You have 3 choices ...

 Location: Spearfish,  South Dakota

Date: 24 May 2023

We pull into the driveway and are met by Mark's cousin Luke and his wife, Sara. They welcome us, and Luke hands us the keys to the apartment above the garage. "It's yours for as

long as you want to stay. The only caveat is that you'll have to move back into your camper for a week or so in August because my daughter's family will be here for the Sturgis motorcycle rally."

August? We're not planning to be here that long!  

"We'll, we want you here for however long you can stay."

What a welcome! 

We all go for a walk along the creek and into town. He says " You have three choices. We can eat at a nice little Latin place, a restaurant next to a brewery, or get a pizza."

Being big fans of Mexican fare, we choose the Latin place. It's really delicious - one of the best meals ever! 

After dinner, he says "You have three choices. We can go get homemade ice cream for dessert, or we can go to the brew pub for a beer, or we can go to a dive bar and see who's playing there tonight."

Being a bit knackered from our drive, we choose ice cream and a walk home. That is some of the best ice cream ever!

Luke keeps giving us choices in groups of three the whole time we're there. Invariably, whichever choice we make, it's the right one. 

For example, one evening we choose "Music at a bar in Deadwood" and are treated to a visit to "#10 Saloon", a veritable museum of the Wild West. This is the saloon where Wild Bill Hickock was killed, as evidenced by his "death chair" on display over the door. There's poker in the next room, and the band is taking requests. Every request taken is played - from country to AC/DC to blues and everything in between - these guys know them all. People are up dancing, and the joint is jumping!  Being the lightweights that we are these days, we

stay for a few beers, enjoy the band and the people watching (there are some real characters here) then head back home early and call it a night.

On Friday, choice #2 leads us up into Spearfish Canyon for a beautiful drive and hikes to 2

waterfalls. Over the ages Spearfish Creek has cut an incredible gorge through the mountains. What beautiful scenery! 

 

On Saturday we pick choice #3 which leads to us helping dig a ditch across their driveway for a new, updated sprinkler system. After taking a few swipes at the compressed gravel and clay with a pickaxe, Mark lobbies strongly for renting a ditcher. Everyone else who has tried their hand at digging readily agrees. Sara and her dad take off and return with a ditcher which Sara proceeds to operate flawlessly, thus saving us from the blisters and backaches we'd all been expecting. 

On Sunday, our three choices are all to attend Sara's birthday party at the park. We choose #1

and, once again, it's the perfect choice. We help set up and meet many of Sara and Luke's family members and have a wonderful time. The kids play in a sandy eddy in the creek. We don't (think "snow melt"), but the kids, like kids everywhere, seem impervious to the cold water. Things wind down, everyone chips in to help clean up, and we all end up back home in our preferred napping spots. 

Our next choice (we can't remember which number it was - they're all starting to run together by now) is to borrow a car and go see something called "Devil's Tower". On the way there, we

pass the Aladdin Mercantile, Wyoming's oldest general store. Intrigued, we park and walk in. The proprietor asks if this is our first visit to which we reply " yes". He says "Well, feel free to look around. If you want a drink while you shop there's a self-service bar over in that room there, and go upstairs if you like and look at our antiques. Oh, by the way, the highway sign says "population 16" - that's true, only 16 people live in this town, but I'm not one of them."

What an interesting store - words can't do it justice, so we've posted some photos on the blog.

Devil's Tower. If you've never heard of it or never been there, you owe it to yourself to visit. You may recall it from Steven Spielberg's 1977 film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

It is the first US national monument, and is sacred to many native Americans. Again, words can't do it justice. We don't even think photos can. Until we stand there taking it in, we had no idea how powerful something like this could be. It's no wonder that it's sacred to so many. We walk around it and feel very small and unimportant and incredibly human. 

As we walk, we begin to see people climbing the 400+ foot rock. Tiny little people hundreds and hundreds of feet up sheer cliffs. We learn

that it is very highly regarded by rock climbers, as well, with lots of ascents, some with names like "Assembly Line", "Brokedown Palace",  "Rock Suckers", "Sunshine Over The Driskill Nation", and "Old guys in Lycra". We both agree that there is no way on God's green earth we'd ever climb up there. 

As much as we've been enjoying playing "three choices" with Luke, its finally time for us to get back on the road. Luke & Sara are flying to New Hampshire for Memorial Day weekend, so we

take the opportunity to haul anchor the same day they leave and go do some real boondocking up on Mt. Roosevelt where, among other things, we see (and go up into) the first ever monument to president Theodore Roosevelt. 

 

More in the works,

Mark & Julie

Location: Spearfish, South Dakota

Date: 17 May, 2023

It's probably about time for us to tell you a little bit about Boondockers Welcome. In RV parlance, the term "boondocking" generally refers to free camping on public land with no services, usually  "out in the boondocks". 

