Abby – Page 3 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Rocky Point October

Sunny! Clear! Crisp! at 66 glorious degrees F

I know, I know…it is supposed to be a blog about traveling, or the MoHo, or at least something a bit adventurous. But I just couldn’t resist talking about October right here at home. Looking back to past years, it seems to be a repeating pattern. October is probably the most glorious month of the year, at least when it doesn’t snow.

The leaves on the aspens are at their high point. I have to take photos every year, and it seems as though I keep going back to the same spots where the aspens have a particular shade of pinky orange, usually backlit since the sun is rather low in the sky. Every year the colors are different, just a little bit here and there, but different enough that I have to take another picture of the same spot.

The colors in the yard are different each year as well. There is lots of shade here and trying to get our hardwoods to flourish is a labor of love. A few of the flowering cherries and crabapples have finally reached high enough to find the sun and are growing in leaps and bounds. The maples are so gorgeous, but due to the shade, they never get really fat and thick the way they might in the sunshine. But oh, how that brilliance lights up the forest!

My greenhouse didn’t do as well this year as some past. The tomatoes are still trying to ripen, although I did get a few. Seems as though the best crop this year was the bush beans, which fed us many meals of yummy fresh beans. We even tried to grow corn. Probably won’t do that one again. Even though I had pollinated the silks, I guess I am not as good as the wind or bees, since the cute little ears had about 2 inches of filled out kernals and 6 inches of what looked like baby corn from a can. ah well, the price of living in a forest in the Cascades…

Now home for a bit of time, and no longer working even part time, I found myself with time to play with all that fabric I have been hoarding. I had a couple of projects that were cut out last spring, when it was still raining, and some ideas rolling around in my head that would wake me up at 3 in the morning. Fabric does that, kind of the way yarn used to do it to me. It has nothing to do with the quilting exactly, but more to do with the color, the playing with color, moving it around, blending it, turning it into something different than the sum of the parts. Even though I mentioned the quilt in the last post, I didn’t have a photo of it, so here it is.

Mo likes fall too. Her favorite thing is fixing stuff, and with the lawns slowing down she has less mowing time and more fixing time. The Rocky Point place is getting all ready for winter. Wood is in, cabin is winterized, our road has been re-graveled by Mo and her trusty tractor, the chains for the tractor are on and the blade is ready.

Winter will be short this year for us. Sometimes it snows in October, often in November, almost always in December. Last year in December we were plowing and shoveling and blowing every single day for two weeks! January it is getting a bit old, but for us this year it won’t matter at all, since we will be heading south. Snowbirds?! If we go south for three months in a motorhome does that make us snowbirds??

Today we are leaving for Junction City to have our new dinette booth and table installed and the sofa taken out. Of course I’ll take photos of the process, and hopefully we will love it.

During this month past, Time has given the blessing of long lazy visits with daughter Melody on her day off, having coffee and doing the girl talk thing. It is the little things that matter somehow. Time also allowed me to finally almost finish going through the last of Bel’s (my friend who passed away last February) stuff that was in storage and send it off to her sister. Time gave me a day of at long last starting a “retirement project” that has been on my list for the last few years, and one I never could seem to get started.

I am copying a gazillion old videos to DVD, with the hope that someday I will figure out how to edit the goofy footage to the really good parts. In the mean time, I get to look at what I looked like when I was 51. Geez?! I wanna do that again….but I seem to remember at 51 I felt really old….Time.

What is it about fall that makes Time seem so precious.

And friends, old and new. Blogging and Facebook are mixed blessings, I know, but I have to thank my new friend, John Parsons, for somehow finding me on Facebook, writing about truly amazing stuff about water, climate, fires, and the planet in general, and actually being the conduit that helped me to find another old friend from the 80s, Marti Bridges. We worked together for SCS back then and had some truly great times together.

