Comfort Inn Buffalo

Leaving Rapid City for Sturgis, Spearfish area and beyond to Devil's Tower and hopefully some roost in Buffalo. Temps supposed to be in the 80s in those areas today. Right now in the morning it's in the 50s. <br>Glad I stopped in Sturgis and chatted with a lovely staffer who recommended the back road to Devil's Tower (Garmin had me going on the interstate and then exiting right to that road). It was way more interesting in landscape and road.<br><br>

Charlie was disappointed that he couldn't go in and see the Buffalo Bill Museum, but I found a parking spot in deep shade with a tree full of birds he could listen to. Hopefully he was entertained. He was sitting in my seat watching out the window for me when I returned.<br><br>Julie was right.. This is an awesome, not to be missed museum. It has 3 big wings and wonderful collections of western art, sculpture ...

... It was great . We couldn't help notice how clean the town was, and we saw absolutely no graffitti, true most small towns  are grafitti free but our mind goes back to New Zealand and we like the clean safe feeling that we enjoy here in the west.

We left the camper this morning at 8:15 and headed off to the BigHorn Mtns. It was a very beautiful drive with many beautiful flowers. We saw (would you believe) a moose. We had to turn around and Les was able to get me to where I could get a good picture. I will try to upload this picture. We drove through the mountains and then through some very unusual looking areas that ...

... at the Holiday Inn Express.) The owner, Dawn, left San Diego a little over a decade ago and bought the rundown hotel. The previous owner, though, had never thrown ANYTHING out, and Dawn recognized a treasure when she saw it. The hotel is fully furnished in authentic, original period furniture. Our dining room was in the old bank section of the hotel, and at the back of our room one could have a cozy romantic meal in the beautifully decorated... bank vault!<br>

... rest area called Independence Rock which was named that because people crossing the country in Conestoga wagons stopped here on Independence Day (July 4). The rock stands out by itself and people scribbled their names and the day on the rock. Women and children walked alongside the wagons gathering wood and buffalo chips for making fires to cook on. (Do you know what buffalo chips are?) The wagons were pulled by oxen. Can you imagine crossing ...

... sculptor who designed it knew immediately that it would take more than his lifetime to complete so he made several detailed scale models and wrote 3 books-full of notes on the dimensions and how to go about blasting and chiselling all the rock. Even more impressively, he spent the first many years working on it alone, constructing his own wobbly ladder all the way to the top of the mountain where he had to do his blasting work, lugging all ...

... valve stems on all back wheels. We were extremely happy with the result and even though we rolled out a little later than planned. Well we were taking the highway 16 towards South Dakota, but before that we had spotted on the map a town called Powell, only 25 miles down the track, and just after Powell was a town called Garland, how freaky is that? For those that may be unaware Karon's surname is Powell and Earnie's surname (Karon's Maiden name) is Garland. Basically this ...

We left this morning back to Buffalo, Wyoming to stay for one night at the same Indian Campgrounds. Good trip except for the unpleasant person who tried to run me off the road twice. I was trying to pass a pickup hauling a trailer on Hwy 90. As I got about even with him, he veered into my lane close enough to strike my right rear view ...

... itself seemed smaller than I'd expected, but it was still impressive. There was a short film in the amphitheater below the monument leading up to the lighting of the mountain, and overall the whole evening's program was quite good. When we returned the next morning to see the park in the daylight, it wasn't quite the same, so I'm glad we saw it at night first... We also squeezed in a visit to Deadwood, SD, before leaving the state, and the town has a very interesting local ...