Fists of Fury, Missiles, & Caverns

As we made our quick exit from Mankato, we stopped at a couple of places in South Dakota.  The Badlands are amazing!




Look at all the textures & colors!

                          Roadside geology!









Of course, a trip to South Dakota means stopping in the town of Wall and gawking at the famous drugstore, Wall Drug.  Amazing!  The best things were the freshly made donuts!

Being the history buffs, we had to make a stop in Rapid City and visit the museum at Ellsworth AFB.  Nice collection of aircraft; however, the really interesting part was going into the missile training center.

This is a B-52 doing a touch & go with a B-29 posing on the ground.

This is inside the missile silo.  Yes, we went down several flights of stairs to the training center.  Many, many hours of boredom with surges of sheer adrenlin during drills!













We spent a fast week-end with some karate friends in Billings, MT.  We were able to help with his karate tournament.  Watching the young competitors was simply inspiring!

On our trek back to the Pacific Northwest, we stopped at the Bozeman Museum of the Rockies.  We promptly lost 2 hours looking at the exhibits. This museum is well known for its on-going dinosaur research.





Catch that dino with feathers!!








Our next stop that was at Lewis & Clark Caverns. Mother Nature does some wonderful things with a bit of water and minerals and lots of time!

Virginia City, MT is an historic hoot!  Over 90 percent of the buildings are original!  Had a blast on the History Tour which was conducted on an antique fire truck that drove us around the area.

Of course, not to be outdone by Virginia City, Nevada City (not too far away) has a very unique outhouse.  Check this out!

It's a 2 story outhouse!!  YIKES!!!









From the caverns, our next stop was Missoula, MT.  Took a really interesting tour of the Smoke Jumpers Base & Aerial Fire Depot.  We didn't realize that most of the smoke jumpers are seasonal employees!

This is a parachute folding table - not a bowling alley!  Each smoke jumper is responsible for packing their own chutes.








We had a real roadside treat on our drive from Missoula to Coeur D'Alene - a moose (cow) was running alongside the road heading towards the trees!  Unfortunately, no photo!  Just a memory!  We "glamped" (that's glamour camping) at Blackwell Island RV Resort to celebrate our anniversary.  Even had the RV washed!  Of course, it rained after the RV was all clean!  Who says Mother Nature doesn't have a sense of humor?  After a very indulgent dinner at Beverly's, we planned our escape from Coeur D'Alene.  The Iron Man competition was scheduled for that week-end; lots of competitors and sponsors and people, people, people!!  Time to leave!! What about the rain??  It followed us all the back from Idaho to Spanaway, WA!

Hammers, Flood, & Escape

Arrived in Mankato, MN on the 8th of June for a Habitat Care-A-Vanners build.  Lovely park with the Blue Earth and Minnesota rivers meeting in an oxbow.  The crew (7 of us) worked on 2 houses putting on vinyl siding.  First week the weather was pretty nice.

Then the week-end began with the rain.  Of course, we went into the Twin Cities anyway.  Rain stopped by Monday - the job site was just soggy enough for the boots to collect 10 pounds of mud within 10 steps!  That night brought no rest for any of us.  The thunder and lightning and heavy rain kept us all awake.  It was like trying to sleep inside of a kettle drum!  Tuesday brought no relief - more thunder storms and heavy rain.  We were awakened on Wednesday at 3 AM by the local police and ordered to evacuate the campground.  Everyone packed up and ready to roll within the hour!  Drove to Wal-Mart and parked the rigs.  Gathered everyone together and had a breakfast meeting to discuss whether we finish the build or terminate 2 days early. Since no one had really rested, we were looking at a real safety issue; a muddy construction site with very tired crew.  Didn't take long to make that decision.






Our camp sites in the daylight!






We went to the job site and cleaned up the site and after lunch, we all said our good-byes.  One couple decided to stay in Mankato and were evacuated again!  Another went north towards the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and found the road blocked by a fallen tree.  They had to back track many miles.  One couple gave up on camping altogether and got a hotel room for the night.  We drove that afternoon all the way to South Dakota to Al's Oasis! First night of sound sleep in two nights! Skies were dark and threatening but nothing like Minnesota!  Next night, we stayed near Sturgis.  We saw antelope, deer, and turkeys along the road.  What an adventure!!