Back home in Northern Arizona...

July 12, 2013 – July 26, 2013

We arrived in Sedona today!! So glad to be here! Our plan was has been to get to Sedona, hang out and see family and that is just what we did.  This entry will not be day by day and it will be mostly photos as we know the area and though we love it, it does not need the detail of the other areas we visited since we have been here many times. 

We had a very long day coming from Moab. It was a beautiful and nice easy ride until we hit the Flagstaff area.  We cruised into Flagstaff and needed gas. We hit a local station that seemed like it would be easy to get into. As Sean loves to say, “You don’t know what you don’t know”.  We pulled in and suddenly realized a car was blocking our access and the easy entry we thought we had was not near as big as it looked from the road.  Add the car and it could have been a disaster!  I got out of the truck and directed Sean and inch-by-inch we averted disaster but getting gas was not an option.  We were just happy to not blow up the gas station with a direct hit!  We made some turns and eventually hit a truck stop and made a pinky promise to NEVER attempt a gas station that was not a truck stop unless we were unhooked.  We gassed up and continued on our way down 17.  A monsoon hit with a vengeance! Sean handled it perfectly and we took our exit to head to our resort but it was a blind exit. By blind exit I mean you exit the freeway but the exit turns sharply in the other direction in a circular fashion so you don’t know what you are getting into. Much to our surprise, a large semi was stalled out in this circular exit.  We came up behind him and stopped too.  Quickly traffic piled up behind us. We had no idea what to do. The truck was broken down and couldn’t move. The rain poured and we had nowhere to go! I called 911 to let them know of our dilemma and then a stuck motorist came to our window and suggested if we backed up we could turn around in the median and get back onto the freeway.  It looked muddy and Sean thought we would get stuck but one of the drivers behind us was familiar with the terrain and said it was asphalt under all the mud and we would be fine. So every one inched backwards so we could turn and so we did!  Whew! We breathed a sigh of relief and headed onto Sedona Pines.

Sedona Pines is our timeshare resort where we own.  Sedona Pines started its life as an RV park.  The current owners bought it and turned it into timeshares but deeded 10 or so spots for owners to park their RVs.  We knew of this benefit but since we never owned an RV, we never paid much attention to it.  We called a week out and made our reservation.  Again, not really understanding too much, but knowing we could park their for a bit free of charge.  We also had a week of free condo time coming to us, so we reserved that for Sean Jr. and family to enjoy.  We pulled in after our very stressful past hour or so to get into our space. The local maintenance guys led us in.  Again, you don’t know what you don’t know and what we didn’t know was that having FIVE slides was going to be a challenge. There were bigger sites but we didn’t ask for them so we didn’t get them! Poor Sean! He backed in, then realized the one slide wouldn’t open. He pulled out, then pulled back in and realized the other slide wouldn’t open and so on and so on. It was a long ordeal and it took myself and two maintenance guys to finally get us situated.  All of this in the pouring rain I might add…….anyway we finally got in and hooked up. We were so happy to unhook for two weeks!!!!!!

We knew we had this benefit with our ownership but again, we werent really too sure on the details. We had originally planned to stay a week but after I visited with owner services and realized we could stay their, free of ANY charges for two weeks A MONTH we were hooked! Why leave the most beautiful country in the world when you can stay there for FREE!!!! And I mean free. Free spot, free utilities, free laundry, and access to all of the resort amenities! This includes, a beautiful pool, several spas, free miniature golf and all of the activities.  Sean and I felt like we had just gotten the best Christmas present ever! Wow! And we learned from other RV’ers and owner services that you could plan your two weeks at the end of the month, then add the next two weeks at the beginning of the next month and really get a whole month with never moving! That is work camping without working! We are definitely coming back for a month after the holidays when get back to Arizona.  Anyway, we were so happy to camp for free, in a beautiful location, where we could put up family and friends for a minimal amount.  Life is good.  We spent July 13 getting groceries, hanging out in Flagstaff and having a wonderful meal with my brother Kent and his wife Kathy in Cottonwood.  His home is just about 15 minutes from our timeshare.

