Finale of This Year's Blog

9/19/2021 - Sunday

OK, I'm ready to wrap this trip up.

We spent 4 days in Sierra Vista with Mazie, beginning the process of putting David to rest.  Mazie was pretty good when we showed up about 11:30 a.m. on September 7th.  There is a lot of red tape to deal with when someone passes, even though she had most of it pretty well organized.  We did what we could, then decided to head home and unload the RV while we waited for the Death Certificate to come in so we could proceed.  It was pretty warm in Sierra Vista, and about 15 degrees hotter in Mesa, so it was a tough decision to leave, put delaying that ordeal did not seem to be of any benefit to us.

We had a really good trip this year, although we got off to a rough start with our incident in Albuquerque, where we narrowly avoided getting involved in the 3-car collision immediately in front of us, and had to limp onto a parking lot with only the emergence brake to stop us.  But we got through that, although it delayed us 3 days, but continued on with no major problems thereafter, although we did have a few "fix-its" along the way.  That's pretty well just part of RVing.  

We traveled through 19 states -- AZ, NM, CO, NE, SD, ND, MN, WI, MI, IN,OH, KY, TN, GA, FL for the first half of the trip.  Then we retraced some of that on our way back, trying to avoid the hottest weather.  That took us from FL through AL, TN, KY, IN, MI, WI, MN, and SD, where we heard about David's passing and headed straight to Sierra Vista, Arizona -- through NE, KS, OK, TX, NM and AZ.  I actually thought we were going to miss Texas this year, in fact we talked about it when we were crossing the corner of Oklahoma on Hwy 54, then Joe saw a mileage sign to Texhoma ahead, and he said, "isn't Texhoma in Texas?" So I got the map back out, and sure enough, we had about 100 miles of Texas to drive.   We really liked western SD and ND, and always love the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (they have good rocks!)  

We drove 9,137 miles in the RV and 6,763 in the Jeep.  We bought a lot of fuel.  I didn't keep track of the Jeep fuel, but for the RV we bought 1,427.007 gallons, paid a total of $4,244.83 and averaged 6.26 miles per gallon -- not great, but par for the course.   Our fuel for the RV averaged out to $2.9746 per gallon.  We had a lot of nights of free camping -- staying at John's, and Mike's in Tennessee, and Mike's in Vincennes, and a few Walmarts (temperature permitting) and casinos, which was good because most camping fees have gotten higher, like everything else.  So I didn't total that, or average it out.  I'm sure it was too much!  We were gone from May 10 to Sept. 11 -- a total of 123 days.  

The desert has really greened up with all the monsoon rain we missed out on.  And the bugs -- driving on the Arizona freeway -- were awful.  We don't normally have many bugs, but all that rain brought out tons of yellow butterflies and other fairly large varmints which continually hit our windshield.  I don't know if we will ever get it clean.  But our place looked good, our neighbors had taken good care of us.  We didn't have any weeds, just a few tree sprouts which happens any time it rains.  We didn't see any missing shingles or fallen trees, so that was a relief.  It was actually good to be home, even though it was 103 when we pulled in at 1:15, and got up to 108 before the day was over, and for the next couple of days.  That wasn't so great.

We are heading back to Sierra Vista this week to finalize the paperwork with Mazie and finish the funeral arrangements for David, so this concludes this year's travel blog.  We were very fortunate to have stayed healthy for this whole trip -- no COVID, although we are vaccinated, and started masking up again when the numbers started growing again, so we did what we could to remain healthy.

Thanks to all who followed us -- it was an Excellent Adventure.  I welcome any comments.

Last Blog of this Trip

 9-7-2021 - Tuesday

Today we arrived at Mazie's at 11:20, getting on the road at 8:35, so this is the end of our journey for now.  Mazie is looking good, seems to be dealing with everything ok.  We got started on our lists and had a couple of accomplishments, but tomorrow we will try to knock out some of the details she needs to take care of.  

It was 66 degrees this morning, predicted high today in Sierra Vista is 91, and for Mesa, it is 100.  We came home a little sooner than planned, so apparently we are not going to miss out on all the heat.  Today's travel took across I-10, which we have done many times on our way to visit our Florida family, so it's nothing to get excited about.  

