...This means something...

 Today was a Destination travel day.  I prepared the night before by packing up the fence, outdoor carpets, and folding chairs.  That shortened the departure list by about a half hour.  We awoke at 6:30 this morning, Got cleaned up and dressed, Then...:

• Let the dogs out for morning relief
• Make and fold up the bed
• Empty all trash cans
• Retract the Slide out
• Disconnect Electrical and store Main Power Cable
• Check and Lock all exterior Storage bays***
• Start Engine
• Raise Hydraulic Leveling jacks
• Retract Awning and stairs
• Lock Door
• Drive to Dump Station and Empty Holding Tanks
• Dispose of Trash

And we are ready to leave.

Not noted above, was coffee and breakfast.  We discovered preparing our travel day that Starbucks and Chick-fil-A are next door to each other on our route from the park to the Interstate.  How Convenient!  

Also Noted above is *** on the storage bays.  I missed one of the bays and we heard a bump when I stopped at a stop light.  We realized what it was when we got out to get coffee and breakfast. Oops!

It's those little things that reinforce your self-confidence.  I won't make that mistake again, trial and error learning at its best.  15 minutes later and we are back on the road.  Interstate 25 took us northward into the High Plains and Wyoming.  A stark reminder out my driver side window of the Rocky Mountain range slowly getting further away.  I was reminded of a song later as we got into Wyoming, "Home on the Range."  We started seeing small herds of wild antelope and after cresting a hill somewhere in the middle of nowhere a herd of Buffalo numbering at least a hundred.  The High Plains are evidently called that for a reason.  At Boyd Lake State Park, The elevation was at 4960 feet, Across the High Plains we were up to 6380 feet that I noticed on my Garmin at one point but gradually we descended to a comfortable 4700 feet where we are now parked at the Mountain View RV Park in Sundance, Wyoming.

I'm getting ahead of myself though.  This was after all, a Destination Travel Day.  I'm sure most of you have expected to see some pictures by now which is usually the case, but I really wanted to keep the anticipation going a little while longer.  We did make a stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  It allowed all of us to take a break, fill up the gas tank, and give the boys another relief stop.  

Georgie Girl has an 80 Gallon Fuel tank, Logically it makes sense to fill up at half a tank.  Reason One is; The Maximum Card Authorization at the pump is $175.00 so a half tank shouldn't reach that limit.  Reason two is; you never know just how far it is to the next Open Fuel Station.  At 8 to 10 miles per gallon, before you know it, that second half of the tank is always dwindling away faster than you might like.  And Fuel Prices here are about 50 cents higher per gal. than at home. 

Back on track, we continued on our way making good time.  The roads here are OK, not too many potholes, I really expect more in the northern states where the winter freeze can do its worst to a road surface.  After a time, the High Plains became more of rolling hills and without realizing it, we all of the sudden noticed there were trees on the hillsides again.  Our Destination was now 32 miles distant as we got off the interstate and turned onto US Hwy 14 East.  Still, no visual clues aside from the odd Sign to let us know we were headed in the right direction.  Speaking of which, We stopped at a rest area (on the left) and had lunch.  When we headed back out, I made a right and My wife kindly informed me about a mile down the road I was going back to Colorado.  Oops #2 for today...

We had planned this entire trip months ago.  Lynn had never been to Mount Rushmore, and with the Crazy Horse Statue nearby it was a 2-for-1 and we found a beautiful campground in the mountains not far from both.  Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself again...  I recall there was another National Monument in the general vicinity but I wasn't sure just how near.  Lynn of course did a little research and we added this little stop along the way. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower as the first national monument on September 24, 1906.  The Devils Tower National Monument gained notoriety in 1977 as a central figure in the now classic Steven Spielberg Sci-fi Production of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"  The topography surrounding the monument left us in anticipation knowing it was ever closer but not revealing itself till we were about 7 miles away, then disappearing again as the road dipped back into the valleys.

At last the monument came into view and I took a photo a few miles away from the park. 

We had planned to stay here for an hour or two depending on how much was on display at the visitors center.  The road from the gate entrance climbs and winds around the tower ending at a parking lot near the base of the main column where the Visitors Center is.  A footpath continues on beyond that with a registration desk for those bold enough to attempt climbing the face.  Lynn and I are old enough to enjoy the view and not suffer the climb up the footpath.  We each spent some time in the visitors center observing the few educational displays and perusing the gift shop while the other was entertaining Toto and Bilbo outside.  While Lynn was inside, I noticed a couple of telescopes mounted to the sidewalk and a few people peering through and commenting about a climber.  

I got my phone out and zoomed in on the near vertical face to find a climber about 2/3s of the way up.  After observing the screen for a few minutes, it was clear this climber had met his match and was frozen in place, probably contemplating his life choices and wondering how to survive as I snapped the shot.  I watched him for another 3 or 4 minutes and he eventually began rappelling back down the face to a ledge about 50 meters below.  I would have loved to make a climb like that 30 years ago but, I prefer free climbing and nowadays that's completely out of the question.

I had to get one last shot before leaving and found this spot where I could frame it between two trees.  Its hard to imagine the scale of this thing until you have a reference like the climber in the previous shot.  If you compare that shot to this one and identify the spot where the climber was you'll have a better idea of the scale here.

We made our way back to the RV and descended back down towards the park entrance.  As you get to the more level ground towards the bottom there are a few pull offs on the side of the road.  to my wife's delight, this was beside a field full of Prairie dogs, there were hundreds of little burrows dotted around the meadow with the prairie dogs standing guard by the entrances.  

We made our way out of the park and headed southeast to the town of Sundance, Wyoming.  Here we'll just stay the night and head back out again in the morning for destinations 2 & 3 in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota.  I haven't been to Mount Rushmore in more than 40 years and from what I spied on Google Maps, It looks like they have done a lot to develop the area better for tourism in that time.  We're also slated to see the Crazy Horse Statue nearby although we have to manage logistics in the morning since Georgie Girl is 12 feet 2 inches high and there are several Tunnels she just wont fit into.  I'll let you know how we did in the next entry.  

Till then, I'll have a nice shower and a warm bed to relax in while Toto, Bilbo, Lynn and I stretch out and watch "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" likely drifting off to sleep about an hour in.