MUDDSCAPE

You are probably wondering about the title. Maybe you are asking yourself “What the heck is a Norcold?” If you have ever owned an RV, even a boat with a refrigerator in it, you have very likely owned a Norcold. And if you have been in the RV-owning business for longer than 4 or 5 years, you have likely had to have it fixed. We went to the extreme a couple of times, in both our boat and our previous 5^th wheel trailer and replaced one outright. They are expensive because they have the “Norcold” logo on them, the outright major manufacturer of these devices for RV’s and boats. You can buy a similar device for your dorm room from 10 different manufacturers for about 1/10^th the price, but they won’t work in your 12V machine.

So, imagine our disappointment Thursday night on arrival in Pueblo, after a very long travel day. The light on the front of the Norcold was off. “Strange” I thought, “who turned off the fridge?” The answer: nobody. Very shortly the light started blinking red, an indication that it was trying to restart itself. It has an “automatic” mode where it can select one of 3 energy sources to run on, propane, 12V electric, or 110V electric (if you are plugged into shore power).

I had just plugged us into shore power, so I immediately thought it was just having a little bit of trouble transitioning from the 12V power it uses while we are on the road to the shore power at the RV park. But it didn’t make the transition. So, I started checking around, pulling off the exterior panel to see if wires had fallen loose, or was something leaking, or WTF? Nothing. Wendy, being slightly more creative than I, began praying, which, while I felt “it couldn’t hurt”, didn’t really think it was helping. I ran out of ideas, and instead decided to sit on the portable massage chair (Wendy named “him” Raul, which I have always thought disloyal of her) to iron out the stiff back muscles. While I was sitting there getting pummeled by shiatsu mode, Wendy asked for a tutorial on how to “kick the fridge back into gear”, redneck trailer trash (which we now temporarily are) talk for restarting it. I simply said, “you just touch the button next to the little light”. She touched it, and it came back on. Just like that. I take back the part about thinking prayer wasn’t helping. Clearly (and you can try to prove me wrong if you want), God fixed my Norcold.

This was the third problem to present itself at this campsite. You read previously about the shattered plates. Every stop more shards creep out from under the sofa slide. This stop, one got caught under the slide and carved a little cut into the top of the laminate floor. A little dab of super-strong clear glue fixed that right up.

Problem #2 happened as I was hooking up the flexi-hose between the holding tanks and the sewer dump outlet at the site.

The connector between the hose and the outlet came apart. It’s a snap together thing, but wouldn’t snap back together, and there was no way I was gonna pull the Geronimo Handle (the thing that opens the valve between the holding tank and the hose) if the hose wasn’t going to stay sealed into the outlet. I’ve had that happen more than once, and it ain’t pretty or sweet-smelling. Wendy, ever creative, again saved the day by microwaving a bowl of very hot water, and when I heated the 2 plastic parts in it they went right back together.

So, we got away clean on 3 problems. It won’t last. Trust me.

That was the end of the day. Early in the day we departed the last super-cold morning location we will likely see on this trip, Cheyenne Wyoming, which was a nippy 36F at dawn. We were overjoyed to be driving straight south toward much warmer weather and celebrated a bit by making 2 stops as we neared Denver. The first was in Loveland, a northern suburb, that has a Lovelocks feature at its municipal community center. Thank you again Wendy for the research on “things near our path”.

We bought a lock (the purple one of course), borrowed their engraving pencil, and immortalized our love on the wire, just on the right side of the heart-shaped O. I thought it would be romantic to throw the key in a river, thus sealing our love forever, but Wendy, for some reason unknown to me after being locked in a small box for almost 3 weeks now, wanted to keep it.

The second stop was only an hour south, at the Stanley Marketplace in North Aurora. We were diverting around Denver to avoid traffic, and this was only a couple of miles off the route. They have an ice cream store there called Sweet Cow, with legendary good ice cream.

This Thursday Throwback from Tippy has always been good advice.

Our drive through the plains and back into the Rockies went well (except for that Kimball Grade thing). There were plenty of wide open spaces, and we had ample road snacks, an absolute MUST for road trips.