Our marathon trip from South Dakota covered 1,392 miles (of which I drove about 60), approximately 25 driving hours, and we made it in 2 1/2 days.  We have been gone since May 10, so at this point 119 days (17 weeks plus one day).  This has been a really great trip for us, we took our time, stayed extra days when we chose, covered some beautiful country and saw fascinating things.  We got to visit a lot of family and friends, meet some new family, and renew old friendships.  The highlight for me, without question, was our airplane ride with Ken Snider over our old stomping grounds.  Thanks again, Ken, what an unexpected delight!

Before we left our campground this morning, I picked up a bag of pine cones.  It's amazing how much less they weigh than a bag of rocks.  I may have to change hobbies. But when we finally get home, I have things to do -- rocks and pinecones.  (Not to mention unloading the RV and Jeep, cleaning, all that other yucky stuff.)

When we were checking out gas stations last night, we found one right down the road from our campground and decided that’s where we would fuel this morning.  It turned out to be a great stop.  It’s a Valero station in Deming at exit 82, for Highway 180. It’s probably less than a mile off of I-10.  It had a fuel island for RVs, it had a restaurant inside, it had a dump station, it has sodas with big starfoam cups and there’s a propane station right across the street from here.  We will have to keep this in mind for future travel through here.

Joe moved the RV around to the back of the parking lot so we could have breakfast here. He parked right beside a truckload of copper —you wouldn’t think a load this small would weigh so much. I got a picture but the truck was pulling out just as I got out there. We actually saw several loads of copper heading east this morning.  We assume they’re coming out of Superior, Arizona.

As we neared the Arizona state line, I got ready with my camera.  Joe saw me poised to take my photo, and made some comment about me being ready.

I was.  And I was happy to see our beautiful state again.

We have been through lots of states this summer, seen lots of beautiful sights, but Arizona is as beautiful as any, and we are glad to be back.  

Keeping up the blog had its issues this trip.  Some of which got corrected, and I learned some new things.  In the northern states, our internet (and phone) signal was often sketchy, so that was a problem.  Loading my pictures took way more time than it should have, but Joe Myers suggested we change the pixels of the photos, and that helped that situation.  Spilling sugar on my keyboard apparently has destroyed my caps key for right hand, and that is still a problem.  My techies (Cathy and Paul) were unable to solve that one, so I am still wrestling with it.  Cathy got me fixed up to be able to write on the blog from my phone as we travel, Barbara introduced me to an external keyboard for my phone which makes it easier to type to my phone, and just yesterday I figured out how to actually dictate into my phone which types it directly to the blog.  Wish I had figured that one out sooner.  But I spent way too many hours blogging, so if I ever do this again, I hope I can reduce my time on it.  I hope my readers/followers have enjoyed following us across the country -- I would love to hear from you, either in the comments section of the blog or on facebook.

I will probably do a summary at some point after we get home, but for all intents and purposes, this is it.

The End.

From Liberal, Kansas to Deming, New Mexico

 9-6-2021 Monday (Labor Day)

Happy Labor Day Everyone.  

Another early start on our marathon trip to Sierra Vista, 7:30 after a breakfast stop ay McDonalds. We got along fine last night without electricity. Joe ran the generator for a while to cool down the RV and our little 12 volt fan kept us comfortable all night. By the time we stopped last night (6:40) it was too late to try to find a campground so we just stayed on the Walmart parking lot.

The largest town we drove through this morning was Guymon, Oklahoma.  We were only about 5 miles from the Oklahoma state line where we camped last night. Every town through here has grain elevators right by the railroad tracks. You can usually see the elevators in the next town as you leave the one you’re in. 

We drove for an hour in Oklahoma then crossed the Texas state line at 8:35.  And again grain elevators.

 

 I thought we had managed to miss Texas on this trip.  In fact, Joe and I had just talked about how many miles we had made the loop around to avoid Texas, then he mentioned that we were coming up on Texhoma and I looked that up on the map and -- sure enough, we were after all having to go through Texas for about 100 miles. Well, I guess that’s better than 880 miles to cross the whole state.

