Rocky Mountain National Parks of the North 2018

On our way to meet up with the Wagon Masters George & Pam Raney.  We barely get started, up towards the Santiam Pass near Marion Forks and we go through butterflies like we have never seen before.  Took a lot of work to get that window cleaned off.  Ken's job ~  LOL

We spent one night at Cherry Creek State Park in Colorado.  Such a great park, see Denver across the water??  

Our tour officially started on July 19th with 40 guests and 4 ambassadors for a total of 44 people for all our events and meals.  We met at Garden of the Gods RV Park in Manitou Springs, Colorado, near Colorado Springs. This part was a bit challenging, especially in the beginning of our stay.  Our WM had called and gotten permission for us to get into the park early, however, when we arrived about 12:30, they sent us out to wait til at least 1:00.  Then, you need to know that this whole area is torn up in road reconstruction.  We understand that after the last forest fires there was flooding that destroyed the city systems, therefore the whole area is torn up including entrances into this park.  Customer service was not in evidence here either. Some of our guests had to move a couple of times because of the way they set up reservations. Some had power issues. Things are improving and we only have one day left here.  We had our orientation and a welcome dinner right here in the park.  BBQ was brought in and we had lots of food.  
July 20th we had our first tour.  Got up to catch the 7:30 bus and headed up to the summit of Pikes Peak.  The first picture is one of the stops on the way up to over 14,000.  Pikes Peak is one of 54 14er's.

 Several of our guests mentioned that this carving looks an awful lot like out WM, George..  He was at another of our stops up the mountain.  Our bus driver was excellent.  Talked non-stop, sure wish I could remember everything he said.  LOL

 The summit ! !   There is a huge gift shop and also a restaurant.  Pam had ordered donuts from there to be ready when we got there.  The store explained that they don't let staff up the mountain until 7:30am and then they have to get the oil hot.  The result was worth waiting for.  Delicious, light, warm donuts.  Our guests loved them ! !

We came down the mountain, had about a half hour at the RV's and then ride-shared to the Garden of the Gods Trading Post, another huge gift store.  They are everywhere!!  LOL.  We had a great lunch there and everyone was free to explore the Garden of the Gods.  More about rock formations than gardens.  Beautiful rocks, like Arches in Utah...

On Day 3 of the tour we took a bus trip and visited the Air Force Academy, The WW II Aviation Museum and the Olympic Training Center.  What a packed day...  
The following are pictures of the Chapel at the Air Force Academy.  They have separate Chapel's for Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist Cadets. Beautiful building..  We watched a film that showed the amazing routine these cadets live. To get into the Academy you must be a great student and a great athlete as well as prove you are a great person. 

Next, World War II Aviation Museum.

The last event was the Olympic Training Campus.  Amazing.  If you make your sports Olympic hopefuls, then you can live here free of charge and train with the best help.

 This guide has participated in two para-Olympic games.  He has bilateral prosthetic legs. You would never know it if you didn't see them.  He has such great balance. Apparently he has dealt with this his entire life.

 Our fearless Wagon Master, George...  Every event has a gift shop !

Now, we get to see if the tour group likes our choice of a fill in for the musical The Little Mermaid.  We decided that might not be a great choice for our age group.  LOL...  We got Fantasy RV Tours to try the Lazy B Ranch Chuck-Wagon and music show.  It was as fantastic as we had hoped.  We have watched the Barleen Family show in Apache Junction numerous times.

The next day was a bus trip up through Estes Park into Rocky Mountain National Park. We went as high as 12,000 feet.  Whew...

 The clouds moved so fast.  One minute was perfectly clear and the next was totally fogged in.  A resident chipmunk stood for a picture.

I thought that the Rocky Mountain National Park was much better than Pikes Peak...  The scenery was stunning.  They also have old, old trees like Alaska, that are so small they look 10-20 years old instead of thousands.  They also talk of permafrost up in the high elevations.