And then, of course, I received news from my friend Jeanne, (who anyone who reads this blog even a little bit should remember). Jeanne had GREAT GREAT news and it seems that I will be traveling to Vermont to share it with her next fall. Ahhhh I can hardly wait till it is old news and Jeanne has told everyone and I can talk about it! Jeanne, do you have a clue just how much self control it took for me to NOT put that photo on my blog??

Time and Friends and the Internet. What more could I ask for.

Shingle Springs to Nevada City, and Friends!

There is nothing quite like a morning in the Mother Lode, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, on a warm spring day. Waking to sunshine and temps in the mid 70’s with an expected high of 84 or so is just about perfect. Light breezes and low humidity make it even better. This time of year, the grasses are still somewhat green, and on a Tuesday morning the traffic was even minimal.

Our site at the Elk’s Lodge in Shingle Springs is just a jump off Highway 50, and there are several ways to get north to Nevada City, but we wanted to take the most scenic route, following North Shingle Road to intersect with the famous gold road, Highway 49 near Coloma. The destination was Nevada City and meeting our new and old friends, (well most of us aren’t exactly new), at Nickie and Jimmie’s home there.

We hadn’t yet met in person, but I wasn’t the least bit concerned about it. I am not sure why this is, but somehow the essence of people comes through in their blogs in ways that always seem to be just right. Most of the time, I know if I will “click” with someone, and it amazes me that people turn out to be exactly as I thought they would. Nickie and Jimmie were no exception, except I think they were even nicer than I imagined. What truly lovely people!

The route north was wonderful, and winding through the hills on the curvy roads reminded me so much of the years I lived in Sonora and drove these roads for work. I also marveled at how lovely the landscape looked when I didn’t have to imagine slogging up those hot, brushy slopes with a pack and shovels! I could once again see the charm of the foothills and why people love it so.

We left early enough to take a short side trip to Coloma, but it was too early to visit the visitor center and once again my visit was just an overview. This is the site of gold discovery on the American River, and there are interpretive signs everywhere and old buildings that have a story to tell. We stopped long enough for a walk along the river with Abby, but returned to the road north fairly quickly so we wouldn’t miss our meet and greet time with Laurie and Odel at Nickie and Jimmie’s place.

The American River is a story itself, and we saw lots of hikers and raft companies that ply the wild waters of that river. It is a great place for recreation, with an old bridge walk that crosses the river in the canyon just below Auburn. We thought we might walk it on our way back, but by late afternoon when we drove the return route, the parking area was packed and it was hot and there were way too many people for us to attempt it. As beautiful as it is, there seems to be a lot of people pressure on the beautiful places around the Mother Lode.

Once we were through the old town portion of Auburn, Highway 49 is a 4 lane freeway all the way to Grass Valley and in no time we were exiting the road to Nevada City. We were a bit early, so decided to amble through town before finding Nickie and Jimmie’s home up the hill. I hadn’t been to Nevada City in years, but I was reminded on this sunny morning of just why it is such a popular place for so many. My eldest daughter dreamed of living here, as I once did. It is nestled into the pine covered hills, with steep winding streets filled with gorgeous restored Victorians and a Craftsman or two here and there, and lush spring flowers. The dogwoods were in full bloom and magnificent! We decided that after our little meeting we would come back and walk the town. Of course, at that time we didn’t know we would have the perfect guides who provided ice cream!

Up the hill to their home was a beautiful drive as well, winding up through Sierran Mixed Conifer forest, thick and lush with Ponderosa Pine, Incense Cedar, and White Fir. At over 3200 feet on deep old soils, the trees are growing beautifully, and the homes lining the road were quite lush as well. It was beautiful.

Our welcome was as delightful as expected, but their home was even more lovely than I imagined, and Nickie’s warm and open southern California personality warmed and mellowed even more by her time in the South and her sweet Southern husband combined to make a truly amazing combination. I loved both of them almost instantly. We laughed and talked as if we actually knew each other (which we did!!) and enjoyed seeing all their work on the yard, the new hot tub, and their beautiful home. Laurie and Odel arrived just after we did, and since the four of them were already acquainted, the talking and laughter was ongoing.

