Going Home

We left Custer on Thursday to go on to Sioux Falls. I can't believe that it has been almost exactly one year since we were here last time to register the vehicles in South Dakota and get our driver's license. We are getting pretty comfortable with traveling without reservations, since it gives us a chance to see things along the way without being rushed. This leg of our trip is a good example for that. On the way we decided to stop at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum at Ellsworth Airforce Base. It was actually a lot more interesting than I thought. There was a lot of fighter planes and the Minuteman Missile and we actually got a tour of the Airforce Base.




They sure are a lot bigger than I thought. The map showed that there were at one point at least 150 of these Minuteman Missile silos in the Black Hills. Makes you wonder what you are driving on without knowing it.

For the longest time we have been seeing signs along the highway advertising "Wall Drugs". We actually drove by it this time and just had to stop.

It sure is a lot bigger than I thought, but just as much of a tourist trap then we expected. However, it still was fun to just walk through some of it. There are certain things you just have to do along the way, does not matter how cheesy. Since it was getting late, we decided to stop for the night at a campground outside of Presho.

The next morning Doug felt we needed to see the Pioneer Auto Show in Murdo (about 30 miles west of us) before we moved on to Sioux Falls. Even though it brought back a lot of memories of cars he used to have, the place was somewhat run down and we left after an hour. Right now we are in Salem, since there is a rock concert in Sioux Falls and our campground is booked out for the weekend. This campground here is very nice, far enough away from the highway and "only" 40 miles from Sioux Falls. Since we were just a little bit anxious, we did go to the storage area yesterday and dropped of some stuff and got Doug's golf clubs from the storage. Looking at all the boxes I have no idea anymore what we packed in them. Oh well, we will go through them before we empty the storage space .

Hot Springs, SD

After the southern loop of Custer State Park, we went on to Hot Springs to check out Mammoth Site. Doug says this place is for real. They build the building around the original dig site and they are still actively exploring the remains at this time. I am not so sure, it looks just to commercial and staged for me. You can be your own judge.

Panning for Gold!!!!!

Even though this also happened during our drive of the southern route in Custer State Park, this experience deserves its own entry. I have been trying to go panning for gold since Nevada City, MT and have not had any success. We went to Nevada City, MT, Lead, SD, Deadwood, SD and Keystone, SD and nowhere was I able to go panning at a creek, as I had envisioned it. The all had these big troughs filled with water and that did not look like fun. The lady in the store in Keystone finally explained something to me on Monday; due to insurance liability reasons, I will not find a commercial place that will let me pan in a creek, because I could slip on a rock and break my neck. People that know me know that I don't give up that easily. We went ahead and bought two pans and a little bottle to keep my findings in and went on our merry way. So today before we went out to check out more of Custer State Park we stopped and Mike and Pat McFalls to say our goodbyes and told them about what happened. Pat told us that around Custer's time people used to pan for gold in the French Creek in Custer State Park. See where I am going with this :-) We found a nice picnic area to park in, I found the perfect rock in the creek to sit on and I had the time of my life.

I had my shuffle, my pan and the water really was not cold at all. I was in heaven and you would not believe just how much fools gold is in the creek. It sparkles all over the place. My sweet husband sat on the rock (without getting wet) and checked out all the "gold" flakes that I found in the dirt. I had an absolute blast and we were thoroughly amused by the lady and her daughter that actually came over and asked us if we had any luck yet.

You know I bet a lot of people are really curious about doing this and are just to adult to give it a shot. That could not happen to me; I wanted to do this for a long time and I really did not care about the looks I was getting.

Black Hills Country

We are leaving tomorrow to go on home to Sioux Falls and decided to take the southern route in Custer State Park, which we had not seen yet. Before we even got to the entrance we saw this interesting looking old Fort and just had to stop.


There is so much history in this area, it is pretty cool. See that sign about the search for gold, keep in in mind for later.

We entered the state park and checked out Mount Coolidge Firetower. What a beautiful view of the Black Hills you have from this viewpoint.


As you can see, there was a storm brewing and it was to follows us pretty much all day, but never hit us.

Heard of Bison???

I have always to wanted to see Bison in the wild and fairly close up, but this was just a little bit to close for comfort.

Doug's remark of "Go out and take a picture" was met with a dirty look and a "Are you crazy?" remark from me. I rather have pictures with a glare from the windshield and be in one piece.

