Today Tolleson, AZ.......Tomorrow, Apache Junction, AZ

Last night we arrived at Tolleson, AZ just to the west of Phoenix. This is our yearly visit to Freightliner to do all of the routine maintenance on the motorhome.......oil changes, radiator cleaning, etc. This year we discovered we will also have to get new tires for the motorhome. That is a huge expense of about $3000. We will put it off until next March when we leave AZ. We will then have new tires to travel on the road instead of putting on new tires now and letting them sit for 5 months.

The past week we were in Cottonwood, just outside of Sedona. The Thousand Trails park there is very nice and peaceful and we spent most of the week at the campground just vegging. We did go to Sedona one day to spend a few hours at the vortex at Cathedral Rock. It is a very spiritual place for us.

One funny (but not so funny at the time) story ..... one morning as I was reading the paper I heard water running and thought Barb was just washing her hands. A few minutes, I still heard water running but Barb was walking around in the bedroom. So I got up to inspect, thinking that she had left the faucet on..................NO! The water in the toilet was running...........that was the fresh water only that filled the toilet..........IT WAS NOT A BLACK WATER OVERFLOW!

The water overflowed the toilet into the bath area and the living area. Apparently the pedal stuck open. So that morning we spent cleaning and dryiing and mopping.............. The carpet was soaked, too.

And now for the worst........................the same thing happened again the next morning...........you would think we would be intelligent enough to be careful..................NO! This time the water ran for a long period of time so not only came into the living room , it flowed under the sofas and ran outside from one corner. Guess we were not too level. Or too smart! More cleaning, mopping, and drying the carpet.

Now we know to watch the pedal. Funny thing, now that we are watching the pedal, it does not stick anymore.

Tomorrow we leave Freightliner and drive to the east side of Phoenix to Apache Junction and our home for 5 months. We are anxious to be back to see all of our friends.

Love and hugs,

Linda and Barb

Palo Duro Canyon and Santa Rosa State Park

The past couple of weeks have been great days of traveling and site seeing. We are currently at Meteor Crater, AZ about 35 miles outside of Flagstaff. We leave this morning for the Sedona and will be there for 6 days. I wanted to just update you with our travels since the last time I wrote.

Palo Duro Canyon in TX was everything we expected it to be. The campsites were in the canyon itself so we had to drive down the winding narrow canyon road with a 10% downhill grade and several switchbacks. All of that is fine with a car but trying to do switchbacks with the motorhome and tow car felt a bit precarious. Barb is an excellent driver and was very confident, but careful, as we drove down. The campsite was at the base of one of the walls of the canyon. We had beautiful views, including sunsets and sunrises. I will sending pictures when I am somewhere with faster internet service.

From Palo Duro we went to Santa Rosa Lake State Park in NM. Santa Rosa is a small town on Route 66 and the lake is just north of town. We spent 3 days there. The campsite was high on a hill and did have somewhat of a view of the lake. There were some great walks in the park that were on a bluff overlooking the lake. Barb walked them everyday and I did once....hmmmm.

After leaving Santa Rosa, we spent one night in Gallup and one night here at Meteor Crater. Interestingly enough, this is really the site of a meteor that fell and left a large hole. The site is about 10 miles from this campground and they do tours of the crater. NASA and the Discovery channel have studied this area. We did not go to the crater to see it but someday plan to do so when we go through this area.

I will post pictures of the the canyon and the lake and update you on some of the funny and not so funny adventures we have had on this trip.

Chat later. Thanks to those of you who write and encourage me to keep this blog up to date.

Love and hugs to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Our Last Day in El Reno

After 5 days we are finally ready to leave the Lucky Star Casino. Barb has done quite well here and has therefore loved the expeience. She played in four tournements.......lost one, 2nd place in two, and won one. She also played poker before and after the tournements.

Her new experience though was to play "No Limit" poker........just like on the World Series of Poker stars. And she loved it and did quite well.

This morning she played in one more tournement and we left El Reno by 1:00 pm. Tonight we are staying at the West 40 RV park in Shamrock, TX.

Our plans for the next week are to spend 4 days at Palo Duro Canyon State Park in TX and then 4 days at Santa Rosa Lake State Park in NM. Palo Duro is supposed to be the second largest canyon in the country; second only to the Grand Canyon and just a beautiful. WE are looking forward to being there and camping in the state park. I am not sure if I will have internet service so will catch you up with pictures in a week.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

El Reno, OK

Yesterday we drove 220 miles. Arrived at the Lucky Star Casino about 2:30 pm ; pulled into rv site and set up camp. Full hookups; no charge. Good deal.

