August 3, 2013. Sunday:
We are finally on our way!!! We just had our RV roof sealed again, a new HD 26 inch Jensen 12
volt TV installed, and replaced our black and grey tank valves.
We
were hot to trot to get out of Birmingham and on to our adventure out
West. After checking our
new TV’s reception, jeep in tow, we started our adventure with a
starting mileage of 70,774.0. We arrive at Whitten COE campground in
Fulton, MS.
We stopped here once before with our friends, Bob and Marilyn Ludwig in 2011 and really liked it.
We had a
pull-through site #8 near the water.
$12 with the senior pass.
It was a very relaxing evening, watching the sunset. We drove 130 miles today.
August 4, 2014. Monday:
We departed at 10 am and arrived at 2:35pm at
Lake Charles State Park in Powhaton, AR. Mileage was
80,137.6. We had a pull-through site number 84 with water, sewer, and electric
for $24.86 with a senior discount. This park is out of the way on AR route 25
south of route 63, but very beautiful. The actual address is 3705 Highway 25, Powhaton, AK 72458
(870-878-6595). We drove 233 miles today.
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| We got a nice paved pull-through. |
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| Our campsite was very near the water. Ed grilled chicken! Tasty!! |
August 5, 2014. Tuesday: We left Lake Charles State Park at 12 noon. We had lunch at the Country Cottage in Thayer,
MO. We recommend it if you are in the area. At Thayer, we took Rt. 19 North. It was narrow, hilly and windy. We took US 60 at Winona east toward Van Buren. Rt. 60 is a 4 lane, 65 mph highway. We
stopped on Rt. 60 for almost 30 minutes to discuss what we were going to do in way
of a campground, since we believed there wouldn’t be any Wi-Fi connection at our
planned next stop, a National Park campground called Big Spring. We then took Rt. 103 toward the Big Spring. We stayed
at site 220 for two nights in the only loop with electricity. With our “Senior Pass” the cost was $17. The park is located in the Ozark National
Scenic Waterway. Although the signal was
weak, we did have some Wi-Fi and phone service.
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| This is what Route 19 looks like. A little hilly! |
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| Lots of deer at this campground! |
August 6, 2014. Wednesday: Missouri Ozarks: We drove to Van Buren and had
barbeque for lunch. Ed lost the screw that holds the lens in his frames, so we picked up a repair kit
at the local drug store.
The towns in this Ozark area are very small. Except for an occasional McDonald’s, all of
the stores are local. We traveled on
route D, 21 and 106 and found a lot of barns for Jeanne to photograph. Note
that the county roads in Missouri mostly have lettered routes rather than numbers.
We then drove a four mile gravel road down to the great Blue Spring. We’ve never seen anything like this. The
spring just rises out of the rock and the pool at its origin is as deep as the
Statue of Liberty is tall. We continued our back roads adventure to Rocky Falls which
at this time of the year was just a stream tumbling over the rock ledges. Several adults and kids were climbing the
rocks of the falls as well as swimming in the pool below the falls. It rained
this evening and we microwaved soup for dinner.
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| The barns on D were spectacular. The following barns were not all on D, but on our scenic route. |
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| It was a little overcast, but mostly beautiful. |
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| Jeanne loves to photograph barns. Don't know how old they were, but they were OLD. |
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| Love this one. |
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| This was just a hay barn but we loved it just the same. |
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| Suitable for framing. |
August 7, 2014. Thursday: We left Big
Spring in the RV at 10:30 am headed for Alley Mills taking rt. 60, then 19 north to Eminence and
then 106 west. The mill is in a really pretty setting adjacent to another
natural spring and stream.
The mill
building is original, newly painted bright red and is under renovation. We
took several pictures and moved on.
Stopped for gas in Houston, MO. We had to
visit the Camping World outside of Columbia, MO to buy a table and campground
book.
Thought maybe we could stay
overnight there but they did not have space available so drove on to Cottonwood
Campground north of I-70 at Columbia on rt. 63.
It is a very nice campground. We stayed here on a previous trip out west.
Charge was $36/night.
Also bought 6 gal of propane.
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| Alley Mills. It was a beautiful setting. |
August 8, 2014. Friday:
We left Cottonwood CG
traveling on I-70 at 9:00 am., stopped
for gas near Kansas City and
traveled across I-70 and I-29 north to Nebraska City where
we caught route 2 to Lincoln, NB, which became route 77 leading
I-80 west. We had originally planned to stay at the Pawnee State Park, which
sounded very nice with electrical hook-ups only.
When we called that morning, they only had 4
sites with electricity left the night before and didn’t know how many had come
in overnight.
