Mesa Verde National Park, across New Mexico, visiting friends in Texas

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Monday, 27 October -

We left Natchez State Park around 0800 this morning after waking before morning light. We would have been out an hour earlier but had to go to the office to pay for our campsite and they didn’t open until 0800.
We headed for the Natchez Trace Parkway but before hitting it saw a sign to Emerald Mound, another prehistoric Indian mound... and in fact the second largest in the U.S. (after one in Illinois).
This one is attributed to the Natchez Indians and used by them from about 1200 AD until 1730, when the tribe was wiped out by the French, reportedly in retaliation for attacks which killed over 200 Frenchmen. This one was unique for us. After walking up an incline, we came to a massive open field raised perhaps 30 feet above surrounding ground. This field was easily larger than a football field in length and width. At one end stands a higher mound, this with wooden stairs, again about 30 feet higher than the open field. The other end also has a mound, albeit a smaller one.
Standing atop these mounds it was easy to imagine a fantastic scene of the times... the mounds topped with thatched structures, several structures lining the open field and perhaps an athletic competition being held as they were cheered on.
We then proceeded north a few miles and stopped at Mount Locust, hoping to get a map and guide brochure. It wasn’t quite open yet so we walked to the Mount Locust homeplace behind the visitor center. This is a wooden house reconstructed by the National Park Service to its appearance in 1810 to 1820 when it served as both a farm and a hotel for men who had brought their flatboats full of goods down the Mississippi to Natchez and sold them there, then walked the five hundred miles home. These men were called ‘Kaintucks’ as many of them were from Kentucky. Their walk home from Natchez took about a month.
As we walked the grounds a ranger-- Kathy-- showed up and opened up the house. When two other tourists showed up, she started a wonderful and very complete lecture recounting the history of Mount Locust from it’s start as a land grant in the late 1800s through its seizure by eminent domain by the US government in the Thirties for the Natchez Trace Parkway.
We then walked with the ranger to the visitor’s center as she changed duty stations and somehow we got to talking about wildlife sightings. And when we blundered onto the subject of cougars and panthers, I showed her my Florida Panther clip and she was astounded. We spent the next hour chatting about Florida, panthers, travels, the writer Nevada Barr (who lived in a nearby town at one time and worked for the National Park Service) and on and on. She’s quite a character and was a delight to meet and try to keep up with her rapid-fire pace. We had intended our stop at Mount Locust to be ten minutes and it turned into two and a half hours.
We then headed north on the Trace to the first shady pull-off to have lunch.
We drove the rest of the afternoon with a few stops--- a walk through a cypress swamp, several lake overlooks, and a half-hour visit to the Mississippi Craft Center. We eventually ended up just before dark at a freebie campground around mile marker 193. We somehow spent the entire day ‘driving’ and only made 180 miles. But with weather so perfect, it’s very easy to spend extra time here and there or just pull off and enjoy the view.

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Sunday, 26 October -

This morning we left Mission Tejas about 0900 and very shortly thereafter came to Caddo Historical State Park. We hadn’t been aware it was there but were very glad to have found it once we started our tour.
The visitor’s film is brand-new and does an excellent job of covering the overview. The Caddos were a Late Woodland/Mississippian-era Indian culture who occupied this area from 800 to 1300 AD and built three ceremonial mounds at this 90-acre site. It appears they --- or at least the higher-ranking ones-- lived in beehive-shaped thatched huts about 12 feet tall and 25-45 feet in diameter. They were farmers, gatherers, and hunters. Their story is much too complex and interesting for me to do it justice in these short paragraphs so I urge you to use your google powers to learn more.
We then continued east via Texas 21 and had lunch in Nacodoches at Mollie’s Diner. We continued into Louisiana as Texas 21 turned into Louisiana 6 and then US 84 through Natchodoches (LA) and, hundreds of miles later, Vidalia on the Mississippi. There we crossed the Mississippi to Natchez and on to Natchez State Park for the night.
We started off at 0900 and drove until 1830 but did have the morning break for the Caddo park and lunch. Other than that, we just kept rolling.
We were very interested to note the changes from the dry plains of San Antonio to rolling mesquite-and-cactus terrain from Bastrop through College Station. But as we approached Crockett we began seeing East Texas pines-- much earlier than we thought we would. After Crockett we were in mixed forest turning to mostly-pines as we neared the border. Crossing the state line we crossed the Sabine River, the first significant body of water we’ve seen in weeks.
And once across, we began seeing Louisiana bayous and sloughs here and there as well as giant long-needle pines.
After an excellent supper of red-beans and Spam, we caught up our notes and enjoyed a Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer. What a find!

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Saturday, 25 October -

This morning we AGAIN had migas for breakfast as we sat around the patio table chatting for the longest time. Finally, we just knew it was time to go.... this couldn’t last forever.
We said long, fond goodbyes to our hosts and embarked up I-35 toward Austin.
Just before Austin we pointed ourselves northeast and drove to Bastrop. We had heard it’s a pretty drive up Texas 21 and can now confirm that’s the case.
We drove for about five hours to get to the little town of Crockett and then Mission Tejas State Park, our goal for the night. As we drove we became aware we were following the route of the old El Camino Real.
We arrived at the Mission Tejas park around 1700 and had took a quick tour of an old logger’s cabin and the Mission Tejas church before supper.
I then caught up the blog while Labashi edited a video from footage from our Rocky Mountain National Park visit.

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Friday, 24 October -

This morning we had migas for breakfast and hung out a bit while our friend took care of a few urgent business items. We then went to lunch at Tong Thai and had really good lobster roll and spring rolls.
We drove to a few of his local projects and then visited his office where we met his staff and they gave us a tour of the projects they are working on.
Then it was a tour of the building projects his firm is doing. We were, to put it mildly, stunned at the quality, quantity, and variety of work.
We toured until 1800, then went to supper at Van’s Vietnamese Restaurant, where we were treated like royalty. Once again we had a large, friendly group and took over the restaurant. We had dumplings, meat-rolls, roast lamb, steamed lobster, prime rib, and crab over noodles. BEST.FOOD.EVER!!!! (Oh, yeah, and creme brulee for dessert)
We then went to the daughter’s home for a nightcap and tour but faded pretty quickly--- we had had such a wonderful evening.

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Thursday, 23 October -

Today we drove to Labashi’s friend’s home on the north side of San Antonio. As it turned out he had an important business appointment he had to go to but offered us a convertible to tour the missions. The car was a beauty but we decided we’d better stick with the van--- we have everything with us, including our GPS and laptops for navigation and getting information about the missions. We also have the bicycles in back and thought we might take a ride.
We drove to the southernmost mission of the chain, Mission Espada, and took the ranger-led tour. The mission church was closed for renovation but we enjoyed watching the workmen lay massive flagstones at the entrance to the church.
We then drove to nearby Espada Viaduct, an impressive elevated canal or acequia for watering the labores or fields.... very ingenious and perfectly preserved.
We then went to Mission San Juan de Capistrano, with a very different whitewashed church.
The final mission was Mission Concepcion, where we once again took the ranger-led tour and spent a long time taking photos. Afterwards, we had a long conversation with ranger Danny Cantu about the role of Canary Islanders in settling San Antonio and Louisiana.
We then drove up through San Antonio’s downtown to Brackenridge Park, seeking the source of the San Antonio River. We finally figured out it’s on the campus of Incarnate Word College and tried in vain to find it there and finally gave up.
We then drove to our host’s home and went out to supper at Tito’s Restaurant. We had a group of nine. That was us, our hosts, their daughter and son-in-law, plus his parents visiting from Denver, plus an architect friend.... quite a lively group.
After dinner we toured the home of the architect friend nearby--- very impressive!
We then returned home for a nightcap and a bit of the football game.