Casino has several tournements scheduled for the next few days. Barb plays in her first one at 1:00 pm today.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

Strafford, MO to Miami, OK

This drive was a first for us. We drove the entire 100 miles without a stop.........no rest stop, no gas stop, no "let's take a break" stop.

Stayed at Quapaw Casino parking lot. They have section for RV parking that includes water and electricity.

Spoke with manager of casino and he told us there are plans for a new casino to be right on the MO-OK border just as I44 enters OK. Will be completed by end of August 2008 and include large hotel, Rv sites and 15 poker tables. Guess that will be our new stopping place.

Barb played poker at Buffalo Run Casino and I played my penny machines at Quapaw.

love and hugs,
linda and barb

From Cuba, MO to Strafford, MO

Yesterday we traveled 120 miles.

Read the paper until 9:00 am or so. Barb did her regular 20 minute walk and I worked on computer for those 20 minutes.

By 10:00 am we were ready to leave the campsite (Meramac Valley RV Camp Resort). Drove to the front of the park and stopped to get propane.

Half hour later we were on the road. Drove 2 miles to next exit to get gas. Left gas station at 11:00 am.

Drove 1/2 hour and stopped at rest stop. Spent about 20 minutes there taking a walk.

On the road again, and we actually drove the remaining 90 miles with no stops. Arrived at campground in Staffard by 2:30 pm.

Wew! What a long day!

Rested awhile at the campsite. Drove 10 miles into Springfield to get best BarBQ in town. Returned back to motorhome. Had dinner and watched TV.

So that is what our driving days are like. Often we will do some siteseeing but there was nothing in this area that we wanted to go see.

Today we will leave for Miami, OK and spend 2 days there at the casino and then on to El Reno and 3-4 days there at that casino.

So love and hugs to all of you. No matter where you are in your adventures in life, know that we think of you often and value our friendship with you.

Barb and Linda

Cuba, MO

We left St. Louis 2 days ago and drove 60 miles to Cuba, MO. We decided to take a few days of just rest before we really started on our travels. We also spent time each day fixing little things in the motorhome and catching up on paying bills, going through paperwork and filing.

Yesterday jobs included washing the windows so we could see out while we travel and fixing one of the rear windows that would not close. It seemed like it was slipping out of its slot so I siliconed it back in. Hopefully that did the trick!

Our plans are to travel slowly. I know, what else is new! We leave this morning and drive 120 miles to Springfield, spend a night there, and then drive another 100 miles to Miami, OK. We stay at the Quapaw Casino so Barb can play poker at the near by Buffalo Park Casino. Quapaw does not have poker tables but it does have RV parking with electric/water hookups. We will probably stay in Miami for a day or two; timing depends on the cards.

Love and hugs to all of you,

Linda and Barb

A Typical Day in St. Louis

So many of you are asking us...........what are you doing that is taking so much time? And actually , we are asking ourselves the same questions.

So, here is what we did on Monday of this week..........

We started the day with our coffee, 2 cups, and reading the newspaper. We are always a day behind since we purchase the USA Today in the afternoon and read it the following day.
Barb walked to the shower house to shower and I worked on a few projects that had to be completed here in the motorhome. Had to clean the filter for the a/c............that required removing the filter cover, washing the filter and the waiting for it to dry. While doing that , I defrosted the refrigerator freezer. That involves placing hot water in the freezer and waiting until it melts the built up ice on the walls. Had to make hot water in the coffee maker to melt all of the ice build up we had. These two tasks took about an hour. Not hard work, but it does take time.
Then I did my shower/sponge bath here in the rig.
Okay, by now it is 11:00 am and we drove to Illinois to visit with my sister for a bit. We drove an hour to get there, had a short visit, drove an hour back to St. Louis.
I had a dentist appointment at 2:30 and we made it back just in time. Barb waited in the parking lot and made some phone calls.
Appointment last an hour and then we drove back to the Babler. Arrived about 4:30. We had an hour to relax.........I read my motorhome magazines and Barb played poker on the internet.
Had to leave by 5:30 to meet a friend from high school for dinner. We had a great visit and caught up on our lives and families. She is a really wonderful person. We talked until almost 8:00.
Arrived back home by 8:30, watched the news that had been taped from earlier in the day, made the coffee for the next day and were ready for bed by 10:00 pm.

