Headed North

     I started my trip to the National Parks and the Pacific Northwest on Sunday June 20. The first night I stopped in Raton and the next day my GPS, “the bitch”, took me through Denver instead of the bypass. Outside of Colorado Springs there were two major accidents which slowed me down for about an hour. I met Carman in Cheyenne. He got there from Florida in two and a half days. On Tuesday we headed for Custer and an rv park called Crazy Horse. On the way we hit road construction and had to have an escort through gravel and fresh tar two different times. They should have called the rv park: crazy parking. We were perched on the side of a hill and we had a thunderstorm that afternoon with horizontal 60 mph winds. Rving is always exciting.

We stayed two days while we visited Mt. Rushmore and drove Needles Highway and went through all the tunnels. They even take the big tour buses through. At first I thought it was impossible, but I saw a video of them doing it.

We visited Keystone, but didn’t take any pictures; and then we went to Hill City and saw their train station. There’s tourist train from Hill City to Keystone and lots of tourists.  We didn’t go to the Crazy Horse Monument, but I got a picture from the highway.

On Thursday, we landed in Rapid City. It was time to refill my prescriptions, which meant a trip to Walmart. Carman talked me into buying a small gas grill so he could barbeque which was fine by me, so we’ve had ribs and chicken so far. The big thing in restaurants here is buffalo burgers. No matter what the Indians say, man cannot live on buffalo burgers alone.

We are parked directly across the street from Reptile Gardens and a couple miles down the road from Bear Country. We had breakfast at the place where they have the set from Dances with Wolves. We ate a cowboy breakfast on tin plates and the guy in Tin Shop did a demonstration for us on how he made all the plates. Bear Country was great; the cubs were the most entertaining. They were only six months old  and sucked on each other’s ears and slept when they weren’t playing. Notice the picture of the guard in the tower making sure no one has their windows down or gets out of the car.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I take way too many pictures. It’s time to get on the road again, so I’ll have to continue this later.