Wrapping up the trip

After we left Houghton in the UP of Michigan we were basically heading toward Elkhart to get RV work done and meet up with our son and daughter-in-law and her parents. But we needed a stopover and camped in St. Ignace at the north side of the Mackinaw Bridge.  Lot's of good seafood and the weather was great.

Next we did a long day's drive to Elkhart and camped near our dealer at Elkhart Campground.  We swapped our Morryde external steps with a new improved design free since ours original ones were showing material failure. Morryde is great to work with.

We spent the 4th with family and got the RV in for maintenance and then headed back to NC.

We did an overnight stop in Rio Grande, OH and stayed at Bob Evans Farm.  It was very quiet this time of year but they have a Farm Festival in the fall and have nearly 400 campers on the farm.

Next stop was the Charlotte Motor Speedway campground so we could visit with Martha's family. The first night there we had a major storm pass over us. It exposed some leaks we didn't now we had. I was lucky enough to find a mobile tech who came out on Saturday to put Dicor sealant a few places and I hope I'm good to go until I can negotiate Keystone to replace the roof.  It was not installed right originally in my opinion.

Monday we will head home, unload the RV, and park it for a few months.  I have a lot of cleaning and maintenance to do to the truck and RV and that will keep me busy for a while.

So this is the last post for this trip.

Quincy’s Copper Mine Tour

The day we did the copper mine tour it was cold, rainy and windy.  So the environment inside the mine was an improvement.  It wasn’t raining and windy in the mine, but it was cold.  This tour was better than I expected.  I think that has to do with the difference in this type of mining I had seen in the past.

First off, the mine has been closed for mining since 1947, so some of the surface buildings have been torn down before the Quincy Mine Hoist Association took over responsibility of maintain it and turned it into a museum and educational facility.  The Wiki on Quincy Mine gives you better details, but here’s what stood out for me.

The shaft to take workers into the mine and ore out is vertical at 54 degrees.  The men would sit on what looked like 10 sets of steep stairs, 3 men across and travel at 15 mph in the dark as far as 9000 feet down with the wall 1 foot in front of their face.  The ore would come out the same shaft at 30 mph. 

The steam hoist in another building several hundred feet away from the shaft house controlled the cable that pulled the man cars and ore cars. Prior to the underground tour we toured the hoist house.  It’s an impressive engineering structure for the early 20^th century.

To get tourist into the mine, they used a cogged railroad car to take you to an entry on level 7 that’s over the side of the mountain and was not originally an entrance, but a drain port for the water pumped out of the mine.  They widened it so they could drive tractors and other equipment into the mine long after the mine closed for business.  So, we road into the mine in a covered trailer pulled by a John Deere tractor.  We only went in a few thousand feet and it was only the 7^th level of almost 100 levels.  The tour guide showed us some of the tools used over the years of active mining and what it looked like with only a candle lit for the men to work in.  She also showed us what absolute darkness looked like when the candle went out.  That is scary.

On the ride into the mine we went by a classroom where the local college has mining engineering classes.  They also practice what they learn in this mine.

The UP

After we left North Dakota, we drove all day to Duluth, MN, but we camped just across the border in Superior, WI.  We had stayed in Minneapolis camping years ago and needed to get Wisconsin checked off the list.  By staying 2 nights we had a full day to explore  So we decided to got to downtown Duluth to checkout their waterfront.  That turned out to be a great idea.  There are a number of eating places, bars, and even a distillery. We chose to eat at a brew pub call Canal Park Brewing Company.  The beer was great and surprisingly the food was excellent as well.  We got a table by the window looking out over Lake Superior.  Really enjoyed a leisurely lunch and view of the folks walking the boardwalk all the waterfront.

After lunch we too enjoyed a stroll along the shore's edge.  Duluth did a smart thing with their walk. They have a wooden plank boardwalk for walkers and they have a paved path for bicycles and runners. Cuts down on the collisions.

On Saturday we drove to Houghton, MI to stay at a city park and campground.  The drive up was okay except for the late 30 minutes when we hit a storm the locals called the worse this year. Driving rain and a lot of it.  It wasn't blinding so I kept on moving but slowly.  The rain broke and it started to clear off as we pulled into the campground. The good news is there wasn't a bug anywhere on my RV. The heavy rains has power-washed them off. The City park and campground of Houghton is truly a great find.  All the sites are for self-contained RV's only.  No tents sites, laundry, or bathrooms.  Great for rigs like us.  All the sites are back in with covered picnic tables and benches at the rear of the site looking at the river.  In our case our site was actually on the river and since we have a rear picture window in the fifth wheel, it was perfect.


Houghton is one of those places we found by just looking at a map and checking TripAdvisor to see what was there.  Figured we were close and would never come here on purpose so see it while we were in the neighborhood.

Well, I would come back on purpose.  But only in the summer.  They get way too much snow in the winter.  There is a sign along the road showing how deep the snow was one year and it was taller than a 2 store house.  But in the summer it's warm, not humid and cool at night.  We've found the good pizza place, the local brew pub and made the loop around the northern part of the peninsula, even stopping in Gay, MI at The Gay Bar.  They have a lot of fun with their name, particularly with their tee shirts that are for sale.

We plan on a copper mine tour today before we leave tomorrow to head to Saint Ignace, MI.  It turns out that copper is what made this place.  In fact in the early 1900's so much money was made from copper that the rich mining executives wives had a big theater build so they could have some culture in the area.  They still get some big acts in the summer to perform in the theater.

I've put a few photos Flickr - Houghton and Flickr - Duluth.

Impressions from driving across Montana and North Dakota

Being from North Carolina and having never lived in the west makes us observe things that locals take for granted.  The same way we do back in NC.  So I thought I'd write about some of the things we saw that we perceived as odd.

