ARE WE REALLY BACK IN KANSAS?

Our stop in Denver was a mixed bag.  We had a delightful evening with Laura Kagan at her home. We were all set to catch up with Sandy Speedy when she ended up in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery!  She's home and fine, but we missed seeing her this trip!  

Our next overnight was in Garden City Kansas, and a wonderful gem in an otherwise desolate countryside, The Buffalo Dunes Golf Course! We played a round on the course which could rival any on the Philadelphia Mainline for maintenance and condition. Kansas is pretty flat, so it is a great walking course! We loved it!

 

 Then on to Dodge City. What's a trip to Dodge City without a taste of the Wild, Wild West!  We off-loaded the scooter and set off for Boot Hill, a reproduction of Front Street in the 1870s. Boot Hill is named for the cemetery where gunslingers on the losing side of the barrel were laid to rest in shallow graves, generally with their boots still on. The museum was very interesting.

In the gallery of Honorary Marshals of Dodge City I found a picture of Roy Clark, friend Susan Thomsen Clark's Dad, who visited the Museum in 1978 and was named a Honorary Dodge City Marshal! Small world!

Do I need to say anything about this?

And what Wild West Town would be complete without the requisite Stagecoach!  All in all it was good fun.  We're on our way to Hutchinson KS for the FMCA 6-State Rally starting Monday.


HAPPY TRAILS!


Laura, Geoff, and their little dog too!

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK AND THE GRAND TETONS

We arrived in the Park on Sunday and checked in at the Fishing Bridge RV Park. Given that the sites here were built decades ago we were very lucky to squeeze into our reserved site. We met a Bison on the way in strolling up the middle of the highway.
The following morning another (or maybe the same) bison trotted through the woods in front of our MoHo, ostensibly headed for the men’s room!

This was our first lesson  in fire management. This is a wild fire under observation by the park service. Current policy is that they only intervene where the fire is arson (human started) or where structures or people are at risk. This one was neither.






The geysers of Yellowstone simply defy description. Suffice it to say that living on an active volcano for 10 days is a life altering experience. The geysers are magnificent and mystical, no two alike, some predictable, many not so much.

The Riverside Geyser was kind enough to give us a show on cue although the picture doesn't really do it justice.  I made several attempts to video Old Faithful, with limited success, so you'll just have to go see it yourself! 


After a 5 day stint with full hookups in the RV Park at Fishing Bridge we moved down to Grant Village Campground where we boon-docked for the next few days with no hookups. It was much more spacious and we thoroughly enjoyed our tours on the Scooter to Biscuit Basin and surrounding areas.  From there we moved on to The Grand Tetons, with it's lovely Jenny Lake and rugged mountain profile. We took a dinner wagon ride out to the lake where we were treated to this spectacular sunset skyline over Mount Moran. 

As we left the wilderness of Wyoming we looked forward to reconnecting our phones and internet service, but it was a truly lovely period of relative isolation and tranquility with the bison, elk, geysers and the raw beauty of the Wyoming landscape. 


If you haven't been there, put it on your "Bucket List."


Laura, Geoff & Yoshi

SOUTH DAKOTA MEMORIALS - CRAZY HORSE & THE PRESIDENTS

What a great week with the Escapees RV Club in Gillette Wyoming.  Who knew there was so much to learn!  Many thanks to the RV Boot Camp Instructors for all the great tips and experiences shared!  The rally ended with a trip to the great monuments of South Dakota.  We were so inspired by the story of the Lakota Indians and there commitment to having a memorial representing their great heroes.  The memorial at Crazy Horse, SD has been under construction with no government assistance since the late 1940's out of the dream of a Lakota Chief and the commitment of a polish sculptor. Today his children continue his legacy to complete the memorial, a task which will likely take another 25 or more years!  For more information go to http://www.crazyhorsememorial.org

Scurrying around on the ground were there adorable little furry friends who came out of their holes to check us out. They are marmots and they all around the memorial sunning themselves.


Equal in grandeur but completed with federal dollars is the Presidents Memorial at Mt Rushmore. Every angle presented a different perspective of the men who left as much of a mark on history as their images have on this mountain. 

Now we are off to Yellowstone National Park, the never-neverland of internet and cell signals, so we will probably be offline for a week or two! Yikes!

Until then... Laura, Geoff & Yoshi