again to visit St. Louis and the Westward Expansion National Park (or whatever it is). That is where the park celebrating Louis & Clark is located (and the arch). We are still arguing with the computer what the best route is from that point east. I will let you know who wins.

We stopped at the Corn Palace. The pictures on the outside of the building honored the Professional Rodeo. The pictures were of rodeo events and were made from multi colored corn on the cob and other corn parts. They were the same pictures from last year (they told us that, we had no idea) since the corn crop this year was troubled due to drought. It was interesting because the place did not look anything like I remembered it. Every once in a while this happens. Age is the only explanation I have. I remembered a dingy run down place with a small gymnasium. It was anything but. Everything was new, bright and busy. Oh well, I am glad this only happens once in a while. Most everything was about the same.

On the way out of town, we stopped at Cabela’s. This is a sporting goods place (like LL Beans) except that they concentrate on the sporting goods and not the clothes. They must have had 500 different fishing poles and meat grinders and guns and pretty much anything you would want to go hunting and fishing and to process the stuff afterwards. They had a special parking lot for campers complete with a dump station. They also allow camping in their parking lot. We took advantage of that and set up camp. We met some people there who were on their way to Maine. It was a nice quiet place. We got up early and headed down the road. We had stopped short of our goal (something about the term free camping) and wanted to make up for it. We wanted to make Kansas City by lunch (or should that be for lunch) and we were further away than we had planned on being. As we got going, we continued on I90 taking the right hand turn at I29. We finally hit the border between SD and Missouri and realized that we had under estimated the distance to Kansas City by about the amount of distance from the Northern border of Missouri to KC. That put lunch about 3:30. Doable but it was doubtful we would get to St. Louis without a big push.

We stopped a couple of times at rest areas that advertised wifi but neither was working so off we went. We did find gas at $2.27 a gallon, ate a yogurt and pushed on. As we got near KC, we took the beltway in the wrong direction. This was calculated to gain another state (Kansas) and to allow us to put another sticker on our trip map. Tacky but the map looks cooler. At the last minute, driving through KC, I got cold feet to drive into the city itself and then have to find parking for the beast (we have had several problems finding parking) so we passed through hoping to find an outside bbq place. As it happened, we got lucky and found a sign for Gates bbq. Gates is one of the old bbq families in KC so after winding our way through some side streets, we found the place, took up about 6 parking places in the lot shared by Gates and some bar and found ourselves the only customers in Gates BBQ. We talked to the staff and ended up with a pork sandwich plate (sliced not pulled) and a platter of long tips (ribs from the large end of the rack (a long tip and a short tip makes one complete rack). The ribs were served on white bread with dill pickle chips under one side and the sandwich was served with bbq sauce and fr. fr. pots. The fr. Fr. Pots. were quite large but cooked perfectly, soft on the inside and crispy crispy on the outside. The sandwich was stacked high with sliced pork but was so tender you could bite through it like fresh bread and butter. Oh glory that was good…..oh so good!!! Definitely worth the wait.

Anything else is not worth writing about. I wish I could impart to you the flavors and smells of the food. In addition we saw the Kansas Speedway, the KC baseball park and Arrowhead stadium. Did I tell you about the BBQ? Then we drove for another 4 hours and stopped at the first campground we came to after we hit 600 miles for the day. Tomorrow we go to St. Louis for the Westward Expansion Museum and the arch.

C2

spelunking & the Badlands (not at the same time)

Its morning and its time to change our locale. We headed out and turned right heading up to the car wash with the big doors. We put the beast in to the wash and spent mucho bucks cleaning all of the Alaska dirt off the outside. Unfortunately, the bugs will require more personal attention. When it looked pretty good we headed down the road to the Buffalo Bill Museum and bought the print we liked. Then we filled up the gas tank and headed out. We stopped at a Mickey Ds for coffee but they were busy and spent most of their time on the drive up window. The Woman at the counter then went back and spent several minutes watching over he shoulders of the staff until they got straightened out. We did not wait for that to happen but walked across the parking lot to the expresso booth and got our coffee. We headed east and at the last minute turned down route 120. We watched the landscape change and the range take over. When we got to 431, we hesitated briefly and then turned. Soon we watched the landscape turn into badlands. The colors were red, white, yellow and purple. It looked like a mini grand canyon. We pulled into the parking lot and read the signs. It seems that we had found the Gooseberry Badlands (not listed on any map or brochure we had). We walked down into it and were faced with a choice (the old high road or the low road). We took the path toward the bottom of the badlands since we saw other people walking around the upper trail. We checked out the entire park and saw bunnies and chipmunks. We kept looking for rattlers but they seemed to be somewhere else (thank god). There were lots of multi colored towers, mounds and various shapes. Many had little hats that were made of harder rock that had not eroded as quickly as the lower sections. This whole portion of the country was once a vast ocean. The land was layered with silt which was then pressed into rock. The ocean floor was then forced up into the air and the water drained off leaving a vast ocean bed. As time went on, erosion washed away portions of the land leaving these areas of soft multi-colored stone. The array of colors was beautiful.

Somewhere on the bottom of the park, we met up with the other couple (it seems that there is only one path through the park and we elected to take it backwards. When we arrived, we looked for a brochure to explain the numbered stations that we observed throughout the park. We found none. We talked with the couple that we met for a while. They lived nearby on “Hoodoo Ranch”. We had seen the signs for this ranch on our way down there. They had a copy of the guide that they had brought with them to the park and gave it to us. They said they could get another one and there were none in the parking lot. We continued through the park without seeing any rattlers (I would like to see one but from a distance). This is another example of the benefits of getting off the main roads. This was a beautiful place and was not on any of the maps.

We then drove up towards Ten Sleep Canyon. This is one of the truly beautiful roads. There were hoodoos and lots of rock. We got off the road a couple of times looking for a place to have lunch. After a couple of unsuitable places (that were hard to get the beast in and out of) we found a narrow dirt road with a beautiful manmade lake and picnic tables. There were several families picnicking there and fishing in the lake. I was wearing my Kasey Kahne shirt and immediately that started a conversation with the man next to us fixing his fishing line while eating his lunch. He is a Kahne fan and showed me some of the Kasey Kahne stuff he had. He had not heard the results of the previous nights race so we I gave him the short version. We got out the stove and grill and had hot dogs by the lake. It was a beautiful spot but it also was not made for 35 foot motorhomes and I was a little concerned about running into traffic on the one lane road going out. I didn’t have to worry.

