US Travel Journal Part 6

August 27, 2008

We awoke to dark gray cloudy skies and rain. Ya, sightseeing isn’t much fun in the rain. We originally, planned on going to the east side of Glacier NP but cuz of the rain we decided to give it a miss and head east to drier, warmer weather. We’re going to visit Badlands NP in South Dakota first so the best route there is I-90. We drove for about 8 hours today before David just became too tired to drive anymore. We drove through Kalispell, Missoula, and Butte before stopping about 70 miles west of Billings at a rest stop. We ran the generator so we could watch movies. We watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Match Point. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was good but very trippy to me. I guess it is difficult to understand the drug scene when one has never been in it. :P I really like Match Point. I was surprised by the ending, but I won’t give any spoilers here for those of you who haven’t seen it. :)

Well, that’s all for today. Off to bed! Night. :)


August 28, 2008

Sleeping in is a wonderful thing! :) Especially when you awake to blue skies…ahhh! :)

We left the rest stop about 10:30 am and headed into Billings, Montana. We’ve driven over 3,000 miles so the RV is in need of an oil change. We figured since Billings is the largest city in Montana that it would have a place for RV’s. And, sure enough, it did. We saw a sign on the way into the city. It was easy to find and we didn’t have to wait. We were in and out of there in about 30 minutes and back on the road heading east. Outside of Billings is the Little Bighorn Battlefield in the Crow Indian Reservation.

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This is where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was killed during the battle. So, we decided to check it out. We were able to use our America the Beautiful Annual Pass so entry was free. After having a quick lunch in the parking lot, we watched an instructional video on the event in the visitor center.


After walking around the Custer National Cemetery, we went on a bus tour of the battlefields. There’s one road that leads from the Little Bighorn Battlefield to the Reno-Benteen Battlefield. After this educational tour, we walked around for a bit checking out the memorials there for the “White Man” and the Native Americans that were killed in the battle.


Once we saw all there was to see, we continued heading to Wyoming.

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David wanted steak since we were in Wyoming. So, I looked in the AAA Tour Book for a place to eat in the next big town which was Sheridan. I found a place called Wyoming’s Ribs and Chophouse. I called and made reservations and got directions. They said they were located on what I thought was Elder but was really Alger. And the AAA Tour Book said it was on Broadway in the Sheridan Inn. So, I got all confused and first we missed Alger, and turned on the next street and I was trying to lead David back over to Alger and we ended up on Broadway, so I thought we were on the correct street. When I saw the Inn on Broadway, I thought that was where the restaurant was. So, we ended up parking by the Inn, but the actual restaurant was on Alger, about 1/2 a mile away. The lady on the phone had mentioned that there was a theater on the same street where we could park so I saw that and found the restaurant in time for our reservation.

The service was really good! As soon as our drinks dropped to almost empty, our waiter was there refilling them. The food was really good too. David opted for ribs instead of steak, mashed potatoes and shrimp. The meat just fell off the bone. He really enjoyed his dinner. I decided on the pot roast over mashed potatoes. I got a huge plate of meat! I wasn’t expecting that. I should have just got sides instead. I was only able to eat about 1/4 of my meal so I got it to go. I should be really good on tortillas. :) We were too full for dessert so paid the bill and walked back to the RV.

It was starting to get dark once we got back on the road, so we stopped at a rest stop just past Buffalo, WY for the night. We started to re-watch the HBO Deadwood series to get us excited about Deadwood. I’m hoping we can make it to Badlands NP, SD tomorrow and find a spot. Hopefully it won’t be too difficult with it being Labor Day weekend and all. K, that’s all for tonight. Gotta digest my food! :P Night!


August 29, 2008

We woke up fairly early and got on the road before 8 am. We continued to head east on I-90, only stopping in Gillette for gas. We could see Devils Tower way off in the distance from the highway, but we decided to see it on the way back. Instead of heading to Badlands NP today, we decided to stay the holiday weekend in Deadwood, SD.

There is a KOA in Deadwood that has internet and offers a shuttle service into the town. We arrived there, secured a spot, and parked the RV. And, boy was it a tight fit!! But, David knows how to park this huge vehicle pretty well.

The first shuttle of the day was at noon, so after buying our round trip tickets, we hopped on and rode into Deadwood.

Deadwood itself is very well kept up. The Main Street is lined with nice brick which matches with several of the brick buildings along the street. Several of the businesses are named after famous people who lived in Deadwood such as Wild Bill Hickok and Charley Utter. We walked around the city several times. We were able to find the saloon where Wild Bill was killed.

They have a mini museum in the basement of the saloon which tells the story. We had lunch in the Gem Steakhouse and Saloon located in the Mineral Palace.