 A herd of elk resting in the picture above. Hard to see but were massive animals. There is lots of grass up there for them right now.

 The entrance, exit gates to the National Park. 

This pavilion is located at the Historic Fall River Hydro Plant. Beautiful setting along the river and no other people. Downtown Estes Park is so very crowded since this is summer season. 

This is the historic Stanley Hotel. Famous hotel where Steven King has stayed and it some attachment to the movie The Shining.  I don't like scary stuff so didn't really listen too well..  LOL

On to Cheyenne, Wyoming and the Terry Bison Ranch where we will have dinner tonight.  Beautiful drive here.  This is gonna be a very busy stay as we are here for Frontier Days. It is a real big deal in these parts ! !  

Our first day in Cheyenne is another added attraction by the WM. We go to Laramie County Community College to watch the Air Force Thunderbird's.  AMAZING is all I can say.. Six planes in absolute precision. On top of all the usual buses bringing people in, there were two Yellowstone Tour Buses here!   

Can you tell he is upside down??

This is the downtown plaza, just north of the Train Station. The plaza has tents of all kinds of vendors. There will be a free pancake breakfast there in a couple days. Our guest who went said the breakfast was terrific, pancakes and ham. They have been doing this for years so are very organized.  The lines went way down the streets but moved from the end to food in about 15 minutes. Great..

After the air show we explored downtown for a couple hours and then back to camp.   

The rodeo, at Frontier Park, was terrific with lots of water in the corral and horses and riders slipping and a sliding..  and putting their nose into the mud! It is rated as a PRCA Wrangler Rodeo so these guys and gals were all competing for points.

The mud was amazing !!  Really lucky that no one got hurt.

The girls were all over these horses and no one fell off ! !

Thursday, July 26th started with the Parade.  Ken and a couple of the guys took our camp chairs downtown next to the St. Mary's Church/Cathedral to save our seats. The bus brought us down at 7:30 for the 9:00am start time.  Love that site as the church opens up their restrooms for the public and there were a couple food carts in their parking lot. 

Before the rodeo time we were able to visit the Indian Village and eat an Indian Taco.  Was so good.  Also, sat and watched the traditional dancing for a while. Fun to see the heritage being kept alive. This gal with the hoops was so amazing to watch..

After the rodeo some of us participated in the Behind the Chutes Tour.  Quite muddy from all the rain but if you stayed really close to the fence you were not covered in muck ! ! !   LOL  Long day, back to camp about 6:00pm.

Our last Fantasy activity in Cheyenne was a great Trolley Tour around downtown.  The guides were great pointing out lots of points of interest. 

We decided to go back about ten miles into town to have dinner with the WM. The weather in this part of the country changes drastically in just a matter of minutes, one minute sunshine and warm and the next hail and rain. We were just a couple of miles from Terry Bison RV Park when the weather changed into this hail. It got to about six inches deep in about ten minutes.  The hail was deep enough that we could hear the scraping on the bottom of the car. We actually had to stop under a bridge, along with a couple semi's and other cars. We waited out the storm, only took about ten - fifteen minutes. 

And, just a short time later.  Look at the beautiful sky now ! ! 



Off to Gering, Nebraska on 7/28/18, already day 10 of this tour.  Had free day and a Walking Taco dinner in camp.  Was all great ! !  Went to the zoo next door and took a bunch of pictures of all the animals hanging out there..

 Leaving town... Isn't it beautiful ! ! 