Mount Rushmore

The tourist crowds were so bad over the weekend at Mount Rushmore, so we decided to wait till today, hoping it was not crowded and we were right. It is pretty amazing to see the four presidents.


We toured the Lincoln Borglum Museum and watched the two movies about the place and the park, which were pretty interesting. On the way home we decided to check out a new route through Custer State Park and had a big surprise.

Custer, SD

We finally arrived back in our home state on Thursday. It is a first for our little car with South Dakota plates, which has 13,000 miles on it by now. We are parked at a nice campground recommended by Mike and Pat McFalls and have been checking out the area. Friday was laundry and grocery shopping day. We have not been in a town big enough for a decent supermarket and were hoping to find it in Custer; we will keep hoping. Pat suggested for us to go to Rapid City, that is were she does her big shopping. On Saturday we started scouting out the area by car, since Doug's foot is still not 100% and you actually can see Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore from the highway. It was a nice drive through some of the Black Hill country and we ended the day with a really nice potluck dinner at the campground organized by Pat. We met four new couples that also travel full time and a lot of good stories were told while we had a ton of food. It is good to mingle with some new people again.

I still have not given up my quest to go panning for gold. So today, we went to Lead and Deadwood, which is supposed to be a "Old Western" town. Lead was somewhat interesting with a mine that was just shut down about 10 years ago.


We went on to Deadwood to be very much surprised. There was supposed to be an original "Shootout" every day and we just thought it would be somewhat like Tombstone, AZ. Well, the streets are paved and just about every store has a gambling establishment. There was a lot of people and a lot of casinos. We did not even bother to stay for the shootout in the afternoon. It was just not the kind of town we had expected. Again, I did not find a place to do my gold panning. Oh well, I will find it yet.

Where are the UFOs?

Our trip from Browing, MT to Devils Tower, WY took a little bit longer than we had planned. Everything started out okay, we are traveling along, but by day's end Doug's right foot was swollen and hot. He had what we believe to be another gout attack. We found a three spot RV park in Roundup, MT (about 60 miles north of Billings) and hung around until Tuesday morning. The swelling in the foot was somewhat less and we headed east towards Devils Tower. By 6:30 pm we found a campground in Sundance, WY, which actually was pretty good and not to expensive. So this morning we were off in search for that big UFO hovering over Devils Tower.

The drive was really pretty. It still amazes me how fast and drastic landscapes can change in this great country. We have seen so many kinds of flat lands and mountains, it just never gets old. Arriving at the park we were greeted by a bunch of prairie dogs. They look so cute, but are had to photograph.

We drove to the visitor's center to find out more about this place. I have to say, up close the rock is pretty impressive and it really looks like somebody took a fork to it and made all those grooves.



On the way back to the rig we found this abandoned coal mine that looked very interesting. You never know what you will find when you take the roads less traveled.


Tomorrow we will move on to Custer to check out the area and meet up with friends of ours from Retama Village.

Checking out the Neighborhood

As I mentioned before, Indian Days are going on in Browning this week, so we decided to go to the parade in the morning. Some of the Indian tribal wear was just so beautiful.

It seemed a little bit strange that some of the Indians would ride on top of a car instead of horses, but I guess these are changing times.

After the parade we went on to see Many Glaciers, which is at east end on the park. I have to admit that I still have problems identifying what is a glacier and what is snow from the last winter. I guess it will be gone around 2020 anyway, and that is one of the reasons why we wanted to come here now. Most of the glaciers in this part of the park are really only visible by hiking, however, we were able to see some of them and have a nice lunch at the lodge.


In the evening we went back to Browning to check out the Pow Wow. It was a somewhat strange experience. I suppose if we would know about the Indian customs, some of it would have made more sense. In one tent were what looked like four groups of Indians playing drums and chanting at various times and other people were passing something we could not identify. At seven o'clock the big Pow Wow started with all the different families coming into a big meeting area; first the chiefs, then the young men, followed by the women and in the end the children in all their tribal wear, dancing to tribal music. It was just amazing.


All in all it was a very interesting day. Tomorrow, we will move on towards Mount Rushmore, SD.

Glacier National Park

This park is amazing. Even though a lot of the glaciers are only accessible by hiking, which we don't do, we still were able to see some beautiful sites.

The mountain in the middle is the logo of Paramount pictures, which is shown in the theaters before every movie. I never knew that, but found out by listening to a tour guide for the Red Bus company.

