More South Dakota

Aug 11 – I feel as though I didn’t do justice to the sights mentioned in my last update. Let me expand some. STURGIS: This event is so big, the downtown area merchants lease their stores to those selling biker related goods for the entire month. They clear out their goods and the biker retailers put up new signs and fill the place with their own merchandize. Block after block after block all you see downtown are brick and motor store fronts selling motorcycle related goods, amazing. Everyone that has room for a motorhome or tent in their front yard rents the space out. There are doctor and dentist offices, funeral parlors and average homes, all full of tents and campers. Children hold signs “camp in my front yard $15 a night.” Hundreds of people line the streets to watch the constant parade of motorcycles head towards downtown.

THE BADLANDS: What a change of scenery. This thing look like someone took a handful of wet sand and let it run out onto the ground creating a little pile. They’re all over. They are composed of soft sand. You can rub it a bit and the sand comes loose. We saw prairie dog towns, several big horn sheep, prong horn antelope and luckily no rattle snakes. They have signs all over warning you to stay on the sidewalks because of the large number of rattle snakes they have there. Don’t worry about Val, she had no intention of straying.

The various colors of the dirt is really something. Some was, naturally, tan other yellow, then pink, then mauve (the decorator in me says there’s a subtle difference). Each color was layered one on top of the other. Made for some great photos.

We drove to Mitchell, South Dakota and saw the famous Corn Palace. This place was amazing. The entire exterior is covered in corn cobs or husks. They put them together to form murals. Check out the photos. Inside they have huge murals all made of corn. We saw a short film and it said it takes 275,000 ears of corn and over 100 acres just for the decorations. They change is every year. They just finished the 2010 exterior in time for their annual festival. Kenny Rogers is the head performer but they have people every night for a week. Gee, it might compete with Sturgis. No, Sturgis will be over this weekend and the Corn festival starts Aug 25th. Whew, had me worried there for a moment.

Tomorrow we should break into Minnesota. More to come.

South Dakota

Aug 10 – After 5 days in Rapid City it’s time to move on. We toured the Black Hills, saw Mount Rushmore and went to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Wow! Everywhere you look are thousands of motorcycles. Next is the Badlands.

Devil's Tower

Aug 5 – We toured the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody. If you are ever near Cody you need to go. It’s fantastic. We spent the entire day there. They have a gun museum that Val and Maggie even found interesting and that’s saying something.

After leaving Cody we drove to the Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. It’s a huge rock thing that sticks up over 1200 feet above the neighboring river. It was featured in the Close Encounters of the Third Kind movie many years ago. We walked around the base (about 1 ½ mile walk) and watched several climbers making their way to the top. We all agreed that it was better to watch than climb.

Today we drove to Rapid City, specifically Ellsworth AFB, and will spend the next several days here. We plan on seeing Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments as well as other touristy things. Maggie and Gary are going to the Sturgis motorcycle rally. They’re expecting 500,000 bikers this year. Too crazy for Val but the other two want to see just how crazy crazy gets. I’m sure you’ll see a photo or two in a couple of days.

Left Yellowstone

Aug 2 – Yesterday we celebrated Maggie’s birthday. No don’t ask. I won’t tell you how old she is. She had her choice of breakfasts, a designer sandwich (picked the items herself), ice cream at the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel in Yellowstone Park and some of the best left over Chinese food available from Missoula. She said she had a great day.

We saw tons of buffalo; got stuck in a buffalo jam (that’s when they walk on the roads and you don’t move). We were practically stopped for 1 ½ hours. Got some good close up shots, maybe I’d better say photos, of some huge bulls. We also saw a couple of really large herds of elk. Both the buffalo and elk had lots of babies on the ground. Add several dozen hot steaming smelly springs and you pretty much have our day.

Today we left the park and drove to Cody, Wyoming; the rodeo capital of the US: at least that’s what they say. A friend of Gary’s (see he does have friends or family all over the US) is spending some time helping his parents here. We spent the day visiting and retired to the comfort of our motorhome. We’ve seen lots of great scenery and looking forward to seeing more.

