Custer State Park/Rushmore Views

Another hot, sunny day.  After breakfast we gave Buster a haircut.  He looks cooler (temp. not degree of coolness as he's always cool in that respect).  We  took the Iron Mountain Road (Norbeck Scenic Drive).  Norbeck was the 1st governor of SD and was the sponsor of Mt. Rushmore construction (some worthwhile pork-barreling).  The road has many twists and turns, bridges and single lane tunnels.  In the case of the tunnels, you always have a view of Mt. Rushmore as you're coming thru it (if you're going the right direction).  It truly is a beautiful drive.  We shared the road with literally hundreds of motorcycles, most of them Harley's.  The big rally is in Sturgis next week so the bikes are starting to arrive.  It was a beautiful day for a bike ride and it's a fun road for them with all the hairpin curves etc.

At a tunnel with Mt. Rushmore

typical bridge...all wood

From a long way off

Family out for a Sunday romp

We then went to Custer State Park...Custer is a big name in the Dakota's.  We had lunch, Buster went swimming in a creek and as we were about to leave an antelope family crossed thru a meadow right by us. Pretty cool.

Mount Rushmore/Chief Crazy Horse

side view

We awoke to a bright, cloudless sky that promised to be in the mid-90's.  That's really hot for someone from Seattle!!!  After breakfast we went to the guest services building to talk with the concierge about a sightseeing route.  We drove first to Mt. Rushmore.  Even though we've seen it before, it is still an awe-inspiring sight to catch the first glimpse of it.  A group of very brave men did the work to create this fantastic tribute to 4 of our greatest presidents.

The Four Tenors

We then drove to  the Chief Crazy Horse monument site.  This is of HUGE proportions compared to Mt. Rushmore.  Much longer, taller and viewable from 3 sides when completed.  A lot of work has been done, but there's a loooong way to go.  All being done with donations  and volunteers.  Just to give you an idea of scale, the tunnel or hole to the right of the face is 9 stories tall.  Unbelievable.

The Vision

Friday, July 29th

By way of background, when we arrived in Medora we discovered that our coolant 'surge tank', made of PLASTIC, had cracked and coolant had been oozing out.  I called Fleetwood (our motorhome manufacturer), who referred me to Freightliner the chassis manufacturer.  They in turn referred me to a repair facility in Rapid City, SD our next destination.  They ordered the replacement part and it was waiting for us when we arrived in Rapid City.  The trip to Rapid City was uneventful.  We stopped in Belle Forche for lunch and discovered that to be the site of the Geographical Center of the US.  It used to be in Kansas until Alaska became a state.  We arrived in Rapid City at 2:30 and took the motorhome to the repair facility.  We unhooked the car and explored Rapid City while repairs were made.  We found among other things some great parks, a Walmart and a Pizza Ranch restaurant, where we had dinner.  We picked the motorhome up at 7:30 and proceeded to Hart Ranch, the RV Resort.  This truly is a resort and not a campground.  It's the nicest place we've stayed since we started.  Something for everyone.  I'm glad we're here for 3 days.

Thursday, July 28...Custer's Loop

We awoke to rain on Thursday.  The sky was dark and threatening to the east and south.  We decided not a good day for hiking so we drove the Custer Loop.  This is a 45 mile loop thru the badlands, visiting many locations where US cavalry crossed, camped and fought in the 1860's and 70's.  When you see the nature of the rugged terrain, you can't imaging how 1000's of men, wagons, mule teams, horses, and cattle could maneuver across the Badlands, all the while looking over their shoulder for Sioux Indians.  Pretty daunting.

1 bdrm w/ Kitchen & "great room"

After the loop, we went back to the motorhome for lunch and then did a walking tour of Medora.  Cute town.  Only a few hundred population, but I think all of them are working in the tourism business.  Lots of shops, ice cream parlors, restaurants (they call them dining rooms) and saloons.  We also visited Theodore's original cabin which he had built before building a large ranch house in later years.

