May 2008

May 31st Jon’s birthday and he had the day off, Kathleen did work on that day. As it was John, the owner’s birthday on Thursday they had a large family gathering and all of the workampers were invited to the party. Jon was included in the birthday celebration just like family. It is a great feeling. We had to get packed for our trip to Washington for the graduation of Kathleen’s granddaughter.

May 28th, 29th, 30th, Spent time working, Jon mainly on the site up grading and Kathleen doing housekeeping. The 30th we went to West Yellowstone and meet up with Buffaloman and Bearlady.

May 27th after about a 225 mile trek we arrived at Wildeness Edge Retreat and meet just some great people. From the owner Janet, and to the managers Glenn & Chris, also fellow Workampers R.T. & Donna. We got set up for a couple days as we will have to move when we leave this weekend as the site are being up graded.

May 26th we left this morning and had a nice ride to Billings, Mt. where we parked at the local Wal-mart for the night. We did are final shopping there, and filled up our shelves to the top.

May 25th we went and toured around the town of Deadwood. It was great to see how the town survived over the course of 140 years. One thing that we like is that all of the revenue from gambling in the town goes to the preservation of the town, also that they do not allow any bets in access of $100.00. We came back and started to pack for our trip tomorrow, as we are heading in to Montana.

May 24th as the rain stopped and we had another great day we went to Wall Drug. Didn’t think a whole lot about all of the hype over it, we think that South of the Border is bigger. Although Wall Drug does sell better quality items. We also toured the petrified forest in the Black Hills, this is a great geographical site and we totally enjoyed it.

May 22nd and 23rd we did nothing as it was a hard rain in the area, receiving over 4 inches of rain. The area was in a drought and this was the most that they had at one time in years.

May 21st we drove and geocached the Spearfish Canyon. What a beautiful sight to see, and by geocaching we got to see even more of the area. We had supper with some fellow workamping friends the “Rvingmillers”. We had a great time and spend over two hours together and just talked about common topics that mean a lot to workampers.

May 20th we drove to the country’s first Memorial, Devil’s Tower, What an amazing site. There is not enough that I could say about the awesome beauty of it. We probably saw about 20 climbers on the tower, maybe 40 years ago I would of tried it. On the way home we stopped at the Vore Buffalo Jump where the Indians drove the buffalo into a pit and if the fall did not kill them they could finish the job with there bows. The bones of an estimated 20,000+ buffalo are there.

May 19th we mover about 60 miles to Rush no More CG and spent the day working around the MH. We also did a run to down town Sturgis, to do a little shopping. Spent the rest of the day relaxing around the MH.

May 18th we attended a local church in the morning, it was a very personal experience as being a small town they knew the regulars and the visitors. Made us feel right at home. In the afternoon we did some walking and a geocache. Later in the day we meet up with Travelingal from the WK forums at the local Perkins Restaurant and had an enjoyable three hour visit. It is so wonderful to meet up with other Workampers. We have casually met a lot of other Workampers on our journey.

May 17th in the morning we went to the Crazy Horse Memorial, what a great sight. We watched workers drill and set charges that would set off by Ann Currie from the Today Show on Monday. We also spent a lot of time just touring the facility. In the afternoon we drove the Needles Highway to Custer State Park, another beautiful drive and the Park is just awesome with all of the wild life and the natural setting.

May 16th we traveled to the Black Hills and to Crooked Creek CG as we tour the sights in the area, we monitored the transmission and all is well. In the afternoon we went into Rapid City to pick up our mail and meet the people that do our service, at the same time we registered to be able to vote and also get an absentee ballot. In the evening we went to Mt. Rushmore and did the tour of the place and stayed till the lighting of the faces, it was a wonderful sight and we can not believe all of the sights that we have seem over the past couple days.

May 15th after checking the fluid level in the transmission we saw it was very low and when we went into Mitchell to do some sightseeing we picked up fluid and other supplies. After adding 5 qts. Of fluid we than hooked up and started our journey to the Badlands, at a rest area we stopped and checked the fluid level again and saw that we needed another 4 qts. of fluid. We finished our leg of the journey with no more problems with the transmission. In the late afternoon we did a tour of the badlands and what an incredible area, more than we could ever expected to see. We stayed in the Badlands till night and watched as they transformed with the sunset.