Yellowstone Park

July 31 – The drive from Missoula to Yellowstone was really pretty. Had a couple of steep grades though: one was 8%. I think we were doing 20 mph when we got to the top of that one. We always try to use the pullouts and let others go by so we don’t hold them up too much. We did have one close call while driving here. An 18 wheeler was passing us while on a 4 lane highway. He was speeding. Then he sees a state trooper in the median so he decides he’d better move over. Guess what; we were there. He just moved over to the right lane while we still had a good 6-7 feet of overlap. Gary slammed on the brakes and hit the horn and flashed his lights. At least we were able to avoid the collision. The truck just kept on truckin.

They had a couple of vacant camping spots in one of the campgrounds at Yellowstone. It’s a little pricey but at least we’re in the park. Besides, we’ve saved so much staying at Wal-Mart we can afford a couple of these. They squeeze you in pretty tight in these campgrounds. Not too much room behind or next to you.

We went on a hike our first day and saw a couple of Marmots. They are kind of like really large squirrels and live around rocks. It was another first for Maggie. She had never seen one before. We also saw several buffalo and deer. Summer just arrived at Yellowstone. It last snowed here July 6th and as you can tell from the photos of the bucks, they are still in velvet.

Today we’re going to be out seeing the sights of the southern portion of the park; the most popular being Old Faithful. Hopefully we’ll have photos to show you on our next update. Cheers.

Making the most of Montana

Jul 29 – No great outdoor photos this time but we had a great visit with Gary’s cousin in Post Falls, Idaho. We hadn’t spent much time with them before other than family reunions so it was really nice for us to get to know each other better. Gary had another idea for our rock/bug screen: paint it to look like the TX flag. So, he bought some spray paint and painted it up (see photo).

After that we headed for Missoula to visit Gary’s sister. Seems like Gary has family everywhere doesn’t it? Anyway we went and toured downtown Missoula, took a ride on a great old Merry-go-round (see photo), visited a farmer’s market and watched some people practicing kayaking on the river. She has a Wii game set and we played lots of games. One of the funniest was the dance game where we all tried to follow the person’s moves on the TV (see photo). Oh, yeah, where do you think we parked the MH? You got it; Walmart.

Next we’re off to Yellowstone.

Beautiful Swan Lake in Washington

Jul 23 – We went to a place just south of the Canadian border called Curlew Lake to see if it was as good as an article we read about it last year. It wasn’t. I told the manager that I was looking for something smaller and in the forest. He told us that Swan Lake was probably what we were looking for. Was he ever right. We drove about 15 miles to get there. This place is a small campground of about 20 spaces, way up in the mountains, surrounded by tall pine trees and has the neatest little lake. It’s about 40 acres in size and they don’t allow motors on it. That was fine with us. We finally had the perfect place to try out our new inflatable kayak.

Once we got the kayak ready to go we carried it down to the water. Maggie and I were the first to try it out. We leisurely paddled around the whole lake in about an hour. They have a special kind of Loon here that is on the endangered species list. There is a male, a female and youngster. They make the neatest sound when they call each other. When Maggie and I were in the boat, one of the adults decided to stay in front of us. We watched as it dove deep beneath our boat. It could hold its’ breath for a long time and swim quite a distance under water. The water is so clear we could see everything. It was really neat.

They also have wild huckleberries here. They are similar to blueberries. The campground is full of them. So, we naturally got a couple of cups and started picking us some. Gary had to eat while he picked: he can be such a pig. Anyway, we finally had enough to make some berry pancakes for breakfast. Man were they good. Gary also took some time and made us all walking sticks. We found the sticks on Gold Beach in Oregon and Gary just bought the materials to make them. They are varnished in high gloss and have rubber feet on them so we won’t slip on rocks or hard surfaces.