you can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd! you get stuck in the dung!

Greetings from the wet wet Custer State Park. It rained most of the night but cleared up this morning. The sun came out and the temp climbed into the high 80s. We decided to get our Custer State Park pass and do some easy hiking. I bought a new pair of hiking boots and needed to start breaking them in before we get to Yellowstone. I wore them yesterday but wanted to give them a little more of a workout.

We drove through part of the park and headed over the Needles Highway to find the Sylvan Lake Trail. The needles of the Needles highway are a series of granite spires that are spectacular. There were a lot of people there but the needles were quite dramatic. Eventually, we came to the lake. It was a little disappointing as you could see the entire trail from the parking lot. Undaunted, we loaded up our pack with some lunch and figured to find a place somewhere around the lake (lake? It is about half the size of the old frog pond down to shoe town). We are not quitters! We said we would hike around this lake and by golly we will do it.

3 steps onto the trail, the skies opened up into a torrential downpour. 3 steps aren’t so bad. We decided that this was good enough for the first day and headed for the car (3 steps to get off the trail and 12 to get back to the car). We didn’t quit, we were chased out by severe weather. I did mention the thunder and lightning crisscrossing the skies!! It really wasn’t safe to be out there…high up in the mountains with all that deadly lightning….not me. I have to be back (alive) in September for the Turkey supper although from what I hear about the July supper, it seems that we are no longer needed but we will return anyway. I am sure there will be something we can do.

We waited for a while for the storm to end but happily kept raining and flashing so we decided to head back to camp. I made spaghetti and sausage and just as we got ready to eat, Cheryl took down the curtain that covers the front windshield and found a leak. I looked it over but could not imagine where the water was coming from. It was leaking from a place that had no contact with the outdoors. We finally put a bucket under it and ate. This will bear looking into in the near future (unless of course it doesn’t pour again). It only seems to happen in a torrential downpour.

After lunch we headed up to the top of Iron Mountain to call my mother. She had tried to forward my calls the day before. We tested it and it didn’t work. She decided to go up to the house and try it again. This time it seems to have worked. The transfer call rang on our cell phone. The funny thing about this was that as we sat on the top of the mountain waiting for her to drive up to the house, 8 different people stopped and pulled off the road to see what we were looking at. That happens a lot around here. Someone will see an animal in the woods or field and stop. Other cars will see them stopped on the side of the road and stop right behind them to see what they are watching. Soon the road is littered with cars watching some squirrel carrying nuts (or deer, or antelope or buffalo and maybe a chipmunk or two).

When we were driving down to the park this morning, we were greatly delayed by the appearance of a bunch (herd?) of wild burros. It kind of took us back to Oatman, Arizona last year. The people ahead of us started to feed them. We knew the error of that. The burros wouldn’t leave them alone and pretty much blocked the road. After a while, one of them wandered over to our car and was mystified why we wouldn’t roll down the window and feed them whatever we had in the car (our hiking lunch was pretty much all we had). They soon lost interest in us and wandered back past the motorcycles (didn’t give them a second look, the noise I think. I am pretty sure they weren’t smart enough to know that the bikers wouldn’t have food, just beer. The car in front of us pulled over to the side where there was a large group of burros. We pulled to the other side of the road and crept by them just in time as there was a string of cars coming up the mountain.

We headed downtown Keystone and stopped at the coffee shop. Keystone is a tourist trap kind of town. It exists purely for the separation of tourists from their money. The people are nice but there are only about 311 full time residents in a town about the size of Dover (just the store portion certainly not the neighborhoods). The stores are all gift shops, restaurants or souvenir shops. There isn’t a grocery store or drug store in the town. There is only 1 gas station in town and the price is 30 cents more than at our campground that is out in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped at the coffee shop. While having our coffee, we asked the owner where to find real stores. He laughed and said “you have to realize there are only 300 people here.” He sent us to Hill City, the next town up the road where we found a grocery store with all the stuff we needed. Right next door was hardware store that we would need the next day.

We got up in the morning. The sun was out and the hordes of children were once again roaming the campground at will. The single bathroom facility was overflowing with people all trying to take care of their morning tasks at the same time. Some people were breaking camp and leaving and some of the tenters were drying out their gear. We and a myriad of others were comfortably sitting in our campers sipping coffee and pondering our day’s events. We have a couple of tasks to take care of, trying to find the leak and dumping the tanks (since this campground has only 8 sewered sites and the give them to their full paying customers and not the Coast to Coasters like us. That wasn’t in the brochure!). We have also developed a problem with the water system. Water coming from the water system here has little pressure. It seems to be a problem in the camper rather than a campground problem. If I disconnect the hose from the camper, it runs with plenty of water but the water inside the camper starts out well but reduces to a trickle.

I looked over the seams in the front sides of the camper and found a place that could be causing the leak. It isn’t a big leak and only seems to show up when we have a torrential downpour. I need to pick up some sealant and clean out the joint and reseal. We decided to head over into Custer State Park on our way to Hill City. I haven’t seen any camper places since I have been here and believe me; we have covered many different roads.

We drove towards the park. The wild burros were out doing their cute act for the tourists and many of them had taken the bait. We slowly wound our way through the chaos and drove up to the park entrance. Of course, we got into the wrong line. While I was awaiting our turn, I noticed that there was another line on the other side of the building that was for people who already had their passes. Soon we were on our way. We took the wildlife loop road and set out in search of buffalo. We came across a number of pronghorn antelope and mule deer each with their own cluster of fans snapping pictures and making noises to get the animals to pick up their heads (from eating) and turn towards the people so they could get better shots (that’s why nature photographers make so much money for their good shots, the animals do not cooperate with mere mortals wishes).