We arrived at the Cheyenne RV Resort in mid-afternoon and had some time before dinner to take a walk-through of Cheyenne proper. We imagined it, as a prominent cowboy town, to have a charming and authentic downtown section that might also present us with an opportunity to sample the local ice cream. Huh.

Cheyenne is Wyoming’s largest city (population approximately 500,000) and its capitol. One would hope that would make for a good walking city tour, a chance to stretch our legs and treat our eyes and ears to something besides a striped stretch of asphalt. We parked close to the State House, figuring that might be a good epicenter for our quest. There is pitifully little content online about how to tour Cheyenne, and now we know why. First, we arrived at about 4:30PM, and the city rolls up its sidewalks promptly at 5. Second, when we asked a local for suggestions about finding some “historic features”, she thought long and hard and replied “there really isn’t anything other than a few buildings about a mile south”. We walked that mile south and did find a few buildings, but not something we would call interesting. Still, better than Deadwood.

About the most interesting thing we saw were large boot sculptures scattered around town, each commemorating some event or person.

To spice up this short post a bit, I have an update on how well our trailer has fared so far. Well, not so much the trailer itself, but the contents. On our transit from Coeur D’Alene Idaho to West Glacier Montana, a highway work crew had diverted traffic eastbound onto an offramp and back up the onramp so they could repair an overpass. I noticed a little late that the cars and trucks in front of me were not negotiating the bottom of the offramp too well, and discovered, at about 20 mph, that there was a pretty sizeable dip in the road. We hit that baby and nearly caught air! When we arrived at West Glacier, we noticed some broken Correlle plate fragments. 2 small dessert plates had jumped out of an overhead cabinet when the door opened and smashed to smithereens on the floor. The cabinet door closed all by itself. We swept it up, initially thinking it was a single plate, but as we opened and closed the sofa slide over the next few days, more shards kept appearing out from under it, thus leading us to count the remaining plates and arriving at the correct damage assessment. If this is all we suffer from bad roads, more power to us!

After our overnight, we’ll head south with our sights set on Carlsbad Caverns for Memorial Day. And here’s some good advice for planning walking tours.

We bugged out of Rapid City wanting some flatter land to tow through, so we drifted south and east toward the promise of the Great Plains. Our target was Alliance Nebraska, where a colorful local by the name of Jim Reinders reproduced the ancient temple of Stonehenge using cars instead of rocks. It’s a to-scale model, with precisely placed elements matching the original complete with an eastward facing portal that directs rays of the sunrise onto a specific fender of a specific rusty hulk on a specific day, which is implied but not specified. That’s not important. What is important is WHY he did it. When asked, he answered “Why not?”. So, there, in a nutshell is what’s important today. This is what counts for excitement in Nebraska.

A historical plaque informed us that the temple was completely assembled over 6 days during a large family visit in the summer of 1987. By his calculations, “we were able to reduce the time of the original Stonehenge construction by 9,999 years and 1 week”, thus imparting some sort of obtuse historical victory to the Reinders Clan. There are also a few other art exhibits constructed on the site.

Bonus Update on rocks for Rushmore and Crazy Horse: we did commemorative painted rocks in honor of our 2 main attractions. They are planted in Rapid City SD and Alliance NE, and their twins will live in our Florida garden.

The remaining ride to Cheyenne was predictably flat until we turned west at Kimball and began a long 60-mile uphill grade toward the Rockies that consumed well over ½ tank of gas (estimated mileage about 6 mpg). You could practically hear my wallet screaming. We were rewarded, however, with some very stunning landscape views, like Scott’s Bluff, which just rises out of the flat plain.

We will next have a walking tour visit to Cheyenne, the capitol of Wyoming and its largest city with about ½ million population.

Tippy is an elephant of high character.

Due to our early start at Mt. Rushmore (we had plenty of parking choices), we finished up at Crazy Horse before 11AM. We took advantage of the free afternoon to make a detour to Wall Drug, about 50 miles east of Rapid City. It seems like a long “detour”, but with 80 mph speed limits on the interstate, it goes pretty quick. Especially when driving the truck without our house attached.

