Saturday, August 10, 2024:
We were tired this morning as we didn’t get to bed until 1 AM after retrieving our kids from the Gillette Camporee. We awoke to the gentle mooing of nearby cattle and when we looked outside our window, we saw antelope off in the distance. We liked staying at “Our Wyoming Life” This was a nice change from our typical morning views. After a lazy breakfast featuring buttermilk pancakes, we departed and headed east, a mere 51 miles to our next destination: Timber Ridge RV Park near the town of Moorcroft, Wyoming. En route, my truck displayed that I have towed the trailer 2,024 miles since we left Oregon on July 8. (2,024 miles, and the year is 2024, so that’s cool, right?)
Timber Ridge RV Park is small (15 sites), and there are only 3 other RVs here right now. We were shocked to discover that our neighbors (with British Columbia plates) are the parents of a physician that I have worked with in Portland. Their son (my colleague) is currently serving as a missionary in Guam. It is amazing to be in the middle of Wyoming, hundreds of miles from home, and then meet someone else who is hundreds of miles from their home and realize that you both have a connection to someone else who is halfway around the world.
Annalise spent a couple of hours working on creating our family tree on ancestry.com after collecting information from multiple family members. Annalise now has a family tree that includes all of the following: her parents, her brother, all of her 1st and second cousins, all of her 1st cousins once removed, all of her aunts and uncles, all of her grandparents, all of her great aunts and uncles, all of her great grandparents, and numerous great great, and great great great, and great great great great grand parents.
Today we tested out my oven repair and I’m happy to report that it now works. When you get the oven turned on, it will stay lit and not turn itself off! Sometimes the small victories are the most satisfying.
Sunday, August 11, 2024:
We slept in this morning which helped us get caught up on some much-needed rest. Shortly after breakfast, I took Ranger for a little walk where he was extremely excited to see a cottontail rabbit. Ranger desperately wanted to either befriend or kill the rabbit, but he didn’t get either opportunity as I had him leashed, so he only got to admire the rabbit from a distance.
The focus of today was to get everything cleaned up, washed, put away, and sorted after the Camporee. We will be starting our year of homeschooling soon, so we need to go through our school supplies and make sure we have everything we need.
We tested our our RV oven repair and I’m happy to report that the chocolate chip cookies taste outstanding!
Annalise was eager to resume practicing her cello, and we initially intended for her to practice in the laundry room. She ended up moving her practice session to the oversized bathroom next to the laundry room as it had more space and better acoustics. Historically, Annalise has wanted to practice her cello only when circumstances were exactly as desired. I’m delighted to see her develop the flexibility to practice her cello wherever she can, if this is in a handicapped bathroom in the middle of Wyoming.
Monday, August 12, 2024:
I awoke this morning to Ranger licking my face. I don’t know about you, but I really despise being awoken by a dog trying to give me a French kiss. Ranger slept in Annalise’s bed last night and woke her up this morning, so she took him outside to go to the bathroom. After he “did his business” and came back inside, Ranger started growling at Annalise, so she decided to toss him onto our bed and he started licking my sleeping physiognomy. Not a great start to the day.
We wanted to get going by 1030 this morning in order to complete our errands, and make it 70 miles to the Deadwood KOA right at 3pm, the earliest available check in time.
Annalise managed to practice her oboe for about 40 minutes prior to our departure and I figured out how she could play audio from her laptop via our TV sound bar so she could practice with pre-recorded piano accompaniment.
On our way to Deadwood, we crossed the state line from Wyoming to South Dakota. Heidi made a detour to Lueder’s Food Market in Spearfish to buy us some Kuchen. Kuchen is German for “cake” and the Germans from Russia who settled the Dakotas brought a recipe for Kuchen with them. It is basically a variation of custard-filled pie crust and is a traditional dish in Heidi’s family.
We stopped at Walmart and made the mistake of shopping while hungry and ended up buying more food than necessary. The big splurge purchase of the day: a toaster. We have always used a toaster oven for the entirety of our marriage, and we had no room for a toaster oven on this trip, and we’ve survived 36 days with only a frying pan or griddle to create toast. When we got back to the rig, the kids were extremely excited about our purchase, so we had toasted sandwiches for lunch.
Deadwood is notorious as one of the worst towns in the “wild wild west.” Deadwood was originally native American land, but when gold was found, thousands of prospectors came to the area. It was completely lawless in the 1870s: The Native Americans wanted nothing to do with it and the United States didn’t have jurisdiction. One reason why it remains famous is because “Wild Bill” Hickok was murdered here while playing poker.
