Beautiful Wyoming

Wednesday August 17, 2011

Somehow we got rolling at 6:30 AM this morning!  I’m glad we did as it took an hour to get up to I-90.  We made Devil’s Tower in time for a 9:30 Ranger led walk around the Tower.  As always, they add those extras that make it really interesting.  A couple of pictures follow.

The guy that shot this for us laid on the ground on his back.  Amazing that he would do that!

OK, this is where the trip got interesting from a towing standpoint.  We exited onto Wy 14 and were at about 4500 ft.  We needed to climb to 8900 feet to get over Granite Pass, so more truckey testing.  Although the speed limit is 65 mph, you cannot drive it that fast unless you have a death wish.  The road is very twisty and narrow.  Most were driving about 40 mph, thankfully.  On those 10% grades we could keep up at 40 but needed 2^nd gear at about 4500 rpm.  Oh am I happy I bought the 4.3 axle!  Additionally, all temps stayed in safe range, 220F or lower.  What really surprised me was I didn’t burn any oil.  That Motorcraft stuff is only 5W20.

The scenery was awesome!!!  Canyons, mountains, big rocks, wow-wow-wow!  I almost turned around just to see it again,….. just kidding!

Finally got on the Wyoming plains, about 120 miles of it.  We passed through towns with a population of 10, and they had a Post Office, no wonder USPS is going broke!  It is pretty deserted, we did not even see a car for like an hour.

We arrived into Cody at Absaroka Bay RV Park about 7PM.

Thursday August 18, 2011

Today we went to Old Town Trail, a reconstruction of a late 1800s town built on the original Cody townsite.  It contains buildings from all over Wyoming.  Big personalities were Jeremiah Johnson, Robert Parker (Butch Cassidy), and Jim White.  I included a couple of pictures.   It was pretty interesting.

We then traveled a little ways to see the Bill Cody Dam.  It dams the Shoshone River for irrigation of the Wyoming plains, and provides power to the area.  The dam is 325 ft high making it 2^nd only to the Hoover Dam.  It was built over 5 or 6 years.  Lots of challenges, apparently the river is too high April – September from ice melt.  So all work is done from October to March.  When completed in 1910 it was -10F.  They had to figure out how to set cement at that temperature!  A couple pictures below.

This picture was taken looking down from the top of the dam.  The dam is that wall on the right. 

   

We also went to the Cody Rodeo.  Had never seen a real rodeo until tonight.  It was pretty cool.  A couple of pictures follow.

All for now, tune in for more of our adventure!

Mt Rushmore and More

Monday and Tuesday August 15 & 16, 2011

We are in Keystone, SD in a small campground called Kemp’s Camp.  A little challenging to get to because of narrow roads and hills.  Boy, been putting my little truckey to work now!  Had a climb out of Rapid City that required 3^rd at 4500 for a couple miles.  Put the tranny up to 220F, and the fans were howling, but we held 50+ mph.  This engine seems to be a winder.  I am very glad I put that 4.3 gear in it now!

After getting settled we went back into Rapid City, needed gas (big surprise!) and Keystone was close to 4 bucks, gotcha.  I needed a truck wash to get off all the grasshoppers from the Badlands.  Lynn even got smacked in the face as we were driving with the window down.  She freaked out! 

When I went to dump tanks in Interior, I discovered one of my tank valve handle and shaft loosened and fell off, so I went looking for an RV parts store, found a Heartland dealer, but they didn’t have the part.  The guy says, yeah we get a lot of requests for those, Dah! Maybe you should carry them!  And finally, Lynn’s watch needed a battery.

We then visited a museum about Gustov Borglum which was interesting.  That guy was a genius!  Have to remember its the 1920s when he started the Rushmore faces.  Besides an accomplished sculptor, he had to know the geology of the granite, engineering for the hoists, cables, and tools; and be project and labor manager.  I have often said that if you can leave your mark in some way that future folks will remember you, that would certainly give you a sense of accomplishment.  The museum was self guided with audio headsets.

We then attended the evening Mt. Rushmore program, which was OK but nothing that special.  Returned today to take in several Ranger led programs, and took a guzillion pictures.  A couple are shown below.

