Kellogg, Iowa

Memorial Day…Got lots of Z’s last night in preparation for heading out today. The weather-guessers were predicting some slight rain but, other than low clouds for the first mile, we had beautiful weather. Tornados have been reported in Iowa, but toward the eastern part of the state. The predictions are for clearing weather so I’m not worried but still keeping my eyes and ears on the weather broadcasts.

The land changed from beautiful wide-open cattle range to farming. Although everything was cut down, it looked like old corn stalks sticking up from the ground. We made two stops on the way, one for fuel and propane and the other to visit the world famous Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. The whole outside of the building is one huge mural made of corn cobs.




The inside is a sports facility with smaller murals on all the walls. All the murals are changed every year. It sounds corny (pun very much intended) but the building is very beautiful and very much worth a stop if you ever get in the area.

The inside of the Corn Palace

One of the murals made of corn cobs

We continued on to Sioux Falls and parked at the Cracker Barrel Restaurant off I-29 for dinner and an overnight stop. After a provisioning run to the local Wal-Mart, we settled in for the night. Claudia fired up the oven for a cookie-baking fest. I love these sessions because I get to eat all the ugly cookies. There were several! Tomorrow…on to meet up with Larry and Linda in Kellogg, just east of Des Moines.

After a great breakfast of biscuits and gravy with two sausage patties (me) and what I call “Frog in a Hole”, eggs cooked into sourdough bread slices (Claudia), we took off heading south on I-25, crossed over the Missouri River to I-80 just north of Omaha where we turned east and went into Iowa. We pulled into the Kellogg RV Park just before 3:00 pm and settled into our spot right next to Larry and Linda. We then got hooked up, set up and caught up and settled in for a three, four or whatever-day stay. We’ll decide later when to take off for the Right Coast. Right now, we are just kickin’ it!

Wednesday, May 28th…my birthday…Got a very nice card from Claudia and a big smile from Valentino. We all (not Valentino) took off to a great little restaurant in Sully for breakfast. Larry recommended the biscuits and gravy so I followed his lead. They were very good…nice and spicy…just the way I like ‘em! We then took off for a sightseeing trip of the area. This place is really cute...one little town after another and each with its own “flavor”. I liked Sully the best.

The old gas station in Sully,Iowa

All the homes are neat as a pin, well-spaced out (about 2-300 feet between houses) and no fences. We went by a school and there were at least 20 bicycles lying on the grass, right by the road, with no locks whatsoever. Try that in California! We also went to the local hardware store which was almost as big as a Wal-Mart. They had absolutely everything. A man’s dream! We then saw the property that Larry and Linda are buying and went to Red Rock Lake, a BLM campground. What a spectacular campground. The lake is huge, at least a couple of miles long, and the area is all freshly mowed grass with gravel campsites about 100 feet apart. Apparently “cramped” in not in their vocabulary!

Red Rock campground

Covered bridge at Red Rock

We then went into Pella to a Mexican restaurant for lunch (they call it “dinner” back here – it’s the big meal of the day). The food was pretty good. I had carnitas with fried ice cream for dessert. After dinner, we continued our tour of the area, getting back to the motorhome about 4:15. We all immediately went in and took power naps! Birthday ice cream is at 7:30 and we must be ready!

Thursday, May 29th…We got up late and casually started a breakfast of hot cereal when the TV blared out “NEWS ALERT”. The station then went directly to their weather center and threw up a map of western Iowa, right where we are. The National Weather Service has issued a “rare” weather warning for tornados in the area west of Des Moines. The “high risk” area was west of Des Moines but the east edge of the “moderate” warning area was right where we are. So…we are right between the “moderate” risk and the “slight” risk areas. The forecast is for rain, heavy at times, with thunder and lightning and hail. And we came from sunny Southern California for this? Larry and Linda say not to worry. If it gets bad, we’ll just pull in the slides and ride it out. The RV park owner lives right across the street and has a storm shelter, if necessary. That makes me feel much better!