We had much the same problem finding a camping spot. We found a national park campground and endured 3 miles of dirt road to find a campground that had no spots for a rig the size of ours. We retreated and moved on to another place that was 80% closed and had kept open only the spaces for tents. The third place was a winner and was even nice enough for a campfire. We had a spot on the high side of a loop overlooking a lake. The lake had been lowered by 10 or more feet but it was still a pretty spot. We built a fire, cooked hot dogs and sat there until all our wood was gone.

We were off the next morning with our first stop being the Crazy Horse Monument. This monument is still far from finished. It is a monumental (please excuse the term) undertaking. Mt. Rushmore carved 4 heads on a mountain top. Crazy Horse is a man on a horse being carved out of an entire mountain. It is Taller than the Washington Monument (just the carved part) and longer than 2 football fields (real football not that other kind). It seems that serendipity struck again as they have 2 major blasts a year and today was one of them. September 6th was the day Crazy Horse was killed and was also the birthday of the sculptor (Korchak). He died several years ago but his wife and 7 of his 10 children are still here working on the sculpture. We decided that this was worth staying for since we had wanted to see the laser show anyway. We were afraid the laser show would have ended on Labor Day like a lot of other things had (campgrounds were a little harder to find as now we had to deal with the fact that some of them had closed for the winter). We spent some time going through the museum and exhibits. This place has been getting bigger and bigger over the years as the carving has progressed. We had lunch in the restaurant. I had a buffalo stew served with a flatbread. Cheryl had a Native American Taco Salad which was like a taco salad with a flatbread on the bottom instead of the fried taco shell. Both were delicious. We headed down the road and found a campground a couple of miles away. We watched a movie and then headed back. We expected a large crowd and wanted to make sure we had a parking place and were place to escape once the festivities were over. We got a great parking place. We could see the mountain and were poised right on the escape road. We watched the parking lot fill up and watched many more vehicles (I say it this way because there were motorhomes and cars/trucks with trailers coming into the parking lot. Eventually, they sent someone up to manage the traffic. Things went fairly smoothly until the “creative” parkers started to show up. They made a shambles out of any existing parking plan but when the smoke cleared, everyone had a parking space and most were happy.

The moon was almost full and the sky was mostly clear. It was cold and the atmosphere was electric. We talked to people (well overheard them telling others) that they had been to many of these. Cameras on tripods were everywhere. Finally, the family talked to us for a while and off went the laser show. We moved in a little closer as I was having trouble seeing it. It talked about Crazy Horse and the other Indian heroes and the reasons this monument was being built to honor all Indian tribes and their heroes. The monument is being built by a non-profit organization. They have been offered government money but have refused it so that they can build it the way they want it without any government “strings”. It has taken a long time (1948) but the first few years it was Korchak alone working on it. There is no scheduled completion date; they are just doing what they can do. The blasts began right at the end of the laser show. It was said there were 98 separate blasts. You could not see all of them from the front as the statue is in the round and there were blasts on the back side that we could not see. The explosions were bright orange flashes that marched back and forth on the different levels of the statue. Then it was over and peace was restored to the countryside (momentarily) before the crush of traffic headed for the gates like a huge wave sweeping in on the beach. I am sure some of the people stayed for cake (all were invited) but we were positioned to leap and we did. I think we were the first motorhome out the gate and it was amazing to see the cars parked on either side of the entry road all the way to the main road. The crowd was bigger than even we thought. They must have been in the seating area between the buildings. There were lots of benches there.

The next morning, we headed for Jewel Cave. We took the Scenic Tour (all of the specialty tours had ended on Labor Day). I was not too interested in the tours that had you crawling on your hands and knees through tiny openings into rarely seen portions of the caves. I though I was doing quite well (thank you) just to climb down into these tunnels that went 200 to 300 feet under ground. I have been in both this and Wind Cave (down the road) 22 years ago and never had any trouble but the coal mine up in Nova Scotia had me leaving early both times I was there. I was a little nervous about this but to tell the story out of sequence, I had no trouble. We, of course, missed the 11:00 tour as the 2 people ahead of us got the last 2 tickets so we had to wait until 12:00. That gave us time to go through the visitor’s center, watch the film (it wasn’t really a film but still pictures and printed words barely acceptable from a national monument). Oh, by the way, why is one cave a national park and the other only a few miles away, a national monument??

It was 49 degrees in the tunnels. It is 49 degrees if the temperature outside is 115 and 49 degrees if the temperature outside is -45. They have done a nice job in Jewel Cave. They have cement walkways and aluminum walkways and ladders. The lights are all hidden and you can’t see any wires. Jewel Cave has lately become the second longest series of caves in the world displacing a cave system in the Ukraine. Jewel Cave has a very active cave exploration program which has expanded the length of the caves from 92 miles to 135. They have worked their way so far out that explorers spend 4 to 5 days at a time in the caves. They have a base camp out in the area that they are exploring and stay out there for the entire time. Out on the terrace, there is a block of cement with an opening that is 8” high by 24 inches wide. To go on the special tours, you have to be able to crawl through this opening. Our guide told us that there was a place between one section and another where you have to crawl through an opening this size for 300 feet. Ok, closet claustrophobics line up over here; the parking lot is out that door! Since I didn’t have to jam my body into any spaces it didn’t belong, I had a wonderful time looking at the sparkly things and wondering where they hide the bats. They had advertised that this tour was moderately strenuous and that there were 723 stairs involved. I immediately wondered if they meant 723 combined up and down or were they counting only the up stairs?? We went down, then down some more then up a bunch and then down again and just when I was wondering when we would start up for the last time, we went around a corner and got on an elevator, the 723 steps were combined up and down and the biggest up part was on the elevator.,

We broke back into the sunshine and headed towards Mt. Rushmore. On the way, we found the KOA Mt. Rushmore. They had a shuttle to Mt. Rushmore and told us that the evening presentation and lighting up ceremony were still being done. We were happy to hear that because we have been finding out that many of the special things had stopped after Labor Day. Several of the National Park Campgrounds had limited their camping areas severely and were about to close. We signed up for the shuttle and checked the restaurant schedule since we wanted to go out to dinner for our anniversary. The times didn’t make it easy to dine out and see Mt. Rushmore so we decided to forego the anniversary dinner to another time and go to Mt. Rushmore. They put us on a school bus and in a few minutes, we were there. As we were entering the complex, we had to pause to let a couple of mountain goats cross the road. The only thing that was recognizable from 22 years ago was the 4 presidents on the mountain. Nothing else was the same. They had built a parking garage (which they now charge $8 a car), a book store, huge gift shop, restaurant, ice cream parlor and a huge stadium type amphitheater complete with balcony. The movie screen had been replace by a granite building with vertical blinds made out of some type of stone or concrete. The lights to illuminate the presidents had been moved from their ground level covered cases to places atop some new granite buildings. In other words, only the sculptures were the same.

