Back Home...The end...of THIS adventure...

Yes, it is nice to be back home, but there's still that want to be traveling again.  We drove pretty quickly after Mt. Rushmore.  We drove through South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri and then down through Nashville to see some friends. We made it home on Monday or Tuesday (don't remember which one) night.  Joe and Jan are in North Carolina at the cabin right now and we parted ways in Missouri. :(

It started getting hot in Iowa, but we didn't need the A/C until Missouri. I figured that I could turn the generator on so we can turn the A/C on.  Holly was panting and Laurie and I were starting to sweat some. I cranked it up and it ran perfectly...for 10 minutes. It shut down on us and we pulled over at a rest area so I could check it out.  I looked at it and tweaked a couple of things on carburetor and it still wouldn't start. I tried a couple more things, but it still wouldn't start.  We were 2 1/2 days from home and I didn't feel like tearing the generator apart at a rest area.  So, we opened the windows back up and cruised on.  The trip through Iowa and Missouri was nice because we had never been there.  There are so many acres of corn and soybean fields.  Until you get around the major cities, that's about all there is.

We stopped by Dale and Bobbi Jo's just North of Nashville for a small visit.  It was great seeing our temporary home and family again because we stayed at their property from January through March of this year. We said goodbye and told them that we would be up soon, then drove down to see Jason, Erika, Colton and Collin (the new one...2 1/2 mnts old).  We had a great visit with them.  Jason cooked some awesome hamburgers and Erika fixed some french fries.  It was just what we needed after driving all day.  Laurie got to feed Collin and hold him for a while until it was time for bed.  We also got yelled at by Colton because he was trying to sleep and he said that we were talking too loud. He's the boss, so we hushed up.  The plan was to get up early the next morning so we went to bed around 11pm.

I woke up at 5am and got moving.  One stop for gas and we were on the interstate headed south again.  We were going to make it home from Murfreesboro, which is 715 miles to Plant City.  It was hot, but we were cruising along nicely.  In Tifton Georgia, we got gas again for the last time.  I decided to get the generator manual out to see where the ignition points were.  I had been thinking that they could be dirty because of all of the dust that we drove through on the way to Alaska and back.  I took the cover off of the ignition point and took a papertowel to them.  I hit the start button and it fired right up.  Wow, we are 4.5 hrs away from home and it decides to start running again.  We had no problems on the entire trip with the generator until it got hot outside and we NEEDED the A/C.  After some tweaking on the carb again and a few slaps on the arm by Laurie, for just figuring out what it was when we are so close to home, we were back on the road again...with A/C!  The rest of the ride was uneventful even though it rained from the Florida border until we got home.

I had some time to reflect on our trip, during my 15 hr drive home. Here are some events and thoughts that stick out in my mind...

