Happy Memorial Day

String Lake, Grand Teton

Happy Memorial Day!  We're fine.  We've gotten our schedule at the hatchery worked out and been out into the park on a couple of days we had off.  Jackson is busy.  Internet has definitely slowed down over the weekend. The hatchery now has only two, fulltime staff (should be 3 fulltime plus 1 seasonal) so extra volunteers are here helping out with picking eggs and cleaning tanks & raceways. 

 

Our first trip into Grand Teton was an acclimation walk along String & Leigh Lake up to Campsite 13 and back to the southern bridge on the String Lake Trail. Started out quietly with few people as it was chilly and clouded.  On our return from Campsite 13, clouds broke and it became warmer.  Soon kayakers & boarders were out in abundance.  

Our second hike was earlier today as we drove up to Blacktail Butte.  Blacktail Butte looks out of place as it sets somewhat in the middle of the "Hole" adjacent to Mormon Row and consists of nothing more than glacial till.  The trail is an out & back trail up to the summit.  You can continue further, but we don't know where it comes out at.  News to me: I wasn't aware that Blacktail Butte was know for rock climbing, and there were folks climbing.  We never saw them, but you could hear them.

Blacktail Butte Trail

That gets you up to date with us.  We're here until September - at least that's the plan.  More pictures follow.  Have a great Memorial Day!  David

 

Seeing the area - Yellowstone & Jackson

Lower Falls, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

 

After arriving  at the hatchery Monday, we travel up to visit Yellowstone NP Tuesday.  Busy with people.   Visitor Centers closed.  Meals were take out, only.  Most lodging closed except for Snow Lodge in the Old Faithful area.  Not as much snow as expected.  Parking still an issue at the more popular stops. Old Faithful geyser still worked.  Grand Tetons busy as well.

Thursday was a walk around Jackson.  Nice day out.  We did some shopping and ate lunch out.

Jackson greening up.  They're still building those $3+ Million homes.  Jackson busy as well.  

Today is our first official work day.  Don't know how busy today will be.  Nice this morning, so we may get some people fishing.  Hatchery is open, so we may get to take some people through. Rain/snow predicted for tomorrow and tomorrow night.  Still have those 20+ mph Wyoming winds!

That gets you up to day with us.  Thanks for dropping by!  Sorry for such a quickly written post.  Gotta go to the hatchery, David

Back at the Hatchery

We made an early start Saturday morning to travel from Casper to Dubois, WY where we spent Saturday & Sunday night.  We started out early, again, this morning for the short, 2-hour drive over to the fish hatchery outside Jackson, WY.  Unusual for us, we didn't drive through rain either day! We did have a rain/thunderstorm shower Saturday night, and we've got dark clouds to the southwest of us as I write this.  Your guess is as good as mine as to whether we'll see any rain or not.

One surprise was the traffic as we got close to Teton National Park and Jackson:  This is the busiest we've seen this area this time of the year.  It's more similar to mid-June traffic.  Grocery store was busy, and the parking lot close to full.  We'll see if traffic is that way tomorrow as we plan to head into Yellowstone for the day.   

Snow:  There's some on the mountains, but not as much as I expected.  Snake River looks normal to us which probably means it's actually a little low.  Gro Ventre River looked OK, too.

No post is complete without some pictures.  Here's some from The Longhorn Ranch (first 3) where we spent Saturday & Sunday night plus our trip over Togwotee Pass and the Continental Divide this morning.  We'll see how the trip tomorrow turns out.  Thanks for dropping by.  Until next time, David

Mt Moran, Grand Teton National Park

We're finally into Jackson Hole with the Tetons on our right.  That's Black Butte to the left.

On Our Way to Jackson, WY

After a great visit to the Black Hills area, we are on our way to the fish hatchery near Jackson, WY for the summer.  Once, again, we'll be tour guides.  We're staying in Casper, WY tonight.  Storms are all around, and we have gusty winds.  The US Flag at the campground has been straight out since we arrived a little after noon.  We expect to be rocked all night by winds.  We're headed to Dubois, WY and more thunderstorms tomorrow.  (BTW:  The Weather Channel indicates the most likely times for the heaviest thunderstorms are when we planned to arrive and any time after we'd planned to arrive. Best time to arrive: too early to check in.  Go figure.)  Posting the blog tonight as we'll have no internet for the rest of the weekend once we leave here. 