We started seeing feedlots again today.  We came through Dalhart, Texas and there were two feedlots almost across the road from each other; one of them was huge.  If I researched the right one, their feeding capacity is 74,000 head.

At our lunch break in Vaughan, New Mexico, we pulled in beside a semi hauling a wind turbine body. At the back of the parking lot were more of these truckloads and also some with the blades -- those things are enormous.  

Just outside of Vaughn we saw six semi’s with these wind turbine blades on them -- looks like they might be waiting for a pilot car or clearance to move ahead since they are oversize loads.  This is where we ran into a problem.  Somehow we missed a highway split out of Vaughn and ended up back on I-40 -- probably added about 50 miles to our drive today.  Good thing we gained an hour in time zones today. But all was not for naught -- our little detour took us past a small herd of Belgium belted cattle, one of my favorite things to see.  There's even a brown one in there, which I have never seen before.

We did see a few antelope today crossing New Mexico.  

As we crossed New Mexico, we saw a train loaded with Fedex trucks, at least 50.  We saw lots of trains today, going both ways, some sitting and waiting for another to pass.

We made it back to our route and eventually got on I-25.  We had never driven this I-25 section south from Socorro to Las Cruces, so this was a new road for us, and it was pretty scenic.  We took the exit at Hatch Valley (highway 26) which was a good road and it ended up being a good choice -- it cut off about 50 miles on to Las Cruces on I-25, then back to Deming on I-10.  Hatch seems like an interesting town -- there are hatch chilies all over the place, lots of gift shops with long strings of them hanging down from the rafters.  Here was also a much needed fuel stop -- we were way below a quarter of a tank.  But the pump shut off at $100, which is normal, and Joe couldn’t get it to take it the credit card after that so we didn’t get full. But we were running really low and we’re happy to have had the $100 worth, but that didn't even get it half full.  However, it was our highest price gas on the trip ($3.299) so maybe we can find some a little cheaper in the morning.

The road from Hatch to Deming was a good drive; we saw several solar farms--one with really big panels and two with the normal size. We had never seen these large panels before.  You can see normal size ones on the ground at the left side of the picture, just for perspective.

 We kept looking for  fields of hatch chilis but we never did see any.  Joe googled it, and they should be harvesting them now.  That would have been interesting to see.

We got off of the road at 6:15, staying just right outside of Deming, New Mexico at Desert Vista RV Village.  This is a nice enough park for an overnight, about 4-5 miles out of Deming, just right off Hwy 26.  Joe drove 624 miles today -- a long day, especially with our extra 50 mile detour, and I didn't relieve him any.  My bad.  As soon as Joe got the electricity hooked up, we drove into town to get some dinner and let the RV cool down. After dinner we drove through town looking for a gas station to finish filling our tank in the morning.  We drove all the way to the last street in town, which forced us up onto the interstate and we ended up driving an additional 3 miles before he found a place to cross over (illegally) to come back.  We thought we were going to have to drive 12 miles to get turned around.  So we have an additional 6 miles added to our log driving day, even though this was in the Jeep. We finally got back to the RV and called it a night.  It didn't  take Joe very long before he stretched out in bed.

We traveled today from Kansas, through a corner of Oklahoma Panhandle, through a corner of Texas Panhandle, and across and then down in New Mexico.  When we got up this morning, it was 67 degrees.  When we got off the road, it was 91! Yuk.  We should be at Mazie's around noon tomorrow, and our marathon drive will be over.  

Exploring Pierre

 9-3-2021 - Friday

We are only about 5 miles from town.  As I said yesterday, Pierre is a very small town, especially for a state capitol.  Population is just under 13,500.  It has a Walmart and Menards, but we haven't seen any other big box stores on either side of the river.  It ranks 8th in size for the state.  So we haven't found too much to explore.  

We saw more of the governor statues but we also found a really nice cowboy/horse one in Ft. Pierre.

We did drive up past a cowboy museum, and a monument commemorating the Verendrye explores who discovered this area in the 1700s.

"Two hundred and seventy years ago, French explorers named Verendrye buried a lead plate on a hill. They were among the first white men to set foot in a land that would later be known as South Dakota. One hundred years ago, Ethel Parish and two friends found the plate while playing on a sunny February day on a hill over Fort Pierre." 