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Wednesday, 22 October -

Today our hosts left early for a Habitat for Humanity build they had committed to months ago. We slept in and had a leisurely breakfast before packing up to depart.
We drove south and down 35 toward San Antonio, taking our time. By mid-afternoon we found our campground for the night at Lake Calaveras. Once we had that all settled we drove into south San Antonio to Mission San Jose, part of the San Antonio Missions National Park.
We enjoyed the very good overview movie in the visitor’s center and that positioned us perfectly to go on an afternoon ranger-led tour. Our ranger was outstanding in explaining the purpose and history of the missions along the San Antonio River. We then spent a good hour taking photos of the church and surroundings. And behind the church there’s a very interesting mill with an intricate water control system and a series of levers and pulleys to control the turning of the millstones.
We got back to the campsite around 1830 and enjoyed our view of the lake and the power-plant’s lights reflecting in the lake.

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Tuesday, 21 October -

We were supposed to leave today but decided to hang around one more day.... it’s just too perfect here to leave!
We again spent the day enjoying each other’s company around the big teak table under the porch roof and had a special dish for lunch-- ceviche made from fresh ingredients from the market.
Late in the day our hosts surprised us with an ultra-fancy cheesecake to celebrate our upcoming anniversary.

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Monday, 20 October -

Today was another Austin-perfect day weather-wise. We again spent the day more or less around the table enjoying each other’s company as we worked on our laptops, told stories, looked up old movies or TV shows (‘Supercar’ and ‘Our Gang’, for example) on the web, etc.
Late in the afternoon we went to Trudy’s, an Austin-Weird favorite, for migas (mexican-style cheesy eggs), fajitas, and mexican martinis (a strongish margarita served in a shaker with a martini glass and olive) and of course chips, salsa and an excellent guacamole.
For the evening, we started with a round of Portal 2 and then went back to telling family stories around the patio table on this balmy, balmy evening.

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Sunday, 19 October -

This morning we once again gathered at the outdoor patio table and continued where we left off. More family stories, travel stories, family history, etc.
That afternoon we drove into Austin to the Blanton Museum. We saw exhibits of Latin American art and a new exhibit of drawings in the temporary exhibits and then spent the remainder of our time until closing in the early European art collection.
We then went to dinner at ‘County Line’ for Texas-style bar-be-que.
That evening our hosts introduced us to ‘Portal 2’, an Xbox 360 video game we didn’t know. Labashi jumped right in and did quite well in controlling her robot and figuring out how to have the robot use its ‘portal-gun’ to make new ‘portals’ to move through the dilapidated building or move objects as needed.

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Saturday, 18 October -

After breakfast this morning we called Labashi’s brother and said we’re on the way from our campground at McKinney Falls State Park to their home on the northwest side of Austin.
We arrived mid-morning and settled in right away at their wonderful shaded outdoor patio table.... and more or less stayed there all day!
We caught up on family news, had a family history lesson from Labashi’s recent conversations with Mom and Dad, caught up with news on our host’s efforts to get his inventions manufactured and established in the marketplace. We also ate VERY well and enjoyed several different types of wine we’ve not had before. Just for science, of course.
For supper we had a Russian-style lamb stew. After dark we had a campfire in the back yard for a few hours and went to bed quite ready for sleep.

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Friday, 17 October -

It’s another beautiful day in the Texas Hill Country. The temperature overnight was 50 degrees--- perfect sleeping weather --- but with the morning sun we’re comfortable to be outside right away. The evening last evening was just perfect--- Labashi calls it ‘balmy’--- to sit out. We spent an hour or so with ‘Scotty’ a fellow traveler. I struck up a conversation with him about his Jeep and rooftop tent combination. Scotty is from East Texas but is currently working within a couple of hours of Lost Maples. He told me he works a two-weeks-on, one-week off schedule and has been using the time to prepare for travel when he retires. He has done quite a bit of hiking and backcountry travel already.
Before leaving Lost Maples State Natural Area, we once more drove the roads, hoping to see a tarantula or two. We had been warned it’s their mating season and there are signs up everywhere about their migration with requests not to harm them. We looked hard for them on yesterday’s walk without success.
On the way out of the park we stopped at the ranger station to ask where to look for the tarantulas and the woman on the desk said the only place she knows is the bathrooms of the park!
We drove out to a nearby country store for ice and continued via the Hill Country scenic route to Bandera, then Medina. Early on, the road climbed steeply and the views were magnificent.
We drove for a few hours, which brought us to the Loop road around San Antonio. After another half-hour, we hit Interstate 35 toward Austin.
By mid-afternoon, we were in the outskirts of Austin and exited the freeway to seek out McKinney Falls State Park. Just a few blocks shy of the park, I ran over a piece of wood in the roadway and immediately knew it was trouble. I didn’t have time to dodge it but just before running over it saw two big nails sticking up. Then I heard and felt the thump-thump of both passenger-side tires passing over it.
Since we were so close to the park, we continued to the office. The campground was full but when I asked if there were any overflow sites, they took a few minutes to confer and said, yeah, they could accommodate us.
We stayed at the office and did a couple of easy checks. I measured air pressure in both and they hadn’t lost any air. But we could see a large staple jammed into the area between two treads and bent over one of them. Labashi sprayed it with Windex and it wasn’t leaking at that point but I was sure there would be an air leak if we removed it.
We looked up the closest Wal-mart on the iPad and GPS and I went inside to talk with the campground registration ladies. They all recommended staying away from that one and going to the next one just a few miles further. The closest one is small and very crowded and there’s always a traffic tie-up around it.
We took their advice and easily found the Wal-mart along I-35 about 15 minutes away. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself next in line for work. I had marked the staple which by that time had broken off the section laying across a tread line and embedded the other section even deeper between the treads. I watched the mechanic from the waiting area and saw him pull the staple and test, then take the tire off the wheel and install an internal patch. He also pulled the rear wheel and tested it in the dip-tank to be sure there were no puncture holes.
We were very pleasantly surprised that our bill for the work was only ten dollars for a tire repair. There was no charge for diagnosing the problem or for pulling and checking the other tire. Excellent!
After the fix we were both hungry so we made a quick stop at the next-door WhataBurger for a junior burger and then returned to the State Park.
We easily found our overflow parking spot and were very happy to see we were the only rig in it. We snagged the only shady spot and set out our chairs and had a relaxing drink and watched the birds in the nearby trees. This is great! This spot only cost us an $8 camping fee instead of the normal $20 and $24 fees the ‘real’ campers have to pay.
About a half-hour before dark I wanted a bit of a walk so hiked down to Upper McKinney Falls and then around to and into the campground. I was surprised to see more than half the campsites still empty. I don’t know what’s going on.
I walked back to the van and sat out a bit, then started up the laptop to catch up on my blog notes. As I write this I can hear two barred owls calling each other along the Onion Creek trail. Nice!

