On to Nebraska

You just never know what you'll see in the road.

See the dog working.

He's waving us through.  Excuse the bugs on the windshield.

A beautiful bridge on South Dakota state route 212 over Lake Oahe 

which is the Missouri River dammed up, upriver from Pierre.

We started to see this really pretty red stuff all around.  

It wasn't flowers just red leaves on a plant that I couldn't identify.  

Then we have hundreds of miles of hay/grass fields recently cut and rolled into these 

big rolls which are wrapped in green mesh and then stacked.

Still seeing acres of sunflowers in all stages of bloom.

And one last pic for today.  Here we have some old and some new in the same field.

I don't remember if I have mentioned what is going on in the middle of our country.  All of the campgrounds/rv parks are nearly full because there is OIL in the ground, folks.  This area is full of oil workers, drilling and building pipe lines all over the place. Oil workers are living in travel  trailers, campers and motor homes.  They're a huge mobile work force.  Moving from one job location to the next, bringing along their wives and kids and dogs/cats.  It is a wonder, all this work. They have filled up the rv parks, it is sometimes hard to find a spot to park for the night.  I say good for all these young men and women who are going where the jobs are.  I know two women who went to Alaska to work on that pipe line.  Oh the stories that they tell.  

Until next time.

Evie and Joy

BEAUTIFUL South Dakota

We've made our way up and over to South Dakota.  It is so beautiful here.  Miles and miles of farms and their crops.  Sunflowers, soybeans, red winter wheat and millet.

We drove 50 miles on Interstate 90

Then turned north on state highway 83.

We spent one night in a county park in Ft. Pierre, SD. right on the banks of the Missouri River.

In this pic the highway bridge is in front of the train bridge.

See that island, Lewis and Clark camped there on one of their trips up the river.

After I took that river picture we continued our way down this little state highway and went over a hill and this is what we saw.  It happens to be South Dakotas 125 birthday and in celebration of that a group of horseman and women are reenacting a ride that took place 125 years ago.  

There were about 100 different wagons.  I pulled off to the side of the road and we watched them go by.  Almost everyone waved to us and many said hi and commented that we were from California, a long way from home.

I'm closing today with three miscellaneous pics but they needed to be in here.

This bridge at first glance looks like it is metal but when we drove under 

it it was made from glulam beams, built in 1968.  Click here to see a story about this bridge.

These last two pictures are for my friends in California.  

These are some of the gas prices for South Dakota.

That's all for now, see you later.

Evie and Joy

  

A Day Along the Oregon Trail

We spent a day following along part of the Oregon Trail.  After spending the night in the state campground which was out near a lake I have a whole new respect for the poor men, women and children who made the trip west in a covered wagon.  Where we stayed the ground was covered with stickers and thorns.  And the bugs were worse than awful.  Mom and I have read many books filled with diaries and personal accounts written by women, of the trip west so I did have a clue of the hardships but OMG. You can read about the Oregon Trail Ruts and Register Cliff by clicking here.

Here's my modern day conestoga wagon.

It's very humbling to be able to walk where thousands of men, women and children

 have labored to push and pull wagons up this hill.

 Here are some of the thousands of name and dates carved into the rock at Register Cliff.

Mom walking back to our wagon.

This is the field where the trail went through.  To the left is Registry Cliff and off in the distance is the sandstone hill where the ruts are.  The land that is not park land belongs to the Wyoming national guard and they have their training grounds along the road to the cliffs.  

Off to the right is the Platte River.

The beautiful and very important North Platte River.

See you in a few days.

Evie

Leaving Riverton, WY going to Guernsey, WY

My new friend Merlin told us about Hells Half Acre.

I seem to be having trouble with my camera, it can't decide what to focus on.

Along the Wind River.

The Valentine Speedway, for all the saturday night racers in my crowd.

 There are still lots of wild flowers blooming.

 Antelope

We spent one night in a state campground outside of Guernsey WY. and little did we know that it was right alongside of these railroad tracks.  Ugg none of us slept all night but it did make for some interesting pictures of trains.

 How many of us get to see a train from above.  

 Yup it's coal.  Wyoming has coal mines.

The coal train is waiting for the tanker train to pass.  Yup there's oil in Wyoming too.

This is so interesting looking down on the engines.

The reason we went to Guernsey was to see part of the Oregon Trail.  That will be in the next blog. 

Thanks for reading.

Grand Tetons

I have nothing to add.  These pictures say it all.

Clouds starting to lift.

Jenny Lake.

It's starting to cool down at night, good thing we have a small 

electric heater that mom can turn on in

 the morning to take the chill off the RV.

The Tetons were breathtaking.  The drive through them isn't long so we started from the north as Yellowstone and Tetons share a border.  On the southern border is Jackson WY where we had lunch and then drove back through the park north bound.  About  two thirds of the way north is state highway 26 going east and that is the way we went.  Highway 26 travels through the Wind River Indian Reservation which has some spectacular views.

We have crossed the Continental Divide many times.

The beautiful Wind River.

This day was a long days drive.  I try to keep our drive time down to two or three hours with four hours being a really long day.  But this day was a long one.  We pulled into a campground after about three hours but I didn't have a good feeling about it so we left.  I rely very much on my feelings and if something doesn't feel right for what ever reason we are flexible to change our plans.  This day we drove for almost two more hours.  BUT apparently the reason I was having 'bad vibes' was because a storm was blowing in and we didn't know it.  We were headed to Landers WY but at the last minute at the cross roads I turned left and we went instead to Riverton, WY.  A good thing too.  A friend, RVSue, whose blog I read was in Landers (I didn't know it at the time) and the Landers area got hit hard with the storm.  It showed in Riverton but it didn't stick like it did in Landers, omg I think RVSue said in her blog she got 4 or 5 inches of snow.  We were at the Owl Creek Kampground (more on that in a minute) so while it was snowing we decided to stay for two nights to wait out the storm.  Good decision. When we left and went south back into Riverton to do shopping the whole mountain range where Landers, WY is was covered with snow.  Very pretty to look at, but didn't get a picture.  You can go to RVSues blog and look at her pictures.  Her blog is listed on the right side of my page.

OK, now back to the Owl Creek Kampground.  A little history first.

In the 1970's and most of the 1980's I was living in Santa Cruz, CA.  At that time we listened to a small outlaw type radio station with the call letters of KPIG.  Yes sport fans it was called Kpig and they played country rock music.  Each year during the county fair the radio station would have a booth and hand out bumper stickers just like the big guys.  

Ok fast forward to now.

About two days before getting to the Owl Creek Kampground I heard a song on my new XM radio that was popular on KPIG in the 80's and it got me to thinking about the fact that I still have an unused bumper sticker at home somewheres and maybe I should put it on the RV.  Ok now we are parked in front of the Owl Creek Kampground and I'm walking up to the office to check in and what do I see on the door?

And here comes the guy from the office and I'm practically rolling on the ground having a fit over the sticker.

Merlin from Monterey, CA.

It turns out that the campground is owned by D. Fallon who use to cook in Clint Eastwood's restaurant in Carmel.  Small world.  I think that one of my readers who use to live in Carmel himself might have eaten there.  What about it Gman?

Here's Merlin with his bike and a sign showing where his allegiance lies in college football.

Go CalBears!!!

Merlin and I had a great time visiting just like old friends.

Thank you for following my journeys and your comments.

Evie