We had a great day, but it was busy. We feel very fortunate and blessed that we are both healthy and happy and can enjoy whatever we are doing. We wish all of you health, happiness and peace in your lives. And hope the future brings goodness to you.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

September 20-?: St. Louis, Part 4

We are in Babler now. It was about a 45 minute drive from the Casino Queen to Babler and all went smoothly until we arrived. We made the reservation online several months ago and realized when we arrived here that we had selected the worst , unlevel site in the entire park. Our auto leveling system is great; you just press a button and all the jacks come down and level the coach. However, they will only extend a specific length, which is equivalent to one bubble from level. Welllllllllllll, this site was more than one bubble off, both from front to back and side to side. We had to drive up on boards stacked 3 high under the front tires. Everything looked good so I started the auto level. I was inside and Barb outside watching. The next thing I knew, Barb was banging on the door , yelling, "STOP"! It turns out that the levelers were going down on the concrete barrier at the back of the rv site. Whew, no broken leveler pads.
So we had to move the coach. We brought all of the levelers back up, drove off the boards, moved forward, drove the front tires back on the 3 boards and punched the levelers again. When the green light showed we were level, we thought we were finished. But noooooo, one of the rear tires was off the ground. So, we put the levelers back up, drove off the boards on the front tires, put another board under the back tire, drove up onto 3 boards under each of the front tires and one board under the rear tire, punched the auto level, and waited. Green light! Check all tires...........after one hour, finally all was level.

But we had one minor complication. In order for the front to be level , the front of our coach was so high that our steps did not even help to get inside. So now we are using a small step stool and the extra step to get in the coach. Quite a challenge but part of the fun of rv'ing. We do love it!

The sites here are lovely. Trees and grass all around us. We have always liked Babler State Park.

We will probably be here for about a week. Our original reservation was for two weeks but we want to be in Sedona, AZ by the middle of October. Our leaving time is flexible. We had hoped to leave by Sept. 25 but still have too many things left to do.

Hopefully we will be finished with returns. Yes, we have taken a few days out to go shopping. We purchased shoes for me, Barb and Elsie. And new containers and organizers for the motorhome. And other stuff. So we have returns to do and then go back to the condo and clean it for the next visit.

We also have some socializing planned. Of course , we will spend time with Elsie. Tomorrow my cousins and Aunt Edna are coming for brunch. We also have some plans with friends.

I think we will be leaving no later than Friday, 9/28. And then we head to Sedona with stops in El Reno, OK and Albuquerque/Santa Fe.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

September 5-20: St. Louis, Part 3

Our two weeks at the Casino Queen RV Park we busy, busy, busy. The park is a quick 15 minute drive to the condo and we went there every day in the morning, worked on going through all of our clothes in the closets to see what to give away. It took us days since, of couse, had to try on all of the clothes. Then we worked on the book cases to see what books...recipe books, picture books, novels........ and what VCR movies, that we did not want to keep. Everything went.

We then started on going through our albums. We spent one afternoon dismantling one album. It was one of our trips to Custer. We pulled out about 25 pictures of buffalo and antelopes that we did not need and kept the rest. We also kept some of the postcards and small blurbs that we attached to the pictures. When we were finished, we looked at each other and realized we had dismantled our entire trip and there was no way to reproduce it the way it was in the album. So the next day, we put the pictures, blurbs, and postcards back in the album. We did leave out many of the buffalo pictures. I probably have 200+ buffalo pictures from all of our other trips.

So after these busy two weeks, we returned to Babler.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

August 21-September 5: St. Louis, Part 2

Our stay in Robertsville was eventful and productive. As you can see by the picture, the campsites were very dense with trees and shrubs. Our biggest challenge was to back into the site since the road was narrow with a drop off on both sides of the campsite and on the other side of the road. We had to do a lot of manuevering to get into the site but we did it! When we accomplish feats like this, we just think we are so great. So we congratulated ourselves many times.

We moved to Babler State Park after two weeks at Robertsville. This put us close to Barb's mom which gave us an opportunity to spend time with her. We took her out to dinner several times to one of her favorite restuarants, the Country Buffet. She really does love their fried chicken. In addition, Barb would go visit her during the days while I stayed at the motorhome and worked on projects. In fact, one day I washed the entire motorhome............WOW!!!

We also spent much of this time going to doctors for our regular yearly checkups. Not fun but definitely necessary. We both received positive evaluations on all visits. Thankfully we are very healthy.

In addition, we had out of town company. First my brother from New York came to visit for 4 days. We were very busy with him going through family photos and possessions. We shipped much of the crystal and serving platters that I had from my parents to Larry. And we reviewed all of the albums from my parents youth and our youth and decided what to do with them. It is hard to believe but it took us two days to do all of this. But we felt like we had really accomplished alot. We also took time to visit with cousins who had us over for dinner. It was a great evening. Larry is fun to visit with and we were really glad to see him.

The day Larry left, Barb's cousins flew in to visit. We dropped Larry off at the airport in the morning and then picked Sue and Deb up in the afternoon. They stayed at one of the rental houses that is located at the retirement center where Elsie lives. We had dinner with Elsie at her dining room one evening and then brought her to the house for dinner the next evening.