We had the chance to sit through a touristy reenactment of his murder which was a little hokey, but also fun. Annalise was extremely worried that the prop gun would malfunction and she would witness an actual murder. Fortunately, the prop worked as desired and no one was killed.
We then explored the historic main street and watched The Deadwood Alive street performance of a shootout. They use real guns from the 1800s and put in gunpowder so it’s extremely loud, but no bullets are fired.
We then drove to the town of Lead (Pronounced Leed) where we planned to eat supper at a place called The Lasagna Mountain. Unfortunately, when we arrived it (and everything else) was closed as it was Monday night. We returned to the rig and had grilled cheese sandwiches and strawberries with whipped cream.
By the time we finished supper, it was almost 8PM and Dexter and I went down to the pool + hot tub to relax until it closed at 9PM. Dexter had visions of playing in the pool, but it was too cold, so we soaked in the hot tub. It was nice to have some 1:1 time with Dexter and no other distractions or entertainment. We had a nice discussion about the way the world works (it’s always trying to get to equilibrium, so heat moves to cold, high pressure moves to low pressure and such).
We returned to the rig to find Heidi in bed and Annalise practicing her cello. We relaxed outside by the fire pit for a bit, then showers and time for bed.
Tuesday, August 13, 2024:
Ranger decided he was all done sleeping in Annalise’s bed again this morning and came to the foot of our bed and kept scratching until Heidi picked him up and let him join us. Eventually Heidi got up and left Ranger asleep next to me. Ranger has been crate trained for his entire life and he definitely isn’t used to sleeping in Annalise’s bed, but I also don’t want him sleeping in my bed. (Spoiler alert from August, 2025: Ranger ended up sleeping in my bed for the rest of the trip).
We got the kids up at 800, got ready for the day, and then ate our strawberry-rhubarb kuchen for breakfast. It was the best kuchen I’ve ever tasted.
In order to pull out of my site at the Deadwood KOA, I had to pull forward as far as possible without hitting the class C RV in front of me, then swing left as far as I could without hitting the trailer with the patio fireplace, then weave my way between a pickup truck to the right and a stop sign to the left. To say that this spot was tight is an extreme understatement. I took it very slowly and managed to sneak through without bashing into anything. This park was not designed with large travel trailers in mind and I will not stay here again.
It was only a 2-hr drive from Deadwood to Hot Springs, South Dakota, a route that took us right past Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse memorial as well as Wind Cave national park. It was an extremely beautiful drive even if it was a bit narrow in places.
When I planned this segment of the trip months ago, the plan was to stay here and then visit Wind Cave national park to explore the cave. Unfortunately, after we booked this segment, the National Park Service decided to repair / replace the Wind Cave elevator so there is no option to tour the cave for the foreseeable future.
We got to our site, a HipCamp that is probably my favorite camping spot of the trip so far. We are situated at the top of a hillside overlooking beautiful grassland and we have tons of room as well as full hookups.
Since we didn’t get our restaurant meal last night, we decided to go out tonight. Hot Springs, South Dakota has a population of about 3,500 people, so there are not a lot of restaurants to choose from. Heidi Picked Jalapeños grill
The drive to the Grill was unpleasant as much of the road is torn up for construction. A local told me that they are “2.5 years into a 2 year project and there is no end in sight.”
Jalapeno Mexican Grill is extremely popular and there was a long list of people waiting for a table. When we finally got our food, I really enjoyed my spinach enchiladas with cream sauce, beans and rice.
Wednesday, August 14, 2024:
We did two big activities today: we visited The Mammoth Site in the morning and then at sunset we went to the evening program at Mt Rushmore.
The Mammoth Site is a really amazing paleontology site where they have unearthed over 60 mammoths, a short-faced bear, and numerous other creatures. The theory is that this used to be a watering hole that had slippery sides and caused lots of creatures to die. Its hard to see how this could be a watering hole as the site sits on top of a mound, but they think that there was erosion of the area nearby which caused the former sinkhole to be a mound instead. They have been excavating the site since the 1970s and they have made it down about 25 feet of an anticipated 65 feet worth of material.
For lunch, we went to the Two Cows Creamery and Grill and had grilled cheese sandwiches with garlic parmesan fries and then ice cream. This creamery sources all of their materials from local farmers and the food was quite delicious.