Opportunities for this are plentiful out West where there is a lot of public land, and less so out East save for National Forests and a few wildlife preserves and certain other state and federal lands. Also known as "dry camping" or "dispersed camping" it is our preferred way to camp - free, away from the crowds, out in the country, and often in stunningly beautiful locations. However, being off the beaten path can also have it's disadvantages, particularly when you are trying to make progress back home to Virginia. When that's the case, we prefer to find spots that aren't too far off our route so we don't end up driving miles out of our way only to find the spot is unsuitable - full or not even close to level or requiring 4 wheel drive, etc.

Boondockers Welcome (a.k.a. "BW") is an organization that matches travelers with hosts who are willing to let RVers camp on their property for free. Many hosts offer electricity (with or without a fee), and most stays are limited to only a few nights.  Guests pay around $80 per year for this service, and hosts get the service for free as a perk for hosting. Hosts get to set their own rules (for instance "no more than 2 nights"  or "the camper must be 25 feet or less", that kind of stuff) which are made available to the guest, and guests are expected to abide by them. It is a peer review system in which hosts review guests and guests review hosts, keeping everyone honest. There are more than 3,000 host sites in the US and it's a fantastic resource for folks like us. 

We have used it a lot this trip. We've made new, and we hope, lasting friendships with several of our hosts along the way, and have invited them to come stay with us in Virginia "if you're ever out that way". 

So, back to the story. We decide we want to go to Rocky Mountain National Park, and if we  follow the "green dots" (designated scenic routes on the map), as is our preference, we find Buena Vista, Colorado is one of the towns we pass through. A quick check shows a host location there. We read the host's profile. She's from the UK and his name is Mark. That's good enough for us! We request a 2 day stay and they accept. 

As a side note, we have a Buena Vista in Virginia, and the  residents pronounce it "Byu-na Vista" rather than "Bway-na Vista". Apparently it's the same here in Colorado so we feel right at home.

We pull in, meet our hosts, park, get set up, and make dinner. There are deer wandering around our camper. Nonchalantly. Graze, move a bit, look at us, graze some more. They're very calm about it all and don't seem to mind us being here. 

The next morning we wake up, make coffee, look at the deer some more, and suddenly realize it's snowing! In mid-May! The flakes get bigger and wetter and the ground begins to get covered. We start to get nervous,  since our hosts just told us last night that they got a surprise 3 feet of snow at the end of May last year. Will we be staying here longer than planned? We begin to think "maybe a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park should go on the back burner until another trip later in the summer".

Luckily, it quits snowing after an hour or so with less than an inch of accumulation, the sun comes out, and it's all gone by evening. But still....

In the afternoon while the snow melts, we go for a walk through town to a loop trail called the "bridge to bridge trail". Walk one side of the Arkansas River to a bridge, cross, walk back up the other side and cross at another bridge. As we're walking a young woman wearing a wet suit and carrying a short, stubby kayak passes us. By the time we get to the bridge, she's in the water doing tricks in a standing wave. Flips, turns, back flips, amazing! We watch for a while, take a few photos, and continue our walk.

 We see an RV parked in an empty lot and, as we're always on the lookout for free camping opportunities, we stop and chat with the owner. It turns out there's a big kayaking competition coming up in a couple of weeks and one of the sponsors of the event has allowed some of the contestants to camp in his lot. So, alas, it's not for us. 

We mention the woman we saw in the standing wave and he says "Oh, that's Abby. She's practicing her tricks for the free style competition. She's 19, a three time Jr. National Champion and is on the Team USA Freestyle Kayak squad. She just got sponsored by Winnebago and they've given her a new RV to drive around to competitions. She's camped right over there." 

So, if you feel like an inspiring story that involves, among other things,  camping and kayaking, check out Abby Holcombe -https://nobarriersusa.org/podcast/interview-with-abby-holcombe/ 

 

Okay, so that's our day in Buena Vista. With a 2 night limit to our stay, but not yet feeling like we've seen enough of this area, we get up the next morning and head about 20 minutes south to Salida, Colorado (pronounced with a long "I" like "suh-LIE-da")  and another BW host. 

Salida is another small town on the Arkansas River, also with loads of tourist appeal. Our host site is right in town only a couple of blocks from all the action. This whole area seems to attract very active people. We are, in fact, pleasantly surprised that they actually allow us in without the requisite kayaks and mountain bikes on the back of our camper. 

We again walk along the Arkansas River and for the first time see river surfing. These guys wear wetsuits and helmets and surf on a standing wave in the river. 

There are many standing waves in town and all of them have their contingent of people playing in them. Kayakers, surfers, free style kayakers, river rafters - if there's a way to play in the river you'll find it happening here. 

