Author: Bill

We were spending 5 days in Detroit Lakes to visit some friends/relatives.  I had to trust Kathy on the “relative” aspect as I would have needed a flow chart to follow the relationships.   Turns out they were visiting relatives too, and they lived right on Little Detroit Lake year round.  (I cannot imagine what it would be like to live on a large lake in northern Minnesota in the winter)

The funniest thing occurred, our campground was maybe a mile from their house.  Not sure how we did that as I did not know where they were in Detroit Lakes when I made the reservation.

Detroit Lakes is a nice little town with lots of railroad tracks and lots of long trains on them.  We all went to breakfast the first morning at a small cafe in the heart of downtown.   Wheat or white toast.  Geez, the Midwest.  Where’s my sourdough or even rye bread?   The food was good, but don’t ask for Chulula sauce,  just received a blank stare.   The best part was at the end of the meal we tried to pay the bill with our credit cards.  They didn’t take cards,  just cash.  the Midwest strikes again.  Between the 4 of us, we scrounged up enough to be allowed to leave without doing the dishes…  Off to the ATM.

Afterward we toured the lakes and Kathy wanted to see the turkey farm Jacki’s family grew up on, so we headed out there.   The farmhouse, barn and a few outbuildings were still there, but the rest of the farm was sold to a large corporation.  Not sure what they are doing over there.     A funny thing happened as we drove up the driveway and around to the back of the house,  there was a woman and a young child sitting there and she waved to us to come in, she said she had been expecting us.   I started thinking I was in a Twilight Zone episode.    We were all wondering why she was expecting us..  It was just a bit odd to me.   (turns out she was actually expecting a real estate agent, as they are selling the property)

Jacki gave us the grand tour of the area:   the cabin she and John owned with her parents, schools they went to, where friends lived, and just a beautiful drive around the lake and the town.  We ended the day with hors d’oeuvres and beers at the Longbridge  Grill, overlooking the lake in the afternoon.   Left as it was about to rain.

Tuesday started late,  delicious albondigas soup by Jacki at the house,  then Dairy Queen.  Haven’t been there in ages!!

Wednesday, we all piled in the car with the dogs and drove to Park Rapids, a cute little town about an hour east of Detroit Lakes.  Spent a couple hours strolling through the shops with a stop for John to get a haircut!  We never did find the rapids!

When we got back, we enjoyed burgers and beer at the Shorewood Pub on Lake Street.  Great burgers!!   Then after a break for a rest, we got together and went to the  movies:  War of the Planet of the Apes.  Fun to go to the movies, which we hardly ever do, but it was a sad one 🙁

Thursday Jacki invited us over for relaxing at their beautiful backyard on the lake and a wonderful salmon dinner.  Her cousins were there and some other friends came over.  It was so nice to see Jacki and John for a longer visit.  Crazy that we met up about 2,000 miles from San Diego!!!!!  Who would have thought that?!

We left Wall SD early as it was a long ride to Sioux Falls and we had a sick puppy that was going to need a few stops along the way.   Our first stop was just a short turnout with nothing but blacktop and weeds.   It was about 50′ off the freeway and wide enough to have around 3 vehicles abreast stopped there.

The second stop was at the Missouri River crossing rest stop.  Pretty nice spot with a nice view.  It appears to be where Lewis and Clark crossed it as there was a blurb about that and a very large statue of Sacajawea.

I didn’t realize that river was so large.  The Colorado river is puny compared to it.

Sioux Falls was a nice little city.  Lots of train tracks running every which way and a nice historic district of older homes on streets with trees forming a canopy.    We mainly stayed there to get the furkids groomed but Baxter decided to get something call C.Diff that prevented him from a haircut.   Dusty is all trimmed up and looking good.  Baxter looks like a ball of hair at the moment.   After getting Baxter to the Vet and Dusty to the groomer we gave them a day to recover and then headed out to find Sioux Falls namesake… namely the falls.  Turns out they are in the middle of downtown.  And fairly impressive for a downtown park with waterfalls it was.   Check out these pictures.   Hard to imagine these are in the middle of a downtown city of about 150k.

We packed up and left Custer, SD, late in the morning Tuesday to head over for a one-night stay just north of the Badlands National Park in Wall, SD.   After a couple hours, we pulled into Wall and found our campground and a line of motorhomes in front of the office.   Once checked in, we proceeded toward our site down the maybe once long in the past gravel road.   It was just dirt now.   We drove till we came to the back of another coach blocking the road.   It appeared the two RV’s that were at the office when I pulled in were given the same #6 site.    Not a good sign.   But once the office fixed it, we got to our empty site, we deployed the living space and hooked up.

