Crazy Horse

After leaving Mount Rushmore, it was an easy ride around to the Crazy Horse Monument under construction not too far away. When compared to Mount Rushmore, it is clear that the Crazy Horse Monument is designed to be far, far larger. The head of Crazy Horse alone is larger than the combined heads of all four presidents at Mount Rushmore. Crazy Horses’ head is only a small portion of the intended monument which shows his head and torso astride a charging horse. We wonder if they will ever be successful in finishing the monument, particularly since it is not receiving any governmental funding. Instead, the majority of the funding appears to be coming from the sale of souvenirs -- and boy are there lots of souvenirs for sale in what were some of the largest souvenir shops we have seen at a facility like this. It was also somewhat troubling for us the extent to which the Visitors Center seemed to focus on the personality of the sculptor and his family. Seven of his ten children currently work on this project, which is run by the sculptor’s widow. There seemed to be almost as much focus on the sculptor and his family’s history as there was on Crazy Horse and what he represented for to the Sioux Indians.

Mount Rushmore National Monument

We had much better luck the next day when we went to visit Mount Rushmore National Park and the Crazy Horse Monument. We started off my driving through a very scenic portion of hill country in Custer State Park. In several places, the road shrunk down to an 8 foot wide hole carved through solid rock. We had to pull in the mirrors on the truck to keep from scraping them against the sides of the tunnels as we slowing drove through those tunnels. But the views of the rock pinnacles and spirals were worth the effort. Moreover, on the last tunnel we went through, we had Mount Rushmore framed in the mouth of the tunnel as we drove through. There was no need to turn our headlights on in this narrow one lane tunnel as the constant flashes from Jo’s camera alerted oncoming traffic to our presence.
It was awesome to be seeing in person the figures on this carved mountain of which we had seen images over the years since our childhood. We were surprised to learn things in the Visitors Center that we had never heard of before. Apparently, Theodore Roosevelt was a late addition and not part of the original plans for the monument. The original plans called for George Washington to be in the center, with Jefferson to the left and Lincoln to the right. However, when they started to blast away the rock to carve out Jefferson’s head they found deep fissures in the rock which would have been difficult to deal with. Accordingly, the sculptor blew away that portion of the mountain face and moved Jefferson to the right, thereby leaving space to add in Roosevelt as well.

Wind Cave National Park

Just to the south of Custer State Park is Wind Cave National Park, one of the earliest national parks established almost 100 years ago. After finishing the wild life loop in Custer State Park, we headed down to Wind Cave. Jo, who suffers from a bit of claustrophobia, was nonetheless willing to take a chance on joining me on a tour through the cave, encouraged in part by our visit earlier this spring to Luray Caverns in the Shanandoah Valley of Virginia. Wind Cave proved to be both a challenge to Jo’s claustrophobia and a visual disappointment. Unlike the many beautiful and colorful rock formations we had enjoyed at Luray Caverns, Wind Cave displayed no colorful formations and indeed only one type of formation – what they call boxwork – throughout the cave system. While boxwork was an interesting formation made up of flat planes of crystal, it was not very colorful, and was not enough to sustain a strong interest through the 75 minute tour underground. Also, the narrow, closed in passageways began to take their toll on Jo, and we were both glad when the tour came to an end.