The rolling hills were beautiful. The Black Hills are unique in that the valleys are grasslands and the trees grow up on the hills. The early explorers first viewed the hills from a distance and the dark green of the trees on the tops of the hills looked black earning them the name of the Black Hills.

Partway through the park we discovered a visitor center and across the road from it 2 dirt roads that were accessible to the public. We took the first one and headed into the (pseudo) wilderness. About a mile and a half off the road, we noticed an open area with dark spots all over it. “Ahah! Victory!” We wound through the hills and finally came into view of a large herd of buffalo. There were hills on both sides of the road and a ravine between the road and the hills on the right. The buffalo were thick on the ravine side. There was a large quantity of babies in the group. They were magnificent!

There were a bunch of them in the road hanging out with the cars and a few up on the hill on the left. There was a single tree on the hill on the right with a large male standing under it. Just as I swung my camera in his direction, he ran down the hill into the road. Later, an older baby walked up to the tree but the picture was not nearly as striking. We watched them graze. We watched them interact with each other; the bigger ones pushing the littler ones out of the way and we watched the mothers feed their babies.

We watched them for quite some time. No matter how many time, I have seen and spent time with buffalo herds, it is always a wonderful experience. We outlasted several generations of cars but finally motored on. There is a network of gravel roads in this part of the park. There are some fishing locations out on these roads as well. We maneuvered through the various roads with the goal of coming out next to the visitor’s center that we saw when we entered the first road.

The visitor center is a stone building that holds a ranger information desk and a gift shop. We lasted about 5 minutes, visited the bathrooms, dug some food out of our packs and headed off down the road. In a while, we discovered the prairie dog village. This was a little different from the others that we have seen on previous trips as they let the people walk around in the village. This may get the tourists closer to the animals but it also keeps the animals in their burrows. You can see a lot more of the animals when they keep the tourists out of the village. The animals are a lot more anxious to come out and play.

We then headed off to the town of Custer to find an RV place. We remembered Custer from our trip 3 years ago. It doesn’t seem to have changed a bit but no RV stores. Thinking we hadn’t seen any in any of the places we had been, we headed to the aforementioned hardware store in Hill City. We found what we were looking for and had a nice conversation with the young fellow that owned the store with his father.

We returned to camp and made hamburgers and grilled eggplant. As we were finishing, the couple across the street hailed us with a couple of questions so we went across the street and visited. They are from Kansas City, MO so we compared BBQ stories. They knew the place we had visited for lunch when we hit KC 3 years ago (Gates Family BBQ). They had a small fire going and immediately built it up as we arrived with our chairs. We talked with them for a couple of hours around the fire. They have just started camping so it was interesting to talk to them. They have a large tent right now but are looking at other campers. Elliot is a retired marine and Nicole works cleaning houses. Elliot is trying hard to get her to quit so they can travel and Nicole is reluctant to quit but really wants to so she can travel. She loves the traveling. We talked about that for quite some time as Cheryl went through the same dilemma and did quit her job in order to travel.

The night before last, we noticed a couple of campsites across from us with campfires. The campfires were spewing clouds of oily black smoke reminiscent of someone burning tires. Elliot’s fire had the same smokey consistency so I asked him what he was burning. He said it was pine that he had gotten at the store. The wood was white and looked like pine but had been stripped of bark. I don’t know what they were burning but it wasn’t anything I have run into before.

By the time we left their campsite, it was too late to do any of our outside projects so we will have to start today off with work. We are getting closer to bike week out here. Lots of the newly arrived people have offloaded Harleys and the noise level has picked up some. I expect that will increase as the week goes on. We constantly hear large groups of bikes climbing up the hill by our campground on their way up Iron Mountain headed for Keystone or Mt. Rushmore or wherever else they are going.

Today was designated as a work/relaxation day. This is one of the days that we don’t go touristing all around the area. We had several things to work on and we have a long standing agreement that we will designate 2 days of each week as a relaxation day. We are allowed to travel some especially if grocery shopping or coffee shops are involved. Today we decided to work on the camper. We have had a problem with the window in the door (it dropped down), the water delivery system (no pressure when we are on “city water” and we need to dump the tanks (I know you have heard this before) and the leak in the cab.

The first project was the leak. I found a place where it could have come from but needed more silicone calking than I bought yesterday so we headed back to Hill City and the friendly Hardware Hanks to exchange the small tube for a larger tube. On the way we found a small log cabin that dispensed coffee so we partook in the special of the day an English Toffee Mocha before continuing on to Hardware Hanks.

Once there, I told him that we needed the bigger tube so he brought me the “right” thing…or so I thought. Once in the car, I looked over the tube or silicone. I didn’t see anything that said it was exterior so I went back in. When I asked him about it, he said that he had given me just what the smaller tube had been. When I mentioned that I had said that I needed an exterior silicone, he agreed but said I decided to get the small tube and that came only in interior. I traded the large tube for the right thing and headed home thinking “friendly” was perhaps not the most important aspect of a store clerk.

