Travel Blog

We had the day off today and got an early start because we first had plans to go to the RV dealership who's fixing our RV to see where things stood and to get some stuff out of our house, and then we were going to go to Sundance, Wyoming, to take a look at the RV we were going to rent. The first part of our day went as planned. We got to the dealership and spoke with Mitch the Service Department guy, and then packed up a load of stuff that we'd need for the rental RV. We had wanted to say hi to the salesman we had spoken to before, but he wasn't around, so we were just planning on leaving, but Phil asked if we should try one more time to find Eric, and I said what the heck, let's do it.

We found Eric and asked him if we could take another look at a new RV we had looked at the first day we brought our busted house to them. He took us over and we were sitting around the living room, and Phil asked Eric if he was sure there wasn't a deal to be made here. Eric said he thought we weren't interested in getting a new RV, and that he was sure something could be wheeled and dealed, so he went off to see on last time if his boss would give us anything for our RV towards this new one.

We waited and waited for him to come back, but he was taking a long time, and I had to go to the bathroom, so we headed back to the main office. Eric was in his office still trying to see what was what, so we told him we'd take a drive and he could call us when he had some news for us. It was still pretty early in the morning, and we weren't hungry or anything, so we decided to take a drive to Deadwood since I had wanted to go back there. We had a nice walk about town, and it was fun to see buildings and things named after the characters (ok, they were once real people) we watched on the TV show Deadwood, like Bullock's hotel, Utts Pub and the bar where Wild Bill got shot.

While we were walking around, we got a call from Eric with the magic number. We said to get the paperwork started, and we'd come right over. Well, when we got back to his office and started to sit down, he said he had "hit a snag." Uck. He said that unbeknownst to him, our insurance company had lowered the amount they were willing to pay for the repairs, and he had gone off the original number, so we were a couple of thousand short now. I was peeved and wanted to call the whole thing off, but Phil, the level-headed, asked Eric if he could somehow get us back to our magic number seeing as how we didn't want any of the furniture in the new RV, so they could keep all that, and they would also be getting some pretty cool stuff of ours in the old RV, like the fireplace and the TVs and some other great options. We also told him we'd sell his boss our scooter, which was no good to us anymore because of the specially-made frame that was on our old RV.

We had to wait another hour or so while Eric played phone tag with the owner, but it finally ended up back to where we wanted it, and now our bank is the proud owner of a new 35-foot Keystone Challenger. (I'm not fond of the name, Challenger, but I'll learn to live with it.) Come take a tour of the new digs with me:

Exterior Shots (a couple feature Phil checking out the roof):

You can't see it from the pictures, but I finally got my exterior shower. What I'm going to do with it, I'm not sure, but I wanted one anyway.

And some interior shots:

This will be my little desk area.

The bed is a King, so we had to go out and buy new sheets today.

Did you see the size of that fridge? We may have room to make ice cubes now.

We go pick it up on our next day off, which is next Thursday. We can't wait to get into our new home, even though it's sad to see the old one go, especially since it had so many personal touches. But the new one will have those soon enough, I guess.

Sunday was our first day off for six days, so of course it was the first rainy day we've had since we've been here. But we didn't let that stop us. We went looking for those donkeys (from now on I'm calling them burros, since I was corrected today by a jeep tour guide).

We took Iron Mountain Road because we were told that's where the burros would be. We didn't see any burros, but we did see some turkeys.

I tried to get a picture of one of the toms with his tail feathers all spread out, but they were running for the hills by the time I got my camera out and all the tails were tucked.

Iron Mountain Road was a very interesting trek in our dually truck. Sometimes our truck seemed wider than the roads, there were corkscrew turns everywhere and some very tight-fitting tunnels.

At the other end of the tunnel, we got our first glimpse of Mount Rushmore.

Then we went further down the road, and came to another tunnel. This time I ran out ahead of the truck to get a shot coming through the tunnel.

And we got another view of Mount Rushmore!

We're not actually going to Mount Rushmore until we get our VIP passes, but it was neat to see it from a distance, and with the help of Photoshop's zoom function, I think we took some cool pictures.

We headed away from the Black Hills after that and headed for Rapid City and Chinese food for lunch. We passed by a place we're going to go back to some day.