Black Hills of South Dakota

After leaving the Badlands, we headed west to the Black Hills. We set up our base camp in a beautiful campground outside the small town of Custer, where we planned to stay for a week while visiting the Black Hills. Our first full day in the Black Hills found us visiting Custer State Park. We had been told that this was a good place to see Buffalo, and Jo anxiously scanned the woods and fields as we drove towards the Visitors Center. She was ecstatic the first time she noticed a solitary bull sitting in a clump of trees alongside the road. Little did we know what was ahead. Not long after we turned onto the Wildlife Loop road through the park, we encountered our first herd of Buffalo. Jo was madly snapping away with her camera as we followed a small family group of Buffalo crossing the road ahead of us to rejoin the herd. While most of the buffalo were content to sit or graze passively, with the tourist in their cars only feet away, we noticed some repeated interaction between several sets of bulls on the edge of the herd. It appeared in each case that an older bull was exerting himself to keep a younger male away from his females. We were lucky enough to see two bulls go at it with all of the head butting and maneuvering we had heard about. Jo was successful in capturing on film pictures of the bulls, horns locked, hooves in the air in a cloud of dust. As we proceeded along through the wildlife loop road, we repeatedly saw small groupings of pronghorn antelope grazing on the prairie grass. We also passed colonies of prairie dogs who again showed their indifference to the passing cars while they scurried around outside their holes.
Later on, we encountered several wild burros/jackasses who were standing in the middle of the road begging for food. When tourists would stop their cars to take pictures, the burros would thrust their noses inside the car looking for handouts. Jo got lots of good pictures, but unfortunately for the burros, we had no food to share with them.

Beautiful Badlands

The first National Park we visited as full-time South Dakotans was the Badlands National Park in Southwest South Dakota. What austere beauty!!!!!!!!!!!!!Rising out of the arid grasslands, the sheer rock walls were as beautiful as they were stark. Jo was fascinated at the different photographic opportunities provided by the way the shifting sunlight struck various rock formations. Oh what a beautiful introduction to western National Parks.

After dropping off our Big Sky in a nearby campground, we drove through the Badlands National Park, enjoying both the natural beauty of the rock walls and the fascinating fauna. There were prairie dogs popping and up down from their holes everywhere alongside the road. Just after seeing a herd of big horn sheep, we had a mother and baby pronghorn antelope dash across the road in front of us. mazing how much animal life can prosper in such apparently arid land.
After passing through the park, we drove on to the small town of Wall in order to visit the famous Wall Drug Store. Throughout our trip westward from Sioux Falls we had seen dozens of billboards advertising this drugstore. An amazing bit of self promotion, reminding us of the billboards one sees on interstate 95 advertising the “South of the Border” tourist trap at the border between North and South Carolina. The Wall Drug Store appears to have taken over a whole series of shops on one side of the main street in “downtown” Wall turning each store into a shop focused on a different type of tourist souvenir. The highlight for us was the “singing cowboys”, two displays of crude mechad up very tasty hot roast beef sandwiches at a very reasonable price, accompanied by coffee which cost only 5 cents a cup, so we certainly benefitted from our trip to the famous Wall Drug.

We went back into the Bandlands National Park the following morning and enjoyed going through the excellent, informative displayed in their Visitors Center. Before leaving the park, we took a short hike on a loop trail just north of the Visitors Center. There were only a few people at the trail head parking lot, and we had the trail virtually to ourselves, it was so quiet we whispered when we spoke to one another. It was wonderful just standing still at several spots on the trail listening to the quiet of the Badlands and absorbing its stark beauty. An added bonus was spotting a pronghorn antelope resting just 20 feet off the trail in a patch of trees. The antelope apparently hoped that we would not notice it as it sat there quietly. Perhaps because we ourselves were being quiet while hiking, the antelope remained sitting while we stared at each other. Befitting testament to the advice we had read in the Visitors Center that the best way to appreciate the Bandlands was to quietly absorb its beauty.

Corny!!!!

Our first stop when we headed westward from Sioux Falls the next day was a visit to the Corn Palace in Mitchell SD. This gymnasium/exhibition hall has been transformed each year over the last 100 years into an artistic canvas for the display of pictures made from colored corn cobs – who would have thunk????!!!!!

Corny as it was, we were urged by many to be sure not to miss this tourist attraction, and it was certainly worth the hour we spent there. Looking at the various ways in which painted corn cobs could be stabled to the wall to form various murals.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

It was with a slight bit of embarrassment that the campground we went to in Sioux Falls was a Jellystone campground, where we were greeted by a staff member in a Yogi Bear costume. However, this was the only campground in Sioux Falls which is willing to assist full timers in becoming residents of South Dakota. Our stay at Jellystone was enhanced by the full moon which Yogi Bear helped support as it shined down on the ever present corn fields.