The internet tells us that Wall Drug, like the Kardashian’s, is famous for being famous. Started in 1931 by Ted and Dorothy Hustead, Dorothy’s genius idea to offer free ice water to travelers on the nearby highway, advertised via roadside signs, started them down the path to monster tourist attraction. If one sign worked well, thought Ted, why wouldn’t a hundred signs work a hundred times better? Soon, signs were appearing everywhere, and when they started their program to offer free signs simply by asking for one (a program that persists to this day), they started appearing all over the world, driven partly by American GI’s being deployed all over said world during WWII. The only requirement to receive a sign: post the mileage to Wall Drug and send us a photo. I’ve seen them all over the US, and as you drive there on Interstate 90 you can see 3 or 4 every mile.

Here’s one far flung fan:

Main Street in Wall South Dakota is totally dominated by Wall Drug. Filling a city block, there are other symbiotic businesses lining the block across the street that try to compete selling pretty much the same stuff but can’t compete with the prices. The only benefit they offer is a lower crowd density, and tattoos. There are many parking lots surrounding the “downtown core” which is primarily Wall Drug. But we must have a large supply of parking karma in the bank because we parked directly in front of one entrance, the Café, where we enjoyed a Buffalo burger and hamburger for lunch. The onion rings were fantastic! And the free ice water was as good as it can be. We passed on the 5-cent coffee, which is offered through an honor bar (“Place nickel in slot prior to serving yourself”).

You can imagine the scene if you can picture about 15 Disney gift shops packed into a building that covers a city block. Resisting the temptation to empty our wallets to benefit the Husteads, we bought a magnet, something we have been doing everywhere on this trip. Then we hightailed it out of town, but not before posing with our two new Besties of Wall.

Our second day of touring was reserved for Deadwood. I had visited 40+ years ago and still had fond memories of the authentic old West gold rush town. In those days, it was still burnished by its birth in 1874 out of a gulch full of dead trees and a creek full of gold. Main Street had the famous saloons and brothels maintained to help impart a sense of the lawlessness and excitement that was Deadwood in the late 1870’s. Wild Bill Hickok arrived here and within a few weeks was gunned down while holding a hand of aces and eights, the “dead man’s hand”. Calamity Jane is buried next to him in the local cemetery. I’m a sucker for old American history, and this place in those days fed that rush.

Today’s Deadwood is a pretty severe disappointment. Main Street is still there, although it has been transformed by a plague of major hotel/casinos that have discovered the new gold: trading history for profits.

These monster establishments literally cast shadows over the original town, blotting out the past so completely that the new town fathers have resorted to a few well-placed historical signs and daily re-enactments of street gun fights (only in the summer season) to remind their craps and slot-playing customers that this was once a wild western place. One may as well visit Reno.

We truncated our Black Hills Deadwood tour early and drove in silence back to the rig. On a brighter note, we used the extra time to catch up on our rock painting and blog writing!

Tippy is a huge Elon Musk fan.

Fresh out of Sturgis, we got settled into Rapid City South RV, aptly named for its location on the highway to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, our main attractions for the area. This is a 3 night stop for us, a chance to really recharge the batteries and do some touring. We’re still seeing profuse evidence of a very conservative population, up to and including whole stores devoted to Trump 2024 (yes, many of these folks seem convinced), heralded by billboards on the highway. It’s a notable observation, not because of the political sentiment, but that folks can apparently make a good living off of it. Who‘da thunk?

With 2 whole days to tour, we planned the first as a Mt. Rushmore to Crazy Horse round trip. We realize that there isn’t a lot to do at Mt. Rushmore other than staring in awe at the mountain, and then emptying your wallet in the gift shop (we didn’t). We had each been there before, at least 40 years or more earlier. And boy has it changed. I remember it being a single parking lot, very crowded, with limited parking for longer or larger rigs. And the Visitor Center was a single building affair with a large veranda at the back for viewing the sculpture. From the parking lot, to the veranda, ooing and awing, then a quick stop in the very small gift shop, back to the car was about a 20 to 30 minute deal. But the National Park Service budget has been very kind to them. There is now a 6 level parking structure, with elevators and ramps and a Disneyland-like crowd funneling system to get everyone to the front of a massive Visitor Complex that has at least 4 buildings, including an ice cream store, a restaurant, a gift shop, restrooms, and a Greeting Center. It’s still just the same few minutes to oooh and aww, but the hike from the parking to the viewing plaza, which is enormous, can take at least 15 minutes, if you don’t count the 15 minutes it takes to pay your automated kiosk parking pass.