A special treat was seeing a special quilt made from some of the great collection of runner’s tee shirts that Nickie and Jimmie had collected over the years of short runs and long ones, including marathons! Gorgeous!

Of course we had to do the RV Blogger get together thing and go find someplace wonderful to eat. Our Nevada City hosts recommended a great spot in town, Lefty’s Grill, and we dined on the sheltered patio to the sounds of the bubbling creek. Wonderful food, and a sweet waiter who told me that definitely dogs were not allowed on the patio, but that if he didn’t know it, I could probably bring Abby. This was the perfect solution, since it was warm and even in the shade, it would have been worrisome to leave Abby in the car. Of course, the waiter smiled and said, “Please don ‘t bring your dog if you come back again, but she can stay for now”. Abby helped by being her quiet sweet and calm self, lying under the table quietly while we ate.

Laurie and Odel had lots of remodeling to continue, so declined to walk the town with us, but we were really happy to have Nickie and Jimmie lead us to good parking (.25 cents for two hours) and show us some of the finer spots in the lovely tiny historic city. Nickie said later that we only saw a tiny bit of it, but after a couple of hours we didn’t mind leaving and saving the rest for later. Something tells me we will return to this great little place again.

There is so much to do around here, lots of parades, and art, and festivals, good weather, beautiful mountains, rivers, so much to do and all sorts of recreational activities in abundance. It is a nice place. However, as we drove home, we remembered again that nice places usually attract lots and lots of people. Once again we drove the winding roads with lots of company. Mo used to love her little sports cars, and as she pushed the Tracker up the steep hills she wished for a clutch and some gears! As fast as she was going, however, there were often many cars right behind her trying to push her up the hill. A surprising number of turnouts along the route at least made it tolerable. Most people waved when she pulled over. Except for all the folks on cell phones, including one woman in a big SUV who almost obliterated us in Auburn, people in California are pretty good drivers.

It was such a great day! Thanks to the internet, and blogging, and RV’ing, we discovered some new friends and explored a place we might not have done without that little extra push of having someone who lived there.

City Camping

Mission Bay RV Park, San Diego, California; High 68F Low 57F, light rain.

I can hear rain on the roof now, after a day of warm air and clouds over the ocean. The predictions have changed over the last few days, with only one thing in common. Tuesday was to be our best sunny day, and it was. The last two days have been cloudy, but still warm, at least to us. I noticed that many of the comments for these days in San Diego are affirmations of what a great place it is to visit. Hard to imagine that in so many years of living in California I visited San Diego so rarely, and remember almost nothing about it at all. I must have been a young teenager the last time I was here.

We have enjoyed ourselves, but haven’t done so much that we are exhausted and overwhelmed. I could see how that could happen here. It is a big city with a great deal of art and entertainment, and a lot of outdoor space to do outdoor things. If we had our bikes and kayaks with us, we would no doubt be exhausted by now, but we decided on this trip to leave them behind. No matter the destination, it is hard to dig the kayaks out of the snow and load up the bikes. It is a bit like grocery shopping when you aren’t hungry, sometimes hard to imagine what you want to eat. In the same way, it is hard to get excited about biking and kayaking when the temperatures are single digits. If we come back here, you can bet we will be sure to bring both bikes and kayaks.

The last two days are still a bit of a blur. Some things stand out, especially the neighborhoods. We did some of the normal sightseeing things expected of San Diego visitors, but we also wandered down unknown streets discovering lovely surprises along the way. One of the best was the area called Mission Hills, a neighborhood west of the more talked about Hillcrest area, and just up the hill from the famous Old Town San Diego. A web site that I later found when searching for information called it “the neighborhood you dreamed of before the world changed”. There were broad sidewalks, and beautiful old bungalows from the 20’s, small and tidy and lovingly refurbished, and not a for sale sign in sight.