Sean Jr and family couldn’t get there for a few days so our best friends in the world, Brad and Lisa Wierck, came down and spent two days in the timeshare and hung out with us. They are so much fun and we always have a great time together. There son Zach came too. Then after they left, Sean Jr showed up with his crew….his wife Lisa, Aislynn and Carson. The next day after they got there, Sean’s mom, Lou and her partner Ken came in and spent the day too. It was great to get the multi generations together.  Cory and his partner, April, came in and stayed with us in the RV but it was pretty squishy so we rented them a condo too. They also brought our grand dog, Bruce as well.  We were pushed to our limit but our little condo on wheels did just fine! Luckily Lou brought some extra snacks and with her contributions and mine we had plenty of food.  Lou and Ken just stayed for the day and headed back down to the Valley. They also had a big trip they were getting ready for back to 

Minnesota.

The next days were spent just lounging at the pool and hiking and enjoying the area.  Sean and Lisa celebrated their second wedding anniversary.  Sean and I took care of the kids so the could enjoy the day with Cory and April. They hiked, went out for lunch and the got to sleep in the next day because we had the kids.  The kids were perfect for us! However, I was such a worry wort over Carson that I didn’t sleep much but that is to be expected.

After all the kids left, Sean and I had one glorious week to do whatever our hearts desired! We hiked Devils Bridge, Cathedral Rock and Sycamore Canyon. One day we got hit with monsoons and Sean decided to take the moment with the free water to scrub our RV too. Talk about multi tasking!! We also hung out in the resort pool and spa as much as possible. We just did not much and had a great time doing it!!!  We also took a day and went to Prescott to see Cory and April. While we were there I met my oldest brother, Hank, at my parents gravesite. I haven’t been there since my mom had passed away so it was good to see their final resting place and I visited with my big brother too.  We had a great time in Prescott with Cory and April as well. I sure love that little town.  Having my wonderful son and daughter living there was sort of like a full circle moment! I pointed out many places that I loved and shared my memories with them.

On July 26 we had an appointment to get our sliders fixed at camping world.  The original plan had been for Sean to repair them but once we realized that there was a camping world in Flagstaff, we decided to let them handle the repairs.  We pulled out reluctantly on the 26^th and headed to Camper World.  They took most of the day and we only got to Holbrook since we hit yet another monsoon.  On the 27^th we left Holbrook and went to Albuquerque.  We are here until the 29^th and then onto Texas!

Trucking on.....

7.7.13

Rocky Mountain National Park

We got up early to take a trek into this huge, beautiful park.  We started off the day by traversing over the mountain to 12,000 feet, well above the tree line. The beautiful tall evergreens fell away to tundra. It is stark, cold and in my opinion a little spooky. Very little will grow and the growing season is only a few short weeks. The winds were hard and the cold went straight through to your bones. I don’t tolerate cold at all and I didn’t find this part of the trip very pleasant though it was interesting to see. We went for a short hike at the top and breathing was not easy. The air was very thin.  Thankfully we went downhill from there. The drive was beautiful and we saw elk and even a few moose.  After getting back down the mountain we took another hike to view a waterfall. It was a beautiful hike but we did notice that compared to Custer Park, Rocky Mt. is grand central station. There were people everywhere! Sean surmised that is probably because of its fairly close proximity to Denver so it has a huge population to draw upon and a major international airport. I preferred Custer to Rocky Mt. but both were incredibly beautiful.

We got home at a decent hour, as we needed to get laundry done and start to get ready for the next days drive to Glenwood Springs.

7.8.13

Glenwood Springs, CO

Our drive to Glenwood was our first really large elevation change while hauling the rig. The truck did a great job pulling it and Sean did great handling it all but it is pretty thought provoking to see all the long runaway truck ramps on the side. I hope to never need one of those.  We took our time and enjoyed the sites all through the Rockies.  We pulled into Glenwood springs and reminisced about our last trip there when the kids were small. We had rented a condo in Vail and spent a week exploring the area. I doubt if they remember much of it. We did spend an afternoon at the hot springs in Glenwood and if they remember anything, it is probably that since there were big slides for them to go down. 