Wendy remembers the thrill of the “first sight” as you drive into the monument on the windy mountain road.

And you can get some pretty nice views without even going into the “complex”.

Once in, and parked, and paid (the monument itself is free, parking is paid at $10 per car, $5 for seniors), you have to hike through the canyon of buildings, catching ever increasing glimpses of the faces as you progress through the “Sculptors Plaza”(Gutzon Borglum is the man) and the “Walk of Flags” where all of the states and territories of the USA are represented.

We knew it would be a quick stop, and we intentionally arrived a little before it opened at 8AM to give us plenty of time to get to Crazy Horse, where we were assured there was much more to do. We snapped the obligatory selfie and hit the road for a 25-minute drive to our next stop. On the way there, we found a very interesting view of George Washington from the highway.

Crazy Horse is a different deal. It has no affiliation with the federal government, the creators intentionally refusing federal funds as a way to stay clear of bureaucracy, intrusive oversight and regulation. As a result, the progress toward completion has taken many decades, and will likely take many more decades until it is done. We were both there the same 40 plus years ago, and although it has changed significantly (better parking lots, roads, and a museum/visitor center, some carving progress), it still gives off the same vibe that it used to. The aura of the place draws deeply on the Native American intention to honor their ancestors through the stone embodiment of Crazy Horse.

Just like Rushmore, you get an early tease before you arrive as the mountainous land gives way to a flatter valley.

We had been using our National Park Service Senior “Forever” Pass ($10 when we bought it 6 years ago, now $80) frequently to get into Glacier, Yellowstone, Custer, Devils Tower, etc. But we had to fork over $12 each to get into Crazy Horse. It really seems worth it. The story of the Lakota Tribe finding and hiring Korczak Ziolkowski, the polish sculptor who had assisted Borglum with Rushmore, and then negotiating the agreements and strategy for the development, is a powerful tale of the marriage of intent, desire, talent, and perseverance to achieve something deemed impossible to most. The result very adeptly captures and projects all that went into it onto the viewers.

For the best experience, we recommend the $4 one-hour bus ride to the base of the mountain. The raw power of the stone, and the effort required to tame it is easy to miss from a distance. And, as a bonus, our Lakota native driver, whose birth name translated to “Crying Boy” but he goes by his “white” name Gary, provided a non-stop diatribe about his family, his girlfriend’s family (a different tribe, not Lakota fans), Crazy Horse’s family, and his work history for the last 20 years. If you listened with a very open mind, you could cull quite a bit of Native American history and sentiment out of his narrative. We found it very entertaining and left him a nice tip. He had very authentic hair. He told us his favorite Lakota joke, giving us a sense of Native American humor. As a setup, the Lakota are considered, simultaneously, the low life of Native Americans, and the fiercest warriors. So, the joke goes as two old natives, a Crow and a Lakota, sit talking: Says the old Crow to the old Lakota, “We used to raid your villages and steal your women and your horses.” The old Lakota considers this for a while, and then responds “When we raided your villages we saw your women, and that’s why we only stole horses”. A little pee might have come out.

Next post: we reveal our Deadwood Day, and our bonus side trip, Wall Drug!

And here’s a tip from Tippy, a big Miles Davis fan.

I can’t believe I skipped one of our “unplanned but then planned” side trips. We originally endeavored to drive basically straight east from West Yellowstone, traversing Yellowstone National Park and exiting through the East Gate, proceeding down Highway 14 through Cody Wyoming and into Ranchester. But we discovered on our trip to Canyon Center (the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone), that the road through to the East Gate was closed in places because it wasn’t yet plowed, and we had no idea how long it would be until that changed. So, we “re-routed” and backtracked north to Interstate 90.

Wendy’s doctor had heartily suggested that we visit the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, previously known as Custer’s Last Stand. Our new route brought that into play, and it was a perfect stop for lunch.