With rain imminent, we did a few chores to get ready. Larry and Linda gave me an aluminum diamond-plate kick plate for the entrance steps so Larry and I installed that. The coach looks much better. We then took off for the Meskwaki Indian casino. I plunked down $5.95 and got three plates of delicious food including roast beef, fish, stuffed cabbage, vegetables, apple pie, ice cream and coffee. Claudia plunked down about $40 (probably…she won’t tell me exactly how much) and got to watch it disappear over the next hour. Now I ask you, who won that event?

We then returned to the RV park to await the evening’s festivities. It is getting darker by the minute, the rain is starting and the weather warnings are still being broadcast. I think it’s time for a cocktail. I have seen rain before. Now when I say “rain”, I mean RAIN…not California stuff. That ain’t rain! I’ve been chased out of tree stands by real mountain storms and lightning while hunting in Colorado but this Iowa rain gives it all to you…rain (real frog stranglers), hail, lightning, thunder and tornados. The last bout knocked out the satellite TV and it took a while to get it to reset. The evening was a Mexican Train game and lots of conversation (gossip). We did not sleep well due to constant thunderstorm and tornado warnings. We slept with the radio on and tried to keep track of the tornados (55 as reported this morning) as they moved across the area. All the weather seemed to be just west and north of Des Moines so we are OK but sleep-deprived. Today will be easy.

We headed out to see Larry’s childhood home in Ottumwa, Iowa. After a tour of the town, we headed for the most famous landmark in the area, the Canteen Lunch. It was a very old building that developers had been trying to buy to build a parking structure. The owners wouldn’t sell so they tried the old eminent domain routine. The townspeople revolted and had the building declared a historical building and that ended that…sort of. The developers built the parking structure anyway…right on top of the restaurant!

The Canteen Lunch and parking structure

They serve only one thing. It’s a sort of hamburger. Ground beef is cooked in an old stainless steel cooker, just stirred and browned by hand.

Cooking the ground beef

You order by saying “the works” or just the fixings you want…onion, ketchup, cheese (melted Velveta), pickles and/or mustard. The ladies take a hamburger bun, slap on the stuff you ordered, pass the bun to the meat lady, she slaps on a big spoonful of ground beef (not a pattie, just loose ground beef) and they wrap it all up in waxed paper and hand it to you. They are different and delicious. Larry once held the record (for five years) by consuming ten of them at one sitting. They greeted him by name when we walked in the door.

We then toured the old German town of Amana, sort of like a Solvang and Buelton back in California and then returned home. Tomorrow we are headed for Woodstock, IL to visit friends and then to Paw Paw, MI. We should sleep much better tonight. The weather is beautiful. Mas tarde!

Mount Rushmore

Friday…We attended our “Reduce the camping fee” presentation this morning and, no, we did not succumb to all the reasons why we should buy into the Midwest Outdoor Resorts family. By attending the presentation, we did receive a free gift…two tickets to the Fort Hays “Dances with Wolves” film set and dinner show. WOW! OK, OK, free is good and a free dinner show is even gooder! After the presentation, we decided to go sightseeing but the weather didn’t cooperate. The fog/low clouds were at ground level and visibility was less than 100 yards. We chugged down the highway 3.9 miles to Fort Hays at 30 to 40 MPH to pick up our dinner and show tickets. We then decided to forget the sightseeing and get our asses off the highway before some damn fool driving at highway speeds decided to reconstruct our full-size Ford Explorer into a sub-compact model. Thanks to our almost-new Garmin nuvi 760 GPS machine, we managed to find our way back to the Rushmore Shadows Resort. After buying a newspaper and playing with an almost-tame cottontail,

we returned home and kicked back for the afternoon.

Saturday…It drizzled all night so we slept in. Pretty soon, it got light…VERY light! We looked out and it was almost perfectly clear. Time for sightseeing. We quickly looked at the maps and decided to head northwest and do a circle tour of Sturgis, Deadwood, Lead (pronounced “leed”) and Spearfish. At Sturgis, we went by the local Harley-Davidson dealer, the center of “Bike Week” every year in August where over 500,000 Harley’s visit for what is now a two-week event. In Deadwood, we visited the Mount Moriah Cemetery, the eternal resting place of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickock and Martha “Calamity Jane” Canary. We had great roast turkey dinners at a local inn for $5.99 each. We also saw a live turkey on the trip to Deadwood. Since Deadwood legalized gambling several years ago, there were a few “one-arm bandits” inside the restaurant. Claudia reduced her previous winnings by $21. We then headed for Spearfish via the Spearfish Canyon Scenic By-way, making two stops…one at Bridal Veil Falls and the other at a Dairy Queen where I had a delicious Oreo Blizzard and Claudia had a brownie fudge sundae in a waffle cone. It was necessary to keep our blood sugar levels within acceptable limits. We then returned home just ahead of a heavy wind and rain squall to await an all-day bus tour of the Mount Rushmore area tomorrow morning.