• I drove appx 16,000 miles over the last 4 months (no, Laurie didn't drive even an inch...but I didn't mind).
• It was almost exactly 4 months from the time we left, back in April.  
• We drove through 22 states.
• A 1987 RV, with 89,000 miles on it, did an outstanding job, with only a few minor repairs.
• We didn't have 1 flat tire. Last trip that Joe and Jan took, they had 6 flat tires. 
• We met up with my dad in Mobile while he was out on business.
• Don't ever stay in Natchitoches, LA before the Jazz festival, if you want to get any sleep. On a side note, the Stomp team that was performing at 3am outside of our window, was really good. They had rhythm!  
• We found a diamond in Arkansas...and it wasn't at Jared!
• I saw naked men everywhere at the hot springs in Arkansas...Arkansas really made an impact on me...and not necessarily in a good way. :) 
• Native American Indians are nice, but they live in some shabby places out west. I even gave 2 Indian bums, $10 for some cheeseburgers...at least that's what they said they were going to use it for. 
• They place old tires on their trailer roofs so they don't blow away in the wind.
•  Kansas and Oklahoma are flat and long! 
• I can see why Kansas is a beef state. They have so many cattle processing plants.
• Colorado is beautiful. The terrain varies widely across the state...plus they have many good breweries out there. 
• Take a jacket that is heavier than a windbreaker next time I go out West in May. IT can snow through July 4th. 
• Ouray hot springs in Colorado is beautiful when the snow is falling...and it does look like little Switzerland.
• The million dollar highway is worth every penny.
• Telluride rocks!
• There's a lot of dessert in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.
• Sam's casino in Vegas is the place to stay and play!
• You can find peace and fortune tellers in magnetic forces in Sedona.
• Goldfield, Nevada has Joe's father's property...somewhere.
• Death Valley is another world...a place where I could spend another week to see more...and the racetrack sign is not a racetrack like I thought.  It's where rocks move when the wind blows hard enough.
• It rains in Death Valley?!  It did when we were there.
• No picture or video can ever do the Redwood Forest justice. You have to go there and take a raincoat.
• The Oregon coast is magnificent with scenery.
• Only my loved ones can make me boil with anger.
• There is sunshine in Seattle...for 5 minutes, but it was nice. 
• Victoria Canada is worth another trip back to see. 
• The Cassiar Highway in Canada is long and sometimes bumpy, but the scenery and wildlife make up for that.
• Alaska is huge! The landscape, wildlife, freedom and boondocks feeling, make it a magical place to visit. 
• Alaskans carry weapons everywhere.
• If you want any type of fur, Alaska is the place to get it!
• Holly can't swallow rocks.
• We saw whales!
• Contrary to popular belief, Canadians are nice! At least the ones that we met.  
• US Border agents have a sense of humor in Washington...unlike Montana.
• Jasper, Banff and Calgary have the most amazing fields of gold flowers.
• I hate bears!  Nothing about them is cuddly. Who wants to take a hike and have to worry about getting eaten by a bear?!
• Bikers annoy me. Why would I look twice? Not the ones that drive BMW or the offroad/onroad traveling bikes...they are normal, courteous people. It's the Harleys that think they own the road.  
• Montana is a place where I could have a home one day.
• Yellowstone is also like another planet. It smells like a huge sewer, but I'd go back and visit again and again...and not only because I like sewer smells! eeewwwww!
• Although Bison (Buffalo) look like gentle creatures, do not approach them.
• Speaking of Buffalo...buffalo burgers are my new favorite meal.
• Cowboys in Wyoming don't have a southern accent...it threw me off to see some guy wearing wranglers, boots and a cowboy hat and talking like a northerner.
• I love the South.
• I miss Cracker Barrel breakfast. There are none out west. 
• Next time the generator quits, I'll spend time to think about it.
• I can actually take a trip with my in-laws and never get tired of them. 
• At 6 miles per gallon and an average of $3.75 per gallon, a 16k mile trip will make me have to get a job sooner than expected. :) ha! 
• I wouldn't trade this trip of a lifetime, for anything...except maybe a buffalo head, no, make that a bear rug because bears are annoying.
• The US is unbelievable!  There are so many various parts to this country, that no person could ever get tired of visiting, exploring and learning...and if they do, then they are just plain ignoramoose (a word I picked up from the triangle game at cracker barrel, for leaving more than 3 golf tees on the playing board).

We have unpacked a lot of the items out of the motorhome already, but we are leaving a few things in it because we are going down to the keys in 3 weeks for some lobster.  It's hot and humid here, but I still love it. This is the end of our adventure to Alaska and back. I learned a lot about the US, myself, my wife, my dog and my in-laws. We are blessed to be able to take an amazing trip like this one.  Now, onto our next adventure.  Lobster Season!  Look for upcoming blog posts about our trip to the keys!  I better go, my mind is starting to think of more events and thoughts, and I already have too many listed.  Good night!

The coffin.

Inside the command center for the Minuteman Missile program during the Cold War

Capsule where two people are constantly ready to turn their keys to fire missiles.

Missile silo, appx 9 miles from the command center.

Minuteman training missile

The green building is where Laurie was conceived. Mound City, MO 

St. Louis, MO

 

Mt Rushmore, Custer and the Badlands.