A half hour before the starting time, they played patriotic music and marches. Then the ranger came out and talked about sacrifice and the 4 men on the mountain. Then they showed a film that highlighted the sacrifices of each of the 4 men and why Borglund picked them. They told a little about the construction of the mountain and soon the film was over with the playing of America the Beautiful. During the playing, the lights began a slow march from darkness to brightness. It was special even if you have seen it before. You forgot about all the changes and just stared at the faces as they began in the obscurity of darkness and came brightly into view. The ranger came out and had us all sing the National Anthem. Then he invited all the veterans in the audience to come down on stage and help retire the colors. About 50 people answered his call and they formed two lines on the stage. He picked 4 to retire the colors and they took down the flag, folded it and handed it to the ranger with a salute. He took the flag and handed it to the first man in the line of veterans and they saluted each other. This was repeated until all of the veterans had become part of the ceremony. Then he went to each one of them and had them give their name, branch of the service and service dates and theater of operations. This was a moving ceremony. There was not a sound throughout the crowd (except for a group slightly away from the amphitheater who were cackling about something and weren’t paying attention. Soon it was all over and we retreated to our bus. Everyone was abuzz about the ceremony and the look of the mountain with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt all lit up in the clear night sky. The moon was full tonight and it did nothing but highlight the brightly lit granite faces of our history. One man sitting across the aisle from Cheryl talked about his son who had recently died and had a military funeral. He was quite moved by the flag ceremony. At camp, we bought a bundle of firewood and returned to camp, had a drink and stared into the fire talking about the ceremony. It was a wonderful evening even without our anniversary dinner.

This morning we got up late and headed out to Wind Cave National Park. Once again, we missed the last ticket by 2 minutes (we are getting better) and had to wait another hour for a tour. We wandered the gift shop looking at books, posters and all manner of things. Then we found the theater and watched the orientation movie (a real movie here). Soon we were gathered with the ranger and headed down into the ground once again. Wind Cave is famous for its Boxwork. 98% of all the boxwork in caves all over the world is located in this one cave. This is special to the way the caves were formed. Instead of the water moving through the caves, the water table was responsible for flooding the caves and then draining them. This provided just the right conditions for creating this boxwork. It is beautiful, intricate and very fragile. The passages here are much narrower than Jewel Cave and there are a lot of places where you have to bend over to keep from hitting your head. There are no large rooms in the tour area (they have found some in the new sections of the cave but decided not to alter their tour infrastructure to include these areas. The lighting is not as well hidden and in places the wiring is visible but the tour is still a great one and the 2 caves are certainly very different even though they are fairly close together.

After the tour, we were looking at some exhibits and one showed the locations of many caves across the US. There was one in Maine and one in New Hampshire. We tried to look up in some books just where they were but were unable to. Does anyone know where these caves are??

Our next stop is the Badlands National Park. We looked at the map to see if there were any things of interest “on the way”. We notice that the Wounded Knee Massacre spot was on the map. Cheryl had read the book and so we decided to check it out. We drove through a lot of areas on the edge of the Badlands on our way and passed through a couple of Indian Reservations. At one point, we passed by a Casino complex. It was quite an impressive place. It was large and fairly gaudy. In a few miles, we passed into one of the towns in the reservation. Poverty was the word of the day in the towns. Places like this are an embarrassment to the US. Most of the people lived in trailers that appeared to be in terrible shape. The rest lived in small houses that appeared to be all the same and in the same shape as the trailers. We veered from the road 2 miles to go into Nebraska (so we could put another state on our trip map). The town in Nebraska was even worse. People were sitting on the side of the road. Stores were all boarded up and the only business being done was a truck farmer peddling his wares by the side of the road. There were a lot of people hanging around the truck. A Lakota woman we talked to at Wounded Knee told us the unemployment rate in this town was over 90%. She said it wasn’t much better in her town 80% but she was proud that she and her friend made and sold Indian craft items (necklaces, bracelets and dream catchers) and made enough money to keep of welfare. She was proud to be able to work and to find something she could do herself. We bought some stuff from her. She was very friendly but her friend wouldn’t make eye contact with us and any time we tried to talk to her directly, she would walk off without saying anything. We walked up the hill to the cemetery where the victims of the Wounded Knee Massacre were buried in a common grave (by the cavalry) and were met by 3 of the locals who were hanging out there. One of them started talking to us and then said he needed some money for pampers for his baby. We gave him some money and he and his friend walked away. The third person began to tell us about the Cemetery. He claimed to be the caretaker and he wanted $40 form us as a donation to the care of the cemetery. The problem with all of this was that he was obviously either inebriated or on drugs. He repeated every sentence at least 3 times and slurred over the words. The other problem was that the cemetery obviously had no caretaker as nothing had been done to care for it. There was no grass and it was in poor shape like everything else. It was a sad end to a side trip that had great expectations. We went away depressed over the conditions on this reservations that held such a large lavish casino.

We headed north to the Badlands National Park. The road went through several parts of the park and then wandered out again. The Buffalo Gap National Grasslands seemed to butt up to the Badlands everywhere so we wandered in and out of that park also. We found the Campground we were looking for just at dusk and from the road, we wondered if we would find a space in it. One of the loops has been closed for work and there is heavy machinery in it. The other loop looked pretty full but once you drove around it, there were a few spaces available. The ranger station (from 22 years ago) is gone and has been replaced by a kiosk and automated machine to manage the campsites. The campground is wide open like everything else in the badlands. There are a few very small trees but nothing else. There are the big mountain-like mounds all around so it is definitely spectacular.

The “west” is an intriguing place. I wonder how it ever developed into anything worthwhile. There is nothing for miles and miles. The prairie is huge and nothing much grows on it. It is good for cattle but even they need huge sections of it just to have enough food to live. How did the cowboys of old ever find their way around? It is miles and miles between places. Yes, I know there were trails/roads that led from town to town. On a previous trip, I saw the route the wagon trains used called the Oregon Trail. You could still see the trail and the ruts that made up the trail even after all these years but the task still seems daunting. People’s worlds were a lot smaller then. People might visit one or two towns on either side of them. Until the railroad, few people ventured far from home unless, like the wagon train people, they had no plans to return. This is a big country and we are lucky that our ancestors found reasons to move around or we would still be 13 states (of which Maine was not one, unless you include the fact that we were part of Massachusetts and they were a state.