May 14th leaving Amana Colonies we traveled through Iowa on our way to Spencer to pick up a Select-Air Comfort mattress. We took all secondary roads and totally enjoyed the country, we had planned on staying the night in Spencer. With out any reason to stay in Spencer we decided to move on and go to Mitchell, SD. On the way to SD we went into part of Minnesota for a while, on this leg of our journey we took the interstate system. We arrived at Family-e-Fun CG for the night, at that time we discovered that we were having a problem with the transmission in the MH.

May 13th As we left Springfield we met with Jerry and he took our mattress, we than headed across Illinois and into Iowa. Again we took secondary roads and just marveled at the beauty of our great country. We stopped for the night at Amana Colonies, after setting up we did some geocaching. We would like to come back to this place as there is so much to do and learn in the area. Just a nice place to be.

May 12th meet wit Jerry & Lois for a lunch of “Horseshoes” which are served in Springfield. Quite tasty and the one that we split was plenty. We than went to the Lincoln Museum and learned about the time of Abe Lincoln. Jerry than took us out to the Springfield Mile race track and it was very impressive. We ate a light supper and returned to there place to enjoy the evening. We made plans to meet Jerry the next morning to discard our mattress, other than that we bade farewell abd will see the in Florida next winter.

May 11th we left in the morning for a drive to Springfield to visit our friends Jerry & Lois. The drive was again on a lot of secondary roads and the scenery was wonderful. We met Jerry & Lois for a Sunday Soup and spent the evening there, it was a great time that was had by all.

May 10th we took two classes each in the morning and than attended the closing ceremony, we won a autograph book by Gaylord Maxwell. We than hooked up, eta a light lunch and headed out for Illinois where we spent the night in a great little community park in Carmi. We had a good day and a great drive as we took a lot of backroads.

May 9th another day of classes and again we each took 4 a piece. After attending the classes we are discovering that they are geared more towards a new camper. They are informative and focus on things that we know, but just make us reremember the issues. Would not suggest the class for fulltimers.

May 8th we took the MH to have it worked on and made it back by the first class. Each one of us attended 4 classes today and gathered a lot of information. We had to cut the last class short as we had to pick up the MH. We were well pleased with the work on the MH and to think that they only charge $65.00 per hour. Rained most all day but, after supper it stopped and we could put the hitch and bikes back on the MH.

May 7th we moved over to Western Kentucky University for Life On Wheels and got set up and than did some shopping in the afternoon. We did fine one Geocache in the parking lot. We also went to the opening ceremonies.

May 6th we drove around the area a while to just get our bearings, we tried to find Dwight Embry’s garage and couldn’t find in so we called them and were told it was on the other side of town. We did locate them and were impressed with the place. Kathleen took her driving course in the afternoon and did excellent. After that we just walked around and met some of the people.

May 5th we finished our journey. It was the first time that I drove out of the eastern time zone can’t believe it that I never did this before. We pulled into Bowling Green KOA and it seems to be a gathering place for a lot of the Life On Wheels people. The weather for driving both days was just great.

May 4th we started early and drove 450 miles which is much too many but we are pushed to get to Bowling Green. We got within 20 miles of the W Va. / Ky. Border till we stopped, that will leave us with about 300 miles to go.

May 3rd just totally enjoyed the day renewing friendships and for the evening meal we had the steak fry at Red Run.

May 2nd We did some last minute shopping to get supplies for our trip out west. Jon went to the old bus stop and met up with some friend’s there. Later in the day as campers came in we got to see a lot of friends.

May 1st we babysat Sammie for the last time this visit and packed up to go to Red Run for the weekend. We had a good trip down and we used our new toy, the DeLorme Street Atlas for the first time and it works great. When we got set up at Red Run we were visited by some of the neighbor’s and had a nice time.