Off And Running - Sunday, June 19, 2011

Off And Running - Sunday, June 19, 2011

Happy Father's Day to all to whom this greeting applies.

Note: We again have phone service. Not only can we be annoyed but we can annoy!  :o)

We were up and out of bed by 5:40 this morning!!!! A ride to the bathrooms and a very reasonable walk, sans walkng stick, back to the trailer started my day. My foot is getting better. Tom drove in both directions. :D

Breakfast was not really hurried but we kept moving. By 8:15am or so we were on the road. We probably would have done better had I done more stowing and securing last night.

We watched Wyoming's mountains, hills and open space once more. It is an amazing countryside. There's a little farming and lots of cattle ranching. If there is a farm there is an irrigation system. There were oil wells working today; very few were standing idle. There were very few trees.

I've mentioned before, or hope I've mentioned before, about the equipment and machinery going to rust in many of the yards in this state and others that we have been through. Lots of the properties that we passed had trailers in various states a disrepair. I've wondered it these were purchased or accepted by the land owner as cheap storage units. I guess I'll never know.

We drove through some sprinkles of rain and mostly dry periods. It was never long stretches of real rain.

We reached Sundance, WY, in just under 6 hours driving time; 340 miles. The name of the RV Park is Mountainview. We have seen more mountains in Wyoming and these do not compare to most of them. But they are nice.

When Tom went to register us, the woman asked if we were going to see Devil's Tower. It wasn't on our list of things to do so the answer was "No." At another time I was looking at the things in the Park Store and kept seeing this image of Devil's Tower. After some converstation later and some googling we found out that Devil's Tower was the place that the aliens landed in the movie "Close Encounter of the Third Kind." I still don't think we will go to see it.

It was dry but threatening rain when we arrived at Mountainview RV Park. We set up and I went to the bathroom. What a nice place. I guess that's why they can charge such high prices. Then Tom went out for gas so that we will be ready to take off tomorrow morning. As a side note: he found that the "Plus" gas was cheaper than the unleaded regular. So the van got a taste of the "good stuff" this afternoon. Hope he doesn't choke! :o)

Just before dinner (and continuing now just after 9pm local time) it started to rain. It's mostly been a soft rain but once or twice there have been bursts of harder rains. As Tom said, "I hate to deny these people the much needed rain but I hope it isn't raining when we leave tomorrow."

Since it is less than 2.5 hours drivng time to Wall, South Dakota, our next stopping place, we will not it be in as much of a hurry to leave as we were today. That means that I will NOT tell Tom to wake me when he gets up. ;o) But we won't dally too long either. And, since we have the time, we will try our hand at a few geocaches along the way. We'd like to log at least one in SD!

Lastly, for those of you who like numbers; so far, in just shy of 6 weeks, we have logged 7,405 miles. And now that we have turned out face eastward, measuring on the great curve we are 1,500 miles from home. This number will be getting lower as we get closer to home.