Jeanne had discovered a
community park in the very small town of Beaver Crossing.
So we drove past Pawnee and went on to Beaver
Crossing. Jeanne read that
this town had a donation-only town park.
She also read that it had been devastated by a tornado and this was
obvious as we drove in as rebuilding was going on everywhere.
The
large brick school was completely
destroyed. The park itself was pretty bad and the town had seen better
times. We decided to move on to the Double Nickel Campground in York,
Nebraska at exit 360 just
next to I-80.
This CG was recently
purchased by a young couple from California.
We had a
full hook-up site without cable for $32.23. A nice view across fields and we
did not hear any highway traffic. Although
this campground is in the “middle of nowhere” and needed some renovation, it was
very nice and the bathrooms were clean, so we would stay here again.
We spent 7 hours on the road today, arrived at 4 pm. Tonight was a frozen dinner for Jeanne, a peanut
butter loaded Fiber One Bar for Ed and a bottle of wine. Jeanne was
having a really tough time tonight missing her mother. She is still grieving from her loss of her mother last November.
August 9, 2014. Saturday:
It rained throughout the night.
Ed left our chairs out (someone please remind him to put away the chairs each
night) and they were soaked.
When
we woke, we found
an overcast, wet morning with a predicted 90% chance of rain for the
day. We
dumped tanks, cleaned up RV, made and big breakfast of eggs, bacon and
muffins
and even took showers. We left at 12:45 pm for Ogallala SRA. We
stopped for gas in Grand Island, NE and changed our destination en route
to the
Cabela CG in Sidney, NE. They were pretty full so we took site 30, an
electric
only site.
We arrived at 5:30
pm MT. We drove 300.8 miles. A huge rain storm
swept through the CG around 6:30 pm MT. Campground fee was $22.78. The
site was narrow and all on gravel with a good southern sky for the
DirecTV. We parked next to two huge toy haulers pulled by long buses
returning from Sturgis. They were headed home to OK.
The
owners, our new friends, Eric and Lynn Pittman, opened the haulers to reveal very expensive bikes
costing upwards of $80,000.
Wow, never saw
anything so fancy.
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| The Platt River Arch on I-80 in Nebraska |
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| This was a horrible accident on I-80. An 18 wheeler turned over. |
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| Nebraska sky. |
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| Sunset in Sidney NE. |
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| The campground at Sidney Cabela's is level and all gravel. Very nice. |
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| $80,000 bike. Customized. Very nice. |
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| Our new friends are Lynn (second from the left) and Eric (middle) Pittman. Their friend Shawn is on the left. And Shawn's mom and dad on the right. They had a great time in Sturgis, but were headed home in this pic. |
August 10, 2014. Sunday: Nebraska to South Dakota: We were up about 6:45 am MT to say goodbye to our biker
friends. We walked around the Cabela property and took pictures including the Total Challenge, a massive metal
sculpture of two bull elk fighting or rutting.
Cabelas opened at 10 am so we waited and shopped. Traveled north on 385 stopping for gas in Bridgeport,
NE.
We continued our travels on Rt. 26/92 and stopped at Bayard to
visit the Chimney Rock National Historic Site Visitors Center.
Although we did not walk out to Chimney Rock we took lots of pictures from the visitors’ center. We
have a few brochures on each of the trails represented here: Oregon,
California, Mormon and Pony Express all following basically the same route at
this location. We continued onto Gering and stayed at Robidoux Campground site 16
for $27/night.
They were almost full so could
not get a pull-through.
This is a
beautiful CG. We stayed here at a few years ago, but had forgotten how nice it
is.
Arrived about 4:00 pm.
Tonight was the largest
supermoon or perigee moon of 2014. The closest the moon usually gets to earth
is about 30,000 miles, but tonight it was 863 miles closer.
This is the closest the moon has been in 20
years. Ed tried to get pictures with the Nikon D-90, but only got one decent picture.
The mosquitoes attacked Jeanne tonight
and she had welts everywhere. She had to take a benedryl to settle it down.
August 11, 2014. Monday:
Happy 64th birthday to Jeanne. Ed was
awakened by the cat and finally crawled out of bed at 5:45 am. Jeanne slept in. A chilly 59⁰
in Gering, Nebraska. Ed figured it was time to check the tire
pressure, so while doing so, he could not get a pressure reading on the
passenger side inside
dually. He used our pressure pump to put some air in
and when he tried to check it again, the extender blew off and all
of the air rushed out of the tire. A
local RV repair person recommended driving to a tire store in town. He said we wouldn’t hurt the tire. Instead, we called Good Sam’s Emergency Road
Service about 10:00 am. They contacted a
local tire service (Nebraskaland Tire, 709 Broadway, Scottsbluff, NE 69361;
308-632-7731) who said they would be there after finishing another job. Long story short, we did not get the tire repaired
and back on the rig until about 4:00 pm.
