Differing from our usual travel day technique, we started the day by dining with our friend, Claude, that we knew in San Diego before he had to move away some five years ago to find work in this part of the world. We contacted him by phone a couple days ago and he returned our call last night. He had some business close to our camping spot and agreed to meet us for breakfast this morning.
We met at a place in Loveland called Mimi’s. The restaurant has very attractive furnishings but, unfortunately, they do not seem to have much talent when it comes to making breakfast. The food was nominal and the prices were pretty stiff for ordinary fare. I suggest to other diners that they seek food elsewhere. Nevertheless, we sat down and were able to hobnob with Claude for about 3 hours. He seems like he is getting along okay but, despite being born and raised in the Denver area, he has come to dislike what this place has become; a large metropolitan area with all the conveniences, disappointments, overcrowding and accelerating living costs that seem to pervade all mega-cities.
Peggy and I came through Denver, Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak area back in the late ’70s and the transformation is startling. Traffic is a nightmare. The drivers here seem to enjoy being pricks, butting into traffic where there is insufficient space, running red lights, gabbing on the phone while holding up traffic and generally being shitheads. The sprawl around Denver now seems to extend about 40 miles in all directions and the inconsiderate driving extends right to the end of the housing tracts. We passed through Denver on a Saturday this time but backups, stoppages and uncontrolled swerving by the local drivers made the passage miserable. We got through the middle of the city and the outbound traffic was a bit better than the inbound and after about 35 miles cleared up to a point where we could actually drive near the speed limit.
We pulled off I-25 and turned west on US-24 in Colorado Springs. A couple miles later we turned into Goldfield RV Park where we had a reservation for a three day stay in this locale. After our wonderful experience at Terry Bison Ranch and the all night howling traffic on I-25 adjacent to the park, we thought we had done well making our reservation at a place a couple miles from the hellish noise. We didn’t. Goldfield RV Park is located hard up against US-24 and the traffic noise is extraordinary. Straight-pipe Harleys, semi tractors and folks who seem to think that high volume bass stereo din is spiffy regularly drive the adjacent road, sharing their signature sounds with those of us stupid enough to book ourselves into this cacophony Hades.
Since we left late after our long breakfast, we arrived late here at skinny spot RV land. On the driver’s side of our trailer where the slide-outs extend to give us more living space the clearance to the next RV is less than 2 feet. On the passenger side of the Invader, we do not have sufficient room to extend our awning. The park has cable TV but not the channel lineup that would allow us to watch today’s NASCAR race. The wi-fi is sluggish when it works. I hope the scenery around here is good because the lodgings are a bit noisy and space, one of the true benefits of camping, is non-existent. We will endure but it is highly unlikely we will come back to this park because it is doo-doo.

We might have been able to do some exploring today but we both selfishly slept late and elected to loaf around until about noon. We decided we needed to get some provisions for the next few weeks travel because we have no idea when we will be in another place to access both Trader Joe’s and Costco within a short drive.
We picked up my prescriptions and a dumpster full of food at the nearby Costco and supplemented it with even more food from Trader Joe’s. Aboard our Barbarian Invader we now have provisions ample to feed a sizeable army, maybe more than once. We also joined Passport America, another discount camping service, but other than that, the rest of the day was pretty droll.

Today was an exploring day so we took off from our spot at Boyd Lake SP and headed west into the Rockies. From where we are camped, it is only a couple miles to US-34, the road through Big Thomson Canyon and up into Rocky Mountain National Park. The starting elevation today was about 4,500′ and we took Charlotte up and over the Trail Ridge Highway which peaked out at 12,200′.
Not far from our campsite, the traffic thinned out and we were able to maintain a pretty low speed which was great. The reasons for our slow progress were the extremely twisty road and the terrific scenery as we climbed up through the canyon cut by the Big Thomson River through pure rock. It is a very steep canyon, maybe 100 feet wide at the bottom and not too much wider 400′ up between the rock cliffs. Most of the drive is in the shade unless you drive through around noon.
