The Heartland

August 18 - August 23, 2015

We left the Custer State Park with plans to spend two nights in Wall, SD for a visit to Badlands National Park. But we had been noticing a suspiscious noise from one of the tires on the Hyundai that we tow, so our first stop was the Sears Automotive Center in Rapid City. Towing is hard on tires. But it might have been the off-road driving that we had done in Glacier National Park. Whatever, two new tires later we were on the road for the short 60 mile trip to Wall.

Wall, SD's main claim to fame is the "world famous" Wall Drug. Easterners who have seen the ubiquitous signs for "South of the Border" in the I-95 corridor get the basic premise behind Wall Drug. Ted Hustead had just completed training as a pharmacist in 1931. The Hustead's purchased a drugstore in Wall, SD because they wanted to live in a small town that had a Catholic church. Unfortunately, Wall was home to only 326 people. And they were 326 poor people. Between the poor residents and the great depression, business was bad. After a few years, the Hustead's had decided to throw in the towell and close the business. But Mrs. Hustead had one last idea. They needed a way to get travellers to stop at the store. The Hustead's made several signs offering "free ice water" to anyone who stopped in. Some of the signs had poems that Mrs. Hustead wrote about the free ice water. It worked! Travelers immediately began stopping in for their free ice water, and, while they were there, bought ice cream comes, newspapers, cigarettes, or wharever. By the next week they had to hire 8 new workers. And the rest is history! Wall Drug now takes up an entire city block. You can still get your free ice water, but there's also a maze of smaller connecting stores selling everything from souvenirs to leather goods. While much of it is junk, there's a good bookstore for western themed books, and the leather shop has some nice items as well. The "backyard" has various places that you can pose for silly pictures

                                               Here I am on a "Jackalope."

 We woke the next morning to a torrential downpour at our campground in Wall and decided that our visit to Badlands National Park was going to have to wait until another trip. So we programmed the GPS for the Winnebago factory in the little town of Forest City, Iowa. We needed to get some minor service work done on the Liberty. I had called for an appointment and was offered one on November 24th! Uh, no thank you. But we were told that we could just show up and get in line for service, and that it "could take up to 10 days." After talking to my friend Phyllis Johnson who had been there before, we decided to take our chances. 

We arrived at the Winnebago factory as night was falling, but managed to find the overnight parking for service customers. They had thoughtfully provided an electric hookup. The next morning at 7:00am, Rick went to the service desk and registered for the queue. It's actually a pretty efficient operation. By the following afternoon we were instructed to report for service at 0700 the next morning.  They had a very comfortable waiting room where we spent the day with about 30 other service customers. Since people often have pets with them in their RV's the room was full of pets. Therre were two cats in carriers that meowed the entire day. SiSi really wanted to give them a piece of her mind! 

I made good use of our time in the waiting room by making Christmas cards. The red box in the picture is a Stampin' Up! product called "Paper Pumpkin." Shameless self promotion: If you subscribe to Paper Pumpkin it arrives in your mailbox every month for $19.95. You can also prepay for just one box, 3 boxes, six boxes, or twelve. It comes complete with everything you need to make the project. All you need is a pair of scissors! And it makes a great gift for a crafty daughter, grandchild or friend. If you are interested you can call me or shop my online store 24/7 at: http://stampwithsally.stampinup.net

End shameless plug!

We were in the RV preparing to leave when I glanced out the front windshield and noticed a man furiously waving at us. It was our across the street neighbor, Gary Cote, from IRCC! Gary and Gail Cote had come to the factory for a tour. What were the odds of that? I thought they were in Maine for the summer!

               Gail, Gary, Sally and Rick at the Winnebago factory

We were on our way by about 5:00. We drove until 9:30 and then spent the night in a Cracker Barrel parking lot near the Iowa/Illinois border. Most Cracker Barrel restaurants welcome RVers to spend the night in their parking lot. Of course you're expected to eat at least one meal there (we ate two), and if you want to shop in the gift shop while you're there, all the better, so it's not exactly free! We slept well, and the next morning were on our way to our next stop in Champaign Illinois.

Our stop in Champaign was to hook up with my cousin Eddie Sutton. He came out to the campground for a look at the Liberty and then we had a really good dinner at a restaurant in town called Escobar. I hadn't seen Eddie in many years so it was a really happy reunion. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures of Eddie, his cute dogs, or his lovely home, for which I hope he will forgive me.