One of our outings with them was to go to wine country. We tasted all of the wines and then purchased a bottle to share on the deck. As we overlooked the Missouri River valley, we sipped the wine, laughed and talked and had a great afternoon.

During one of the afternoons we went to the St. Louis Air Show. This is a annual event that always occurs over the Labor Day weekend. And the location of the air show was close to Babler. We had never been to an airshow and it was a very exciting experience.

I took these photos with my Sony camera. It is a digital with a zoom that is comparable to 435mm that allowed me to zoom in close to these Blue Angel planes. In case you did not realize, these planes were flying at several hundred mph and I was able to track them with the camera and lock in on them without blur. I am so thrilled!!

After Deb and Sue left, we took several days to relax and visit Elsie. Our two week limit at Babler was over and so we had to move on to the Casino Queen in East St. Louis , IL.

Love and hugs,

Linda and Barb

August 8-18: St. Louis, part 1

We left Custer August 1 and spent 9 days driving to St. Louis. We will stay here until the end of September, around the 25th.

Our time here has been very busy with projects downsizing at the small condo, visiting with Barb's mom, Elsie, visiting with out of town guests including Linda's brother, Larry, and Barb's cousins, Sue and Deb, and seeing friends from St. Louis. In addition, we have had to move RV sites every 2 weeks since the state parks have a two week limit. So let me see if I can summarize our time here.

August 8-11: We arrived in St. Louis and set up at the St. Charles , MO Rv park called Sundermeyers. It is very close to where Elsie lives. We do not stay there normally because the daily rate is about 2-3 times the rate of the state parks. But this time we decided to stay there for three days because Linda flew out of St. Louis to Las Vegas to celebrate her oldest daughter's, Susan, 40th birthday. Susan planned her birthday celebration to meet 4 of her girlfriends in Vegas and spend the weekend together. It was to be a girls only weekend. Linda flew in a day early and spent the day with Susan and Robyn. It was the first time that the three of them had been together in over three years. They had a great time visiting. While Linda was gone, Barb spent the 3 days with Elsie. Linda returned on the 11th and they moved to Robertsville State Park, about 45 minutes outside of St. Louis

August 12-18: This was project week. We actually packed out suitcases and moved into the condo for 4 days. While there, we started the downsizing project. Our plan is to sell the condo in about 2 years but want to have it almost empty now so that we will not have work to do when we are ready to sell. I did not realize how much stuff we still had; Barb had been telling me that we had a lot but I did not believe her. Now I know. It took us the four days to just work on the storage locker that is in the basement. It is a small room that we had filled from floor to ceiling. There was a portable closet with clothes and shelves lining all walls with tools, supplies, cords, boxes of pictures, files, etc. We took all of the clothes, tools, etc. to the Indepencence Center as a donation. And then we started on the files and old pictures from my childhood and Barb's. It took us those four days and more to finish with the storage locker. I shredded all the files that were before the year 2000 and hope that I will not need them! The plan with the pictures is to scan them to a DVD.

We felt very good about our accomplishments and will start on the condo itself later in the month.

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

A Buffalo Love Story

One last buffalo picture. On one of our buffalo outings, we were watching the bull snorting to his love. I was standing on the seat of the car with my head stuck out through the sunroof trying to take a video of the buffalo. I located my favorite buffalo couple and started talking to them.

The beginning of the video is one bull chasing one of the females but stick with the video because I move over to the couple that is just sitting there. He is snorting at her and as I talk to him, I start giving him hints as to how to impress her. And he listens to me!!!

So just watch this video to the end.

Hope you enjoyed this video.

We leave Custer on August 1 and head for St. Louis. We will be there for over a month and will spend time visiting with Barb's mom as well as with my brother , Larry , who will fly in from New York and with Barb's cousins, Sue and Deb, who will fly in from Greeley, CO.

Love and hugs,

Linda and Barb

Buffalo at Custer State Park

Elk

Last night we saw 30-35 elk just grazing out in field. Really wonderful to see them. My only regret is that they were so far away and it was almost dark out that I could not get any good pictures.

Any photographers out there want to suggest how to take pictures when it is dusk. What settings should I use?

Love and hugs,
Linda and Barb

Custer Wildlife: Pictures from yesterday

One of the wolves..........a timber wolf named Khan


Baby mountain goat.

Daddy and baby.

Pronghorn.

Another cute couple.






Sniffing the air...........



Posing.






Mama and baby on the road.

Love and hugs,
Barb and Linda

The Wolf People

I do not know much about The Wolf People. From what we can gather, it is an organization whose goal is to preserve the wolves. The main organization is in Idaho, where they have over 5000 acres where the wolves run free and are protected.