First, thing we did after crossing the state line from Washington was to get off I-90 and head north to Columbia Falls, MT.  Since we didn't know when we'd find lunch we stopped at an old truck stop that was now only a cafe and surprising a casino.  At first I thought I might be on an Indian reservation, but I quickly found that anybody and everybody opens a casino in Montana.  It's always some sort of video game of chance like poker or slots. All across Montana we saw gas stations, convenient stores, restaurants, bars, and hotels with casinos.  I looked but didn't see a church with a casino.  I'm sure that will happen at some point.

There is terrain difference when you drive from one end of Montana to the other and then across North Dakota, but it's nothing like North Carolina.  In North Carolina, you can't drive 20 miles without going into a different town.  In Montana you can drive on a road for 60 miles and still not see a town and may have only passed 2-3 farms/ranches.

Since both Montana and North Dakota are farming states everyone drives a truck and most are dually's, every gas station has diesel and usually Diesel #1 and Diesel #2.  Sometimes they even offer Premium Diesel. That was good for us because I can always get fuel with or without being hitched to the RV.  A whole lot of the fuel stops were truck stops and had restaurants.  They usually service a great breakfast, but no grits.

The big part of the drive was along US-2. The picture at the top is from the start when we left the Glacier area along US-2 which goes from the Pacific to the Atlantic with a break at the upper peninsula of Michigan, but it picks up again in NY.  It is mostly a 2 lane road, but in most of Montana it doesn't need to be but 2.  We'd drive for hours and pass no cars and have none pass us.

One of our overnight stops was in Glasgow, MT.  It was larger than most we passed by, but small enough to have most all the business along US-2.  There were 3-4 gas stations with all of them being C-stores.  All were casinos.  There were a few full service restaurants and all had a casino room. There was a bar/casino that said food on the sign, but that's all it said about being a restaurant .  We checked Yelp and found Nickel Bill's Casino was one of the best breakfast and lunch places in the town.  We went and tried the Chicken Fried Steak breakfast and it was outstanding.  Even the hotel and RV park had a casino.

Speaking of Hotel/RV parks, we found that to be a widely available choice. It's nice to have to combo.  If the hotel is a good one, then the RV park will be as well.  The hotel provides the lounge/restaurant, pool, and laundry for the RV park.

You see some real characters along the way.  In Glasgow we wanted a hamburger and found Flips, a well rated hamburger, hot dog, fries and shake place.  When we walked in the counter girl had turquoise and purple hair, but was good at taking orders and delivering food.  At one of the booths were three cowboys who obviously belonged to the farm truck pulling the horse trailer out in the parking lot. When they got up to leave you could see and hear their spurs. Of course they had the cowboy hat, jeans, and western shirt. They all were a little dirty from their work. The scene called for the decor we saw in Tombstone and not the look of a plastic modern burger joint.

Bugs - I didn't notice many and none bothered me.  That must have been because they all run headlong into the front of the truck and RV.  I can have both vehicles perfectly clean but after 8 hours of driving they are covered.  It's almost hard to tell the color of the front of the RV there are so many of them.  I'll not complain about the few bugs we get back east.  The ones back home must be smarter. They miss the vehicles but annoy and bite people.

Bicyclist out here are a different breed.  There are large groups of them loaded with backpacks, pulling trailers with their camping gear and clothes and are supposed to be having fun. They are usually struggling with their heads down so they miss the scenery.  The roads we've encountered them on are 70 mph 2 lane roads with wide shoulders.  When we or 18-wheelers passed them you'd see them shake and wobble.  Not sure how much fun that is, but there aren't many roads out here that aren't 70 mph.

When you hit North Dakota, the change is immediate.  No casinos and among the fields and grazing lands are oil wells and the associated equipment.  The oil work is down due to the world oil price.  So a lot of the businesses have hundreds of pieces of oil field tools just setting there waiting for the next boom.  It's also interesting to see how the industry ramped up and how it temporarily shutdown. There are special high density trailers communities built especially for oil workers.  The trailers don't resemble RVs or mobile homes.  They are closer to module housings. I saw dozens of these communities completely empty of people. Some even had for sales signs for the whole community. Each one of the communities held hundreds of workers when full.

Glacier National Park

We went into Glacier National Park several times during the week we were camped in Columbia Fall, MT.  The first day was just to the Apgar Visitor Center area to try to figure out if we would be able to do the Going to the Sun Road tour in the Red Bus. It's called the Crown of the Continent Tour.  It came down to the fact that the tours would start on June 17th or when the road was opened by the park service.  Snow removal and guardrail replacement were what was keeping the road closed.  In fact we found out by driving the Going to the Sun road that it was closed at the Avalanche Creek area.

We did get some good pictures of the Lake McDonald Lodge and Lake McDonald and the creeks that fill the lake.  The good news is that the night after we made that trip, we saw that the park service had posted to their website that the road was going to be open on the 17th just in time for the first scheduled tour.  So we quickly got 2 tickets for Sunday, the 19th.  The weather was supposed to be good on Sunday and it turned out that it was.

Because we had some days with rain, even down in Columbia Falls, we found out we had a significant leak in the rear of the RV.  We got an mobile RV tech to reseal the roof seam and while it was drying we went to the east side of Glacier to see what we could see and check out the route as it was the likely path out of this area to our next destination.  When we got back we had a major rain storm and no leaks so that was great.

On Sunday, we got up early and dressed for multiple climates; low 60's at the RV and 35 degrees at the continental divide with 30 mph winds.

We met the Red bus at the Apgar Visitor Center.  The buses were made in the mid 1930's and were completely rebuilt to make the DOT happy about their safety in 1999.  Ford donated the rebuild after the old buses were donated to a non-profit organization to manage the buses.  It cost $7.5M to upgrade all 35 buses.  The were able to save the original carriage parts and figure out how to mount them on a Ford E-450 chassis, which is the chassis a lot of Class C RV are build on.  Ford even made them dual fuel; propane and gasoline.  Since these buses were made for 1930's sized people it was crowded to get 1 driver and 17 passengers into them.

I was more relaxed as a passenger than as a driver on other narrow mountain roads. Even though this road was better than the San Juan Skyway highway, I would not drive it.  The driver can't watch the scenery, so it was more enjoyable for me being a passenger this time.

