We left Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse memorials behind us and I happily clicked away, taking pictures of the landscape as we passed by. I took a lot of pictures and have a hard time trying to decide which of them to show you.
It goes without saying that I photograph barns in all stages of their life cycle — although I tend to favor those with a little more age on them rather than new ones.
Log houses with cows in the pasture,
sheds with weather worn boards, sprouting antlers.
And critters of any kind.
I always find things to photograph and I have way more photos than I can show you and that is my conundrum.
What would they like to see? I wonder as I scroll through the miles and days I’ve captured on my camera.
I like this one, I think and click the buttons to make a copy in a file I set up for this next chapter in the Great RV Adventure.
This one is okay, and I make a copy.
Oh! I have to show them this one! And before you know it I’ve picked out a hundred and six photographs!
But you wanna to know something else?
Invariably, what happens is while I’m writing I’ll think of something else to tell you and I know I have a picture of it, so I go back and add even more pictures!
Like this picture of bicycles near Pringle, South Dakota.
Midwest’s Largest Bicycle Sculpture — And Possibly The World's, touts a sign.
I started seeing tepee or wigwam burners popping up along our route. This type of a burner was used in the logging industry to dispose of sawdust and wood scraps. A conveyor belt would deliver the waste to the top and it would fall into the flame in the center.
This beehive burner, as it is so called in Canada, vents directly to the atmosphere and as you can imagine, was a major source of air pollution. Two states, Washington and Oregon, have banned their use altogether and in the early 1970’s these burners have fallen out of general use — although I did see one with smoke coming out of the top!
“Peggy?” Momma called.
“Yeah Momma,” I answered.
“Do you see all these mounds over here?”
“Uh-huh,” I grunt.
“Do you suppose they are gopher holes?”
“I don’t know,” I said and snapped a picture.
Then guess what we see!
Buffalo! And they weren’t fenced in either!
As you can imagine I took quite a few pictures of them, I even got a couple of pretty nice ones, but the one that tickled me the most?
This guy scratching himself on the sign. What’s the sign say?
Buffalo Are Dangerous! Do Not Approach!
Outside of Hot Springs, South Dakota we see this.
“What is that?” Momma asked.
“I don’t know. It looks like an elephant to me,” I answered.
I wasn’t far off. There are some mammoth digs going on near here and they are erecting a 50 foot long, 36 foot tall Woolly Mammoth. The tusks will be 22.5 feet long when they are done. I don’t know who’s building this but it’s being worked on as the money allows.
Near Oelrichs, South Dakota I spot a memorial along side the road. I Googled it and found out it’s a memorial to the ranchers who settled this part of the country and the picture they had online was better than the one I took, so I’m going to show you both of them.
Things don’t change all that much, from state to state.
We cross the state line into Nebraska and I see they leave old cars out in their fields too.
And tractors!
And wagons!
Not much left of this one!
Between the Crazy Horse Memorial and our next stop of North Platte we had over three hundred miles of traveling to do this day. The roads were decent and we had long spans of driving with no turns. My services as navigator would not be required for a few hours and there wasn’t anything to do but take photos and chat with Lori. And it seemed like Lori and I never ran out of things to talk about.
We came to a section of highway where the main highway went one way — and most of the cars were going that way — but Betsy (our GPS) wanted us to go another. We followed Betsy’s directions, totally trusting her. The road was smaller and we go through several small towns.
Jack’s. This is in Oshkosh. This cracks me up. Is this a garage named Jack’s or are they simply telling us these are jacks? If it’s a business, it didn’t appear to be in operation anymore.
A fence lined with skulls is a little farther down the road in the small town of Lewellen. Population 282. Since this is ranching country, I will assume these are cattle skulls.
Just past Lewellen, near the turn-off for Ash Hollow State Historical Park, I see boots on top of fence posts. I hurriedly raised my camera and tried to get a picture of it for you but it was blurry, I saw more boots and tried again. Every post didn’t have a boot topper, but a lot of them did. I can’t tell you how many blurry shots I got and with every one I groaned. I was afraid I was going to run out of boots and not get the shot. But I need not have worried. There were a couple of miles of boots and eventually I did get a couple of shots that weren’t too blurry.
“Peg, do you know anything about that Ash Hollow State Historical Park?” you ask.
I’m so glad you asked! I do! And it would be worth a stop if you ever find yourself in the area. Unfortunately, we didn’t know anything about it at the time plus we were on a schedule that we needed to stay with as close as we could. But, be that as it may, let me tell you a little about Ash Hollow.
