6 May – Rapid City / Black Hills

After breakfast we headed off to Crazy Horse. En route, we drove through the conifer forests that gave the Black Hills region its name. From the plains, the hills look black in the distance. Arriving at Crazy Horse, we turned off the highway and could see the monument towering over the tree tops. Crazy Horse is a giant statue cut out of a mountain top. The Latoka people are native to the region and the Black Hills are sacred to them. Crazy Horse was leader of the people and defended their way of life after the Treaty of 1868 was broken. This treaty was signed by the President and said As long as rivers run and grass grows and trees bear leaves, the Black Hills of Dakota will forever be the sacred land of the Sioux Indians. Then gold was discovered in the Black Hills…. Crazy Horse was stabbed in the back as he stood under a flag of truce.

The Crazy Horse memorial was begun in 1948 and work continues to this day. At this point only his face is finished and his outstretched arm and horse’s head is under construction. The family of the sculptor is working on it as an unfunded project. All funds come from admission and gift shop sales. Even in its unfinished state, the memorial is stunning. It is the world’s largest mountain carving.

After leaving Crazy Horse we drove the short distance to Mt Rushmore. Much smaller than Crazy Horse (the 4 Presidents heads could fit into the head of Crazy Horse) but equally as impressive. The Yanks have really gone to town on the presentation of the monument. On arrival you walk up a granite avenue lined with the flags of all the States. Ahead of you, is the mountain, with the heads of 4 Presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln carved into the stone.

Amazing that the carving was done between 1927 and 41, mainly by men hanging in bosons chairs from the cliff side with jackhammers. We followed a path that leads closer to the mountain and it is really interesting to see the heads up close. 

We also saw 2 mountain goats filling up on tasty grass after winter. They were not in the slightest interested in people and just kept nomming away. 

We did a bit of videoing for Ros’ business, as Mt Rushmore is the perfect place to talk about Leadership Legacy. A visit to the gift shop for Ros to purchase a Black Hills gold necklace as a souvenir, then heading back to the RV Park. On the way we passed through Keystone, and made a note to go back for a look at the goldmine. We also stopped at Fort Hayes to see the sets from Dances with Wolves. The film was made about 14 miles away on a private property and after they wrapped, the sets were moved to Fort Hayes. Kinda cool to see.  They were closed, so the only building was the outpost where Kevin Costner received his orders.

5 May – Laramie to Rapid City

We headed into Deadwood after breakfast and to the Back to 76 Museum. The town was started in 1876 during the gold rush. The museum is devoted to their “back to 76” celebration that seems to be an annual event. Sounds fun. They have a rodeo and re-enactments of all the notable events, like the shooting of Wild Bill Hickock outside one of the saloons. In the basement they had a large collection of wagons and stagecoaches (over 130) that they use in the parade.

Leaving Deadwood, we drove to Lead (pronounced LEED) to look at the formerly most productive gold mine in the world. It shut when the bottom fell out of the gold market after operating for 125 years continuously as a combo of open cut and shaft mining. The shafts go down to 8000ft. We took pics of the open cut hole – it’s pretty deep! 

Not much else happening in either Deadwood or Lead, but apparently they come to life after Memorial Day (in May?). It’s still a bit snowy here.

Leaving Lead we drove about 70ks to the Geographical Centre of the USA. Nothing actually there (the monument is in the nearest town) but we stopped and took a pic anyway. 

We thought there might be a flagpole or something, but no…. Given there was stuff all to do…we had lunch on the side of the road. The plains are flat for as far as the eye can see.

We then made tracks for Rapid City and an RV resort just out of town and close to Mt Rushmore. Heading there tomorrow!

4 May – Laramie – Deadwood

We didn’t have a great night, being next to both the Interstate Highway AND the main rail line, both of which ran all night. We were up and on the road early, as we had a big drive ahead. We travelled North with the Rockies to the left and the Laramie Mountains to the right. The plains were very bare and rugged. Speaking of trains, we overtook one that was at least 60 plus cars long, with 4 diesel engines.

Turning East, we crossed the Laramie Mountains and into farmland. It is early in the season, so the remnants of last year’s crops are still in the fields. We passed a paddock with bison and saw a number of prong horned antelope in the distance. 

We turned North again and began following the Oregon Trail route. At a town called Guernsey, we stopped at 2 significant historical places, the Oregon Trail Ruts and the Register Cliffs. The Oregon Trail is visible for some of its length, despite it being just wheel ruts and 150 years old. The Guernsey site is one where the wagon wheels wore deep ruts in soft sandstone and are clearly visible. Even after the obvious ruts, you can still see the trail heading away across the fields. 