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Thursday, 16 October -

After an ultra-quiet night at San Angelo State Park, we headed to the San Angelo Wal-mart for supplies and gas. Gasoline has been running something like $3.45 to $3.60 but now in Texas is more like $2.95 to $3.10 per gallon.
We then set the GPS for Vanderpool, TX for Lost Maples State Park. We don’t need to be in Austin until the weekend and so are diverting from a direct path to venture out into the Hill Country. Also, Labashi’s brother had years ago given her a fossil from Lost Maples so there’s also a family connection.
We drove most of the day, stopping only for lunch at a roadside rest. The temperature this afternoon was around 90 degrees but we were comfortable so long as we didn’t spend too much time in direct sunlight. We lucked out at the lunch stop and had the only shade tree for miles around all to ourselves. Getting the sun off the van, coupled with a nice breeze, made all the difference.
By 1530 we reached Lost Maples and quickly checked in at the campground. We then drove to a nearby trailhead and walked the East Trail and Maple Trail for a bit over two hours, totaling just over four miles. We had been warned to watch out for mating tarantulas but didn’t see any.
Back at camp, we had drinks and dinner, then walked over and talked with our next-door neighbor, Scotty, who is traveling in a Jeep with an Eezi-Awn rooftop tent like we had in Botswana. We struck up a quick friendship talking about travel and hiking. Scotty is practicing for retirement with weekend and week-long trips in his Jeep and was very interested in our experiences.
After 2100 we faded and returned to Mocha Joe for the night.

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Wednesday, 15 October -

We woke around 0730 this morning to wonderful red sunlight painting everything around us. Birds were very active and we saw a dozen or so bluebirds foraging in the trees nearby.
After breakfast and make-ready time, we drove out of Salazar Canyon very slowly, both to keep the dust down and to look for wildlife. Our patience was rewarded with a coyote. This one appeared to be large and very healthy and was quite inquisitive. Normally in an encounter like this the coyote takes off a-running. This one, though, took a good, long look at us and then retreated a bit before turning back around to look some again. It did this four or five times, giving us time to get some decent video footage of it.
Back on US 380 West, we continued across southern New Mexico to Roswell. As we passed through little Lincoln, we realized we had been there before. This was the site of the Lincoln County War in the late 1800’s. We were going the opposite direction from our visit back in 2010 and that threw us a bit when we first started seeing the historic buildings.
We continued across 380 for the next few hours, stopping only for lunch in tiny little Tatum. Though the GPS doesn’t know about it, there’s a very good little restaurant called the ‘Burger Barn’ in Tatum and they make an excellent green-chile cheeseburger.
After Tatum we started seeing quite a lot of oil-field development-- something called the ‘EnergyPlex’ according to the promotional signs. We also started seeing cotton fields and they were laden with the white bolls, nearly reading for harvest.
That also took us to the Texas state line and into Plains, Texas. From there on, the productivity of Texas was remarkable to see. We saw hundreds of cotton fields, sorghum, and sunflowers galore as well as hundreds and hundreds of oil-field pump-jacks. Around Big Spring we started seeing many windmills, generally clustered in groups of 20 to 50 but you could see up to a dozen of those groups at a time simply by looking around. And we also noticed something different about the oilfields. Even where pump-jacks were pretty closely spaced, we’d still see crops planted or cattle browsing among them. Further west we would see the pump-jacks but not the crops or cattle among them.
We continued down US87 the rest of the afternoon until we reached San Angelo. There we looked up the San Angelo State Park for our campground for the evening. This one was a bit more expensive than most because Texas charges both an entry fee and a camping fee so the night cost us $18. That’s not too bad for a campground on a lake with access to a shower (back at the main campground) but our primitive campsite didn’t have water or a bathroom nearby, i.e., within a couple of miles. We’re fine since we’re self-contained but there are also a few tenters in the next loop and there’s no official solution for them other than to get in the car and drive back to the main campground.
The lake we’re near is a reservoir which is mostly empty because of drought. And it has been a long drought, apparently, because the shoreline area which would be underwater is heavily overgrown. This isn’t a matter of the water level dropping in the last few weeks or months.
Despite the small area of the lake in the distance, it is jam-packed with American white pelicans-- hundreds and hundreds of them. What a sight in the reddish light of the sunset!

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Tuesday, 14 October -

This morning we left our host’s home around 0800 and hit a nearby McDonald’s for breakfast. We then drove down I-25 to Socorro before turning east on US 380. We drove through magnificently-barren lands for mile after mile. There appeared to be grass but then again much of the land was Federal land making up a wildlife refuge. We also passed a northern gateway to the Trinity site associated with White Sands Missile Range and stopped at a rock shop offering ‘trinitite’, i.e., sandy earth fused into glass by the nuclear testing associated with the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. It was selling for $30 a gram!
Our next stop was the Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan. We toured this small state park dedicated to the original Smokey Bear. Smokey was found in the nearby Lincoln National Forest nearby in May, 1950 after a 17,000-acre fire had devastated much of the area.
We watched the historical-footage movie and toured the exhibits and even paid our respects at Smokey’s grave.
We then found a prospective campsite in the Lincoln National Forest at Baca Camp, about a dozen miles north-east of Capitan in Salamanca Canyon. We took a walk for an hour and spoke at some length with Bill McKnight, a rancher on the parcel adjacent to the camp. He was hanging around trying to catch wood-cutters who were somehow messing up the elk hunting in the area. He was a pleasant-enough guy to talk with but I wouldn’t want to be one of the guys messing up the local elk hunting!
After supper we sat out enjoying a drink and watching the late-day sun play on the mountain behind our campground. But as the sun went down the evening cooled off very quickly and we moved into the van.
Though it felt we were many miles from civilization, we had a cell-phone tower far up on the mountain and had internet service for the iPad. I spent the evening catching up the off-line blog for awhile but then we went to bed around 2100.

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Monday, 13 October -

We were glad for our electric connection last night as the temperature continued falling into the low Thirties.
We have places to go and people to see today. We drove down dotted (scenic) road US550 from Aztec toward Cuba for about 100 miles, passing Angel Peak along the way. As we passed the entrance road to the Angel Peak National Recreation Area we realized we had stayed at a primitive campsite there the last time we were through this area in 2008.
The drive down from Aztec was through very active oil-producing country. That may seem at odds with a scenic-highway designation and it is. The scenery is mostly in the distance, i.e., mountains, buttes, escarpments, etc across open sagebrush. The oil and gas production equipment (a relatively small number of pumpjacks) are not far off the highway but are relatively unobtrusive.
We drove through to the Apache casino north of Cuba where we gassed up at a bargain price ($3.30 per gallon for 88-octane) and had lunch in the parking lot before pressing on.
We reached the north part of Albuquerque by 1400 with a planned rendezvous with Labashi’s brother and family for dinner at 2000. We parked at a local park not far from her brother’s home and did some work on the laptop and iPad as the time neared. That turned out to be a good move. Her brother’s wife got off work early so we moved things up a half-hour.
We all went out to dinner at Red Lobster and had a wonderful evening reminiscing and catching up.