We stopped periodically to stretch our legs and take pictures.  At the top we stopped at Logan's Pass and it's was covered with snow.  They had just finished plowing that parking lot on Thursday.  35 degrees and 30 mph wind as predicted. Luckily the canvas tops of the buses were still closed at this point.

We proceeded down the east side and out the East entrance of the park then drove 10 miles to the Many Glacier park entrance and stopped for lunch at the Many Glacier Lodge restaurant.  On the east side we saw more wildlife.  Saw 2 bears, and some mountain goats and sheep, bald eagle, and deer.

We went back to the east entrance and retraced our path back to the start.  We did open the canvas top about halfway back that really gave us a great view of the mountains as we drove down the west side.

We knew we were pushing the season for the tour, but a lot of the waterfalls we saw would not be here in mid summer.  I posted a lot of photos on Flickr.

RVing out west - observations

I've been busy with a lot of driving so not much time for posts.  When we left Walla Walla, WA, we luckily had arranged to meet my cousins David Paxton and Kathy Paxton-Schwartz and their spouses in Seattle.  With such a great distance between us all our lives, we don't get the opportunity very often to visit in person.  It was a great afternoon and evening at Kathy's house.

It was the difficulty in setting up our travel arrangement into Seattle that prompted this post.  Seattle has no RV parks, but the communities around Seattle have a few 10-20 miles outside of town.  Well most of these have been around for years and suffer from being designed for smaller RVs.  So getting my rig in was next to impossible.  Everywhere you called said you need to call 6 months ahead to assure a spot.  We didn't know 2 days ahead that we were going to Seattle.  We finally found a spot in Bellevue but for only one night.  So we had to drive in early, setup the RV, and head to my cousins.  

Since we had to leave Seattle the next morning, we didn't get to visit anything but family.

Big cities seem to have not planned well for RVers.  I'm told it's not as profitable to build an RV campground as an apartment or housing development. The ones that do remain can charge anything they want and not upgrade their facilities.

We drove a lot on Monday to get as close to Glacier National Park as we could.  Stopped at a road/lakeside campground that was nice but nothing special.  It was still $40 with all our discounts. It seems that most all the decent campgrounds are packed from June to September out west.  We spent the next morning trying to find a campground near Glacier.  Must have research 20 and eliminated those who could not offer 60' sites with room for slideouts. Then we called about 5 before we could find availability for 5-7 days.  The KOA was $99 a night with discounts, some were $65-75.  We finally found a newly rebuilt campground in Columbia Falls for $54/night if you stayed a week.

Not sure why everything is so full and expensive.  Probably it's the 100th anniversary of the National Park service, the increase in the popularity of RVing, and/or the cheap fuel.

It does mean we are going to have to do what we hate and that's plan ahead.  It's been nice up to now to just drive until you are tired and start using your phone to search for a campground.  You can no longer reroute your trip because you saw a roadsign about visiting the world's largest ball of twine. :-)

Also forget about RVing in State and National campgrounds.  We have not found one that you could put a 40' fifth wheel with pickup truck into.  In fact most we've researched limit you to a ~30' RV and a pickup.  Basically 40' combined vehicle limit.  The basic infrastructure of state and national parks has not kept up with the growth of RVs. No 50 amps, no sewer; great for tents and pop-ups, but not for big 5th wheels.

So if you are going to visit National Parks out west,  book as far out as you can.

  

Walla Walla Wines - best reds in the USA?

Didn't know much about Washington State wines, but we'd had a few good ones thanks to wines tastings at the club.  So after a lot of research we found that the Walla Walla Valley was the place to go to taste the most red wines without driving too much.  And we were right.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon and set up camp at Blue Valley RV park.  It was just on the other side of the big 4 lane highway from the downtown area.  There was even a nice walking path from the campground to downtown.  Of course we didn't use it since Martha's foot is acting up again.  Plus it's hard to carry cases of wine that far.

We did have time for 2 tastings at a couple of wineries.  We talked with the visitor center lady about her opinion on destination wineries around town.  Dozens of the wineries don't have tasting rooms except downtown.  That's good for hitting a lot of them, but we like tasting out at the winery surrounded by fields of grapes.  With over 100 wineries in the area there is a lot to taste.  The first winery we stopped at was Amavi on the south side of town about 2 miles from the Oregon border. Beautiful location on a hill overlooking some of their fields of grapes and around the corner from their sister winery.  Everything we tasted at Amavi was good and we bought a cab for supper.  On to the sister winery Pepper Bridge.  They also had great reds, but they started at $65 a bottle.  So we just paid for a $12 tasting and moved along.

Back at camp we met a RV neighbor lady, Karen, who was a full timer.  Her husband was in software and worked out of the RV and she worked part time at Tero Estates winery tasting room downtown. Since she worked on Saturdays, we put that on the list for Saturday's tastings.

On Friday, we started at the Walla Walla Community College which has a winemaking program. The students learn all aspects of the wine business and they even run the tasting room.  The college owns their own vineyards around town and in the higher altitudes surrounding the valley.  We likes all their wines some had won awards and got a 91 from Wine Spectator Magazine.  Some of the graduates had gone on to be well respected winemakers in the valley.

After a pizza for lunch we went back out to the south side and tried the wines a Saviah.  We talked them into opening a Cabernet Franc after we tasted their current choices and it was good enough for us to buy a couple of bottles.

All of the wineries are good about recommending other wineries to try in the area.  Saviah sent us to Windmill Winery just over the border in Oregon. It's still part of the Walla Walla AVA. Loved their Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc.

Back at the RV park we met the new folks next door who were from New Zealand.  Passed our newly found wine knowledge on to them.  First time we've met someone who lives a long way from the USA, but owns and stores an RV here so they can RV over here every year.  He was a former world champion speedboat racer and comes over for the races and touring.

On Saturday morning we went to Walla Walla Vintners and talked with the owner/winemaker. Everything we tasted was wonderful.  Had to buy a lot, plus he ships to NC.  We were the only folks there when we got there, but it got crowded soon.  A limo arrived with a bunch of ladies and the driver talked with me about his very old Pontiac.  He had stretched it into a limo to hold 8-10.  Photos are on Flickr.