Our efforts the next day in Sioux Falls to become full-time residents of South Dakota where facilitated by the efficiency and friendliness of everyone we dealt with. Our mail forwarding services, Alternative Resources, is clearly a “low overhead” enterprise, but the people there were both knowledgeable about the mechanics of registering to vote and getting a driver’s license and extremely helpful in helping us to accomplish those goals. The employees at the driver’s license office and the tax collector’s office immediately recognized that we were full-time RVers as soon as they saw the address we were using to become South Dakota residents. They nonetheless displayed no hesitation is assisting us in becoming licensed and registered SD residents.

On Tuesday we head across South Dakota to the Bandlands National Park. We've seen enough corn for awhile - looking forward to visiting the parks.

Good Routine

We've developed a good routine for living on the road......................

David Drives.........

To date at least, David does all of the driving when we are towing the RV and handles the outside chores when we are setting up at a new campsite and when we are preparing to leave. This includes emptying all of the waste holding tanks before we hook up and head out on the road, although he is lobbying hard to share this “pleasant” task with Jo. He is also pretty much responsible for all of other maintenance work, although he is again creatively looking for opportunities to share these fun tasks with Jo.

Jo Navigates, takes pictures and plays on the computer.......

While David is busily monitoring traffic and checking all of his gauges while we are traveling down the highway, Jo loves to put her feet up on the dash and surf the internet, exclaiming about how great it is to be able to send and receive emails and instant messages way out in the middle of nowhere. Her internet surfing in frequently interrupted, however, when she dashes for her camera to capture all of the wonderful sites we come across during our journeys. To balance the scale, however, Jo has assumed responsibility for all of the navigating and trip planning, including checking for low clearances (we really don’t want to drive a 13’ 6” RV under a 12’ bridge clearance). In addition, except on those occasions when David is barbequing, Jo takes on the responsibility for cooking all those delicious meals we enjoy on the road. It is not clear whether her eagerness to do all of the cooking is motivated by the fact that David cannot even boil water or in keeping up David’s energy levels!!!!!

Wisconsin - No "Cheeseheads" BUT - Sleeping in the Missippi River

The pleasant part of the ride through southern Wisconsin was the fact that it was sunny and dry. The most surprising part of the drive through Wisconsin was that, as in Illinois, we were surrounded by corn field after corn field after corn field. We thought Wisconsin was supposed to be a land of cows, milk and cheese, but we did not see a single “Cheesehead” during the entire drive through Wisconsin!!

Who would have thought that our great adventure would begin its western phase by our sleeping in the middle of the Mississippi River. We had hoped that our decision to head west from Illinois would give us a chance to dry out after the heavy rains and floods in Illinois. We did not realize at the time that we made our reservation for a campsite in La Crosse, Wisconsin that the campsite was situated on an island in the Mississippi River. Once we found out that it was in fact on an island we had visions of one end of our rig up against the bank of the island on the east side while the other end stuck out over the west side of the island. What a relief it was to find that the island was big enough that we were not put in such a precarious situation. Indeed it was a lovely campground, albeit a somewhat diverse collections of facilities; sandwiched between the campground and the affiliated RV dealership was a banquet hall where they were hosting a wedding when we arrived to check in. Not clear whether they were initially mistaking Jo for one of the wedding guests, but they did wave here into the bar when we went to check in and tried to persuade her to sit down to have a drink. Turns out the bartender also handled responsibility for checking in campground visitors. What a great start to our western adventure.

After another delicious dinner in our traveling home, our “dessert” was walking along the west channel of the Mississippi River. Something about flowing water that really appeals to us. WOW!!!!

Indiana/Illinois - Friends & Family - AND RAIN!!!!!!!