For a while now, we're both been feeling homesick. Rick's missing his memory foam mattress, his hot tub, and "his" golf course. I'm also missing the mattress and the hot tub but mostly my friends and my craft room. So about the time that we left Custer State Park, we decided that it was time to start the long journey home. You know you're far from home when you tell the GPS to "go home" and it gives you a date of arrival along with the time!

I'm writing this while sitting at the dinette as we roll along I-24 through Tennessee. Rick's been threatening to drive all night, but I think the traffic and rough roads around Nashville wore him out. He wants me to look for someplace to stop for the night in either Chattanooga or Dalton in northern Georgia. Just asked him how to spell Chatanooga and he says it's Chatttannnoooga. Maybe he's right.

Stone Faces

August 13 - August 18, 2015 (Part 2)

Mount Rushmore was initially the idea of South Dakota state historian, Doane Robinson. In order to boost the state's income from tourism, Robinson wanted to carve giant statues in the Black Hills of local figures like Chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Lewis and Clark. He was inspired by reports that a sculptor named Gutzon Borglum was carving a Confederate memorial on Stone Mountain in Georgia. He recruited Borglum to carve Mt Rushmore, but 60 year old Borglum said that his life's work would not be about immortalizing local heroes. He insisted that the scope of the project demanded a national and timeless subject and he proposed that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt should be the subjects. He felt that those four had shaped the nation in unique ways. Washington exemplified the birth of the nation. Jefferson stood for expansion because of the Louisianna purchase, Roosevelt stood for development because of the Panama Canal, Conservation, and trust busting, and Lincoln stood for preservation because he had saved the nation during the Civil War. I can think of many better reasons than the Louisianna Purchase to include Jefferson, who is my personal hero, but I digress.

The project took 14 years to complete, used 400 workers, and cost $989,992. Each face is 60 feet tall, each eye is 11 feet wide, and each nose is 20 feet long, except Washington's which is 21 feet long. The tools used to carve the project included drills, chisels, jackhammers, and dynamite. The workers would hike up the 700 stairs to the carving each day, climb into sling chairs, and be lowered down the mountain to the place where they were working each day. Incredibly, there were no fatalities and only a few minor injuries over the life of the project.

In March 1941, Borglum died of complications from surgery at the age of 74. With America's inolvement in World War II looming, the decision was made to abandon the project. The work on the faces was mostly finished, and after Borglum's son Lincoln Borglum put some finishing touches on the sculpture, it was declared complete. You can see the parts that weren't finished by looking at the model that was being used for the carving.

When we were on our way from Cody to the Black Hills, Rick had remembered that a friend of his from the Police Department in Baltimore now lived "somewhere in South Dakota" but he couldn't remember where. Through the magic of Google and Facebook I was able to find his friend, and we made plans to have dinner with Ted and his wife, Cheryl. We had so much fun that we met them again the next night for another dinner, and they accompanied us to the nightly lighting of the monument at Mt Rushmore. Though, truthfully, we were disappointed in the program, we had fun with our friends.

                 Rick, Sally, Ted, and Cheryl

Rick and I also spent a few hours at the ongoing Crazy Horse Memorial carving. The Black Hills were considered sacred land by several Indian tribes. After watching the heads of 4 white men being carved into their sacred mountain for 14 years, Chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned one of the carvers from Mt Rushmore to sculpt a carving of Crazy Horse that was bigger and more elaborate, to show that Indians have heroes too. The project was begun in 1948, and when finished, will show Crazy Horse atop his horse. The third generation of Ziolkowski's are now working on the memorial. 

The visitors center also houses several gift shops with high quality Indian art work. Many other Indian artifacts are on display in the visitor's center. It's interesting to note that the family has refused monetary help from both the state and federal governments.

This a model of what it's supposed to look like when it's finished.

When finished it will be 641 feet long by 563 feet high. This is the only ongoing mountain carving project in the world.

We finished our visit to the Black Hills with a visit to the interesting Wind Cave National Park. It was a 90 degree day, so the 54 degree temperatures inside the cave were quite welcome!

Now Somewhere in the Black Mountain Hills of Dakota...

August 13 - August 18, 2015 (Part One)

I couldn't get the lyrics to the old Beatles song "Rocky Raccoon" out of my head during the 5 nights we spent in the Black Hills of South Dakota. And they really do look black. They are so densely covered with evergreens that the Lakota Indians called them "paha sapa" which means "hills that are black." And they are amazingly beautiful. The prairie meets the forested mountains in the Black Hills, and combination is spectacular.