After lunch we hit a few more downtown tasting rooms including Karen's Tero Estates and another one she recommended.

This is the place to come tasted big bold red wines.

Traveling hard

Not much to this post except to document for myself later.  We left Spearfish, SD on Monday and drove for 7-8 hours and stopped in Livingston, MT.  We found Olsen RV park right off I-90, rested, and did it all over again on Tuesday.

We got to Spokane, WA and found Wild Rose RV park 12 miles north of town.  We should have just skipped Spokane because the traffic was terrible.  Stop and go on crowded roads.  The 12 miles took 45 minutes.  Lots of malls and other stores and everyone was out shopping. So we weren't going to drive downtown to explore.  Also none of the wine places were open early in the week.  We stayed 2 nights in Spokane and just rested and did laundry.

We left Spokane Thursday morning for the short 4 hours drive to Walla Walla, WA.  We'll spend 3 nights here mostly to visit wineries.  We did go out after we got the RV setup and visited Amavi Cellars and Pepper Bridge Winery.  Bought a great cab at Amavi for dinner and then went to Safeway for a few steaks.

Next post will be all about Walla Walla and their wineries.

Spearfish area, Crazy Horse, Devils Tower

Before moving on to Spearfish we went to the Crazy Horse Monument.  I don't remember what is looked like in 1993, but they actually have photo wall with the progress documented, so a lot has been done since we originally saw it.  But a lot more has to be done.  There is no target to complete or a prediction of when it will be done.

Crazy Horse is not a government park and they receive only public donations and admission fees. The park is managed by the Crazy Horse Foundation and has a board that guides the Ziolkowski family on how to proceed with projects.  The park has added a lot of museum type displays on Native American culture, history, etc. Ruth Ziolkowski, the wife of the artist decided back in the late '90s to completely finish the face of Crazy Horse and that really increased the visitors per year and therefore the money they had to work with.

About the time Mt. Rushmore was completed, Chief Standing Bear had the vision and desire to have a mountain carving similar to Mt. Rushmore to honor Native American heros.  He got with artist Korczak Ziolkowski, who only worked a short while on the Rushmore project, and convinced him to take on the project.  Standing Bear had no money for the project, just an idea.  Korczak and his family has done the rest with guidance from the tribes.  

The project is huge.  The face is 1/3 larger than the heads at Rushmore.  When completed there will be the horse's head, Crazy Horse's head, outstretched hand, and both sides will be completely carved. The tour guide said they would not complete the back end of the horse because they would be inundated with politicians coming to worship :-)

The picture we took of Crazy Horse are on Flickr.

We did get back to Mt. Rushmore for a lighting ceremony, but it was cold and the lights don't do much for the carvings compared to the sun.

Our timing was perfect arriving in Spearfish when we did.  Peter and Cindy Ostman had just moved there from Holly, Springs, NC and were settled in waiting for the moving truck with all the rest of their stuff.  So they had time to show us around.  We hit Deadwood, Sturgis, and Spearfish over the next few days.  On a day when the Ostmans were tied up, Martha and I drove over the Devils Tower.

We also went to the Fish Hatchery in Spearfish which was established when the government was trying to get rainbow trout to proliferate in areas outside of Yellowstone River.  Nice little museum and preserved director's house.

The photos are on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jfabernathy/albums/72157669019458232

Mammoth Site, Hot Springs, SD

On Monday, we went to Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD.  We'd been there in 1993 with the boys. Since we'd been to multiple archaeological sites we knew more and understood the tour a lot more than in the past.

A lot of tours have changed in 23 years including this one.  First they have a theater with a 15 minute video to tell the history of the the site.  It was very well done and a good prelude to the tour.  Second they gave everyone audio headsets so we could all hear the tour guide clearly, since they run multiple groups through at staggered times.  The headsets eliminate the interference with the other groups leaders.

The site, like the one in Waco Texas, is a building constructed over the dig site.  However, in Hot Springs, they have known for years that the site of interest was a sinkhole whose boundaries are defined by a red shellfish clay.  So when they built the current structure in 1988, they just covered the land inside the red clay ring.

They have already found 61 mammoths, both Wooly and Columbian.  They also have found other animals like bears, camels, and llamas.  The large collection of animals is due to the fact that the sinkhole had sharp edges of slippery red clay, so when the animals slipped into the pool of water they couldn't get out.

The site is classified as an in situ archaeological site which means they leave as much uncovered material in place to be viewed.  They remove fossils that need better preservation and they cover some in plaster casts if needed.  The photos on Flickr would make a lot more sense if I had the commentary we heard on the tour, but I don't have that.

Badlands National Park

We drove out to the Badlands on Sunday.  In the past we had driven out on I-90 past Wall, SD and taken the main entrance, but this time we went in on a back road and got a different perspective.  We saw the usual stops at the main entrance and the visitor center, but then took off on a long loop. Along the way we stopped at a fossil education walk and met a park ranger who was from Charlotte, NC.  He is a retired teacher from East Mecklenburg High and worked the summers for the park service.  We talked for a while to catch up on stuff back home.

After we completed half of the loop, we were close to Wall, SD and decided to go the Wall Drugstore for a required visit when you come to this part of the world. They post road signs advertising free ice water, 5 cent coffee, and homemade donuts for hundreds of miles on I-90 and other roads.  It's expanded since we were there in 1993.   It was half the town then, so they basically are the town now.

We drove back to the park and picked up the loop again, but this time it was a gravel road for 20 miles.  This ride was along the rim and where the buffalo roamed.  Also there was a prairie dog town with hundreds of their hills.  We got a lot of pictures on Flickr, and I've already posted a buffalo video to Facebook.

We saw a big storm building in the distance and got some pictures of that as well.  It's amazing how far you can see things out here.  The storm was 20 miles away when we photoed it.