Since the weather forecast was for steady but light rain, and most of Jos family had left for home, we decided to depart ourselves on Sunday afternoon and head west to visit friends in Illinois. Driving through off and on rain on the Ohio and Indiana turnpikes, we made it to Michigan City Indiana Sunday night. Monday morning we visited the nearby Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a part of the National Park System. Thanks to the intermittent rain, we did not have to worry about fighting any crowds at the Lake Shore. We had a wonderful stroll along the beautiful stretch of empty beach in front of Mount Baldy, the largest of the many sand dunes in this park. The most pleasant surprise of the park, however, was a series of homes in the process of restoration in the lakeside development of Beverly Shores. These homes had originally been built for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and thereafter had been moved by barge to the Beverly Shore development. Many of the houses being restored had signs in front with pictures of what the houses looked like when in their prime. What a wonderfully varied collection of different architectural styles.

After spending a few hours at the National Lake Shore we headed back to the campground and picked up our very wet home on wheels. Thankfully, the trip to our next campground West of Chicago took less than three hours, even though the frequent rain and Chicago traffic made it seem much longer. The campground in Sycamore, IL, 60 miles west of Chicago made a great initial impression with its lovely lakes/pounds and with the first sunlight we had seen in several days. The positive impression was enhanced when our friends Rick and Ann came out to visit and joined us for dinner in a very quaint little restaurant in “downtown” Sycamore. The next several days were dominated by the combination of pleasant visits with Rick and Ann and unpleasant bouts of rain.

One of our frequent topics of conversation with Rick and Ann were our plans for spending the summer of 2008 traveling together through Alaska and Northwest Canada. By happenstance, an old friend of Rick’s pulled into a nearby campsite while they were visiting us. When they went over to greet their friends, Al and Linda, they discovered that Al and Linda had themselves taken an extended trip through western Canada and Alaska in the summer of 2006. When Al and Linda joined us for cocktails later that evening, they brought along the thick notebook which had been provided by the organizer of the caravan in which they toured Alaska. We made a copy of that notebook and look forward to using it as a helpful resource in planning for our own trip.

Thursday afternoon we headed for the Chicago suburb of Joliet to visit with David’s niece Wendy and her husband Fred. Within minutes of starting that trip, we were caught in a terrible thunder storm moving rapidly from west to east. Even though we were headed eastward on interstate 88 at 40-50 miles per hour, it took more than a half hour to get ahead of the storm, only to have the storm catch up with us again as we went south to Joliet. After a very pleasant dinner with Wendy and Fred and great conversations about our planned trip to Alaska and other aspects of our great adventure, we heeded Fred’s advice as to the roads to take back to our campground. Unknown to all of us, the roads he recommended had become flooded in several spots. The first we realized this was when we hit the first patch of flooded roadway with virtually no warning since the highway was deserted and dark. Fortunately, the truck sits high above the road on its 18 inch tires and weights over 8,000 pounds. As a result, the flooded roadway caused more surprise than danger. Now that we were alert to the hazards, we were able to spot several more flooded areas on the basis of a lack of reflection of our headlights when they struck the areas of the roadway that were under water. Jo kept repeating the words “this is an adventure”, although David kept explaining that this was not the kind of adventure he had in mind.

Friday night we met with two more friends of Rick and Ann’s (David and Marge) who had also just returned from a caravan tour of Alaska and we had a great time during and after dinner talking about Alaska and looking at their many pictures.

After dropping Rick and Ann off, we had an unexpectantly adventurous time trying to make it back to our campground in Sycamore. The off and on rains over the last several days had resulted in the flooding of several roads and the damaging of a number of bridges throughout the general vicinity. On our way back to the campground, we were stopped several times while driving on dark roads amongst cornfields, by signs indicating that the roads or bridges ahead were closed. After driving through a flooded roadway adjacent to the campground we finally made it home after midnight and were delighted to discover that the flooding had not reached our area of the campground. The next morning, we were considering extending our stay in Sycamore one more day to allow time for nearby roads to dry out. When we talked to the campground office, however, they advised us that the river adjacent to the campground was continuing to rise and it might be necessary to evacuate the campground on short notice if the river overflowed the temporary berms that the campground owner was having reinforced that morning. We decided that enough was enough and it was time to head to dryer territory. After confirming that the route we were planning to take through Wisconsin and Minnesota to Sioux Fall, South Dakota was open, thanks to receding flood waters, we left early Saturday afternoon to continue our adventure westward.

