2022 Trip

September 14 -21. Days 3-10.

We are on the road again after spending two nights at Maumee Bay State Park. What a beautiful state park. We had site 16 which was an electric only site so we had to fill our fresh water tank upon arrival. Tom guesstimated a good amount of water to add to the tank, that was just enough for our stay. Yesterday we took advantage of the golf course on site and walked 18 holes. It was level terrain and an easy walk but we were tired when done. The fairways, tees and greens were in great shape. There wasn’t a weed to be seen in the fairways and it felt like you were walking on air. Our scores weren’t the greatest but we had a great time. 

After golf we went back to the camper and celebrated the day with our own happy hour.  Luckily we had some leftover pasta and sauce that my sister’s friend José had made so we didn’t need to cook. BTW, it was delicious José. Thank you Patty for sharing that with us. 

To end day we had our first campfire of our trip. So relaxing! Still working on pictures. 

On the way to our next stop we passed by Elkhart, Indiana We could see the numerous RV manufacturing plants along route 80. We had wanted to stop at the Alliance plant for a tour and parts for our camper but it didn’t work out time-wise so we continued on through South Bend, Chicago, and on to Pelosi, Wisconsin where we will spend 2 nights at the COE (Corp of Engineers), Grant River Recreation Area campground. We are thankful for the advice from a Chicago transplant that Tom knows on the best timeframe for traveling through Chicago as traffic flowed beautifully in spite of the fact that there was construction all along that route through the city. 

Update: When we got to Grant River Recreation Area campground we found out that the road in and out of the campground was going to close the morning of the 15th so they could repave the railroad tracks and would not open until possibly the morning of the 16th.  As this was the only way in and out of the area other than by boat on the Mississippi River (se below), we decided not to stay there. As you can see I figured out the picture thing. 😄

The picture above is the Mississippi River view at Grant River Recreation Area campround (GRRA).

Tom was able to find another campground, Rustic Barn RV park, about 20 minutes from GRRA that had availability for us to we headed over there.  

There's a coffee hour every morning in the Rustic Barn.

 

This is the view from our site 42.

While unhooking we met some folks from Wisconsin who winter in Texas at the Llano Grande Lake Resort and Country Club.  They are a lively group of people who belong to a Winnebago club and travel around together. They reminded us of our "Hood" friends from Paradise Oaks.  We have met the nicest people in our travels.

After setting up camp, we headed to the Polosi Brewing Pub for some dinner.  Polosi is known as having the longest Main Street without intersections in the country.  The food and drink were very good.  Two noteworthy beers were the blueberry (for you Becky) and the pumpkin.

September 15-16

After being on the road for almost 9 hours on Wednesday, we had a relaxing day at our campsite on Thursday.  It felt good to do nothing. 

On Friday the 16th we took a 45 minute ride to Dyersville, Iowa to tour the Field of Dreams Movie site. It was as beautiful now as it was in the movie.  The ball field, grounds and house are in pristine shape.  There's no charge to visit unless you want to tour the house.  They do accept donations so we took James Earl John's suggested admission from the movie and donated $20. ("They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom.....They'll arrive at your door...... You'll say it's only $20 per person.  They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it.....Oh...people will most definitely come.)

The movie site is out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by corn fields.  It was cool coming down the road, we could picture the part in the movie where all the cars were driving to the field at night with their lights on. We learned that many of the people from Dyersville turned out their lights in their homes and drove their cars down the road.

We met a man who played a White Sox player in the movie and he works there now answering questions and allowing photo ops for visitors. He suggested the video and that was fun walking in and out of the cornfield. The voice you hear in the video is Jack from Chicago.  We met him and his wife, Pat, and took turns taking pictures for each other.  Tom had fun chatting with Jack about the history of baseball. 

Tom wanted to bring our Bills flag to get a picture to post on the Bill's Mafia Facebook site.  From the Field of Dreams in Iowa to our Field of Dreams at Highmark Stadium. (The Ralph!)  Go Bills!!!

There was a father and son playing catch on the field so the son offered to lend Tom his glove so he could play catch on the field of dreams. So cool!

Later that day, since Wisconsin is known for it's cheese, we decided to check out a cheese factory not far from where we were staying (30 minutes).  Roelli's is a two man operation but they have won many awards world wide for their cheeses.  They also have really good ice cream, so of course we had to have an ice cream cone to check it out.  

They had some fresh cheese curds from the morning that, we were told don't need to be refrigerated until 24 hours after they are made, so we bought those (bottom right of photo) along with an assortment of their other products. The key for determining if the cheese curds are fresh is that they squeak on the enamel of your teeth when you eat them.  Kinda freaky but they were good.  I think we have enough cheese, etc to last us a while.  Can't wait to share with our Paradise Oaks friends.

After our travels during the day, we came back to our site and cooked our dinner on the grill as the sun was setting over the field.  Another great day!

