This is the journal Kevin kept of our family's relocation from New England to the great American Southwest in a travel trailer. friends.Previously, Kevin and his family went on a ten-month travel trailer trip, from October, 1998 to August, 1999, to explore the country and find a suitable area to which to relocate. His journal from that trip is also available online.
Read earlier entries from July, 2000.
We attended a talk on fossils for my Junior Ranger badge (which is a real badge, not like the Yellowstone patch). We went to Roberts Prairie Dog Town and saw all the wild prairie dogs and listened to a ranger talk.
We saw our first pronghorn and buffalo on this trip.
We saw elk, bighorn sheep, reindeer, mountain goats, bison, peacocks, donkeys, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, lynx, and lots of bears (duh). The dominant elk had a huge rack. The elk were playing in the street purposefully to hold up traffic. Mom had to bump them gently with the car to get them to move. There were electric fences and electric cattle guards everywhere to keep the animals in their own environment (vicious, huh?).
Most of the bears were supposed to be black bears, but they were anywhere from black to gold. We also saw a badger that didn't like anyone or anything and was mad at the world. It sounded like a three-year-old pitching a temper tantrum.
In the baby animal area we saw a baby bear on a fork of a tree, dangling asleep. Another cub climbed up and swatted him until he woke up. There were some baby elk that were being nursed by goats because their mother didn't have any milk for them. There was a newborn goat only three days old called Patches. He was sooooooo cute!
For the rest of the day we made use of the campground.
We have seen a lot of motorcycles for the sixtieth annual Sturgis motorcycle rally nearby. They are expecting half a million bikers for the week of August 5-12. We saw signs everywhere saying "Welcome Bikers!"
We went off to see Mount Rushmore and I made my Junior Ranger badge (I have three now).
I found out about the history of Mount Rushmore and its maker, Gutzon Borglum. The first face to be unveiled was Washington's. Then Jefferson, then Lincoln, and finally, a giant spotlight and a fireworks display for Roosevelt.
During the planning for the dedication, Borglum died. His son, Lincoln (named after his favorite president) was left to do the finishing touches on the faces and to finish the Hall of Records. The Hall of Records holds the entirety of the history of the United States up to October 1941.
I also got a souvenir shmooshed penny with the faces from Mount Rushmore.
At dinner, Dad had an elk steak that was surprisingly lean. Mom had buffalo ribs. Furf loved the bones.
Afterwards we went to the lighting ceremony which had Boy Scout Troop 186 from Breckenridge, CO, lead the Pledge of Alliegance. There was a movie about Mount Rushmore explaining why these presidents were chosen, why they were great, and why America is great. Then they lit up the monument. At the end, the Boy Scouts had a flag ceremony and took down the flag for the night.
We left the Dakota Black Hills and reentered Wyoming prarie country. We saw some pronghorn herds. All these bikers are like lemmings making the exodus, all going to one place and finding out that they don't have enough fuel to make it back. Mom came into Lusk on fumes and ended up buying forty gallons of gas. Later did a speed run to Nebraska just for mom and I to say we've been there.
On the road, we had two men flag us down to pull over. We pulled up next to them and they said, "You're about to lose your awning!" A giant gust of wind had hit us and ripped part of it loose about a mile before. Everything was twisted, so Mom had to get up on the roof and cut it down. It took Dad and the two men to hold down the awning while Mom cut it down because the wind was so strong.
(All the wind reminded me of "Red's Saloon" from the woodcarving museum. There was a building with a sign saying "Red's Saloon," a horse straining upwind, a cowboy hanging onto a post for dear life, and a vulture, stuck in the wind, with his neck wrapped around a pole, choking.)
We ended up stuffing the awning into the trailer through the front window and it took up most of the trailer front to back. On Monday we will have an insurance damage estimate done and maybe get a new awning installed at the Camping World here. We drove around and around and all the campgrounds were full. So we ended up boondocking at WalMart.
Later we went to the Denver Mint. It was a disappointment for me because I thought the tour would be more exciting. We thought they might show us some of the gold transferred from the San Francisco mint and stored there. While we were standing in line we saw a whole bunch of barrels standing in their parking lot that were 819 kilos to the barrel, eight barrels to the pallet and a yard half full of pallets. We later learned that they were filled with nickel coin blanks. We waited in line for an hour and a half in 95 degree weather. I dumped water under my hat and on my sleeves to cool off while we waited. The mint gift shop was also a disappointment. The one thing that I really wanted was a coin blank of any kind of coin, preferably a quarter or penny.
Dad went out to the park behind the campground and tried out his new boomerang. It was a very touchy boomerang and it took him a while to figure it out. At one point it almost came down and hit Mom while she was using the video camera.
We saw a lot of different kinds of hummingbirds. We ended up putting out our feeder that we'd brought and we saw different kinds like rufous, broadtailed, Anna's, and black-chinned hummers. If there were more than one, they would fight each other for the feeder, until one flew away.
The next day we went to the Scouting Museum of New Mexico. It was really small and had lots of really old merit badges, uniforms, books and other items. I'm surprised that in a small hamlet in the middle of nowhere there was a museum with more Boy Scout items than Boy Scout headquarters itself.
On our last day at Whittington, on our way to our trail ride we saw a beautiful eight-point mule deer buck near the road.
The trail ride was actually a lot better than I expected. Dad's horse made grunts and groans as he mounted and started to ride away from the corral. They gave Dad a draft horse. We expected the trail boss to give Dad either O'Doule (the second biggest draft horse there) or Bud (the Clydesdale), but Bud had thrown his shoes. She rode O'Doule herself. Mom's horse and mine were best buddies, and mine followed Mom's the whole way, except for the end where mine got ahead. We saw lots of wildlife on the trailride, such as two deer and a bunny.
We had lunch at Skinner's, the Whittington Center cafeteria, and in the afternoon, more shooting.
A pickup truck camper travelling between Dad and us hit a giant raptor of some sort and shattered his camper window and didn't seem to notice. Mom saw the bird hit the camper and then skid across the breakdown lane into the grass.
At about 9:00 PM I went to the bathroom and there was a rattlesnake in front of the bathroom door! I went back to the trailer to get Mom. We did some research at the library the next day and we think that it was either a young Western or Red Diamondback.
Around dinnertime we saw a coyote walking through the park. Late at night there were three that kept me up for almost exactly half an hour. They sat outside our windows howling and screaming. I heard Furful sleeping on the floor and then all of a sudden I heard him scrambling to get up. He tried to look out the window for the coyotes.
[Kevin and his family have reached their destination, so this is Kevin's last diary entry for our trip. He hopes you have enjoyed reading about his travels.]
Continue on to "Kevin's Family Ferry," beginning June, 2001.