Things are definitely on the move for us, as we make our way home.  The stops seem to come and go a little faster now...if that is possible because we have been going, going, going for a while. We are parked outside of the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, in a campground now.

We saw Devil's Tower in Wyoming two days ago.  It was lava that was pushed up to the surface many years ago.  It stands about 870ft tall and is very big around. It's pretty amazing to see what nature can do. We took a walk around the structure that night and saw some climbers making their way down from the top. I would have loved to go up top, but there was no way to do it beside spelunking, and I don't have any gear like that.  We camped in the Park that night and were awoken by slamming doors, tailgates and other noises, at 6am!  We haven't slept good for the last week because we have been staying in campgrounds and tent campers and motorcyclists get up early.  I'm not happy about that. Next to the campground were prairie dog villages.  There must have been 100 prairie dogs out in the field.  When Mindy walked up where they could see her, the PD that stands guard started making this noise that sounded like a loud squirrel. He was warning the others that a real dog was near. The prairie dogs in WY are bigger than the ones in Colorado.  I guess they eat more!

Devil's Tower

View from walking around Devil's Tower

Driving through Wyoming was pretty.  There are mountains that we crossed at a snail's pace because the motorhome wouldn't go any faster up the inclines.  There are plains that we drove across and rolling hills also. We loved the drive into the Inyan Kara Mountain area. There are valleys with rivers and many beautiful houses. The temps are starting to rise because we are starting to sweat again.  That's ok though because it's nice to feel a little heat for a change.  Plus, 85 degrees is not really hot. :)   After we set up camp, we drove through Custer Forest, into the State Park and to MT. Rushmore.  The bikers are headed to Sturgis for the rally on Monday, so they were everywhere.  No offense to the courteous bikers, but I am not fond of bikers...and they are probably not fond of me when I am going 15mph up a mountain incline.  They want us to watch out for them, yet they do stupid stuff that puts themselves in danger.  I'm going to make a bumper sticker that says "Bikers Suck." (Maybe I've seen too many reckless and disrespectful bikers along this trip.)  Sorry about the tangent...We drove through Custer, SD and it was a cool little town.  It had many campgrounds in it and some cool shops and restaurants.  It's a place to brings kids if you have them. We drove through Custer state park and took the scenic wildlife loop also.  The rock formations and the rock mountains were spectacular.  We drove through small, one lane tunnels and saw some buffalo, tons of deer and even some friendly, people-food-eating burrows.  The mules were walking in the middle of the road and when people would slow down, the mules would walk over to their window and expect some food, or they would just move to the next vehicle.  It was starting to rain hard while we were watching them, so I was only able to feed the mules a cheddar cheese cracker. He ate it and moved on.  It rained pretty hard for about an hour, so the rest of the loop was seen with the windows up while trying to see through the blowing rain.  We arrived just outside of Mt. Rushmore and it stopped raining.  We were able to view the mountain from afar and get some good pictures.  We drove up to the park and paid our $11 parking fee and walked inside.  The carvings were a lot smaller than I thought they would be, but were also pretty far away.  I pictured the mountain to be a little bigger because of all of the movies I've seen, has made it look huge. But, it was an amazing work of art. I have always wanted to visit Mt. Rushmore and was finally able to see it in person.  The monument area was done nicely.  They had a nice visitor's center as well as an exhibit hall and gift shop.  We walked around for about 30 minutes, took some pictures, then drove into Keystone (a town about 2 miles from Mt. Rushmore) for dinner.  We ate at a "Home Cookin' Place."  The buffalo burger was great!  We wanted to watch the night show where they light up the faces so after dinner, we drove back into the park and watched the show.  It started at 9pm when it got dark.  A Ranger did a talk for about 10 minutes, then we watched a movie on the 4 Presidents, then they lit up the faces and we saluted the active and inactive military members of the audience.   About half of the audience was in the military and were able to walk up on stage while we clapped for them.  After we all got back to the truck, Joe said, "does anyone else think that we really screwed up?" We all knew what he meant and said, "yes!"  The leaders of our country are turning over in their graves to see what kind of mess this country is in right now. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt all gave something to this country and honored it.  It was pretty moving to watch the video and see how much they loved America. We made it back to camp at 11pm and went to bed after a long day...again.