We parked the Liberty in Custer State Park, near the town of Custer City, SD. Custer State Park (CSP) is the second largest state park in the US (Adirondack State Park is the largest) and CSP is surely the best. We were just blown away by this park. With beautiful historic hotels, spacious and well-planned campgrounds, good restaurants, and many well-run activities, it rivals any private resort in the US. And with its lovely vistas and four amazingly scenic drives, it is certainly the match of any national park that we have visited. And then you have the wildlife. Everywhere you go, the park is teeming with bison, pronghorn, elk, and prairie dogs. It's like Yellowstone without the crowds and the bears! Which isn't to say that folks don't slow down to watch the animals along the roads. But a "bison jam" in CSP only sets you back a few minutes as opposed to an hour or more in Yellowstone.

One of the biggest herds was all over the grassy areas by the visitor center on two of our days in the park. But, unfortunately, by the time they left the beutiful lawns were covered with many big mounds of bison poop. I'd hate to have the job of cleaning that up!

This shows just a small portion of the prairie dog "town" that was right next to the wildlife loop.

There are quite a few burros in the park. At one time they were used to give rides up Mt Harney. When that concession ended, they were turned loose in the park. Siince they are not technically wild, the park doesn't prohibit people from feeding them. As you can see in the above shot, they are used to getting handouts!

We had a nice hike one day from the wildlife loop on a trail called the Prairie Trail. It was a pleasant hike across a scenic prairie, crossing a stream several times, and climbing several hills for pretty views. And best of all, SiSi was welcome.

 

 

Hangin' with the Hells Angels in Cody

August 7 - August 13, 2015

I have a friend named Kathi Marler who lives in my neighborhood in Florida. She is originally from Idaho. When she heard that we were going to Yellowstone, she encouraged us to spend a day or two in Cody, Wyoming. When we left Yellowstone, we had intended to make the Black Hills area of South Dakota our next stop. But, luckily, my guidebook had warned that Sturgis, SD would be hosting the 75th annual Sturgis Motorcycle rally from August 2nd until August 9th and that half a million (I'm not kidding) bikers would be descending on the entire Black Hills area. And if that wasn't bad enough, all hotel rooms and campgrounds within a 2 hour drive of Sturgis would be full and that their rates would be trippled or even quadupled during the rally. Naturally, we wanted to stay far away until they were gone. So a day or two in Cody turned into 6 nights. 

It was a short and beautiful drive from East Yellowstone to Cody. We had booked a few nights at the very pleasant Ponderosa Campground. But sites were hard to come by in our campground and at the surrounding campgrounds and hotels. Despite the fact that Cody is a full 6 hour drive from Sturgis, the bikers had arrived. They were everywhere. Between the tattoos, the doo rags on their heads, and the vroom vrooming everywhere they went, they were making me crazy. Seriously, though, they were very well behaved and certainly kept things interesting and colorful!

                                               This one was my favorite!

               Motorcycles lined both sides of the streets during most of our visit to Cody.

When we arrived, the nice folks at the campground steered us to a cowboy chuckwagon dinner and show, followed by the Cody night rodeo. We had a blast! The dinner at the Cody Cattle Company was very good, and the music was even better. The 3 very talented musicians played western, country, and southern rock. 

When the show ended, we went next door to the "Cody Nite Rodeo." Cody, which bills itself as the "Rodeo Capital of the World," has a rodeo every night during June, July, and August. There was bareback riding, calf roping, steer wrestling, barrel racing, and bull riding. It was a hoot!

We spent two full days at the excellent Buffalo Bill Museum of the West which is sometimes called the "Smithsonian of the West." While that's a bit of an exageration, it's definitely a must-do if you're ever in Cody. The Buffalo Bill Museum is actually 6 different museums. In addition to a museum about Bill, there's the Draper Natural History Museum, the Plains Indian Museum, the Whitney Museum of Western Art, the Cody Firearms Museum, and the McCracken Research Library. We really enjoyed it, Thank you, Kathi for steering us that way!

We had intended to spend 3 or 4 nights in Cody but ended up being there for six nights. While we enjoyed our time there, staying for six nights wasn't our choice. When you're traveling for an extended period you have to figure out what to do about your mail. Most of our bills are either automatically charged to a credit card or else delivered to my email box. I then pay the bills online through my bank's online banking system. But you've still got to figure out what to do about the rest of the mail. The post office will only hold mail for 30 days, so that doesn't work. And picking up, sorting, and forwarding your mail is really too much to ask of a neighbor, even one who's a good friend. So we have been using a mail forwarding service. It works like this: I file a temporary forwarding order with the post office, and have the mail forwarded to my unique "personal mailbox" with American Home Base in Tallahassee. When I know where I'm going to be for a few days I call American Home Base and give them the address for them to forward my mail. I then pick it up from a campground, relative, or even general delivery at the post office that I have designated. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. 