There was a good view of this valley from this hill, and a good view of the winding Missouri River.

And the rolling hills behind the town.

 We have an acquaintance here who owns a fencing business and we tried to find it, but so far we haven't been successful, even though we found it on google.  We will give that another shot before we leave.  Joe wanted to get a haircut, so I told him to drop me at a thrift store and I would shop while he got his haircut.  Well, he was back before I even got halfway through the store.  He said he got to the barbershop between appointments so he got right in.  So I spent my $2.40 on some stencils for scrapbooking, and that was that.

I have a pinched nerve in my neck -- I'm pretty sure it's from carrying a bucket of rocks last week.  So I am babying that a little, on heating pad, naproxin or ibuprophen, and using some voltaren.  It's hard for me to look down -- as in reading, looking at my computer, etc., so I'm not liking it one bit!   I can sympathize with Jeff now about his headaches -- I get it!  We had intended to try to have a "down day" today anyway, so that works in my not-busy-schedule.

Joe grilled hamburgers for dinner and we ate outside -- a rare event this trip.  And then we went for a walk -- an even rarer event.  It was a short walk, but we did make it down by the river, which had a little beach area all along the campground.  One guy was out swimming, and some others were getting ready to head out in kayaks.  The water was perfectly calm.  

But our little walk wore us out, so that was it for the day.  I'm sure tomorrow we will go for a drive -- not much to do in this little town.  Our campground is filling up, though, so we still feel lucky to have gotten a spot here for the holiday weekend.

  

Heading to Sierra Vista

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

 9-5-2021 Sunday

We got an early start today, even after dumping, filling with water, and fueling. We got on the road at 8:15-, heading south on hwy 83. About the only traffic we met on the way into town were pickup trucks pulling boats. We had scoped out the gas stations and Joe picked out the one he thought would be the easiest one to get into, so once he got that job finished, we were on our way.

About 8 miles out of town we saw our first antelope -- 6-- just a few yards before the National Grasslands sign. I immediately started writing down the count, but we only saw 11 and they were all in South Dakota.  But we saw zillions of cattle.  We are definitely in beef country today, especially in Kansas. 

We had our first hundred miles in by 10:00 and crossed into Nebraska at  10:17.   I took a driving shift today for about an hour in Northern Nebraska, rolling hills and cattle were about all of the scenery.                                                                                                                                        

 I think we are in the grain belt too.  We saw some different crops today, maybe canola?

and we think this is milo or sorghum.  Makes a pretty field.

Our road turned in Murdo, S.D. and I caught a photo of this truck/car? on a post.

There was a sign before our turnoff stating that there was construction on hwy 83, part of it was dirt, and we should consider another route.  Well, that didn't really work into our plans, so we just took the risk.  We did run into 11 miles of dirt road, but it was actually smoother than some pavements.  Some of it was just dirt, and some had been oiled.   But it slowed us down a bit. It certainly wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Fortunately, no one was working on the holiday weekend, so we didn’t have that to deal with.  But once we got through it, we had good road again.

We were moving right along today.  We crossed the Kansas state line at 2:40.  We passed a feedlot just north of Oberlin, Kansas that must have had 5,000 to 10,000 head.  Then we saw 4 more feedlots, and at least 2 dairies, besides the hundreds of range cattle we passed.   I'm always interested in the feedlots because the company I worked for in Terre Haute sold our cattle products to them.  A lot of the towns we drive through when we travel are familiar to me because of that work we did with them.

And in Oberlin, we saw this HUGE dump bed — probably more than 20 feet wide — waiting to get the go ahead to travel on.  It’s probably going to a mine somewhere.  It is oversize in every way -- height, width, and length.

Another sight in Kansas was this buffalo/cowboy statue in Oakley -- this was at the Buffalo Bill Cultural Center.  There was a lot of Annie Oakley stuff there too, but I don't know if she was from there.

And we met another wide load -- this one I saw coming and got a picture through the windshield.  Joe moved over a little as we met him.