There is a smaller , much smaller, newly opened, version here in the Black Hills. We found it on one of our drives yesterday. They have two wolves that they have raised since they were babies. Right now they are in a very small pen. The caretakers are working on enlarging the pen and will do so as they have more funds. Anyway, we were able to go see them and as you can see from the pictures they are very friendly................hmmmmmmm.

We spoke at length with the owners who actually do go inside the pen and play with the wolves. They even let their grandchildren go inside. Their belief is that since they raised the wolves from babies, they are familiar with them and they feel quite safe. He did say we could go in, but nooooo, I don't think so.

It made for an interesting experience and we wanted to share it with you. Does anyone know anything about the Wolf People??

Love and hugs,

Linda and Barb

WE SAW BUFFALO AND MOUNTAIN GOATS

We certainly had a wonderful adventure yesterday. The buffalo were everywhere..............and they were beginning the mating season. We spent 4 hours in the park following the herds and were amazed and thrilled to watch the males select their females. The males would wander around the herd, sniffing the females, and then when they decided, they just followed them. And I mean followed...............they stayed right with them whereever they went. If the female sat down, the male sat down next to her. When the female got up to walk, the male walked right along side of her..............and you can believe, no other male could get close.

What was even more interesting is that the females still had their babies from the previous season...................And so the three of them just spent the time together. A cute , very big, family.

The herds were immense................there were hundreds of buffalo all over the entire area, including walking across the roads. I managed to squeeze through the opening of the sun roof (it was tight in a few places, as you can imagine). I was then able to get some great shots and some good videos . I do not know how to include videos in this blog but if I figure it out, I will include it.

And then to make the day more perfect, we saw mountain goats.

WE HAD A GREAT DAY!!

Love and hugs,

Linda and Barb

Yesterday, thunderstorms and hail in the area changed all of our plans...........or at least, we decided to change all of our plans.

Instead of going to search for elk, we stayed home and played gin rummy...............and as usual, Barb beat me.................

Then the rain stopped, it was cool outside, so I made a roaring fire ............... we sat out there until 8:00 pm .............. dinner was late ............

Today, we leave early , at least early for us, to go to the wildlife loop.................we are on a buffalo and big horn sheep hunt.

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Viewing Pictures and Writing Comments

Just an update as to procedures for this blog.

If you would like to enlarge the size of the pictures, you just need to click on them once.

If you would like to write comments to Barb and me or make comments about any of our commentary, just click the comment button. It will not post instantly..................I will receive an e-mail notifying me of a comment and I will then accept it.

So let us hear from you.........

Linda and Barb

A Typical Day in Custer

Today is a typical day in Custer.

We were awake by 7:oo am and read yesterday's paper. Each day we read the previous day's paper since there is no delivery of the USA Today newspaper and we are not energetic enough in the mornings to go out to get a paper. Depending on the weather we will either sit inside or outside, read the paper , drink coffee and plan the day.

Each day does involve an outing. Today by the time we read the paper, chatted with neighbors and showered , it was almost noon. So we decided to spend the day sitting under the pines, reading and relaxing. Then we drove down the hill to the office to use the internet, checking emails and writing on the blog, checking finances, etc. And most exciting, is that Barb is learning to use the computer. She had started downloading her pictures from her camera and editing the file. AND, she will start checking e-mail and writing responses. HOOORAY FOR HER!

So our day's outing today will be this evening. We will have dinner early , drive through the wildlife loop at Custer State Park and then drive to Wind Cave National Park to search out the elk. Two nights ago, we saw 4 elk, two of which were huge bull elk with 10 point antlers. But it was too dark to get a good picture.

Another alternative for a typical day, would be what we did yesterday. That is, we drove all day and then by the time we arrived home, we were able to have a campfire...............and eat a late dinner.

So all in all, this is a wonderful place for us and we are having a great time.

Love and hugs,
Barb and Linda

A Day's Drive to The Town of Rochford and to Spearfish Canyon

Yesterday we traveled to Spearfish Canyon which is about an hours drive from Custer. Of course , it took us about 3 hours to get there.

We left Custer about 10:30 am and traveled through Hill City where we picked up a gravel road taking us to Rochford.

The downtown area of Rochford is one 3-way corner with a restaurant, the Moonshine Gulch, on one corner and a gift shop, called the Rochford Mall, on the other corner. As for as the third corner, well, I am not sure what is there. And that is all there is of Rochford..............the highlight of the town is that the Moonshine Gulch makes the best hamburgers!!! We drove about an hour on the gravel road surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest. It was a beautiful drive and we were starved by the time we got there.