Custer State Park Tunnel

Friendly mules

Rushmore in the background

Profilin'

This morning Laurie and I got up and went to take the Jewel Cave tour.  It's a cave that is over 150 miles long (and that is only 10% because the rest is not surveyed yet) and it is underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota, right near our campground.  The tour lasted about 1.5hrs and was done nicely.  The  Ranger did a great job guiding all of us through parts of the cave.  It was interesting to see the Stalactites and the Calcite formations that looked like crystals.  I would have loved to be one of the first to explore the caves.  At one point the ranger turned the lights out and it was so black you couldn't see anything.

Calcite Crystals

We drove 4.5 hrs to the Badlands today. South Dakota has many fields of wheat and rolling hills.  Not really a lot of trees though.  There is this town called Wall, SD.  It has a huge mall area, more like an amusement park, that people stop and visit, called Wall Drug.  We walked around there, got a milkshake and took off.  The crowds were pretty big, but it was interesting to see.  I guess that is a big attraction when traveling through there. The Badlands are pretty.  They are rocky, sandy and grassy.  They remind me of driving through a smaller scaled grand canyon.  We drove through at dusk, which made it prettier.  We saw a few got alongside the road as well as deer.  Tomorrow, after we take a missile silo tour, we are starting our final drive home.  We don't plan on making any extended stops along the way, but maybe through Nashville to see some friends. This was the last park that we had laid out for our trip.  It's sad that the trip is coming to a close.  I guess it's time to get back to reality for a little bit...until the next trip starts.  I'll keep you updated of our ride home.  Good night!  

Wall Drug

Badlands

Mt Rushmore!

It just stopped raining and we are able to see it clearly now. Yeah!

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Wow...is all I can say about Yellowstone!

Yellowstone and Jackson Hole were amazing! We rolled into Yellowstone on Friday morning. We set up camp and started our Gung-Ho Yellowstone Journey. We drove down to Mammoth Hot Springs first.  The area took our breath away...not only because of the sulfur smells but because it was like looking at another planet.  The water was bubbling and steaming, the rocks were covered in mineral colors and the land looked dead.  We took a walk down the boardwalk that the park set up and looked through all of the steaming springs.

All throughout the park, there were so many boiling springs.  There were many bison and elk in the park also. You couldn't walk on all of the grounds because some were fragile and might cave in.  Some of the streams were warm water because of all of the hot pools that drain into them. We drove around the park and saw one side it. Then, we drove down to Old Faithful. We got there at 6:40pm.  It was scheduled to go off at 7:06. We were sitting on a bench with about 1000 other people waiting also.  We saw it sputter a few times, then at 7:15, it finally erupted.  It shot water about 100 ft into the air and sounded like a steam engine.  We took a walk to the Old Faithful Inn to see the old wooden structure.  The building was made of logs and was massive.  We had some ice cream and thought about having dinner there but the wait was too long.  We headed back to camp and got there at 9:45pm.

Baby Elk

Old Faithful before takeoff

On Saturday, we woke up and started another long day of driving and seeing the sights around Yellowstone.  We drove through the Lamar Valley (In Yellowstone still) then, took the Beartooth Highway (Hwy 212) outside of the the park. The scenery was beautiful...again! The Beartooth took us up a winding, two lane road that peaked at 11,950ft.  There was snow on the ground up at the peak still. There were some goats that we saw at the peak. I guess they liked being that high up in the mountains. The road led us into the town of Red Lodge.  It was a cool little town with shops, restaurants and bars and it was down in a valley. After we walked around there for a little bit, we started the trek back to camp.  We drove through Cody, WY and then down a winding road through a canyon, and finally to the East entrance of the park.  We made it back to camp at 10pm that night. 