Ash Hollow was the gateway to the North Platte Valley and the emigrants used it as a campsite because there was a spring for fresh, clean water, wood for a fire, and grass for the livestock. They traveled 18 miles across the tableland before they came to Windlass Hill and a steep 25 degree descent. The emigrants used ropes and would rough-lock the wagon wheels before descending some 300 feet. As a result the wagon ruts are still visible to this day.
How cool is that!
I started seeing boats beside the road with for sale signs on them. “I bet there’s a lake around here someplace,” I guessed.
Just past Ash Hollow we crest a hill and there before us is the expanse of Lake McConaughy.
“Are we on the right road?” Lori asked and I pulled the map onto my lap. By the time I found Lake McConaughy we were crossing an earthen dam with water on one side and a steep drop-off on the other.
“Oh Lord!” Lori exclaimed. “Two of the things I fear most, water and heights!” She kept her attention focused straight ahead and we got across just fine.
“Turn right,” Betsy announces when we reach the other side and at this point there was little to do but follow. The roads get narrower and narrower but lucky for two things. First and foremost is that Lori drives the RV with all the command of a seasoned driver. Second, we didn’t pass but one or two cars the whole time we were on these roads.
We go through a bunch of dinky little towns,
then through Roscoe with its abandoned buildings, then we join up with the highway again and less than an hour later we were at our campsite for the night.
“Did we miss our turn?” Lori and I both wondered when we had a chance to reflect on the skinny little two-lane roads we were on.
“I don’t think so.” And I have two reasons for thinking that. First, if you have a GPS and you miss your turn, your GPS announces, “Recalculating.” Betsy never announced she was recalculating. Second, I think she took us the most direct route.
Having said that, maybe this Betsy, this GPS doesn’t announce recalculating — is that a setting maybe? — and the way Lori and I got to gabbing sometimes, it’s entirely possible we missed the turn. But I have to tell you that there is one nice thing about traveling the road less traveled. And that is you get to see things you just wouldn’t have gotten to see had you stayed on the highways.
The next morning, with sprinkles on the windshield, we find a 1950’s style, stainless dinner named Penny’s and stop for breakfast.
Momma couldn’t get coffee hot enough to suit her.
I smile as I remember.
“May I have some hot coffee?” Momma flagged down our waitress as she was bustling past us.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Decaf, right?” and she was off before Momma could do more than nod. When she came back with the pot she tried to pour hot coffee on top of what was already in the cup.
“No, I want you to dump this and get me a fresh cup,” Momma told her.
The waitress hardly rolled her eyes at all as she went off to do as Momma asked. In a minute she was back with a fresh cup. Momma touched the sides and frowned a little. She added cream and took a sip. She grimaced.
“Is it hot enough now?” I asked already knowing the answer.
“Not really,” and she shook her head.
Hot enough for Momma would be scalding for me! I’ll tell you what! That lady does like her coffee hot! But she didn’t fuss — I was so proud of her — but she didn’t drink much of it either.
The diner was busy and people were waiting for tables so we didn’t linger. I can’t tell you how nice everyone was to us, holding doors and stepping out of the narrow entryway so I could get Momma (in her wheelchair) past. Then patiently waiting for us to clear the doorway so they could go back in out of the rain, and even asking if we needed more help.
We cross another state line, this time entering Colorful Colorado.
Things don’t change all that much, from state to state.
They still have graffiti on train cars…
…dilapidated gas stations…
…cars and trucks abandoned in fields…
…cows grazing in pastures…
…and other critters too!
We are driving through Fort Morgan when I spot another bicycle sculpture. I hurriedly raised my camera and took a couple of shots and this is the best of the bunch.
This was an old power plant but has been turned into the home of the Parks Department and the bicycles are to promote an event called Pedal The Plains; a three day, 151 mile, late summer, bicycle trip taking in the scenic views of southeastern Colorado.
Late Friday afternoon found us nearing our campground and these signs catch our attention.
“Are we on a toll road?” Lori asks.
“It looks that way to me. What’s a license plate toll?”
“I don’t know,” Lori answered.
I watched as other vehicles exited the highway and there were no booths. “Maybe they use cameras and take a picture of your license plate and send it to you in the mail,” I speculated.
We never exited the highway as we followed this route around and onto another highway to our destination and we never saw any signs saying we have to pay a toll, nor did we see any signs of a toll booth or camera.
I saw the city in the distance.
And I saw six Doppler Radar stations! Why they need six so close together, I’ll never know, but I asked my cute little redheaded sister about them.
“Diane, are these Doppler Radar?” I asked.