Since we were only here overnight, I headed over to the Badlands right away.  Kathy begged off on this drive to stay with Baxter who got really sick.  [We called the only vet in the town and he was out doing some annual check of the cows so no one was available.]   It was only about 8 miles south of Wall, so I filled the car with gas and took off.   The Badlands must have been a sight when travelers heading west had just ridden a thousand miles of green prairie and came upon this desolate place.

I stopped at the first viewpoint and noticed a huge wall of black clouds far in the distance touching the ground,  probably back near Rapid City.   I walked down to the viewpoint and snapped a few pics, some with the storm in the distance.   I then headed further into the park and was about halfway thru when the radio squawked with one of those emergency broadcast tones.   Then they started talking about a severe thunderstorm.  Thankfully not a tornado warning, but 75 mph winds and quarter-sized hailstones.   They stated everyone should get under cover now.

It was just east of Rapid City and moving west at 35 mph directly toward the Badlands.    I made a U-turn and headed back home as quick as possible to button up the coach.   But as I got closer to Wall, I could see the storm was going to pass a few miles south of the town, and just then it started to sprinkle on the windshield.  But that was all i was going to see this afternoon.

I was kind of bummed I only got to see the top half of the park and won’t have time in the morning to drive the rest as we need to make it to Sioux Falls tonight so the pups can get groomed tomorrow morning and its a bit of a drive.

Of course we had a rude awaking later, around midnight the wind started howling and the coach started being buffeted around.   Then came the thunder and lightning.   I jumped out of bed and opened the laptop to view the NWS Conus weather radar.   There was another big storm coming thru.   Luckily its biggest red area was south of town, but there was a lot of red and yellow almost upon our location.   I immediately dropped the TV and moved the recliners back into their stowed position so I could bring in the slides quickly if it got any worse or if it started to  hail.   I went back to bed to watch the lightning from the little window and quickly fell back to sleep as it appears the worst was already over as my head hit the pillow.

We got up early and I headed over to Jewel Cave to purchase tour tickets as we heard they sell out very early and only sell them the day of the tour.  I picked a tour time of 4 pm so we would have plenty of time for the rest of the day’s activities.

I got back and we headed off to Mt. Rushmore.   It was a short half-hour ride over and surprisingly they have parking garages.  Shade!!   The pups weren’t allowed too close.   I guess they are worried they might pee on the granite.    It was an awe inspiring place.  Hard to imagine guys on wooden ladders with pneumatic tools did that.   I have always wanted to see it in person.  They are huge!

On the way there from Custer, you can see the beginnings of the Crazy Horse sculpture off the 185 highway.   It’s going to also be massive but only the face is close to finished.

There is no entrance fee at Mt. Rushmore, but there is a $10 parking fee,  and as I said, the parking garages are awesome on a warm day in the Dakota’s.

We stayed there about an hour, it was a bit too warm to hike the mountain and there isn’t anything else to see there… just the chatchski shop and some food joint.

From there we headed out to find Iron Mountain Road.   I read about it and a tunnel carved into the rock that had a great view of the dead presidents’ heads.    And they were right.  What an awesome view  it was.   And one of the windiest roads I think I have ever been on.  (and me a brain dead motorcyclist)  Turns our there were three square tunnels blasted out of the granite, and two of them lined up directly with the monument.  They had even cut down the trees in a straight line so they would be visible.   What a great road.   There were also a lot of wooden bridges that were shaped in like a spiral staircase so you curved around and went under where you just were.  Thank god we weren’t in an RV for this road.

After all that fun we headed back to the coach to eat some lunch and change clothes for the tour.   I neglected to tell Kathy there were 750 stairs on this tour.   It was awesome!   Although climbing all those stairs to get back up to the elevator was a real bear.  Thankfully it was 49 degrees down there so we weren’t sweating as much.   It was very different than Wind Cave.  I had a lot of fun,  but I think Kathy is done with caves for a while.

We leave Tuesday morning for the Badlands, staying across the street from Wall Drug.

We left Devils Tower before 9 am this morning for Custer, South Dakota.        Mt. Rushmore is the main attraction in the hills, but there is also the Crazy Horse memorial, which is a work in progress; then there is Deadwood; Custer State Park; and the two big caves,  Jewel and Wind Cave.

We headed into the hills just below Deadwood, which was nice, but it wasn’t at all like the TV show, so we kept going.  Also,  hard to park a 65′ vehicle in a small town like that.

It was a beautiful ride thru the hills to Custer.   We passed by another huge lake on the way there.   We are staying at a Horse Ranch Campground,  lots of barns and horse trailers,  but quite a few RVs too.   We were having a hard time finding a place to stay when a coach arrived next to us in Cody.   I mentioned we were heading to Mt. Rushmore and were finding it difficult to get a spot to park.   He had just been there and told us to try this campground.   It’s really nice and doesn’t even show up in the Good Sam app.  The pups like all the horses!