As it worked out, it was not the right thing anyway. I sealed up the places on the camper that needed but noted that the texture of the caulk was not nearly what I had taken out. Then I took out the window. It was not built very well. The glass was held in the frame by these little tiny plastic extrusions of the frame and the whole frame was held together and in the door by these 18 little screws. No strength anywhere. The problem with the window was that the 2 pins that held the window in place broke and the window fell about 2 inches. We scraped the sealant from the window frames and used the same silicon to seal the window. We turned the frame upside down as the pins on the top were still in one piece. We then tried to put everything back in place. Not good! The window would not stay on the pins long enough to put all the pieces back together and screw them in place. I was sitting thinking about some way to hold everything in place when my new neighbor came over. We talked about the problem for a while and then he said that he had something that would work.

He went back to his camper and came back with a tube of something called Aquarium Sealer. It was 100 percent silicon and was very stiff. He said to put this on the frame then place the glass on it and press it into place. Leave it overnight and you shouldn’t have any problem putting it back together. I put the cement onto the frame. It was a similar texture to the stuff I had taken out. I can’t wait to see how it holds when I try to put it back together.

Now to the water problem. I figured that the problem centered somewhere in the water coming from the campground. It had carried over from the last campground so it wasn’t the campground. When I disconnected it, the water flowed freely from the faucet. I then noticed that there were 2 pressure regulators; one on the faucet to start with and one on my hose. I removed my pressure regulator and the water pressure in the camper immediately got better.

Time to finally dump the tanks. I unhooked the trailer and the water and electricity, rolled up the awning, moved all the lawn furniture and headed off to the dump station. I headed for the men’s room and Cheryl dumped the camper. She had wanted to do it by herself. When I got back, all the connections were made and she was ready. She did a great job, put everything away and off we went, back to our site. It only took a couple of minutes to get everything back the way it was. Then I got into the cab and tried to put the hydraulic stabilizers back down to stabilize and level the camper and they wouldn’t work. I checked the fuses and the motors and everything seemed ok.

Then remembering a problem I had before we left, I checked the battery level and got no reading at all. No battery power. I looked into the battery compartment under the passenger side door and one of the terminals looked loose. Cheryl got the wrenches out and I crawled under the camper and unbolted the battery compartment. Sure enough, the rear coach battery terminal was loose. This happened just before we left and I tightened them all up. Now they have loosened again. I tightened them with a pair of pliers this time. The gauge showed the batteries to be fully charged and the stabilizers worked.

Since we were working, we had lunch at the deli in the store. We had a chef salad (very small one) and a small pizza (even smaller than the salads). They listed pie and ice cream for $3 so we asked what kind of pie they had. The cook said they didn’t have any as it wasn’t selling. We expressed our disappointment. She then said she would make a pie if we wanted to come back later. We asked what time it would come out of the oven and said we would be back as we liked our pie hot (apple).

At 5 (on the nose) we headed back to the deli. We noticed that our new friends had returned from Devil’s Tower but seemed to be breaking camp. We headed over to see if they wanted to go with us for pie but found that they had received a couple of phone calls while they were out. The first was from their daughter who had found a new job but the second was from home saying that Aquilla’s father (suffering from Cancer) had been taken to the hospital. They were breaking camp to head home a few days early. We helped them break camp and pack their car. They folded up their tent and walked it over to the dumpster talking about holes they had found in it and a large rip in one of the pole sleeves. They had been looking at campers and said they would at least have a pop up and if Elliot could convince Aquilla to leave her job, they would get a motorhome and hit the road big time.

As they disappeared into the sunset, we continued our journey to the deli. The pie was still hot and we settled in for a slice of great. Unfortunately, the ice cream was soft serve (better than no ice cream but certainly not equal to the pie). Now that dessert was over, we headed back to camp and made fish chowder for supper.

We watched TV for a while. This is an interesting place. All of you folk that moan because the best shows come on too late would love it here. We are in the far eastern portion of the mountain time zone but most of the TV stations are in the central time zone so you take the hour early that central time zone shows have and add to it the one hour time change for being in the Mountain Time Zone and you watch shows 2 hours earlier than we see them at home. The Late Show with David Letterman comes on here at 9:30. The 11:00 o’clock news is on at 9. We can watch the 8:00 shows while we eat supper at 6. Pretty cool.

c

Hey! There's no rain here! We are not in New England Any More??

MOVING DAY! So far they have all been traveling days but since we have sat in one place for 2 days, we can now refer to days like today as moving day (haven’t used that term since last year). Today we moved from Mitchell to Rapid City, Keystone actually. It was a moderately long day of more than 300 miles.

We got up, broke camp, loaded the car onto the trailer, said our goodbyes to the owners and hit the road before most of the people opened their doors to the world. It was another great day with blue sky and some high thin clouds. Looks like a great day for the Blue Angels with the high thin cloud cover. They have several maneuvers that they can’t do with a low cloud cover. The last couple of times We saw them, they were unable to do the starburst, one of the most spectacular things they do (next to the 600 mph plane that sneaks in from the back of the crowd right over their heads).

We watched the plains degrade right up to the Badlands and then were nearing the Black Hills around Rapid City. We gassed up at (of course) the Flying J and headed into civilization. The roads got smaller, much more hilly and very winding as we worked into the mountain areas. When I got to the last road change, there were a couple of signs that stopped me in my tracks. The first warned agains trucks using this road and the second talked about heights and widths of the vehicles. I stopped and thought for a minute thinking that the campground wouldn’t have given me these directions if there were a problem but I definitely didn’t want to get into a jam in a place where I might not be able to turn around. I called the campground and talked to them for a minute and then headed up the road. It was really narrow and winding but I drove very slowly and found the campground (before any of the tunnels that they had warned us about).

