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