We went through town to Carbondale where our RV park was.  Our site backed onto the Crystal River. We could see and hear it from our window all night. The park didn’t have a pool, tv or internet but we didn’t miss it for a minute. It was probably the prettiest park we have stayed in but it also had a pretty price tag.  Sean noticed on one of our slides that a cable was fraying. We sent a text to the rv repair guy we used in Texas and he told us how to find the parts. We ordered the replacement cables and had them sent to my brother Kent’s house in Camp Verde. Kent lives about 15 minutes from the rv park/timeshare resort in Sedona we will be staying at. Poor Sean, he is being dragged into being a handyman whether he wants to or not! The plan is to replace the cables as soon as we get to Arizona. Anyway, we fretted about the cables a bit then went for along bike ride. There is 35 miles of trails here and you could ride all the way to Vail and beyond if you wanted. We rode into Carbondale and had a look around. Very cute little town. 

The next day was spent in Glenwood Springs. We saw Doc Holidays gravesite and spent many hours at the hot springs.  Hopefully it will cure all that ails us.  We shopped and headed out to our beautiful rv site for the night.

7.10.13

Moab

We didn’t rush out the next morning but had a nice walk and a leisurely breakfast. It was good that we did as we found out quite quickly by the large flashing signs that I70 was shut down near the Colorado/Utah border. They shut it down at 7:30 a.m. so we figured it would be open by the time we got there.  We kept our eye on the signs and I looked up the Colorado highway information on the Ipad and saw that it was still shut down and there was no idea as to when it was to open. By lunchtime we decided to pull over into a state park and have lunch and wait out the closure.  After about 1.5 hours, Sean had enough of waiting and we hit the road again and just figured we would chance it.  By the time we got to the closure we decided to give the detour a try. The road was terrible! It was bumpy and full of cars and truck rigs. I don’t think the road had been used in years.  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why a major interstate had been closed down for no apparent reason for most of the day. After seeing the ugly and desolate area, I am convinced it was an alien crash and they had to get the aliens bagged up and taken to Roswell.  Why else would you shut down such a huge interstate with no exploration on the radio or Internet other then “police investigation”?  Hmmm………. Well we finally made it to Moab and got set up in our RV park. Then the FUN began!

My nephew, David, lives here part of the year and runs his Extreme 4x4 Tour Company.  David built from the ground up, his very own extreme, rock-climbing machine.  It is amazing and we were lucky enough to get an evening tour with him.  He met us at a local motel and to my surprise; my niece Emily (and David’s sister) was here for a visit too with her boyfriend! We all got into David’s monster of a machine along with a couple from Germany and off we went!  He took us on a 3-hour tour that was incredible! I laughed and screamed the whole time! Sean sat in the back and got a great view and an even rockier ride. I sat in the middle row with Emily and felt a little more protected. David did a great job building this machine and we passed up hummers, jeeps and every other 4 wheel drive machine you can think of. They all looked at us in envy as we went places they couldn’t dream about going to.  David was a ton of fun and when he wasn’t busy scaring us to death, would give us bits of information about the area. We were out so long that we saw a beautiful sunset and even did a bit of driving in the dark.  It was the most exciting time we have had yet!

7.11.13

Jett Boat

The next day we met David at his friends business, Jett Boat. He got us the family discount and we went on a 2-hour tour on his high-speed boat on the Colorado River. It was hot but he would do 360-degree turns and this would cause large wakes of water to splash up on you. We went through the canyon and waved to the rafter and kayakers. The water is not very high and this part of the country could use some rain!  It was really pretty and we could see up on top of the canyon walls and where we had been with David the night before. After we were finished David took us to this little local dive restaurant that had great burgers and then he had to go do some marketing of his business and Emily came over with her boyfriend and we visited for a while.  She is headed back to Austin tomorrow and we are on our way to Arizona and Sedona!

Boot Camp and Escapade!