Even if our friends from Spring Training hadn't told us about this place, I think I would have been drawn to it.

And that's about it for our latest tour of the area. There are some super cute towns around here, though, and if we get the time, we'll go through some of them and take some pictures. I'll end this post with a picture of the town of Keystone, right near Mount Rushmore. But before I sign off, our jobs are going well. Phil has already started his main job at the front desk of the Creekside Lodge. He's checked folks in and out, he's cleaned rooms (major snafu on visas for our foreign workers who were slated to do housekeeping), and he's done the night audits. He's working long hours, but he says he's having fun. I don't start my real job in the gift shop until May 1st, but I've been staying busy in the warehouse getting the products distributed to the five gift shops located around the park. It's tedious work, but I work with some fun folks, so it's all good. I'll be glad to have the stores ready for opening day, though.

On the RV front, our rig is still in the shop, of course, and we can't wait until it's fixed. In the meantime, dorm life has been bumming me out because the walls are paper thin and people moved in next door and I can hear every move they make (plus they like Whitney Houston music, and I just can't abide that). So I've been using headphones and ear plugs quite a bit. Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful for the place to stay, but I'm too old for this. So we posted a Wanted Ad on Craigslist for an RV to rent, and we got a call from a guy today who'd be willing to rent us his RV for a month or so. We go and meet with him this Thursday, and I'm really hoping that all works out. Keep fingers and toes and eyes crossed for us on that front, would ya?

And on that note, here's Keystone...

We heard back from our insurance person, and the decision is to have the RV folks fix our RV, not scrap it. The estimate for all the damage came to about $13,000, and honestly that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The dealership was given the green light to start the work, so now all we have to do is wait a couple of weeks for all the parts to come in, and then a couple of weeks after that for the work to get done, and we'll be back in our RV. We can't wait. We are happy the folks here have been so kind as to give us a place to stay, but it's just not the same. It's actually the first time I've ever lived in a dorm. Phil says this place is a lot nicer than the dorms he lived in. We don't have a communal bathroom, and that's the biggest perk for me. The dorms we're staying in look like little cabins.

We're staying in the one on the left (2B). These were just built this past year. I had to take the plastic wrap off the shower drain, it's so new. Here's what the inside looks like (excuse the mess, won't you please?)

Phil's not too happy about the twin beds, but I sort of like sleeping alone for a change. No one steals my covers.

While we wait for our RV to be fixed, we get to drive around the park and see the sights. We took the Wildlife Loop the other day, and I think they named this road pretty accurately. Here's all the wildlife we saw (no wild donkeys yet, but I'm hoping to get pictures of them this weekend).

Pronghorn deer:

A horse (ok, I guess this horse isn't wild, but you get the drift):

A buffalo scratching his belly on a rock (I hope that's what he was doing, anyway):

A buffalo staring at us (sort of looks like he's trying to tell us something):

A field of buffalo (feed them; they will come):

Prairie dogs (only one is shown here, but take my word for it - there was a whole village of them):

Deer:

And a yellow-bellied marmot:

We started work on Monday, and that's going well. Phil had his first day working the front desk of the lodge today, and he said that went well. I'm working in a warehouse, getting all the retail merchandise ready to go to the stores. Same old, same old for me.

Thank you to everyone who told us they were thinking of us during our RV troubles. All is well, and hopefully by the end of May, we'll be back on wheels.

Soooooo, where was I? Oh yes, on US 85 about 22 miles north of Lusk, Wyoming. We heard a weird noise and I turned to Phil and asked, "What the hell was that?" Phil looked out the window and said, "That's our tire bouncing across the road." Luckily we were very close to the cross-section of SR270 and Phil was able to pull off the main road into a turnoff. We thought we'd just be changing a tire or something (even though I guess since we watched the entire tire bounce across the road, we should have remembered that the lug nuts were probably long gone), but we get out of the truck and see this:

And this:

I guess when the tire was shearing off the axel, it decided to take the entire back end of our house with it.