Generally, despite the pictures you'll see below, we're traveling through rain or enjoying the local area in snow or rain.  In 2018 we pretty much followed the same route and spent the trip experiencing the various muds of the mid-west and west.  For 2019 we followed a slightly more southern route and beat the rain into Jackson.  This year we've experienced less moisture than in 2018, but we've generally traveled or experience rain during the majority of the trip. It hasn't been the never-ending training of rain that the southeast has experienced, but it's enough that you can't keep the trailer or truck clean.  Donna says I can't say we "always" travel in the rain.  She said I should state that we "usually" travel in the rain.  Our last completely dry day was May 6th.  It has either rained or snowed on us everyday since then - traveling or not.  The local weather people here in Casper, WY indicate more is on the way.  Hopefully, our travel day on Monday into Jackson will be dry.  Below you'll see what I consider pretty pictures with beautiful skies.  Just know it either rained or snowed on us sometime that day, and most likely we drove through it.

Lover's Leap, Custer State Park, SD

 

Our longest hike of the week was Lover's Leap.  It's about a four mile trail with some steep  trail areas with loose rocks.  To get to the highest point, you must do a rock scramble.  The views are worth it - see below.

This picture got the most "Likes" on Facebook

The view from Lover's Leap.

We also drove through the snow...OK, short, "medium" snow showers...to visit the DC Booth Historical Fish Hatchery in Spearfish, SD.  It's more of a museum covering the history of fish hatcheries though they do raise some fish for local stocking.  Made for a nice day-trip out, but only the gift shop was open.

Back to Custer State Park:  We did try another hike, but it was along an old wagon road used by area residents and miners.  Not as scenic as the Lover's Leap trail, but it definitely demonstrated that we were out of shape for the distance and elevation.  We were on Custer State Park's Wild Life Loop, so we did get a couple of wildlife pictures:

We also got out to Keystone, SD.  We drove by the "heads" (Mt Rushmore), but didn't stop.  Didn't even waved, either.  We ate ice cream in Hill City, too, for Mother's Day.  

So that's been our week or what I'll call our "vacation" as we treated it as such.  We ate as we wanted.  We tracked our food using WW, but didn't really try to stay within the "healthy range" as defined by WW.  Today was a late lunch at HQ Southern BBQ.  Loved every WW point of it, too, but I digress.  

Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Apparently, we're "forcing people to buy something" or "installing malware" when people visit the site.  We don't own this site.  We just have the privilege of using it.  If you're threatened by someone demanding you buy something or you get malware from the blog, not only report it to google but leave a comment or send us an email, too.  We'll report it to blogspot.  David

Black Hills, South Dakota

Sylvan Lake, Custer State Park

After a good visit in Sioux Falls, we took a couple of days to travel over to the Black Hills area for about a week's stay.  As usual, we started the trip off with rain on Wednesday & spent the night at New Frontier Campground in Presho, SD. We had a pretty Thursday trip over to the Black Hills.  

One view from Rafter J-Bar Ranch

We're at Rafter J-Bar Ranch for the week, one of favorite campgrounds.  It's centrally located (just south of Hill City, SD), which means you do a lot of driving to go do/see things.  We're in the campground's base camp area, but there are several areas and many cabins.  Most rigs seem to be in the base camp area as it has cable TV, close to the playground and restrooms/laundry.  

We've already ate breakfast & completed some shopping in Rapid City, yesterday (Friday).  To complete the day, we walked around Sylvan Lake in Custer State Park and had a great hamburger & fried cheese curds at Burger 'n Bun in Custer, SD.  

Yep, that's part of the Sylvan Lake Trail

As you can see in the picture, above, there's still some ice in the hills and some Custer State Park trails remain closed.  Gift shops are open, but dining doesn't seem to be.  Not sure about actual lodging within the state park. 

Base Camp as seen from the Lower Ranch Camp area

Today is laundry day as it's a rainy (local meteorologists call it a "washout") Mother's Day weekend for South Dakota.  Highs are in the low 50s or high 40s with each night below freezing.  As we have much less wind than earlier in the week, we'll get out some.  Maybe just walk the campground as it's a great place to just walk around.  Campground isn't busy, and they're just now stocking the camp store.  No ice cream, yet, so we've been out looking in other places.