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Sunday, 12 October -

We woke early this morning and were up and about by 0700. We went up to the shower building for our showers and mine went well so I thought Labashi would be very happy too. But her shower wouldn’t get warmer than luke warm. She said it wasn’t that bad but I could tell she had been looking forward to a good hot one.
While Labashi was finishing up I talked with a gent in the parking lot about his trailer. It was called a Backpacker II and was essentially a ruggedized teardrop trailer. It was by a small company in eastern Oregon called Three Feathers. He had just picked up the unit this week and had had lots of comments and questions about it. As I looked at it I could see the backcountry appeal but also many things wrong. Perhaps the most egregious problem was the cooler mounted on the trailer tongue. Now what is the first rule of camping in bear country? Do not let anything containing food outside your unit. Then again, perhaps he moves the cooler inside his truck for the night. And maybe he keeps it in the truck to get it out of the sun. Come to think of it, when WOULD you want it on the trailer tongue?
We had breakfast in the van and headed up to Chapman Museum. The drive was spectacular this morning, though we noticed the wind starting to pick up. We spent a few hours in the very good museum, watching an excellent orientation film, viewing incredibly-detailed dioramas (I’m a sucker for a good diorama and these were EXCELLENT), and then going through extensive displays. My very first impression was this was a throw-back museum. The displays were done in an older style. However, I soon started to realize they were amazingly thorough and detailed. Excellent, excellent work here.
After the museum we went back to the van for lunch just as the sky turned dark and we started getting rain and wet, slushy blobs on the windshield. They weren’t hail and they weren’t snow-- just big fat raindrops clustered together in slushy ice. Fortunately, that only lasted a few minutes at a time over a half-hour and then the sky cleared.
We took advantage of the clearing but windy weather and started our tour of the Spruce Tree House. It’s not a tree house, it’s a cliff-dwelling where there was a large, prominent spruce tree. But it turns out the tree was a Douglas Fir. And it was chopped down by some early white explorer in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, probably so he could take a photo of the ruins.
After walking down a series of switch-backs into the canyon, the trail swung wide and followed the overhanging rock and we entered the dwelling from the side. It’s in truly remarkable condition, given it was built in the 1200’s and abandoned for centuries. The kivas had fallen in and reconstruction of a roof was done and one major wall was re-constructed in 1908 when it was thought the entire three-story structure was at risk.
We were fascinated by the entire structure and tried to imagine what daily life would have been like from what we had learned in the museum above. The dwelling is in an overhang at the end of Spruce Canyon and as you walk away down the canyon you almost immediately lose sight of the dwelling, though it was three stories high.
After taking climbing down into a kiva and taking many, many photos, we circled back up from Spruce Tree House to the museum parking lot and our van.
That’s when we learned I had left the headlights on and had killed the battery. Labashi opened the passenger door with the key and pushed the power-unlock button before trying the side door. The side door wouldn’t open. I had already opened the driver door by that time and the first thing I noticed was the headlight switch.
Well, thank goodness for my Micro-Start. Last summer I bought an exceptionally small jump-start kit made for motorcycles, ATVs, and, yes, regular engines. These are popular with long-distance motorcycle riders but to my mind the jury was still out on whether it would have enough stuff to start my van’s engine. It’s reported to be new lithium battery technology but of course that’s easy to say.
Well, the answer is..... it worked! Though the battery was so dead there was no sound whatsoever when I turned the key, the engine started right up once I hooked up the Micro-Start.
I did notice the charging voltage was abnormally low but it started coming up within about ten minutes of the start and over the next hour climbed up to normal levels.
Just in case, though, we drove on down out of Mesa Verde and on to Durango. The plan was to see how it goes by the time we reached the Wal-mart there at Durango. I’d park in a spot suitable for the night and we’d take care of some re-supply needs. If the battery still appeared to have problems, we’d stay there at the Wal-mart for the night and attack them in the morning.
I was keeping an eye on voltages as we drove toward Durango and was pretty sure we were okay. After turning off the engine at the Wal-mart, I tried it and it seemed fine and the battery’s resting voltage seemed normal. After our shopping, it again started right up.
We decided the battery was sufficiently recovered to continue and planned our route down into New Mexico. We chose to drive for another half-hour or so down to Aztec and get a campsite with electricity. That would enable us to not only have electric heat for the night but also allow me to recharge the Micro-Start and our laptops without stressing the van battery.
The campground we chose also had wi-fi so we had an evening on the web.

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South from Yellowstone to Grand Canyon and beyond

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Saturday, 11 October -

This morning we woke late-- almost 0900-- probably because we stayed up late watching the movie last night. The temperature this morning was a pleasant 43 degrees outside, 53 inside and we have yet another sunny, 70-plus day on tap.
After a quick breakfast we continued up Route 67 to 89 at Jacob’s Lake and saw that the campground we thought might be closed was indeed open. No regrets, though. Our freebie site on FR205 was near a trailhead for the Arizona Trail and was in a very nice spot.
We then drove east and very soon were at the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, a massive red bluff extending for miles. What an incredible sight as we descended from an altitude of 8000 feet to the valley floor at 5000 feet.
We drove through the morning, arriving at Tuba City shortly after lunch time. Labashi was again hungering for a Big Mac so we hit the local McDonald’s. This one was an extra-interesting one with all the Navajo and Hopi faces. I chuckled to see young Navajo teenage girls excitedly engaged with their smartphones, just like teenagers everywhere.
After gassing up and icing up in Tuba City, we continued across Route 160 to Kayenta. We had originally planned to take 163 up through Monument Valley but we’ve done that route before and decided we needed to save some time and miles to get to Mesa Verde yet today.
We continued across 160 and entered Colorado and on to Cortez, where we stopped at a Wal-mart to re-supply for the next few days. Along the way we stopped at the first cell towers we saw to call Labashi’s Mom and Dad to check in.
After Wal-mart we just had a short drive up to Mesa Verde National Park. We checked in at the campground registration station and found our campsite for the night about a half-hour before dark. Cost tonight was an expensive (for us) $17.50 but we’ve been getting so many freebies lately that on average we’re doing very well.
While Labashi made supper I went up a few sites and talked with an older guy camping in a Jucy van. We had seen these colorful vans in New Zealand and the guy told me they are indeed a New Zealand company now expanding into California and Salt Lake City. The van is based on a typical suburban mini-van with a small kitchen unit accessible from the rear hatch. The unique thing about several of these I’ve seen is a ‘penthouse’, or roof-top tent contained in a roof-top cargo carrier (like a Thule ski carrier, only bigger). The renter in this case was a gentleman from Rome. He told me his wife is visiting Berkeley to do research and he’s retired so took off for a few weeks. She’ll join him later.
After supper, we turned to the laptops. Believe it or not we have an excellent wi-fi signal throughout the campground!

