Heading West on our 48th Anniversary

2018-08-29

Not much to write about today— we got out of our campsite at 11:15 this morning, after cleaning up and hooking up the Jeep. We had some difficulty with Cassie—she simply refused to get into the RV. She gets this cow-like look on her face, with her head held down and looking up at us at the same time, simply refusing to go up the stairs. We finally tied her up to a tree while we hooked up the Jeep, and then it was a battle of authority and she caved and got in the RV.

We drove south and then west in the Black Hills, and stopped for lunch at the parking lot in Jewel Cave National Monument. We did the exact same thing last year! After that, we drove into Wyoming, and everything went smoothly until we found ourselves in one of those construction zones where you have to wait for the flag an and the pilot car. The wait was about 20 minutes, and then we followed with a long line of cars as the pilot car led us about 5 miles going 20 or so miles/hour, back and forth through the construction and new pavement. That backed our time line up by about an hour.

The Road Ahead in Wyoming

I almost forgot— there was one thing that was really cool about today’s drive— we saw ANTELOPE at the side of the road! Here we are out west, driving through the prairie grazing land. And suddenly, there were these deer-like animals, and then I realized, they were antelope! We’ve never seen that before. Joey took the photos on his camera, because I was driving, and he hasn’t sent them to me. So I’ll have to add them later. But it was very cool.

After much discussion, we decided to splurge on a site tonight at an RV “resort” in Casper, Wyoming. After 3 nights with no electricity, our house batteries were very drained, and we couldn’t even charge our phones overnight because we didn’t want to risk draining them further. We also were essentially out of water (luckily the drinking water pump was adjacent to our site, so we were filling old water jugs with water for the past day) and we needed to dump our waste tanks. The electricity was the deciding factor, though. So we are at an expensive (for us) campground, but we are happily using up a LOT of electricity. In addition, Joe spent some time playing with our television access via our new antenna and laptop, and as I type this, I am watching the Minnesota/South Dakota State game on FS1. This makes me SO happy because, if our internet connection is good tomorrow, we will be able to watch the MSU game, which is also on FS1. So we’ve splurged for tomorrow as well, to make sure we are in a campground which has full hookups for our laptop etc.

Today was our 48th anniversary. We’ve spent a lot of anniversaries on the road! Once I remember one in Wisconsin, where we had a problem with Mo all afternoon. About 4 years ago (I think), we were in East Lansing for our anniversary. And there have been a lot of others. Today was very nice— nothing to stand out about our drive, but our campground is next to the North Platte River, and after we got here, we sat in a swing in the grass by the river, watching it flow and feeling relaxed and mellow. And that is just a fine ending to a fine day, as far as I am concerned.