We made it all the way to Liberal, Kansas today -- 562 miles!!  Joe just kept driving.  When we left Pierre, S.D., this morning it was 56 degrees.  When we stopped 10 1/2 hours later, it had reached 90 degrees.  We parked on a Walmart parking lot since we just needed someplace to park overnight, and ran the generator for a while to cool it down.  We bought a lot of fuel today -- 120 gallons, ranging in price from $2.99 to $3.05.  for a total of $366.91 -- an expensive day.  Tomorrow will probably be similar if he can stay in the seat that long, but we should get to Sierra Vista on Tuesday.  That's our goal.

sad day

 9-4-2021 Saturday

We are both saddened to announce the passing of our dear friend, David Johnson, this afternoon.  He lost his battle to cancer today, and will sorely missed by his wife and all his friends.  Rest in Peace, Dave,  we shared many good times together.

We will be heading back to Arizona tomorrow to help Mazie with the details of Dave's death, so this was our last day in Pierre, and in South Dakota.  We are about 1350 miles away so we have some hard driving days ahead of us.  But we have had some good rest here.  We explored more of the countryside today, beginning with driving the other campground right here.  And we found some deer.  We think it is a momma and 2 fawns, you can still see the spots on two of them.

We took the road down to the river and spotted some kind of "bird house or nest" out in this swampy field.  We assume it is something for an endangered specie of bird but didn't find any information.  There were 5 or 6 of these in this field.  It is not attached to the branch in the side of the picture.

Then we headed into town, back to the Capitol area to find the Fighting Stallions monument, which is on the grounds there.

"Fighting Stallions Memorial was constructed by the people of South Dakota as a lasting memorial to eight South Dakotans who perished in an airplane crash on April 19, 1993. The state plane, N86SD, crashed due to propeller assembly failure in poor weather on a farm near Dubuque, Iowa."  "Four state employees, the Governor, and three Sioux Falls corporate leaders were on an economic development mission to save the largest agricultural processing employer in South Dakota."

I had to keep Joe from going the wrong way again in front of the Capitol, but we did finally get a picture from the front.

Then we went out of town to the Oahe Dam.  This is quite an impressive dam, built by the Corp of Engineers, of course.  When Joe saw this sign, he said the castle on it was the insignia he wore on his uniform in the Army, since he was with the Construction Engineers.  I never knew about the insignia (and I thought we had no secrets!) and really never connected him with the Corp of Engineers.

What really amazed us about this dam was how close we could drive to it.  There were roads on both sides, and boat ramps.

The river is beautiful, water very clear.  And there were several fishing boats making use of it -- the current from the dam made for a pretty fast troll, but they were certainly using it.

We watched this one fisherman actually catch a fish, but it was really small.  It's a small white fish in his hand.  Joe talked to a couple getting ready to walk down the bank to fish, and they said they catch walleye, salmon, paddle fish, and one other kind, but he couldn't remember it.  

As we were leaving, an all-weather boat came racing by, and stopped right in this area.  This is probably the kind to have up here, if you want to fish in cold weather.

We continued on past the dam and came out in Ft. Pierre again, so we explored it a little more.  Then we grabbed some lunch and went back to the RV for a while.  Later, we drove back to Pizza Ranch for dinner, and Joe saw there was an events center next door to the restaurant.  It looked like they had a wedding going on, so we drove over there and saw this beautiful set of horses getting ready to give a carriage ride -- we assume to the bride and groom.  The horses were awesome.

After dinner, we drove out to the Walmart to do a little shopping, then headed back to the campground.  As we turned onto our road, we caught a beautiful sunset -- goodbye South Dakota.

It was a beautiful day here, 70s again, and sunny.  It was a bit chilly when I got up though, 59 degrees -- nice.  We were happy to have the opportunity to explore this part of the country, but are ready to head home.  We hope Arizona is over its 100-degrees by the time we get there.  We are going directly to Sierra Vista to Mazie, and they are usually 10-15 degrees cooler than the Phoenix area, so there is hope.

Pierre, South Dakota

 9-2-2021 Thursday

We stayed comfortable with our little 12 volt dc fan last night although Joe did run the generator for a while to watch tv while I played at the casino.  I actually won $200 last night.  So the free camping worked out well.