We spent the afternoon yesterday exploring Balboa Park, home of the San Diego Zoo, but also home to 14 world class museums, countless manicured gardens, fountains, and pathways meandering through the wooded hills just minutes from the central part of the city. We had Abby along, and decided against trying to see the museums, but one could easily spend a long day just exploring this beautiful park.

Later in the afternoon we drove through Hillcrest and Mission Hills to arrive in Old Town San Diego at just the right time for an amazing Mexican dinner at Fiesta de Reyes, with gas lit fires scattered around the patio to keep us cozy in the cool evening.

The morning rain was light today, and the skies lightened enough mid day to make our trek to Coronado quite lovely. We drove across the Coronado Bridge and I searched for the small home where I lived as a four year old. I can remember what it felt like, and remember the policemen bringing me back when I “ran away” to the beach just two blocks away. I think I found the street. It will be fun to go home and search for the old letters that just might have the address of that little house on them.

We drove south to Imperial Beach, within view of Tijuana, and on this gray day, I could find very little about it that was appealing. We drove back north to find another well known Dog Beach, where Abby could play ball and I could just sit and listen to the ocean. The Dog Beach is adjacent to the Naval Base and is actually on military property. It was a bit confusing trying to figure out exactly where to go, and the signs were not very clear at all. The military gate guard was helpful though, and pointed us in the right direction.

Later we parked closer to the Hotel Del Coronado, an amazing landmark on the southwest perimeter of the island. The hotel has the distinction of being the largest wooden building still standing in the US. Since it was a cool afternoon, we left Abby for a bit while exploring the lobby and grounds of this famous site. The woodwork was impressive, and everything was lustrous and beautiful, but the interior of the main part of the hotel was really dark! All that gorgeous dark wood from the late nineteenth century can be a bit oppressive. Much has been written about this wonderful old hotel, and the gift shop was amazing with a special emphasis on Marilyn Monroe, who stayed here during the filming of “Some Like It Hot”. The hotel was well featured in the movie.

We opted for an ice cream cone from the hotel sweet shop and were a bit aghast that two single cones cost us $12.65. Sheesh. Then as we explored the sun deck overlooking the beach, we saw the burgers went for merely 15.95 each, and even came with a pack of potato chips. At least they were Kettle Chips. It was lovely when the sun came out, and for a short time the beach lit up a bit. I still would much rather be camped in my MoHo than staying at this beautiful old hotel.

We drove back into downtown San Diego to explore the much touted Gaslamp District, only to discover that much of what makes this area fun to visit are the restaurants and the night life. The restaurants lining the street were busy with folks eating outdoors, and the sidewalks were lined with folks from the nearby convention center, identified by their matching dangling name badges. We walked a few blocks but since we weren’t ready for more restaurant eating, there wasn’t that much to keep us there.

Instead we drove a few more blocks to search for another well known area called “Little Italy”. Once again, the restaurants and eateries seemed to be the major form of entertainment. In spite of the descriptions of “boutiques and shopping”, there wasn’t much to entice us to park and walk again. It might have been because it was a cool winter day, but there didn’t seem to be much going on in this area either.

It is surprising how close all of this is to our little spot in Mission Bay, with the Pacific Highway leading right from downtown, past Old Town and Sea World, past the turn to Fiesta Island and once again home at the RV park. Almost anything of interest in the main part of the city is within fifteen minutes or so of the park.

I can see how San Diego would be a nice place to live if you liked cities and all that they have to offer. It is a nice place to visit, for sure. But I do notice that I am feeling the pressure of people and the lack of open space. I am ready for the next stage of our little getaway to begin, starting tomorrow morning when we hook up the Tracker and head east for the desert.

The rain has stopped for now, and I am finished with my latest book. How long has it been since you read a book that was amazing for its language? I found myself wanting to reread and highlight passages just for their eloquence, and for the feeling they gave me. When so many books lately are quick reads that are simple entertainment, it was wonderful to slip into the magic of prose that lifted me from everyday life. Remember Margaret Atwood? I read “The Handmaid’s Tale” a very long time ago, but just found another old novel of hers, “Cat’s Eye”. It was a haunting story of a difficult time in a girl’s youth, but the writing itself is what made the book sing.