But first! In response to the massive appeal by subscribers for help locating the mystery climbers of Devil’s Tower, a clue:

Now, back to the battlefield. This National Park Service monument has its own off ramp from Interstate 90, so there isn’t much of a detour from our BTE. It isn’t a big site, either in size or in infrastructure. There was parking for maybe 75 cars and about 6 or 7 RVs, and the gift shop would be crowded with more than 40 people. But the relatively small size of the site belies the large impact it can have on you.

In June of 1877 George Custer and 276 other members of the 7^th Cavalry Regiment were wiped out by several thousand tribal warriors when they foolishly attacked a large native encampment without waiting for reinforcements to arrive. The treeless landscape is bleak, and when we were there, it was cold and windy.

Standing atop the hill that Custer and his men died on, the vastness of the space and image of what it might have looked like with 2 to 3 thousand attacking warriors coming at you, it is easy to imagine the fear and dread those men felt in their final moments. It is a powerful moment, and we’re happy to have taken advantage of it. If you are ever in the neighborhood, it’s a highly recommended stop.

And here’s a bonus Tippy.

At 550 miles, it’s too far a reach to get from West Yellowstone Montana to Rapid City South Dakota in one drive, so we overnighted in Ranchester Wyoming, a suburb of Sheridan. This is Coal Country, as the many trains pulling hundreds of coal cars will attest. Our small RV park for the night, the Lazy R, is basically someone’s large back yard with about 20 sites cut into it. It really imparts the feel of staying in a very small town just like you lived in the neighborhood. We took a walk after getting set up, through the neighborhood, and found a delightful little gang of girls selling lemonade for $1 a cup. In my day it was more like $0.10, but my day is long gone. These little capitalists were entertaining, one of them waving a large cardboard sign and shouting her head off “Lemonade, L E M O N A D E ! !” so loud we could hear her a block away. No cars or people around, mind you (except for the guy driving the lawn tractor down the main drag), but they were doing the best they could, so we happily paid them 5 bucks for 2 cups. I did notice their money jar was crammed with bills, either “tip bait” put there by Mom, or they had successfully fleeced the entire population of Ranchester at their going rate.

Beside the train whistles (and I’m being polite here, a diesel engine horn isn’t the quaint steam whistle of years gone by), we also were serenaded (again) by propane heaters in the night, whooshing and throbbing like a 747 jet engine as they rhythmically turn on and off several times an hour. Al Gore should up his game and include a message about electric heat in RVs. It would improve our life considerably. But the drive and the very fresh cold air induced sleep, in spite of it all.

As we penetrate the heart of the country southeastwardly, the change in weather, scenery and pace of life is mirrored in the politics on display. Houses and businesses displaying American flags are everywhere. “Biden did that” stickers are stuck on lots of gas station pumps. The local minimart had a placard on the front door declaring “Coal Guns Freedom”. A sign along the road reminded us that President Reagan once allowed “We don’t have inflation because WE are living too well, we have inflation because GOVERNMENT is living too well.” A bumper sticker on a truck advised “Have you noticed that there have been no news stories about people who have lost their businesses or livelihoods?” I think that the vast interior reaches of this country are like this, unseen and unheard by the coastal denizens because our media complex doesn’t find them interesting or noteworthy. They only really get to be heard every 2 or 4 years, and it will be interesting to hear what they have to say.

Lest you all think that living in this tiny box on wheels is a sacrifice, be assured we are doing just fine! Wendy, the irrepressible baker, made some Snickerdoodles, and we killed a houseplant, just like in a real house!

RV living is by nature a little cramped, and your toes, shins, elbows, and knuckles need some time to learn the limits on movement in it. The payoff: cleaning the bathroom in 3 minutes without taking a step (same with the kitchen). Our relatives in Florida, Glen and Donna (Daniel’s other grandparents), purport to have one-upped us on the tiny living space and volunteered to meet us in Nashville.

