South Dakota shenanigans

 Our time in South Dakota was splendid, catching up with friends and enjoying long motorcycle rides.  We camped in Spearfish and saw our friend Doug who Amy worked with at the law firm in Denver. Doug is as much of a motorcycle enthusiast as Dan, so there was plenty of gearhead chatter.  We took a beautiful ride through Spearfish Canyon and saw loads of deer, as well as incredible waterfalls in Bridal Veil Falls and Roughlock Falls.

Then we moved on to Hot Springs as our base camp for riding through Custer State Park, seeing Crazy Horse, Jewel Cave and Rushmore at night.

The bison calves at Custer are adorable!  Crazy Horse is a great memorial with a wonderful museum and live entertainment including hoop dancing and native flute playing.

We took a lantern-light tour of Jewel Cave, similar to what the original discoverers would have seen in the early days. It was neat, but we feel like the regular tour probably would have shown more of the formations we are used to seeing in caves and want to return for it.

We met up with my girlfriend, Sheila, in Rushmore and enjoyed the nighttime patriotic show. They do a neat presentation connecting the faces on the mountain with their contributions to the country and honoring the veterans who were present at the ceremony.  It was moving.

The next few days at the Randall Creek recreation area on the Missouri River were spent enjoying the slow movement of the river in the shade.

Renovations!

 We spent almost a month in Montana where we utilized the machinery and tools in my dad’s woodshop to renovate Josey. She came with a bare bones garage complete with a TV, two benches and a weird metal toolbox attached to the wall.

 

 

We kept one bench and tore out the other. We put the kitty litterbox cabinet in the corner, secured our amazing drawers from the Container store, and built out the cabinetry around them.

 

 

I built the doors with some neat punched aluminum sheeting.

 

 

I really like how this project turned out.  It provides SO MUCH more storage, which allows much easier access to pantry items and I think it really ties the room together. 

 

Then we tackled the dinette.  The bench seating supposedly seated 4 and turned into a bed if needed.  The benches were terribly uncomfortable, they were too tall so my feet didn’t touch the floor. The table was much too big. It just was unwieldy and we wanted to change it to make it more functional.

 

 

We used “luxury vinyl planking” on the floor, making a distinct difference between the dining area slide-out and the rest of the living room floor.  Then we started building the shelving against the wall. This allows me to set the keyboard in the space so I can practice any time the muse strikes.

 

 

We bought this beautiful table top online and now have a smaller table which makes the entire room feel so much more spacious.

 

 

It was such fun working together with Dan to make our ideas into reality. We love this new space and are already thinking about the next project!

Eclipsing in Arkansas

 Boy, we sure have seen some neat things on this adventure, but the total eclipse in Arkansas was really something!  

When we bought Josey and drove her from Texas to Colorado, I was in the passenger seat looking online for the path of the eclipse in 2024. It was a huge swath from Texas up to the northeast and I thought, we have to see it!

   

 

We chose a campground in Indiana and booked it before we even got back to Colorado. The managers of that campground told us that their listed rates were inaccurate, because they hadn’t accounted for the eclipse, and they cancelled our reservation.  Screw you guys!

 So, we booked another campground (Edgewood by the Army Corps of Engineers), much closer to where we would be, as it turns out, and it was just lovely. We sat by a lake, with our picnic lunch and about a dozen other people, looking at the sky.  What a spectacle!

A tropical break from RV life

 We interrupt this amazing RV life to take a little Mexican vacation.

 

In December, we pulled into Las Vegas and parked Josey for a 2 week respite. Our friend Meg, our kitties’ godmother, lives in the area and graciously adopted our cats while we spent the week in the Riviera Maya.

 

We stayed at a resort with their own marina next door so we were able to dive for 3 days straight.  It was fantastic! We saw this cool green moray eel and also a shark-sucker that wouldn’t leave us alone, and this neat sea star that crawled all over Dan’s hand.

 

We love our RV life, but this week of diving, pampering and gourmet food was just heavenly!

Camping on the Colorado between Arizona and California

 Pirate Cove is a big, commercial RV campground right on the Colorado river. They have a marina and a restaurant and cater to the big summer party crowds.  When we were there in December, we were the ONLY campers onsite. It was magical.

  

Our spot was right on the river. We unloaded the motorcycle and the bikes and backed up Josey so her tail hung over the river. We saw amazing sunrises on the Arizona side of the river and gorgeous sunsets in California. There are hundreds of miles of trails that would be amazing for ATVs and side-by-sides, which they rent, of course.  

We took a bike ride and saw (but couldn’t really see) something called a geoglyph.  Geoglyphs are giant ancient rock art figures made of stones or other natural objects that can best be seen from an aerial view.  The geoglyph we saw was marked off by a cable fence to protect it, and the photo here is from Google.  

It shows two bodies with their heads close together and their bodies and legs spread. There is no signage, so when we found the cable fencing, we didn’t really know what we were looking at.  After we got back from our bike ride, we looked up the aerial view and were simply fascinated. That led to learning about other geoglyphs like the Fort Mojave twins near Needles and the Blythe Intaglios near Blythe. 

The experience of being with such a powerful natural force as the Colorado river, alongside mysterious historic art like the desert geoglyphs, was truly inspiring.

Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree

 We didn’t want to leave the serenity of Mojave Narrows with its chirping and chattering waterfowl and the rustling of the cottonwood leaves. But our next adventure was waiting!

 

We chose to stay at an RV park in Twentynine Palms because of its proximity to Joshua Tree National Park. We are geeky about enjoying nature and learning about the different deserts and peoples and geology in an area. We planned on the trail at Barker Dam, which was built by cattle ranchers at the turn of the century.

 

The trail was a lovely and flat loop, about 1.5 miles long. We saw lots of the namesake Joshua Trees and even some petroglyphs on the trail. 

The dam only sees water in seasons with rain and winter wasn’t the rainy season, so we climbed it safely.

 

Twentynine Palms has a wonderful national park office and there was a great farmers market that weekend. Picking up fresh vegetables and homemade bread and tamales is such a treat!

Mojave Narrows Regional Park

 Sometimes you make plans, you pivot on those plans, and you just get lucky!  Dan and I skedaddled out of the free campground because we felt too claustrophobic with all the rigs packed in together. We found a regional park near Victorville, CA, in San Bernadino County, called Mojave Narrows.  The reviews we read sounded decent, and we reserved a spot where our back patio opened to Horseshoe Lake and crossed our fingers.

 

We were pleasantly surprised to roll in to a lush nature park with tons of cottonwoods and willows. We relaxed to the calls of so many different bird species, the website says there are over 1500 species of watchable wildlife!

 

We took a couple bike rides around the acreage and watched the train delivering who knows what to people who knows where.  

We had terrific weather and practically no neighbors except the ones who took flight just to settle back on a log in the water on one of the two lakes.

 

That’s the kind of experience that centers me - the calm of the cattails and the chatter of the birds.