6.26.13 – 7.6.13

Gillette Wyoming – Escapees Boot Camp

Our drive from Custer to Gillette was short and our setting up camp fairly uneventful.  The Escapade and Boot Camp were held at a huge complex somewhat like a fairground.  However it is called a CamPlex and it had parking and hook ups for thousands of rigs there. There is also rodeo grounds and many buildings to provide areas for meetings, get togethers and class rooms.  After we set up and had lunch we checked in for our Boot Camp.  There were probably 50-60 other participants.  After a brief introduction the overwhelming information came at us like a machine gun! I haven’t learned so much in three days since college. All the information was great but also somewhat frightening. By the end of that day Sean looked at me and said, were just parking it and not going anywhere!  Besides basic systems and maintenance that are needed with a rig, a HUGE emphasis was placed on safety. Along with learning about safety came all the horrific possibilities of what could happen if you weren’t safe. Tire blowouts, fire, fire and more fire, traffic accidents, etc. You get the picture. After each horrific possibility, they would tamper it down a bit and say how wonderful RV’ing is and how low these possibilities were but how you needed to know the worst case scenario so you would be prepared.

After three full days of frightening education, we graduated! Much more knowledgeable but yes, much more wary! 

During this period we got to meet many other people who are embarking on this journey that we have chosen. All but one or two were quite a bit older then us but all were friendly and interesting. We met our neighbors next to our rig the first day and as it turns out, Donna and Michael are from Arlington, TX and were only living 5 minutes away from us in a KOA for a few months while they were finishing up their jobs! We spent a lot of time with them and had a great time! They will be heading back to Arlington later on this year and we are going to get together again then. We quickly found out that the thing to do is make business cards with your personal information on them and hand them out to people so your not constantly trying to write down peoples phone numbers, email addresses etc. We will make our own when we get back to Texas.

After graduating from Boot Camp, we had one day, Sunday, June 30 to get laundry, shopping etc. done before the Escapade started. It was nice to take a breather as we felt as if we were going 90 miles an hour every day.  We also enjoyed watching as each day more and more rigs rolled in. They were almost all HUGE, beautiful and very pricey! We walked every day and looked at all of them in sort of awe. It would be easy to get rig envy but I love our fiver and the very best thing (and I doubt many could make the same claim) IT IS PAID FOR!

The next four days were as busy as the first three.  We woke up early every morning, exercised one way or the other and had breakfast then we headed out to the area that had all the buildings.  We attended more classes on varying subjects and also shopped the vendors.  After graduating boot camp we had to buy different smoke detectors (RV fires burn hotter and faster then traditional house fires and different smoke detectors are far more sensitive to that), fire extinguishers, halogen light bulbs for all our lights (pricey but so much nicer and will last forever!) and a few other things.  The evenings were spent having happy hour with our neighbors, dinner and then we would go to the evening entertainment briefly to see if our number was drawn for the many prizes they had. We never won and frankly the entertainment was for an older generation and we never stayed too long. Plus, we were exhausted!

We learned a lot more things but some of it was a repeat of what we had already learned in boot camp. One sort of sad thing we learned after attending a class on traveling in Mexico is that Mexico does not have the type of diesel fuel we need in our truck (any diesel engine made after 2007) and if we were to use it, we could destroy our engine!  Escapees host a rally into Mexico every year and we were really looking forward to attending but not if it means destroying our truck. However, the rally is set up to be about 400 miles and we should be able to do that on one tank of diesel fuel but what if you hit head winds and you use too much fuel? It was suggested to put an extra tank on our truck for that emergency.  We also plan on wintering in Rocky Point for a month or so next winter and did not know about this gas issue. The good thing about Rocky Point is that the border is not too far and we could go across and fill up but that would be a hassle too. The gas mileage we get in this truck has pleasantly surprised us. The mileage has been as high as 18-20 mph without the trailer and 8-12 with the trailer, depending on hills and wind.

At the end of the Rally there was a huge banquet.  There were almost a 1000 rigs in attendance at the rally and of course probably double that in participants.  The people who started the Escapees in 1978 are a couple named Kay and Jim Peterson. Jim passed away this past year but Kay is still going strong. She attended this years Rally and spoke several times. She is a tiny little spitfire and funny!  After the banquet we got our photo with her and told her we were second generation Escapees. Her daughter asked us to send the photo to her at headquarters so who knows, maybe we will get in the Escapees magazine! 

After the banquet we went back to the rig to get ready for the fire works.  Two couples that are traveling the U.S. but are from the U.K., joined us. They were quite interesting and I wish I had spent more time with them.  Maybe down the road somewhere….One interesting comment they made was about how many long hours workers in the U.S. work and how little vacation time there is. In the U.K. it is typical to get 6 weeks off a year and only upper management jobs work 40 hours per week. Most employees work less then the typical 40-hour workweek. I like the way they think! Unfortunately it started to rain very hard so we went into our respective rigs and saw what little of the fireworks we could from our window. 