Well, that’s it for now. We are awake and it is raining (whatever happened to “it never rains in the badlands). We will head up to Wall to pick up mail (I hope it comes so we can spend the day here and move on) and show Cheryl Wall Drug. This is a one of a kind place. The closest thing to it is probably Pedro and South of the Border with a western tilt.

It has been drizzly and foggy all day. You can’t see much and the colors of the Badlands are washed out by the fog. We drove into Wall for the mail but it hadn’t come. The woman in the post office said that Wall is a 3 day 2 day delivery (if you know what I mean). The weather requires us to stay here if we want to see the Badlands at its best. We spent the day looking around Wall especially Wall Drug. This used to be (if my memory serves me correctly which it doesn’t always) a tourist trap with store after store of cheesy items. It has become a series of shop spaces that have been contracted out. The shops have a nice collection of things. Western shops, book stores and the usual tourist area items. It was a pleasant time. We later headed back to our campsite and stopped at the visitor’s center. We looked over the exhibits and watched the movie…sort of. I fell asleep and missed most of the movie. Cheryl asked if I wanted to sit through it again but I felt that I needed a nap (I didn’t sleep well last night. I had a low blood sugar problem during the night and had to get up and eat then had trouble getting back to sleep. Not bad for all this time on the road. Well, we are watching the Sound of Music wishing we could watch the race tonight as this is the one that decides who makes the Chase for the Championship. Oh well, we have missed most of the races anyway so we will probably play dominoes.

This morning has arrived, broken does not describe it. It is not raining but the low overcast is still here. This is our extra day here so I guess we will head out and see the park. You can see th colors of the formations but they are not as vibrant as they are in the sunshine. We are not going to renew our campsite and just see where we end up. We may end up here but I think we will try for something closer to Wall maybe with wifi.

When we were at Crazy Horse, we each had a meal with a native American fried bread, kind of like a cross between a pita and a taco. While wandering in the stores in wall, I found a large cowboy cookbook with 25 or so recipes for bread one of which was a Navajo fried bread. It was a very simple recipe consisting of flour, salt, dried milk and warm water. I made it for breakfast this morning. It was not exactly the same but it was delicious and definitely a keeper. Theirs was so perfect, they must have used a taco press or something like it. The baking powder gave it a rise when cooked and it cooked quickly. They had a nice 9” round, cut it into quarters and placed it in a bowl serving stew on it with and the edges sticking out so yoou could pull them out and eat them.

Well, time to clean up, pull the slides in and go see the badlands. So Bye for now. We still have to spend some time with the maps and figure out what we want to see on the way to Delaware although time is beginning to run out especially if we want to get the best camping places. Peace!.

C2

Where the deer and the antelope roam!

Another day is in the books. We headed out this morning to explore the northeast quadrant of the park. The Roosevelt Corral is in the northeast part and that was where we were supposed to pick up the wagon that would take us to the cookout. As we were headed for our day’s assignment (sounds a little too much like work) we drove around Yellowstone Lake and the West Thumb Basin. At the top of the lake is Fishing Bridge Village and a RV park. We pulled in there and inquired if we could change our last night in Grant Village to Fishing Bridge and then add another night to it. This would make our trip home after the cookout many miles shorter. They let us do it and so we had a new place to live (with electricity, water and sewer). We soon ran into bison. There were 4 of them, 3 bulls and a cow. They grazed on one side of the road then crossed the road to get water from the Yellowstone River. We met a man who claimed to have seen a large herd the day before that was on both sides and in the middle of the road creating a massive 1 hour traffic jam (animals do that here often and there are no bigger jams than the ones created by Bison or Bears). He said that one gentleman (not the word he used) had a bison in front of his truck and honked his horn to get the animal to move out of the way. It worked to a point. The Bison did move out from the front of his truck but before he could get moving, the Bison rammed the side of the truck putting a big dent in the truck. He told us this as a warning that if we encountered a bison in the road, we should not honk our horn. Personally, I thought this was fairly sound advice if not a given.

We drove into the South Rim Road of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We tried to park at Uncle Tom’s Trail but the lot was not set up for large RVs so we had to move on unfulfilled. Uncle Tom’s trail takes you down to the upper falls. We continued on to the parking lot for the lower (more popular, larger and the falls you think of when you think Yellowstone). The falls is more than 300 feet tall and wide with a huge volume of water pouring over it. This water flows into a canyon created from yellow rock with multicolored stained areas where various thermals put water out through the rock staining the yellow rock with various reds and browns. It is gorgeous and spectacular. We then drove to the other side of the canyon where we found a trail that took us to a viewing point just above the upper falls. This was just over 100 feet tall but no less spectacular as you could get much closer to it. The spray at the bottom contained a double rainbow to add to the glory of the falls itself.

The next section of road wound around Mt. Washburn. I am not sure how tall this is but the road goes to 8,800 feet and the mountain is much higher. Once you get to the top, a small sign informs you that there is 6 miles of 7% downgrade and the speed limit is reduced to 25 mph. They don’t inform you that the road is very narrow and there are often cliffs on one side or the other (and, yes you guessed it, no guardrails either).

We survived this and found Roosevelt Corral where we were about an hour early (a bison or bear near the road would delay us for an hour but we didn’t see any). We watched the trail rides get ready (they were sold out when we made our reservations) and leave and finally it was our turn. We gathered at the wagon area and a cowboy named Bob told us the rules in a way that made them seem more like stories than rules. The first and most important rule is NO RUNNING. It upsets the horses and we don’t want that do we? At that point, a bus tour pulled in (late of course). These additions to our hungry patrons were solid senior citizens. Bob picked up his rules once they got settled in and one heckler in the back yelled out “don’t forget to tell them about the running thing!”. Most of them were using canes or walking very slowly. The crowd broke up and Bob tried very hard not to laugh but he was struggling. This whole process seemed to take a long time but finally they brought out several teams of beautiful draft horses and off we went. It took about a half hour to get to Pleasant Valley where the cookout would take place. On the trip, one of our fellow passengers claimed to have been in the World Series of Poker and finished 250th out of 9,000 entered. He dropped all of the right names and was impressed at the names we dropped. Of course, he knew them and we only feel that we knew them from watching them play.