As we drove up to Estes Park, we noted a few structures like bridges, garages, roads and residences that were wrecked by floodwaters with fractions of them still standing. Must have been an expensive spring. We emerged from the canyon and took the bypass around the really touristy, disgusting part of Estes Park which is located at an elevation of 7,500′. A few miles after leaving town, we crossed through the Rocky Mountain National Park entrance station where we didn’t have to pay $20 because we have a new federal access pass. We bought this gem in the Badlands and have already come out $30 ahead on federal entrance fees.
The road gets steeper past the entrance and continues pretty much without downgrades until we got all the way to the park visitor center up on the Continental Divide at around 12,000′ elevation. Charlotte ran like a top all the way up. We fooled around and took some pictures at the top of the world but pictures are poor reproductions of the absolutely stunning views from here. The road is way above tree line and the mountains are stark monoliths of rock with many-colored tundra, pikas (puny rodents), chipmunks, marmots and some Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep as the only inhabitants. The horizons are a great deal of distance from this vantage point. On the way back down, we pulled out at almost every turnout along the road and were rewarded with more magnificent scenery. We descended through some really tough but dinky conifers and some colorful aspens grimly hanging on in a very tough winter environment. We kept descending to a campground called Moraine Park where Peggy and I stayed on our honeymoon trip back in 1979. The scenery is just as gorgeous now as I remember it back in ’79. The magnificent scenery of this park makes it a true bucket list destination.
We headed down through Estes Park, this time with all the repulsive enterprise dedicated to separating suckers from their hard-earned dollars plainly evident as we traversed the main drag of town before continuing down the spectacular Big Thomson River canyon. It is an extraordinary chasm this river has cut and the evidence that the river rises during the thaw is widespread. There are very few roadside turnouts so this drive may be more rewarding for passengers than for the driver who must keep his eyes on the twisted road to avoid certain death from a plunge into the river or an abrupt stop into the adjacent cliff faces. This is a good road to creep along if you can get away with it because the views are very nifty.

We had a travel day, of sorts, today as we pulled up stakes at Terry Bison Hellhole in Cheyenne and took off south down I-25 to Loveland, Colorado. The distance we covered was a whopping 48 miles in less than an hour and we were lucky and the Garmin took us nearly to the campground entrance at Boyd Lake State Park.
We got an early start from Cheyenne mainly because the traffic noise at our former spot was almost biblical in proportions and the volume level seemed to increase in the early morning hours. We cruised into the campground only to find that, in addition to the relatively high nightly cost for scant amenities (+/- $25 for power only), there is an $8 charge, per vehicle per day, for entry past the park entrance kiosk. The park surfaces are paved roads and RV spots with thirsty grass in between spaces. We are located at the end of a loop and have a nifty view of Boyd Lake out our living room windows. It is very nice.
After loafing around for a while, we drove up to a Colorado visitor center and picked up a ream of publications about this state. Departing the VIC, we headed for Horsetooth Lake which is actually a reservoir but it does have neat rock formations along the edge of the lake. It might have been better if they named the place Horseteeth Lake because the brilliant, multi-colored rock formations around the lake look like a horse’s lower teeth except a lot bigger and not green. The road has some pretty steep sections and abrupt drop-offs adjacent to the road which made Peg a bit nervous because she is not too skookum on routes with deadly hazards about. We headed home from the lake after some exploring and got drunk so I don’t remember too much after that.

Our site at Terry Bison Ranch turned out to be worse than we expected despite their expensive and colorful advertisement in the Good Sam Campground Directory touting the abundant wonderfulness of the place. The ad may be attractive but it is merely an ad and turns out to be something less than accurate. We probably should have figured something was awry when we noted that the Terry Bison Ranch consists of 28,000 acres but the owners have elected to put the RV park, the campground, the restaurant, the general store, the shower and restroom facilities, the laundry, the child amusement areas and the stock pens right next to the northbound lanes of I-25. The views from the RV park consists of prairie that extends to the horizon uninterrupted by anything other than the park’s alleged amenities, large hideous billboards along I-25 and a bit of the stock pens.
