Monday, September 14, 2015

Our Journey Continues ....

Now I know I promised to get this blog caught up ... and that will happen.  And though we're now in California, the adventures over the last couple of months have been wonderful, so better late than never .... here goes.

Our time in Colorado was awesome, even though we had some not so good weather, which in turn kept us from doing all we wanted to do, there was a lot of family time and even a gathering at the campground where we had lots of visitors, including my mom.




A great event to close our time here .... But holding to our schedule, we prepare for travel.
The good news is we'll be back next spring .... same time ... same place.

My brother assisted with some minor work on both the car & the trailer.  Adding some lifts to the ramp door of the trailer help resolve the loading and unloading of the car.  And the routine maintenance checks on the Bus, not to mention a trip to Walmart, to stock up on supplies .... and bug spray.  In talking with our sister & brother-in-law in Wisconsin, they tell us the shelves up there are pretty much void of bug spray.  So we stock up good .... several cans of yard fog, and a bunch of every kind of body spray you can imagine ...we're ready to travel.

Our next destination is Appleton/Shawano WI, but first we need to stop in at Americas Mailbox near Rapid City SD to take care of some errors on our new SD vehicle titles, and the SD DMV to get our new driver's licenses.
So during the last week in June, we make our way north, up I25.  It's great being back in the driver's seat. It's a pretty easy run to Rapid City and quite uneventful.  We'll be staying 2 nites at the campground provided by Americas Mail Box.  This will allow enough time to get what we need done and maybe take in some sights as well.  Neither Jackie or I have been in this part of the country.


The camp ground here is pretty nice and they provided a place to set the trailer after unloading the car.
After a relaxing evening, we stopped by the office to see what we needed to do to get things done.  And the folks at Americas Mailbox are quite helpful.  When we walked into their building, we were greeted immediately with "Welcome Home"! Talk about surreal!!  We would soon call our home South Dakota! They provided the paperwork needed to get our drivers license and took the information necessary to get our title issues resolved.  They would be handling all the paper work.  So after a short stop at the SD DMV (about 30 minutes), we were off to see the sights with our SD drivers licenses in hand.  Almost too easy.
We had an awesome day seeing things like Mt. Rushmore, the site where the movie Dances With Wolves was filmed and Bear Park USA.  Course it rained on us during our tour of the bear park, but was still a lot of fun.


 


We had a great lunch at a cool little restaurant on the way back from Mt Rushmore. The food was good and the people there very nice.  It was nice not having a lot of traffic either way.


Our adventure at Bear Park USA was all that for certain .... if you've not done this at least once, you need to .... never saw so many bears .... along with other wild life.  You do the tour in the car ... and of course Jackie was quite concerned with us in our "rag top" Vette .......


They did get up close and personal ........ even sticking their nose in the window at times .....
Quite frankly I was surprised to see so many of them out with how hard it was raining .... but what do I know .......  Lesson learned...bears are Not intimidated by rain whatsoever!  They were everywhere!


We even had a gray wolf come by to say hello ....  it was very tuff getting a good pix ....


One of my most favorite movies is Dances With Wolves .... and getting to see some of the areas & sets where the movie was shot was very cool ..........




And the area around this set is so beautiful .... Jackie & I could not get over how green and beautiful it is ............


But now it's time to get packed up for the 3 day journey to Wisconsin ....


Great short stay in the Rapid City area .... and we know there is a whole lot more to see ... but we're anxious to get up to Wisconsin, so we're back on the road .........  and a most beautiful ride .....


Our plan is to either see if there are parks along the way to stay at, calling in the last couple of hours of our driving ... or just hitting a rest stop or something to grab a nap.  Well ... my lil navagator finds the most interesting possibilities .... 
The first nite out, she finds a little campground out in the middle of farm country, near the town of Salem SD, called Camp America Campground.  It sits about 1 1/2 miles off of I90.  And what a find it was ..... 

(Web Site Photo)

Two very nice ladies greeted us when we arrived and were happy to chat with us for a bit and direct us into our site.  Guys .... these were the biggest sites we had seen so far .... we were able to pull into our site .... with trailer in tow ... with room to spare .... and the surroundings .... second to none.  Trees, where they should be in a park .... satellite worked perfectly .... and every part of the park very well taken care of .... our "yard" was almost as big as our yard at our old home in Mesa AZ, with grass, picnic table and fire pit .... with flowers everywhere.  It was soooooooooooo nice.  The sky was so blue, white fluffy clouds everywhere!  It was as perfect as a movie set!

 
 We were early enough, we set up, prepared to do a nice dinner outdoors and even enjoy a glass .... cheers to a most awesome navigator .....


Did someone say fire pit ????  We're always down for a little fire .... and maybe even some s'mores ...



 And can the girl cook em .....  



Come on .... these are the kind of evenings we all dream about out here on the road.  
Now we did talk to the nice ladies about staying another nite, but unfortunately, our site was rented for the next few nites ..... and they did tell us they were working on selling their park.  I certainly hope the new owners take as much pride in the park as these ladies did ..... what an awesome stay.

Next .... Welcome to Wisconsin

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