Mt. Rushmore

At this point we have only been to Mt. Rushmore during the day.  We want to go to the nightly lighting presentation, but the weather's not cooperating.

We drove over to Mt. Rushmore via the Custer State park entrance which took us through more tunnels and a lot of great views, but lots of switchbacks and climbs and descents on narrow roads. However, this path gave us different views of Mt. Rushmore Monument from very far away and even just as you come out of a tunnel.  On Flickr, I put some of those views from the drive over.

The monument park was busy, but well organized.  They had workers mixing the cars into the lanes to keep the cars moving and into the parking lot.  Now they have a 6 section parking deck with a guy telling you where to go.  He took one look at my truck and routed me to the top of the parking garage. They remade the support building since we were there in 1993.  In 1994 they added a new amphitheater, and in 1998 they added a 3 story building that overlooked the amphitheater to contain a museum, 2 movie theaters, and restrooms.  At the entrance they added 3 food places with one being an outdoor cafe.  It's promoted as a place to eat and watch the lighting at night.  It's all very well done.

None of your National Park passes are good here.  They change $11 for parking and admission is free. The parking pass is good until the end of the year.    

Custer State Park

We spent late Friday afternoon driving thru part of South Dakota's Custer State Park.  It's one of the best state parks in the country, in my opinion.  It's got great views, wildlife, and places to pull off the road and get out to photograph and explore.  Since we were camped in Hermosa on the west side of the park, we went in through that side on SD-36 and took the wildlife loop first.  It's mostly high plains that the bison like so the driving is easy with lots of curvy roads, but easy.  We saw bison, prairie dogs, wild burros, and antelope.  We'll probably do this loop again either early morning or dusk to try to see more wildlife.

After we came out of the loop, we took the Needles Highway which is more challenging.  Lots of narrow roads, switchback, and steep climbs and descents.  Since there were trees on the outside the drive around the switchbacks was easier to me visually, so not as much panic as San Juan Skyway. We even went up to the top of Coolidge Lookout on a gravel road.  Great views, but that ride was a little hairy.  We even made it through the Needles tunnel. I had measured the width of the truck and it was 96", so with that tunnel being officially at 100", I had 2" to spare on each side.  I slowly inched through and there was a guy from Tennessee standing there watching me who had just driven the tunnel in exactly in the same model Ram 3500. We stopped and talked to them and took some more photos.  There wasn't much traffic so we could stop and stage pictures.

After the Needles highway ended, we went toward Hill City, Mt. Rushmore, and Keystone.  We drove past the KOA Mt. Rushmore that we had camped at in 1993 with the kids.  Still looked the same except for a huge central office complex that was new to me.  Also went past the entrance to the Mt. Rushmore Monument and it was still busy late in the evening.  Went into Keystone and it had a lot more tourist trap establishments that in 1993 for sure.  Made it back to camp in time for drinks and dinner.

I'll post something on Mt. Rushmore separately but we will make multiple trips there; one in the morning sun and one at the evening lighting ceremony.  Need to get a clear night for the second visit.

Photos are on Flickr.

I hate my GPS!

Back east with the relatively close distances between places, destinations, and multiple paths, your GPS sometimes chooses odd paths, but it's not too bad.

Out in the middle of nowhere Wyoming, the GPS will pick a secondary road instead of a US highway because it calculates it's a little closer.

That's how we got 26 miles down a secondary road that was okay, beautiful farm country and no traffic right up until the dreaded End of Pavement sign.  There aren't any pull-offs on this road, so I had to back down a dirt road until I could find a possible turn around.  That's an hour and a lot of diesel I'll never get back.

So now I will never trust a GPS for anything.  It's just a confirmation that our printed atlas is right and something to ridicule when it doesn't agree with our better manually planned route.

Our day reminded me of the GEICO Insurance Tarzan commercial.. GEICO Tarzan

What a drive from Grand Junction, CO to Cheyenne, WY!

We got up early on Wednesday to make a long drive up to Cheyenne, WY.  It is a good halfway point to Hermosa, SD where we will base camp for a while to revisit a lot of our favorites.

I must say that the drive across Colorado on I-70 at least to Denver is spectacular.  You start at the Utah border which looks like a lifeless planet except for a few bushes growing on the lower levels with spectacular walls of red rock 100s of feet high.  By the time we got to Grand Junction you could see how the Colorado River nourished the valley so fruit trees and wine grapes could grow, but you still had the bare rock mountains on each side of the valley.   You basically follow the Colorado river for most of the trip.  Sometimes the valley is wide and you can speed along at 70-75 MPH.  Then the valley narrows to just enough room for the railroad tracks, 4 lanes of traffic and the river.  As we got to the skiing region like Vail, Breckenridge, etc. you proceeded up and down from the valley at 8000' to the peaks of 10,000'.  I wish I could have watched more but the drive was intense.  The interstate made it much easier than your basic 2 lane mountain road, but the curves were tight for the highway speed and you had to deal with the slower 18 wheelers and the scared flatlanders.

I was never more glad to have my Ram 3500 Diesel DRW.  I had no issues with pulling the hills or driving down the steep grades with full automatic speed and engine brake control.   I hardly had to use my disc brakes.  Since I'm at GVW or 24,000lb, I'm under the limit that has to drive at 45 MPH. We passed with ease a number of Motorhomes and trailers being pulled with less truck than I have and too many of them were broken down on the side of the road.  Hopefully they were only overheated and would be able to continue after they cooled down.

If you fly into Vail to golf or ski you really miss the experience.  The amount of terrain changes we saw in 6 hours of driving was incredible. If you don't want to camp out here, I'd suggest flying into Denver and renting a 4x4 and just drive all over Colorado.

BTW, the slopes at Vail were still covered with snow, but I didn't see anyone skiing.

We picked a campground just into Wyoming call Terry Bison Ranch.  They have a thousand head of buffalo, plus cattle, camels and other game.  Great place for kids, a lot of activities.  But for us it's a one night parking place that takes Passport America Discount.