If you notice the decor of the restaurant is not what you would call "fancy".............the ceiling is covered with caps and the walls are covered with all kinds of stuff/junk.

And we just had to take a picture of this sign that was on the wall.

When we left Rochford, we headed toward Spearfish Canyon.

Our favorite views in Spearfish

are the waterfalls

and the flowers.

Barb and I find these all day drives to be invigorating; we love seeing the beauty of the Black Hills.

Love and hugs,

Linda and Barb

Our Travel Plans for this Summer

I have not updated our plans for the summer since I first wrote it in May. Many of the plans stayed the same but some have changed and some are still indefinite. So I will fill in comments/changes in this color . Hopefully this will keep you current as to what we have done and where we are going next.

Several of you have asked for our summer plans so I thought I would post our itinerary here on the blog.

May 18-24: Zion National Park. Stayed at the campground in the park. See pictures in blog commentary.

May 24-30: Bryce Canyon National Park. We will stay in Panquitch, UT, about 20 miles outside the park. It is one of our membership parks. See pictures in blog commentary.

May 30- June 10: Mt. Pleasant, UT. We are not sure what is in Mt. Pleasant. It is a small town in the mountains near lakes and mountain hikes. We just wanted a place to see scenery and vegetate for a while. Plus it is one of our membership parks and we thought we would check it out. This turned out to be a great place to spend time and as you can see in the blog commentary we even experienced snow peaks.

June 10-June 17: Henefer, UT. This town is in a valley on the east side of Salt Lake City. It is supposed to be an absolutely beautiful area plus it is a membership park also. We stayed at East Canyon Reservoir. It was a lovely lake with shoreline consisting of only camping sites and fishing sites. No residential areas which was very nice and made for a pristine view.

We decided that since destination for July is Custer, SD, that it would be fun to stay at the different membership parks in Utah. Just call this research!

June 17 - July 1: We will meander through Wyoming. We do not have any reservations or definite plans yet, but will probably go back to Ft. Bridger for a few days. We were there two years ago and really liked the area. We did not go to Ft. Bridger; instead we went to Casper to visit friends and then to Ft. Robinson State Park in Nebraska.
We decided to get to the Black Hills earlier than planned and so stayed at Hart Ranch for a week. Hart Ranch is located just south of Rapid City and about 30 miles from Custer.

July 1- August 1: Big Pine Campground in Custer, SD. We have gone to this campground in Custer for 8 years and are excited about returning. Remember, we are Custer residents and are really just returning home. We have been here for two weeks now and loving it. See pictures in blog commentary.

August 1-August 21: Leave Custer and travel towards St. Louis. No plans yet.

August 1-10: Travel to St. Louis so that we can arrive by Aug. 7. On Aug 8 , Linda will fly to Las Vegas to see Susan who is celebrating her 40th birthday. She has arranged a weekend celebration with 6 of her friends in Vegas and I am flying in a day early to be with her and Robyn before the friends arrive. Since I have not seen her since Barb and I flew to Brussels last winter, I am really looking forward to this.

Barb will be staying at a resort campground near St. Charles which is very close to where her mom lives. This will give her time with her mom while I am gone.

August 10-21: We will move to Robertsville State Park, about 30 miles outside of St. louis. Babler has a 2 week limit on stays so we cannot go there until the 21st.

August 21 - September 5: Babler State Park in St. Louis. Linda's brother, Larry, and Barb's cousin's, Sue and Deb, will come to visit for a few days during this period.

September 5 - 20 : No plans yet We will return to Robertsville for this two week period. During this time we will spend several days at the Renmore (our condo in the city) to get rid of stuff that we left there. I will be scanning all of the pictures in our photo albums and putting them on CD's. That way we will not have to worry about where to store albums. We will also clean out all of the rest of the stuff (tools, cleaning supplies, boxes) in the storage locker in the garage. Plus we will begin to get rid of the clothes that we do not wear that is in the upstairs closets. All of this will probably take us quite a few days but will feel good when we are finished.

September 20 - October 4: Return to Babler State Park in St. Louis.

October 4 - November 1: Leave St. Louis and head back to Apache Junction for the winter. No travel plans yet.

We will post updates and pictures of our travels.

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Link to Satellite view of Big Pine Campground

I thought it would be neat to attach a link so that you can see from the satellite view where we are camped. The indicator for the campground on the satellite map is not correct. The white road that leads to a circular road is the entrance to the campground and we are parked back up under all of those big pine trees.

[Click on the link below]

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&view=map&q=big+pine+campground&near=custer,+sd&hl=en&om=1&ie=UTF8&ll=43.749366,-103.641023&spn=0.001907,0.004989&t=k&z=18&iwloc=A

Custer Wildlife Pictures

Thought I would just post a few of the wildlife pictures we took the other day while driving through Custer State Park.