The campground is fairly nice with a heated pool and a mini golf course (9 holes). We set up (sort of) and headed out in search of Pizza. We didn’t have anything thawed out (too bad). We drove into Keystone in search of. The Sturgis Motorcycle ralley isn’t until the end of next week but the area is thick with bikes. The main street of Keystone was no exception. Bikes took up most of the parking spaces throughout the town forcing us 4 wheel people to the back streets. We found our pizza shop (homemade dough) and had a decent if not great pizza (when your favorite place is LaFesta and the Gaslight Pizza (wood fired brick ovens)other pizza is merely mortal pizza).

Afterwards, we dropped into the Chamber of Commerce kiosk and talked to the nice girl and picked up a bunch of books/brochures before heading up the street to the Iron Mountain Coffee Shop for a cup “o” joe and another round of talking to the locals. Then we drove to the top of Iron Mountain and made our cell phone calls before heading back into the cell phone void we call our campground. We read the brochures, looked at the maps and decided not to make any decisions tonight as we popped open a bottle of wine and a tube of Pringles “Extreme” (not as extreme as they would wish). We watched all the new arrivals set up their camps as if we had been there for weeks while we talked to each of our neighbors. Most of them we re from nearby but a few were from distances (I think we won the distance award).

Morning happened accidently. We both slept well and awoke around 7:30. We lazed around for a while and got up to begin the day. I made up some buttermilk pancake batter and with bacon under my arm set out for the gas cooker outside. The morning was beautiful if a little hot from the sun. Our camper living side faces southeast and catches the morning sun which around here is a little hot. The camper was hot too so we decided to cook outside. Breakfast was great but the buttermilk alone wouldn’t give the batter the texture that I was looking for so I had to add some skim milk too. There was too much baking powder in the batter but that was my fault. I shook some in and it wouldn’t come out of the can so when it finally let loose too much of it came.

Our neighbors (from Idaho) said they were headed for Mt. Rushmore as the early morning sun lighted the entire sculpture. We drove over and just sat there and stared at it. It is really striking and inspires patriotism in you heart. We met some people from England who were here on Holiday. They had a young daughter who was here instead of at school so she was happy. The people were not sure that they wanted to come to Mt Rushmore as they felt that the Land was sacred to the Indians and had been stolen from them. They did go and were glad they did. There are pictures out here that portray the 4 presidents on Mt. Rushmore with the 4 great Indian Chiefs (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronomo and one other whose name escapes me at the moment). It is a striking picture and portrays the 4 Indian Chiefs as the people who should be on the mountain.

After that, we headed to Deadwood. Information that we had been given said that the PRCA was holding a multi day rodeo in Deadwood through the 26th. We arrived on the 25th and decided that we would relax and catch the last day of the rodeo. Well, they made a decision a while ago (after the schedule we had gotten had been printed) that they would hold the last 2 meets on Saturday and skip Sunday. Arrghhh! We could have gone last night if we had known.

We listened to the NASCAR Sprint Cup race on the radio as we drove around seeing the sights. We kept hearing ads for Sports Rock, a bar in rapid city. They said they had all these big screen tvs and were always open for the NASCAR races. They had brick oven pizzas and wings and lots of specials for every game or race. We headed over to Rapid City and “eventually” found the place (rapid city is the most spread out metropolis I have ever seen. There is no center of town. It runs through a valley). We finally found the place but it looked like it was closed. I drove around it a couple of times and finally parked and walked up to look in the door thinking maybe it was open and there just wasn’t anyone there. Just as I got to the top of the stairs, someone opened the door and said (in a nasty voice) “We’re still closed!”

I said “ we were listening to the race on the radio and your bar was advertising heavily that they were the place to watch……..”

“WE’RE CLOSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and he slammed the door in my face. We went across the street to another place that looked busy and looked like a place we could watch the race. It was a ratty place and had all these little tiny tvs above the bar. We turned around and left. It was amazing that the parking lot was full of cars and there was no one (and I mean no one) in the place?? Hmmm, maybe there was something going on upstairs or something.

We stopped and did some grocery shopping. Nothing exciting, we just needed some stuff. Then we headed on down the road and went by a Sonic. We had never eaten in one of those so we pulled in. The menu looked pitiable and the voice over the intercom was totally unintelligible so we left there too and drove back to camp. Once at camp, we declared happy hour and ate the olives, blue cheese and crackers we had bought while shopping.

While we were sitting outside having happy hour was that over the last several years we have not camped with other families. It seems funny to have all of these children roaming the park in small medium and large groups reminiscent of the Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange”. Ok, not really like that but we are not used to it. They are cute and bring back a lot of memories of my early camping experiences. You find this neat brook near the edge of the campground and try to dam it up and see how big a lake you can create before the owners or managers come by and knock it all down.

You hang out in the rec(reation) hall playing pinball games and the Jukebox. They ride their bikes down the hill as fast as they can go. As an adult, I fear for their mortal lives as they reach dizzying speeds only inches apart (or was that the Blue Angels, I forget). The families out here are bigger than we see at home; 3 to 5 kids. Older kids put up (not happily of course) with their younger siblings (at parental insistence I would assume). As time goes on, one group will merge with another and then split along age lines.

