May 30th - The Badlands

Tonight we are parked at Cedar Pass Campground in the Badlands National Park. This is the first time we have stayed at a National Park. It has been my impression that most National Park campgrounds can't handle a 40' motorhome. This one can, of course this is the wide open spaces of the prairie. It drizzled rain most of the way here but hasn't rained while we have been here. There has been a brisk breeze with temps in the high 50's. The breeze had died down and the low is forecast to be 38. We will see.


This is main street in Wall, South Dakota; home of the famous Wall Drug Store. What a neat place. Everything you see in this block is part of the "drug store" complex. There is even a nice little chapel, capable of seating over 50, in the complex. Behind what you see is the Wall Backyard. Another complex of buildings with historical photos and lots more stuff, including a T-Rex that "attacks" every 12 minutes. Once you are inside you just keep walking from area to area. I think the "cafe" said it had seating for 560. There is a nice covered walkway to get to the "backyard."

 Just a little larger scale photo.

 Lunch. My beef gravy sandwich was really good and Kathy like her chicken/bacon sandwich. My cup of coffee was only a nickel, one of Wall Drug's trademark issues, but my plain donut was $1.25. Kathy has a glass of Wall Drug's free ice water, another of their trademarks.

 Parked at the campround in the Badlands. If I took the photo right now you would see 5 RV's in it. There are quite a few tent campers here. If it gets down to 38 it will be brisk crawling out of the sleeping bags in the morning. There are no water and sewer connections for RV's but we do have a 50 amp electrical connection. It is a very short walk to nice restrooms, although there are no showers. Not a big deal for us. We can easily take showers in the motorhome for 3 days before we need to dump our grey water tank. With our old folks pass to National Parks we got into the park for free, which saved us around $15 and it only cost us $14/night for a space with 50 amp electricity. The standard rate is $28/night if you want electricity. No WiFi, just a slow Internet connection using my phone. (The plan is to stay here tonight and tomorrow night)

The sun is setting here now. Time to get outside and look around. Star gazing is supposed to be spectacular here. There is also supposed to be some type of program at 9 PM but I don't know if we can stay up that late.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 29th - Sturgis & Spearfish

The weather was great today. Mostly sunny with a high of 66 and a low last night of 39. The 39 really didn't seem all that cold. We didn't pay any attention to how cold it was supposed to get and our bedroom windows were open all night. At night we only leave the front heat pump active. We had the thermostat for it turned down to 60. I don't think it even ran excessively.

Today we "backtracked" to take a look at Sturgis & Spearfish, Montana. Last Friday we spent the night at a rest area, on I-90, that was very near Spearfish. We (Kathy) probably drove 160 miles today while looking around.

Sturgis, at least without all the Harley's that are there in August, wasn't all that impressive. Spearfish, on the other hand was quite impressive.

We first went to the DC Booth Historic Fish Hatchery. It is currently more of a historic site than an active hatchery, but they still raise fish, They release 50,000 8-10" trout a year into South Dakota streams. The hatchery and the adjacent park are a real feather in Spearfish's cap. They provide a beautiful setting for a "day in the park."

http://www.visitspearfish.com/thingstodo/attractions/dcboothhistoricfishhatchery/

You can buy fish food, it comes out of quarter vending machines, to feed the trout. We fed the smaller ones. It is fun to see them make the water boil as you throw the food pellets into the water. The larger ones are in pond that is built against a "basement" wall which contains glass panels. You can go down and watch them through the panels. The photo below is looking down at them from the observation area. These are 15-18" long.

 In the early 1900's they used rail cars to transport the fish to the area, since trout are not native in the Dakota's. This is one of the "fish cars" that was used to transport them. It is 81' long and was built expressly for the purpose of transporting fish. Five men travelled with the fish. A "boss", three "workers", and their cook. the car had a small office in one end and a bathroom and kitchen in the other end.