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Friday, 10 October -

Overnight we had a magnificent full moon and the temperature hovered around the freezing mark. We slept very well in the ultra-quiet of the wilderness.
After breakfast we headed down the mountain to the Grand Canyon north rim entrance. Once again my senior pass did its magic and got us into the park for free.
We drove to the visitor services area and walked through the visitor center, gift shop, and Grand Canyon Lodge. We walked out the Bright Angel Trail atop a massive knife-edge formation, trying not to look down as the trail sides fell away to oblivion on both sides of our three-foot-wide paved path.
We thought we might have lunch at the Lodge but they have a breakfast-to-lunch turnover period and we were hungry so we abandoned that idea and went back to the van. Labashi made us nice salami sandwiches with bread from the German bakery we stopped at yesterday.
We then drove out to Cape Royal and walked out to the viewpoint and took a few photos. We hit a few more viewpoints as we came back and parked at the trailhead for a hike out to Cape Final.
Our walk was about two miles of rolling terrain through very nice Ponderosa pine forest. Some of the trees had to be close to four feet in diameter. Their rugged bark and the occasional waft of scent from them as you walk down the trail is just magnificent.
The trail took us first to several overlooks, then finally up atop a massive rock with 270-degree views of the Grand Canyon. The other 90 degrees looked back over the pine-covered escarpment we had just come through. I took photos of two of the three geodetic markers.... the third was just too risky.
We walked back in very pleasant evening light, struggling a bit with the uphills at this altitude. We put in 4.5 miles with this hike but with the other walks today we did over 19,300 steps (8.6 miles) and 70 flights of stairs according to the Fitbit.
We drove back to the main road and, since we knew we wouldn’t be able to get a campsite in the park, drove north out of the park. We tried the DeMott Campground run by the Forest Service but it was filled. We headed north to the next Forest Service campground at Jacob Lake but then saw a note on one of the maps saying it’s only open in summer. We dug out the Kaibab National Forest map and looked for possible dispersed camping sites, i.e., places we could camp at a pull-off or trailhead. We saw a trailhead off Forest Road 205 and thought we’d check that area as a possible fall-back position, then go on to Jacob Lake and hope the OTHER information we had about it being open into November was correct. However, when we saw a nice site near the trailhead, we elected to stay there instead of going on. Good decision!
After a fine supper of split-pea soup and the last of our German-bakery rolls, we spent the evening on our laptops for awhile, then watched a movie on DVD-- ‘Eagle Eye’. What a farce.

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Thursday, 9 October -

The overnight temperature was a nice 40 degrees here at 8000 feet in Bryce Canyon National Park, a pleasant surprise indeed.
After breakfast we drove to Sunset Point and donned our day-packs for the Navajo Loop walk into the canyon. The round trip is only a bit over two miles but it’s a steep descent of .7 miles a bit of respite at the bottom, then a very steep .8-mile slog back to the rim. But the walk was completely worth it. The stroll downhill was fairly steep--- enough that you wouldn’t dare try it on a wet trail--- and looking over the switchbacks was dizzying.
When finally the trail leveled out a bit, the hoodoos opened up to a small valley filled with Ponderosa pines. But as soon as you hit bottom and the trail junction there, you started climbing. And at 7500 feet, the climb was a strain.
The walk down had been fairly open but the climb back up wound through very narrow slot canyons-- a spectacular sight.
Once back at the top, we drove down the main park road a few miles and parked at a picnic pulloff for lunch. We then hit a few more overlooks before heading out of the park.
Our goal for the day was the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. We spent the afternoon wending our way down US89 to Kanab, Utah, and into Arizona. At Freedonia, we stopped at the Kaibab National Forest ranger station for info. As we stared at the maps, I asked if there happened to be a good gravel road we might explore. The ranger directed us to Forest Road 22, a former logging road, which was about 50 miles long and leads down to Route 67 near the campground he recommended for us.
We took FR22 with some trepidation since you never know quite how bad a gravel road will be. This one was indeed wide and well-maintained for the most part though we have a few stretches of heavy washboards to deal with.
FR22 wound through sage-brush territory for almost 20 miles, then began rising into the mountain. We soon were cruising at a steady 25 miles per hour through Ponderosa pines and a very open understory.
We spent the rest of the afternoon making our way across FR22. When we hit FR406, we saw signs for vistas but without mileage indications. We detoured for five miles or so but soon realized the vistas were actually much further away and turned back.
By that time it was after 1700 and we knew of a trailhead not far from the intersection of FR22 and 406. We drove back to the trailhead and decided it would be our campsite for the night.
Before supper we walked back the trail about a mile, slowly descending all the way. That gave us an uphill walk back to the van and we declared the day a success with 12,000 Fitbit steps and some 60 flights of stairs.
After supper, we spent the evening catching up the blog (me) and doing some video editing (Labashi).

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Wednesday, 8 October -

After showers this morning at Jordanelle State Park, we headed south down the dotted-road (the scenic road) to Provo and then on down US89 (more dots!) through wonderfully scenic ranch country to Panguich. It was an all-day drive but so worth it.
We then continued on to Bryce Canyon National Park and selected a campsite in the North Campground and toured the visitors’ center. We then went to the historic Bryce Canyon Lodge, thinking we might have dinner there but in the end decided we’d just go ahead and have dinner in the van and better control our time before tonight’s program at the lodge auditorium.
At 1900 we went into the lodge auditorium for the 1930 program. We were way-early of course but that just gave us a chance to chat with the park geologist before his presentation. He’s a former college professor who now serves as a volunteer geologist-- the only one in the national parks system--- and lives in one of the historic residences in the park. His hour-long presentation about the ‘grand staircase’ of geologic wonders leading from the Grand Canyon to Bryce Canyon was the best geology lecture I’ve experienced. I was surprised the general national-park audience was up for it but his presentation was generously applauded.
After the lecture we returned to our campsite and took a short moonlight walk along the rim. The day had been quite nice and the evening downright balmy for an 8000-foot altitude.

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Tuesday, 7 October -

We left Blowout Campground this morning after a mild night-- about 40 degrees. We have no idea why it’s called ‘Blowout’ campground but assume it has something to do with construction of the reservoir.
As we followed the reservoir we noticed it’s down quite a bit but we don’t know if that’s seasonal or of special concern.
We followed US89 into Wyoming at Alpine and then back into Idaho at Montpelier. As we approached Montpelier we recognized the Montpelier Canyon Campground where we had stayed in 2009 during our Oregon Trail trip. That prompted us to remember we had tried to visit the Oregon-California Trails Center in Montpelier but it had been closed at the time.
This time the Trail Center appeared to be closed but the gift shop was open. When we asked about the Living History tours, the woman at the desk said there was a wagonmaster on call to take tours if we were interested. By that time another couple arrived and we took the tour together. WagonMaster Dave led us through a series of rooms representing key milestones on the trip. We started from a wagon-train outfitter in Independence, Missouri where we learned what life on the trail would be like--- including the fact that 1/6th of people starting out on the journey died along the way.
We proceeded through several campsites along the way as we learned more about life on the wagon-train. The final camp was at Clear Creek--- right here under our feet at Montpelier. Dave told us even the campfires in the dirt-floored room we were in had been placed on the sites of historic campfires of Oregon Trail pioneers.
After Montpelier we headed south toward Utah, skirting Bear Lake. In Garden City we had milkshakes. The traditional milkshakes to have here are raspberry ones, apparently because there’s an abundant raspberry harvest each year.
We continued around Bear Lake and instead of going toward Salt Lake City, we took the less-traveled route to Evanston, Wyoming.
There we joined Interstate 80 West toward Salt Lake, However, we took the Heber/Provo exit so we could visit Park City, home of the Sundance Film Festival each winter and a massive ski resort.
We found our campsite for the night at Jordanelle State Park and then drove into Park City for supper. We walked from the bottom of Main Street up through the historic district and found Le Bistro, a nice little French restaurant. We elected to go with various starter dishes to have a variety of tastes. We shared a pear-almond salad, spring rolls, a forest mushrooms-on-toast dish, figs and duck carpaccio, and cocktails. The tastes were wonderful and we were so glad we had happened upon this restaurant.
After dinner we walked up to the head of Main Street and then back to the van parked off the bottom of it. We were surprised to see how dead Park City was tonight. Obviously we’re out of season but the weather has been magnificent so it seems a shame there weren’t more people out to enjoy it. On the other hand, we had it more or less to ourselves!
After our walk we returned to the campground at Jordanelle State Park and turned in.