Cowboy are w/ barbed wire, skull &rock

No roads in Custer's day

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

We had a 3 hour drive to Medora, ND, the gateway to the Theo. Roosevelt NP.  After getting settled in our campground, we went to the NP visitors' center.  There's a 36 mile loop drive with various hikes emanating from it along the way.  We decided to just do the loop drive to get the lay of the land.  The temp was cooler today...low 80's...much welcomed.  The NP is located in The Badlands, named by the settlers to reflect the difficulty in making a life in the area.  The Badlands includes beautiful landforms and animals of various sizes.  As we made our way around the loop we encountered animal life ranging from small to large to HUGE.  They were all by the road except the wild horses, which were about 100 yds off the road.  It was a pretty exciting ride and made us so happy we came here.

Simon and Garfunkel

Walkin' down the center of the road

Herd of Wild horses

Amazing, rugged scenery

Even BIG laying down

Big Prairie Dog

The Road to Miles City, MT

Yellowstone River

We had a six hour drive today...most of it on freeway.  Today is our anniversary...43 years.  The best 25 years of my life.  It's very hot here...95 when we got here.  Fortunately the campground has a pool and we took full advantage of it.  We had a great steak dinner with baked potato, asparagus, and fried mushrooms and walla walla onions.  We then went for a walk in Miles City.  They have a very nice central park.  We were letting Buster chase and retrieve sticks when a lady pulled into the parking lot with 2 standard sized poodles.  Buster had fun running around with them.  In discussion, she says she lives in San Diego, but she grew up in Dearborn, MI where Diane and i grew up.  She graduated from our high school a couple of years ahead of us.  She knows our next door neighbor and other neighbors.  Her father owned the neighbor hood drug store (Jason's) where I spend every extra cent I had to buy candy.  What a small world.

Typical rock outcroppings

White Sulphur Springs--A catchup day.

Monday, July 25.  The campground had full wifi and cell.  So we used this as a catch up day.  Made a lot of necessary phone calls and emails.  I washed all the bugs off the motorhome windshield and gave the car a much-needed bath.  Tomorrow an early start for Miles City, MT.

To White Sulphur Springs

Sunday, July 24.  The drive was about 5 hours, going thru Great Falls and over a 7500 foot pass.  A very beautiful drive.  We drove thru Belt, Mt., the home of the brewery that makes Pig's Ass Porter, a very good beer.  I had one at East Glacier on Friday and I wish we could have stopped.  But not with a motorhome, thank you.

sunset...not a real buffalo

sunset at white sulphur springs

Going To the Sun road in Glacier

Saturday turned out to be a very nice day...sunny and not too hot.  We started in West Glacier and took the Going to the Sun Road thru to St. Mary Lake.  We didn't make any stops until after Avalanche Lake since we had done that on Thursday.  Many breathtaking views of glacier covered mountains around every turn in the road.  Some favorites were Birdwoman Falls and Logan's Pass, where people were skiing on the glacier.

Big Sky Country

At Logan's Pass

Birdwoman Falls

Mountain Goats holding up traffic 

East Glacier Village/Two Medicine Lodge

On Friday, we awoke to rain drops a a completely overcast sky.  We decided to forego entering the park since we wouldn't be able to see anything because of the low ceiling.  Instead we drove to the East Village along Highway 2, just skirting the national park.  As we went east the sky cleared and by the time we got to the east village we were in the sun.  But the storm was over the Park as was approaching from the west.  We saw some pretty views...including a mother moose and her tiny baby.  But of course by the time we got stopped and the camera ready she had led her baby over a rise to protection.  It turned out we made a wise decision to stay out of the park.  We heard people talking of sleet, hail, high winds and rain.

Avalanche Lake

On Thursday we entered Glacier at the West entrance and proceeded to Apgar Village, McDonald Lake Lodge and finally to Avalanche lake trailhead.  It started out sunny, but got cloudy by the time we started the hike to the lake. The round trip was about 2 1/2 hours and Buster had to stay in the car.  He was a good sport.  We had a picnic lunch and he helped up eat our lunches.  All in all it was a great day.  We made it back to the motorhome for a wonderful steak/asparagus/salad dinner.

Pictures from the Second day

 Riverwalk Park in Spokane.

















Buster got the crabs.

Catch Up Pictures From First Day

Here's Jim and his assistant hooking up the car to the motorhome.








Here's Jim at the wheel.