Tonight, rain on the roof. Tomorrow, rain in the desert. But still, it isn’t snowing and it isn’t freezing, and rain or shine, the desert hot springs pools are waiting.

The Last of Wyoming

August 6 and 7 Falls Campground on Highway 26 west of Dubois, breezy, in the low 70’s

It’s breezy at the moment, and the vertical mountain cliffs north of the campground are a bit clearer than they were when we woke this morning. Smoke from the fires in Montana and Idaho are finding their way toward us again and dimming the brilliance of the sunshine. I am sitting in the shade by the unlit campfire while Mo splits kindling for tonight. Tee shirt and shorts are the order of the day. The sun is warm but the breeze is just chilly enough that the shade feels wonderful.

When planning this trip, I hoped to find something along the way between Thermopolis and the tourist busy part of the highway around Jackson Hole. Streets and Trips led to this Shoshone FS campground and we took our chances without a reservation. Then I read RV Sue’s account of her time both here, and at the Brooks Lake campgrounds five miles north, and I knew the choice would be a good one.

It has been a peaceful stop, even with the daytime sound of traffic moving west toward Yellowstone and the Tetons. The rally at Sturgis is now in progress, so the roar of motorcycles has dimmed to just an occasional rumble. After our hot evening in Thermopolis, (yes, I still have to write about Thermopolis, the Bighorn Mountains, the Medicine Wheel, Buffalo, and the Little Bighorn Battleground!) even the A loop seems uncrowded to us. The plans were adjusted a bit yesterday so that we could stay here two nights and have a full day to enjoy the last of the Wyoming mountains.

Yesterday was a short trip, only 155 miles or so between Thermopolis and this park, with a Wal-Mart stop at Riverton in between. Some parts of Wyoming are simply breathtaking, but other parts seem like long stretches of a landscape only a geologist could love. When we reached Dubois, the mountains again lifted to the west. This part of the west gives full meaning to what John McPhee described so well in “Basin and Range”.

I thought of RV Sue in the laundromat, telling her great stories at the only place where you can get any kind of internet. We haven’t had a decent signal in several days now. We don’t even have a cell phone signal here and in the park in Thermopolis, the phones wouldn’t work at all and the MiFi struggled along with a single bar.

We decided that even though loop B was completely empty yesterday, we wanted electricity, and so entered loop A hoping for two sites together. Two sites appeared, and just in time, since the two rigs following us were hoping as well. I think this loop filled up last night, but when we went walking in loop B it was still empty.

Nancy and Roger and Mo and I are still enjoying or tandem travels. This is new for us, since we usually travel alone, but it has been working out just perfectly. Mo and I are somewhat the tour guides, with the responsibility of planning the routes, looking for gas, choosing the overnights, deciding how far we can go in a day. Whenever I ask Nancy or Roger if they have a preference, their answer is invariably, “Whatever you two want is fine with us”. Talk about easy!!

We have been sharing our evening meals, with most of them a joint effort, and now and then we do the big camp breakfast complete with hash browns and toast. Tonight is steak night, and I’ll bring the salad, Nancy does the Texas toast and we each cook our steaks. Roger even has a pair of titanium sticks for cooking marshmallows. They don’t get hot at all over the fire and I have some of those huge camp marshmallows left over from who knows when. I don’t even like marshmallows, but still love to do the campfire thing.

We walked around the campground last night, took pictures of the waterfall, and spent a lot of time laughing at the dogs while they played in the Wind River that winds through the campground. Jeremy really enjoyed this spot as well, since it was open and spacious enough that I could let him run around outside on his own. He is really so good about it, but every once in awhile he decides that he is NOT ready to go in and will go under the rig and laugh at me.