Sunday…We were up at the ungodly hour of 6:45 to go to a pancake breakfast before the bus tour. The breakfast fare was biscuits and gravy, pancakes, hickory sausage and coffee. All delicious! We got on the bus and headed out for a 120-mile circle tour of the Black Hills. We went by Old MacDonalds Farm and saw this…

Continuing on, we headed for Mount Rushmore which fulfilled all expectations and then some. It was awesome!

After Rushmore, we cruised through Custer State Park, stopping for a bison stew and chocolate ice cream cone lunch at the State Game Lodge. After lunch, we continued through a VERY narrow and winding scenic road through some narrow tunnels and one VERY narrow tunnel with 1½” clearance on each side of the bus. We were ready to get out the grease.

Several motorists on the other side of the tunnel got out of their cars and were taking pictures of the bus going through. We made it through without as much as a scratch. Going through Keystone, a cute old western town, we headed for Crazy Horse where a family is building a massive granite sculpture of Crazy Horse riding a horse. They claim it’s for the Native Americans, but we got the idea it was a total rip-off…interesting, but still a rip-off. We then headed for home and the end of the tour, slowing on the way to watch several really cute black bear cubs romping on grass and climbing trees at a tourist attraction called Bear Country USA. A great day!

Tomorrow, we start a two-day drive to Kellogg, Iowa to meet Linda and Larry Slycord for four or five days. Until later…

Out of the frying pan...

When we went to Pahrump, the temperature was 108 degrees. When we went through Las Vegas on the way to Utah, the temperature was 105 degrees. The weather-guessers predicted a cooling trend. For once, they got it right…too right! The night in Payson at Wal-Mart was windy and rainy but not cold. We took off about 8:00 and headed north to Provo and went up Provo Canyon (Hwy 189). What a beautiful road! It (obviously) went up a canyon lined with oaks and other trees and beautiful large homes, following a small river. When we turned east on I-80, the rain turned to sleet and then to snow. We were debating about continuing on, but the westbound truckers assured us the snow would end about 40 miles down the road. It was sticking to the landscape, and the front of our rig,



but not the road so we not too boldly ventured forth into the unknown. As promised, the snow soon turned to rain which soon stopped completely. Due to the storm forecast, we decided to push the day’s travel and go all the way to Casper, Wyoming to make Thursday’s run to Mt. Rushmore a short one. We got to Rawlins and turned north on Hwy. 287. This road crosses the typical Wyoming high country. I was anticipating seeing a few pronghorns (antelope) but a few is not the descriptive term I can now use. There were heaps and gobs and bunches and herds of the critters. We probably saw close to 50, and those were only the ones that were close to the highway.

At 6:15, we pulled into the Fort Caspar Campground. There was a replica of the original Fort Caspar as we pulled in. The campground itself was a little run down and was occupied by many full-timers in somewhat run-down rigs using the campground as their home. I listened for a banjo playing “Deliverence” after going into the office and talking to the young lady in the office. She was barefoot, missing a few teeth and wearing levi shorts a la the Beverly Hillbillies movie. We pulled into our level dirt pull-through site and plugged in the power. It worked and we were home! Now for a stiff scotch and water, dinner and a shower.

It rained all night and the predictions were for light rain for the rest of the day, but clearing thereafter so, again, we ventured forth. It was an on again, off again windshield wiper day as we drove east, and then north, toward Rapid City, South Dakota. We passed several local landmarks of note, namely a huge log hotel with the cute name of “C’mon Inn”. We also spotted several more pronghorns, much to my delight. They are really beautiful animals.