 The "boss" had his bunk in his "office", the other men had bunks in the main part of the car. There was an ice storage area in the car. The workers had to regularly chip ice from ice blocks (there was room for the ice) and put in on top of the containers of fish, which run along the bottom sides of the cars. As the ice melted the cold water dripped into the water containing the fish. Without the ice the water would have gotten to warm and the fish would have died. The cooler water also held more oxygen. One man did all the woodwork renovation on this car. It took him over 2,000 hours.

I talked to the "staff guys" at the car for quite some time. Both of them, and their wives, are full time RV'ers. They typically "volunteer" at locations run by some arm of the federal government. Volunteers at the hatchery are provided with a full hook-up (water, electricity & sewer) for their RV's, along with free WiFi and cable TV. In return the volunteer works 15-24 hours a week. One of these guys never got out of his chair and the other walked around some just to chat with other visitors. They aren't "locked in" to a time frame. They don't have to commit to being at one place form months, although I am sure that there is some minimum time frame to make it worth training the volunteers. At the hatchery volunteers can start as early as April and stay as late as October. One of these guys winters in Texas and the other in Arizona. They didn't tell me where they volunteer in the south. (One of these guys spent most of his working life in Detroit and camped somewhere around Coldwater during summers. He was a mason.)

 The concrete channels are left over from when the hatchery was in full operation.

 Notice the patient lady sitting and waiting for her husband to stop shooting the bull with the volunteers.

 After the hatchery it was time for lunch. I picked the Bum Steer on 5th as the place to eat. The building was great.

 The food was the best I've had in so long I can't remember having better, maybe at the Beef House near Covington, IN. Kathy also had a steak and thought the same thing. There was a great salad bar, with two different soups. The soups were both great.

We decided that this was our anniversary lunch, since it cost about twice as mcuh as  our supper last night. It was worth every penny! If you ever drive I-90 near the South Dakota, Wyoming border make sure to stop at the Bum Steer for a meal.

After lunch it was off to the High Plains Western Heritage Center.
http://www.visitspearfish.com/thingstodo/attractions/highplainswesternheritagecenter/
Actually Kathy dropped me off and she went back to check out downtown Spearfish in more detail. Spearfish is relatively close to the border with Wyoming. I took the photo below before entering. While visiting with one of the staff guys, in a upstairs area with huge windows, the guy told me that you can see three states from the museum. The area far out and to the left of the hill is Wyoming. There is a similar vista to the right of hill but I didn't take a photo of it. You can see Montana when looking that way.

One of the interesting things I read about while at the museum was that last "great cattle drive." In 1979 a South Dakota rancher had 4,500 head of cattle that he needed to get to the stockyards. The stockyard was located 40 miles from some of the cattle. He decided to drive the cattle to the stockyard. After getting approval from the other ranchers whose property they would cross he did just that. The original cancelled check for the cattle was on display. The amount was $2,522,957.87. The check was a plain old hand written business size check.

We came back through Spearfish Canyon, cross-country. The sights in the canyon are well worth seeing.

It was another great day. Tomorrow we leave here and are going to see if we can park a couple of days at the Cedar Pass Campground in the Badlands National Park. We know there is some type of camping available but can't find any good information. At best we will only have have a place to plug in for electricity. Since we only plan on staying a maximum of two nights we have plenty of on board water and sewage capacity. Since we have never tried staying at a National Park my biggest concern is getting our 40' rig in and out of the camping area.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 28th - Mt. Rushmore

Today we explored the area around Mt. Rushmore. First we stopped at a winery. After seeing many, many, many billboards advertising Red Ass Rhubarb wine we had to check it out. The grounds were nice. This is one of the nicest truck docks I've ever seen.

 The rest of the facility.

 We went on to Hill City. We drove around it but didn't see anything that caused us to want to stop and look. We then drove over to Keystone. We parked and walked around there for quite a while. We had lunch and then walked down to the "old city". This is an old riveted tank that someone is using for a building, maybe even a home.