Today we decided to take a leisurely drive (five miles of very washboard road) up to Brooks Lake for some kayaking and hopefully to hear more stories about the mama grizzly and her two cubs that have been hanging out there. Mama is gone it seems, at least the camp host Richard hasn’t seen them in a couple of weeks. We also discovered to our dismay that in order to launch our kayaks in Wyoming, we are required to have a Wyoming boat sticker and an additional invasive species sticker for each boat. A bit too expensive for one afternoon of kayaking.

Instead we parked at the boat launch area and wandered off toward Jade Lakes and enjoyed the part of the trail that borders Brooks Lake. We thought better of hiking the four miles round trip to the top since we were in our kayak sandals with the dogs and had no bear spray and no water. It was a pretty walk, and at the time we didn’t know that mama bear wasn’t around, so we were a little nervous now and then as we approached buffalo berry thickets.

It feels great to slow down a bit, and this will be our last day in cool, timbered mountains. Mo built great campfires, surprising that they are allowed in this kind of fire season, but the fire circles at this campground are especially nice, with strong iron grates, and a space beneath the fire box to store kindling.

It has been wonderful to have enough space to let Jeremy outside to explore the campsite and play with Jackson, his new found best buddy. Jackson loves the kitty and will lick Jeremy’s ears and follow him everywhere he goes. Abby isn’t as affectionate with Jeremy, and since Jeremy grew up with dogs, he misses that interaction. He often snuggles up to Abby and she looks at us saying, “really?!”

Tomorrow we will again have internet access, television, and probably traffic. Twin Falls is next on the list.