Grand Junction, CO Wineries

We needed breaks in our trip from Dolores, CO to Hot Springs, SD so we picked our first stop at Grand Junction, CO because we saw they had a large number of wineries.  A good enough reason to stop.

We camped at Junction West RV park.  It seems nice enough. As long as they have full hook-ups, and nothing blocking my satellite dish setup, we are good.  We are both fighting colds, so we are moving slow these days.  Used Yelp and Trip Advisors to pick a few wineries to visit.

We picked Masion La Belle Vie because their owner grew up in Loire Valley in France.  Their wine was good.  They had a lot of reds.  The dryness and altitude is good for the big red grapes here.  The photos above are from Masion La Belle Vie.

We picked Hermosa Vineyards next and got lost getting there because we put their address into the GPS.  Bad move.  We found it and it was not picturesque like the first winery.  It looked closed.  Nothing but a metal building.  While we were getting out of the truck the garage doors on the building opened to reveal a tasting room and the owner/winemaker standing there.

This was a pleasant surprise.  Great wines, but expensive.  He has a loyal local following so he has not distribution, no wholesale or wine club shipments; just the tasting room sales.  We has a long conversation about everything wine related.  At the end, we got into a discussion on bourbon and he mentioned a local distillery they won awards in Kentucky.

So next we went to a bourbon tasting.  It was very good, but not worth the $60 they wanted for a bottle.

We also found a liquor store that had Buffalo Trace for $22, so I bought all he had.

It was a good day for a couple of alcoholics. :-)

Scared to death

Scared to death?, really?  Yes, and I'll try to put into words what that's like.

We've been taking it slow up here at 8100' because they don't have any air to breath so everything we do is like working out at a gym.  Yes, I remember what that was like.  We spent the first day running back down 30 miles to Cortez, CO to shop for essentials and gather tourist info. Later we cooked out on the grill.  The second day we drove up to Telluride to look around and eat at Brown Dog Pizza. That ride over a peak at 10,000' was a little hairy due to the drop offs next to the road bothering me, but I made it through it.

The problems started on Friday when we decided to drive the San Juan Skyway loop, 240 miles. The photo at the top can only give you a sense of my problem because when it got really bad Martha couldn't get a photo because she was on the side that was the closest to the edge.  This picture shows how the roads has just 2 feet from the white line to the drop off of several thousand feet.  Note that they don't use many guard rails in Colorado.  When they have enough edge to put a guard rail they figure you don't need it and when there isn't enough room to put a rail, well...

I have a small problem with heights.  It's sort of bothers me to look out from a balcony on the 50th floor but the wall or balcony rail makes we feel safer so I can enjoy the view.  Same thing with scenic put-outs where I can get the great view without having to be 3' from the edge. So to get by areas like the one at the top, I just keep looking at the road ahead and stare at the yellow line.  I think my fear of heights gets amplified when driving at 10,000' because the lack of air makes me light headed.

Since we had driven to Telluride the previous day we decided to make the loop counterclockwise and go down to Durango, then back up to Silverton.  The first 3/4 of the drive from Durango to Silverton was easy and picturesque. But the last few miles were filled with switchbacks and drop offs that started at the white line.  Literally, the white paint was the last part of the road with a thousand foot drop off.  It also didn't help that a lot of the ascending left turn curves around a point immediately descended .  So visually it looked like the road ended.  The speed limit was 10 mph on these turns but that was way too fast for me.  Just staring at the yellow line was not working at this point so I waited until there was no opposing traffic and I'd ride into their lane.

When we drove back down the mountain to Silverton which was just a high valley of 9300' we stopped at the visitor center mostly to collect my nerves and rest.  The nice lady at the visitor center told us that the drive up to Silverton was nothing compared to the drive on over to Ouray on the Million Dollar highway.  The next time I want to go to Silverton, I'll take the train out of Durango which was $100. Looks cheap to me, now.

Leaving Silverton I could see the start of the climb we'd have to make, but since I saw a Ram 3500 like mine pulling a 40' Redwood RV I figured it couldn't be that bad.  About 5 miles out of Silverton on the way to Ouray, they had traffic stopped both ways for construction. They were blasting and removing rock.  We sat for 30 minutes before the follow-me car led us through.  This part was not bad because you had all the construction trucks on your right as you went by.  But after we got past that, every few miles you'd have the switchbacks and outside peaks that had no margin past the white line just like the ride into Silverton.

I hear the views are spectacular but I never saw anything but the yellow line.  When there was room for a scenic overview we'd pull off and take a few photos.  We've put them on Flickr.

All of these small tourist towns like Telluride, Silverton, and Ouray are visions out of the 1800's when mining and drinking were the major activities.  We could have spent a lot of time in each, but having had lunch and explored a little in Telluride the day before, we didn't stop much in the other towns on the Skyway.  We wanted to do the whole loop in one day.

After Ouray, the rest of the drive is more high pasture and much easier to handle.  So we rode past Telluride to our campground a little past Rico.

Not sure where the people who live in these towns shop because other than tourist shops and convenient stores we saw no where to buy groceries except Cortez and Durango.  No Safeways, Krogers, Walmarts or Harris-Teeters.

Now that I've safely survived the San Juan Skyway, I can tell you that while the views are spectacular, I will NOT be driving it again.  Those of you who decide to do it can just post your photos and videos.  In fact put a GoPro video camera on your dash and then we can all relive the horror of the drive again.

Moving from Grand Canyon to Dolores, CO

After spending a week in Williams, AZ at the Grand Canyon Hotel and RV park (and kennel) we had heard enough trains in the middle of the night.  Great park, but too many trains.  This hotel/RV park also own the Grand Canyon Railroad and are on contract to the National Park to run the train into the park everyday.  They seemed to keep the RV park and hotel full most nights.  We had a lot of fun in Williams at all the Route 66 restaurants, bars, shops, and art galleries.

So we left Williams on Monday morning and drove up the edge of the Painted Desert and through Monument Valley.