The Road to Glacier

We left Cheney at about 10 am.  We thought it would be about a 4 1/2 hour drive.  Between a time change to Mountain time, road construction and winding mountain passes, we arrived at our campsite at about 6:15 pm.  Regarding our campsite, we thought it would be very close to the Nat'l. Park entrance.  It turns out to be 20 miles east of the entrance.  The RV park is right on Highway 2, the main road in the area.  Our campsite is about 150 ft. from the road so we could hear all the traffic as it went by.  Then about 300 feet on the other side of our campsite is the mainline of the Burlington Northern Rail line.  Within 2 hours of arriving we had already had 4 trains go by.  They didn't shake the motor home, but they were quite loud and seemed like they could.  But we had a nice pull-thru site (see previous post) with 50 amp power.  The camp host is friendly, but is a dog nazi.  Dogs cannot be walked in the campground if there is a remote chance that they might relieve themselves.  If that were to happen, they could/would ask you to leave the campground.  So Buster is now wearing a diaper...just kidding.

The drive included some beautiful scenery.  Flathead Lake is HUGE and very scenic.  Great views of distant mountains with glaciers.  One eerie thing...an organization in Montana maintains white crosses along the roads where folks have died in traffic accidents.  It's amazing the number of white crosses we saw.  The worst was right across from our campground where there was one grouping of NINE crosses.

Spokane

Again we have great pictures to share and will do so when we get the bugs worked out.  We went to Spokane to see the sights...a very nice city.  Before sight-seeing, we went to Costco and they exchanged our Garmin GPS.  What great customer service Costco has!!!!

We first went to the Spokane Riverwalk.  A beautifully landscaped park along the Spokane River.  Lots of flowers, fountains and displays.  It goes for about 6 blocks along the river, ending in the Spokane Falls, a pretty impressive series of waterfalls.  Again we got great pics.

We then went to the Davenport Hotel.  This was built and opened in 1914.  Magnificent!  It went into disrepair in the 70's.  A family bought it and spent millions restoring it to its previous grandeur.  It's really something to see with all the ballrooms and historic displays.

The entire Spokane downtown is very well done.  Lots of historic buildings have been restored on the exterior.  Lots of funky bars, pubs and eating places.  We had a great afternoon and were able to dodge rain showers to enjoy it all.

On to Glacier National Park tomorrow.

First Day

We left Leavenworth at about 11:00 after considerable last minute packing (even though we thought we were all ready).  We went about 15 minutes before being stopped in Tumwater Canyon for our first road construction event.  We have some great pictures of what we were stopped next to and I will post them in the near future (once I figure out what I'm doing wrong).  The next event was that our GPS stopped working.  After we entered the destination, she (I use the woman's voice..."hello, big fella" and all that) started to tell us to exit the freeway and turn right at EVERY exit between Leavenworth and Spokane.

We're not actually in Spokane.  The campground is in Cheney.  They tell me it used to be pronounced like Chain-ee, but that after the unfortunate selection of a Vice President, they changed it to Chee-knee.  I don't know if that's true or not but it sounds like it could be.

We arrived at the campground at about 4:00 and got a very nice pull-thru space.  For you non-RV'ers that means you don't have to back the rig up and that's a good thing.  It was in the upper 80's so we used the air conditioning for the first time...it works well.

The First Day

The Trip/Oddesey/Journey

Diane and I have been thinking about this for about 3 years.  After planning, researching, routing and creating an itinerary, it is finally here.  Over the course of the next 5 months we will travel about 10,000 motorhome miles (with plenty of extra car side trips), visited 27 states, and eaten about 5000 pounds of lobster (just kidding...only 1000).  As the trip progresses I hope my blogging skills do as well.  Also, we will learn more about this motorhome (boy, is air conditioning ever nice when all you've been used to is mid-60 temps. and rain; and about my camera and tripod (thanks City of Redmond friends).  I hope I'll be able to easily put pictures in the blog as I was led to believe by my sister.  And I intend to write each day something about the previous day.  Please give feedback and suggestions on places to visit and things to do.  I hope to see you all along the way or on our return from The Trip.

The Countdown Is On.....5 more days

Spent the day putting shelves in the motorhome, shopping for supplies in Wenatchee, and organizing the motorhome.

And Now It Begins...

After the many months of preparation, tour planning, and making reservations, the day is finally here.