~Deadwood, Devils Tower, and Buffalo ~

We are now in Buffalo, Wyoming, at the Deer Park Campground. Skies are smoky and night temperatures have cooled to something more reasonable that the 95 degrees we found when we arrived at 7 pm.
Somehow this day seemed to be a study in contrasts. The streets of Deadwood thundered with the sound of motorcycles and the crush of people, and the same sounds accompanied our views of Devils Tower. Yet, as we approached this mythical mountain, I felt much as N. Scott Mornaday did when he said, “There are things in nature which engender an awful quiet in man, Devils Tower is one of them”.
We approached from the south leaving Interstate 90 at Sundance so that we could make the loop back to Moorcroft without having to backtrack on our way to Buffalo. The land rises slowly, with low rolling ridges lifting upward and shadowed by the dark pine forest of this far northern tip of the Black Hills. The road is a good one, and the views open up to the west for a hundred miles of Wyoming space, but Devils Tower doesn’t make it’s first appearance until we are several miles north of the interstate. When it does, it seems small but still not insignificant, even shrouded in the darkness of an afternoon thunderstorm moving east.
Controversy surrounds this vertical dome of rock, even to the geologic origin of the porphyritic igneous gray stone filled with large white crystals of feldspar. The simplest explanation is that it is an intrusion of magma that wasn’t ever really a volcano, and probably never erupted on the surface of the earth. It cooled and was later exposed by erosion. That is the simple version, and there are many others written up in the various geologic references to the dramatic vertical tower.
In addition to the creation controversy, there are conflicts over the name, which has a negative connotation that doesn’t sit well with the local tribes who revere the monolith as a sacred place. Bear Lodge is one of their many names for it. There is also controversy over the several thousand people who come each year to climb the huge columns. Just yesterday a young couple ascended the east face with their ten month old on board. That puts a whole new spin on the “baby on board” thing, doesn’t it! What about child endangerment??
If you ever saw “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, a classic and a favorite of mine, you saw this place. It is the kind of place that triggers imagination, whether that of Steven Spielberg or the many Native American tribes who have an equally mythically compelling story of 7 sisters who were chased to the top of a tall tree by their brother who had transformed into a bear. Eventually the sisters were raised safely to the sky, and became the Pleiades, or the Big Dipper, depending on who is telling the story.
The road to Devils Tower past the entry gate (where we used our Senior Passes for free entry) wasn’t too narrow, but when we saw a sign “Large Vehicle Drop-Off) we whipped around and took advantage of it and unhooked the toads for the trip to the visitor center just 2 miles farther up the road. It was a good thing we did, because there wasn’t any parking at all up there and barely any turnaround space. I enjoyed the visitor center, and the proximity to the tower. I could have stayed there much longer, but the day was escaping and there was still some 130 miles to go before we settled in for the night in Buffalo, our destination for the day. I somehow didn’t plan this leg of the journey quite right because my short little hour for the town of Deadwood, turned into three hours of delight and fun.
Leaving Hermosa this morning right on time at 8am, we caravanned north on Highway 40 to Keystone. The town was still sleeping and yet the rock shop was open and we spent some time wandering among the big bins of rose quartz and petrified wood so that I could take back a big hunk of that gorgeous rosy rock that comes from the heart of the Black Hills. I saw several outcroppings of the stuff as we wound our way around the hills, and remembered the huge bins I have seen in Quartzite of Black Hills rose quartz. Of course that would be my souvenir! So much better to get it here right in the hills than down in the desert.
The drive north toward Deadwood opened up a completely different part of the Hills, with deeper forests and less rangeland, more water, a big reservoir, and green valleys in between. Yesterday we spent time in Custer State Park, buffalo country, gorgeous rangeland, and the difference was significant. The Black Hills stretched north, and felt much bigger today than they did until now. I’ll be writing about Custer City and Custer State Park eventually, but tonight this day is foremost in my mind and vision.
Thunderstorms threatened us all day, with huge dark clouds just out of reach, and just an occasional burst of raindrops on the windshield. By the time we got to Deadwood, the skies were clearing and the air was fresh and cool. I had no idea what to expect of Deadwood, but Mo thought we definitely needed to at least drop in and spend an hour or so.
Deadwood reminded me so very much of Wallace, a north Idaho mining town where I once lived. The big difference was the influx of money from casinos and gambling into Deadwood. Like Wallace, the entire town is a National Historic Site, but the money from gambling seems to give a big boost to the Deadwood economy. The town was lively and fun! After walking up and down the streets I did begin to notice that there weren’t any real “shops” anywhere in Deadwood, just a LOT of bars, and saloons, and restaurants, and casinos, and just a few shops with kitschy stuff and a boutique with diamond studded leather everything. In the midst of this, however, it was obvious that underneath all that was a real small town, with a courthouse, and an athletic center, parks, and some old wonderful neighborhoods. Just like Wallace.
We wanted to see Boot Hill, or what is now called the Mt Moriah Cemetery, where Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane are buried, side by side. Instead of climbing the long steep hill to the top, we decided to enjoy the Boot Hill Tour trolley. Lucky for us, they were dog friendly, and Abby and Jackson were perfect dogs on the trolley and in the cemetery where they sat on the stone steps and slept while we all listened to stories of Bill and Jane, who actually only met once and were barely acquainted! A shocking revelation to me.
Back down the hill we settled in for lunch on the patio of one more very dog friendly spot before loading up and heading out of town. I was so glad that we stopped at the first big parking area on the southwest side of town as we entered, because we discovered there would have been no place to even think of parking a motorhome any closer.
We drove from Deadwood to Buffalo with the Devils Tower loop in about eleven hours, and it was only 275 miles. I was excited to once again see the Big Horn Mountains, my reason for traveling this way, but on this August afternoon I was to be disappointed. Fires in the west are wreaking havoc, and at the moment there are several burning in Montana just north of us and in Wyoming and Idaho. The smoke got thicker as we approached Buffalo and we could just barely see a thin faint outline of what was supposed to be Cloud Peak, the crown of the Cloud Peak Wilderness and the Big Horn Mountains.
Big Sigh…
We have scheduled three nights here in Buffalo, with day trips into the Big Horns big on the list. Smoke in the summer in the west… I knew it could be a problem on this trip, but so far we have been really lucky. We will see what the next three days have in store for us. Looking at the murky skies over Buffalo, I wished we had planned instead for a night or two just feeling whatever it is that you feel at the base of Devils Tower.