Quiet Day at Broken Arrow Campground

We stayed at the campground today and took care of a couple of fix-it jobs that needed to be done in addition to doing laundry and finishing a few cleaning chores. Nothing big.
We went to the chuck wagon dinner at the campground tonight. They had a cowboy singing and playing his guitar, accompanied by a guy playing the fiddle. The food was good and the entertainment was too. A few pictures are attached.
Please note that I have also loaded current pictures of our fur babies on the blog (right hand side). Sadie is growing like a weed!!
That is all for today. Stay tuned!!

Custer State Park

We completed the chores that we had planned for yesterday. The fur babies sure do smell lots better!!

Charley started a campfire last night after dinner and we sampled one of our Red Ass wines. It sure was good!!

Today we started our tour of Custer State Park. We drove the Wildlife Loop and Iron Mountain Road. Saw prairie dogs, burros, pronghorn, and buffalo on the Wildlife Loop. Saw beautiful scenery on both of these, in addition to seeing Mount Rushmore again.

Cheyenne and Sadie enjoyed the burros. We fed them apples and carrots so they got up close and personal!!

We will be going back to drive the Needles Highway another day before we leave for Cody on Thursday. Not sure if that will be tomorrow or Tuesday.

I have a few pictures included along with a link to see them all. Hope you enjoy them!!

Up close and personal…..

The little prairie dogs – my favorite!!

Mount Rushmore from Iron Mountain Road – yes, that is Mount Rushmore that you see through the tunnel!!

This is the pretty little town of Keystone

Click on the link below to see all of our pictures from today’s tour.

Custer State Park

An Update from Custer

We went into Rapid City as planned on Thursday and got all of our errands taken care of. Stopped on the way back at the Red Ass Winery. Did the wine tasting routine and picked out three that we liked. And, yes, we came home with three bottles of wine!! Planning to open the first bottle tonight in front of a campfire!!

Went on the 1880 Train ride yesterday and it was fun. Train only traveled 10 MPH and it went from Hill City to Keystone and back. Saw a lot of the mountain scenery like wild flowers, trees and deer and a lot of the mountain homes that you cannot see from a road.

Also, have to mention that our daughter had a birthday yesterday. She hit her first milestone – 30!! Happy Birthday again Stacey!!

One other major accomplishment was completed yesterday. We finished our itinerary for the remainder of July and August. Will be going from here to Cody, staying there for a few days and then up to Glacier National Park where we will be for two weeks. This gets us out of the hubbub surrounding the motorcycle rally in Sturgis. Then we will make our way back to Custer, returning to the Broken Arrow campground until time to head for Gillette and the Escapades Rally. All reservations are in place so we can now sleep more soundly.

Planning to take care of some chores around the campground today, cleaning up the 5er, bathing the two fur babies, and napping!!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

 Beautiful drive to Rapid City!!

 

 Updated picture of the Crazy Horse monument

The sign explains these two!!

 The 1880 Train in Hill City

Click on the Picture Below to see more pictures from the train ride.

1880 Train Ride

Rainy and Foggy in Custer

It has been rainy and foggy since we arrived in Custer so no real sight seeing yet. Gotta be able to see the sights and take pictures!!

We did get the windshield replaced in the truck today after waiting most of the day for them to arrive! After it was finished we did take a short ride to the Jewel Cave National Monument mostly to get me out of the camper for a little while. We did not go in to see the monument because it was too close to dinner time and we were hungry!! The drive there was beautiful, with lots of winding mountain roads that Charley enjoyed driving on. We did not take pictures so none to share today.

Tomorrow we are going into Rapid City (as we had planned to do today) to pick up prescriptions and other things at Wal-Mart. We are also going to the commissary at Fort Ellsworth to pick up a couple of things. Also need to check out the laundromat in Custer. The one here at Broken Arrow is too expensive!!

Friday we have tickets to ride the 1880’s train. We do hope that it is not foggy that day!! Then after that we will spend a day or two at Custer State Park.

Stay tuned!!

We have arrived in Custer, SD

We left Sturgis at around 9:30 this morning, headed for Custer. We arrived at 11:30. We have to move the 5er after today to another campsite due to reservations here at the Broken Arrow Campground so we have just left everything hooked to the truck until we move tomorrow.