The access roads at this alleged resort have big potholes and muddy spots that are liberally distributed among the poorly graded recycled gravel covering. I think the recycled road covering is composed of broken asphalt, sharp gravel aggregate with a bison poop binder.
The individual camping spaces are almost directly atop one another and after our neighbor pulled in, we could have easily slapped his face as he exited his trailer without leaving our trailer. The RV spaces closely resemble a Wal-Mart parking lot except Wal-Mart does not have acres of unmowed dead grass and the paving is worse here but the lighting is about the same; treated poles with ugly exposed streetlights giving the place a nice penal institution ambience. Additionally, there are quite a few trailers in spaces here that look like the residents have elected to live here and have brought all of their belongings with them including multiple rusty dead propane cylinders, bicycles that should be classified as unicycles since they lack the proper number of wheels, old lawn mowers, many colorful torn plastic tarps, shade structures without fabric covers or shade, ceramic pots that formerly held plants, myriad useless twisted fencing components and many broken trash receptacles that have blown over in the stiff winds that pervade this country. We could tell the cans had blown over when full because there are plenty of bottle caps, cigarette butts, used Q-Tips and various product wrappers well distributed throughout the dead grass and on the windward side of the grubby unpainted cabins that line the east side of the RV area. Many folks with dogs have left their animal’s droppings in the tent areas so others can enjoy them until they desiccate and blow away in the stiff breezes.
As the evening wore on, we noticed a clearly audible roar coming from nearby I-25 and, just when we thought it couldn’t possibly get any louder, a long freight train came by that made the ground tremble. Due to the relentless background racket, the only way it could be any less restful at night was if they moved the campground 100 feet west directly onto I-25’s divider, right next to the Union Pacific’s multiple tracks. Traffic, both trucks and freight trains, aggressively continue their activities throughout the night at a sound pressure level that makes slumber difficult except for the hearing impaired.
The guy who owns the place fancies himself as an engineer and he has made some very primitive-looking kiddie rides with exposed operating mechanisms without the pesky, nanny-state guards to keep fingers, legs and hair from becoming entangled in the wheels, sprockets and gears of Wyoming commerce. Nobody seemed to be taking advantage of these child mashers and I soon found out why; a ride on the Barrel-O-Death or the Whirl-and-Hurl is $4 a pass with probably a surcharge for amputations of those troublemaking limbs children have. A pony ride for the kiddies is $8.
You can be treated to a one-hour ride on one of the resort’s four-wheelers through the surrounding bison ranch for $30. The owner/engineer has created his very own train out of repurposed farm equipment and truck parts that scuttles about the ranch and one can take a dinner trip of two hours for a mere $95. We did spot some bison here but we walked to the spot where we could see them which is an oversight on the owner’s part because he missed out on charging us for the privilege of seeing some bison on a bison ranch. They also offer trail rides on horses of an hour or two for $80 a head as long as you are more than 8 years old and weigh less than 250 pounds.
We did not have the honor of using the restrooms or showers because we read some frightening news about the restroom cleanliness and maintenance on the internet after we arrived. When Peggy and I took a walk through this sylvan wonderland, I noticed some turds strewn about that made me believe that others may have found the restrooms disgusting as they had elected to crap on the dead grass instead of encountering the frightening hazards of public restrooms or showers that have not suffered the burden of occasional maintenance.
We had part-time access to the internet because they offer part-time wi-fi that seems to only fail once you have tried to repeatedly establish a connection and temporarily succeeded. Our dreadful phone was only rarely able to see the park’s wi-fi network but, strangely, our HP computer was able to stream video from wi-fi with only periodic rebuffering. Sometimes the streaming video would attempt to rebuffer and would fail so we would have to re-establish the connection before the video would successfully run for a while.