The drive from Sheridan to Rapid City was planned as an express route, but Wendy has found she can occupy her time as co-pilot by researching things we are passing near on our route. She found 2 “bonus” side-trips on this leg. The first was about a 40-mile detour, paralleling our planned route (nicely done Wendy!) to Devils Tower in Wyoming. I had never been, and she insisted that I just HAD to see it. She was right. It has stunning views from every angle and distance. In the right-hand picture, there are 2 climbers at the bottom of one of the vertical grooves. HINT: in a future blog post, I’ll reveal where!

The Native American story is that the tower was created by the Great Spirit to save 7 sisters from a bear that was chasing them, raising it from the earth beneath their feet. The bear, still pursuing them, created the “scratches” on the walls as shown in this authentic depiction. I know I’m a storyteller, and occasionally take a little poetic license, but this one tops my best. Vindication.

While Devils Tower is famously known for the starkness of its being, lesser known is that it is also home to the National Prairie Dog Monument. This small, 2-acre field has seemingly thousands of prairie dogs, who I suspect have all been trained to pose for photos. Here’s a wide shot of the field, and a close up of the same spot. Point a camera and they all snap to and freeze in perfect Prairie Dog Poses!

Bonus side-trip #2. I’m a car guy. When traveling to Rapid City South Dakota on Interstate 90, one comes temptingly close to Sturgis, the center of the universe for bikers since the start of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally 81 years ago. That first event drew less than a dozen bikes and riders. Last year was the 81^st Anniversary, and it drew about 525,000 participants for the actual week of the rally in August, and another million seasonal visitors. I love cars and motorbikes, but not as much as I love ice cream. We went to Sturgis. To Emma’s Ice Cream Emporium on Main Street. Where we parked the truck and trailer parallel in a row of “head in only” parking spots, taking up ½ a city block of parking, and got our ice cream. Then we hightailed it out of town before the sheriff got wind of it.

And Lacey has another friend, meet Blaze. Blaze was gifted to us by a tenant at Peoples Storage, and his magnetic feet make it easy for him to “hang around” the rig. He has secret stash compartments all over him.

As a note to our replacement managers, Debbie & Tommy, here’s what we back up to at Rapid City South RV Park. We just can’t escape!

Ladies and Gents, Tippy.

A long drive on Day 4 brought us to West Yellowstone Montana. Last October, when making reservations for campsites, I discovered that Yellowstone National Park had some very nice ones, but they had closed down for 2 Covid years. And when they reopened to reservations, all the campers whose reservations had been “put on hold” were given priority to make new reservations starting on May 20, 2022. It normally takes at least a year in advance to get one of these reservations, and with the Covid backlog, it will probably take between 2 and 3 years to get one. So we were obliged to seek a space outside the park, and the Pony Express RV Park had a slot. It is basically in the parking lot of the Brandin’ Iron Motel, and they hadn’t yet turned on the water service, but it had a 50 amp electric hookup which would power both of our electric heaters, something very important to us on nights that get down to about 20 degrees F. West Yellowstone is, after all, in the Rockies at about 7,000 feet of altitude.

If you have been following this blog, you will remember Christmas 2021, where we got frozen out of Deception Pass when the overnight temp fell to 9 degrees F and our water pump froze. We also got stuck trying to get up an icy hill, and well you can click back a few posts and read all the gory details. So, worried this might repeat, we set up the trailer and high-tailed it over to the Do It home center. We bought a 3’ length of “heat tape”, an extension cord looking thing that plugs in and has a thermostat on it to turn on and warm the length of the device. You zip tie it to a problematic piece of plumbing to keep it from freezing when the cold sets in. In this case, I just stuffed it around the water pump and plugged it into an extension cord. And it worked like a charm, keeping not only the pump nice and cozy, but the entire equipment bay around it. The truck didn’t look too cozy in the morning.

We rewarded our ingenuity by going out for dinner at the Slippery Otter Bar & Grill. I had the house specialty, the Elk Burger. It didn’t taste any different than a regular Beef Burger, or likely the Bison Burger either, but at least I gave it a shot. I did discover my all-time favorite non-alcoholic beer. Sam Adam’s “Just the Haze” NA. Really tasty, and you can buy it online for about $65 a case. Not too bad when you consider my 12 oz. can was $6. They had a “wall of beers” there, a great selection.