The town has mini gun battles at different locations, so we watched the first one of the day. Funny enough, it was performed outside the Hampton Inn. :) Those guns are loud! They make me jump. :P Next, we located the visitor center and picked up a map. This gave us the location of the cemetery where Wild Bill and Calamity Jane is located. We started to walk toward the cemetery and got side tracked by the Adams Museum. That museum is packed with relics of the history of Deadwood.

After spending some time in there, we were both exhausted so we decided to do a little shopping, cooled off at a neat restaurant / bar and head back to the RV. We made dinner and watched some more Deadwood.

Tomorrow we hope to see the cemetery and maybe pan for some gold! That’s all for tonight! The heat wore me out. Good night.


August 30, 2008

Hmm…I hope I’m not catching a cold. I just could not get up this morning and then I felt out of sorts all morning. David has been fighting off a cold for the past week or so, so maybe it’s starting to make its way to me. I hope not! :)

Since I was feeling under the weather today, we stayed in camp this morning and watched some Deadwood while I relaxed. I started to feel better after lunch so we headed into town. David wanted to play some blackjack so we scouted around the casinos for a proper table. After a long search we determined that most of the casinos in Deadwood contain slots and not much else. There were pretty slim pickings as far as blackjack tables. We finally found a couple and David had his fun. :) We returned to that neat restaurant / bar from yesterday and sat outside instead. It was fun to watch the people walk by.

It was pretty hot again today so we decided against walking up to the cemetery. We’re gonna get up early tomorrow and do that. We did a little bit more shopping, found a casino that has free soda (crazy huh!) and caught the shuttle back to camp. After we let our dinner digest a bit, we went down to the pool and spa. The pool was too cold for me so I opted for the spa. David tried to get into the pool, but we soon joined me in the spa. It was so nice! My muscles are very relaxed now. We chatted for a bit in the spa with a father and son who were from Iowa. After the spa, we came back to the RV, took showers, watched some Deadwood and now I’m heading to bed. I promised David I would be really to leave the RV by 8 am so I need my sleep. :P Night!


August 31, 2008

I woke up pretty late this morning. I guess that’s what happens when I stay up til 2 am. :) It was pretty cloudy today even with some rain, so we stayed in the RV and watched Deadwood for most of the day. I’ve been adding pictures in my previous blogs so that they are easier to read. :D But, I can’t post them until David’s finished with them. Not feeling so hot this evening. I think I’m still fighting off a cold. Still managed to do laundry tho. Anyway, I’m heading to bed. We’ll be leaving Deadwood in the morning and heading to Badlands National Park. Looks like the rain we left in Glacier has finally caught up with us. Hopefully, it won’t rain too much. Night. :D


September 1, 2008

It was misty and foggy when we woke up. Our plan is to check out the Badlands National Park today. If it is cloudy there like it is here, the pictures aren’t going to be very good. Might have to wait to take pics until tomorrow morning.

We unhooked in the mist and left Deadwood before 11 am. We had had enough of Deadwood and still didn’t make it up to the cemetery. Oh well. :P

We headed back north to I-90 and drove through the town of Sturgis which is a big American motorcycle town. They have a huge event every year in August. I’m glad I missed that!!

We headed east on I-90. As we got closer to Wall, our exit for Badlands NP, we saw a mass amount of signs for Wall Drug. I looked it up in the AAA book and it turns out that they used to have signs for this store all over the country and even overseas. It was the first to advertize free water to travelers. So we decided to check it out since we were here.

The store itself was several blocks long containing a gift shop, a couple restaurants, an ice cream parlor, a doughnut shop, and several various shops containing items anywhere form fudge to jackalope head mounts.

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In the back, they had a few more shops, a jackalope you could sit on and a T-Rex. Ya, it’s a pretty weird place but it’s famous. We had to get some fresh doughnuts and saltwater taffy. Both were really good.


From Wall, it was a short trip to the entrance of Badlands NP. The lighting wasn’t very good because of the overcast, so we drove the 45 minutes through the park to the Ben Reifel Visitor Center on the eastern end of the park.

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We had lunch in the RV before heading inside. There, we watched an educational video on the park. It was neat to see the park in all four seasons. It even snows here in the winter. The Badlands was formed from erosion due to the rain. The soil erodes away at a rate of an inch a year! After the movie, we drove over to the Cedar Pass campground. It was pretty empty so we picked out a spot and used the automated machine to pay for our spot. Neat huh!

The storm looked like it was starting to break a bit so we decided to drive back through the park and stop at the lookout points to take pictures. There are several lookout points throughout the 60 minute drive on the Badlands Loop and each had a convenient spot for an RV to park. We stopped at the fossils trail lookout and walked the quarter mile trail, looking at the fossil cases along the way. The Castle trail (a 5 mile trail) started here so we walked about a half mile of it and turned back. The ground of the park is dry and cracked from the hot sun while the mountains around it remind me of Bryce NP. It’s really cool how the water has sculpted the mountains and the landscape.