We got to the Rushmore Shadows Resort in the early afternoon and ran for the office between moderate rain drops. Checking in, we even decided to do the 90-minute presentation for a hefty reduction in the cost of our stay. They even had to refund some of my deposit. I may have even done better than Claudia’s slot machine caper the other day. Setup was sloppy as a slight but steady rain was now falling. However, we did get the chores done and settled in for a three or four-day stay. Our first inside chore was to take showers and get into some dry clothes. We have three days for sure but may extend one more depending on whatever. There’s lots to see around here…that is IF the damn weather clears up. Since we have email here, I’ll send this out now and do another in a few days after exploring the area. Everyone stay safe!

The summer begins!

Who’s that ugly guy that sticks his nose into everything and screws things up at the worst possible moment? Johnson? Nope. Seymore? Nope. Oh yeah…Murphy! Well, Murphy visited me Friday evening. Here I was, sitting in my easy chair, watching the Military Channel on TV (Claudia was out with girlfriends) with a nice hot cup of coffee in my hand. I took the first delicious swig and…OH SHUCKS GOLLY GEE WHIZ DARN! I came straight out of the chair with a pain that felt like someone stuck a six-inch #2 needle in a tooth on the lower left side of my jaw. I immediately suspected something was wrong! Wonderful! What else?…and just before we are scheduled to leave. I slugged down some Ibuprofen and went to bed.

Saturday morning, I called my dentist and he told me to be on his doorstep at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning and to be prepared for a root canal. Never having had one before, but hearing many horror stories, I envisioned him standing on my dentist’s chair with a surgical version of an air-driven jackhammer and me walking out many hours later with an extra-large, double-huge swollen jaw. Not the way I want to start out on a cross-country trip!

Monday morning found me at his office. I would have taken several “calming shots” of my favorite adult beverage except that we had already packed away the scotch for the trip. I entered the office totally sober and full of anxiety. I was soon seated in the chair and he was freezing up a cotton ball to do some “touch tests”. He placed the frozen cotton on the tooth that hurt. I felt nothing. He said “That’s bad” and broke out a needle I thought was much too big for the job he had in mind. Not to bore you with what transpired over the next hour or so, but suffice to say I left with a new “happening” in my diary of life…a root canal.

I returned home and brought the Motorhome to the condo. We got ready to head off on the new adventure, pulling away a little after 11:00, headed for Terrible’s Lakeside RV Resort in Pahrump, NV. We pulled in just after 5:30, set up camp and then headed over to Jerry and Liz Fiske’s house for a reunion and dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. The margarita’s were delicious and greatly appreciated after a long and full day.

The next morning, Neil and Marlene Elkins, friends from our first Alaska trip, came over to the park and we had the buffet breakfast at the RV park casino restaurant. Claudia had me pay the bill and slipped away on her own. I finished paying the bill and met Neil and Marlene. No Claudia! Where oh where would she be in a casino on her own. It didn’t take long to find her. She has some hidden talent to find a certain type of slot machine within one minute of me not holding on to her. I was too late. She had already found the machine of her choice (a penny machine – she’s a real big spender…RIGHT!) and was FIRMLY planted down in front of it, promising to only play $5.00 until it was gone. She hit a few and lost a few when it soon announced “Wheel of Fortune”. She asked the guy seated next to her what to do. He scowled and said “Just hit the button” and pointed to a flashing button on the machine. She pushed the button and the wheel started turning. It settled on the number 250 and the machine started dinging away. It stopped on $67.00 and some change. At my urging, she cashed out immediately. Let’s see, $67 and some change less her original $5 investment and we, strike that, SHE was $62 richer. This, she announced, would be parlayed again when she met Linda in Iowa at their local Indian casino. Why did that not surprise me? We went back to the rig, said our goodbye’s to Neil and Marlene and headed out for a three or four-day trip to Mount Rushmore.

We did 429 miles the first day and wound up overnighting in a Wal-Mart near Payson, UT. The highlight of the trip was sighting a pair of wild burros at the side of the road. I would have taken a picture except that I would have taken at least 5,000 miles off the brake shoes if I had tried to stop in time. One was a really good looking black and gray one. I have no proof of the sighting. You’ll just have to trust me! Tomorrow, we continue on to Mount Rushmore. BTW, my tooth feels great…no pain at all.