Saturday, June 30, 2012
Note to all
I finally found wifi in the local laundromat so have published the posts through yesterday. Sorry there was not time to put the pictures with the posts, but I promise to catch up when we get to another area and I am not working in between loads of laundry. Sandie :-)
Friday June 29, 2012
Today Dave made blueberry pancakes for breakfast – yum! We clean up and headed to the Wildlife Loop. We saw several white-tailed deep and prong horned antelope (the Ranger told us that they are the second fastest animal on earth), but the big find was the wild burros. We were told last night that the burros are the only animals in the park you are allowed to feed (anything except Cheetoes as their lips get stained orange!). We came prepared with a bag of apples that we had brought from home. After rattling around in the truck for a week, they were not too appetizing. The boys (and Dave) enjoyed feeding the cut-up apple to the donkeys. There were several babies with the herd and we got to pat a few of them – very soft. One of the donkeys followed Dave around begging for more apples – he had to shoo her away several times so that the others could be fed. At our next stop, we found the buffalo. There must have been a herd of 500 or so! There were also many babies here too. Of course, this time we stayed in the car, but we opened the windows so we could hear them snorting. The boys were fascinated! They couldn’t get over the size! We learned last night that they can run up to 40 miles per hour and turn on a dime. The boys were appalled by how the babies head-butt the moms to get milk – they thought it was cruel to the mom. We finished the loop at Prairie Dog town, but didn’t hear any of them barking which was a disappointment. We got back on the road and stopped for lunch at a picnic area near Jewel Cave. We continued on into Wyoming and visited Devil’s Tower. Everyone was impressed with the size. Dan was interested in the climbing so he and the boys went into the climbing permit office and found that they could climb up the boulder scree zone, but no higher without a permit. I told them they could climb as far as they were comfortable. Theo climbing up about 12 feet, Alex ended up going about half way, but he said his shoes were starting to slip on the rocks. Dan, the monkey, made it to the top. I took some pictures, but he may look like a fly spec in them. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center and Theo bought himself a book on the constellations. On the way back to camp, we took a wrong turn and drove for miles without seeing any signs of human habitation, but finally came to the town of Upton and figured out from there how to get back to camp. Dan cooks the parmesan chicken tonight while I made the rice. We had to skip the vegetable as we put new ice in the cooler today and the carrots must have migrated to the bottom and no one could find them. I turned on the phone to find we had a voice mail from Laura and Nick. Dan’s great-grandmother was in the hospital and not expected to live so we had him call home. We spent some time talking about what a great life she has had and while Dan was sad, he was happy that he had just gotten a chance to visit with her recently. We have been reading “Tucket’s Travels” each night and find it interesting as the main character is now in the Black Hills. After brushing our teeth, Dan, Theo and I went to the Ranger talk on the constellations and their myths (how appropriate for Theo). We sat around the campfire for a few more minutes and then went to bed.
Thursday June 28, 2012
It was quite chilly this morning, about 52. Dave and I woke up early and went to the showers. We sat outside for a bit, but it was too cold so we went back into the tent and read until we heard the boys stirring about 8:00! We had breakfast and then headed out for the day to Deadwood. On the way, we passed Crazy Horse monument, but didn’t stop as we could see him (the Indian) from the road. When we got to Deadwood, we hopped on a tourist bus and got a very educational and amusing tour of the town. We also drove up to Mt. Moriah, the local cemetery (the kids were thrilled not to have to walk up the steep hill) and visited the graves of Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. The bus driver told lots of stories of the fabled pair. We went to Diamond Lil’s for lunch and Alex, Dan, and Dave had buffalo burgers. Theo took a bite and thought it was good. Kevin Costner owns the restaurant and the walls are covered in movie posters and framed outfits that he wore in the films. We walked down to the #10 saloon and watched a reenactment of Wild Bill being shot while playing poker. After stopping for an ice cream cone, we wandered down to the Tin Lizzy to watch a shoot-out in the street. The town is a lot more touristy than when we were here in 1985 and many of the stores are now casinos which became legal in 1989. We did a bit of window-shopping, but no one found anything worth stopping for so we got back in the truck and headed back to camp. Dave was ready for some quiet time so I offered to take the boys swimming in the nearby lake. Alex opted to stay and read, but Dan and Theo had a good time swimming and playing in the sand – Dan did more sand play than swimming as he found the lake very cold! We came back to camp and made dinner. Alex made the fried potatoes and I cooked the steak and used up the salad that Dan had made last night. After dinner, the NY neighbor children came over and asked the boys if they would like to play Monopoly. They had a grand time while the adults chatted. They came over to our campfire for s’mores and then we all went to the Ranger talk on the animals in the park. It was very good. We had a few sprinkles during the evening, but it didn’t amount to much.