Fort Robinson, Nebraska is an amazing State Campground. It is huge, hundreds of acres, and absolutely stunning setting.  Driving here was so different than I envisioned Nebraska to be.  Lots of rolling, green hills and then beautiful outcroppings of rock.  This Fort is famous as the place that Crazy Horse died, which was a really sad story (basically stabbed in the back) and the fort was also used as a training ground for military dogs. Thousands were trained there at a time. We took a horse drawn ride around the fort with a terrific guide. She was so knowledgeable and talked non-stop. Was great to do that before we went to the Museum cuz then it all made sense. Fantasy arranged for jeep drawn wagons to take us up into the hills for a steak dinner..  Was such a beautiful setting and great company.  Before we left the next day, we had breakfast. The park has a great little restaurant with the best prices we have seen in a very long time.  The most expensive breakfast was about $7.50.  No fancy omelets tho!   LOL

August 1st brings us into Hermosa, South Dakota, crossed into another state. This is the fourth since we started in Colorado. Hermosa has been packed with activities. After getting settled into camp we catch the bus for a tour out to Mt. Rushmore and the nighttime lighting ceremony. Was very well done. A Ranger did the program and gave lots of quotes from the four Presidents as well as some others.  Trump should listen to the words from his predecessors, they were very moving, especially in the present climate. The ceremony also included a salute to all the military in attendance with a flag folding ceremony. Ken couldn't walk down all the steps and back up again so he enjoyed from the seating at the top.  We had dinner in the cafe before the ceremony so we were ready for the evening. We didn't get back to camp until almost 11pm.

At night, it was really amazing ! ! 

 Spectacular from across the way !!  Had to dodge the traffic to get this amazing view through the tunnel ! !  Ooops, got these out of order.. Text is below ! !  LOL

Along the way, sometime recently, LOL, we were asked to Co- Wagon Master the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Rally's.  YIKES ! !   We said yes ! !  So that started with phone calls but mostly emails asking all kinds of questions. Gotta make sure we concentrate on this tour before doing Balloon stuff.  FUUUUUN ! ! !

The next day, August 2nd, can't believe it is August, we head out in a bus and a van toward Needles Highway, Iron Mountain, Crazy Horse and Custer State Park. Ken and I were lucky and got the van with a terrific driver/guide named Ken!!  He has lived in the area his whole life and was terrific.  The guests in the bus had a great driver but she didn't narrate anything.  Turns out the bus was still too big to go through the Needles Tunnel sooooo, we skipped that.  The pictures through the Iron Mountain Tunnel, across the mountains are amazing of Mt Rushmore.. Crazy Horse is just amazing too.  It's a long, long process and the family hopes that the next couple generations will be able to finish it. The museum is wonderful and our guide, Ken, got us into studios and other rooms that we didn't even know were there. 

We stopped for lunch at the State Game Lodge in Custer State Park.  It was a great buffet.  Along the way we were escorted by the buffalo, oops bison.  The only buffalo are water buffalo and another species in a different part of the world. Interesting that lots of people are selling buffalo burgers, no one calls them bison...  LOL

8/3/18 took us to the Badlands and Wall Drug.  OMG, the Badlands were amazing.  You go from rolling, green hills to this amazing area with high rock formations and low valleys.  Would never imagined anything like this existed here. 

Could do without Wall Drug..  Huge building with lots of different shops that are quite high priced.  Lunch was ok but didn't buy anything else.  You could get lost in there..

Our next stop is Elkhorn RV Resort in Spearfish, SD, near Deadwood, South Dakota. It is the first real appearing resort we have stayed in.  Great place however it is raining today.  Feel so bad for all the tenters and bike riders along the way. This is the first day of lots of rain during the day.  At the Wagon Masters request, I set up with Deadwood Gulch Casino that our guests could park in their lot about a mile from downtown Deadwood. In exchange, we purchased lunch for everyone. They then could take a trolley for $1.00 each way per person. They have whole areas blocked off for just bikes so parking is hard to find, there are a few spots, but not many. This is the spillover from Sturgis, I think... LOL...  We came back to camp about 5:00pm and are catching up with lots of paper work stuff. 

We took a Trolley tour that was really an old bus with no windows.  It was by a company owned by the actor, Kevin Costner. Dave was our driver and guide. He was a very funny guy.  The tour was mostly up the very steep hill to the Mt Moriah Cemetery where Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane are buried.  This area is right in the middle of all the Sturgis activity. Our campground had a lot of amazing motor homes pulling amazing utility trailers with their bikes in them. Everything was matching... Lots of money ! ! 

