Orchard Creek Cottages Spearfish

Then I drove down to Spearfish, So. Dak. Spearfish Canyon is in the Black Hills - so called because the evergreens on the hills are so dark green that they look black in the distance. Spearfish Canyon is beautiful any time of year, but is especially gorgeous this time of year, when all the aspen and birch turn golden. The gold trees are interspersed with the deep green evergreens ...

Today's drive was a lot better than yesterdays. South Dakota reminds us of home a little. Lots of mountains, trees and wildlife, beautiful. We made our way into the Black Hills Nat. Forest, and stopped in a old west town, Deadwood. Which is where Wild Bill was shot. Pretty much just another touristy town filled with shops and a few museums, which of course we ...

Yesterday was a learning experience....in preparation and patience. We started out the morning at our little bunkhouse in Thermopolis, WY. We then went to the Dinosaur Museum where Jimbo, Wyoming's biggest found dinosaur to date lives. He's a longneck. The girls squealed with excitement when they saw "baby maiasaurus" who "Diego" introduced them to in his "Great Dinosaur eadventure. I have some cool pics to be uploaded ...

... of people driving around on Harleys.
The fishing was great, I spent a day fishing in the Spearfish canyon while Jo took the day of, well if you call hanging around the campsite doing the laundry a day off, I dont think she does!!
The area where I was fishing is where they filmed the last scenes of "Dancing with Wolves", when the indians were camped in the Black hills in a deep gorge .It really is a beautiful area, and we would like to return.

Hi! -_-

Well, let me tell you about what happened last night. First of all, the toilet began to malfunction, so my mother had to call room service to check the plumbing situation. At this rate, the toilet will get filled up with water and will overflow, which would suck! It was a good thing that nobody did #2 that night. Otherwise...well, you don't want to know! In addition to the plumbing problem, the air conditioner was too loud and thus, I barely slept.

so I ...

I went back to Badlands National Park in the morning for a bit more of a look around before heading off towards the Black Hills area of South Dakota and the old western town of Deadwood. I had watched the Deadwood TV services back home and had to make sure I visited the town itself.

On the way to Deadwood, I stopped at Mt Rushmore and also the Crazy Horse Monument. I am not sure why I bothered with the Crazy Horse Monument. They are still along way from ...

... within a 50 mile radius. Well Mandy decided, we required a more stressful approach, other than which we had, had over the last few days, she took us to a turn off of a dirt road(busg track) that was refused to be taken by the driver, (to the relief of the fellow travellers, The driver is sure) but gee now where do we head? Well after a short "discussion" we reset Mandy to take us to a town "close" to the destination. She did this through narrow twisting roads, but at least ...

... It was worth the $8 to get in, definitely. We drove around the corner to see the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is similar to Mt Rushmore in that it's being carved out the side of the mountain but is no way near finished. We decided, after reading the planet, that seeing as we were this way we'd pop over to the Badlands, which was going right out of our way but the book said it was unmissable and they were not wrong. The ...

... another unexpected surprise - we drove across the street to the Milstone lodge restaurant and had a very nice dinner in the family style restaurant with a room all to ourselves. After dinner we all assumed a long drive was ahead of us. Mr. Troy, however, managed to locate a KOA for us to stay at tonight. We took our showers and slept on the big green and blue tarps we had not seen in three days. Journal Crew Link to today's photos

... condensor, timing, and saw the vacuum was low.
I have talked aobut the national forest campgrounds in a former blog, but to repeat, they were generally pretty basic-no running water, no bathrooms (sometimes portojohns), sometimes picnic tables and trashcans, but that was about it. And I liked it liked it like that, because aa a general rule they were always ...