We stopped at a second turn out and walked to the overlook there. We even saw a couple rabbits here. Lastly, we stopped at the Pinnacles lookout and had dinner. It was really windy here being on a plateau. We waited here until the sun set in hopes of the sun coming out for sunset pics. Sadly, it stayed behind the clouds. It even started to rain. As it got dark, we admitted defeat and drove the drive back to the campground. Along the way, we could see frogs jumping a cross the road. Also, we could see the lightning in the distance.

We’re hoping the storm will blow over tonight and we’ll have good weather for picture taking tomorrow. Wish me luck! I’m heading to bed early. Night!


September 2, 2008

Man, we accomplished a lot today. Where to begin?

We went to bed about 9:00 pm last night, so David woke me up at 4 am with his constant peeking out of the blinds to see what the weather was like. I remember at one point he realized I was awake and informed me that the crazy wind that we had experienced during the night blew all the clouds away. Then he continued to peek through the blinds until I told him to stop or get up. :P He let me sleep for about another hour and I got up at 5 am. He was already up and ready and already taking pictures of the morning twilight. I made some tea to warm me up (gotta put the comforter back on the bed tonight!) and put my contacts in. At about 5:30 am, we pulled out of camp and started heading west along the Badlands loop. We stopped quickly at Prairie Wind Overlook and then headed over to the Panorama Point to wait for the sun to come up. There was a small group of clouds over the eastern horizon so it took a little bit longer than usual for the sunrise. Right when we got up to the lookout for the Panorama Point the sun rose out of the clouds.

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We continued to drive west, stopping at some overlook points and completing the drive at Pinnacles Overlook.


We stopped here and look some pictures before heading back east along the same road. David had it all planned out on what areas would be best to take pictures at depending on how high the sun was up. We basically stopped at practically all the overlooks and points on the way back to the visitor center. We stopped at a few more lookout points along this route as well.


From there, we headed north to complete the loop back to I-90. We had read the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in the Badlands NP newsletter. We stopped at the information at the Minuteman Missile Visitor Contact Station and got directions to the Historic Site and the Missile Silo. We hurried over to the Historic site and managed to get on the last tour of the day.

The Historic Site was pretty neat. The site was de-activated in 1992 so we didn’t have to worry about anyone dropping a nuclear bomb on us while on the tour. :P A ranger led the first part of the tour, showing the group around the station that was topside. The building housed the living quarters and dining area for the launch controllers and above ground staff. Next, we took an elevator down to the launch control center.

This second part of the tour was lead by a retired launch controller himself. He talked about the standard procedures that they went through while on duty and explained the different equipment in the control center. He said that they really didn’t have much to do while on their shift. After that, they took us back up to the surface. We next drove up the highway a bit to the missile silo.

This site was unmanned but had a cell phone self guided tour. We listened to that in the RV after we were finished there. It was sooo windy that you wouldn’t have been able to hear anything on the cell phone. To continue on with our military themed day, we continued to head west to Ellsworth AFB where the South Dakota Air and Space Museum. We didn’t make it in time to tour the de-activated missile silo on base, so we took pics of the aircrafts outside and toured the museum. We checked out the gift shop when we were finished and found astronaut ice cream!! And it was cheap! So, we bought a lot.

On returning to the RV, we made lunch and then headed to Mt. Rushmore! We stopped in Rapid City to get gas. It was a quick drive south to Mt. Rushmore.

It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but I kind of had a feeling that it would be like that. And I imaged it as being white rock too. But, we arrived in the evening and the sun was already behind the mountain. We parked the RV and looked around a bit. There’s a passage way leading up to the monument that houses all the flags of the US states and its territories. That was pretty neat to see all the different flags. The parking pass is good for a year, so we decided to get a camping spot for the night and then head back for the evening ceremony. There was a KOA close by (I’ve never seen a KOA this big; it even has a waterslide!) and charged us an arm and a leg for the night and we didn’t even get full hook ups. But, the KOA offered shuttle service to Mt Rushmore for the evening program so we got tickets and hopped on that. We didn’t even have time to park the RV, so they let us leave it in the holding area until we returned. Parking in the dark is gonna be fun! No, not really!

The evening program was alright. Very patriotic. A ranger gave a talk and a video was presented for further information about the four presidents on Mt Rushmore: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. Then, they had us stand and sing the Star Spangled Banner and they slowly lit up the monument. The monument is pretty neat at night. And man was it cold!! As soon as the program was over, everyone jetted for the warmth of their cars. We headed back to our shuttle (which was nice and warm!) and a quick trip later, were back at the campground. We got a little lost in the dark and missed the parking spot on the first run but found it on the second pass.

The comforter is definitely going back on the bed tonight. It is so cold. It looks like summer is finally turning into fall, at least here if not in southern California.

That’s it for the day. It was very long and I’m pretty tired. We have to get up early again tomorrow to take sunrise pics of Mt Rushmore and then I’m not sure where we are headed! Night. :)