There were some road construction workers nearby, and when Phil went to retrieve the tire, a worker talked to Phil and said he'd send his supervisor over to talk to us and help us out if we needed it. It seems we were in a cell phone dead zone, so we couldn't call anyone from there. The supervisor came over and offered to take us to the nearest town, but we had the truck, and it was fine, so we thanked the guy, unhitched, and drove up the road until we could get cell phone coverage.

The first call we made was to our insurance folks. We never did a claim before, so we needed our hands held, but the person we talked to was very nice to us (even though she scolded us a bit for leaving the accident scene, but she backed off when we told her we wouldn't be calling her if we had stayed at the scene). She asked about our welfare, and then tried to help us find a nearby RV dealership who could take a look at our rig. We conferenced-called about three dealerships who either told us they didn't deal with our kind of RV or else they were booked for weeks and couldn't see us right away. The GMAC lady sort of left us to our own devices after that, but told us our claim adjuster person should be calling us by noon the next day, and she gave us that person's name and phone number. So Phil and I sort of felt a bit abandoned and weren't sure what else to do, so we drove into Lusk to get on one of our computers to search for some more RV dealerships. We finally found a place who was willing to look at our RV. It was over 100 miles away in Whitewood, South Dakota. But we weren't picky at that point. Then we asked if they had towing capabilities to get us there, and they said, "No."

So our next mission was to find a towing service who could get us from where we were to where we needed to be. About five calls later, we actually found a towing service in the town of Lusk who was willing and able. It was Jordan Auto, and if you ever need help when you're near Lusk, give Jim a call. He was absolutely awesome and helped us tremendously through a very hard situation. And watching him do his job was very interesting once you get past the fact that it's your house getting tugged up onto a flatbed.

He was going to take us that very evening, even though it was already near 6:00 p.m. The accident had happened around 1:00 p.m., and Phil and I were wiped out from the experience, so we asked Jim if his wife would like to have him home for dinner that night. He said that would be great and that we could meet him at his place early the next morning and we'd all head out for Whitewood. He recommended a good place to stay for the night, and told us about the best place to eat in town. Nice guy, that Jim.

The RV is now at the dealership in Whitewood. Phil and I are being put up in style at the dorms at Custer State Park. They bent the rules for us and are letting us keep all our animals in the dorms with us. Very cool of them, we think. Now we're just waiting until Monday to get the estimate on how much it would cost to fix our house, or if it's a total loss. Keep us in your thoughts as we would really like to have a home again very soon.

We were having a great trip from Albuquerque to Custer State Park in South Daktoa. The weather was pretty good except for some flurries around Denver, and we had plenty of time to get where we were going. We stopped quickly in San Luis, Colorado, to say hello to a friend of Phil's, and then moved on up past Pueblo, Colorado, and stayed at an RV park we had stayed at once before on our way up to Alaska. The next day we stopped for night in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at the Terry Bison Ranch Resort. It was a really cool place with lots to see (camels, even) and do (mostly in the summer, but we aren't complaining). We knew it was going to be our kind of place when we pulled in.

And we checked in here:

After we got settled in, we walked around the place, bought some buffalo meat for dinner and looked at some goats.

Ain't that baby cute?

The next day we set off for our last leg, planning to go up through northeast Wyoming and then over to South Dakota. The weather was great, skies were blue and all was right with the world. And then...

Our Easter plans have changed a bit. We were going to San Luis, Colorado, for Easter, but due to some illnesses there, we've changed our plans and are spending Easter with Pat and Paula in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I must say I'm enjoying ABQ weather after melting in Arizona. We actually were contemplating turning on the fireplace last night. Ahhhhhhhhh!

We spent this afternoon doing what we do best - spending money. We finally got a new car stereo that wil enable our Sirius satellite radio to play through it without us having to find an empty FM station first. That's going to cut down on a lot of headaches. Then we got our spare RV tire fixed. We broke a weld on our old one, so we needed a new rim. We got a good deal on an ugly, white, shiney rim, so that's going to look good if we ever have to use it. It may not match the other rims, but it sure does match our RV. Except our RV isn't so shiney. Ha!

We heard from some of our friends who are in Skagway right now. They say we are missed by the Corringtons, and we sure do miss Skagway and Jeanie and Jerry and all those folks. But it's time to do new things. Here's to hoping Custer State Park is just as cool.