6.5.13

The next day started early, again! We got the rig ready to travel and then we had an appointment with Smart Weigh. This is a mobile weight management program that Escapees provides (for a fee) that weighs your rig to make sure you are not overweight and that you are carrying the weight asymmetrically.  This is one of those huge safety issues that can cause all sorts of accidents and mechanical problems. (fire, fire, fire! It is now are greatest fear) Sean and I were both nervous about it though we were pretty sure we were ok.  Our fears were alleviated and we now know that if we need to, we can carry more weight if needed. Also, our truck is more then adequate to tow our fiver. Sean did a great job figuring out most of this before we ever bought the truck by doing his homework. He also replaced our tires with much better ones that should stand the load.

We traveled from Gillette to Estes Park Colorado. A friend and ex co-worker is getting married here and we decided we could attend since we were in this part of the country.  We have lived in Colorado for many years and we came to Estes once but we were not prepared for the huge holiday weekend crowds and narrow roads! They weren’t that narrow to us before but you start towing this monster and suddenly EVERYTHING is much smaller!  After a brief panic moment of whether or not we would make a turn to get to our RV park, we got here and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Then Sean had to back in, which he did with no problems and we began our usual task of leveling the RV. For some reason, we just couldn’t get it to level. Sean had to hitch up three times and maneuver the rig before we finally got it right.  I just have to add here, Sean did not get mad once! Frustrated, but never angry! I think every woman should send her husband to Afghanistan for a while. It seems to really put a perspective on life. I am so thankful for his new outlook on life and that he came home safe and sound. Besides his ability to finance our new way of life, his time there has been an eye opener for both of us. We are both grateful the opportunities and renewed look on life.

Yesterday we got up early to go out to breakfast, grocery shop and see the Stanley House. This is the mansion that the Shining was filmed at. It was beautiful but I had another movie magic disappointment, as there was no maze! I guess that was put in digitally. The we went home and did a 12 mile bike ride around the whole town. We also stopped and watched even bigger rigs make that turn we were so worried about. One was a triple pull. A truck pulling a large fifth wheel, pulling a tow car! That is crazy but they did it. I suspect they have been towing a bit longer then us.  Last night we attended my friend and co-worker from Anza Elementary wedding. She moved to Colorado the year after I left Sahuarita and met her fiancé. It worked out nicely that we were in an 8 hour drive.

Custer, South Dakota

Custer, SD

6.21.13

Mt. Rushmore

The weather went a little cold on us but we were determined to start our South Dakota visit with a bang. We went to Mt. Rushmore and though it was foggy intermittently, we still got a great look at the monument. We toured the museums, watched informational movies and did walks that allowed us different views. But, in the end, really, how long can one look at a monument?  We enjoyed our morning/afternoon. After our tour we were very hungry and went into Rapid City for a Buffalo burger at the Firehouse Brewery and walked around the town a bit. From there we went to Wal Mart and got our supplies for the week. I am not a big Wal Mart fan but they are CHEAP in comparison to everyone else. We went home and put away our supplies and walked our new camp ground a bit. Our campground host/hostess are really nice. They are from Texas and decided to leave the rat race and open a campground. Very friendly, helpful and they have a great dog, Bo, who loved to be petted so I was happy! We both really miss having a dog but we don’t miss all the associated issues having a dog in an RV brings along with it. I don’t know how long we will feel this way but for now, we are content to be dog less. We did laundry that night while we watched the weather as it predicted golf ball sized hail! Thank goodness it didn’t happen.