We'll get out more later in the week as the rain dies down and temps start to warm up.  There's ice cream that needs to be eaten, you know.  In the meantime, the campground is a great place to walk if you just want to go outside for a little while.

Tire pressures are hanging in there on the truck.  I-90 was a much better ride than through Minnesota though there's a lot of road work ongoing.  As of this time, some of  eastbound I-90 lanes are dug up and getting a new road bed.  We've only lost one machine screw that holds one of the holding tank's pull handles to the pull rod.  (BTW, those are machine screws 8-32 X 1/2 inch; small head should you ever need one.)  I now have four extras of that screw plus a new, small vice-grip pliers in case we lose the handle.  I'll see if I can get just the handle once we arrive in Jackson.  Generally, once we have replacement parts, we'll never need them.

So you're up to date with us.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next week, David

 

Sioux Falls, SD

We're back in Sioux Falls for a few days.  Hope to meet up with Ken & Sue while we're here.  Donna has a couple of dentist appointments (yes, we have dentists everywhere), and I'd like to pick up mail.  We have one truck tire that's beginning to show signs of a possible air leak.  It's an inner wheel of the rear dual wheels, so we'll  keep an eye on it while we're here in Sioux Falls.

The trailer service at MORryde - while early morning - went find.  Several parts were replaced and we were out a little after noon.  Problem with me going to MORryde is that I see things that would be useful to add to the trailer.  This time it wasn't expensive.  They've developed motion sensitive step lights for the StepAbove steps.  We bought a package of them (two to a package), and we'll install them at some point.  Word to the wise:  If a MORryde rep offers to show you the product displays while you're waiting during service, stay away.  Stay far away. 

Trip out around Chicago was overly busy (no pandemic here) and rough on both truck and trailer.  At one point driving over roadside curbs would have been easier on the rig.  No joke.  We'd sustained serious front suspension damage if we'd hadn't been in stop & go traffic.  

We spent a couple of nights at DeForest, WI to rest up, then bounced along I-90.  And I do mean bounce!  Rocking horse bounce.  Wisconsin sections of I-90 mostly OK.  Minnesota...well, there's a lot of bounce, then there's not so much bounce.  What little we've traveled in South Dakota indicates we'll continue to bounce as we head west.

Current plans - OK, reservations - are for an overnight at Presho, SD, Wednesday night.  We move on to Hill City, SD Thursday where we plan to spend a week.  We'll continue on to Jackson, WY via Casper, WY and Dubious, WY.  Plan to arrive at the fish hatchery May 17th.  We want to make a day trip up to Yellowstone before we start work that following weekend.

In other news, for the first time in our RVing "career", we experienced an overbooked situation for a site type we'd made reservations for.  Campground wasn't full, but the full-hookup sites we'd fit in were overbooked.  There were water & electric sites available that we'd fit in, but the directions from the office staff required us to drive through trees to get to them.  Word to less experienced:  If you're unfamiliar with the campground, don't be afraid to walk the campground first. (I should have, but didn't.) Many RV parks haven't really started trimming their trees, yet, this early in the season.

Also, be aware that early in the season, campground staff may not be fully familiar with the RV park (or RVs for that matter).   So far we've stopped in a RV park where the fact that we were a 39 foot 5th wheel trailer didn't really "register" with the staff working the front desk.  You're a 39 foot long trailer so we'll give you a site that turns out to be about 50 feet long.  Ok, where would you like us to park our 22 foot long tow vehicle?  The lady with the golf cart that lead us to the site realized it was too short when we pulled in and called the front office to switch us to a longer site.  (Side bar:  as the lady on the golf cart was talking on her walkie-talkie to get us a longer site, the guy in the site next to us was "loudly" telling her that we'd almost hit a tree limb along the campground road to the site, and they need to trim back the @#$%^$&*%$# tree limbs.  I took it that he'd made this recommendation before.)  

By-the-way, there are campgrounds that we stay at where the longest sites are only 45 to 50 feet long.  Most have an area where it's convenient to park your tow vehicle or toad.  We typically plan to unhook, so it's no problem for us (and makes it easier to go refill the truck with fuel.) 

Ahhhhh...life in a RV.

So that gets up up to day with us.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  Until next week, David