Also, here’s an update on the painted rock “100 Days” project. These were our productions for Glacier and Yellowstone. One of the Yellowstone rocks was left at Pony Express, the other at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, which we visited as a “drive by” tourist on our trip to Sheridan Wyoming on Day 6.

We got up and got going early on our day dedicated to a Yellowstone tour. We had both been there before (just not together) and decided we would focus most of our attention on the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The only visible part of the GC is a 2-mile stretch that contains two waterfalls, incredulously named Upper and Lower falls. There is a short drive loop on the South Rim that has 2 overlook stops, and another short one-way drive on the North Rim that has 4 overlook stops and deposits you back at the Canyon Visitor Center at the end. We did both and got some breathtaking views of the falls and the amazing colors in the rocks that have been exposed over 150,000 years of the Yellowstone River carving out the canyon.

The North Rim is a kind of repeat of the South Rim, but from a different angle. The great view is supposed to be from the Grand View overlook, so we headed there. Arriving at the parking lot, Wendy remarked “Look at the size of this bird! It must be a raven”. Whereupon it flew up and perched on her rear view mirror and began to pose for photos. Meet Quoth, the Raven (apologies to EA Poe).

Quoth really was big, and annoying. I got out and attempted to shoo him away, but he wasn’t budging. Wendy snapped a shot of our standoff, with the killer and I locked in a staring contest. My 2 week gnarly beard and snarling, threatening tone didn’t intimidate him much, and when I started to get close, Wendy insisted that I get back in the truck and drive to another parking spot. I got up to about 5 mph before he gave up and flew off.

Wendy has been keeping 2 journals, one for trip details, and one for wildlife. We figured Yellowstone would be the holy grail of wildlife and set out to find 3 prime species: a bear, a bison, and a moose (or multiples of any of them). It is a little early in mid-May for bears because so many of them are still hibernating. And moose are concentrated around the slower river flows, and not too many of those are near roads. But if poop is any indicator, bison are everywhere. We saw a bunch of examples of big guys like this right along the road. I’m still scratching my head about who the ranger is that keeps moving the orange cone….

And we saw a few flashing signs along the way imploring us to be careful because “Bison are on the Road”. And what do you know, there he was. This big guy held up traffic for many minutes as he ambled right down the middle of the road over a bridge until he could put on his blinkers and pull into a turnout.

We compromised on the moose with the only one we found

Steam is a big feature of Yellowstone, especially on a cold day. Somebody asked the weather, wondering if we would have sun, snow, rain, or clouds for the day. Yep. Lots of sun, followed by squalls of either rain or snow/sleet/corn snow, followed by more sun, then clouds, then more snow. And steam everywhere. It comes out of almost every feature in the landscape. It even comes out of holes in the road, which is a little unnerving considering what you are driving over.  But the biggest steam feature of them all is Old Faithful. We anchored the other end of our tour there and wondered if we would have to wait long after arriving for an eruption. OF only goes off about every hour and 10 minutes or so, and the last time I was watching I waited the whole time to finally see the spectacle. We arrived at the visitor center, which is enormous, and parked in the lot, which is enormous, and walked in the direction that everyone else was walking. As we approached the viewing area, off she went! Zero wait, eruption, and boom, we’re off to the gift shop! Timing is everything.

And the steam comes with colors. Pools of blues, and reds, and pinks, and greens, and muddy browns. Vast flat plains just full of bubbling holes and steam. And sulphur steam, which stinks. I couldn’t help but think about all the energy under my feet as I looked at it all. And how small I was in comparison.

Tonight we’ll sleep in Ranchester Wyoming, a suburb of Sheridan. We’ll mark up a couple more rocks, this time advising a lucky rock-finder to “Live simply, Love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and enjoy the ride.” And tomorrow’s ride will take us to a well-deserved 3 night stay in Rapid City South Dakota.

Tippy, of course, will have the last word.

We broke up our BTE (remember, Big Trip East?) into ‘bites” of 400 miles or less, often less than 300, so that we could stop and smell the roses (and pine trees, and freight trains, and cow pastures, but I digress). The first leg ended at Tamarack RV Park smack dab in the middle of downtown Coeur D’Alene Idaho.

