Go Yotes!

I thought I'd start out today's post with a logo of the U. of South Dakota. When we left North Sioux Falls this morning on I-29 North, one of the first billboards I saw was a cartoon figure of a coyote with the words "Go Yotes." I figured it had to be short for "coyotes" and sure enough, it was. So, for anyone who didn't know the mascot of the U. of SD (which I didn't), Go Yotes!

We basically traveled across the entire state of SDakota today, after picking up I-90 in Sioux Falls, and following the interstate for almost 400 miles east west, ending up in Rapid City this afternoon around 4pm. The biggest disappointment for me was not seeing a single buffalo, since the literature we picked up at a very nice rest area/info center on I-90 said to watch for buffalo herds along the interstate.  Well, Obidiah and I never saw anything that looked like a buffalo. Lots of cattle, with loads of new calves (I thought calves were born in the spring???) along I-90, but no buffalo or bison. Otherwise, most of SD is pretty boring. Very flat, with lots of corn fields in the eastern half of the state and lots of the large circular hay bales in the west. The only change in the very FLAT terrain was around the Badlands. We didn't have time (at least on this trip) to take the Badlands Scenic Loop, but I'd like to do that some day. 

Once we got set up at the TeePee Campground on the south side of Rapid City, we went out to dinner at a restaurant recommended by our campground hosts called The GasLight, in Rockerville (about 10 miles from Rapid City), just inside the Black Hill National Forest.  Gaslight is part restaurant/part old time western saloon -- and the food was pretty good. I'd recommend it to anyone visiting this area.

We plan on getting SD drivers' licenses tomorrow and then getting the Winnebago and the Saturn registered in SD while we're here. After that (hopefully accomplished in one day), we hope to see Mt Rushmore and other sightseeing locations, if possible. More to follow. Cheers for now.

Crossing the USA's Big 3 "I's"

Crossing the Three "I's" -- Okay, that's my own moniker, but how best to describe traveling through Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa?  One word: Corn, corn, corn and more corn.  And once in awhile a field of soybeans.  Loads of corn, and most of it baked under the sun with little to no rain.  Believe several counties in Indiana and Illinois were declared disaster areas.  Corn looked absolutely terrible compared to the corn fields we're used to in Carroll County, Maryland.  I caught a news program tonight that said this year's crop of corn will effect food prices next year since corn by-products are in so many of our food stuffs. Everything from fuel for our cars to toothpaste to chewing gum to anything with glucose in it.  This year is okay, since all the stuff in food on grocery shelves this year came from last year's corn crop.  But watch out for next year; maybe a 3% to 4% increase in the cost of many of our food stuffs.  But enough of that.

We did manage to do some sightseeing while staying at the Thousand Trails (TT) Horseshoe Lakes region near Clinton, IN. Found the Ernie Pyle rest area that's maintained by a couple patriotic groups in the area. Nice little rest stop out in the middle of nowhere. There was an old covered bridge (probably reconstructed) and a historical marker. Took a snapshot of Lynette and Obi in front of the bridge and one of Obi and the marker . While stopping for gas at a local mini-mart, I had a pleasant conversation with some of the locals about a "nice" restaurant to celebrate our belated wedding anniversary. They sent us into Illinois, only two miles away, to the town of Paris, where we had a very nice Italian dinner at the Tuscany. Plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day.

Lynette and Obidiah at Ernie Pyle rest area near Dana, IN

Obidiah posing with Ernie Pyle historical marker

Left the TT campground around 9am and headed north on state highway 63 to pickup I-74. After a few miles we entered Illinois again and headed for Danville.  And once again, it was very flat, with lots of corn fields.  Weather continued to be hot, but maybe not as humid.  The corn crop here in IN and IL is basically gone.  Several counties in IN and IL have been declared disaster areas.  Corn crop was pretty pathetic; very brown, very small, with no tassels. Anyway, we headed west on I-74 going thru Champaign (home to the Fightin' Illini) and Urbana, and taking a bypass around Peoria.  I-74 is a tad bit better than I-70, but not by much; both need loads of work. We eventually crossed the mighty Mississippi river and entered Iowa, the last of the Big 3 I's.  We crossed at what is called the Quad Cities (Moline and Rock Island, IL, and Bettendorf and Davenport, Iowa).  We were treated to an impressive view of the mighty Mississippi River. What a natural beauty. Lots of traffic on the river....barges and boats of all kinds. Beautiful sights.We ended up staying one night at the Interstate RV Park just west and north of Davenport.  For $34 a night, a very nice, if somewhat vanilla RV park.  When we crossed into Iowa at Davenport we picked up an hour crossing the state line.

