Author: scsvirskycomcastnet

Headed west from Montana through the Idaho Panhandle into Washington. Tomorrow we head north right to the border with Canada. It is really hot here for May. We’re a bit concerned for the road through Alberta with the fires, fingers crossed!

So guess where’s Waldo (Beau) lol!

Amazing – the falls on the Spokane River right in the middle of the city!

Had a great day! We started out visiting the town of Lead, SD. It is the home of the historic Homestake Mining Company that pulled $41 M of gold from the mine. It has now been reimagined as a deep underground laboratory for advanced physics research by Sanford – it began with an experiment that landed the Nobel Prize.

After that, we had a beautiful drive through Spearfish Canyon in SD and then over to Devils Tower National Monument.

Devils Tower was the first National Monument to be designated by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. It is know by Native Americans as Bear Lodge and the current name is a point of controversy, with many wanting it to return to the Native American name.

There were some interesting visitors taking in the view too.

We started out east of the Black Hills at the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. Here is a view looking over to Badlands National Park which we will visit in September on our way back.

Minuteman Missile NHS tells the story of the International Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) that were built and armed with nuclear warheads following WWII through the Cold War. After seeing the story of the development of nuclear war weapons when we visited Los Alamos last year, it was a very powerful follow-on.

This is how they packaged the components of the ICBMs in transit.

The Visitor Center tells the story of the men and women in the bunkers that were trained and prepared to launch the missiles to Russia at a moments notice over the North Pole, and the amazing feat to hide these missile bunkers in plain site in the remote plains and the effects on the local folks. I am too young to remember the Cuban missile crisis, but this made it all so real.

The incredibly frightful thing was the number of incidents were nuclear war was almost triggered due to errors on both sides. There are over 400 of these silos still operational in the remote areas of the midwest.

Shortly after we left, we stopped at the legendary Wall Drug. It is on the level of South of the Border, road signs for miles, and incredibly tacky when you get there 🙂 It’s original claim to fame was free ice water and 5 cent coffee, which they still offer to travelers.

Today we traveled further through the Great Plains, leaving Iowa for South Dakota. Although it seems flat at first glance, in fact the terrain is rolling hills as far as you can see. Some of the wind gusts were strong enough to blow the RV over a 1/2 lane or so. It isn’t hard to image when the hills were covered with buffalo. You just need to squint and pretend that’s what the cows are 🙂

The Missouri River (with a lot of bugs on the windshield for atmosphere).

We had a seriously good burger and fries at an interesting local spot.

Tonight we’re staying in Rock Island which is part of the Quad Cities area (Davenport, IA). The Mississippi River runs through the area, and this week the river crested at the 7th or 8th highest level ever recorded.

I took this picture from the news service.

These are pictures from a couple of sites over from where we are. They had to close a good portion of the campground because the sites are flooded. But the geese are happy 🙂

This is not going to be a very exciting post as we are just trying to cover some miles to get to the west. We’ve had terrible weather since Friday but starting tomorrow it should get a bit better now that we’ve made it to Columbus, OH. There was snow going through western PA at the higher altitudes (this was actually snow but looks like rain).

Though there were glimpses of how pretty some of the area is.

And Beau was on top of his co-pilot duties! Or maybe not…

on our first day – but just barely! Oh boy, sometimes things just don’t come easy. The manufacturer didn’t get our RV back to us until a week before departure. Some things still weren’t fixed after it being with them for 9 months – which was really discouraging after all the issues, and we still had things to do to it once we got it back – outside of what the dealer had on the warranty list.

Combine that with having to empty out our kitchen at the house for a gut reno (but coming back to a brand new kitchen!) while we are gone, it was a rough departure from the house to say the least. And the weather conspired against us to boot with a corker of a storm front coming through the day before we had to leave. However we did it, and here we are in Newburgh, NY on the way to State College, PA area tomorrow on schedule.

So not a lot of scenery pics today, but a couple of Beau pics. He was such a trooper adapting to his first day of the road trip with not a lot of play time.

In this pic the slides are closed for travel. The Beast needs a spring cleaning which we’ll do when we get a layover day.

Settled right in 🙂

Good thing we have a co-pilot!