We arrived early and decided to check out Wind Cave.   Bought some tour tickets and headed into a very cool crevice at 5 pm (54 degrees cool), felt real nice on a 95 degree day.   It was a very interesting cave.  So far they have explored over 147 miles of it.  They speculate there may be up to a thousand miles left to explore.  There are lots of stairs and low ceilings.  I can’t imagine how hard it was to get concrete all the way in there to make the walkways, but it was carried on people’s backs in tire tubes.     And they don’t spend much on electricity,  pretty dark down there.  The ranger had to pass out flashlights at one point due to the lights going out completely.   You cannot believe how dark it gets in a cave 200′ below the surface.

They had the most amazing formations in there.   These box lattice like things,  I’ve never seen anything like it, never even in pictures.  The ranger explained it’s only found in 7 caves in the world, and this cave has 90% of all the structures found so far.   They explained them as if there was a brick wall and all the bricks were removed, leaving just the mortar.   If they were done by a brick layer,  they should find another occupation as they were at all angles.   And there wasn’t even one stalactite or stalagmite, like I had seen in the only other cave I have been too,  Luray Cavern.  Went there as a kid on vacation with my parents.  It was somewhere in Virginia.  This is a dry cave, so it was very different than what I remembered from back then.

Just prior to getting into the cave, we got to experience why it was called Wind Cave.  As far as they know, there is only one natural opening into it.   It’s a small hole in the rock about 15″ in diameter.  There was a stiff breeze blowing out the hole while we were there, maybe 20 mph, and cooler than what blows out of your air-conditioner at home.   It all revolves around the air pressure.  When there is a storm coming (low pressure) it is really blowing out the hole, and when it’s beautiful outside (high pressure) the hole is like a big vacuum cleaner.   There was a big thunderstorm brewing when we got there, so we got to experience the big outbound wind.

This is small town America!   It started out with the proverbial 4th of July parade down Main Street.   Lots of cowboys and cowgirls, old cars and trucks,  marching bands, a few floats, and the inevitable Shriner’s in their small go carts, these all having tortoise shells for bodies.   The little kids loved it.

The marching bands really had to watch their step due to all the horses that preceded them in the parade.   The fire trucks were showering the kids on the side of the road.   And it turned out the Grand Marshal of the parade this year was the Sheriff of Absaroka County,  and he even had his sidekick Ferg.   Only Starbuck was missing,  that was a bummer!

We also got to see that last mounted Marine Color Guard in existence.  I’ve  seen lots of Marine Color guards living in San Diego, but never one mounted on horseback.

I still think the Coronado 4th Parade is the best.   Maybe it’s the cool weather…   But had Starbuck been there… you never know.

We decided to skip the Rodeo due to the heat.  Moving it up to 5 from 8 pm was putting it in the hottest part of the day here.    It doesn’t get dark here till close to 10 pm, so that is when the fireworks begin tonight.

We drove over to the hospital parking lot where we could see the fireworks going off,  amazingly there was only a small crowd.   Nothing like trying to get to a fireworks display in San Diego.   We brought the dogs and chairs and it was great.  Dusty was bored with it till someone walked behind him and he perked up to growl.   Baxter was a bit scared and pushed his head into Kathy’s shoulder toward the end.

They were shooting them off in a big field with lots of dried grass, so we also got to be entertained by the fires the falling embers started.   One of the flareups got fairly big where the flames looked to be 10 feet tall or so, but before long that one seemed to burn itself out.   We couldn’t see anyone fighting the fires prior to us leaving after the show.  I was hoping all the firemen in the parade weren’t at the bars!

Kathy mentioned it was odd as almost no one there spoke, no oohs or ahhs at all.  And there were some very sophisticated (expensive) fireworks,  a few I have not seen before.  And no music.  Not like the Lake Murray fireworks at all.  I hope you all that went there had a great time!!!

There was a bit of traffic on the way out, though, because they don’t have many intersections with traffic lights, so that reminded me of home.

Tomorrow we are off to Buffalo, Wy.

Sunday morning we headed over to the Museum.   What an excellent museum it is.   It’s 5 different museums under one big roof.  It took us a few hours and we just toured the Buffalo Bill, Plains Indians, and the Gun sections.   Bill was quite a character!   And I guess he must have been one of the first “hoarders” as there is so much stuff packed into that section, it’s truly an amazing exhibit.

I was intrigued by the gun section.  I had never, ever thought there were that many different types of guns.   The oldest was from around  1609,  a Blunderbuss, all the way to an AR16.  Along the way are so many six shooters, rifles, shotguns and machine guns your head will spin.   There were even a couple of Gatling guns from the civil war. The most amazing thing was that most of those guns were in pristine condition.  There were several thousand guns.  They even had some of the tiniest Derringers that you could put in your vest pocket!

There was also a collection of President Roosevelt’s rifles and shotguns from his years living in the west.