Last year, we traveled in areas where we were out of season and most of the people we met in the campgrounds were people who lived there much of the year. This is a nice change from that.

The Tour de France should have ended today. I missed the last week because we were on the road without satellite. I did hear results on the radio. I think Lance’s effort was exceptional. His age and the 3 years he has been retired have certainly taken their toll but he did prove that he is still competitive. He was beaten by his own teammate who is much younger and raced under Lance the last time Lance won the Tour. Bravo Lance!!

It is Monday Morning. The first week has come to an end. The first week always involves the most traveling and the least sightseeing. We have a rememberence of home. It rained last night and looks to continue this morning. It is a little after 7 am and the skies are still dark and thunder rolls through the hills. The coffee is cooking, Cheryl is still sleeping and I am torn between the cool damp air coming in the windows and the cool drier air from using the A/C. We have been keeping the windows open at night but wake up stuffy so maybe I will use the A/C more.

That pretty much catches us up to the moment so I will fade away. Tomorrow!

Hey! There's no rain here! We are not in New England Any More??

MOVING DAY! So far they have all been traveling days but since we have sat in one place for 2 days, we can now refer to days like today as moving day (haven’t used that term since last year). Today we moved from Mitchell to Rapid City, Keystone actually. It was a moderately long day of more than 300 miles.

We got up, broke camp, loaded the car onto the trailer, said our goodbyes to the owners and hit the road before most of the people opened their doors to the world. It was another great day with blue sky and some high thin clouds. Looks like a great day for the Blue Angels with the high thin cloud cover. They have several maneuvers that they can’t do with a low cloud cover. The last couple of times We saw them, they were unable to do the starburst, one of the most spectacular things they do (next to the 600 mph plane that sneaks in from the back of the crowd right over their heads).

We watched the plains degrade right up to the Badlands and then were nearing the Black Hills around Rapid City. We gassed up at (of course) the Flying J and headed into civilization. The roads got smaller, much more hilly and very winding as we worked into the mountain areas. When I got to the last road change, there were a couple of signs that stopped me in my tracks. The first warned agains trucks using this road and the second talked about heights and widths of the vehicles. I stopped and thought for a minute thinking that the campground wouldn’t have given me these directions if there were a problem but I definitely didn’t want to get into a jam in a place where I might not be able to turn around. I called the campground and talked to them for a minute and then headed up the road. It was really narrow and winding but I drove very slowly and found the campground (before any of the tunnels that they had warned us about).

The campground is fairly nice with a heated pool and a mini golf course (9 holes). We set up (sort of) and headed out in search of Pizza. We didn’t have anything thawed out (too bad). We drove into Keystone in search of. The Sturgis Motorcycle ralley isn’t until the end of next week but the area is thick with bikes. The main street of Keystone was no exception. Bikes took up most of the parking spaces throughout the town forcing us 4 wheel people to the back streets. We found our pizza shop (homemade dough) and had a decent if not great pizza (when your favorite place is LaFesta and the Gaslight Pizza (wood fired brick ovens)other pizza is merely mortal pizza).

Afterwards, we dropped into the Chamber of Commerce kiosk and talked to the nice girl and picked up a bunch of books/brochures before heading up the street to the Iron Mountain Coffee Shop for a cup “o” joe and another round of talking to the locals. Then we drove to the top of Iron Mountain and made our cell phone calls before heading back into the cell phone void we call our campground. We read the brochures, looked at the maps and decided not to make any decisions tonight as we popped open a bottle of wine and a tube of Pringles “Extreme” (not as extreme as they would wish). We watched all the new arrivals set up their camps as if we had been there for weeks while we talked to each of our neighbors. Most of them we re from nearby but a few were from distances (I think we won the distance award).

Morning happened accidently. We both slept well and awoke around 7:30. We lazed around for a while and got up to begin the day. I made up some buttermilk pancake batter and with bacon under my arm set out for the gas cooker outside. The morning was beautiful if a little hot from the sun. Our camper living side faces southeast and catches the morning sun which around here is a little hot. The camper was hot too so we decided to cook outside. Breakfast was great but the buttermilk alone wouldn’t give the batter the texture that I was looking for so I had to add some skim milk too. There was too much baking powder in the batter but that was my fault. I shook some in and it wouldn’t come out of the can so when it finally let loose too much of it came.

Our neighbors (from Idaho) said they were headed for Mt. Rushmore as the early morning sun lighted the entire sculpture. We drove over and just sat there and stared at it. It is really striking and inspires patriotism in you heart. We met some people from England who were here on Holiday. They had a young daughter who was here instead of at school so she was happy. The people were not sure that they wanted to come to Mt Rushmore as they felt that the Land was sacred to the Indians and had been stolen from them. They did go and were glad they did. There are pictures out here that portray the 4 presidents on Mt. Rushmore with the 4 great Indian Chiefs (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronomo and one other whose name escapes me at the moment). It is a striking picture and portrays the 4 Indian Chiefs as the people who should be on the mountain.

After that, we headed to Deadwood. Information that we had been given said that the PRCA was holding a multi day rodeo in Deadwood through the 26th. We arrived on the 25th and decided that we would relax and catch the last day of the rodeo. Well, they made a decision a while ago (after the schedule we had gotten had been printed) that they would hold the last 2 meets on Saturday and skip Sunday. Arrghhh! We could have gone last night if we had known.

