May 26th

I thought I would start this post with our first day out in the Black Hills area of South Dakota with Adventure Caravan.  Our first stop was the Journey Museum in Rapid City, SD. Take a journey through time at this unique museum with many interactive displays, including geology, dinosaurs, Lakota culture and pioneer history of the Black Hills. All of our guest liked this museum a lot and here are few picture from there.

 After just over an hour we loaded the bus for our next stop at the StavKirke Norwegian Chapel.  I highly recommend that you see the  Chapel in the Hills, it is one of a kind. please go to this web site to get some of the history of it.  http://www.chapel-in-the-hills.org/history.php  I really enjoyed it and so did everyone else.  All the wood was hand cut and it was all made out of Redwood Ceder.  Here are a few pictures of it.

After walking around and everyone hearing about how they construct this chapel we loaded the bus for a short trip downtown Rapid City, also known as the City of Presidents.  I was unable to get any pictures of the presidents but they are on every corner made of bronze.  After a hour in a half we loaded the bus for a trip to Black Hills Gold Factory.  I don't know why but they didn't want any pictures taken while we were on tour of the factory.  If you ever get a chance stop by there and take the tour, those people do a great job of making all there jewelry.  It is located on the way out of Rapid City heading towards Mount Rushmore.
We had one more stop after we left here and it was a drive through Bear Country.  This is the only place in South Dakota that have bears.  It was a good trip around the park but the best was the baby cubs.

 We stopped and watched this guy for a few minutes, he was really getting a good back scratch.

 He was enjoying the bath all by himself.

 We watched these cubs for half of an hour just watching them role and play.

  I asked this guy to look up and I took this picture.  We had a great day and everyone enjoyed everything.

Now with what Cyndy and I did today.  We stayed in bed and just relaxed after a long drive yesterday. We are currently at Crescent Bar TTN here on the Columbia River.  We got woke-up with something knocking on our window.  When I opened up the curtain I got a surprise.

 They have been spending most of the day trying to get in, but every time I open the window they leave.  After a good breakfast and some more just sitting around we decided to go for a ride up to  Grand Coulee Dam and see if we could see the crack in the dam.  On our way their we got a great picture of Steamboat Rock.

We looked and looked but could not see the crack in the Dam, see if you can find it.

They must of fixed it by now, because the dam is almost full again.

It was a nice day for a relaxing drive, we are planing on leaving here tomorrow morning and arriving in Spanaway sometime tomorrow.  We were watching the news tonight and glad we didn't drive home today.

May 24th

We have internet!!!!!
We left Mount Rushmore KOA at about 6:30 this morning.  We wanted to get an early start for our trip back home.  The weather was great and it was a hole lot warmer than when we head this way.  We seen a lot of antelope on our trip through South Dakota and Wyoming, and the eastern half of Montana.  We made good time just over 9 hours and 411 miles, not bad but I really don't like driving live this.  We have things we need to get done back in Washington before we head to Canada for the Calgary Stampede.  We are really look forward to this Rally also.
Anyway I am setting back and doing nothing but getting caught up on e-mail ( 4 days worth) and checking out the next trip we are going on.  We are thinking about heading by way of Yellowstone!!!
Watch next week and I will post pictures from the great places we got to see while back in the Black Hills.

May 19th

Cyndy and I are doing great, we were hoping to be able to post more often on this trip.  But the campground we are staying at have no internet of phone service.  If we are able to get up to the office I might be able to get on.
This Adventure Caravan Rally has been great.  We both have been really busy and going twenty different ways.  A lot of old friends are here and we are always making new ones. We are just over half way through the rally and we still have a lot to do.  Today we opted out of the tour so that we could get some wash done.  Our washer quite on us the first day in the park.  Any way I wanted to post a couple of pictures, from our first day tour.

This was a Norwegian Chapel build by hand and to scale of the true Norwegian Chapel's.

 We also drove through Bear country and seen a lot of bears, this is the only place in South Dakota that has bears, at least that is what our guide said.  The little ones were really neat to watch.  When we get home I will post each of the areas that we traveled to and tell a little bit more about them.  We are having a great time but to much going on to get a post out some times.  It helps to have internet and today while Cyndy is doing the cloths I am getting a little bit done on the internet.  Later and look forward to posting more.

May 7th & 8th

We left Reed Point real early this morning for one good reason.  It was beginning to snow and they said it was coming from the west and we are hoping to get ahead of it or try anyway.

As you can see the snow did stick to truck and trailer along with grassy areas, but their was none on the road.  So off we went at day light 6:30 AM

As we were getting closer to the refinery area in Montana we seen this flame way before the rest of the buildings.  We had snow all day long but nothing sticking to the road.

 The snow that was falling did stick to the front of the trailer, no wonder it was cold inside the trailer.
We really wanted to stop and sight see at Little Bighorn Battlefield, but with the snow and cold weather we just drove the loop.

