We left Sturgis to park at Ellsworth Afb while we both headed off to work for a few days. After returning from work we headed north into North Dakota starting on the western side of the state. We parked in a campground in the small town of Medora, a town really made popular by Theodore Roosevelt’s love of the black hills and cowboy lifestyle. When he was in his early twenties his wife and mother both died on the same…
Our last day there we went to the Crazy Horse monument. For those not familiar it’s basically the Indian version of Mount Rushmore that was started in 1948 and still isn’t complete. The sculpture who began the project worked on it from 1948 til his death, at age 74, in 1982. From there his family has taken over the project and is working on it to this day. The face was completed in 1998 but there’s still a lot of…
We met our friends Tiff and Lori at the Full Throttle Saloon. This was a place we’d also been to last time we were here but it had moved. Last time we stayed here we were at a campground called Glencoe, which was fairly close to the Buffalo Chip, where we stayed this year. Across the street from Glencoe was a bar called the Full Throttle, which was where we spent a lot of our time when we wanted some…
One of our days we went to Deadwood, Sd. This is a place we had visited on our last trip to Sturgis back before we started this Rv adventure but it’s a place we could visit over and over again. Deadwood was a town that was illegally established back in the 1870’s. Illegal because it was on territory that was granted to the Lakota Indians just a few years prior. But gold was discovered in the area and that was…
We spent a few of our days throughout the week in downtown Sturgis where most of the activity was. Not much to write about here, the pictures say it all. Some very interesting bikes and fun bars, huge amount of vendors and shopping and something always going on. They had demo rides on a three wheel vehicle called the Polaris Slingshot. I have a video of it below. Looked like allot of fun and I wanted to do it but…
We left Devil’s Tower the next day and headed to Sturgis, Sd. The bike rally was kind of a last minute plan as we’d already been to the rally before and besides, we sold our bike before starting this adventure. But our friends were going and we don’t get to see them very often and it was pretty much along our planned route so we decided to make it though bike week with Jim suffering watching all the people have…
We both had to work the weekend after visiting Eric and when we got back it was time to leave Colorado and head north to meet up with our friends for the bike rally in South Dakota. On the way we stopped at Devil’s Tower in northwestern Wyoming. We had pretty much covered all we wanted to see in Wyoming and although Jamie had been there I had never seen Devil’s Tower. For those who don’t know what Devil’s Tower…
Although our primary reason for staying in this area was to visit with our son, Eric, he had a busy week scheduled between work and a weekend festival he had tickets to. So we had to squeeze a week’s worth of visiting into a few days. One night was spent having dinner together and the next couple of days we did an overnight trip to a couple of places west of Denver. We picked Eric up in the morning and…
We returned to Colorado on 7/23 and headed to a campground in Loveland. Amazing how hard it was to find a campground in the Denver area in July but we found a pretty descent one. I gave us one day of rest and then it was back to sight seeing. First stop was Rocky Mountain National Park. It wasn’t quite as spectacular as some of the other parks we’ve been to but it was nice and we had beautiful weather….
Next we went to a Renaissance festival they were having. Apparently it runs every weekend during the summer and turns out it was another thing Eric had been to before. If you’ve never been to a Renaissance festival and you’re not into role playing or dressing up in garb from a certain era it seem a little strange. Many of the people that attend these things really get into it. It’s not really our thing but we enjoyed the entertainment,…
After the Academy we went to visit the US Olympic training center. There are three around the country. One in Lake Placid that is mainly used for winter events, one in California, and the one we went to in Colorado Springs. This was very fascinating especially for Jamie as she once had aspirations of competing in the Olympics as a gymnast. We got about an hour tour of the facility and even ran across one of the male gymnast that…
Day 2 started with a tour of the Air Force Academy. We started with the base chapel which is world renowned and it didn’t disappoint. They have four sections. The main section is a Protestant or maybe non-denominational section. It was very large and had beautiful architecture and a huge organ in the back on the second level. The next level down had three more sections. One was for Catholic services, one was for Jewish services and the last was…
Next was a place called the Manitou cliff dwelling. We thought this was an actual Indian cliff dwelling but as it turns out it was built in the early 1900’s using stone from the actual cliff dwellings a couple hundred miles away. The stone was shipped by railroad by Dr. Edgar Hewett and reconstructed as a museum and tourist attraction. The original dwellings were built around 1200 bc by the Anasazi Indians. I was a little disappointed these weren’t the…
Next was the Garden of the Gods. A place our son Eric had visited recently that we had read about. Basically a bunch of unique rock formations. Was cool to look at but after some of the other parks we have visited like Bryce Canyon this one kind of paled in comparison. There was one unique formation that is kind of famous for being able to take a picture of Pike’s Peak through the hole in the rock. So of…
Next on the list was a place called Seven Falls. Nothing fascinating about this one other than it’s always fun to see large water falls. There were two sets of stairs you could go up to get a better view of the falls. They were both a couple hundred feet high and I forget how many steps. The first was to an overlook that sat across from the falls. That one had an elevator so we decided it would be…
We pulled into the Air Force Academy campground for 2 jam packed days in Colorado Springs, Co. We both had to work and we had to get the rv somewhere while we were both gonna be away for almost 2 weeks and they didn’t have availability there for that long so 2 days were all we could work out. Day 1 we hit 4 places. I have them listed separately in their own posts because each was worthy of quite…
The next morning Jim went to a place called Meow Wolf. A place that was recommended by a bar tender in Jerome, Az from the Haunted Hamburger and also by Jim and Cathy. We had a full day scheduled so he wanted to get there when it opened at 9am. Jim and Cathy had already been and Jamie couldn’t quite make the early wake up so he went alone. I guess the only way to describe this place is bizarre….
We pulled into Kirkland AFB in Albuquerue, NM for a visit with Jamie’s step parents. We got to play a round of golf at the resort where Cathy works but our initial stay was short lived. Jim had to go to work and Jamie decided to go visit Ashley who was in London doing some continuing work on her degree. We got back and the two Jims, Jamie and Cathy decided to do an overnight trip to Taos and Santa…
We left Prescott for the Petrified national park. A park full of petrified wood. We weren’t sure what to expect but it didn’t disappoint. Looking at these large logs you’d swear they were freshly cut pieces of wood but when you touched them they were hard as rocks. Doesn’t sound very exciting but it really is in person. There was also an old Indian Pueblo that was sort of interesting. We did a fair amount of walking and I was…
Prescott is a “back in time” old cowboy town that has the notorious honor of hosting the oldest continuously running rodeo in the country dating back to 1888. It also has a bar called the Palace bar that was built in 1877 and has had such patrons as Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp. Yep, we had a delicious steak at the very bar those old cowboys sat at! It burned down in the early 1900’s but was quickly rebuilt and…