We listened to the NASCAR Sprint Cup race on the radio as we drove around seeing the sights. We kept hearing ads for Sports Rock, a bar in rapid city. They said they had all these big screen tvs and were always open for the NASCAR races. They had brick oven pizzas and wings and lots of specials for every game or race. We headed over to Rapid City and “eventually” found the place (rapid city is the most spread out metropolis I have ever seen. There is no center of town. It runs through a valley). We finally found the place but it looked like it was closed. I drove around it a couple of times and finally parked and walked up to look in the door thinking maybe it was open and there just wasn’t anyone there. Just as I got to the top of the stairs, someone opened the door and said (in a nasty voice) “We’re still closed!”

I said “ we were listening to the race on the radio and your bar was advertising heavily that they were the place to watch……..”

“WE’RE CLOSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and he slammed the door in my face. We went across the street to another place that looked busy and looked like a place we could watch the race. It was a ratty place and had all these little tiny tvs above the bar. We turned around and left. It was amazing that the parking lot was full of cars and there was no one (and I mean no one) in the place?? Hmmm, maybe there was something going on upstairs or something.

We stopped and did some grocery shopping. Nothing exciting, we just needed some stuff. Then we headed on down the road and went by a Sonic. We had never eaten in one of those so we pulled in. The menu looked pitiable and the voice over the intercom was totally unintelligible so we left there too and drove back to camp. Once at camp, we declared happy hour and ate the olives, blue cheese and crackers we had bought while shopping.

While we were sitting outside having happy hour was that over the last several years we have not camped with other families. It seems funny to have all of these children roaming the park in small medium and large groups reminiscent of the Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange”. Ok, not really like that but we are not used to it. They are cute and bring back a lot of memories of my early camping experiences. You find this neat brook near the edge of the campground and try to dam it up and see how big a lake you can create before the owners or managers come by and knock it all down.

You hang out in the rec(reation) hall playing pinball games and the Jukebox. They ride their bikes down the hill as fast as they can go. As an adult, I fear for their mortal lives as they reach dizzying speeds only inches apart (or was that the Blue Angels, I forget). The families out here are bigger than we see at home; 3 to 5 kids. Older kids put up (not happily of course) with their younger siblings (at parental insistence I would assume). As time goes on, one group will merge with another and then split along age lines.

Last year, we traveled in areas where we were out of season and most of the people we met in the campgrounds were people who lived there much of the year. This is a nice change from that.

The Tour de France should have ended today. I missed the last week because we were on the road without satellite. I did hear results on the radio. I think Lance’s effort was exceptional. His age and the 3 years he has been retired have certainly taken their toll but he did prove that he is still competitive. He was beaten by his own teammate who is much younger and raced under Lance the last time Lance won the Tour. Bravo Lance!!

It is Monday Morning. The first week has come to an end. The first week always involves the most traveling and the least sightseeing. We have a rememberence of home. It rained last night and looks to continue this morning. It is a little after 7 am and the skies are still dark and thunder rolls through the hills. The coffee is cooking, Cheryl is still sleeping and I am torn between the cool damp air coming in the windows and the cool drier air from using the A/C. We have been keeping the windows open at night but wake up stuffy so maybe I will use the A/C more.

That pretty much catches us up to the moment so I will fade away. Tomorrow!

from the blue angels to an oil change, fresh corn and steak

This was a pretty lazy day. We used up all the extra mileage we had amassed over the last 3 days. We slept late, partly because we had a neighbor that had little care for those around him. He pulled in near dark last night in his fancy bus based motorhome. He immediately started up is generator blowing its exhaust right into our open camper door. It was hot last night so we had to keep the windows and doors open to capture any moving air. The alternative was to run our generator in order to run our air conditioner (which I am sure the people next door were doing. Optimistically, I figured that when they went to bed, they would shut off the generator because frankly no one could be so callous that in the environment we were in with the campers only a mere foot apart, would run their “diesel” generator making a lot of noise and spreading a lot of diesel fumes and we all know how pleasant they are.

Once again, humanity let me down. We discussed their apparent lack of caring for their fellow man (loud enough so that they peeked through the curtains in their bedroom but not loud or obnoxious enough so that they felt guilty and shut the damn thing off. We did have an out but that would require running our generator in order to run our air conditioner allowing us to shut all of our windows along with their noise. We compromised; we moved our camper and turned it around so that our door and bedroom window were on the side away from them. We made a lot of noise doing it but this kind of people have no continence and the noise/fumes continued. We placed ourselves where it bothered us the least but we didn’t sleep all that well.

They left before the sun came up. I hope that was partly our doing!

We spent the morning catching up on our bills and other mail. The quiet was broken by the sound of jets flying around our location at low levels. It turned out to be the Blue Angels. They are performing at an airshow in Sioux Falls and were doing their Thursday preparations. They flew all around the area even over our parking lot several times. The sight of these planes bring tears to my eyes. I almost wish were could stay in the area to see them perform just one more time! It was the middle of the afternoon before we finally filled up the propane tank and the gas tank and hit the road. We had a lot of trouble with nonworking gas pumps but finally got filled up. $2.24 a gallon.