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Happy Birthday to Alex! He turns 12 today. We gave him a birthday card and will try to find cupcakes to help him celebrate at dinnertime. As hot as it was yesterday, it did cool down quite a bit last night. I started out on top of the sleeping bag, but sometime in the night, I burrowed in. It was 62 by morning. I got up early and went to take a shower. Unfortunately, the top of my shampoo opened in my ditty bag and I had to take everything out and rinse it off. I put on a sweatshirt and sat outside to read until the others woke up. I happened to spot a red squirrel that jumped onto the picnic table to explore (we had put all of our food away so he didn’t find much). He then jumped down and ran around the camp. I was sitting with my legs crossed and at one point, he jumped onto my shoe! I swung my foot up and he got an extra lift to his next destination. After a banana bread and hot chocolate breakfast, we cleaned up – Alex washing and Theo drying and then hopped into the truck to drive to Mt. Rushmore. We spent some time viewing the amazing sculpture in the rock face and then took a trail which lead to the sculptor’s studio. I bought each of the boys a National Parks passport book and they put the stamp for Mt. Rushmore on the appropriate page. We came back through Custer State Park and stopped at the Game Lodge, which is a hotel and restaurant, to have a picnic lunch. I also thought I might pick up a wifi signal there, but I didn’t have any luck. We added a deer and a turkey vulture to our list of wildlife today. The vulture was on the road in front of us snacking on a small bit of road kill. We then drove up the Needles Highway (Hey, kids – remember when we locked our keys in the car by accident and Doug had to climb down a steep slope to get a length of wire so we could jimmy the door open?). We drove up to the Eye of the Needle and the boys had fun climbing up on some of the closest “needles”. I dropped the boys and Dave off at camp and I went into Custer (we discovered that it is a fairly good sized town just 3 miles from where we are camped) to grocery shop, get gas, and drop off some cards to be mailed. On the way, I stopped at a church, which was selling wood as a youth fundraiser. The boys wanted to have a campfire last night, but it was way to hot for one. I think we will enjoy one this evening. I bought everything we need for s’mores and the boys are very excited, as the only marshmallows I could find were the giant ones! We will go to the ranger talk tonight – it is on outdoor cooking. I couldn’t find cupcakes at the store, but I did find mini-brownies with red, white, and blue frosting. We sang Happy Birthday to Alex and then enjoyed the brownies after a dinner of hamburgers. Dan made the salads, Alex cooked the burgers, and Theo washed the dishes. Laura and Nick called and talked with Dan for a while and then Amy and Dean called to wish Alex a happy birthday. After we had cleaned up from dinner, we cooked s’mores. We asked the neighbors to join us as they also have three children with them. They are from Binghamton, New York. We sat around chatting for a while and missed the ranger talk – oh well, maybe tonight. It is cooler tonight so will definitely sleep inside the bag.
Tuesday June 26, 2012
Happy Anniversary to us! Today is our 47th anniversary – it seems like yesterday. After the usual routine of shower, breakfast, teeth brushing and gassing the truck, we got on the road at 8 this morning. We were very thankful that we did not have to drive as far today. Dave took his last antibiotic – he came down with bronchitis on Friday before the trip and stayed in bed all day. Each day since then he has felt better and better. Today he was almost back to normal. We drove north towards Sioux Falls for an hour and then hooked a left (west) across South Dakota. We continued to see corn for another 100 miles or so, but gradually we came upon rolling grasslands. I was able to tell the boys that this is where the phrase “amber waves of grain” came from. The boys felt lucky to see several flatbed trucks carrying the long blades for the wind turbines – they couldn’t believe how huge they were up close. They spotted an enormous metal sculpture of a longhorn steer on a hillside – it was an advertisement for an outdoor sculpture garden. We saw many bales of rolled hay and grain silos as far as the eye could see into the distance. As we approached the Badlands, we could see that even the grasslands disappeared and the mesas and hills were bare white and orange rock. We will come back to hike here on another day. We also saw the 500 or so signs for Wall Drug, which we chose not to visit as we made that mistake in 1985 when we took our kids out west. We stopped for lunch in a real old fashioned diner and everyone enjoyed his meal. Not long after stopping for lunch and gas, we ran through another time zone change. We are now in Mountain time and two hours later than in Mystic*. We finally got to Rapid City and turned down towards our campground in Custer State Park. It is very big and we had to drive at least a half hour from the gate to get to our North Stockade campground. We saw several buffalo and two pronghorn antelopes on the way to camp. The kids were amazed at how large the buffalo are. We have a very lovely site and spent a hot afternoon setting up camp. As we were driving through the Badlands, the thermometer in the car got up to 110 degrees! It had “cooled” to 96 by the time we got to camp. It was so hot that there must have been a great temperature differential between the outside and inside as at one point, ice cubes came shooting out of the air vent in the front! It was quite startling and funny! Alex, Dan and I went to the camp grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner, breakfast and lunch. Our original