These are three baby Pronghorns.....
. If you look closely, you can see two prairie dogs standing up in the background.
















As we were leaving the park, we saw these bucks with 6-8 points each. What a site!!!














This mountain goat was one of 5 or 6 that were just walking down the road.

Love to all of you, Barb and Linda

June 10 - July 1: From Mt. Pleasant, UT to Custer, SD

We left Mt. Pleasant after 10 days and headed 120 some odd miles north to East Canyon Resort, which is about 30 miles east of Salt Lake City. We did very little siteseeing there. We spent the days reading and watching the hummingbirds on our bird feeder. We had to fill the feeder every day. There were hummingbirds on the feeder all day long and would let me sit within 3' of them and take pictures.

We also drove into Salt Lake City to visit our friends, Robyn and Sherri. We had never been to their house before and were very impressed with it. I especially loved their garden. It was beautifully designed with sitting areas and plants. We sat and talked with them for a few hours and had a great time.

After Salt Lake we headed towards Casper, WY. Our friends, Terri and Karen, who we met in Custer, SD, live there. We met them in Custer, SD, two years ago when they were looking for directions. We have kept contact with them and , in fact, visited them in Casper last year.

On the way to Casper, we stopped for a night so we could go see the Martins Handcart exhibit and the Independence Rock. Both of these areas were part of the Mormon trail. The handcarts were the means of transportation that the Mormons used as they traveled from the east coast to Salt Lake City. While traveling , they discovered that they had left too late and the cold weather got to them before they arrived. Their leaders found a valley they could stay in during the snow storm that protected them from the elements and cold. Rescuers came from Salt Lake area and carried them across the river to safefy. This area is now protected and we were able to tour it. There were many Mormon volunteers from the area who gave us the information and stories and the history.

Independence Rock is a huge boulder that the Mormons etched their names into. It was this rock that they used as a siting to be sure they were going in the right direction and it represented their independence.

We spent two days in Casper visiting with Terri and Karen. It was nice to see them again. During the day while they were working, we took a drive up to the Casper Mountains.

Our next stop was Ft. Robinson State Park in Nebraska. It is a beautiful state park. It is on the site of the fort where the soldiers protected the travelers from harm as they traveled.

From Ft. Robinson, we headed to the Black Hills and spent a week at Hart Ranch, just south of Rapid City. We used this week to work on the motorhome. We gave it a good washing including the roof. Barb spent an entire day up there washing it since it had not been washed in over a year. Our neighbor across the way was an RV repair person. We talked to him about caulking the few cracks on the roof. He went up there with Barbara and found many more than we thought.

We asked him if he would repair and he replied, "no, I do not like to do that but I will teach you how." And he did. Barb spent that day in 90+ degree temperature on the roof, pulling off the old caulking and recauking the areas that needed it. She did a great job and I am very proud of her.

And finally on July 1, we arrived at Big Pine Campground in Custer, SD. Not only is this our favorite place to stay in the Black Hills, it is the place where exactly four years ago we decided to become full timers. So this is our "full timing" anniversary.

That's all for now.

Love and hugs to all of you,

Linda and Barb

June 8: Snow in Mt. Pleasant

To our surprise, June in Utah brought snow. Though there was no snow at our campground, the mountains surrounding us were covered. So we drove up to the mountains that were at an altitude of 10,000' .

I just thought this was a neat picture so I included it.







Love and hugs to all of you, Barb and Linda

May 30 - June 10: Mt. Pleasant , UT

We did not expected much in Mt. Pleasant and instead, it has turned out to be a beautiful location. We are at 6200' surrounded by mountain ranges in the 10,000' to 11,000' range.
The views are beautiful. And became even more magnificient when it snowed yesterday.
So now our views are of snow-peaked mountains.



We have spent the days here just reading and doing projects. We have managed to wash the motorhome and the car. And we fixed the levelers (for those of you who are not RV'ers, that means the jacks that support the rig and keep it level). I had to crawl under the motorhome with silicone spray and clean each of them and check for leaks. Then we fiddled with a few things and ran the jacks up and down a few times and added fluid to the motor and boom, the jacks worked. We are so talented..................

Just thought I would bring you up to date.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb

May 24 - 30: Panquitch, UT (Bryce National Park)

We did three days of touring in this area.

First we drove 40 miles to the Fremont Indian State park. It is a remarkable area that has preserved the petroglyphs of the Fremont Indians. They lived in the area before the 13oo's and noone seems to know what happened to them after they left. But they left behind multitudes of rock art.



It seemed as though everywhere we walked there were drawings on the rocks.