I am not quite sure what happened here but I know I wrote more than this. Well, here we go again. We left Sioux falls and drove all of 73 miles to Mitchell, SD. We had planned to stay overnight at Cabella’s but decided that we needed an oil change more than we needed a free night followed by another night that we would stay heaven knows where. We discovered a KOA just outside of Mitchell so we pulled in there for 2 nights. We set up loosely and headed for Mitchell looking for a Chevy or GM dealer. We found the local Chevy dealer pretty quickly and they made an appointment for the next day (they would have taken us in that day if we had needed it but the next day was fine with us. We then drove over to the Corn Palace and checked it out. They were working on the murals on the outside. No one was working when we got there but it was late and we figured they had left for the day. The murals depicted American Destinations (Lincoln Memorial/Washington Monument, Space Needle, Cape Canaveral, St. Louis Arch, Badlands, and many more). The work was being done on the trim areas between the murals. They were bundling straw and using it to frame the murals.

We went inside and watched the film. That wasn’t available when we were here 3 years ago and was interesting. The materials used in the frames and trim become available in June and are harvested and placed on the building in June and July. They were nearly done when we were here. The corn is harvested in September and the murals are changed in the fall meaning we are seeing this years trim but last years murals. It doesn’t matter, we haven’t seen this batch anyway. They are beautiful. They grow all of their own corn specially for the murals. It is 12 species of 12 different colors and the corn and trim plants are grown on 100 acres specifically designated for these crops.

The building is an arena used for sports and concerts and many other things. Basketball is the biggest user of the building, college and high school. Meetings and conferences and many other things use the auditorium. Tourists visit when nothing else is going on. The murals on the outside of the building are the main reason for being there.

This is also the area the George McGovern comes from. His father was a minister here and George grew up here and met his wife here. His library is here on the Weslyan Campus. The public part is small but interesting. There is a nice Dakota Museum across the street. We didn’t have time to visit it but we did walk around a couple of the out buildings. One is a Methodist Church. It seems to be still in use as there were hymnals on shelves there. It was an interesting building as the pulpit area had 3 large windows in it that spread a lot of light around the pulpit. The windows were plain glass and arched. In a side room, there was a long oak table with no chairs. There was also a display of their communion items. The glasses were very nice and in trays like ours. There was also a round wooden box with a large slit in it. It was not familiar to me.

Outside there was a bell that had a separate clanger for funerals. In order to maintain the dirge type ring, it had a separate clanger with a handel on the side of the bell. That allowed the ringer to control the rings to a funerial pace. I had never seen anything like that.

We left there and headed back towards camp. We found a roadside vender of fresh veggies and fruit. We bought some corn (candy corn was the claim-not as good as Tuttle’s (either one) was our assessment). Soon we found a butcher shop. They made their own sausage and hot dog’s (we bought both) as well as hamburg and one really large rib eye steak. We headed for camp, put the meat in either the fridge or the freezer and headed out for Cabela’s. We walked around there for a while, bought nothing and left. Across the street was a Menards. Being good NASCAR followers, we turned into the parking lot and took a walk in Menards. It was not what we expected. It was like Home Depot or Lowes with a few extra items thrown in. It was huge and had a really nice selection of merchandise. It must have had 5 or 6 times the number of lights in stock as Home Depot and much larger choices in most of the departments.

Soon we tired of looking at things we had no intention of buying and headed back to camp once again. Once back, I started a fire and prepared to cook supper. We had the corn we bought and the steak we bought and some other veggies that we brought with us. It was a great meal. IT is nice to be able to cook rather than eat out.

Well, tomorrow we are off to Rapid City and the Black Hills of South Dakota and our first Coast to Coast campground. More tomorrow. See ya!

C

the long drive may be fun but there isn't much to write about!

Well, this day didn’t start out so well. We moved into Central Time sometime yesterday. We forgot to change the clock in the bed so when we woke up at 5, we decided to get up and hit the road. After about an hour and a half driving, I got very tired. In retrospect we decided that we had gotten up at 4 and hit the road vice 5. We pulled into a rest area and took a nap. After the nap, we had breakfast and hit the road again around 10 feeling much better.

Previously, we had come across 80, merged with 90 and headed North at Chicago through Wisconsin and Minnesota. Just to try something different (and to avoid Chicago), we continued on 80 through Gary and stayed south of Chicago traveling into Iowa. Iowa doesn’t look very big on the map but when you drive across it, it just goes on and on (and on…….). We stopped at the Flying J at Lasalle.

Iowa starts out very flat and totally farm lands with corn being the predominant crop by a wide margin. A lot of this corn is going to make ethanol to add to gasoline. At today’s gas stop, there were types of gasoline: unleaded and the next on up whatever they call it. The higher octane gas was $.10 a gal cheaper than the regular unleaded (the regular unleaded was just petroleum based product and the higher octane had ethanol in it reducing the price). It is hard to find gas with no ethanol at home but last summer in the southwest, most of the unleaded had no ethanol and here was the same.

The geography changed about half way through the state. The ground started to have rolling hills and cattle started to show up to eat the corn. We started to see more hay and another crop interlaced with the cornfields (probably soy but I am not sure).

At the end of the state, the hills got more severe and the crops began to show up terraced on the hillsides. There were more cattle and more hay but still a lot of corn. The radio listed the agricultural prices in the newscasts. Corn, cattle, pigs (didn’t see any of them) and other crops…the agro-prices took up more time than the news itself.

Whoa, I think we got here just in time. There are campers wandering around looking for places to park. This place is just about full (did I mention it was free?) Just cost $100 in gas.