This time, our mail didn't show up. We waited and waited, extending our stay for one more day after one more day until we finally gave up and left. The nice folks at the campground assured me that they would forward it if it ever shows up, but I'm not betting on the post office.

Rick played golf on two of the days we extended, while I did some crafting. And on our last day we visted a very interesting museum called Heart Mountain which was a World War II Japanese American confinement site. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, 120,000 Japanese Americans (many American Citizens) were confined by the US government in various "relocation camps." This one was chosen for its remote location and its proximity to a railroad line.

Heart Mountain is now a National Historic Landmark. They've done a really good job with it. Particularly moving is a film with interviews with some of the surviving detainees. Many of them lost everything. Before they were sent to the relocation camps, they were kept for 30 days in an "assembly center." During that time, their bank accounts were frozen. Thus they were unable to make payments on mortgages or other business obligations, and most lost any property that they owned to forclosure. Many also found that their possessions had been lost or stolen before they were released 4 years later with nothing but a train ticket and $30.

But mostly, I was impressed with the grace with which they suffered through this imprisonment and the ingenuity that they used to make their life better in the camps. They formed schools, clubs, exercise classes, and institutions of self government. They grew vegetables and flowers. They built furniture with scrap wood and hung sheets to provide some privacy in the one room cells that entire families were expected to share. Here's a shot of an example of one of those rooms.

Yellowstone National Park

August 2 - August 7, 2015

We left Glacier National Park for the long drive to Yellowstone. Ten years ago we visited Yellowstone with our son, Mark, while he was a college student. It was a wonderful trip which we very much wanted to repeat. 

After a long day of driving we spent a night in a large campground in the tourist town of West Yellowstone. My AAA guidebook was very complimentary about a place called The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, so we decided to check it out. The Center is kind of a home for bad bears and their cubs. While each bear has his own unique story, they are all nuisance bears who had learned to obtain food from people, had been aggressive towards people, or who had damaged property in their search for food. Problem bears are usually caught and euthanized, but the 8 bears that live at the center were rescued from that fate. The Center is also home to eight wolves who were born in captivity and were scheduled to be destroyed because their owners were no longer able to take care of them.

We spent several hours over two days at the Center watching the animals in their naturalistic habitats and learning about how to respond to an encounter with a bear while hiking in Yellowstone. Before we left home we had, by chance, watched a tv documentary about a pair of hikers who were badly mauled by a bear in Glacier National Park. The man and his daughter were enjoying an early morning hike on a sparsely travelled trail when they encountered a mother grizzly bear and her cub. The bear attacked the pair, severely injuring them both, and causing them to fall off of the trail. We found this quite sobering and, back in Colorado, we acquired a cannister of "bear spray." Bear spray is a form of pepper spray similar to, but much stronger than, the kind that police officers use. Between the tv documentary, the information we received at the Center, and repeated warnings in the form of written literature and signs by both of the national parks, we were concerned to say the least!

We had managed to score reservations at the Fishing Bridge RV park, a full-hookup RV park centrally located inside Yellowstone. The park allows only "hard sided RV's," no tents or pop-ups. The reason for this is because it is located in "bear country," and bears have been known to rip through tents and canvas covered RVs in an attempt to get the food stored therein. While the campers were allowed to use propane grills, they had to be cleaned and stored inside the RV during the night. We were also told not to leave dog food or water bowls outside and that even things like toothpaste needed to be properly secured.

Once we got to Yellowstone, Rick was recovered from his bronchitis and ready to hike. We began studying park brochures and hiking books that we bought at the park bookstores to find hikes that appealed to us. Our first hike combined several trails around the very popular Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone area. 

It was a fun hike with wonderful views of the canyon and its beautiful falls. Our return route took us through forest and meadow areas where we saw several geothermal features called fumaroles, which basically are holes in the ground with steam coming out. Yellowstone is located atop a huge active volcano, and is home to more Geysers than anywhere else on the planet

We also encountered a herd of bison which, thankfully, took no notice of us. I carried the bear spray on a special belt on my hip, and Rick carried his Glock in a fanny pack. I told Rick that I felt dorkey with the bear spray, and was glad to take it off once the hike was over.