It is very cool (weather) here right now due to thunderstorms that are moving through the area. In the high 60’s and we have the windows raised to get some fresh air. It is so nice!! So sorry that all of our family and a lot of our friends are sweltering back in SC. We would have you all over if we could!! It actually has not gotten above 72 today.

We will not be able to start any of our touring until probably Thursday. We have to change campsites tomorrow and make a grocery run and these will take about half the day. Then Wednesday the Safelite people are coming to put our new windshield in the truck. Told us they would be here between 8 and 12. So we should probably rule Wednesday out too unless we can find something very close that we can do. We will be checking on that.

We are also going to try to get by to meet Mike and Pat McFall. They live just down the road from where we are.

Stay tuned. We should have some great pictures from the Custer State Park, the 1880 Train ride, and maybe the Wild Horse Sanctuary (although the entry fee may be a little steep for us). Charley also wants to visit the Red Ass Winery near Hill City where they make rhubarb wine. And I am sure that we will do just some driving around and looking at the scenery since it is so gorgeous.

Update from Sturgis

We went on a short tour of Deadwood and Lead South Dakota on Thursday. We had been there before but wanted to see it again. We also drove through Bare Butte State Park but there isn’t much that we found that was interesting other than a couple of scenic pictures and, of course, the buffalo with babies.

We took Friday off and hung around the campground and joined the campground owner for dinner (steak night). While on the subject of the campground, the owner is a very nice gentleman who just purchased the campground in February. We sort of got to know him pretty well because we had a situation with the windshield on our truck. When we got in the truck on Thursday for our day trip the windshield was cracked. It was not cracked when we arrived on Wednesday and the truck was not driven until Thursday. The campground was being mowed on Wednesday afternoon. We reported this to the office/owner and explained what we thought happened. He contacted his insurance company and we will be reimbursed for the repairs. He indicated that he wanted to “make it right”. We could not have asked for this to be handled any more nicely than it was. If anyone is planning to visit the Sturgis area you should consider the Rush No More RV Park as a camping option. We recommend it!!

Today, we went to see Debbie, Duane, Bo and Laska (finally got to meet Bo and Laska). We took Cheyenne and Sadie too since they had not met Sadie. Had a very nice visit at their campsite, watched the dogs at play, managed to keep up with all four of them and then headed to a Mexican restaurant for lunch (very good). Did not make note of the name of the restaurant. Went back to their campsite to pick up our fur babies, after Duane and Debbie kindly invited them to stay in their camper, and then headed for home. We were planning to visit the Historical Fish Hatchery while we were there today but decided to try to get together again before we leave the area and visit it then. Duane and Debbie are great people and just loads of fun to talk to. We have been full timing about the same length of time so we have lots of stories to tell each other and I don’t think they have all been told yet!!

We are planning to stay at the campground tomorrow and do a little cleaning up inside the 5er (much needed) before we head for Custer on Monday.

Stay tuned, there will be lots of pictures when we go back to Custer State Park for our third visit. We love that place!! It is beautiful and has so much to offer.

 Downtown Deadwood

Blooming Cactus

Bare Butte

 Buffalo at Bare Butte State Park

 Our site at Rush No More RV Park

Bo with Sadie

Laska

Debbie and Duane

Sturgis, SD

One note on Chef Louie’s last night. It was delicious!! Just like last year!

We left the campground in Mitchell at 7:00AM Central this morning and arrived in Sturgis before noon Mountain time. We are at the Rush No More campground about 7 miles from Sturgis. It is very quiet and peaceful here. We had planned to stay here two weeks but we changed our minds today and will just be staying until Monday morning. We then plan to move to Custer, to the Broken Arrow campground where we stayed last year.

Our two fur babies, Cheyenne and Sadie, seem to be the hit of this campground!! They are getting everyone’s attention already. We love it.

We have set up everything, for the most part anyway, and will finish up the little things tomorrow.

Not sure yet what our touring plans are. We also need to get in touch with Debbie and Duane Rowe to see when we can get together with them while we are here in Sturgis.

More later!