Our Travel Blog
What happens when the place you are supposed to camp is under water from the recent storms? You find a cheap motel and go to Cabelas!
An hour later and our daily budget has been stretched to bursting.
New air matresses so Mr. Sleeping Beauty can get his rest and a new stylin’ hat for me, I mean a very necesarry shade and rain hat that just happens to look awesome on me.
What chance is there waaaaay out here in WY of meeting up with family and friends. Well, not quite as slim as you think.
Our first meet-up was with Darrin’s younger(?) brother, Paul, and his lovely companion, Virginia (and of course Trouble, aka Beastie Boy, and Harley). They were travelling all the way up here from FL and we happened to land at the same campground. That’s our story and we are sticking with it!
Then we met-up with the Conways from NH at Devil’s Tower! We had a great reunion, catch-up, chow down and soggy hike around Devil’s Tower. Thanks for swinging by guys! Safe travels!
We have had a great, if soggy, week in the WY Black Hills and Devil’s Tower area. We stayed at a great little campground in the national forest, Reuters. Randy, the amazing host took great care of us. Thanks Randy…hi to Boo and Shadow!
They say the sun is supposed to shine tomorrow, but we are not holding our breath. Remember how we were complaining about the heat? Well, be careful what you wish for. It is in the 50s and soggy, but what a view! We’ll take it! Although I can’t figure out why Darrin keeps piling up his mash potatoes?
Thanks Jenny and Scott for the inspiration for the blog title and the sage. I think I’m feeling a little batty now😋 Hope you had a safe trip back to Laramie!
So we took off full of pent up energy after being waylaid in Newcastle. We were ready to get back into the woods after our time in the hotel.
We headed up in the Wyoming Black Hills to find a dispersed place to camp. While Heading up the fire road we checked the weather…hmmm….severe thunderstorms and a slight chance of a tornado! No ridgetop with a view for us. We needed a secure place to set up before the storms hit in a few hours.
Looking, looking, looking, hmm there’s a spot just down that little slot canyon. It looks like a 4 wheeler may have left a trail just our size. Dropped the rover into 4 wheel low range and down we went into the little canyon. No problems dropping down to the site, but it wasn’t as flat as it looked from above. Surprise, surprise!
So, it’s hot down in this little canyon and when we went to jockey the Rover around the vapor lock reared it’s head for the first time since installing the famous Peach Can Vapor Lock Reduction Device (PCCVLRD) and the rover quit (PCCVLRD 2.0 is in the research and design phase, production to start shortly).
At least we were in a place safe from the approaching storm, but we wanted a secure place to set up and camp, not just ride out the storm.
Out comes the winch and 45 minutes later we had winched ourselves back out of the little canyon into a semi secure spot in a glade of ponderosa pines.
While using the winch to shift around bit I tried the starter and the Rover sprang to life
We jumped in and made a beeline down to the security of the little national park outside Sundance, WY.
Where we met some wonderful people.
We were given a pile of dry wood for out little woodstove.
Given a ride into town for groceries.
Given a nice lunch at the community center.
Lesson learned!
Free dispersed camping is great, but not when you are in a rush and racing a storm.
We would have missed out on a nice spot and great people!
Sorry, no pictures🤨
If you have been following our blog, you know that space in the Rover is very tight, so buying souvenirs is not high on our list, and well we aren’t really shoppers anyway. But, during our stay in Newcastle, we befriended a team of Archeologists who were doing surveys in the area. Every night we would ask what they had found and they would ask how the Rover was coming along and we would chat for a while. The night before they left, the team leader, Hillary, gave us a brachipod fossil.
If I have my facts right, which I may not so feel free to correct me, during the Paleozoic period (something like 450 million years ago)Wyoming was covered by a shallow sea, hard to believe since we are in the middle of a huge landmass. It left behind all kinds of marine fossils, like our brachipod, in layers of sandstone, shale and limestone.
So this little critter remnant is really, really old. What a great keepsake.
The Wyoming state tree is the Plains Cottonwood, a member of the willow family. They are called cotton trees because of the cotton like substance that surrounds the seeds. One person told me you could spin the cottony fluff, I’m not sure if they were pulling my leg.
As reporred on an historic marker in downtown Newcastle, WY.
Have you ever flown somewhere, had a long layover followed by a delayed departure or a cancelled flight? Wait, walk the terminal, read, walk again, eat over priced fast food, read, stare at people, make up stories about people, maybe actually talk to some people, walk again…and repeat.
You alternate between relaxed, hey it’s a mini vacation might as well enjoy it, frustrated, don’t they know I have places to go, trapped, the terminal is only so big and there are only so many times you can walk around it…and repeat.