LynDen Haus at an interstate reststop - amongst the many trucks - somewhere in Iowa

We departed Davenport around 9am again, and shortly picked up I-80 to basically cross the entire state of Iowa.  Also, I never knew that Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River in the east and the Missouri River in the west.  By the way, Iowa in the Pawnee language means corn.  Okay, I just made that up, but in the future when I think back about our trip across Iowa today, I'll remember the VAST fields of corn.  Corn, corn, corn and more corn...and once in awhile, a field of soybeans.  The corn here looks so much better than the corn fields in IN and IL.  Guess Iowa caught more rain.  As my eyes became mesmerized by the straight lines on I-80, I began to think about the American pioneers who traveled across this country not so long ago.  Wonder what they saw?  Probably a vast sea of prairie grasslands, as far as the eye could see.  And maybe hundreds, if not tens of hundreds of buffalo.  Must have been quite a sight.  As one travels across this part of the USA, the eyes can only take in the farthest horizons.  The land just goes on and on and on.

We did take a bypass around Des Moines and continued our journey west by tracking toward Omaha, Nebraska.  Just before we would have entered that state, we caught I-29 and headed due north for Sioux City, Iowa, basically following the route Lewis and Clark took in following the Missouri River. We finally caught sight of the Missouri just outside Sioux City, and while not nearly as impressive as the Mississippi, still a pretty impressive sight. We followed I-80 thru Sioux City and found our KOA campground in North Sioux City, South Dakota, around 4pm.  We're watching some of the Olympics on TV right now, but figure we'll hit the sack early for an early wake-up tomorrow morning.  We will cross the entire state of South Dakota tomorrow, ending up in the Rapid City area where we will stay for a few days.  In addition to registering the motorhome and car, and getting SD drivers' licenses, we hope to do some sightseeing.  More in the next blog.  Bye for now.

Blogs are up-to-date now...

TT Horseshoe Lakes, Indiana.  We departed Spring Valley campground early the next day, around 9am, and headed west on I-70 thru Ohio and into Indiana.  Pretty flat country – really flat, actually – so not much to see from the Interstate.  I-70 is dire need of repairs in several sections, and we saw several construction sites along the way.  The I-270 spur around Columbus, Ohio, is absolutely shameful; a nasty road.  They are trying to fix it, but right now, it’s awful.

We turned off I-70 at Terre Haute, IN, and drove about 18 miles north on State Hiway 41 and eventually 63, to Clinton, IN.  Turned onto County road 163 that brought us into the TT Horseshoe Lakes campground last night about 5pm.  After hitting the pool to cool off, we went a-looking for a local café for a bite to eat.  We drove into the small town of Clinton and found several restaurants, settling on Benjamin’s Family Restaurant on the main street into town off State Hiway 63.  Great food, and great prices!  If in the area, would recommend it.  Hiway 63 in a nice four-lane divided road that connects I-70 at Terre Haute to I-74 as it comes out of Indianapolis headed west.  We also found what looks like a very nice Italian café in Clinton (recommended by a couple of locals we met at a CVS pharmacy), called Terra Villa.  We plan on eating there tonight and celebrate our 3^rd (or is it 37^th, Kip?) wedding anniversary, since we were on the road on July 24^th.  Will let y’all know the results.

Well, that pretty much brings us up to date for now.  We hope to add some pix to accompany this post.  And I promise to try and keep this updated better than I have so far.  Oh, I also discovered that the little Indiana town of Dana (just a few miles from here), is the birthplace of one of my favorite wartime correspondents, Ernie Pyle.  Ernie was born a tenant farmer in 1900, and went on to win fame (and die from a German sniper bullet) as a war reporter in WWII.  His book, “Brave Men,” is still (at least to me) the standard for war reporting.  He lived right alongside the average GI in foxholes, marched with them thru muddy roads, and braved the drudgery of war.  Anyway, I hope to take a picture of a Ernie Pyle rest area or elementary school with our pal, Obidiah, and post it along with this blog post.

So long for now…Denny…Thursday, 26 July 2012  

Still catching up with blogs...

Obidiah is sitting on the sign, above the "n" in "Thousand" (small, I know, but will try and do better as we travel around; try blowing it up to X-Lge size)

Thousand Trails Hershey, PA.  While RP was nice, we planed to spend a couple weeks at TT’s Hershey campground; we'd been up there for a long weekend years ago and found it a great park.  We were not disappointed – it’s still a very nice campground, with plenty of sites, and that huge swimming pool I mentioned.  We settled in quite nicely and spent a very relaxing two weeks – which I thoroughly enjoyed as my first two full weeks of retirement.  A guy could really get used to this! 