“Yeah and they are by Buckley Air Force Base just outside of Aurora.”
“Why do they need six of them?”
Diane shrugged. “I don’t know but there is talk that there are other things in there besides radar. And not only that but we have some pretty impressive jets come out of that base too.”
Well! Give me a little information and I’ll run with it! Okay, I’ll Google it.
According to the Fact Page on the Buckley AFB website, these are not Doppler radar buildings. These large, geodesic domes — looking to all the world like giant golf balls — are called radomes. They use them to protect a variety of equipment used in telemetry, tracking and communications. Besides these six large ones, there are smaller clusters of radomes in different locations around Buckley. Four of them are eligible for a listing on the National Register of Historic Places as they are historically significant. They were built in the 1970’s, consisting of concrete bases, with a large roll-up door and a smaller door, exhaust fans and vents and the outside is white tedlar coated with Esscolam.
“What is ‘tedlar’?” you ask.
Tedlar is a polyvinyl shell.
“How about this ‘Esscolam’ stuff?”
This one is a little harder to explain. Esscolam is the trade name for a water-repelling coating. I was fascinated to discover that water, even thin layers of water, can cause a large loss of signal strength in transmitted or received signals. This Esscolam stuff allows the water to be repelled in beads rather than sheets and that doesn’t interfere as much.
Yeah, maybe more than you wanted to know but I thought it was interesting.
Our RV Park for this night was located in Englewood, a suburb of Denver as is Aurora where Diane lives. Although not familiar with this area, she managed to find us anyway.
“I just put it in my GPS,” she told us.
Later, when Diane’s youngest and very handsome son Dustin, was off work, he brought his family out to say their good-byes to Momma too.
“Get those boxes out for them, will you Peg?” Momma asked.
Momma had set aside some keepsakes and household items she thought Diane, Dustin and his family would appreciate and I went and dug them from the cargo bay.
There were a couple of little stuffed animals that the two older girls claimed.
“Wasn’t there one for the baby?” Momma asked.
“He’s okay. He doesn’t need one,” Diane said and glancing into the box of treasures, she saw a pack of noodles. “Here,” she said, picked it out and handed it to baby Oliver who took it and contentedly chewed on a corner.
The next morning we were up and on the road early. The morning sun was trying to burn off the morning fog and this shot, with a mountain top peaking through, is by far one of my favorite shots of this whole trip.
We were on the down side of our trip now. Two more days of driving, one more night on the road, a night we would spend in Albuquerque, New Mexico then we would reach our ultimate destination of Phoenix, Arizona and Momma’s new home.
But I rush it. I have a ton more photos I took in Colorado to show you first.
A horse barn in the morning mist.
A windmill.
A tractor turned billboard.
Graffiti on buses…
…and buildings. Do you think Ray Shaw did this one?
Cemeteries on hillsides.
A billboard on the side of a semi trailer declaring, “25 Million Acres Is Enough, www.pinoncanyon.com.”
If you Google this, as I have done, it will take you to a Facebook page called Pinon Canyon Expansion Opposition Coalition. Without doing a bunch of research on this, I believe this group is trying to stop the Army from acquiring more land.
I love this shot of an old church. There isn’t much left of it (I can see green on the other side of the door) and I could edit out the power lines if I wanted to.
As we traveled I enjoyed the variety of road signs — signs I don’t see in my part of the country.
There were bear…
…and elk…
…and falling rocks…
Oh wait, we do have falling rock signs.
We saw where the wildfires had swept through. There were miles and miles and
miles of burnt forests.
Did you know that the 2015 fire season set a new record for the number of acres burned in the United States? That’s right. Over ten million acres! And fires don’t respect state lines either. We continued to see evidence of wildfires as we crossed into New Mexico, USA.
Have you ever noticed the license plates for New Mexico? They don’t always say this, but a lot of times they do. They say New Mexico, USA. Do you think they have to qualify that New Mexico is one of our states? Do people really not know that?
I Googled it. USA was added to the plates in 1969 to help the geographically challenged. So there it is.
Things don’t change all that much, from state to state.
New Mexico has old barns…
…and critters…
…and deer!
“Momma, are they deer or antelope?” I asked her.
“They’re pronghorn,” she replied.
Pronghorn (thanks to a Google search) are neither deer nor antelope. In fact they are the sole surviving member of an ancient family dating back 20 million years and their closet living relatives are the giraffe and the okapi. They are the fastest…
“Wait, wait, wait,” you say. “I know what a giraffe is but what in the world is an okapi?”
Okapi (o kaapee) are African mammals that resemble giraffes, only with a shorter neck.