6.22.13

Custer State Park

The weather predictions were still on for bad weather so we chose to do a wildlife-driving loop in Custer State Park. We stopped at a visitor center and spoke to a volunteer who has been working there for 3 summers. When you give three days of your time per week (not sure if this is per person or couple), you get a full hook up in the park and a pass to every tourist attraction around and believe me there is plenty of tourist attractions! He was very positive about his experience and Sean and I have already decided we will come back and work camp here as there is so much to do but it gets costly.  A free pass and a free campsite makes it all so much more inviting!  Our drive took us through herds of buffalo; three prong antelopes, chipmunks, prairie dogs, birds etc. We stopped at Sylvan lake and did a small walk around the lake. There was a group of red headed young boys, (reminded me of Jenny’s kids!) fishing. We asked them if they had caught anything and they were quick to wave us over to see their catch! They were adorable little boys. After our walk a storm that had been threatening all day hit. We got home and ate left over’s and prayed that no hail hit us! We also discovered a local pie place called “The Purple Pie Place” and they have the worlds best strawberry rhubarb pie! (sorry mom L) and we had that after the left over’s.  It has been great sleeping here, quiet, cold and wonderful to 

snuggle too!

6.23.13

Wild Horse Sanctuary/ Mammoth site

I really wanted to see the Wild Horse Sanctuary. The kids and I explored the Wolf Sanctuary when I worked for the Boys and Girls Clubs in Pueblo CO. We all remember it as being extraordinary! So, I was hoping for the same experience but with wild horses. I was sadly let down. Maybe it would have been much better if we had paid $45 each to go on a “tour” but I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much money. We walked around a bit and left.  We stopped at the Mammoth Site and we both thought it would be hokey but it was so cool! We learned there was a sinker hole there and over 60 (to date and counting) mammoths fell into it and died! There was a guy who bought the property and was going to put a bunch of houses up and he started finding all these bones so he brought in a scientist who discovered this sinker whole and the whole excavation process was started and the housing project was given up. We learned a bunch of great information but the best was that all but two of the mammoths that were found in this pit were teenage males! I guess the herds were ran by elderly female mammoths and when the uppity teen males gave them too much trouble, they chased them off. Being teenagers they were too stupid to see that even though there friend was dying in the mud, they could surely get down into that pit and get good water and food.  Testosterone has been the bane and saving grace of men since the start of time!  Saving grace because it makes the girls want them, and bane because it makes them stupid and fall into holes, starve and die!!! I cant tell you how that made me chuckle all day……

6.24.13

More RV repairs and Mickelson trail ride

What I didn’t mention before was that Sean had wanted to get our wheel bearings packed on the RV before we left Texas. His research had said that they could be an issue but with all of the rest of our problems we never had a chance to get it done and it preyed heavily on his mind. When we were leaving Sioux Falls, we left our site and went four miles up the road to get gas before we hit the freeway to make our way to Custer. When we pulled in Sean noticed large puffs of black smoke coming from our RV! My heart did a flip and we both jumped out to see what was the problem. Sean figured out that our quick release cord on the hitch had gotten trapped under the hitch and it had caused the emergency breaks to start breaking on the RV and thus smoke! Luckily there was a RV repair nearby who disengaged the cord and we bought a new one but now we knew the wheel bearing packing was even more important so as to surmise the damage done to the brakes.  The strange thing was we both had a bad feeling when we left tour campsite. Sean said he kept checking gauges and nothing showed. I just waived my bad feeling off to my general paranoia though I hadn’t felt this way the whole trip. I need to listen to my bad feelings! Anyway, when we got to Custer our wonderful camp hosts pointed us in the direction of a local mechanic. Sean called him and he got us in today. He was awesome. He packed the bearings and sanded down the brake pads and replaced the grease as it had melted away from the smoking and charged us HALF what camping world had quoted. While we had this done we went and had a hardy breakfast and did a 25-mile ride on the Mickelson trail to the Crazy Horse monument.  We then went back and got the rig and took it back to our site where we got everything hooked up again.

6.25.13

Deadwood, SD

We drove about an hour away and went to a historical town called Deadwood. It seems that both Wild Bill Hickok was murdered here and Calamity Jane called it home for a while too. Deadwood is like Tombstone with their own boot hill but much bigger. It was a nice day and we walked around and had lunch.

6.26.13

Back to Custer Park/Lovers Leap and Mule fun!