Our two sons, Kip and Jamie, and their families joined us on our last weekend for the Hershey Park experience.  Jamie and his family came up on Friday night and we spent Saturday at Hershey Chocolate World, which included a trolley tour of Hershey, a terrific 3-D movie about the history of chocolate and Mr. Hershey, and even a demo of chocolate candy making that included designing and making your own candy bar and wrapper.  Quite a treat and experience.  A big “Thank you” to Jamie and Lisa – we had a great time..as the photos below illustrate.

The Monkees: Ben, Luke, and Rayne

Grandma with son, Kip, and oldest grandchild, Skye; Skye and her very handsome PaPa, are in the photo at the right. 

Below is a photo of our youngest son, Jamie, about to be launched forward at about 200mph; I missed the actual "launch" of course.  Next to Jamie is another cute photo of our "Three Monkees" monkeying around for the camera.  Luke is such a "hugger."

               

Kip and our two granddaughters, Skye and Rayne, joined us on Sunday for a day at Hershey Park –and as I said, we had a great time. We said our goodbyes at the park in the late afternoon (very sad), and headed back to the TT campground to get the motorhome ready to leave early the next morning.


We departed the TT Hershey campground a little after 10am and picked up I-81 to head southwest to join with I-70.  Had a minor problem with the RV while at a rest stop just outside of Carlisle.  It took a call to Coach-Net roadside assistance and a conversation with Tech Support to get us on the road again.  Guess I would call the whole thing “operator error” on my part, but lesson learned, and we were on way again. We drove thru western MD and WV, and parts of PA, on I-70 and I-68 (well worth the trip… wonderful scenery, although lots of mountains…mileage for this leg of the trip for the Winnebago was 8.5mpg), and arrived at Spring Valley campground near Cambridge, Ohio, about 4:30pm.  This Mom-and-Pop campground is very nice; too bad we were only spending one night there. The $34 overnight cost was well worth the stop.  Next segment of the trip on next blog.

July 26th from Indiana...catching up on blog posts

Greetings to everyone who is following the Travels of LynDen Haus.  It's been a while (ya' think) since we've posted something to the blog, so I think I’ll post three shorter blog entries: An Intro to summarize where we are right now; on for Thousand Trails (TT) Hershey, PA, campground; and one that takes us on our journey west, with stops at Spring Valley campground near Cambridge and we’re were at right now at TT Horseshoe Lakes campground near Clinton, Indiana.  Will include some pix as appropriate.

Intro – Today is July 26th and as I mentioned, we are staying at the TT Horseshoe Lakes campground near Clinton.  It’s a small campground (TT most likely bought out a local campground that’s been here for years and renamed it as a TT campground), more suited to fishing and taking a canoe or paddleboat out onto one of the small lakes here.  There’s no swimming or wading in any of the lakes, so that's a bummer.  The TT reserve has a small pool (nothing like the Olympic-sized pool at the TT campground in Hershey, where we just recently spent a couple weeks and were joined by our two sons and their families for a couple days at the nearby Hershey Park.  But I get ahead of myself.  [Below are photos of Obidiah Longbeard, The Traveling Lord of LynDen Haus, posing at a couple spots at the RP campground in Woodbine...isn't he one handsome fella?

Let's go back to July 10^th when we left the Rambling Pines (RP) campground in Woodbine, MD. After we sold our house in Westminster, MD, we moved into the Winnebago fulltime and camped out at RP from mid-April and until we left on 10 July.  RP is a nice family-oriented campground with lots of activities.  We had a couple of the grandkids join us at different times: Ben and Luke, and then Ben and Rayne (that's the two of them  in the photo to the right when we took them to a nearby amusement park (and Ben is leading!).  The oldest granddaughter, Skye – who has turned into a terrific fast-pitch softball player (mostly at catcher) – had numerous games/tournaments this summer that prevented her from joining us.  But she was part of the day at Hershey Park, where we all had a great time. 







But back to RP.  While there, we witnessed two hot air balloons being set up from scratch, and then launched.  Quite a feat getting one of those balloons stretched out and pumped full of hot air, let me tell you.  We've posted a couple pictures of the set up and launch.  

Also noteworthy in the RP area are a couple of restaurants we really like. In nearby Sykesville, MD, there is Baldwin’s Station.   The restaurant occupies the old Sykesville train station and is quite nice.  Good food and drink, with entertainment on the weekend.  Plus they carry 25-year old MaCallan’s scotch!  In nearby Woodbine itself sits the Woodbine Inn, a local bar and restaurant, that we found had some wonderfully delicious cream of crab soup.  The café sits right on the Howard - Carroll county line, so easy to find on Route 94 just a mere two miles north of I-70. Definitely worth a stop for lunch or dinner.  


After some minor repair work on the motorhome at Beckley’s RV Sales and Service in Thurmont, MD, we headed north for the two hour drive to TT Hershey, just on the other side the Campbelltown, PA, on Route 322.  More to follow on the next blog.