As I was saying, pronghorn are the fastest North American mammal and the only animal in the world with branched horns — they are not antlers! And they are the only animal in the world to shed their horns as if they were antlers. How cool is that!
New Mexico has graffiti…
…cemeteries...
and old trucks.
We all had our jobs on this trip and Lori had by far the most important ones. It was Lori’s job to drive and Lori also put gas in the tank.
In a gas station in New Mexico, as Momma and I waited for Lori, I see a man.
Peddling five miles for each soldier killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, his sign says. He’s peddled eighteen thousand miles thus far and was asking for help in any way, by any one who wanted to give it.
My Google search shows there have been 2,345 soldiers killed in Afghanistan, 4,486 in Iraq, times five miles each equals 34,155 miles he needs to peddle to complete his mission.
That’s a lot of miles, but more than that, that’s a lot of sad mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. That’s just a whole lotta sadness.
I saw a pretty bird like no bird I’ve ever seen before, walking around in the parking lot of the gas station picking up dropped scraps of food.
“That’s a magpie, Peg,” you say.
I know that now but I’d never seen one before. Did you know that the magpie, the black-billed magpie to be more specific, is one of only four North American songbirds whose tails make up half or more of its total body length? The other three are another kind of magpie and two flycatchers. Magpies are tolerant of humans but you can often see them riding on the backs of bison and cattle picking ticks and insects from them. They sound like a good friend to have around, don’t you think.
We took a side trip into Old Santa Fe. One of the first things I see as we are coming into town is a gopher! All those holes on the plains and I didn’t see a single one. Come into the city and I see one peeking up out of his den! Go figure!
We were looking for a place to have a bite of lunch but the streets were crowded and narrow and there wasn’t any place to park so we just did a drive through and took in the architecture of the town.
Late that afternoon found us in a nice RV park in Albuquerque. We dumped our tanks (besides navigating, crawling under the RV and hooking up the hose to dump our sewer was my job) and we settled in for the evening.
Lori found a bench on the nicely landscaped grounds where she sat in a spot of sunshine and returned the phone calls she missed while driving.
Momma and I played Skip-Bo until supper time, after which I normally wash up the dishes. I love to wash dishes; a job I haven’t always liked but a job I have learned to embrace. Since we only turned on the water heater when we needed hot water, I sat down to play another game of Skip-Bo with Momma while I waited for the water to get hot.
Lori got up and took her empty dishes to the sink and I’ll be darned if she didn’t start doing my job. “Lori!” I exclaimed. “That’s my job!”
“You play with your mom, I’ll wash tonight.”
And I let her.
The next day, Sunday, would be our last day of travel.
We crossed over into Arizona in the late morning.
Things don’t change all that much, from state to state.
Arizona has old buildings…
…and graffiti.
They have barns and critters, cars and trucks left in fields to rust. But Arizona has other things too. Things that you don’t find just everyplace.
They have donkeys that cross the road.
They have Saguaro cacti (pronounced sa waaro) which only grow in a narrow swath from a tiny little bit of California through Arizona and into Mexico.
They have tepees…
…and mines…
…and towers disguised as palm trees.
I know, right! It fooled me too!
We stopped in a tourist trap and shopped for trinkets.
We had miles and miles of long straight roads with not much to see.
Late afternoon we finally arrived at my sisters house and Momma’s new home. Although we all got along well, we were glad to have this trip finally be over.
After hugs and greetings, Patti invited Lori to have dinner with us but Lori was anxious to head for her home which she hadn’t seen in three weeks.
The moving company had delivered Momma’s belongings and they were now taking up most of Patti’s garage.
“I have a couple of guys coming over the weekend who’ll move my things out and yours in,” Patti told Momma. In the meantime Momma would be comfortable in the guest room and I would be comfortable on an air mattress on the office room floor. When all was said and done, Momma would have a bedroom, a sitting room and her own bathroom.
That night we had chicken that Patti cooked on the grill. I’ll tell you what, Patti is an excellent cook and I told her so. “I don’t like to cook,” she told me with a little laugh. “That’s why when I cook something, I cook enough to last for three or four more meals.”
I was surprised to hear that Patti didn’t like to cook and for not liking to cook, she has certainly mastered it very well.
Monday.
Monday, Monday.
This Monday found Patti and me cleaning out the RV, getting it ready for the Tuesday morning return to the rental company. That would be our job for the day.
“Let’s use the Kubota,” Patti said referring to her utility vehicle. “It’ll be easier. We’ll put everything in the back and take it around to the shed.”