intention was to drive back to Rapid City to do a big shopping for the week, but by the time we finished setting up camp, no one felt like driving all the way back to the store. The camp store was disappointing. Most gas station convenience stores carry more – but we did get hot dogs and chips for dinner, milk for breakfast (we brought a loaf of banana bread from home), and lunch fixings. Hopefully, we can get to a bigger store tomorrow. Theo helped with cooking tonight and Alex and Dan did the dishes. We will rotate chores for each of the meals. Everyone is happy to be out of the truck and settled into camp. We are all working on our journals now while it is still light. We will stop soon to call Nathaniel and wish him a happy birthday. * Okay, I can’t believe we did that! We called Nathaniel at what we thought was his dinnertime and it was 10 minutes to 10 – way past his bedtime! Obviously, it is two hours earlier here than at home. It is still very light and warm out so we will read and explore the camp a bit before settling in for the night.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Monday June 25, 2012
Wow! What a day! We left Elyria at 7:40 this morning after having all showered, eaten breakfast (the boys were in 7th heaven as they chose Fruit Loops (yuck!) for breakfast), gassed up the truck and got back onto I-80. We traveled across the rest of Illinois and then across Indiana and Iowa before stopping tonight at 9:30 in North Sioux City, South Dakota - about 14 hours! Of course, it is "only" 8:30 here as we changed to Central time when we crossed the Mississippi. Much of the day, the view out the window was a little wheat, a few cabbage fields and CORN, CORN, CORN! The boys will probably never want to eat a corn product again for the rest of their lives. We did get to explain about the extremely long "walking" water systems that we saw along the way on the huge farms. By the time we got to Iowa, we lost most of the trees except those planted around the farm houses. Car wise, we did pass a Jaguar and a Mustang near Chicago and the boys all decided that this event helped to cancel out being passed by a Smart car yesterday (how embarrassing!). We passed the exits for Ronald Reagan's birthplace (I guess I thought he was born in California), Captain Kirk's "future" birthplace, and the RV Hall of Fame - choosing instead to drive on and get as far as we could today to make tomorrow's drive a bit shorter. We didn't actually mean to drive this far, but there were absolutely NO motels in western Iowa! We were tempted to stop and camp in an abandoned house by the side of the road, but decided we could stand sitting in the car a little longer. Fortunately, we had trail mix, grapes, apples and water in the car so no one actually starved to death. The boys watched two movies and we finished "Brian's Winter". It was quite good. We also listened to "Storm Runners" - another good book. We looked out the windows, but there wasn't too much to see except CORN! We did see several fields of wind turbines and the kids were quite amazed at the sight. We also saw several trains that were over 100 cars long! The boys are busy writing in their journal while I am typing this and we are all waiting for the pizza to be delivered as there are no restaurants within walking distance of our motel and we ALL refuse to get back in the truck until morning! Theo says "we finally got to the hotel and I am really happy about that". Alex's "favorite part of the day was seeing all of the giant windmills". Dan says that his favorite part of the day "was watching Eragon". The pizza finally arrived and our bellies are full. The boys have brushed their teeth and I just read chapter 2 of Tucket's Travels, which is the story of a boy who is traveling with his family in a Conestoga wagon to a new home in the West.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Sunday June 24, 2012
We got the boys to bed early (for them) at 8:30 and woke them up at
6:30 (late for us). We got out the door and on the road at 7:07. We
stopped at BJ’s to fuel up the truck and then headed down I-95 to begin
our Wild West adventure. The boys searched the road for fancy cars and
found a lime green Lotus Exige with black racing stripes near
Stamford. They were all enraptured and Dan was drooling on the seat.
We also saw two Ford Shelbys, two Triumphs, and a Jaguar. At 9:07 we
were on the far side of the Tappan Zee bridge. The boys started a
movie on the portable DVD player and we continued onto I-80 and through
the Delaware River Gap. We stopped for lunch in Pennsylvania at
McDonalds. After lunch, we listened to some of “Brian’s Winter” and
then the boys watched another movie. Alex is banned from eating at
Mickey D's for the rest of the trip as he is now wanted in three states
for gaseous emission violations! Dave and I have been changing drivers
every two to three hours. We pushed to get to the other side of
Cleveland before stopping for the night as we don't want to fight rush
hour traffic in the morning. We stopped at a Best Western in Elyria,
Ohio. The only restaurant within walking distance was an Arby's so
that became dinner. We came back and Theo and Dan opted to go to the
pool (Alex wanted to stay in the room to watch 60 Minutes with Dave),
but they didn't stay long as the pool water was very COLD! The boys
are going to write in their journals and then I will read to them for a
bit before bed. They were all very good in the truck and we hope they
can have another good day tomorrow as it will be another long day of
driving. Alex's best part of the day was "arriving at the hotel after
driving all day". Dan said "the Lotus was awesome because it was only
the second one I have ever seen". Theo said "getting this far in the
USA - we drove over 600 miles!"
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