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Monday, 6 October -

I slept very well in the 30-degree overnight weather but Labashi said she was awake until quite late. We can’t figure that one out--- we certainly had enough exercise. Last time I looked at the Fitbit yesterday evening we had done over 17,500 steps for the day.
Today’s major task was to find a wi-fi source so I could hook up to the Internet and update my credit card information for all the bills we have automatically paid while we travel. As I noted in an earlier post, our regular card was caught up in the Home Depot compromise and while in Custer, South Dakota our card suddenly began being rejected.
We went through this same thing less than a year ago for the Target compromise so I knew from the get-go it was going to be a slog. The online systems for many of these companies are in some cases poor beyond belief.
We tried the West Yellowstone Library but they’re closed on Mondays. But I did learn that free wi-fi is available in the Yellowstone Visitor’s Center nearby.
I started off with our Netflix bill and that one was resolved in only a minute or two. But the next one was a nightmare. I worked for 20 minutes just trying to sign on and when that failed to have my password sent to me. Absolutely everything failed. At one point it told me it didn’t have any record of my email address--- the same one it had used to send me a notice that my monthly transaction had failed. There was no number to contact anyone about it so I had to send an email. As I worked on other accounts, I received a response with a phone number. The agent told me their system does not work with Mac computers, iPhones, or iPads because Apple has too much security in their firewalls!!!!! And you couldn’t just detect I was coming from an Apple machine and tell me that? The agent then started to tell me how to go online with a Windows machine to make the change. When I said I had no such machine, she agreed to handle it over the phone--- it took only a minute to update my card.
I then had a similar problem with Tracfone. The update-the-credit-card function simply would not work. I couldn’t change any fields on the form. I eventually blundered onto a way to ADD a credit card, then reassign it to my phones.
ANYWAY, I had a series of absolutely unbelievable hassles just trying to update my credit card so the companies I could pay my bills. It took me three hours to work through my list of nine places I needed to make the change on the web.
While I worked on credit card stuff Labashi wrote an email to family and uploaded some photos and sent them off.
We then went to the local McDonalds for a quick lunch so we could get out of town yet this afternoon.
We drove south down Route 20 and then across the Mesa Scenic Parkway (Route 47) and stopped for a short walk to Upper Mesa Falls. In the parking lot I talked to a guy who was riding a 99 BMW 650 dual-sport and he asked me lots of questions about my F650GS twin.
We continued down the eastern-most roads in Idaho and could see the back side of the Tetons most of the way. The trees in the Targhee National Forest looked great--- none of the bark-beetle damage we saw elsewhere (including Yellowstone). Between the National Forest segments, we were in potato-harvesting country and there were loaded potato-hauling trucks everywhere. And there in the backdrop were the snow-covered Tetons--- incredibly beautiful on this sunny, mid-60’s day.
After Driggs we headed to Swan Valley and enjoyed the bottom-of-a-steep-walled-valley drive. As we drove, Labashi looked for campsites on the iPad app (Allstays Camp and RV) and found that almost all the campgrounds had closed the end of September. We finally found one a hundred miles away which was supposed to be open and set the GPS for it. We also decided, however, to check on a couple of the closed campgrounds to see if the gates are left open for campers who don’t need services. That turned out to be the case. We found Blowout Campground on Palisades Reservoir wasn’t gated and two of the dozen-or-so sites were occupied. We picked one overlooking the ultra-blue reservoir about an hour before dark and settled in.
After supper we went for a short walk just as the full moon came up over the mountain to our east. Wow! And this is free?????? Double-WOW!!!


******* END OF POST ***********

Crazy Horse, Rushmore, Yellowstone

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Sunday, 5 October -

The alarm woke us this morning at 0600. We quickly dressed and headed back into Yellowstone via the North gate and then on to Slough Creek... about a 40 minute drive As we drove the sky lightened up and by the time we reached the turnoff into Slough Creek campground, it was almost 0730 and we had good light. We were surprised to see we were among the early-birds. We had no problem parking, of course, and in fact snagged a prime spot.
We moved to an obvious observation area on a hill looking west. We scanned with out binoculars for a good half hour and saw a few lone bison here and there, a small herd of elk by the ‘loaf’ shaped hill, and many bison way up on top. We could see something like 100-150 bison in the hills around us.
We had a light wind and a coldish morning so we started getting cold right away. We noticed other vehicles coming in to join us and the more popular place to be seemed to be up on the hill behind us-- but that was further yet away and we didn’t have powerful binocluars or a spotting scope.
Around 0815 I made a pact with Labashi--- we’d stay out here freezing until 0830 and then move to another spot, maybe check out the higher hill so we’d warm up hiking up the hill.
At 0825, a guy nearby who had a spotting scope said he could see a black wolf by the two spruce trees in the distance. It was so far away that we could only see a dark shape. But it also didn’t seem to move like a wolf. That’s because it was a grizzly bear! As it moved about we could clearly make out the shape of a grizz.
As we watched the grizzly, we started seeing other moving shapes--- wolves! We saw a black and several grays milling about. Again, they were so far in the distance that it was hard to tell exactly what we were seeing. Nevertheless, I set up our little pocket camera on its tripod and zoomed to max zoom-- 56X--- and once I was sure I had the objects centered, pressed the video-record button.
I was surprised to see I could actually see a bit more detail in the camera’s monitor screen than with the binoculars but the price to pay was battery life. It wasn’t long before the battery-low signal came on.
After about an hour more of watching and looking for the bear and wolves as they moved in and out of view we were too cold to stay out any longer. We returned to the van and fired up the propane heater for a few minutes.
Once warmed, we went back out but by then the scene had changed-- the bear, wolves, and bison were all gone. We stuck around to try a few more times but after another 20 minutes or so we called it a day.
We then drove further into the Lamar Valley, always scanning for wildlife. We saw hundreds and hundreds of bison in groups of 20 to 40 but they were in the hills in all directions. We also saw several herds of elk, probably numbering somewhere in the 200’s all told.
After our great success in the Lamar Valley, we drove back to Mammoth Hot Springs, hoping to find a wi-fi connection. We’ve been getting emails the last two days about our credit card auto-pay transactions failing. That credit card was caught up in the Home Depot data compromise and our replacement cards are in our mail at home. We have a second credit card to continue buying stuff while on the road but now will have to go in and change all the auto-pays to the other card. Unfortunately for today, Mammoth Hot Springs only has pay-wi-fi by the hour and charges too much for the service (for my way of thinking). We have a few days to get this straightened out so will start looking for a library tomorrow once we exit the park.
After Mammoth Hot Springs, we drove on down past Norris, pausing at many of the roadside pull-offs to look for wildlife. It was in this area a few years ago that we saw seven wolves near Obsidian Cliff.
We continued on down to Madison Junction and booked a campsite for the night, then drove on down past Old Faithful to Lone Star Geyser trail for a late-afternoon walk.
We walked in 2.5 miles on a very pretty trail along a stream. At the geyser we checked the log and saw it had last erupted around 1440. It was only 1530 by then so the geyser wouldn’t be erupting for another two hours (this particular one erupts about every three hours--- since 1872!)
We relaxed a bit then headed back, watching the creek closely for otters. Two bicyclists had told us they had seen otters!
We didn’t see otters but did have a very strange encounter. As we walked along scanning the creek for signs of otters, I noticed something moving in the distance. It was a coyote--- trotting right up the trail toward us. Labashi started up the camera and caught great footage of it as it approached to within 50 feet of us, diverted off-trail for a bit, then went back on trail and continued trotting along in an easy, no-worries trot. What an amazing day we’ve had for wildlife!
We made it back to the van around 1700 and headed to our campsite at Madison Junction. Once there we had supper and then took a walk through the campground and along the stream. Not far from our campsite I saw a Sportsmobile 4x4 Ford van and we stopped and chatted with the owner and his wife for a half-hour or so. They tell us they’ve been coming to Yellowstone for a decade and it has changed dramatically. Ten years ago if you had been here in October, you would have been alone but now it’s difficult to get a campsite. Also, the herds of elk have been decimated by the wolves and farmers all around the park have predation problems. The wolves brought in to re-populate are bigger and much more aggressive (according to these folks) than traditional Yellowstone wolves and the governments all to blame. I don’t know that I believe any of that but that’s what they said. I’ll have to look further into it but it doesn’t sound right to me.
We then spent the rest of the evening taking it easy after our long and very successful day.