Rick was reading a book called Death at Yellowstone that evening. It described all of the many ways that empoyees and visitors have found to die inside the park over the years. There was a long section devoted to animal attacks. He read that in 2011 a man had been killed and his wife badly injured by a mother bear whom he encountered on the exact same trail we had taken at the end of our hike! Yikes! I didn't feel dorky anymore! Interestingly, though, many more people have been injured or killed by bison attacks than by bear attacks. A child was killed earlier this year when his idiot mother tried to get a picture of him standing next to a bison. 

A few days after we had left Yellowstone, we heard news reports of an employee of the clinic at Yellowstone who had gone hiking on his day off in an area of the park that he loved. He had been killed and eaten by a mother grizzly bear and her cub. The trail where he had been killed was very near to our campsite and it was a trail that we had chosen, and would surely have hiked, had we not cut short our stay!

But bison, not bears, actually caused us to cut short our Yellowstone visit. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons why we had chosen the Fishing Bridge campground was because of its central location. But its central location put us adjacent to the beautiful Hayden Valley area and its abundant wildlife, and consequent "bison jams." A bison jam is caused by photo op hungry tourists who see bison, antelope, or whatever along the roadway and then proceed to stop their vehicle in the middle of the road, get out, and snap their picture or video. In fairness, sometimes the bison would actually be in the road and block traffic themselves, but more often it was the tourists. This caused horrible traffic backups, often of an hour or more. After we had suffered through our 4th bison jam we had had enough. The crowds, the traffic, and the fact that we were less than thrilled with our campground made us decide to move on.

                               One of the culprits in an hour long traffic back-up.

We did take the time to tour some of the thermal features at Yellowstone before we left. The below photos are from the West Thumb Geyser Basin. We also visited Old Faithful and I took video of its eruption. I would post the video if I could figure out how!

Glacier National Park

July 26 - August 2, 2015

When we are on the road we are often out of the loop with regard to the news of the day. We have 3 TV's in the RV: one in the bedroom, one in the living room, and another in an outside compartment. We are able to use a cable hookup if it is offered by the campgound and we have an antenna on the roof to pick up over-the-air channels. But many campgrounds have no cable hookup and we are often in locations where there are no over-the-air stations. Many RVers have satellite service in their RV, but our RV isn't so equipped. One day before we were to leave Salt Lake City for a week in Glacier National Park, our daughter-in-law, Cristin, called us and let us know that there was a large forest fire at Glacier National Park. We investigated and learned that the fire, while very large, was confined to the east side of the park. I had reserved a campground in the western part of the park, so we decided to go anyway. We figured we could always leave if it wasn't working out. 

After spending a night on the road, we arrived at the West Glacier KOA. We had tried a week or two previously to get a reservation at this very well reviewed campground. But we tried again on the day we left and found that they now had vacancies. It seems that news reports about the fire were causing cancellations throughout the area. It turned out to be a really nice place. We had a paved patio area with a gas grill, an attractive tile topped table and chairs with umbrella, and a fire pit surrounded with benches. We've found that the northern campgrounds are really expensive, but at least this one made us feel like we were getting something for our money.

We loved this park. Though it was certainly crowded, the fire reports kept the crowds to a manageable level. The fire closed the east to west highway within the park called the "Going to the Sun" road. You could drive the incredibly scenic road as far as the summit, or Logan Pass, but it was closed after that point. We had to drive all the way around the park in order to see the incredibly beautiful east side. The below shot is in the "Many Glacier" section of the park with the Many Glacier Hotel in the foregound.

We hadn't expected to go to Glacier NP when we were planning our trip so we neglected to bring our passports. If you ever get the chance to visit Glacier National Park be sure to bring your passport. Glacier is actually Waterton - Glacier International Peace Park. It's also a World Heritage Site. The park is really the combination of Glacier and a Canadian park called Waterton. The  parks are joined at the international border. I understand that the Canadian side is amazing. We were sorry to have to miss it. 

                   Both the US and Canadian flags fly over all sections of the park.

We were able to see smoke from the fire while we were exploring the east side. There were firefighters from all over the country who had come to help with the fires. They were all camped in a field. There was another field with a number of heliocopters and small planes that were being used to fight the fire.

We had some chilly weather on our day on the east side, but we mostly had nice weather while we were at Glacier.

Rick came down with Bronchitis while we were there, so we didn't get to do any hikes. We did travel many miles and explored as much of the park as we could without a passport.

One day we drove into the little ski town of Whitefish. We took the ski lift up to the top of the mountain and admired the view.