The cost of dismounting and remounting and stem repair with tax was $159. Service call comes with Good Sam’s
service so we weren't charged for that. We had to stay another night at Robidoux Campground, but had to
move to another site, without cable for $24.
We
drove out to the Scott’s Bluff National Monument Visitor
Center and drove to the top for great view. It was amazing. We stamped
our National Park book at the visitor center, then went to Walgreens to
pick up
Jeanne’s prescription and ended for dinner at the “Steel Grill.” Fun restaurant, great steaks and wine and
beer. Waitress was Brook Burford, who explained that she and her husband live and work on her father-in-law's feed ranch that currently has 16,000 head of cattle.
They get the cattle as calves, fatten them up and then get paid
$1.69 per pound cattle weight, which is the most they have ever been
paid. We thought that if the cattle cost was up, maybe our dinner would cost less, but not so. Ed had rib eye, Jeanne had New York, both for $26, but worth every penny!! After a great dinner, we returned to our CG to
find a huge orange moon and we took pictures before bed.
August 14, 2014. Thursday: Thankful, we are not driving today. Neither of us slept very well. We did laundry and walked around the
campground a couple of times. The campground had
a rally of women called “Sisters on the fly,” a nationwide membership of five thousand women who restore and travel in their camper trailers, some dating back to the 1950s.
Jeanne took a lot of pictures and fell in love with the concept of a
camping getaway with women from all walks of life and ranging in age from 20s up through 80s. Most of them at this rally dressed like
cowgirls, boots, hats, and lots of denim. Their RV's decorations had every theme imaginable from Coke Cola
to African. There were 74 units at this particular rally and these women liked
to visit and party.
We went into the small town of Buffalo with its historic
Main Street. We bought a watch for Kaeden
at a local sporting store that sold everything you would ever need for outdoor
adventure. Also toured the Occidental
Hotel, the location for writing of the book “The Virginian.” We walked the town taking pictures and
returned to our CG.
We made reservations at the KOA about 4 miles north of Red Lodge, MT. The distance from Buffalo to Red Lodge was
estimated at 224 miles.
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| Jeanne fell in love with these small, restored camper trailers. The Sisters on the Fly are a nationwide group. |
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| They started with only two sisters who loved to fly fish and they invited their friends, and they invited theirs. |
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| So as of July, they have a nationwide membership of 5,000+ women. |
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| Jeanne just fell head over heals in love with these warm, friendly women. |
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| So we are headed down to Colorado to see a man about a trailer! |
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| Hey...by the way, don't squat on yer spurs!! |
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| This lady sold aprons. We bought a "Route 66". |
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| The Occidental Hotel |
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| Ed wants a shave! |
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| The Parlor Room at the Occidental Hotel. |
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| If we had hung around for a couple hours, their would have been live music. |
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| But we were tired and made our way back to the campground! |
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| Ed modeling an apron that Jeanne bought (Route 66). He looks cuter in it than Jeanne does! |
August 16, 2014. Saturday: The goal today was to
do a hike on the top of the Beartooth Mountains. Packed water, sandwiches,
cameras, binoculars, etc. It was cold today and overcast. The wind
was howling. We hiked Island Lake. The book states it is 3 miles in and out, but we must have gone a little farther because Ed's pedometer read a little over 4 miles. At 9,500 feet,
these Alabamians had a hard time catching their breath. It was a great hike, very pretty. Because of the wind Ed scraped the idea of
fishing, but once on the hike he wished he had taken some equipment. We saw
several people catching trout.
The whole area and particularly the drive on the Beartooth Highway is
breathtaking. Everywhere you look there
is a beautiful picture that cameras cannot capture. We came down off the mountain and arrived in
Red Lodge about 5:45 pm. We stopped in a
restaurant/wine store that Jeanne had seen called the “Bridge Creek Backcountry
Kitchen and Wine Bar,” a very popular restaurant. We didn't have reservations and were lucky to have gotten a table. The food was good, but a little expensive. Of course everything in Red Lodge is a little
expensive. By the time we got back to
the RV, we were exhausted. Over 13,000
steps and close to 6 miles of walking today.