There is a restaurant here called Senator’s Steakhouse where patrons can get a $15 bison burger, a half-pound bison sirloin for $32, chili and cornbread for a mere $15, a $20 chicken fried steak and the full meals only have a $5 uptick if you want soup and salad. We chose to refrain from eating in this steakhouse because, again from the internet, we read about some Air Force personnel who came here to enjoy a serviceman’s discount and left with the trots that even Imodium couldn’t cure. They elaborated voluminously about the cloud of flies swarming the soup and salad bar which may have contributed to their choosing the meal without the $5 salad bar add-on.
My conclusions about this place are as follows: go anywhere else because camping, amusement and dining prospects here are bleak. This place is ugly. In order to not be completely negative, I can state that they do have propane sales here and service was quite prompt although I found out after getting my cylinder filled that the price for propane was the highest I have encountered in my 15 months of travel.

Today was one of the longest drives we have taken in one day since June 2014. About 300 miles separates Sundance from Cheyenne, WY, and we were fortunate to get an early start for us – about 8:30 AM we pulled out of our site and took off south down WY-585. After about 30 miles, we connected with US-85 southbound to a town called Lusk. This road goes up to about 5600′ and drops to about 3300′ along the way.
Lusk is a nice little place with cute houses, good roads and one of the finest rest areas we have encountered. They had a playground for kiddies, picnic shelters with shade structures and really clean restrooms that we utilized fully. From Lusk, we headed west on US-20 to Douglas where we purchased inexpensive fuel and turned south on I-25. The weather started looking iffy as we continued south on I-25 but the terrain was gorgeous with bizarre rock formations strewn along the way.
The good driving weather went south and it started to rain, sometimes with considerable vigor, as we approached Cheyenne. We drove through Cheyenne and about 7 miles later came to our camping spot for the next two days at Terry Bison Ranch. We are about two miles north of the Colorado border.
According to our Good Sam Campground Directory this place is supposed to be an RV resort and the prices for camping here are relatively high ($40+ w/ the Good Sam discount). At first glance, it looks like the description might be highly optimistic because the place does not look too good; bad roads, tight camping spots and not too clean. Vegetation, except some trees, is nearly dead. Tomorrow I will be able to give a better report.

Regrettably, this is our last full day in the Black Hills area. Peggy and I have both fallen in love with the scenery here and the abundance of animals roaming around is amazing. Today we took a short drive up county road 858 to Warren Mountain in the Black Hills National Forest just north of our base in Sundance and returned via the long route down Highways 116 and 585. The views were great and we saw one kestrel, some meadowlarks, a few bluebirds, about 10 deer and not less than 200 pronghorn antelope. We also got to meet Max, the Warren Mountain fire watch tower lady’s pooch who stays in her pickup during her shift because he is not comfortable climbing the eight flights of steel mesh stairs into the tower. The elevation of Warren Mountain, if you don’t climb into the tower, is 6666′. The view from the top of the mountain is superb. I suppose that’s why they put the tower up there.
After our short drive and a fuel stop, we returned to the Invader to do the dreaded laundry, dump the waste tanks, top off our water reserves and generally prepare for our departure tomorrow. We have what we consider a very long drive tomorrow (300+ miles) and need to get out of here early to get into the Cheyenne area prior to dark.
This part of northeastern Wyoming is absolutely stunning to look at although I imagine in a few months it may still be beautiful but it will also be minus 20 degrees outside and we certainly do not want to be here for that. I am extremely wimpy in weather below about 50F. Some might say I am wimpy all the time but they are liars, according to me.

The day started with another great Peggy breakfast including a fruta plata along with some fortified coffee. Then we took off going east (I hate backtracking but we had no option) to Spearfish, SD. After carefully scrutinizing our South Dakota maps we determined that we should get off I-90 at exit 10 which is the wrong exit. From this point we attempted to use dead reckoning to get us pointed in the right direction for our target, Highway 14A through Spearfish Canyon. After a while, we determined we were going the wrong way and pulled a U which got us all the way back to the original, wrong exit. After some more meaningful discussion, we tried going another direction and accidentally found the turn to go on 14A and embarked on our Spearfish Canyon adventure.