Today we went back to Custer Park and did a 3.5-mile hike straight up a hill to Lovers Leap. Supposedly an Indian couple jumped off this peak and died. Sean and I just took some photos and didn’t leap. It was a great hike. We went down and had a picnic then took the wildlife loop again in the hopes of seeing the mules we didn’t see before. We did and they were very cute!  We got back to our campsite to do laundry but a large encampment of Catholic high school kids on a large camping expedition beat us to the laundry mat so we went back into town and did all of our laundry.  We had dinner and started the process of packing up for our 2-3 hour drive to Gillette Wyoming today for the Escapees’ Escapade!

RV park internet stinks!

OMG! I hate RV parks Internet service! We had heard how sketchy it is but I had no idea! So, my blog will be intermittent at best until we get a handle on this Internet thing.

I just want to comment here, this blog is to keep friends and family up on our travels but also as a way for us to log/diary our travels. So, this being said, I will need to go back and try to remember a few things, add dates, etc. to get me back up to speed. I have decided to log onto word perfect or an ipad notepad every day so that I don’t have to go back and re create all of this. My memory aint’ what it use to be!

So, on June 15 we finished our driving lessons and headed on our way. They were very helpful and answered many questions though we both think just time and experience will be our best teacher. Needless to say we left feeling a lot better about our knowledge of how to pull this huge rig.  From Sanger TX, we went on to Guthrie, OK on June 15. Oklahoma was way nicer then we thought! Green, pretty but very hot and humid! This photo is from our morning walk before we hit the road. We also went through Moore and saw a bit of the devastation from the last tornado right of f the freeway. Very weird and scary!

We stayed one night in OK and then went on our way to Kansas and spent one night on June 16. My thoughts on Kansas….not very pretty, flat and they don’t sell alcohol on Sunday, even if it is fathers day. Boo!!  And it is still hot. Kansas was flat but a little prettier and they still had weird beer selling rules. I think we could have done a few more days in Kansas and saw Dodge City and a few other places but we were on a mission.

The highlight of our trip to Kansas was the world’s largest ball of twine in Cawker, Kansas on June 17. My personal thought is they could have done much to increase tourism but they didn’t ask me.  I have always wanted to see this large ball of twine after seeing one of my favorite movies, Michael with John Travolta. I was a little disappointed to see that the movie was not really filmed at the actual site but on some Hollywood movie studio.

From Kansas we went to Nebraska on June 18.  Not many thoughts on Nebraska….more flatness and corn fields.  We left quickly and got to South Dakota on June 19 and went to the great Corn Palace! It was really fun and Sean got to remember some great trip memories of having gone here with his mom and three younger siblings.  We spent the night in the middle of nowhere South Dakota that night but did see a nice sunset.

Yesterday, June 20, we got to Wall Drug Store pretty early before the crowds. Again, very cute and I talked Sean into the Jackalope photos plus they had great homemade donuts for a $1 and a $.05 cups of coffee. I am not a big donut person but I gotta tell you, these were delicious! It was probably the 500 hundred signs leading up to it that made them so good.  One sort of sad note….many signs read that if you were a Veteran you got a free donut.  While we were waiting to pay for our donuts and coffee an older gentleman stepped up with his military ID and asked about the free donut. His donut was chocolate iced and the young man informed him that only plain donuts could be given out with that deal. The veteran was disgusted and said forget it and left. I felt really bad about the whole thing. Really, a tablespoon of chocolate icing is deal breaker?!  The poor kid serving him looked so sad about it but I guess he felt he didn’t have a choice.  I wish I had been a quicker thinker and offered to pay for his chocolate donut but I didn’t.

Wall Drug had many shops to look at but we aren’t big shoppers but some of the stuff was fun to look at.  We stayed an hour or so and left.  After a few short hours we finally made it to our destination, Custer South Dakota! It is beautiful here. Lots of pine trees and nice and cool.  We set up the rig to stay for a week. We will see the sights before we head to Gillette Wyoming where we will be attending the Escapade and attending our full timer boot camp.

As a side bar, Sean and I don’t intend to travel like this all the time. We are on “vacation” and doing many miles a day. We are trying to attend a seminar with an organization we belong to call Escappees.  This is a huge gathering of their members and we are hoping to learn much about our new full time RV lifestyle. Eventually we will travel very slowly and also work camp along the way.   We are spending a $100 a day just in fuel!

Today we are off to see Mt. Rushmore!