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| Beginning of the Beartooth Highway on the Red Lodge side. |
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| Many motorcycles on the Beartooths. |
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| Ed taking it all in... |
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| Going over the Bearthooth Highway from Red Lodge, you enter Wyoming and the Shoshone National Forest |
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| This could possibly be our Christmas picture! |
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| At the top of the Bearthooths. |
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| Love this one. So serene. |
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| Jeanne and Ed at the highest point on the pass...almost 11,000 feet! |
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| Some folks enjoying lunch. It was too windy for us so we ate our lunch in the car. |
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| Beginning of the Island Lake hike out to Night Lake and Becker Lake |
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| Stones and roots will not deter us!! |
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| Lots of humans, dogs, and equine on the trail. |
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| Island Lake in the background. |
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| Ed mulling it over.... |
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| It was a beautiful day for a hike! |
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| Lupine in bloom around Night Lake |
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| If you look directly over the second "t" in tooth, you will see a tiny peak. That is the Bear's Tooth. |
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| As you come back across into Montana, you enter Custer National Forest. |
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| Sunbeams on the Mountain! |
August 17, 2014. Sunday:
We made arrangements to meet our friends Ron and Karin Smith for breakfast at Café Regis in the Old
Grocery Store in Red Lodge. Afterward, we visited with them at their cabin in the Grizzly Peak community near the ski
slopes. We had not been in their cottage
before and they gave us the grand tour. Our friends, the Johnsons, Griffins
and others, have a second home here in the woods. We drove back to the campground a little after 1:00 pm to work on pictures and
travelogue. Tomorrow, maintenance to the RV
at Laurel Ford and dinner tomorrow with Billings friends.
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| Ron Smith. |
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| Karin Smith |
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| The Smiths at their home in Red Lodge. |
August 18, 2014. Monday: We dropped the RV off at Laurel Ford around 12:15 pm and headed off to
Billings for lunch with Dale and Judy Peterson at BIN 119 on N. Broadway. It
was good to visit with them and we had such a nice lunch. Downtown
Billings has changed some, but still seems like "home" to us. We then
stopped at Cabelas and Sam’s to shop.
Laurel Ford could only do a synthetic oil change, but not the tire
rotation and front end alignment since their lift could not
handle our rig. We
ran to Laurel to pick up the RV and check in at the KOA campground at
Billings, which was $44.30 for electric and water hook-up. Pretty pricey for our blood!
Then off to Bev Gormley’s new home for cocktails before dinner. Bev lost her husband Tom last year, but is making wonderful progress with the transition. She has downsized to a smaller home in a wonderful community where she doesn't have to worry about upkeep on the lawn. It's all done for her. Her home was absolutely beautiful inside and out. Wish we had this type of living opportunity in Hoover! The Smiths,
Johnsons and Griffins joined us there for appetizers and cocktails. David Johnson and Phil Griffin left to play
bridge at the Yellowstone Country Club and Smiths left for home. We went to dinner at the Windmill with Bev, Barb and Judy. It was so wonderful catching up with these lovely and strong women. What a great evening!
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| Dale and Judy Peterson, our dear friends from Billings. They were busy for dinner so they met us for lunch at Bin 119. |
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| These women are Jeanne's "Sisters of the Heart". Left to right, Karin Smith, Barb Griffin, Judy Johnson, and Bev Gormley. While living in Billings from 1995 - 1998, these women and their husbands took us in and made us feel right at home. |
August 19, 2014. Tuesday: We left the KOA at 11:30 am and stopped at Costco.
We arrived at the Bozeman Sunrise CG at 3:45 pm.
We had campsite 19 with
electric.
This was the only site
available for 3 nights $29.92/n X 3 nights =$89.88.
Nice campground, very accessible to
downtown.
Both men's and women's bathrooms were renovated
and clean.
The campground was very
full.
This was the week that
freshman at
Montana State University arrived for orientation and there was a lot of
traffic. We ate at MacKenzie River Pizza (again) and walked the streets
of Bozeman. When we pulled into the Sunrise, we noticed that there was
another Lazy Daze RV in the CG, so we went over an introduced ourselves. They
are Jim and Bev Moore from Salt Lake City. A very nice couple. We really enjoyed visiting with them and will continue to stay in touch as they are on their way to Glacier.
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| Billings to Bozeman is a beautiful drive. See why they call it Big Sky Country? |
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| The Crazies (mountain range). |
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| Legend has it that a woman went mad and went up into the mountains and was never heard of again. |
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| That is why they call this mountain range the Crazies. |
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| Ed wishes he were out there fishing! |
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| Here we are at the family-run Sunrise Campground in Bozeman. Very nice. |
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| This is one of our favorite places to eat in Bozeman. Great everything, including pizza. |
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| Love this bench! |
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| Sunset on Bozeman! |
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