Leaving the town of Spearfish the scenery along the road rapidly transitions from commercial to residential to driving between the walls of a skinny gorge with a crystal-clear stream running next to the highway. We drove through gorgeous canyons with giant ravines on both sides of the road. After a few miles, we made it to Bridal Veil Falls. It is pretty okay as a small waterfall but after seeing the Smokies, the Carolinas and Niagara, it is merely a nice cascade with easy fat tourist access. Numerous overweight Americans had crossed the stream and obscured the view of the lower falls section with their bodies and we waited a bit for them to exit stage left before shooting a few pictures.
Continuing on, we soon came to another waterfall called something that was up a dirt road behind a place called the Spearfish Lodge. The road was a gravel with enough room to pass oncoming traffic if you were careful and we crept along for about a mile before we arrived at the full parking lot so we missed this attraction. The surrounding countryside is gorgeous so our return trip back to the pavement wasn’t too bad. We got back on 14A and passed through the town of Cheyenne Crossing and continued to Lead. In Lead there is a really humongous hole in the ground where they mined things and it is so big they don’t let you get too close to the edge and you can’t even see the bottom. Other than this huge hole and some quaint old houses, there is nothing too spectacular about Lead other than where it is. The surroundings are gorgeous but the town is …..uhh…nominal.
At this point Peg asked me whether we should detour Deadwood and take 14A or take WY-85 and pass through this fabled municipality. Of course I acted like I knew and directed her to take 85 through Deadwood. I was stupid. I am embarrassed. Notice to travelers: Avoid Deadwood. There apparently were many historic things that may have happened in Deadwood but now it is a grisly conglomeration of a casino, dreadful tourist stuff, poorly designed road construction work with puzzling detours, unsynchronized traffic signals, narrow one-way streets and the resulting traffic nightmare that keeps auto speeds between dead stop and barely moving. It’s awful.
We finally cleared Deadwood and headed north for Belle Fourche, SD. Although the scenery along the road is beautiful, Belle Fourche is unremarkable and the only reason I wanted to go there was because I remember it from a John Wayne movie called The Cowboys. From downtown Belle Fourche, we turned west on WY-34 and passed through Aladdin again on our way home. The town is still for sale.
In conclusion – the towns around here do not blow up my dress but the terrain is absolutely gorgeous.

Sightseeing was the agenda for today so we drove up to Devil’s Tower taking the same route from Sundance as we did yesterday. We didn’t spot near as many deer this time but we did spot a big turkey herd and the drive is gorgeous taking us delighted gawkers over the ridge and down through a very colorful gorge to the park entrance. We got to use our access pass again and saved another entrance fee. We made a brief stop at the prairie dog town next to the road and continued up the hill into the facility parking lot. We were very fortunate in finding a parking place almost exactly between the trail and the visitor center.
Peg and I took full advantage of the government-provided restrooms and were only waylaid for a short time in the visitor center. We found one of the national park postcards Peg and I like and bought one. Then we sorted out our stuff and took off toward the trail around Devil’s Tower.
The trail is almost perfect for old farts like me. There is a little bit of climbing here and there and for some reason I don’t remember nearly as many descending sections although the trail is a loop and we finished where we started. There are very few sections of the trail without some shade. The best parts about the trail, however, are that the enormous monolith of the Devil’s Tower was on our left and almost primeval meadows and red gorges on our right. The entire circuit of the mountain is through stands of Ponderosa pine and a truly impressive boulder field.
Devil’s Tower, other than being pretty flat on top, is a geological idiot confuser for this part of the world. It kind of looks like Devil’s Postpile in California except it is about 1000 feet taller. After some very slow sauntering along the loop trail we got a glimpse of the what we think is the southern exposure. Since we were moving at a very leisurely rate we started to spot little shiny reflections off the Tower. After a modest amount of searching the wrong areas, we finally got the binoculars on several specks that turned out to be a bunch of climbers part way up the side of the big rock. The Tower fills up your view and the climbers look like the small end of nothing whittled down to a fine point. They are almost invisible against the giant columns of rock. The magnitude of the colossal cone thing of rock with the flat top is impressive, particularly from up close. As we wobbled around the loop we got pictures from all sides.