When we got there, they had a nice fire going with several pots of “cowboy coffee” steaming away. This was brewed in the traditional manner with the grounds dumped into the water (there was some controversy as other dinners like this had said that the grounds were put into (clean) tube sox to keep the grounds out of the consumer’s cups). I have no opinion. The coffee was strong and actually quite good (cowboys out on the range never heard of decaf and with coffee this strong who needs expresso?). (Rhetorical question of the day: why do we see so many signs saying espresso rather than expresso??) I had 3 cups and am up late working on the blog. I will probably be cruising on super high test until I totally collapse.

Bob was the entertainment too. He is from Fort Worth Texas and has been coming here to work at the cookouts for 7 years. He sang old cowboy songs reminiscent of the Sons of the Pioneers and Gene Autry. Meanwhile they opened the buffet. Cornbread (cooked in a kitchen somewhere, cole slaw, potato salad, cowboy beans (bacon and several different kinds of beans), apple crisp and buffalo steak. Soda, lemonade and ice tea were also available. You could go back as many times as you wanted. They wanted to make sure you were full. One of the wranglers (modern day name for cowboys) came over to me to talk. I was wearing my USS Maine hat and he had been in the Navy. We talked about the Navy and Norfolk specifically. When dinner started, he came and sat at our table. He was from Montana and was named Byron (my Grandfather’s name). We also had 2 other couples; one from Detroit area (retired from GM, glad to hear about my Chevy truck) and another from Charlotte, NC (and damned pleased that NASCAR had decided to put the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte since no where else deserved it!!!). We had a great time talking about places we had been on this trip and where we were headed when we left Yellowstone. They had both done Cody as day trips while they were there and we were headed there.

We headed back to our new home and got there just in time for the 9:00 ranger presentation (which we always look forward to). We didn’t really know where we were going but soon ran into a ranger who informed us that the ranger presentation had been cancelled. It seemed that when they showed up to set up, there was a bear in the amphitheater. Discretion being the better part of valor, we returned to our wheeled palace and called it a night.

I have a completely different view of Yellowstone Park than I did 22 years ago when last I was here. The last time I was here, I had small children and we all lived in tents. The campground we were in was being terrorized by a bear and a woman hiking had been killed by a bear the week before we got there. We did the e-ticket rides and left because no one was sleeping. This time, none of that is a problem and there are no children to bring our program down to. I could easily see spending 2 weeks here. There is lot to see and lots of hikes to do. We have spent 2 full days here and have barely scratched the surface. We have taken little of the down time we need but don’t want to use any of our Yellowstone time to rest. We have this one day left and need to look over the books and maps and figure out what we want to do with our last day here.

When I woke early this morning, it was dark and I thought it was cloudy. Today would be a good day to rest and take care of some of the things that need to be done like house cleaning and laundry. I went back to sleep and when I woke an hour later, the sun was bright and the sky clear. Who can waste a day like this? We have a couple of days more clothes. Actually, we might take a ride down to Jackson Hole. That is a neat western town (or was 22 years ago) and I bet it has a commercial Laundromat with the oversized machines (that we could park next to rather than carry our laundry halfway across the campground). We could also catch the West Thumb Basin (more geysers and mud pots) on our way. That is almost a day off. We can enjoy the sun and get some work done. Tomorrow we leave for Cody. We could leave a couple of days later but I understand that the Cody Rodeo closes this weekend for the season and I don’t want to miss that. A couple of days there in the Buffalo Bill Museum then it is off to Devil’s Tower. Our schedule looks good. We have plenty of time to do the things we want to do and get to Dover in time to get a good Camping spot…..if the tickets ever come. We had the same problem last year, the tickets came at the last minute. I got worried enough that I called them Monday. They said they had not been mailed out yet and that the last day of mailing is September 13…..to which I replied “for a race on what date??.....September 18. These tickets have to get to Maine, be transferred to our alternate mailing address and forwarded to Wyoming….We have until September 13 to mail them.” Arrgh

Well, I seem to be rambling again. I get this way when I am reflecting or just have nothing to say so I will be off.

We headed towards the south and Jackson (it says Jackson on the maps and all of the signs so I guess it is now known as Jackson and not Jackson Hole as it used to be). We drove out the southern gate of the park and directly into the Grand Teton National Park. The road runs parallel to the Tetons and provides quite a nice view of the mountains. There are also some lakes, rivers and streams to add to the view. The mountains are spectacular and jagged. They are very young mountains formed when the earth split and formed into 2 blocks. One block sank and the other rode up at an angle to form the mountains. Over the years (many many many) the sedimentary rock eroded away leaving the igneous (volcanic) rock. The eroding material settled into the valley.

We drove into Jackson and found a public (free) parking area specifically for RVs. We wandered around and checked out the stores. It is really a nice little area with a western tilt but still a tourist “trap”. We checked out the Pendleton store to see all of the new Western Blanket Patterns (they had some with the Indian Totemic Symbols and one that was a map of Lewis & Clarks expedition route). We looked into several stores with T-shirts with the clever little statements on them. We also looked into several galleries with their western art and more important their bronzes. What a collection of statues we saw. There was one that was an entire pack train and another that was a stampede of cattle and cowboys ($175,000) and lots more in the 5,000 to 15,000 range (not nearly in my range). We did check out the Silver Dollar Bar. It had silver dollars inset into the wood of the bar top and saddles for seats if you were sitting at the bar. They only had 1 bar open and the only empty seats were singles here and there so we headed back to the park. 22 years ago, I came here with my family and camped. The campground we stayed at is not an art gallery.

On the way back we stopped at the West Thumb Geyser Basin. We figured to get in one more grouping of geysers. There are also supposed to be some paint pots (bubbling mud pots) here also. We arrived as dusk was settling in. We got out and started to walk toward the entrance. We got to the pylon where the area maps were kept and were a little short of change to purchase one. We went back to the camper to look for another dime and changed from shorts to lined jeans and heavy sweatshirts. We also found plenty of change. We bought the map and headed into the boardwalk area (they use boardwalks to get around as the ground is unsafe to walk on. The crust is thin and with the heat places moving around, you never know where it is safe to walk. We had no sooner entered the geyser area than we noticed a group of elk off to the side near the woods. There were 8 or 9 females and young elk. We watched them for quite a while waiting to see if some males would join them or just to see what they were going to do. They grazed in the grasses outside the boardwalk and then walked onto the boardwalk and into the inner ring of the boardwalk where there were some geysers and heated pools. They grazed in the grass. One of the females licked at the water on the ground away from one of the hot springs. Her little one came over and tried to take a drink out of the hot spring and started crying loudly. He/she cried loudly for some time and left the area of the hot spring. We figured at that point that the elk were just going to eat and not bother anyone (there were about 8 or 10 people there. We wandered around the boardwalks looking at the thermal features and as we approached the end that swung back to the parking lot we noticed that the elk were all around the area we had to walk through. Most of the other people had already passed that point and had returned to the parking lot leaving us alone with the elk. As we were waiting for them to move on or out, we noticed an addition to the “herd”. A bull elk had entered the geyser basin. He watched us for a minute and then began to herd the “women and children” rather roughly out of the geyser area. He hit them with his horns (and oh what a magnificent rack) and drove them towards the woods. We decided to retreat the way we had come in. All of a sudden, we didn’t feel the need to see the rest of the geysers and pools. We did get to the car and head up Yellowstone Lake toward our campground. We noticed the herd down by the lake right after we left the West Thumb area.