On Sunday, we drove down through Yellowstone, through the Tetons and into Jackson Hole.  Round trip, it was about 275 miles.  The weather was a little cloudy this day, but the views were still amazing.  The Tetons are massive, jagged and intimidating looking. We didn't get a chance to hike at all, but we did stop and see the waterfalls in Yellowstone, and a few history centers along our route.  We saw where the Rockefellers donated land to the National Park as part of their Philanthropy efforts. We saw the ski village of Jackson Hole and then drove into the old town of Jackson.   It's a neat little town also.  It still has the western theme and has a town square that has tons of antlers shaped like a rainbow so you can walk under them.  The ladies wanted to shop so we stopped for a couple of hours.  After the shopping, we were all pretty hungry and stopped by Bubba's Barbeque.  That place was recommended to us by a volunteer at the Teton visitor center. Bubba's turned out great!  Jackson is definitely a place that we would like to go back to and it is open all year long. We drove back into our campground and luckily didn't see an animal in the road the entire drive.  We made it back into camp at midnight.  We were all pretty exhausted from 3 full days of touring around the area.  

Tetons

We saw a black bear along the way

Jackson Hole

Today, we left Yellowstone and started the route towards Mt. Rushmore. We stopped by a local Antler, Fur and artistry place along the way.  It was at this guy's house, but he had a workshop full of antler chandeliers, antlers, furs and all kinds of cool stuff.  Joe and Jan bought a few Elk antlers and we bought 2 beaver pelts to make a pillow out of...or a toilet seat.  I'm torn between which one we should make.  We are staying in Greybull, WY tonight.  There's an airport down the road that has an older airplane boneyard at it.  There are old WWII planes that are just sitting off of one of the runways.  I tried to get to them tonight by riding my bike, but there were fences surround the airport.  I am going to try to get to them in the morning by asking one of the businesses to see if they'll take me out there to look at all of the old planes.  

I have to tell this story because it is funny.  But, I'm not sure that you are going to laugh as hard as we were today. We were in tears from laughing so hard.  It's one of my blonde moments, but I am not ashamed because it is so funny.

 Here we go...I heard about the bear mauling a hiker in Yellowstone, while we were still in Alaska.  I also heard about the 3 people falling over a water fall but I couldn't remember whether it was Yellowstone or Yosemite.  I talked with a guy the other day and he thought it was Yellowstone also.  So, I went with it...it was Yellowstone where they fell over. Well, the other day, I was browsing my news clips that I get on my phone, and one of the headlines said,"Raging River Hampsters Search for Bodies of Missing Hikers." I thought, wow that's cool, they have hampsters looking for the hikers. I guess they are scuba diving to be able to get underwater.  I really didn't think too much about it because I was just browsing the headlines. I told Laurie, Joe and Jan about it and they think that I dreamt it because there was no such thing as scuba diving hampsters.  I told them to look it up, I read it on MSN. They were all laughing.  We thought that we would ask a park ranger if he has heard of the hampsters, but we couldn't find a person to ask about them. I asked the guy at the antler shop today and he thought I was crazy. We were all having a good laugh, but I swore that they trained hampsters to look for the hikers. On our way out of Cody, WY today, I asked Laurie to look it up.  She was reading about the bear mauling and where it was, and about the Yellowstone hikers...which actually, it was Yosemite where they fell over, and I was anxious for her to google the hampsters.  Well...she did...and this is what the headline actually read..."Raging River Hampers Search for Missing Hikers."  HAMPERS! NOT HAMPSTERS!  She and I could not stop laughing and I am still laughing as I type this.  I really didn't think too much about it. Hey, they have waterskiing squirrels, why couldn't they have scuba diving hampsters?  Hahahahahha!  I'm retarded!  Anyways, that's my funny blonde moment.  I'm headed to bed now.  Good night. I think I'll go reflect on my scuba diving hampster idea.  I think that's a niche market that I could get into!