If we could quit looking at the Tower, the views out over the surrounding Wyoming countryside are breathtaking. The vistas of sky over pines over granite bluffs over gently rolling hills that are amply stocked with wildlife are memorable. We paused to be stoked by the great glimpses of the scenery so many times that it only took us about 2 hours to walk the 1.3 mile loop trail. It is gorgeous here. We arrived back at Charlotte’s preferred parking place, drank a river of our water and vamoosed from the park. We hung a left on WY-24 and pretty quick we were in Hulett.
Hulett has a terrific deli called R Deli right on the main and only road through town. They made me a roast beef sandwich with cheddar on a ciabatta roll, threw in a midget size bag of Lay’s potato chips and some good cole slaw all for $8. They even heated it up so it was filled with melted cheddar and it was terrific. Peggy got my pickle. Peggy ordered a Reuben on marbled rye and got the same sides for $8.50 and she said it was great. She got her pickle, too. The sandwiches are amply sized or we are getting to be even worse wimps because we each took half a sandwich home.
We waddled back to the truck and headed out of Hulett destined for Aladdin, WY. Aladdin has a population of 15, a general store/post office/liquor store/antiques dealer/ice cream parlor/trinket shop, a small vacant wooden motel, several mobile homes in various states of decay and a listed price, lock, stock and barrel of $1.5 million. The sign is still up so I guess there have been no takers.
We turned south off WY-24 at Aladdin and cruised down County 111 to close to something called the Vore Buffalo Jump which we ignored. West on I-90 to Sundance where we decided we had not wasted enough diesel yet so we turned south on WY-585 for about 10 miles to a road I can’t remember the name of where we turned west until we hit WY-116 back to Sundance. Back in our trailer we got the air conditioning, the ice maker and the CATV running and sampled some porter before calling it a day. We are scheduled to leave here in a couple days. I sure hope we come back to the Black Hills next year because we just don’t have enough time to see all we would like to see this year and the scenery and the wildlife are delightful.

Today we had a travel day so we hooked Charlotte to the Barbarian Invader and departed Heartland RV Park in Hermosa, SD, and headed north on SD-79 to Rapid City. We turned west on I-90, passing through Sturgis, SD, where, fortunately, the annual biker get-together and fisticuffs extravaganza was over. We continued on I-90 across the South Dakota / Wyoming border to Sundance where we pulled into Mountain View RV Park & Campground. This park has spaces that are pretty tight but they have CATV and good wi-fi along with full hook-ups.
The drive today was less than 2 hours. We set up the Barbarian and started the air conditioning. After an hour of doing nothing except watching the nice cable TV they have here, we got bored and decided to go for a spin. We took in all three blocks of the main drag of Sundance before getting on US-14, a single lane road through some amazing Wyoming countryside. We had not gone more than about 10 miles before we had counted 27 deer grazing in the exquisite grasslands adjacent to the road.
We continued on for about 20 miles on US-14 until we turned north on WY-24. We descended into an enormous canyon with red walls reminiscent of Utah’s Bryce Canyon or the Grand Canyon and then we spotted Devil’s Tower. It is a huge hombre and you can spot it about 10 miles out. We were able to pass the gate without paying due to our recently renewed federal access pass and we took the three mile road right up to the base of this giant vertical monster. We arrived in the parking lot and immediately saw the usual horde of Oriental tourists taking pictures of each other and parked cars. We passed through the lot and returned home because we are going back tomorrow, hopefully by the same route because it was gorgeous terrain.
On the way home Peggy asked to pull over at a local farmer’s market where she visited all the tables and left quite satisfied with herself.