A Little Down Time!

05/22/2016

This week has been fairly docile and not as exciting as far as travel is concerned. It’s been some driving, visiting a few attractions but mostly some much needed down-time. Last Sunday we spent the day traveling and stopped at the Little Big Horn Battlefield to see where Custer was killed by the Lakota and Cheyenne Indians. I’ve never been very good with history but hearing Michael tell us makes it so much more interesting. If only he had been my teacher in high school I might not have gotten that D grade. Wait, did I just say that out loud? Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet Candice and Mallory…lol!

So, as I stated in the last post, we were camped in Columbus, MT on Sunday night and left there to spend Monday night in the Sheridan, WY Walmart. The Walmart’s in these northern states are way better than the ones in Southern California. Large parking lots where every night a dozen or so campers in RV’s and a few semi-trucks all converge to catch a little sleep before heading on. The stores are much larger also with a super great selection of groceries and other amenities for us to stock up on.

Crazy Horse Monument

Tuesday was spent driving to Sturgis, SD. It felt a bit weird driving into town not having a few hundred other bikes sharing the same piece of road with us. We did see a lot of bikes while here but not in the thousands like the last time we visited. We were later told that the locals don’t even ride during the Sturgis event. They are either too bust tending to all the needs of their customers or stay off the roads because of all the accidents and/or crazy riders during that time.

We arrived at the Sturgis RV Park only to find no one around. We parked and setup in our choice of spots since there were only 2 other RV’s here before us. With no one around we started meandering and checking things out when another RV pulled in. We met the other couple and were told they were there to work the summer season. He was a retired fireman from Fountain Valley, CA and they had moved to South Dakota a few years earlier.

Deer about 20 yards from our door in Sturgis

Our time in Sturgis was spent seeing the Crazy Horse Monument, wine tasting Red Ass Rhubarb wine at the Prairie Berry Winery, doing laundry and visiting with a “young” old friend we had met the last time here. Wednesday the plan was to go see the monument and tour one of the local caves but on the way we passed the winery and Michael made a comment about buying a bottle of wine for a give-away at our next camping event. On the way back from the monument we took a detour into the winery and never made it to the cave tour.

Crazy Horse Monument is huge when compared to some of the other attractions in the area. A very large collection of clothing, tools, artifacts and history from all the Indian tribes in the area. We started out with a short video of how and why Korczak Ziolkowski, along with his wife and 10 children, are building the monument. Korczak passed away as did his wife after him but most of the children still work on the monument or in the museum.

I promised Kathy we would find a good pizza place when we got to Sturgis and on Wednesday evening we all went out to Pizza Ranch. Sort of like our Shakey’s Pizza back home but with a little more added to the buffet. The pizza selection was quite large and the dessert pizzas were fantastic with bright fruit flavors and a vanilla icing to top them off. I made sure to taste every flavor strictly to obtain knowledge of how to create my own with my new pizza stone.

Thursday was exciting! While I washed and dried the road grime off the motorcycle Kathy and Sara went into town to do laundry at the only laundromat. The girls came back broke…lol! Kathy said it took $26.25 just to wash and dry 7 loads of laundry and then brought them home to hang the heavy stuff around the coach to dry some more. Diesel might be a little over $2.00 a gallon around these parts but washing & drying clothes takes a day’s pay. Sheesh! Thursday evening we were invited to our friends place for home cooked lasagna dinner. Definitely a treat for all of us.

Friday was spent packing and traveling to a little lake called Byers Lake. We are now on our 3^rd day here and it’s beautiful. We are all alone except for the occasional fisherman who passes by on their way to a fishing hole and a large family tent camping for one night and who have already left but it is quite windy.

It has blown so hard even the birds fly backwards or walk where they want to go. Yesterday, while placing an antenna on the roof of our RV I was almost blown off by a gust of wind. It has been blowing since we arrived and doesn’t appear to be going to stop until after we leave tomorrow.

Tomorrow is Monday and we leave for our reason to be here in the first place. It has been 22 days but tomorrow night we will be in Sioux Falls, SD to become citizens of this state. We will purchase a local mailing address, register the vehicles in this state and turn in our California Driver’s License for a South Dakota license. More on all that in the next post!

Stay tuned for part two of this trip next week!