We decided to ride the "1880" steam train that travels back and forth between Keystone and Hill City. This is the train coming into the station at Keystone.

Taking on water before heading back to Hill City. I talked to one of the train guys and he said the engine uses 900 gallons of water going from Hill City to Keystone and about 1,000 gallons going the other way. The difference is due to the grade.

I just heard on the local news that even though the 1880 train was out of service for a week this year the ridership so far this year is over 30% above last year. It is about on par with 2010 ridership, which was one of their best years. They do a lot of the restoration work on the cars, in addition to restoring the locomotives. The wood work on the car we rode in was beautiful.

It was WINDY here today. The news just mentioned steady winds of 50 mph at one area community. It was also mostly sunny so the wind was tolerable.

 The view from the parking area at Mt. Rushmore was almost as good as looking the sculpture. It seem that you could see for miles across a valley. The grade on the highway leaving Mt. Rushmore is 10% for at least a mile. After that you still keep going down for a while but it isn't nearly as steep. We went into Rapid City for supper. Coming into Rapid City from Mt. Rushmore you again look out across miles of valley.

Since today was our 45th anniversary, and I am such a big spender, we went out to Golden Corral for supper. Actually while at Keystone I splurged and bought Kathy a $4 chocolate/carmel/almond turtle for desert.

The weather is supposed to be nicer tomorrow, minimal wind, and we think we are going to drive back west and look over Sturgis and Spearfish. We will probably pack up and head east again on Wednesday.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 27th - All Is Well in SD

I was to lazy to post anything yesterday. Actually there wasn't much to post, nor is there much from today.

We are at a campground about 10 miles south of Rapid City, South Dakota. We plan on staying here several days before heading east again. More rain yesterday but the drive was less than 100 miles and fortunately it wasn't raining while we set up at the campground, although it did rain through the night.

Other than going out for lunch we didn't do much yesterday. We can't seem to kick our colds and I am staying around the RV today. Kathy is out at some flea market. There is a 40% chance of rain today, but so far it has been sunny and the temperature is in the low 60's, although it is breezy.

The plan is to start our area sightseeing tomorrow.

We are now less than a thousand miles from Centertown, Missouri, the location of the home we just bought. That is only two LONG days of travel in the RV but the plan still is to take our time and arrive there around June 15th.

Tomorrow is our 45th wedding anniversary. So far no plans to do anything special.
Hopefully we can at least find a nice restaurant for dinner.

Good day to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 25th - South Dakota

This won't be another book. Our cell phone signal is weak and thus our Internet connection is SLOW.

We are spending the night at the South Dakota welcome center on I-90, maybe 30 miles from Sturgis, SD. We travelled 440 miles today. (We are such wimps. Tom, my brother-in-law, used to drive his motorhome from near Tampa Florida to Crossville Tennessee in a day, 650 miles, and he did all the driving. Kathy and split the driving on the longer mileage days.)

It rained, or snowed, on us most of the way. It was snowing and in the mid-30's when we "broke camp" this morning. The wind chill was in the low 20's. The highest temp we encountered today was 46.

This is Montana snow, 1:20 PM, around elev 4,900.

 This is Wyoming snow, 3:45 PM, around elevation 4,900.

 The road runs uphill into a cloud. Foggy.

 Foggier.

 Foggiest. Visibility was maybe 100' at this point.

 Parked for the night at the South Dakota welcome center.

We went uphill and downhill all day. The campground in Livingston, MT was at elevation 4,500. We went down to below 2,800 while in Montana and then started back up again. We were up to 4,500 many times, and 4,900 maybe three times. I don't think we ever got below 3,000' again.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

May 24th - Yellowstone National Park

It only got down to the mid 40's last night, not into the 30's as forecast. It is 37 here right now and supposed to get down to 33 tonight.