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Saturday, 4 October -

This morning we first went to the nearby Cody Wal-mart to provision, gassed up, then headed for Yellowstone’s East Gate. We fought a strong headwind the whole 40 miles to the gate and across to Yellowstone Lake. We went to the Yellowstone Lake Hotel to look around and noticed the wind had died quite a bit and we had a really nice sunny day along the lake.
We then continued north, stopping in at most of the tourist stops. We had a good look at Yellowstone Falls viewpoints and that brought us around to the Canyon Visitor’s Center, where we saw a tourist film and educational displays about Yellowstone’s volcanic origin.
We continued north the rest of the afternoon, then turned into the Lamar Valley. At Slough Creek, we tried to get a campsite but there were none available.
We then drove back to the loop road and across to Mammoth Hot Springs, where we once again found the campground full. However, the guy at the desk gave us directions to two alternative sites. One was Eagle Creek Campground up in the hills above Gardiner (MT) and the other a roadside pulloff five miles north of Gardiner. We chose the latter so we didn’t have to go up the steep 2.5 mile road to Eagle Creek. We believe we had stayed there years ago and if memory serves, it doesn’t have much level ground. And with the elk hunters out in abundance this weekend, I’d bet we’d have a hard time finding a level-enough spot.
We found the roadside pull-off without problem and it has great views of the river and nearby mountains, but does, of course, have traffic going by.
We had supper and turned in early since we’ll be getting up early to return to the Lamar Valley to (hopefully) see wolves.

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Friday, 3 October -

This morning we left our snug little freebie campground in Ten Sleep Canyon and drove in to Worland, then turned northwest toward Cody. We drove to Lovell by lunch time. We went looking for some place to have lunch but ended up having sandwiches in the van in the parking lot of the Bighorn Canyon National Monument there at Lovell.
After touring the visitor’s center, we drove up into Bighorn Canyon, looking for bighorn sheep. We finally spotted about a dozen of them high on a hill but none had the characteristic curved ram’s horns.
We spent the next couple of hours slowing touring Bighorn Canyon’s overlooks and one of the historic ranches, then headed back to Lovell and on to Cody.
At Cody we sought out the library and took an hour or so to upload several videos for family. We then found our campground for the night at the west end of Cody at a small trailer park where we could get showers in the morning.
We then drove into town for supper, first trying a steak house but it was too crowded. We ended up next door at a Mexican restaurant and had fajitas and very strong margaritas.
Back at our camp, we turned in early--- around 2100.

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Thursday, 2 October -

Temperature overnight was 33 degrees but once the sun came up it quickly warmed ten degrees before we ever got up. We could have gotten away without the Buddy Heater but it felt very nice to dress by the glowing element.
After breakfast we drove up to the visitor’s center, pausing many times along the way as our vantage point on the Tower changed. The morning light on it was spectacular and changed as we spiraled up to the visitor center.
Upon emerging from the van, I first saw a climber’s platform high up on the rock. A ranger explained it had been left up there overnight by an IMAX film crew. A little while time later I heard a whoop and saw a climber up on the platform moving about and two more ascending to it with equipment on their backs.
After the visitor’s center we donned our day packs and began walking the Tower Trail, a 45-minute walk around the base of Devil’s Tower. The trail was a beauty. It led through the pines and boulders very close to the base of the Tower and gave us different views at every turn.
After a while, we were joined on the trail by a busload of Chinese tourists from Taiwan. They were very excited and chatty but also friendly. Fortunately, they moved along quickly so all we had to do was wait out their passing and chatting with a few of them. One even invited us to come see Taiwan!
After our walk, we drove back down to the campground and had lunch. We then took on a chore-- cleaning out the cooler. It’s actually an easy chore but does need to be done every two weeks or so.
We then drove back down from Devil’s Tower to I-90 West. We set the GPS for Sheridan, thinking we’d zip across the plains for a couple of hours, then head up into the mountains and camp somewhere in a Forest Service site.
But as we approached an intermediate town, Buffalo, we saw very black skies up toward Sheridan. We used the iPAd to see weather radar as we drove and it looked bad up there--- heavy blue indicating frozen precip. Also, we could see snow-capped peaks and it looked like it was actively snowing in the mountains.
At Buffalo, we stopped at the Visitor’s Center and talked with the agent about weather up that way. She confirmed they were getting hit and said the road we were planning to take was both steep and filled with hairpin turns. We took her advice to instead take a southern route-- US16-- west from Buffalo through the Powder River Pass in the Big Horn Mountains--- and on to Cody.
We climbed out of Buffalo slowly. Mocha Joe was feeling the altitude and the head-wind and climbed most of the time between 35 and 45 miles per hour. Fortunately, we had very few cars behind us.
After a while we started seeing snow at about the 8000-foot level. The girl at the visitor center said the snow is left over from a storm 3 weeks ago but that does not explain the blowing snow we were seeing today.
We stopped at Leaf Mountain Overlook to give the van a rest and take photos of Mocha Joe in the October snow.
We were very happy to see Powder River Pass and start our descent. As we neared Ten Sleep Canyon I pulled off for another cool-the-brakes stop and noticed something interesting on the Forest Service camping brochure. I had checked earlier and saw that only one campground remained open all year and it was at the 8000-foot level. As we passed it, we saw there was snow now and snow coming tonight. However, the interesting part was the fact that Leigh Creek campground at 5000 feet was closed but not gated. We could stay there free but could not expect services such as water pump, trash service, etc.
We took the next turnoff, Forest Road 18, to the campground and were very pleased to find Leigh Creek Campground was both ungated and beautifully situated on Ten Sleep Creek.
We picked out a site and chatted briefly with a young couple who had stayed here last night and were now headed over to Devil’s Tower. We then walked through the campground and up FR18 to the fish hatchery. Though the sign said visiting hours ended at 1700 and it was 1658, we walked through it, reading the exhibit signs and checking out Leigh Creek and Ten Sleep Creek. This hatchery is one of Wyoming’s most productive and specializes in Yellowstone cut-throat trout.
Labashi and I then walked back to our campsite and had supper, then I blogged and Labashi continued editing a video of our visit to her brother’s family in Ohio.