On our second night in Sailda we are wondering where to go next when our new friends in Buena Vista call and say "we don't have any guests coming tomorrow and we're wondering if you'd like to come back for another night?" 

We accept their invitation and head back up. Another lovely night with the deer, visiting on the patio, and getting to know new good friends better - very similar to our cruising days on Rachel and a pleasant reminder of what we miss most about cruising. We have really begun to appreciate Boondockers Welcome! 

After checking the weather at Rocky Mountain National Park again and learning that the road through the park is still closed, we once again change our ever-flexible plans. A lovely drive through the mountains finally lands us in Longmont, CO , near Denver, at another host site.

Another great stay, this time parked outside the "Garage Mahal" (Mark has contracted a terminal case of "shop envy"), more kindred spirits, yet another invitation extended to visit us in Virginia, and we're off again the next morning.

Our next stop is Ft Laramie, WY, which played a major part in the expansion and settling of the West. Treaties we're made here, later to be broken after George Custer led an expedition onto Indian lands and discovered gold. That pretty much started the Indian wars. 

Finally, we land in Spearfish, SD for a visit with one of Mark's cousins and his family. There's a lot more to come, so stay tuned! 

Desert to Mountains

Location: Army Corps of Engineers Campground near Aquiui, New Mexico

 

 

We leave the Chaco time warp and head back to the present going East and North toward the Rocky Mountains. The camper is covered inside and out with a fine grit from all the wind and blowing dust. As are we! Try as we might to seal it out, it still manages to find ways in and we're getting tired of it. As beautiful as the desert is, and as much as we've enjoyed it this trip, we find ourselves longing for trees, green grass, and, yes,  humidity. 

 

As we drive we begin to notice some old friends:

Hey! There's some standing water!

Ooh - a patch of green grass!

A creek! Look! The water is actually moving!

Dandelions! (Wait a minute - do we really miss dandelions?)

Trees! Woohoo! Trees and grass and creeks and no blowing dust! Yay!

We begin to climb some winding roads into the mountains and spend one last night in that space between desert and mountain. It's breezy, and the trees are small and stunted, but at last we can go outside and breathe.

 

 Farewell desert, hello mountains, and on to Colorado!

More soon!

Chaco

 We finally left Redding on 2 April and started heading back to Virginia. Our track thus far includes a lot of North and South and not all that much East. We've been having a great time and the new (to us) RV is doing great, keeping us warm and cozy on cold nights and cool and comfortable on the hot ones. It's a great fit for us and we're very happy with it. 

 Among other things, we have

 - visited Lake Oroville, CA and had wild turkeys courting in our campsite

 

 - spent 3 days with and made new friends in Grass Valley, CA, and toured the Empire Mine, the largest hard rock gold mine in the US. This is a scale model of the mines. Each little wire represents a shaft directly below the town of Grass Valley

 - drove over Donner Pass and down the east side of the Sierras near Mammoth Lakes which got over 40 feet of snow last winter

- visited Death Valley, this time with relatively pleasant springtime temperatures in the mid-90s

 
 

 

 - visited Pinoche, NV and their lovely small town museum (no photos, sorry)

 - saw our first cowboy of the trip in Nevada, who then proceeded to entertain us by falling off his horse, getting up, dusting himself off, and with his dog, start running to chase down his horse (sadly, no photos again, it all happened so fast as we were driving by)

 - headed south to warmer weather to Page, NV where we spent a couple of days wandering around the desert taking in the beautiful views and the profuse wildflowers. As an aside, it having been a pretty wet winter, we have been enjoying the spring wildflowers everywhere we've been so far on this trip

 

 

 - saw some traditional Navajo drumming and dancing in Farmington, NV, where we also had arguably the best salsa ever at Francisca's - an old, secret family recipe at a small family run restaurant. Yum!
 
 

 

 

 

Now we're in a campground at the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico. This is our first trip here and we are finding it fascinating.

Chaco is a world heritage site and we can see why. Over the course of about 300 years (from about 850 AD through about 1150 AD), native people created an incredibly complex series of buildings. The largest one

here, Pueblo Bonito, contained over 600 rooms and used 225,000 logs from forests 50 to 70 miles away for beams - all carried to the site by hand! It was arguably the largest building ever built in North America until the 19th century.

Linked to various settlements by over 400 miles of roads, these great houses were sacred places and became the centers of Chacoan society. They continue to be revered by the Native American Indian tribes who trace their roots back to these sites.

We'll spend another day here soaking up as much of the ambiance as we can, then start working our way up to Rocky Mountain National Park. That is, if it's not snowed in by the time we get there....

 

 

Movin' along,

Mark & Julie