Today we had a GREAT day in Yellowstone. It was a little disappointing that several roads through the park were still closed. We basically drove to Old Faithful, about 110 miles, and returned on the same route. I would have liked to see Yellowstone Lake but that would have required another 30 mile trip just to see one part of the lake and then backtracking the 30 miles. The lake covers 136 square miles. The elevation of the surface is about 7,800 feet above sea level. Even though we didn't see the lake we still had a very good day.

The north entrance to the park is about 55 miles from here. We are at elevation 4,500 while the north entrance is at elevation 5,300. We were up as high as elevation 7,500 during the drive. The number of people at the park today shocked us. There were easily more than 500 people, maybe even a thousand, who watched the same Old Faithful eruption that we did. I assume there were approximately the same number who watched all the other eruptions today, they occur every hour. Another amazing thing was the number of rented motorhomes. We never went more than a couple of miles without seeing a rented Class C motorhome.

There was some beautiful scenery getting to the park.

 I had to stop and get a photo of this "bridge" after we drove over it.

Our first stop was at Mammouth Hot Springs. The entire area has hot water coming up out of the ground and leaving colorful deposits. The surface is sometimes just a crust and can collapse. There are boardwalks that you must use to view the area. Sometimes the ramps were relatively steep and there were also steps. I counted 287 of them getting to the top of the observation area.

We saw quite a few elk, a small bear and many buffalo. The one below was just grazing along the edge of the road. If I had stayed in our lane Kathy could have reached out the car's passenger window and touched it as we drove by. No way was I going to get that close.

A few miles later we had to stop while three crossed the road. This one decided that he preferred to walk down the road for awhile.

Two of the other three came back up next to the road and followed it. After maybe 150' they walked off the road. They have absolutely no fear of cars.

This bear was clawing the bark off this fallen log.

 "Steam vents" are all over the park.

 These folks are just starting a picnic at one of the areas along the river. We ate our lunch at one of the other picnic tables. The temperature was in the high 30's. It snowed a little while we were eating our lunch.

We finally made it to the complex built around Old Faithful. We spent some time in the visitors center, on the left in the background. Kathy went out before I did and took this photo of me while I was walking out.

 I returned the favor.

 The walkway out to Old Faithful.

 The steam you see in the foreground is Old Faithful. There are lots of other vents in the background but we didn't see any of them erupt. I don't know if they do.

 I couldn't resist. I had to take a photo of the eruption.

On the way back we stopped and walked back in to see Painters Pots. There were colorful deposits around different vents. Some were quite close together and yet the colors were totally different. At the Old Faithful visitors center there was a display that said that different organisms preferred different temperatures, and that it was the organisms that created the colors.

The bottom of this area was a muddy brown. There was about 6" of flowing water here.

 This one looked to be several feet deep. The water was clear but had a turquoise tint. Large bubble regularly came up from the bottom, out of cracks in the bottom.

 This one was kind of a creamy white.

 This one looked like it was a diluted form of the one above.

We also stopped at Gibbon Falls on the way back.

 This is the stream that carries the water away from Gibbon Falls.

This is some of the snow we encountered. We regularly drove through snow flurries when we were at the higher elevations. It snowed quite hard during one mile long stretch.

When we returned to Livingston we went to Rick's on Main Street for supper. Kathy had a shrimp dish and I had a hamburger. Both were good.

A side note. I had filled the car up before I took my 100 mile plus drive around the Hanford Site in Richland, WA. I filled it up again this evening. We had driven 374.8 miles and it took 12.35 gallons to fill it up, 30.3 mpg. This car loves high altitudes. On the way back "down the hill" (800 foot elevation drop over 55 miles) out of the park, I drove 65-70 mph. The instrumentation on the car said that our average mileage increased by 0.4 mpg during the drive.

It is past time to get to bed. It has been raining and it will probably be a cold, rainy morning to pack up and move tomorrow. Since tomorrows high is supposed to be a rainy 40, and tomorrow nights low is supposed to be 31, we are heading east. Hopefully we will make it to someplace where the low will at least be in the mid 40's.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.