8/21/19

After Rapid City, in our last post, we headed east and stopped in Mitchell, South Dakota. We stayed a couple of nights, which gave us time to visit one of Penny’s aunts and drive through Woonsocket, the town that Penny lived in from birth to 3 years old.

From there, we continued east, stopping in Welcome, Minnesota, only because it was half way to our next destination. From there we drove to Galesville, Wisconsin to see Don’s mom and some friends from Yellowstone.

Originally, we intended to continue east to Philadelphia to see our son and daughter-in-law but they are going to Ireland the week we would have been back there, so we changed plans and headed back west.

We stopped again in Welcome, Minnesota, then turned south into Iowa. Based on our experience, Iowa does not waste taxpayer money on road maintenance. They have some of the bumpiest roads we’ve ever travelled on. We stopped at a park in Omaha, Nebraska and visited another aunt and uncle of Penny’s.

From there, we returned to Mitchell, then to Belvidere and on to Rapid City, South Dakota. While in Belvidere we took another drive through the Badlands, with a side trip to the Minuteman Missile Visitor’s Center.

In Rapid City, we picked up our mail again and fortunately, Penny’s passport had arrived, so she will be able to go on her cruise to the Bahamas in October. We also took a day trip to Devil’s Tower in northeastern Wyoming. We had been there around 2004 but didn’t get any photos at that time because we left the battery to our camera in the trailer that was parked in Gillette, Wyoming. This time we made sure we had our fully charged battery.

 August 18^th we moved to Dickinson, North Dakota and spent the last couple of days touring the badlands of North Dakota, Theodore Roosevelt National Park and has some very interesting geologic formations. Penny got to see her favorite wild animal too.

They also have an area with large balls of stone called Cannonball Concretions.

 They also have a lot of other erosion formed areas that are interesting.

Tomorrow we head west into Montana. The plan is to visit Glacier National Park, but it will take a few days to get there.

7/24/19

On the 15^th we left Twin Falls for our trip to Rapid City, south Dakota. We stopped for the night at a county park near Ririe, Idaho. Ririe is about a dozen miles east of Idaho Falls. The RV park is on the banks of the Ririe reservoir.

The next day we headed into Wyoming south of Jackson. We wanted to avoid taking the trailer through the narrow streets of Jackson, so we headed a bit south through Alpine, Wyoming, over to Lander. We spent another single night in Lander, then headed to Douglas, Wyoming, east of Casper.

Wednesday the 17^th we drove from Lander, Wyoming to Rapid City, South Dakota. The weather was good from Twin Falls to Rapid City, but it was getting warm - as can be expected. We stayed in a campground south of Rapid City for a week, waiting for some time sensitive mail that we were expecting. It finally showed up on the sixth day of our stay.

On the 18^th we started doing the touristy things around Rapid City. We went to Mt Rushmore in the morning. Unfortunately, there was construction going on inside the park, so we could go no further than the visitor’s center, but that was probably close enough with our camera.

 

That afternoon we took a drive down towards Custer State Park. We didn’t actually enter the park that afternoon because we didn’t want to rush ourselves around the park. The drive down there is interesting though. It is a very narrow, winding road with one lane tunnels that are as low as 8 feet high and tight 360 degree turns.

 

The morning of Friday the 18^th we wanted to take a tour of Wind Caves National Park, which is south of Custer State Park. Unfortunately, their elevator into the caves is broken and won’t be fixed until late August. So we opted to go to Jewel Cave National Park, west of Mt. Rushmore. There is some evidence that the two are interconnected somewhere in the underground labyrinth. Jewel Caves elevator was, thankfully, working. Even with the elevator, the tour requires you to go up or down 736 steps. By the time we were done, our legs were tired.

 

 

 

After the caves we actually did drive through Custer State Park and the needles highway, since it was on our way home. Lots more rock formations, narrow roads and tunnels.

 

 

 

 

Saturday we drove east to the Badlands, another interesting geologic display, though we also got to see a few animals. First, on the west side of the park we saw a herd of bighorn sheep, with some young ones.

 Up the road a bit, there is a town of prairie dogs, a couple of them were quite chummy.

On the east side of the park there was a lot of interesting rock formations.

Monday we went to the air and space museum at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Besides a number of World War 2, Korean War and Viet Nam War era airplanes, they have a Minute Man I training missile silo.

Tuesday we went to the Crazy Horse Monument.

 We took the needles highway home.

Tomorrow we resume our trek east, towards Wisconsin.

7/14/19

Haven’t posted since October. We spent winter and spring at Thompson’s Mills again. Stayed longer than normal because we had a wedding to go to in Port Orchard at the end of June, so decided to stay in the area.

We left the mill July 8th and headed east through central Oregon. We were going to stay in Mt. Vernon, Oregon for a couple of nights but couldn’t find an RV spot, so we kept driving until we got to Unity, Oregon.

The next day we continued into Idaho and stopped in Twin Falls. We've stayed here about a week and made a lot of day trips while we were here.

The afternoon we arrived we went to Perrine Bridge, a bridge that crosses the Snake River 486 feet above the water. It’s a popular place for base jumpers. We didn’t see anyone jump but we did see a couple of guys repacking their parachutes.

Then we drove out to Shoshone Falls. There was still quite a bit of flow over the falls. In late summer the falls are almost dry.

 

Wednesday we drove to Balanced Rock State Park and got a few pictures of the namesake.

The Hageman Fossil Beds were in the same direction so we continued on to the visitor center for the fossil beds. It turns out you can’t go out to the fossil beds to see fossils. On the way out to where the fossil beds are there are hikes out to the Oregon trail, where you can see some of the wagon ruts. It was too hot and there were too many bugs to hike the six miles we would have had to walk, so we just took some long distance photos that don’t show much.

On the way back to the trailer we drove along the Snake River and saw quite a few springs dumping water into the river.

We went out to Shoshone Falls again Thursday morning the 11^th and then went on to the Twin Falls waterfall, upstream of Shoshone Falls.

Friday the 12^th we drove to Three Island Crossing and Malad Gorge. Three Island Crossing (Glenn's Ferry) is part of the Oregon trail where the emigrants crossed the Snake river and followed it to Fort Boise on their way to Oregon. If they didn’t cross the river they actually headed south-west on a shorter route, but that route had fewer resources to help the during their travels. There aren’t many historically significant artifacts left at the crossing, but the visitor’s center has a good presentation about the history.

On the way back to Twin Falls, we stopped at Malad Gorge (also called the Devil’s Washbowl) and took a few pictures. The gorge is 250 feet deep, carved out by the Malad River.

Downstream, there’s a waterfall coming from a spring on the east side of the gorge.

Saturday we drove out to City of Rocks National Reserve - about two hours southeast of Twin Falls - near the Utah border. We hadn’t heard of it before but we found it on an Idaho map and wanted to check it out. On the way there we saw signs of a brush fire in the hills to the east of Burley, Idaho.

The park itself is a really interesting geological area. Many of the emigrants moving west camped there because it had water, grass for grazing their animals and shelter among the rocks for sleeping. Today, it’s a popular area for hiking and rock climbing.

We’ll be heading to the Idaho Falls area Monday, then toward the Casper, Wyoming area, before we go to Rapid City, South Dakota.