One of the first things we did when we went outside was to let Dakota out of her kennel. “She gets mad at me if I don’t let her out when I’m working around the yard,” Patti told me. Dakota is an Australian Cattle Dog, sometimes called a Blue Heeler. Before this Patti had had Rottweiler’s, or Rotties for short, and was impressed with Dakota’s intelligence and loyalty. Once someone had stolen Dakota. A few days later Dakota came trotting up the road. She had gotten away from them and found her way home.
“Will she leave the yard?” I asked.
“No, she never leaves the yard.”
We pulled the Kubota up to the door of the RV and Dakota sat on the seat as Patti and I started to pack up the things that needed to go back to the shed. The sleeping bags, coffee pot, camping dishes and things like that.
A dog, a Pit Bull, came trotting up the road and when he saw Dakota he came into the yard after her. Dakota wasn’t having any of that. No siree! No interloper was coming into her territory! And we had a full fledged barking, snapping, snarling, biting, dogfight on our hands.
I was inside the RV when the commotion started. I heard it. And I heard Patti yell.
“NO! GO ON! GET OUT OF HERE! DAKOTA!”
And my sister, bless her heart, my sister dives right in between the snapping, growling dogs.
Oh my gosh! I was so scared.
She’s going to get torn up! And I was frozen in fear.
Patti pulls Dakota from the jaws of the Pit and tries to get her into the Kubota when the Pit attacked again.
“NO!” she shouts and lands a kick to his side. “GET OUT OF HERE!”
Dakota wasn’t helping all that much. She wasn’t going to back down from this bully and she would snarl and bark and lunge at the Pit and that would incite the Pit again. I had to do something! But what! I looked around me and there wasn’t anything there but Momma’s bath stool and a flyswatter.
(Don’t laugh.)
I picked up the flyswatter and threw it at the Pit.
(I said don’t laugh!)
I know, right! I don’t do well under pressure. The flyswatter didn’t land anywhere close to the Pit and even had it hit him he probably wouldn’t have felt it.
He lunged for Dakota again. I picked up the bath stool and threw it at him and hit him with it too. He barely blinked but it was enough of a distraction that Patti got Dakota up onto the seat of the Kubota.
“GET OUT OF HERE! GO ON!” Patti yelled at the Pit all the while psychically restraining Dakota to the seat.
The Pit wasn’t leaving. He stood there.
I’ll make him leave, I thought and jumped from the RV and picked up a fist size rock from Patti’s landscaping.
“GIT” I yelled and threw the rock with all the force I could muster.
THUNK! Yipp, Yipp!
I hit him! Boy, was I surprised! But he wasn’t leaving. He only retreated a few feet into the yard. Encouraged I picked up another rock and even though I didn’t hit him, he took shelter under a cactus.
“Stupid dog! Get out of here!” and I threw more rocks at him.
“Keep him over there, Peg,” Patti yelled. “Till I get Dakota in her pen.”
The Pit got up and I felt so sorry for him, he had cactus balls hanging from him. That hurts, I know it does. But I can’t let him get at Patti and Dakota so I threw a couple of more rocks and he took shelter under another cactus.
Patti had Dakota back in her kennel so I stopped with the rocks.
“Where is he?” she asked when she came back.
“There, under the cactus,” I said pointing. “Stupid dog.”
The Pit wasn’t aggressive with Dakota gone and he even came up to Patti and kowtowed at her feet.
I wanted to help him. I wanted to pull the jumping cholla (choy-a) balls from him, but in the end we decided to go inside until he moved on. And he did. And Patti and I finished cleaning out the RV.
Tuesday.
Tuesday, Tuesday.
“Peg, do you want to go with us to take the RV back?” Patti asked me. “Lori will be here in a little while and we’ll stop and have lunch someplace.”
“No thank you,” I answered. “I’ll stay with Momma. We can play a few more rounds of Skip-Bo before I leave tomorrow.”
I laughed when Patti related a conversation she had had with Lori over lunch that day.
“Are they still playing that game?” Lori asked her.
“Yeah, every chance they get.”
“Oh, Lord. We’re going to have to stage an intervention!”
My three week, six thousand mile RV trip across the country with these two beautiful women is a trip and a memory I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
Patti’s husband, Lee, died less than a month after our trip. I thank God that she was able to spend those extra few weeks with him.
A tragic accident took the life of my beautiful daughter Kathryn in mid-July, less than two months after I had seen her. If I had not taken this trip (and I hadn’t wanted to) I would not have gotten to see her, to kiss her and tell her I loved her that one last time.
God is good - all the time. All the time - God is good.