The next morning, we headed out the east gate towards Cody. The road is under construction. There is a 6 mile stretch that is narrow, dirt construction and steep downhill. There are sections of stone walls along the outer edge (mostly new) but the rest of the road is cliff off the edge of the road. At one point, there was a sign that said “Shoulder Drop”…..yeah, the sign was on the edge of the road and the shoulder dropped off about 400 feet. This was a little disconcerting to say the least. Once we got out of that, it was a pretty nice ride through the Shoshone national forest. There were pillars and other shapes of rock along both sides of the road. These are called hoodoos. They are places in the sedimentary rock where lava had intruded through cracks and cooled. Erosion then washed away the sedimentary rock leaving only the intrusions. There are miles of them and they are pretty spectacular. We then came to Buffalo Bill Dam and the lake that it has made and soon were pulling into Cody. We drove through looking for the best campground that would allow us to walk to the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Wallmart and the rodeo grounds. Of course, they were too far apart so we settled for the museum and stayed at the Ponderosa. Before setting up, we drove down to the Wallmart and dumped the camera chip onto disks, go a quick bite at the Subway in the Wallmart and then did some grocery shopping. We found out that the Cody rodeo had ended the night before we got there (Thursday night?? actually it started the first of June and ended the 30th of august). BUT, they were having a special show, the CBR (Championship Bull Riding) touring group was scheduled for a show on Saturday night. We bought tickets and settled in for a cookout. We had a nice cookout, steak, (white) sweet potatoes and grilled vegetables with Boston Crème Pie for desert.

Off to the Buffalo Bill Cody museum. We decided to hit the gun section first. This section has grown immensely. Not only do they have a huge inventory covering the history of guns, they also have substantial side exhibits. They have a colonial gun shop and a factory from the early water power era. They have an exhibit from the Boone/Crocket hunting club consisting of trophy “heads” and fully stuffed trophy animals from years ago. The exhibit room was a log cabin. I had never heard of this club but it was started by Roosevelt. Not really my cup of tea as I spent time sharing an office with someone who had 3 deer heads hanging in the office because they were banned at home. It didn’t take long to see our fill of guns so it was off to get a cup of coffee (they even had decaf, something we have had trouble finding in a lot of this trip. Then we wandered into the Western Art wing. This was much better. I was not a fan of western art when I came here 22 years ago but came away from the museum liking Charles Russell’s art and Frederick Remington’s bronzes. Each of these artists now has a room in the wing for their stuff including exhibits of their studios. There are a lot of other bronzes there now with a room dedicated to them. In fact, there was a bronze of a cattle stampede that we had seen for sale in Jackson ($300,000).

We headed back to the camper early as we wanted to get something to eat and rest for a while before the long walk to the rodeo stadium (or whatever they call a rodeo place). Upon arriving at the camper, there was a note on the door telling us that enough people in the campground had bought tickets to warrant the bus coming by. The bus ride to the rodeo let us know that we were glad we got to ride the bus. The walk out would have been ok but the walk back in the dark would not have been a good walk.

The first item on the program was the “Young Guns” program. This consisted of 13 year olds and one 9 year old riding miniature bulls. A miniature bull is not all that miniature (until you compare them to the full sized bulls). The 9 year old had his bull lie down when they opened the gate then jump from the ground up still in the gate and spin outward throwing the kid like a dart straight out into the arena. They gave him a reride because the bull had behaved so weirdly. He had a more traditional ride on his second try but even though the crowd was definitely with him, the ride didn’t last much longer. The trophy was a gun and money was paid too. Then, after a long delay, we got to meet the participants, all 40 of them. I was surprised they didn’t introduce the bulls too but in a way they did. As each cowboy was getting his ropes attached properly and heated up their rosin, they would tell us about the bull he was riding. “This is the Unabomber. He is the son of Death in the Afternoon and we all remember what a great bull he was. He threw the leader in the 1998 National Finals Rodeo. This bull will come straight out, spin to the right jump a couple of times and spin to the left. He hasn’t been ridden in his last 8 outings.” Really! Then they would open the gate and the bull would not do any of those things but just come out and jump, tossing the cowboy into the air and hip checking him into the fence. Out of 40 cowboys in the first round, 8 had full rides and 15 limped away. This is the western equivalent of our night at the local stock car track. Loud announcers who keep talking when they have nothing to say and a never-ending list of local sponsors who are mentioned by the names of the people who work there (Be sure to go over to Cody hardware and see John or Sylvia for all of your hardware needs then go across the street and see Marjorie at Great Bear Espresso to get a great coffee).

They advertised that they would give away a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Yeah, that didn’t happen either. They drew 6 names out of the barrel then had the six people draw cards from a deck of cards with the winner throwing dice with letters on them to spell Harley. As soon as you duplicated a letter, you were done and the motorcycle rolled out of the arena and back to the dealer safe for another “giveaway”.

Today we will return to the Museum with 3 wings left to see. Tomorrow, we will head towards Devil’s Tower and South Dakota. Time to get going. We are heading into the final stretch. Later!

C2

back - back - back in the USA

Whoa, I have been rather delinquent. I looked at the last part I wrote which was several days ago in Smithers. We have been putting on some miles while seeing things and quitting late in the day very tired. We have been talking about finding a place where we can take a few days off. I also need to figure out where I want to celebrate my birthday. 60 requires some effort. Tell you more when we figure it out.