It got up to 90 once the sun came out. It is hot outside now. We are hunkered down with the generator going (for the computers and to charge the phone and oh, yea, did I mention running the a/c). Most of the time, we will be in places where we will have all the amenities but on the road, we are somewhat at a disadvantage.

We have the bulk of the trip out of the way. We have covered 1700 miles of the 2000 to get to Rapid City. I think we will wander over to Cabela’s (in Mitchell) at a moderately easy pace tomorrow (about 175 miles). We will spend some time there and visit the Corn Palace as well to see what artsy creations they have come up with this year. The Corn Palace is a small arena where sports are played (mostly basketball). Their claim to fame is that every year, the arena is decorated in pictures made from corn. The pictures are complex and the colors all come from special breeds of corn that they grow on their own farm(s). It is really quite striking. 3 years ago, the pictures honored rodeo and were really spectacular. This will be the third time I have been there and I always look forward to it. I am not sure what we will do then. We may stay at Cabela’s for the night before heading for the Black Hills or we may head out in the afternoon and stay at the Badlands National Park (they claim that they never fill up, we may just test that) or we will find a park to stay at. If it remains hot, the park with electricity may just win out.

Well, I have to go change all the clocks to avoid making the same mistake tomorrow am. Of course, if it stays hot all night, we will head out early anyway just to run the a/c in the truck. ……………………………good night!!!

c

Don't look now, They're at it again!!!!

It’s been a long winter and a really lousy spring but summer is here and as I write this, I am in Indiana headed for the Black Hills of South Dakota, Cody and Yellowstone. As you may know (or surmise) we have sold the house. A really nice young woman has bought the house. We hope she is really happy there. Her name is Christine. If you see her stop and say hello and let her try to figure out how you know her!

This is our second day on the road. The first was kind of an adventure with a couple of construction areas that chewed up large pockets of time. We stopped for fuel at the first Flying J that we came to about 150 miles from the Ohio Border. I was beat so we decided to stop for the day and relax. We pulled out our lawn chairs and sat in the parking lot in the shade of the Toyota (on the trailer). The combination of shade and a nice breeze made it a real comfortable place.

We had stopped just an hour earlier for lunch. We had (Julia’s) chicken oriental cabbage salad and a toll house cookie so we weren’t really hungry. I finished a book and just enjoyed watching all the trucks go by. I hate to admit it but I went to bed around 8…it was still light out but I was beat. Cheryl came to bed about 1 ½ hours later. I woke up at 2, 4 and 5 and we hit the road at 5:30. We drove a couple of hours and stopped at the next Flying J for breakfast.

What’s up with Ohio?? They have this great long “Turnpike” and insist on everyone paying cash…NO EZ-PASS. I thought maybe EZ-PASS didn’t come this far west but upon entering Indiana and the Indiana Turnpike, I came up to the toll booth and found that they have something called I-ZOOM. In the small print they said that EZ-PASS was acceptable. This was a “get-a-ticket” series of booths. Some were marked I-ZOOM ONLY, some were marked Cars only and the rest were marked “All Others”. I approached with some trepidation, planning to just drive through no matter what happened before realizing that there was a gate across the road. I braked hard just as the green light came on and the gate lifted giving me access to all of Indiana. Now what’s with Ohio?? Get with the program and join modern times!

One rather striking sad note, we have passed by 2 really large automotive plants today. The first was the biggest and was the GM plant where they build the Cobolt and the G6 (?) and the second a Chrysler plant. Both were enormous buildings with acre after acre of parking lots; both were ghost towns. There might have been 25 cars parked right next to the front door with dust blowing across everything else. There were no lines of cars awaiting the trucks scheduled to take them to their new owners and even sadder, there were no acres of cars ferrying workers to the plant and paychecks home to feed, clothe and house the worker’s families. The numbers of car carriers on the highways was markedly down from previous trips. Post Note: I guess I spoke too soon. By the end of today, we had seen over 100 so I guess I spoke too soon.

We spent yesterday rolling up and down the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. This morning as we finished up the state, the rains (showers, yea right) came and lasted through the rest of the state. The weather broke as we rolled into Ohio and soon the sun joined us through a forest of large fluffy clouds. I was forced into my sunglasses but couldn’t read the navigation system on the computer because of the polarization of the glasses.

At one point in the middle of Ohio, we saw a sign for the Rutherford Hays presidential center. We though briefly about visiting it but decided to save it for a time when we were smaller. Ohio was somewhat of a not very exciting trip. It is big and while there were some places that would be fun to visit, the highway gave us little but road for our $18. I was tempted by Sandusky (Cedar Point) with their vast inventory of world renowned coasters but decided that we would visit that when we had time for Rutherford B.

We are now deep into Indiana with only 100 miles before Illinois and the adventure that getting by Chicago provides. The newer map shows more choices in avoiding a confrontation with the inner city but only time will tell. I should load the Delorme upgrade to my Nav system before we get there. That just might help. This version is 3 years old and my atlas is 1 year old. I guess I will close now and get to the upgrading. Cheryl won’t consent to driving through Chicago and I have work to do.

It is evening. We were planning to stop in Davenport Iowa but found a Flying J that we hadn’t seen and stopped. We did over 600 miles today and will take the evening off. It is raining again. Just started (again). I guess I will upload this and look for a book.

Bye for now!

C