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Wednesday, 1 October -

This morning we woke to a clear sky and the sun coming up on the gigantic stone face of Chief Crazy Horse in the distance. Nice!
We drove to the Welcome Center and watched the intro film for about 45 minutes-- very well done.
We then began our tour of the facility and just kept going and going and going. We arrived at the Welcome Center at 0800 and were kept busy right up to lunch time perusing all the displays of Indian culture and the planning and building of the Crazy Horse mountain-sized statue. It’s just too incredible to conceive that one man did this and his family is carrying it on.
After our tour we lunched in the dining room. I had the tatanka (buffalo) stew and Labashi the Native American taco, both very generous in portion and very tasty.
Rain started just before lunch but we nevertheless drove on to Mount Rushmore, thinking we might be making a mistake. At the entrance gate, we were at first put off by an $11 parking fee but that turned out to include the memorial so that was fair after all. We first saw the massive stone heads of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln from the parking lot. I loved it!
Shortly after we parked the rain stopped and we viewed the work from the various viewing vantage points (several outside terraces and from the glass enclosure of the exhibits and theaters) at the visitor center. We then went inside and watched the introductory movie (time for an update, NPS!!!!) and toured the exhibit galleries. Again, an amazing engineering and artistic feat and quite inspiring.
After Mount Rushmore, we drove northeast across Route 387 to the towns of Lead and Deadwood and then on to our campground for the night (another hundred miles away) at Devil’s Tower National Monument. We arrived near the Tower just as the sun set and took a few photos but the sun didn’t quite co-operate in painting the Tower in light. Perhaps tomorrow!
We spent the evening catching up the blog (me) and editing a video of our visit in Ohio (Labashi).
Today was a good one! It started out clear and we got a good look at the Crazy Horse Memorial, then rained throughout our touring the museum inside. At Rushmore, the rain seemed to stop just after our arrival and we not only had good views, we were able to walk the trail under the Presidents. Then, late in the day, we arrived at Devil’s Tower in the last light of the day and set up camp among the impressive cottonwoods at the campground just as darkness fell and the half-moon came out. Nice!

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Tuesday, 30 September -

Overnight we had a small water leak in the upper seal of the back door. I noticed it early and simply stuffed in some paper towels to keep it at bay overnight. But today we needed to address it. We temporarily covered the back of the mattress with a waterproof tablecloth and that turned out to be a very good thing. After moving the van to the shower building to take our showers, we noticed the leak was a good bit worse but it was being re-directed away from our bed.
After showers we drove in to a “Do-It” hardware store and I bought two different types of rubber seal to address the leak. One is a 3/4”-wide by 3/16” foam tape with a sticky backing and the other is rubber air seal of similar dimensions. When I went to pay for them I discovered my credit card was rejected. I used another card and called my credit union to figure out what’s going on. The agent said they had sent me a new card due to the Home Depot data compromise so all I had to do was activate and use that card. That’s fine-- except the card is at home and I’m in South Dakota. Looks like I’ll just have to use the other card until I get home.
With the persistent rain, we needed something to do this morning so we drove to the nearby National Woodcarver’s Museum. This turned out to be a museum almost exclusively dedicated to one woodcarver -- Dr. Niblack---but he was quite a guy. He had spent some 70,000 hours woodcarving and was a master not only of wood but also of what Disney calls ‘animatronics’--- old-school gears, wheels, and wires moving the wooden characters.
The museum film was a great intro and the displays were kind of old-time kitschy in nature but displayed an amazing talent. We thought it a bit over-priced but not outrageously so.
After lunch the skies cleared so we took the van to an open area at the visitor’s center and I fixed the water leak problem. The worst of it was removing the hardened old foam tape I had used for this repair before. Hopefully, this new all-rubber seal will last longer.
We then drove to Hot Springs and ‘The Mammoth Site’. This is a really nice museum. It’s an indoor paleontological dig of a prehistoric sinkhole which trapped some 60 mastodons--- mostly Columbians and a few woolies--- plus a short-faced bear and other animals.
We were surprised how good this little museum is. It’s a community effort (as opposed to a university or major museum one) but the quality is very high. Everything from the displays and explanations to the laboratory to the book shop are all top-notch. We loved it!
We then drove back via Custer State Park and the Needles Highway. I had no idea the Black Hills had such spectacular scenery as we saw in the Needles Highway.... including two snow-white mountain goats high up the stone spires called ‘needles’. Our drive at sunset was incredible.
We returned to Heritage Village campground for the night and this time we could see the Crazy Horse Memorial in the distance. In fact we saw the laser-light show on it later in the evening.

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Monday, 29 September -

First thing this morning we drove to the nearest Ford dealer to (hopefully) get a new fuel filter installed. Last evening I found Greiner Ford and it was less than a mile from our Wal-mart overnight camp.
When I walked into the service department I steeled myself for a long discussion. I figured they had a full-up schedule and it would be a great stroke of luck for them to be able to work on the van anytime today or, more likely, tomorrow.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I told the service advisor I needed a fuel filter and he said they could work on it immediately, He wrote down ‘fuel filter’ on the service ticket and asked for the keys. I figured this meant I’d get a surprise on the bill and asked how much. “$59.95”, he said. I said that sounded great.
Labashi and I grabbed our computers and went to the waiting room while Cole, the service advisor, drove Mocha Joe into the service bay. While the tech worked on the van, I uploaded the blog update and Labashi uploaded a video clip for Shilla. In less than an hour, Cole was back and said the bill came in a little less than the estimate--- $56-something. I could hardly believe it. They did the work for LESS than the estimate? And there were no “Hey, we noticed you need a new .......” sales pitches? Really?
I happily paid the bill and we moved on to the local Starbucks, again just a short distance away, to continue with some work on wi-fi. We then figured out where we were going (to the Black Hills!) and took a short detour to the local Staples for Labashi to shop for a laptop sleeve. We had been sharing my laptop bag and it was just a bit small and inconvenient. Somehow, she lucked out and found a nice sleeve--- actually a bag--- for $21 and it’s perfect.
After lunch at a Five Guys we got on the road and headed for the Hills. We drove for a couple of hours while listening to ‘This American Life’ episodes headed up the interstate. We then got off the ‘slab’ and drove through the Salt Creek Formation oil fields, Thunder Basin coal fields, and the Thunder Basin National Grasslands. These oil fields have produced since the late 1800’s and the coal is a favored lower-sulfur variety, making Wyoming a hotbed of activity. At Wright, we stopped at the rest-stop/museum and learned the area is also one of the top producers of uranium yellowcake in the nation.
Around supper time we finally came out of the grasslands and saw the first Black Hills in the distance. We made it to Custer and the Heritage Village campground just before dark. Our campsite was a reasonable $15 per night and supposedly had a view of the Crazy Horse Memorial-- but by then we it was raining and the hilltops were fogged in. We couldn’t see it!
We spent the evening snug in the van with a steady rain drumming on the roof.

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