Devil's Tower -and- Rapid City, SD

Thursday, August 03, 2006

On the way to Rapid City to the KOA we stopped and saw the town of Deadwood. It really isn’t very RV friendly. Not a lot of big parking. We just drove through. Lots of bikers. It’s really close to Sturgis. We stopped at the Wal*mart in Rapid City and got groceries, had lunch in the parking lot and headed for Bear Country U.S.A. http://www.bearcountryusa.com/default.asp We skipped it last time and were glad we didn’t this time. It is just crawlin’ with bears and other wildlife. (see the WebShots page for pics http://community.webshots.com/user/MKAdams66 ) The dogs were hilarious. They were barking at the bears and stuff but we don’t thinks that they were trying to get at them just to warn us. They were really looking at them. There is a picture with Gar looking out the window at the bear lying on the log and one with Loki standing against the back seat as Paige drove. When we got to the end there is a place you can walk around and look at the baby animals and there is a gift shop and food. The dogs usually fight us as we get out the door. They always want out whenever we stop and it is really had to keep them in. Not this time. Neither of them seemed too interested in getting out of the vehicle. I’m sure that they could still smell the bears and didn’t want anything to do with them; I imagine that they might have thought that they would never see us again. It was really terrific. The baby animal part was great too. There was a section with about 8 bear cubs in it. All wrestling, swimming, scratching and sleeping. It was really amazing how active all of the animals were. It was hot but the animals all over the park seemed to be almost as interested in us as we were in them. More tomorrow. m

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

On the road again, decided against going to Billings, heading to Devils Tower, WY. Driving east thru Montana on Hwy 212, saw some wildlife today, lots of Pronghorn Antelope, a coyote and prairie dogs, not to mention some of the biggest John Deere tractors I’ve ever seen. We’ve driven thru two Indian Reservations, and they are like shanty towns, it’s discouraging. The RV park had an ice cream social last night, BYOB (bring your own bowl) $1.50 for two big scoops, had at least a dozen flavors. We were good and only ate one scoop, have the other in the freezer, probably shouldn’t have ice cream all the way cross country, if I want to keep my new figure. Billings only has one Weight Watchers meeting a week, so I couldn’t go…I’ll try another town. p

So tonight we are at Devils Tower National Monument. http://www.nps.gov/deto/ The KOA http://www.devilstowerkoa.com/ we are staying at is at the base of it. You can see it from just about every camp. You may recognize it from the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. If you are too young or too old you may not. I expect we will not see any UFO’s during our stay. They actually show the movie nightly at 9 pm. It’s unlikely we’ll go and see it. We didn’t actually go into the park itself. We can pretty much see what we wanted to see from here. I’m not exactly sure what the devil has to do with this place. I would look it up if I had internet service but I don’t here. We are in the middle of nowhere. I got a postcard, which I will put online, of a giant bear scratching the Devils Tower with Indians on top. I guess that’s how it got the rough edges. Tomorrow we are planning to drive Rapid City South Dakota. We are very close to Mt. Rushmore but we aren’t going to go back to it since we recently went. It’s pretty neat but there are other things to see. We may go to a wildlife park in Rapid City called Bear Country that we decided against last trip.

Tomorrow will be 1 week on the road for us. It seems a lot longer sometimes and then, at times, it’s hard to believe it’s been a week. The weather has been pretty nice. It’s cool and breezy here at 7 pm. It gets pretty hot in the RV but the AC works nicely. At night we might watch cable (when available), watch a movie via the DVD or something from the internet. iTunes has quite a few shows available and the quality is pretty good. We also might read or talk.
In this part of the world they are all ramping up for Sturgis motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, SD. There are motorcycles and bikers everywhere. It’s surprising how many of them come in RV’s with trailers. We have seen some rigs that would blow your mind and could very well be a sin to own.