One of the oddities of this trip was, we became the tourist attraction during a lunch stop at Burger King.  We stopped at the BK in Kayenta, AZ and it was a large one.  They had several buses and RVs parked in the back in a big gravel lot.  The buses were filled with vacationers from Switzerland and they had never seen a fifth wheel 40' long being pulled by a heavy duty pickup.  So several of the tourist came up and took pictures of us and the trailer and had tons of questions.

We overnighted in Mexican Hat so we could have a steak at the Swingin Steak Restaurant.  We got there early enough to get some photos of some of the rock formations on the edge of a thunderstorm. Made for some interesting pictures.  I have those on Flickr.

On Tuesday we drove on to Dolores, CO and picked Priest Gulch RV campground on the Dolores river in the San Juan National Forest.  We heard about the campground from new friends we made in Williams, AZ.  Charlie and Jennie are also Montana RV owners.  They also told us about a road trip to do up in southern Colorado; the San Juan Skyway.  We will be doing that this week.  More on that later.

The Grand Canyon

We had a perfect day to visit the Grand Canyon.  The weather was cool, sunny, and clear. That made for better pictures and easier walking.  We drove up instead of riding the train, which would have been fun, but it's would have limited our time in the park.  We got there before the train arrived, but had to wait 20 minutes to get past the gate.  We had the Senior Lifetime pass which was only $10 when we got it, but it saved us $30 at the Grand Canyon National Park.  They had 4 lanes and all were 20 cars deep.  I'm glad we were here now and not in the summer.

After finding a parking place we jump on the Blue shuttle bus to go to the visit center/bus depot. They have 3 bus loops, the Blue Shuttle loops around the middle of the park and connects to the Red and Orange loops.  The Red loop takes you to the Hermits Rest out west and the Orange Loop takes you east to Yaki Point.  The Visitor center is walking distance to most of the rest of the park.  But that's a matter of point of view.  We road the bus to the visitor center with 4 girls with backpacks who had just finished 150 miles hike to the bottom and back up, and around the Colorado river basin.

There were tons of foreign visitors and too many of them climbed out past the safety barriers to take selfies.  I ask a Ranger if they had many fall and he said they had more than you'd guess, but only the fatalities make the national news.

The trip out to Hermits Rest is only accessible in the busy season by the Red shuttle bus and was a part of the park we've never seen.  It is where you have the best view of the Colorado River from 5000' above.

On the way out of the park we took the east exit past a number of view points that were also new to me.  At the end we went to the Desert View Watchtower. The east exit took us past much better views than the route we took into the park from Williams.  We exited through Cameron and then south to Flagstaff.  We stopped in Flagstaff at Cracker Barrel, which was our first stop at a national chain restaurant this trip, but we needed the taste of home cooking and there isn't any out west except at Cracker Barrel.

All in all a great day.  While I'm not a fan of crowds, the Park service handles them well, at least in the spring.  I have photos uploaded to Flickr, here.

Williams and Sedona

We had a long drive from Benzon, AZ up to Williams, AZ on Monday and picked the Grand Canyon Railroad and Hotel RV park. We got a good rate for 7 days so we are using it as a base camp. I'm surprised how busy they are.  Can't imagine what the summer looks like.

Since we bypassed Sedona on the way up, we decided to go back down there in just the truck on Tuesday to see what all the fuss was about.  We'd heard it was a must see.  Well, not so much in my mind.  Our first mistake was to take the scenic route 89A down from Flagstaff, thinking it was, well scenic. 

The road was very curvy with very few pull off for taking pictures.  If you found a wide spot in the road it was already taken.  Keep in mind this is Tuesday in early May, not July 4th weekend.  We found a few pull-offs, that charged to park and take pictures and they were full.

So I was not in a great frame of mind when we came into the "city".  Finally found a public parking lot, but not designed for trucks, so we sort of cheated and used Martha's still valid handicap parking sticker since there were lots of those in the lot.

Next we hiked to the main drag for some lunch and found a nice place.  Our goal was a place with a view.  Found one, took some photos while we enjoyed the most expensive hamburger and grilled cheese & mushroom sandwich I've every seen. 

After lunch we looked into taking a jeep tour off road in hopes to get a better view of the red mountains.  $90 per person!!  You can get a special deal on Southwest Airlines cheaper than that.  So we passed on that.  Maybe I can find a video of the trip on Youtube.

So we headed back up to Williams and stopped to take some pictures and got a good one of the high peak you see out of Flagstaff.  It was still snow covered. (Link to Flickr photos)

After a stop for groceries, we went bar hopping.  The first one was clearly a tourist place.  $7 for a craft beer that made me miss the pubs back home with their $4 beers that are clearly better.

On to a local bar next.  It's famous we are told, mainly because it's the oldest bar in Williams, first to reopen after Prohibition, and has a theater as part of the bar that was the first one in Arizona.  It's 110 years old, if I remember right.  It's called Sultana.  Met a retired local couple who moved here 5 years ago after retiring and RVing around the USA for 6 years.  Picked Williams because it was a small interesting town.  They still ride their Harley's up to Sturgis, SD when the need arises. 

So the day ended on a positive note aided by mass quantities of alcohol.

People you meet

This won't be new information to my RVing friends as they already know all this stuff. We've stopped at all kinds of RV campground on this trip and met a lot of folks.  All have been friendly and outgoing.  Much more outgoing than in any regular neighborhood. It's so typical of RVer's in my opinion.  It's probably due to the fact that you aren't in any place too long and if you want any human interaction you have to be willing to just walk up and start talking to folks.

The parks we've been at the most have been SKP co-op parks.  SKP is synonym for Escapees which is the real name of the RV club. As co-op parks, all the lots are leased by the owners and visitors like us can rent the sites when the owners are out traveling.  In the southwest most of these parks are full in the winter when it's cold back home and almost empty in the summer when it's hot here.

These co-op parks are interesting.  The lease holder can add little building on the lot for all kinds of purposes besides storage.  They can be living rooms, laundry rooms, porches, etc. Whatever they need space for when they are here for the six months they are here in the winter.