(We were so busy and had so much fun with Rick and Ann - Jo forgot to take pictures)

Our Great Adventure Heads North

At 10:09 on Wednesday, August 15 we picked up our Big Sky from the RV dealer where we had left it for some minor tweaking and headed out westward on our great adventure. First stop will be in Ohio, where we will visit family before heading westward. The travel north and west through the Allegheny Mountains on the PA Turnpike in our Big RV proved to be less challenging then we feared. The truck proved equal to the task of hauling our 22,000 pound “camper” through the mountains, although David was quite appreciative of the extra gauges he had installed in the truck to protect against overheating the transmission. Jo was in hog heaven as she travelled down the highway instant messaging with her friends, thanks to the air card in her computer. While we both were listening to golden oldies on our new Sirius radio and were sassing back at “Karen”, the bossy voice of our Garmin GPS.

After a long days drive, we arrived at a beautiful little campground in Streetsboro, Ohio, just off the Ohio turnpike exit heading up to Cleveland. The campground was covered in lush green grass everywhere, and we had a beautiful view out our dining room window as there were no campers in any of the sites between us and the woods 1,000 feet away. What a very wonderful change from the dry, dusty conditions of the campground where we spent a month in Maryland.
On Thursday, we had a wonderful visit with from David’s older brother John and his wife Carol. As with virtually all of the family and friends who have come to see our Big Sky during the last two months, John and Carol were amazed at how spacious and comfortable our Big Sky is. Jo fixed a lovely lunch in her big kitchen, and we had a wonderful visit all afternoon in our home on wheels. When they left in the evening, Carol left behind a delicious loaf of homemade zucchini bread which provided us many tasty snacks over the next several days.

On Friday we traveled westward to Vermilion Ohio to visit with Jos sister and several members of her family who were coming by for an impromptu mini-reunion. Jo found a lovely little campground right on Lake Erie, just outside Vermilion. Things initially looked a bit dicey when it became apparent that all the beautiful trees around each campsite would make it far more problematic to back in our Big Sky into the one campsite they had available. Fortunately, at the suggestion of neighboring camper, we drove in a loop around his RV and pulled in from the back side of the campsite rather than try to back in from the road. Thank goodness the grass we drove through was not too soft or we might not have been able to succeed with this maneuver.

After spending Friday night visiting with Jos family, we invited everyone over to our home on wheels for lunch on Saturday. Jo’s brother and nephew drove up on their motorcycles bringing along Jo’s great niece Rachel and great nephew Ryan. David hooked up the barbeque to the main RV propane tank and cooked hamburgers and hotdogs for everyone. The day was bright and sunny and the breeze coming across the lake was wonderfully pleasant.

That beautiful weather, unfortunately, did not last. Late Saturday night a cool front came through and brought a steady rain. Sunday morning, David decided to take advantage of the rain to wash off all the dust that had accumulated during our stay in Maryland. After spending an hour or more washing the Big Sky and the truck in the rain, he looked like a drowned rat.

Saying Goodbye

We spent this morning saying goodbye to our son Matt and his wife Dawn and cute, seet Nicholas. We will look forward to seeing them at Christmas when we fly back to Baltmore to see them and drive up to to Connecticut and down to Florida to see our sons and grandchildren.

Annapolis, Maryland

We spent a wonderful afternoon wandering around Annapolis. What a beautiful City.

We enjoyed a light dinner outside overlooking the waterfront.

The capital building is amazing.