After supper, we decided to head up to Mt. Rushmore for the evening program which included a ranger talk, video, taking down the American flag, and the lighting of the monument. On the drive, we saw a couple of bison and a prairie dog and then we came upon a deer lying in the middle of the road. We slowed down and could see that the deer had been recently hit by a car and had a pneumothorax, blood dripping out of its chest as well as its rectum. It was still alive and lifted its head as we approached but death was imminent.
We arrived to Mt. Rushmore about 755, quickly found parking, and headed to the amphitheater. Promptly at 8pm, the Mt. Rushmore ranger gave a 10 or 15 minute talk on each of the presidents represented at Mt. Rushmore.
After the talk, there was a 15 minute movie which talked about the history of Mt. Rushmore as well as the history of our country.
When this was finished, they invited all of the current or prior military members as well as gold star members to come to the stage where they took down and folded the flag. We all sang the star spangled banner and the program concluded.
I really enjoyed the program and it filled me with pride for our country. It was amazing to see how many veterans were in attendance. My Grandpa Hill would have been very proud to stand on that stage if he had the opportunity.
On the drive home, we spent a bunch of time talking to the kids about types of government (democracy vs theocracy vs monarch and such) as well as political parties (primarily democrats vs republicans) and then the idea of a fiscal conservative vs fiscal liberal and the idea of a social conservative and a social liberal as well as the idea of progressive politics. At the end of our discussion Annalise asked me if there has ever been a single presidential candidate that I was excited to vote for. When I told her no she said, “It seems like in politics you have to choose between 2 candidates and you don’t necessarily like or agree with either candidate.”
Exactly, Annalise. That’s the way the world works. Choosing the less undesirable candidate is generally how voting works.
By the time we got home and made it to bed, it was 1130PM.
Thursday, August 15, 2024:
Last night was the most outrageous lightning storm I’ve ever experienced. I fell asleep about midnight and then at 145AM I awoke to the sound of extremely loud thunder as well as Ranger barking. I took off my eye mask and counted 33 lightning strikes in a couple of minutes. A nearby weather station recorded 1,518 lighting strikes overnight!
Most of the strikes weren’t too close, but there were a couple that were close enough that the lighting and thunder were nearly simultaneous.
Annalise put Ranger in his crate to see if this would help him calm down. It did not. Eventually he ended up in our bed, wedged between Heidi and me. This helped him calm down sufficiently to quit barking, but he felt the need to lick my face which I really do not enjoy, especially at 2 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.
Eventually the storm calmed down and we all slept in until after 8AM.
During oboe lesson, Heidi, Dexter, and I headed in to town to buy gas for the Highlander as well as a gallon of milk. The RV fridge can fit 2 containers of ½ gallon milk easily, but not a single gallon container. At the gas station, the only ½ gallon milk they had was past it’s expiration date so I ended up buying 4 quarts of Milk instead. It cost $8.45 to buy a gallon of milk this way which is more than double the grocery store price, but I was paying for the convenience.
After lunch, Dexter had just enough time to get his practicing completed prior to my first AHPL informatics meeting. I spent 3 hours this afternoon doing informatics meetings. My first meeting was a “listening” meeting as opposed to a “talking” meeting so Annalise got in an hour of Cello practice.
This afternoon, Dexter and I had a nice e-bike ride while Annalise practiced her cello and Heidi made supper. The kids currently are banished from screen time, so after supper we played a board game. I let Annalise choose and she picked the board game “Pandemic.” This is a fun strategy game and is cooperative instead of competitive. Heidi dislikes playing strategy games that have numerous different pieces, multiple decks and complicated rules. In the end, we lost our game of Pandemic, and the world ended with everyone dead.
Tomorrow will be a long day as we have a bunch of driving to do and we are stopping at Wall Drug along the way.
Friday, August 16, 2024:
I set my alarm for 730 this morning with a goal to depart our site by 930. Heidi got up a little after 7 and I was up before my alarm went off. Ranger slept in his crate last night which meant no middle of the night sleep disruptions due to the dog. No thunderstorms last night either.
We completed our departure process and were outta the HipCamp about 930. I had to make a tight U-turn in order to leave, but I navigated it successfully on the first attempt with Dexter and Heidi both spotting for me.