We left Smithers and continued down the Yellowhead Highway. It was a long drive but the scenery gave us something to do so the miles melted away. The mileposts to Jasper kept going down and much progress was made (this is just a way to indicate that we put on a lot of miles and had nothing to report). Soon the Canadian Rockies began to show in the windshield. The Canadian Rockies are broken up into several parks, some national and some provincial. The first one we encountered was the Mt. Robson Provincial Park. Mt. Robson is one impressive rock. It is shaped like an old fashioned toaster, the one with the doors on either side. It is sheer rock up the 3 sides I saw. I don’t know about the back side. The top and sides are covered with ice and snow. It is a very popular climbing destination. My son, the mountain climber (he was on McKinley as we were driving up to Alaska) said that this mountain is on a very short list of mountains being considered for next year’s climb. I have seen Mt. Ranier and Mt. McKinley and have seen pictures of the Mexican and Bolivian climbs and while they were all much bigger than Robson, Robson could be the most difficult climb yet. I am sure he would disagree but this mountain is impressive.

We drove into Jasper from there. We saw this really impressive tram and drove up to it. Unfortunately, there was no room to park the beast. The parking lot was very small and tight and there already were some large motorhomes taking up some space we `could have used. Rather than drive around, we headed back down and went into the town of Jasper. We parked along the main street and spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. Jasper is a tourist town surrounded by huge mountains. It could be in Switzerland or Austria. We traveled back to the area of the tram to a large national park campground called Whistler’s. There were over 350 campsites so we didn’t have any trouble getting one but it was without electricity or water. That is ok; we can make up for it. Ooops, we didn’t read the rules and had to be spoken to about the generator. They had the strictest generator rules I have ever run in to. They allowed you 3 ½ hours a day (7 to 8:30 and 5 to 7). Even Denali with their Nazi like wilderness experience (keeping all the vehicles with generators in one place (protecting the rest of the world from them) and then not letting them use them. Campfires were not too much of an issue when it doesn’t get dark until after midnight. In the Canadian parks, you are charged $7.90 a day for a fire permit and then have to put out your fire at 11:00 to maintain quiet rules. If you pay for the permit up front and it rains, you get no refund or you can go up to the ranger station and buy one each day you want to have a fire. This means standing in line as there is a lot of turnover and a lot of new campers coming in each night. I was third in line with 2 lines going and took about 20 minutes. Not sour grapes, I deserved to be spoken to as I had not read the rules. The other rules seem strange though.

Off and running early the next morning. We were anxious to see the park. We headed into the park and soon realized that one of the biggies, Miette Canyon, was not in the park at all but further down the Yellowhead. We turned around and went out of the park and drove to the Canyon. This is a very deep very narrow fissure created by a flowing stream. There are several waterfalls and bridges across the canyon. There is a nice trail that winds down along the canyon. It is mostly in the trees and a nice walk. Bridge 3 has a waterfall and you can feel the spray on the bridge. Bridge 4 goes basically nowhere. You get a nice view of the lower part of the canyon from it but it is there to provide the ice climbers with a means across the canyon. There is a trickle of water there at the top of a sheer face of rock. In the winter this builds a great wall of ice that is a popular climbing spot. The lower section of the hike is a nice walk through the woods along the banks of the stream after it emerges from the canyon. Ok, now the fun, I didn’t mention just how much the drop was along the 4 ½ kilometers but now was the time to climb back up to bridge 2 where we started. Of course, nothing is easy, there is also a bridge 1 they didn’t tell us about. It follows the top section of the canyon from where it starts with a little stream dropping through a rocky area before plunging into the action portion of the ride. The top section dumps you into the Tea House (a poorly disguised effort to portray the gift shop as something classy like a Tea House). The Tea House was nothing more than a concession stand and the gift shop was the clutteriest place I have seen in a long time. You could hardly walk through it.

Back to the park. We went through the same lane we had gone through earlier and got the same girl checking our passes. She looked at us kind of funny and waved us through. We were now seriously on the Icefields Parkway. Soon we slowed down to see some mountain goats grazing next to the highway. They were pretty much the same color as the ground they were grazing on. They didn’t pay any attention to us so we took some pictures and moseyed on. The mountains and streams got more and more beautiful. We didn’t stop at every scenic spot but we could have (and we would still be there). Every turn brought new vistas and soon most of them were topped by snow pack and glaciers and the bottom of every glacier spawned a stream of the prettiest green water. Many of these streams gather together into a torrent and soon you have a river of green water. On the glacier, the melt is a bright blue. Once it collects below the glacier, it creates green streams which end up as grey rivers. Got it? There will be a test at the end. We saw cirque glaciers, hanging glaciers and alpine glaciers. Then we saw the Columbia Ice Fields. This is a mountain or series of mountains with one solid ice pack on the top that rolls off into several glaciers. There is an Ice Fields Interpretive Center. There was a lower parking lot near the toe of the Athabascan Glacier. It was steeply downhill and the parking lot itself was tiny. There were a couple of small motorhomes there but I didn’t think I wanted to go there. You could walk up to the toe (bottom edge of the glacier) and then up onto the glacier itself. We opted instead for the snow coach ride up onto the glacier itself. These snow coaches are bus like vehicles with big earth mover tires on them lifting them 6 feet off the ground. This company claims to be the only company to take people onto the glacier anywhere in the world. There are 33 of these vehicles in the world and this company (Brewster) owns 32 of them. The 33rd is owned by the US Government and is used in Antarctica to transport people from McMurdo Sound to the Airport and back (small bit of useless information which I only mention as I was the only one on the coach who analyzed the data and came up with the right answer). Once again, we played in the snow and enjoyed the rarified air on a large mountain (we were at the 7,000 foot level. The parking lot was 6,600 feet, an altitude my truck didn’t much appreciate.

Back at the camper, we discovered that we could camp overnight at the parking lot (for a fee of course) so we motored on in search of. After one false start (the campground was too small for us) we found a place to spend the night. We set up and walked up to register. When we returned, our neighbor was out in his site playing his bagpipes. I have to admit, that was something I had never run into before. It was pretty neat. We rose early as we wanted to finish the parks and get over the border before night. We soon passed from Jasper National Park into Banff National Park. This was more of the same and we checked it all out. We soon arrived in Lake Louise. We had heard that Lake Louise was not to be missed so we got off the parkway and headed into Lake Louise. There was a little town and then we arrived at the Chalet. We followed a bus through the traffic pattern with all the little cars peeling off to a car parking lot. The busses had their own lot and then came the RV lot. Like a group of second class citizens we moved into our lot. Always the furthest away from everything. We didn’t have to exercise much as we always had to walk a long ways to get anywhere from the RV lot. Lake Louise was a green lake in an area carved out of 3 mountains. You looked down the lake at 3 immense walls of stone above a green lake filled with red rented canoes (it would have been more interesting if they had been “red rented rowboats” or even “rusty red rented rowboats”. Off we went on or way toward Banff. We arrived in Banff and found that to visit the town we had to get off the main road so we passed and continued on saving that part for another trip. Calgary was our next target. As we approached Calgary, we entered the Canadian old west. We took route 2 toward the south and didn’t get to see much of Calgary up close. All down route 2 we could see the Rockies to our right in the distance. The trip was unexciting and eventually we arrived at the border. After a brief interrogation and a superficial search of the motorhome we were back in the good old US of A. We weren’t near any civilization but we were home. We drove a few miles and pulled into a KOA at St. Mary’s Montana for a well deserved rest. The campground was in a section that had been in the middle of a huge forest fire at the end of July, 2006. Our plan was to drive through the park’s northern road and head down to the southern part of the park and head for Bozeman for an attack on Yellowstone and Jackson.