Last week the wee Rover sputtered out a complaint and refused to go. A few calls later and Darrell, the amazingly wonderful tow truck driver from Kregel Towing & Recovery, came to our rescue. He put the wee Rover on his very large flat bed and drove us to Outlaw Motors in Newcastle, WY where Jason, our night in shining armor, pretending to be a mechanic, was nice enough to squeeze us into to his schedule the following Monday.
Newcastle, WY, the gateway to the Black Hills (from the west), the wild west train hub town, a small town trying to survive, like every other small town in America, a town one would normally just pass through. We were in a holding pattern.
Was this a delay? A layover? A cancelled flight?
Small Rover issue? Catastrophic? End of trip?
We walked every road in town, we visited the local museum, we walked every road again, we ate fast food, watched TV, walked some more, played cribbage …and repeat. We felt relaxed, hey what could we do, we felt trapped, there are only so many roads to walk, and surprisingly we felt lucky…
A town we normally would have just passed through taught us about the local coal industry, it’s proud history and team spirit (Go Dogies), fed us pancakes at a community breakfast followed by a parade for the weekend mud bog, and quite simply reminded us what small town America is all about…people.
People raising their kids, trying to keep their community alive, helping each other through the latest bust while hoping for the next boom. People who offered us rides and use of their cars, people who waved at us when we walked by for the tenth time, and stopped what they were doing to chat, and the wonderful ladies at our motel who were amazingly kind.
And we met people like us who were here for just a while. A team of archeologists who were working on federal land who offered to share their dinner and stories, a couple of motorcyclists on their yearly ride, and a civil engineer here for 6 weeks working on a water project.
All this we would have missed, yet there is still the feeling of being trapped. Ok relax, read, walk, eat junk food…and repeat.
Oh, and the wee Rover is just fine. Some small plastic thingee broke. The new parts are in and Jason will have us back on the road again tomorrow!
A train every 6 minutes.
Can you imagine a town where a train goes right through the center of it every 6 minutes? How do they get any sleep?
Newcastle, WY is, well was, such a town. I had no idea that Wyoming was coal country, and oil country, but that is a different story.
In 1887, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad stretching its way across the continental US reached Nebraska and realized it was too expensive to bring the coal needed to run their engines from the east. If they were going to continue west, they needed a new source.
Coal had been reported in eastern Wyoming. The railroad investigated and the Cambria mine, and town, was founded. The railroad stretched its line west running a spur up to the mine. The junction of the main line and the spur came to be the town of Newcastle, WY.
For the next 40 years the coal from the Cambria Mine flowed down the tracks and through Newcastle. In 1928, the mine finally petered out, but not the coal industry. To the west large resources of coal were found right near the surface. These mines are the largest producers of coal in the US. This coal is still transported via train right through Newcastle.
Today, I am sitting on the hill above Newcastle, which happens to be the town cemetery and a beautiful spot to write, watching a coal train snake through town like a mythical monster from a Viking saga, Darrin counts 135 cars full of coal.
The trains don’t run every 6 minutes anymore, but they do run back and forth almost every 15 minutes or so, day and night.
Now that’s a lot of coal!
Many year ago, my brother and I drove across country. He had just finished at the Air Force Academy in Colorado and needed to quickly relocate with his car to an east coast post and I had a few days off before starting my summer job. We jumped on the highway in his little 2 seat sports car and made a quick job of it, stopping briefly at a few sights. I could now brag that I had ‘driven cross country, right?
Boy was I wrong.
Traveling on the highway did not give me a true sense of the areas I had traveled across. I did not see the subtle changes every area had to offer.
Traveling slowly on the backroads in the Rover with the windows open (our version of ac) has given me a whole new appreciation for the land we have crossed. It is definitely not flat, although if you look across the horizon at times it certainly seemed so. And the tornado warnings made it seem like we were quite exposed.
The trip from Florida to South Dakota has included rolling hills, sharp winding gorges, rollercoasters (see previous post) and long slow ups and ups and ups with very few actual flat areas.
The countryside has included corn fields, soybean fields, other fields growing I know not what, large open spaces fenced for cattle, and large expanses of horse country. We constantly remark on how the landscape can change in 150 miles (our chosen daily limit in our putt, putt vehicle).
While at times the trip has been challenging, the heat, the long days, the many miles, learning to live on the road (that is a whole other post or two!) I feel very lucky to have travelled the backroads and had the chance to experience all that we have, so far.
Did we see it all? No way. We could spend months or even years in each area and still have much to learn. I at least feel that I have a flavor of the many landscapes and what they have to offer and a new appreciation for their unflatness. Perhaps on our return trip in a few years, we will see or experience even more or find a state that really is flat!
Storms in the Black Hills can be quite intense. With all the flat prairie land to the west and south, the storms can build up some steam to run into the hills. The outcome is amazing storms that are intense and fast moving. Last night a storm skirted around us, just barely skimming our nicely sheltered camping spot and allowing for some great pictures.