These parks have tons of activities in the winter to keep folks busy.  In addition to that some of the people find jobs or volunteer work to fill their time.  I met a retired attorney yesterday who filled his time in winter with being an arbitrator for civil cases under $10k for the county court system.

It's also interesting what people do in the summers.  Some just go visiting and touring around the country, somewhere it's cooler than the southwest.  Others have jobs lined up.  Working for a state or national park.  This usually means they get all their campground fees paid, and sometimes a small salary.  But most important to some is the access they get in the parks.  They are cleared to go where park visitors can't go and see some things that aren't viewed by normal visitors.  They are also there for all the great events, like animal migrations or births of young, and don't have to get lucky to catch something interesting the way normal visitors have to.  Some people have co-op sites up north and here in the southwest and just move as the weather changes.

Obviously the folks that do this are full timers, meaning they sold their house and everything they owned that wouldn't fit in the RV.  As one fellow I talked to yesterday said, he traded possessions for experiences.  A large percentage of these folks are experts at living inexpensively.  Most have solar so they can live for a week or so without any hookups for as little as $5 a day. They also know all the great food places where locals eat and avoid the high priced tourist chain restaurants.

A trend I found interesting at SKP Saguaro Co-op in Benson, AZ is having 2 campers.  A number of these folks have setup their original RV like a 5th wheel trailer on the site and have never moved it.  So they buy RV's like Class Bs, or truck campers so they can go boon-docking as a group for short trips while they are in residence at the Co-op.  They have a big storage area near the campground to park their second RV or boats, etc.

Ft. Huachuca

We took a quick trip over to Ft. Huachuca, AZ.  The fort dates back to when the frontier settlers need protection from the Apache and Mexicans.  It became the fort that trained and housed the 10 Cavalry commonly called the Buffalo Soldiers.  Until desegregation come to the Army after WWII, the black cavalry soldiers were all trained and commanded from Ft. Huachuca.

When the army got serious about electronic signal intelligence, they needed a electronically quiet place to do their research.  The valley where Ft Huachuca is located provided that dead zone without much interference.   So beside the frontier history, and the Buffalo Soldier history, there is the SIGINT history and current work for Military Intelligence (MI).

Because it's an active military base, we had to clear security and get badges to enter.  The fort is right under some mountains and has a great view in all directions.  We went up the top and took some photos looking into the valley.



There are really 2 museums.  The legacy museum and the MI museum.  We did both and we enjoyed both.  The legacy museum is located in a part of the fort that is original.  The museum is housed in the old officers club.



The MI museum is in a more modern section of the fort.  It's located in the same building as the MI Library and has a lot of interesting artifacts like a piece of the Berlin Wall, an Enigma machine, etc. I remember when Intel shipped tons of Xenix 8086 computers to Ft. Huachuca for use in MI.  I never knew what they used them for.

I posted some other photos on Flickr

Tombstone revisited

On Monday we went back to Tombstone to finish looking at stuff that was too busy on Saturday. The city was less crowded but they still had a nice crowd. Everything was still open.

We went to the Courthouse museum and looked at a lot of the artifacts.  It's interesting how the names you remember from the Tombstone movies are listed all over town, but when you dig into the facts you find the truth or a better, more believable story.

The courthouse had some of the old rooms still furnished as in the 1880's and the courtroom had been restored back to the 1880 look.


Next we when to Big Nose Kate's for lunch. Nice old western bar. The food was surprising good. Also got to try some Prickly Pear Tequila.


After lunch we went to a unique museum. Its big draw is the oldest rose bush.



The owners of the museum are the original owners of the house and they saved everything, so there some great family photos and artifacts. Like one the original owner and his son sitting with Geronimo at a peace conference. Also one of the family members was a Doolittle raider in WWII.

I have a lot of photos on Flickr

Titan Missile Museum

This was a unique museum. There can't be any other missile museum on a Titan II silo site with a Titan II missile inside because the Salt II treaty that Reagan signed with the USSR required us to blow up all the other silos and dismantling all the missiles. There is a special exception for this silo and missile. It's allowed to exist for educational purposes, but the lid of the silo must be opened so the Russians can use satellites to verify the missile is not active, plus they can come over and spend $8.50 for a ticket and take the tour like we did.

What you see when you get to the museum is the building they built to house the offices, gift shop and briefing room, all of which didn't exist when the site was active.  Everything else is underground with lids a few feet above the ground.  There are also a lot of nice cactus beds that were flowering this time of year.


You go into the silo via a set of 55 steps the way the airmen did when they reported to work. There is also a handicapped elevator that use to be for freight.


Since the silo is hardened against a direct nuclear strike there was a lot of thick walls made of reinforced concrete and steel.  Doors were 4', 6', and 8' feet thick as you got deeper into the silo.


Once we got into the control room where the officers would launch the missiles, the guide, who actually worked there when he was in the Air Force, walked us through the process of how they would get the command to launch a missile if it were every required. There were alarms, flashing light and recorded messages to put a little real life into the tour.

Next we went to the part of the silo where the missile was housed, a few hundred feet away through a tunnel.



From the photos you can see we were about half way up the missile looking up.

Next we went outside to see the missile from above, which you could do because the large concrete lid was slide open.


Inside the museum there were a few interesting displays including the ones related to some movies shot at the museum including one of the Star Trek movies.

I have a number of additional photos on Flickr

Tombstone, AZ

So on our first day camping in Benson, AZ we decided to recon Tombstone. We knew it would take more that one visit to see everything we wanted to see. I've been a fan of the history of the town and loved all the movies about Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and the Cowboys.

The picture above is taken in the Crystal Palace Saloon. We had lunch there and loved the decor.



There are a lot of folks in period costume like the fellow at the visitor center with Martha.



Some of the characters have jobs like the visitor center guy or the gun fighters in the shows, but the fellow above just dresses up and plays the part because it's what he likes to do.


These were the real gun fighters in town. They were the local Arizona Rangers. No six shooters for them. They looked like Glock's to me.

We are going back some more to see the museums and gun fights, but for now, here's a link to the photos I took on the first day. Flickr