Well, that plan didn’t work out. We pulled into the entrance and were told we couldn’t drive through the park. Due to the narrowness of the roads in the middle, we could drive in 11 miles and then turn around and come back out, drive all the way around the park and go in just 20 miles on the other end then turn around and come back out. We went in, turned around and left. We figured that we had seen enough mountains and glaciers anyway so we headed south into Montana. We drove through miles and miles of the forest fire area. Not much to see but burned trees. It was quite amazing to see what had burned and what had been spared. In some areas great huge areas had burned and an occasional patch had been spared. Soon we broke out of the hills and into the old west. Miles and miles of cattle ranches with hay fields spaced in between. You wouldn’t see anything but rangeland for miles and then a ranch. We drove through this for hours. Every hour to hour and a half we would find a small town with a gas station, a small store and a bar. The bars were dumpy weather-beaten buildings with neon signs in the windows. Then we drove through miles of stone outcroppings and hills with big rock formations sticking out of them. Beautiful but nothing like it anywhere on the east coast. We drove into the darkness and threw in the towel in a town called Pipestone at a little campground. In the morning, we looked over the map to see what route we would use. We were in a position to get to Bozeman, Mt in plenty of time to take the road down to the North Entrance of Yellowstone. Of course that didn’t happen. We found a route that went from the next exit down the highway and headed down to the West Entrance but went through 4 towns that had these little rickety building symbols on the map. After searching for the legend, we discovered that this symbol meant ghost town. Among the towns were Virginia City and Nevada City. This intrigued us enough to cast off our plans and head down towards a rendezvous with a couple of ghost towns.

We had a nice drive and eventually came to the first of the 4 towns. We couldn’t find any signs or indications of what made the towns ghost towns. We didn’t fare any better in the second town but we hit the jackpot in the third. Nevada City had been abandoned following their gold rush. A couple of people stayed there into the 20th century and began to collect buildings from other places around Montana and added them to the collection of buildings remaining at Nevada City. They eventually died off and the place has become a museum. Many of the buildings are furnished and the stores stocked. You can go into many of the buildings and look around at the inventories. There are some homes that are just as they were when people lived in them. There is a hotel there that you can stay in. The lobby is just as it was when it was open 100 years ago. Several movies and television westerns have been filmed in the buildings there including Little Big Man, Return to Lonesome Dove, Missouri Breaks and others. There were original Conestoga wagons, a sawmill and a building full of player pianos and other musical oddities.

Then we moved up the road to Virginia City. Virginia City was never completely turned into a ghost town even though the map said it was. The original buildings were there as were other buildings. It was an odd arrangement for a town. Several of the original buildings were museums and others were in use as stores. I did not find it effective and the commerce only cheapened the historical aspect of the town. We wandered around and had lunch there before hitting the road again. We passed through some beautiful country with large lakes and were soon on the doorstep of West Yellowstone, Montana. My cell phone rang. It was my son. It was the first incoming call we had received since leaving home. It was my son. He wanted to discuss the fall race tickets and to let us know he was flying up to the Canadian Rockies next weekend (Labor Day) to do some climbing. It was a last minute decision and he and his climbing buddy figured they would have 2 days to climb and the holiday to get home. We talked about some of the places we had seen and he told us about the places he had climbed when he was up here between Christmas and New Years. Since we realized we had cell coverage we pulled over the side of the road and made several phone calls (the coverage continued into the park. It was the first time we have had continued coverage since we left home in July). Soon we were passing into Yellowstone. We drove through the park to the campground we had picked out and here we are. We are in Grant Village. We signed up for 3 nights but after our first day here, it looks like we will extent our visit. There is a lot to do here. I was last here 22 years ago and a lot of things have changed. They had a huge forest fire in 1988 that destroyed much of the park. You can still see the damaged areas and their bare empty trees. In the base though there are lots of smaller spruce trees that have been replanted and are growing. They have also repopulated the wolves since I was last here. The wolves were totally eliminated in the 20’s and it was years before they realized that this was bad for the park. The wolves were the top dog (please excuse that one) in the predator column and the park totally lost the ecological balance. Returning the wolves restored that balance and all is well in the park again.
Today we got up and headed up to Old Faithful and its geyser basin. We got there just in time to watch Old Faithful erupt. Then we wandered over to the Old Faithful Inn (under renovation but partially open). We got coffee and a muffin (to split) and wandered up to the second level deck where we watched the next eruption of Old Faithful. We also met a bunch of people and ended up talking to them (more Cheryl than me, of course) until it was time for the nest eruption. We did leave and watched the eruption from the area around the geyser before returning to the camper to change into something cooler and have lunch. That is one thing that is great about having only the camper, you always have your clothes and food with you. No wishing you had it knowing they were miles away.

In the afternoon, we wandered through the geyser basin of which Old Faithful is but a part. We caught several geysers as they erupted and had a nice walk among the geothermal features. Then we visited every gift shop in the area. Cheryl is determined to fit some kind of birthday party into our schedule tomorrow. We did sign up for a cowboy dinner here in the park tomorrow afternoon. We couldn’t get in on the trail ride but there were still some seats left on the wagon out to the party. Oh, do they know what they are getting into?? 60 years old and still able to get into trouble!!

Tonight, we had a campfire and cooked hot dogs in the campfire. Then we went to the amphitheater and saw a presentation on the wolves of Yellowstone (thus the paragraph on wolves). Then we walked home in the dark (most people take their cars but we don’t have one). Now here I am finishing up my journal and listening to some great music (talking heads). We have to study the maps to figure out what we want to do tomorrow so that we can end up in the right place for the cookout. Bye for now, the pie just arrived so I gotta run.

C2