We have some besties there that we haven’t visited in a while, so they arranged a dinner reservation, and we also wanted to visit their new puppy, Dora Bell (NOT doorbell, we are repeatedly told). She’s cute, they’re fun, and dinner was delish!

We yakked on for hours, as we always do when we see each other every couple of years, and eventually had to pull the plug to catch some ZZZ’s before the next day’s drive to Glacier National Park.

The next morning pre-departure, however, we discovered that we had to make a payment to an appraiser in Florida to keep the timeline on the close of our construction loan, and that became a little difficult when we realized we had packed our checkbooks with the household goods. I mean, who uses checks anymore? Well, it turns out appraisers and title companies do. Luckily, there was a branch of our bank across the street (yay for camping in the downtown!), and a short walk after breakfast resulted in a cashier’s check and an envelope, and that went into the nearby Post Office.

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We’re hoping there aren’t any more of these little emergencies along our way, perhaps when we are in an internet black hole. We expect one such black hole in Glacier, because when we were there 12 years ago there wasn’t even a cell signal much less WiFi.

Speaking of black holes, there is probably one where my hair stylist used to stand. On my last day at work, I declared that I would go “full hippy” for the BTE, and I had no idea that I would make great progress on that front this early! I mean, just look at the “then” and “now” pictures here!

And here’s a fun fact: not all gas stations have high covered bays. (It looks closer than it is.)

And a quick update on Racy Lacy: Wendy found her a pair of puppies of her own to travel with. Meet Flora and Ida. (Note to Editor: less than 1 week on the road and already mentally unstable)

We’ve been tracking our moving van across the country. We’re sure you all will be happy to hear that it was in Point of Rocks, Wyoming at last report. (Note to Editor: Point of Rocks? Really?)

The drive to West Glacier, Montana was pleasant and scenic. Mountains, more mountains, and yet more mountains, then a very long valley full of mostly cows and lakes. Those are the Rockies in the distance, and yes, we will have to find a way over them at some point.

It is political campaign season, and the billboards and yard signs all reminded us we are in a very very conservative part of the country. We stopped for gas, and every pump had one of these on it.

Wendy came up with a great idea to help us pass the time, and to commemorate our BTE. At every stop, and on every day, we will paint and inscribe a pair of smooth rocks with the same quotation (she has a massive list), resulting in what we call “the twins”. One will be inscribed on the reverse with the date, the location, and our blog address; the other will be inscribed with the date, location, and name of the RV park. We’re planning on putting the twin inscribed with our blog address either in our RV campsite, or somewhere along the road when we make a stop. The other will go into our new garden in Florida. We’re hoping that some of the finders will tune into the blog and leave a comment about finding the rock.

We planned 2 nights in West Glacier Montana, which were originally designed to be an off-grid decompression stop, no internet, no cells, just peace and quiet and sleep and hikes.

But sometime in the last 12 years 5G came to West Glacier. Our “remote” RV park, which advertises “WiFi if you are less than 50 yards from the office”, had a very robust 5G signal, even way out on the perimeter where we were. Our 5G smart phone hotspots happily connected all our devices, smart TV included, to the internet. We were able to stream all our favorite TV shows, email, text, Facetime, even write and post this blog. Despite all that, it was still peaceful, we got plenty of rest, and we hiked. We intended to hike from Lake McDonald Lodge to John’s Lake, about a 3-mile round trip. We ended up hiking about 4 miles and never finding John’s Lake because we followed a smart looking hiker with multiple trail maps that looked like he knew what was going on. Rule #2 in the Book of Smart Living: never make assumptions. The last time this happened to us, we were on a self-guided walking tour of Rome, and there was so much sidewalk construction that we literally walked within 1/8 of a mile of the Coliseum several times without seeing it, in spite of walking well over 10 miles. I mean, you can see the damn thing from space! And we didn’t find it. That was a little like John’s Lake.

We’re off tomorrow to West Yellowstone, where it is forecast with “light snow” for 2 days. Stay tuned! The adventure continues.

And, h e e e e e r’s Tippy!