Many of the drawings have meanings that to this day, noone has been able to explain. And many others are clearly people, sheep, rams with huge horns, rivers, concentric circles and one very tall (6') drawing of a person.

The next day we drove to Bryce Canyon.

Now that is an absolutely magnificient area. The hoodoos are inexplicably awesome. And the color in the rocks and peaks are this very vivid red with white limestone leaching through.



We learned the relationship between the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce. Geologically, the Grand Canyone is at the bottom, the top of the Grand Canyon is Zion, and the top of Zion is Bryce.

And yesterday, we drove to Cedar Breaks National Monument. It was a beautiful drive up to 10,000' in the mountains with landscape of cedars, big pine, spruce, and other rocky mountain trees. And then we came to a vast area with red rocks much the same color and configuration of Bryce. So we experienced views from mountain pines and snow to vast area of red rock and then the landscape changed to huge pilings of volcanic rock. At first, it looked like someone had dug up the land and made huge hills of rocks. And then we learned that this is the remnants of volcanic eruptions. These large volcanic piles were taller than many of the pine trees and covered many miles of expanse.

Today is rest day. Clean the motorhome, update the blog, read, rest, prepare the motorhome for travel for tomorrow.

Next destination: Mt. Pleasant, Utah. Two weeks of completing projects and reading and who knows. We will check out the area. All we know is that it is 8000' in the mountains and a beautiful area.

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

May 18-24: Zion National Park

May 18: We left Vegas and traveled to Zion. As you can see from the previous blog, we were assigned what we consider an absolutely perfect campsite. We are right at the base of the Watchman Peak

May 19: We rode the shuttle from the Visitor Center to the end of the Zion Canyon. During the peak season, you cannot drive your car through the Canyon. The shuttle has about 8 stops in the Canyon so you can get off and see sights around that stop. A shuttle arrives at each stop every 6-8 minutes, so it is quite convenient and perhaps, even easier that driving our own car, finding a parking place, getting in and out.


For our first day, we stopped at the Patriarchs Peak so I could get a good picture while the sun was in the right spot. Then we traveled to the end of the canyon to the Riverside trail. It is about a mile and ends at the narrows. NO, we did not walk the narrows. Walking on the rocks of a river back into a narrow canyon did not sound good to us. Plus everyone who came out had water up to their hips, which would mean water up to our waist. NOT FOR US !



Actually by the time I stopped every 4 feet to take 6 pictures, it took us 2 hours to walk the mile to the narrows. Walking out took 20 minutes; Barb would not let me stop for pictures again!

May 20: We took a drive to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes. To get to the sand dunes we had to drive over highway 9, which took us to the Checkerboard Peak and through the tunnel. The sand dunes actually were a beautiful coral color and great to see.

May 21: We drove to the northern section of Zion, called Kolob Canyon. Drove through the canyon, hiked a mile up a bluff to view the entire area,

and then we rested and had a picnic.

May 22: We started the morning with a Ranger sponsored shuttle. It was 2 hours with Ranger selected stops to teach us about the geology of the area.

May 23: We hiked about a mile to the Emerald Pool to see a waterfall. Nice hike. Waterfall was more a trickle due to poor snow/rain conditions.

May 24: We left Zion to head to Panquitch, Ut in the Bryce National park area.

Love to all of you,
Linda and Barb

Zion National Park

WOW !!! This place is beautiful !!

We pulled into the campground, not knowing what our site would look like and found we had been assigned a perfect spot. We are located at the base of the Watchman Peak and have other peaks surrouding us on all sides. The first day we just sat outside and stared. As the evening approached, we made a campfire. Then the sunset came and the colors on the peaks just changed each moment. A glorious place to be.

Saturday we plan to take the shuttle into the Zion Valley. Probably we will take some short hikes. We would like to hike the 2 miles along the Riverside Hike back to what is called the Narrows. Will let you know how far we get.

Also, I have my new camera now. It is a Sony cybershot DSC-H9. It is the closest digital camera to an SLR without being one. So I will testing it out while we hike. So that means an hour and a half hike will probably take us four hours.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb

Back to Vegas Again

We returned to Vegas after Lake Havasu and had more time to spend with the kids.

The first weekend we returned, Robyn and Scott had a conference for the entire weekend. Zack and Ashley stayed with us in the motorhome for the first time. They were really excited by that. We were at the Oasis RV Park that had a swimming pool with a sand "beach" next to it. Since the temperature was in the lower 70's and too cold for swimming, the kids spend several hours just playing in the sand.

We even did some siteseeing with them and took a drive to the Valley of Fire. That is an absolutely beautiful area.





When we leave Vegas, we will head for Zion National park.

Love to all of you,

Linda and Barb