In Buffalo, WY we stayed in the Buffalo KOA.  Very small town but about ten miles out in the farmland was an old homestead ranch where they serve dinner. Very delicious dinner of roast beef brisket and chicken.  Yummy and a beautiful setting.

Trying to stay caught up with this blog is hard ! !   LOL   This tour is so packed that I hardly have any spare time!!  LOL

Can't believe that today is day 21, August 8.  Three weeks in already...  We crossed into Montana today and are staying in Hardin at the Grandview Campground.  Salmon BBQ tonight in camp ! !  The BBQ turned out so great, everyone really like the healthy dinner. 

WOW, The Little Big Horn Battlefield tour was another step back in history. What a sad story. Our tour guide really knew his stuff and gave us tons of information. This land is Crow land and they are having a big celebration, third weekend of August and more, very soon. Wish we could be here. We talked to a Crow volunteer guide at the Visitor Center. How much more authentic a name than Eric "Leland" Big Man.  After films and touring we went to lunch at the Custer Battlefield Trading Post.  The owner, Jill, told us that Oprah's O'Magazine voted their Indian Taco the best in Montana.  It was so huge and good that I finished it for dinner. LOL

Gosh, we arrive at the Cody Trout Ranch Camp to find that most of the supposed campground is "Off-Limits" and/or a $100 fine would be levied.  Also, their trout fishing pond is covered with green algae.  Not a very inviting place. We gave the company a great suggestion of a place right downtown, the Ponderosa RV Park.  In Cody we did get lots of time to visit the five museums within the Buffalo Bill Historic Museum.  What a great place...

On to Yellowstone.  An amazing drive through beautiful country. Never realized how Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana are mostly green, rolling hills with lots of antelope or maybe prong horns.  At our campground we have an IMAX theater. What a great film they have of Yellowstone. Had to close my eyes a couple times in the plane tho.  LOL

The driver, Jackie, we had for both the Lower and Upper loops of the park was so great. She pretty much, non-stopped talked for the entire two days of touring the park. We saw so much. 

She took us into the Old, Old Faithful Lodge and talked about it's beginnings.

She coordinated with the WM about all the days stops and did a terrific job pointing out every bubbling pot, steam vent or major geyser. Jackie did wonderful and, of course, the scenery didn't disappoint. 

 Old Faithful was faithful as usual..  always magnificent to watch ! ! !

Lunch was at the Snow Lodge, right near Old Faithful Geyser. The second day, lunch was at Mammoth Hot Springs. A few strangers were pleasantly surprised with our left over lunch tickets. Nice to "play it forward". 

 Love the scenery ! !   LOL  Out in the Lamar Valley, we saw, what the tour guide Jackie described as, thousands of bison and a few antelope or prong horns.

Searched West Yellowstone for family of my childhood friend, Betty.  Found that her brother David had died in 2011 and that she still lives in Blackfoot, Idaho. Thinking about trying to find her on the way home. Been about 50+ years since I have seen her. 

Went to leave West Yellowstone and, guess what, no power at all.  Called out a mobile guys who spent three hours and just kept saying we needed batteries.  We knew that we had just bought new ones... Soooooooo, had to be towed to Belgrade, near Bozeman.  Turns out that we had an electrical problem. Ended up being an issue with the battery posts. Amazing since most of them are three months old and the others are less than a year. Our pocketbook is quite a bit lighter but back on the road by the next day around noon.  

 We were definitely the parks entertainment for a Friday night about 5:00pm

They got us all fixed and back on the road by about noon on Saturday.. Great service and guys ! !   Family owned business.  Thanks MCM Truck Repair !!

Off to Wilson, near Jackson, Wyoming. Missed the day of touring the Teton's but got there in time for the float on the Snake River and our final dinner at the Bar J Ranch. Was a wonderful day.  Great end to a great tour ! ! 

The smokey, forest fire driven, drive home ~  So sad...