 We did see a few house running around out here but know people.

Here is a picture looking back at the ranger and Custer National Cemetery.  We have marked this place a full day stop next time we come through and the weather is a lot better.  We will add a day to our next trip east to see this historic area.  Their was a lot of history here and the both of us want to hike some of the trails.  We did stop and take a few pictures of the cemetery.

We hit the road and started down 212, which is a two lane road.  It cuts off about 60 miles by not going I-90.  We seen a few trucks and other vehicles.  

 It was a really good drive, about 80 miles from the Little Big Horn we started to get out of the snow we had been having all day long.  We had a little rain but not bad.  We made it to No Name Campground near Sturges, SD about 6:30 PM.  It is nice to filly be stopped.

Today we are doing nothing but laying around and getting little things done for the Rally.  We head over there tomorrow morning and have a meeting with everyone in the afternoon.  It will be a long drive of 51 miles.  So I am going to set back and enjoy life the rest of the day.

May 6th

We did it, and I don't really want to drive more than 400 miles a day in a while.  We did 375 today and it was a really pretty good drive.  We left the Bar at about 8:00 AM and stopped at Pilot for fuel about 35 miles down the road.  I will say having that RV Card for Pilot has got to be a great deal, we saved 8 cents a gallon on fuel and that starts to added up when you stop twice in a day and pump over 50 gallons.  I have thought of adding another tank, but that is all I have done for now is think about it.  The only time that it would be nice is when we head up to Alaska.

Again our day started pretty good, weather was good and we had no traffic problems.

Now Cyndy was trying to get some pictures of snow in the mountains.  I reminded her that we are at 4800 feet so we are up in the mountains now.

We made it to the Old West RV Park at about 4:30 and guess what it was doing?

Yep it is raining, and guess what we get to set up in the rain.  We are pretty good at it and ten minutes after getting parked I was inside and getting warmed up.  The park owner said that there is a chance of snow tomorrow.  I thought this was May not March.  I hope we don't wake up to snow but if we do I have an extra day planned into our trip.  So we can just sit and wait for the weather to get better.

May 5th Montana we made it

Today we went just a few more miles than yesterday, we added just about another 100 miles for about 275 miles.  We had a real good day, the weather was great.

We had a lot of high clouds but no rain.  Going across the Idaho panhandle is a short drive but a lot of climbing.  The truck is really doing great with the new gears that I put in it last summer.

 I hope the rest of the drive to South Dakota is just like today.  It makes it so easy to drive when the wind is not blowing against you and no rain.  We did have a little tail wind today.

Turbo even enjoys the view going down the road.  He had a little problem once today when they were working on the road and we had to drive over those wake up strips they have along side the road.

He felt better with his little friend riding next to him.
We made it to the Lincoln 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar.  They have a very small RV park here that offers free power.  We were able to hook up and enjoy the life with electricity , we are able to boon dock but why do it when you have free electricity.  We did go over to the restaurant for dinner and it was really good and very reasonable.  We have been building up to this day tomorrow, we are going to plan on driving almost 400 miles.  We want to make it to a passport campground. I can member a couple of times doing over 500 and not blinking an eye, but I like these short drives a lot better!!!!  

May 4th On the Road again

It is great to hit the road again with the one that I Love for ever.  We have been married for 40 years, some days are are a little bumpy but most are out of this world.  I would not trade her for anyone.  It is amazing how after this many years we are both still alive, no just kidding, she still has that little spark in her eye and I Love her.
We left this morning from our site in Spanaway about 9:00 AM.

We had a really good trip, weather was a little wet when we first left, but after we got close to the pass the weather got better.  We are on our way to Rapid City, South Dakota for a Adventure Caravans 11 Day Rally.  We are hopping to arrive there by the 7th or 8th.  We are looking forward to all of our friends that will be their.
One of the things that have come up missing while going over the pass that has come up missing is the snow shed just over the pass on the East side.  They are working widening I-90 which should keep traffic moving better over the pass.

Yep snow shed is gone!!!

Turbo is wondering what all the big deal with the snow shed being gone.  He likes to keep an eye on where we are going and lets me know when I hit the turtles marking the lanes.
We arrived here at Crescent Bar TTN at about  1:00 PM, yep we could of went a little farther but for the first day this was a good start on our trip.

We have a nice site and have never been to this park before, I think we might come back here and just sit for a couple of weeks. We have a great view of the river.  As you can see the Colombia River is a little low.

  There is a lot of beach access right now, but when they fix the dam up river it should start to rise a lot more.  Tomorrow we are hopping to make it to the 50,000 Silver Dollar Bar, they have free parking there and that will be our boon dock stay on this trip.  If we get there early we might even get electric.  They have a few sites.  Looking forward to keeping everyone informed about what we are doing and going.