There are so many cascading waterfalls and snow melt runoffs, you just don't know where to look first.





Some of the runoff rivers actually still have a snow/ice cover over them.


The pass was just opened about two weeks ago, so we still saw some amazing snow piles.


The glaciers we saw at Logan Pass and other places were just amazing.


And of course lets not forget about all the beautiful wildflowers we came across on "Glacier's Going to the Sun Road".

Moving On

There is one very good thing when you don't book campgrounds in advance, you can change your mind at any time. Last week we were thinking of going east to Wyoming. Well, by the time we were ready to leave, we decided to go north to see Glacier National Park in Montana, before the glaciers all melt away. It was a long drive, going about 370 miles in one day, which we have not done in a while.

When we drove a few months ago on Route 380 from Lubbock, TX to Roswell, NM we decided that we had found "the middle of nowhere". Well guess what, we were wrong!!! The middle of nowhere is somewhere on Route 287 north of Helena, MT. We saw the most beautiful green rolling hills with fields of pink, blue and yellow wildflowers, but really no farms or farm animals for miles. I was so glad that we went grocery shopping in Helena, since we did not see a grocery store again until Browning. We are back on Indian land and things are a little bit different. It seems that most campgrounds do not have sewers at site, just a dump station, but by now I have learned how to ration the gray tank.

Tonight we went out to dinner at a steak house and were not able to have a drink, since there is a pow wow right now in Browning and no alcohol can be served on the reservation until that is over (very interesting). You can bring your own, but the restaurant can not serve liquor.

Tomorrow we are going to Glacier National Park to check out what it is all about.

Yellowstone Nationl Park Part 2

Today we took the southern route of Yellowstone National Park to see Old Faithful. There are so many geysers to see before you ever get there, it is amazing. I prefer the clear blue colored ones, but the mud geysers have their own appeal.





At last we arrived at Old Faithful, which I believe is the only geysers that has an internal clock and can be watched once an hour within 10 minutes. We arrived 20 minutes before the explosion and there was no more seating available, standing room only. It was definitely worth the wait. I was so impressed, I just kept clicking away for about two minutes to get as many shots as I could. Most of them will be on our picture website later.


So we kept driving the southern route as it started to pour rain and hail for about 5 minutes. I felt to bad for all the bikers that could not find cover. We decided to stop at Artist point and wait out the rain. I was not thrilled, since I thought it would just be another victim shop, but I was so wrong.

The shapes and colors of the rocks were just so impressive. They call the it the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone for a good reason.





Just when you think you have seen every thing you want to see, something else is around the corner.

And of course, this time I got my fill of wildlife close up.

The Week in Review

Monday: Yellowstone National Park Part I

Tuesday: We finally found a campground that lets us wash the rig and it needed it badly. The roof took a while, but by early afternoon we were done. Of course, just before a rain storm came and gave the rig a final rinse. :-)

Wednesday: We drove to Bozeman to pick up meds, got the oil changed in the car and went shopping for new pillows, which was long overdue. It was a beautiful drive up to Bozeman and on the way back we checked out a model log cabin. Doug has been interested in them and we got a quick lesson on how well they are build and how easy the upkeep supposedly is.

Thursday: The campground invited everybody for a 4th of July picnic. They provided the burgers, hot dogs, buns and condiments and the campers all brought salads and deserts. We met some new people and a good time was had by all.

Friday: We decided to check out Earthquake Lake. "On the evening of August 17th, 1959, the area just west of Yellowstone National Park experienced an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale. At the time it was the strongest earthquake recorded in the United States. It killed twenty-eight people; many were buried beneath the 80 million tons of dolomite that crashed down upon a sleeping Forest Service campground, others drowned when the Madison River, displaced by the slide, engulfed their tents." You can still see were the landslide was.



Saturday: We decided to go up to Virginia City and Nevada City in Montana. The idea of "panning for gold" got my attention. Virginia City is an old gold mining town, well preserved with the original buildings, starting with the General Store, the Pharmacy, the Blacksmith, etc. We took a nice walk up and down main street and went on to Nevada City for lunch and some gold panning. The lunch was good, the gold panning was not what I had expected, so we decided not to do it. However, the town had a very unique attraction. They have a building with an outstanding collection of old time music boxes, pianos and organs. You could play each one for 25 cents up to a dollar. It was pretty cool, except when the tour bus stopped and all the kids decided to play them all at the same time.