Dickson, TN

Rodger and Sue came by for coffee and cinnamon rolls at around 7 AM to start our day. They had just completed a 12 hour shift and were ready for some rest, but we chatted for almost an hour before they departed for their rig. The rest of the morning, up until noon, was spent getting things together to hit the road once again. I went into town, filled our empty propane tank, gassed up the truck and came home to take the Jeep out to top it off with gas. We were ready to go and out of the campground by noon.

We had rain almost the entire 185 mile drive but it wasn't a driving, heavy rain. It was more like drizzle and occasional stretches where we had no rain. Our arrival at Dickson was at 3 PM. The campground will not win any prizes for quality, but is fine for a one night stay and with a Passport America 50% discount, works for us.

After setting up and making sure we had a good satellite signal, we ventured into town. Of course there was a Walmart where we stopped and picked up some miscellaneous stuff and then we stopped at a Mexican Restaurant - Mazatlan Mexican Restaurant - where we had some dinner. We would rate it fair, but the price was right and the margaritas were 2 for 1 which helped make it enjoyable.

It's off to Memphis today where we will spend 2 nights at the Graceland RV Park and Campground. We will leave here early this morning so that we can have some time this afternoon to do some local exploring - like perhaps a casino (?). Tomorrow we will do the Graceland Tour and all of the Elvis attractions. It should be a fun time in Memphis and we are sure glad that we can forget the alarm clock for awhile...

Drive to LaGrange, IN

It was around 10 AM by the time we got everything together, packed the vehicles, drove to the storage unit, unpacked the vehicles, hitched up and hit the road. Patty went with us to the storage unit to see us off and we appreciated her help.

Our drive was to take us only on toll free roads and it wasn't too long when we questioned that strategy. We went through every town, stopped at every light and lost valuable time. By the time we decided to switch to toll roads (the interstates) we were in Indiana and the roads were great without taking the toll road. We arrived in LaGrange at 2:30 PM and were surprised to see all the Amish people that were in this area. Actually, we shouldn't have been surprised since this is the RV manufacturing center of the country and we knew that many of the RV's were manufactured using Amish help. I was able to get a couple shots of them on the road, even though I was driving while shooting these pictures:

Our first clue to all the horse and carriage activity was the amount of horse apples along the roadside. They were everywhere. We got set up:

(ours is the 2nd from the right) and had conversations with our neighbors about why they were here, where they were going and everything else about their travels that RV'ers talk about. It was a Doubletree hang out, so to speak. We scheduled ourselves for the tour at the factory that was to start this morning at 8:30, so this entry will be cut short.

The day today was a doozy! I finally got this entry posted, but check back tomorrow - it was an exciting, and scary, day...

Sundance, WY

It was about 8:15 by the time we left Cody yesterday. It could have been a half hour earlier except people kept walking up to us to say final goodbyes which was nice. The trip was great and took us through the southern part of the beautiful Bighorn Mountains before we picked up I-90 in Buffalo, WY. From there it was straight, flat and open land. We arrived at Sundance at 3 PM (total of 312 miles) and decided to do the Devils Tower Monument since we still had some time and it was only 20 miles from our campground. It would also free up some extra time over the next day and a half to see more of the Black Hills attractions. The Devils Tower Monument was an incredible attraction. We could first see this unusual formation from miles away as we approached the Park:

(Note - This entry is late as a result of an unexplained software problem which does not allow the images to be downloaded. I am researching the problem and will make sure these images are properly added after I find and repair the problem. Meanwhile, the image locations will be noted with whatever you are seeing above.)

The appearance of this rock formation is that of columns, all together in a tight group. The "columns" have been falling away from the huge formation over the last several million years, creating the sea of boulders seen all around the formation:

We took the 1.3 mile trail around the whole formation and the different views were amazing. The boulder field was evident around the entire formation and I took this shot of Josie standing among the boulders in front of the Tower:

As we walked around to the back side, we saw 4 climbers on the face of the Tower. We were able to get this shot of the 2 climbers that were about half way up:

The other 2 climbers were near the top and weren't as clear in the photos.We were glad that we decided to see the Tower Monument last night as that freed up our morning today to travel to our new location in Sturgis, SD - 55 miles away - and take the loop road around the Spearfish Canyon and then visit the city of Deadwood.

We arrived back at the fifth wheel around 8:30 PM last night and turned in pretty early in order to get a head start on today. Today was a very exciting day that will be reviewed tomorrow. -----I believe I found the software problem (it's almost midnight), so tomorrow's entry should be normal. Until then...