After driving the twisty scenic roads we headed to Hot Springs, a mammoth excavation site is there.  Apparently a wide swath of tropic seas covered an area north to south including the Badlands and Hot Springs.  The dumb mammoths would go into these muddy lake areas and then couldn’t get out.  The site contains many of the critters remains which they enclosed in a building.  The picture below is a mammoth head.

We are having a good time, couldn’t ask for nicer weather.  On toward Cody, Wy tomorrow.  We want to stop at Devils Tower so we need to get a really early start.

Travel Update Aug 14

August 11, 2011

After visiting our friends in Grand Rapids we headed out early this morning going  west.  We made a stop at Walcott, IA to visit the Truck Museum at the I-80 Truck stop.  It is the largest truck stop in the world.  The Museum was pretty interesting.  It consisted of a collection, belonging to Bill Moon, of mostly antique trucks along with a history of trucking.  After about an hour we went over to the truck stop to check it out for overnight.   The place was way too busy for our liking so we decided to move on.  The huge store is a trucker’s candy shop!

After another hundred miles, we ended up at a WalMart in Newton, IA and are currently parked there.  They requested we park at the southern end of the lot.  They are open 24 hours and have lot security.

So we covered about 450 miles, averaging just shy of 10 mpg.  Another reason to hate Illinois, had to fill at $3.69/gal, 20¢ per gal over Michigan and +35¢ higher than Iowa.  Kind of weird in Walcott, 89 octane at BP sold 10 cents below 87 octane.  Probably loaded with EtOH courtesy of the farmers.  The truck tended to drop 2 gears in the rolling hills, so I went to manual and managed to pull most in 6^th at 60 mph.

Tomorrow, Sioux Falls, SD, or further, maybe.  We expect to make the Badlands on Saturday.  All for now.

Friday, August 12, 2011

We’re in Mitchell, SD at a WalMart tonight.  Looks like a campground, so many RVs parked in here!  Into a strong headwind most of today, ran in 5^th most of the way at 8 mpg.  Our route took us through much of the flooded areas around Sioux City.  What a shame, there still is lots of water over roads, fields, yards, and up on houses.  I-29 is closed south of Sioux City as it’s really bad down river from there.  Hey where’s CNN and the “celebrities”, I guess  it isn’t New Orleans?

We stopped at the Corn Palace once we got here.  Pretty cool, only one in the world.  They use 3,000 bushels of rye, oat heads, and sour dock, plus 275,000 ears of corn to decorate the face and side of the building every year.  They use several different colors of corn grown in isolated fields to keep the color pure. Work starts with a template developed by artists, kind of a paint by number thing only using corn.  The template is put up and workers trim the ears and nail them in place.  The process takes about 2 months.  The first picture is the fron of the Palace, the second is a close up of the left mural showing the actual ears of corn used.

Tomorrow we head for the Badlands.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

We arrived in Interior, SD which is in the Badlands.  We went to a Minuteman Missile launch control and silo.  It has been decommissioned since 1993.  There were hundreds of Minuteman II’s in silos all over the Great Plains to provide response to a Soviet nuclear attach.  Each of these babies had over twice the destructive power as the bombs dropped in Japan.  Such a war would have obviously destroyed the world.  Today we went down into the launch room for the command wing that controlled 150 of these things.  Also saw a remaining silo with a disarmed Minuteman II in it.  Growing up during the cold war as many reading this did, we found it pretty interesting.

Also made a stop in Wall, SD home of Wall Drug.  The store opened in 1931, offering free water in an effort to get people to stop between the Badlands and Rapid City.  It now covers a good city block and is a destination, not just a stop! 

Seems like Wall, SD would make a good place for a “Wall”-Mart, however I’m sure the Drugstore would put a kibosh to it.

Campground here is OK, but not very high on the nice place list.  They are supposed to have WiFi, so we will check into it tomorrow.

Sunday August 14, 2011

Spent the day driving and hiking around the Badlands.  As you see in these pictures, its pretty rough countryside.  These buttes and spires are from water erosion, and have been in the making for about the past 60 million years.  The different colors represent different periods of time.

Spent some time watching the prairie dogs.  They remind me of a cross between squirrels and rabbits, the way they eat and run around.  They are on every predators menu.  Lynn had one actually get almost close enough to take some grass from her.

Tomorrow we leave for Keystone to see Mt Rushmore.  Stay tuned!