The Register Cliff is a camping place that the pioneers used regularly and it became a “thing” for people to carve their name, place of origin and the date into the soft sandstone cliffs. The information board says that the oldest name is a trapper from 1790 something and the tradition continued through cowboys, army scouts stationed at nearby Fort Laramie and up to modern times. They have fenced off the old names and left sections for modern graffiti.

Driving North, the scenery changed first to drier plains with tumbleweeds caught in the fences and then to the foothills of the Black Hills in South Dakota. As we drove into the hills we started driving past snowdrifts and log cabins. We arrived in Deadwood for the night to find that we are in the lower zones of the snow line, its gonna be a cold one! We also had a couple of little visitors near our site, so we left a couple of nuts out for them.

3 May – Cheyenne to Laramie

Up and at em!  We drove into Cheyenne to have a look around.  We went through the historic train museum, which is right next to the working train station used by Union Pacific.  It was very interesting as the rail has been a very significant factor in developing the American interior lands.  The steam engines, or “Iron Horses” grew in popularity and size as demand required the services.  Grew in fact to be humongous engines known as “Big Boys”.  One on these was on display in a park nearby that we went to later. The museum went through the history of the development of the rail and the interior towns as they quickly grew to accommodate the people moving there.  There was quite a lot of lawlessness and it seems that there were vigilante groups set up to deal with this.  

There was also a model rail set up above the museum and this was done really well, depicting some of the actual towns that the rail went through, with great attention to detail.

From the Rail Museum we walked to Capital Building, based on the actual capital building in Washington, which had 24 crt gold leaf on the dome. 

Then onto the Wyoming State museum.  Here we looked at the history of Wyoming, very interesting.  After this we picked up a Starbucks, Ros had a caramel crunch Frappuccino while Steve had a chocolate cookie Frappuccino, very nice…. We like our Starbucks.  We made our way to the original state Governor’s House and had a look through.  Was used as the Governor’s residence up to the mid 1970’s.  It then underwent a restoration project in 2005 and decorated it with items from different eras.  Now they allow tours through it.  Very interesting.

We walked back to the RV, had lunch and went over to the park to see the “Big Boy” loco.  My goodness these things are huge!  No wonder they called them Big Boys.   The Union Pacific Railroad made 25 of these, toward the end of the steam era, at a cost of 1 million dollars each.  This one (4004) was retired from service after 440,545 miles in October 1958.

We then set sail, or steering wheel, to Laramie. A mere 1 hour to the West of Cheyenne.  Unfortunately there was quite a head wind blowing and we also had a slight incline, so the ole girl was back to only about 50mph (the speed limit being 75mph).  The incline took us from about 5500 feet to around 8500 feet, back to what we were (roughly) in the Rockies.  The plains beside the highway still had the remnants of snow on the ground.

We arrived in Laramie and stopped at the Laramie Plains Museum, which is in the historic Ivinson Mansion.  We were quite lucky as the lady doing the tours was just about to close up.  She had seen us parking the RV (no mean feat on a side street LOL) and asked if we would be doing the tour.  We said yes, only if it wasn’t inconvenient.  She was more than happy to take us and it was fabulous and very interesting. 

This mansion was built in 1893 by Edward & Jane Ivinson.  Edward was then running to be the first Governor of Wyoming at the time and it was intended that this would be the state house and the Laramie would be the state’s capital.  Unfortunately he lost and the house became his private residence. Later on it was gifted to become a girl’s school and was known as the Ivinson Girls School.  It fell into disrepair and was saved from demolition in 1972 and has since been fully restored using furniture and other items of the time & from around the area.  It is a spectacular place that has extremely well restored.  The inside is very beautiful and the house has 3 upper levels with a basement used for wine & storage.

Having done the tour, we headed off to find a camp site.  We found our rest stop at a KOA park ground, just on the outskirts of Laramie.  Time to have a dinner…. Sweet n sour-stir-fried pork…. Yum!

2 May – Rocky Mountains to Cheyenne

We were up in the morning and packing up. 

We did a bit of drive through Estes Park for a look at the township and found the historic Stanley Hotel. 