This morning we walked over to the casino and I remembered I could run my rewards card through the kiosk for a reward.  I got $15 so I told Joe I was going to run it off.  He went over and finished getting the RV ready to go, then drove over to the casino gas pumps.  When he went out the door of the casino, a lightning bolt flashed right in front of him.  Well, the same lightning bolt must have caused a surge of electricity on the newer machines in the casino, including the one I had just transferred my money into, and shut my machine down for about 5 minutes.  It eventually came back on, and I eventually cashed out a little over $10  (you can't just take the money and run, you have to play it in a machine).

It was sprinkling when I walked over to the gas pumps.  Joe said it had rained hard for a couple of minutes.  62 degrees and raining hard again when we pulled out at 8:50.  And it rained off and on most of the day, sometimes pretty hard.

We crossed the state line into South Dakota at 10:20.  Our first interesting site was this beautiful white buffalo statue in Madison, S.D.  It is the advertising symbol of a car dealership there, but it certainly gets your attention.  

A lot of pretty rolling hills in this part of the state, often dotted with cattle.  An Indian Reservation was on one side of our highway through much of this area.

We also saw a lot of crops -- beans and corn mostly, but we drove past 4 huge fields of sunflowers.  We also saw a pumpkin patch.  All of the fields here are gigantic, and the farm equipment we have seen is huge -- covering several rows at a time.  We got behind a few tractors, etc. but they usually don't go very far before they turn off.

Sunflower field at 60 mph.

We took a break for lunch and a half-hour rest, then our highway 34 started zigging and zagging a little as we neared the huge Missouri River.  We had a couple of viewpoints but I couldn't get a very good picture since we didn't stop.  Through here, the Missouri River is bigger than I've ever seen the Mississippi River, I don't know if it gets smaller as it flows south.

Not too far from our turnoff to the campground, we saw these silhouettes of cowboys, horses, Indians.  We may have to drive back down to get a better look at it -- looked like a battle was taking place.

Then we reached our campground.  When I made the reservation yesterday, I was on the phone with the person longer than I have ever been on making a reservation.  I thought we were going to get into children and grandchildren's birthdates before she finished asking questions, but when we got to the gate today, we were all set up, so I guess it was time well spent.

As I said, it had rained most of the day.  When we backed into our campsite, we started sinking into the mud.  We made some pretty big ruts.  So Joe pulled up and got some boards out to put under the jacks, that worked much better.

This is a beautiful campground, we were very lucky to get in here for the holiday weekend.  I think she told us we got the last spot when I called in.  The sites are very roomy, we are right on the bay of the Missouri River.  

There are also cabins to rent.  A couple of them are right by the river.

I found a Pizza Ranch in town, so we drove in for dinner and to look over the town.  It is amazingly small to be the state capitol.  The restaurant was across the river in Ft. Pierre (who knew?), and it is also a very small town.  

A very interesting sight around the town is the "trail of governors" statues.  I took pictures of some we saw and googled it to find out what they represent.  This is what I learned.

"The Trail of Governors is series of life-size bronze statues of former governors of South Dakota in Pierre, the state capital. The project's goal is to place statues of every former governor; as of 2021, twenty-eight statues have been placed."

I guess we will have to chase down the rest of them now.  There is also a statue of horses we need to find.

We drove past the Capitol Building and I took a picture from the back of it.  Joe tried to drive past the front but got on a one-way street the wrong way, so we didn't get that one.  The Capitol was recently restored and looks pretty grand.

Our new Garmin GPS has several features we like, but the "you are going the wrong way" one has come in handy twice now.  

Our drive today was 287 miles, pretty much our max I would say.  Joe was pretty tired by the time we got stopped.  But we had really good roads most of the time, and nice scenery if you like this kind of stuff, which we do.  The only wildlife we saw was geese, both on the ground and in flight.  Not many places for wildlife to hide here since there are few trees and bushes.  We might have passed a prairie dog village but we don't know for sure -- didn't see any animals but it looked like dirt piles like they dig for their homes.  

We are in this campground for 4 nights, leaving on Monday (Labor Day).  No specific plans for our days here -- little down time, little exploring.  That should take care of it.