We headed generally Northeast, back through Wind Cave national park towards Rapid City, South Dakota where I made a pit stop to refill Red Rover with Diesel. I’m learning to plan my fuel stops far in advance and using the satellite view of Google Maps to plan my approach and departure.
As we merged back on to Interstate 90, Dexter and I chatted about all of the “Wall Drug” signs we’ve seen on our trip and decided to look at every one we could as we approached Wall Drug. We learned about free water, 5 cent coffee, homemade ice cream, homemade donuts and homemade pie as well as a variety of other items for sale.
Wall Drug was created in the 1930s by an enterprising pharmacist who gave away free ice water to travelers on the way to Yellowstone. Of course, once you stopped for your free water, you needed to have some ice cream to go with it. Wall Drug is the original, “If you give a mouse a cookie…” (If you know, you know).
Wall Drug has now expanded into a huge store and café. The café has seating for over 500 people and there are 15 or 20 different shops that are part of the store. Each shop has a different feel and I suspect that it’s sort of like the business model of many antique malls and that each vendor rents out space for their shop.
Today is day 40 of our trip and I haven’t purchased a single souvenir, item of clothing or really anything other than food, fuel, or RV necessities. The only real thing I’ve splurged on thus far was when I bought a toaster oven. Today, I broke my “don’t by stuff” streak and purchased a Wall Drug branded fly swatter. We’ve been wishing for a flyswatter and I’ve never seen a touristy branded flyswatter in the past so I bought one. As I was checking out, the cashier pulled out his Wall Drug flyswatter and told me that I should give mine a name. In sharpie on his flyswatter was written, “The Grim Reaper.” I think I will name mine “The In-TIM-i-dator.”
We had vegeburgers for lunch at Wall Drug, and they were pretty tasty. Wall drug may have free water and cheap coffee, but everything else is priced as high as the market will bear.
Dexter found a change machine and converted a $5 bill into quarters as he saw that there was an arcade in the back. When we made our way to the arcade, Dexter played the shooting gallery game where he paid $1 for 25 shots. The shooting gallery was pretty generous with its targets and Dexter had a great time shooting the targets. Dexter would love to have access to guns if I let him. Earlier this week we had a long talk about guns, gun safety, gun violence, as well as accidental gun injuries and deaths as well as suicides. I’ve never owned a gun and I’m glad that there will never be any type of intentional or unintentional gun injuries or deaths based upon me.
After Wall Drug, we turned into Badlands National Park and headed about 30 miles to our campsite. Badlands National Park is extremely desolate and while driving today the truck thermometer read an outside air temperature of 97 degrees. That is too hot for my Tillamook blood! We found a pullout that was big enough for the rig so we stopped and took some pictures, but were glad to get promptly back into the air-conditioned truck.
The campground is on the very Eastern edge of Badlands National Park and we initially drove past it, but we eventually found our way to site 79. I sweet-talked the campground host into giving us the longest available site so we could fit the truck + trailer + bikes + highlander.
At 830PM, we went to a lecture by a Badlands National Park Ranger. We didn’t know the topic until we arrived and it was all about the Minuteman missile silos and control center just a few miles down the road. Each minuteman missile was powerful enough to destroy a large city, and could fly fast enough to go from South Dakota to Moscow in 30 minutes. “We deliver in 30 minutes or less or your next delivery is free!” (The South Dakota minutemen blatantly stole the Domino’s Pizza slogan). Just before the talk, we had the chance to look at the craters in the moon through a large telescope. The astronomer told us that the dark parts in the center of each crater are mountains. When an asteroid hits the moon it liquefies the surface which creates the crater and then liquid splashes up in the middle and then hardens before it falls down again.
After the minutemen talk, the astronomer got up and used a green laser pointer to show us various things in the night sky. He was quite funny and made the talk very enjoyable. He spotted a satellite going “via the polar route” which is the route that spy satellites take. “Who knows? We may have just had our picture taken.”
After the talk, we walked back to our RV in the dark. The moon was quite bright tonight which made the stargazing suboptimal, but it illuminated our walk nicely.
Tomorrow we are headed North towards Pierre, South Dakota on our way to North Dakota. Heidi’s ancestors used to live in the southeast corner of North Dakota and we are going to spend the night there in 2 nights in honor of her ancestors.
SAOTD: Ranger, who was bathed, groomed, and terrified of the massive thunderstorm.
August 10, 2024 to August 16, 2024
Trip days 34-40
Published on September 2, 2025