Saturday, September 17, 2022

We left Rustic Barn around 8:30 am for what we thought would be 6 hour drive to  a COE campground called Cottonwood in Yankton, SD which is in southwest South Dakota.  We stopped near Rockwell City on route 20 and while there noticed the driver side slide gasket was coming out of the top of the kitchen

slide about 2 feet.  Tom had to get the ladder down from the back of the camper so he could fix the gasket.  When he was returning the ladder to the back of the camper we noticed the bike rack needed to be better secured but before he could fix that he had to tack up the underbelly of the camper which had torn as a result of hitting a retread in the road a few miles back.

We got back on the road after about an hour and a half and continued on to Cottonwood, arriving there around dinner time.  Our 6 hour trip was actually about 8 hours.  The campground was nice but the sites were a bit difficult to get into with the trees and narrow roads.

Our campsite backed up to the Missouri River.  It was very pretty and very buggy.  It was nice to wake up the next morning and see some fisherman out on the river.

Sunday, September 18, 2022

We left after one night and headed up 81 to 90 to cross South Dakota, heading to Custer State Park.  It was a beautiful drive, with miles of corn fields, sunflowers, windmills, and cattle ranches.  It was fun to see the signs for Wall Drugs starting about 300 miles from Wall, SD and repeating every 20-25 miles until we got to Wall.  Of course we had to stop to see what is was all about.

This was worth the stop if you're in the area.  Very RV friendly as they have a separate parking lot for RVs. It's not your average drug store that's for sure. 

Interstate Route 90, which goes through South Dakota between the Minnesota state border and the Wyoming/South Dakota border, is officially known as Purple Heart Memorial Highway.

Sunflower field on interstate  90 on way to Custer State Park.

Arrived to our site 34 E around 5:00 MT.  Beautiful park. 

Monday, September 19, 2022

Toured around the park today.  Beautiful day to experience the wildlife, hairpin turn mountain roads and a National Monument.

We stopped at the Blue Bell Lodge Restaurant along the way and thought the saddles there would be a nice photo op...  We would ultimately come back to this restaurant the next evening for a delicious dinner of Bison skillet for Tom and Bison Stew for me.  We didn't need the apple crisp for dessert but couldn't pass it up.

Beautiful animals!  Tried to upload a video of some Buffalo in the road but the file was too big so had to settle for a couple of pictures.

We stopped to walk around Center Lake, one of the many lakes in the park.

Climbed up some rocks to look at the view on the way to Mount Rushmore.  Tom was braver than me.

There were several tunnels on the way to Rushmore that were a little over 8' wide so it was a little tight with our big truck but so beautiful.  Passing through this one we could see Mount Rushmore as we came out.

Pictures don't do Mount Rushmore justice.  It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Tuesday, September 20, 2022 

We had to move to the next site over (33E) in the morning.  What we thought would be a quick and easy move turned out to be more involved than we anticipated but we did it.  I'll spare you the details. 😉

We decided to go to Rapid City today.  All along Main Street on several intersecting street corners there are statues of each of our presidents.  Can you guess who we are posing with?

After Rapid City we drove south to Hot Springs, SD.  The highlight of our day was that Michelle video called us while we were visiting the Mammoth site.  The fact that we were able to show Jack and Chloe what we were seeing made it even more interesting for us.  Afterwards we headed back and as mentioned above, we stopped at the Blue Bell restaurant for our dinner where we had Bison for the first time.

Wednesday, September 21, 2022 

Tom went into Custer to pick up some parts for the camper to fix the kitchen slide and dining slide seals and while he was out he checked out a few campgrounds to see if there was another spot that we could dump our tanks other than the one in the park that was in the opposite direction of where we would be traveling on Thursday.  He had no luck finding a location we could use so he came back, repaired the seals and we headed out to check out Needles Highway and  Sylvan Lake.  We had taken a portion of Needles Highway on our way to Mount Rushmore previously but today we wanted to take it to Sylvan Lake as this was highly recommended to us.  

The 14 mile trip was very scary for me because of the hairpin turns, straight down drop offs with no guard rails and the clincher was the last of two tunnels that was only 8' wide and 9' high.  Tom went veeeerrrryyyy slowly and his truck just barely fit through it.  The scenery and the rock formations on the way to Sylvan Lake were beautiful.  

When we got to the lake we were able to take a 1 mile hike around the lake.  The trail was pretty cool because we could climb up on the rock formations and get a pretty view of the lake. 

After our hike we went to the see Sylvan Lake Resort Lodge.  It is a beautiful old building with a nice fireplace, bar and restaurant.  There is an artist in residence there now who was working on a painting near the fireplace when we were there.  The bartender told us we were at an elevation of 6300 feet and he pointed out that from the patio we could see Black Elk Peak, the highest vertical point east of the Rockies, at an elevation of 7200 feet.

A few places we wish we could have visited are Black Hills Burger and Bun Co. in Custer, the town of Sturgis and Devils Tower.  We will keep those in mind for our next trip west.