We went on a 90 minute tour of the hotel and surrounding outbuildings and grounds. The tour was heavily weighted towards the paranormal, as Stephen King was staying there when he got his inspiration for the book “The Shining” and the ABC miniseries of the Shining was filmed there.  The guide told us all the ghost stories; rooms where your unpacking is done and put away mysteriously while you are out, a room where a cowboy appears and kisses women on the forehead, children’s footsteps heard on the 5^th floor (except there are only 4 floors…) and even a cat that sits on your bed, then gets down and disappears before your eyes… It was a bit of fun and lots of interesting information about the area and the hotel owners – they were inventors and society people who were making $100,000 per week from the invention of dry plate photography (that’s $2M in today’s money). The hotel was built for their society friends to spend summers in the Rockies and no expense was spared. 

We had lunch in the restaurant after the tour and it was very nice – a late lunch, it was nearly 2pm.

Leaving Estes Park, we followed a river canyon east. There was a big flood in 2013 and the results were still there. We passed houses that had their foundations undermined by the floodwaters, crushed cars washed up on the banks and debris in clumps in the trees. There were excavators working all along the river, scooping up debris and resculpting the river bank with heaps of rocks.

Leaving the canyon, we headed north to Wyoming. Rolling plains as far as the eye can see!

Finally into Cheyenne and a small RV Park on the outskirts.  

1 May – Rocky Mountains

We awoke to the pleasant sounds of silence that you’d expect in a National Park in the early season with nearly nobody around….and also awoke to the fact that it was a mere -2 (inside the RV) due to the elevation of 8150ft (for our Tassie friends that is about twice the height of Mt Wellington).  So we shattered the silence with the sound of our generator to get the heating going.  The heating works off the “house” batteries and they were low due to being used overnight for lighting etc (in National Parks you can only run generators at certain times etc). We noted last night that there were a couple of sites with tents….bbrrrrrr…. they must have been cold during the night.

Whilst Ros waited for the inside temperature to reach a suitable level before emerging from under the covers, Steve went out to get some stunning early morning photos of the Rocky Mountains, just behind the RV.

We had breaky and set off for a hike to Cub Lake, which is about a 4hr walk (no kickboxing work out needed today J).  Along the way we saw more elk in the fields and more stunning scenery. 

We passed a Parks worker (on horseback) leading some pack mules, carrying gravel for work team who were fixing up sections of the track….really cool to see this.  We eventually got to Cub Lake.  It was quite pretty, although a lot of trees & vegetation has been lost in a fire during last year.  

We continued on the round trip circuit and found that the track was becoming harder to follow and identify, as we were climbing higher into the snow line and the track was covered with snow.  We persevered and got ourselves down to the lower level of the track with no problems.  We past another group of track workers who were clearing trees from another side track.  They had pack llamas with them, quite unusual to see.  The llamas were just lying there quite contently whilst the guys cut down trees using an old fashioned cross-cut hand saw (2x person type).

On the way back to the RV we saw a male Elk by himself in a field.

After walking for about 4hrs, we were quite happy to get the boots off and have a late lunch.  We then drove back into to Estes Park parked up in Spruces RV park for the night and to sit down, rest & plan tomorrow’s adventures J, Steve has decided that there is definitely no kickboxing training tonight LOL.

30 April – Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park

We headed out to Camping World to get some parts for the RV before heading out of Denver. Camping World was amusing – it has everything the RVer could want, including plastic flamingos on stakes to set up outside when you set up camp.

We drove through rolling hills with the sharp peaks of the Rocky Mountains jutting up to our left side and Denver visible on the plains to the right. Denver is known as the Mile High City because at just over 5000ft, it is a mile high. We drove through Boulder and past the Uni of Colorado – looked nice.

About half way to the National Park, we were detoured due to road works and went via Saint Vrain Canyon which was a lovely drive through steep rocks alongside a river. There had obviously been a flood recently as the river had been dug out and the road repaired in places. All along the banks were hunting / fishing shacks and some of them had been quite undercut by the flooding.

As we neared the NP, the trees got more alpine looking and the mountains snow capped. 

The fishing shacks gave way to real hunting lodges and hotel style mountain retreats. We arrived at the City of Estes Park at the gates of the NP and checked in at the Visitors Centre. We found the campsites were still without services due to the cold – its going to be -5 degrees tonight, but we headed into the NP undeterred!

After parking up at a very vacant campground, we went for a walk. Rounding a bend we found the most amazing Elk meadow. There must have been 40 or so Elk lying resting or grazing in the meadow beside a river. We sat on rocks and watched them for ages with the mountains and conifer trees behind them. Lots of photos. 

Finally, at risk of wind chilling we headed back to the RV for dinner. We kicked the generator in the guts and after a few coughs and false starts it got going just fine, so we have heat and light until the 10pm curfew. We are going to heap the blankets on tonight!

After dinner we looked out the window and saw a herd of deer passing by the RV. Some quick pics before they disappeared.