Devils Tower, Wyoming

Sadly we had to leave South Dakota to stay on track with the weather. Our next stop was a one day visit to Devils Tower in Wyoming.  Some of us older people will remember this rock formation from the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".  We pulled into town around 5:30 pm, set up camp and just kinda hung out around the RV.  Karen was getting tomorrows school work ready and the kids were unwinding from the drive and I talked to the neighbor for a little while.  Because we didn't go into the park that evening to see Devils Tower, I decided to wake up early and take some pictures of the tower as the sun came up.  It was nice just sitting in my truck at 6:00am in the morning, on the side of the road, listening to the birds chirp as the day was starting.  There is something very therapeutic about waking up first thing in the morning and watching the sun come over the plains with a cool breeze.  All you hear is nature waking up around you!  I sat there for a good hour or so and just snapped pictures of the tower and the surrounding scenery.  From here I decided to go into town to get fuel for the truck and pick up some drinking water for the family.  I went into the 1st town with a population of 383 and there was pnly one lonely little gas station and zero stores open for water, so I figured I will just head into the next town.  Nine miles later as I pulled into town the sign said population 50!  ...I decided to go back to the 1st one and try my luck at the only gas station there was.  When I pulled in there were people at both sides of the pump, so I went in to pay.  Upon entering I smelled Bacon!  In the back of this gas station was a tiny restaurant, so I popped in and ordered up some breakfast!  There is something else to be said about a fresh cooked breakfast and some good old CNN news all by yourself!  As I was eating breakfast I could hear the gas station attendant greeting everyone by name as they entered the store and then the normal chit-chat that a small town would usually have.  I found it funny that when I walked in for breakfast the lady asked me "Are you visiting?" I replied "With a town of 383 people, you know that I'm visiting."  She smiled and said "Yeah I know everyone in town."  I sat and watched TV as she went in the back and cooked my breakfast. I enjoyed my breakfast and the conversation with the nice lady who had that very "motherly" way about her. Time to pick up the water and head back to the RV.  When I returned to the RV, I found Karen and the kids up and sitting out front of the office on a bench doing school work. You see, Internet signal strength is a precious commodity, so you do what you have to do to get a good signal!  After school work we headed into Devils Tower Park and spent the next few hours hiking around the base of the tower and reading all about this interesting rock formation.  From what I gather this giant rock is basically lava that rose to the surface, but actually never broke through the surface and cooled and hardened in place.  After millions of years of erosion from a local river the hardened lava mountain was revealed.  The formation is a rock climbers dream and they come from all over the world to climb it.  We saw several of them scaling the side of it and to put it into perspective they looked like ants on the side of it!

The family really enjoyed our one day trip, but it was time to head to Yellowstone for some more fun and adventure!

 

South Dakota!!! So much to see. So little time!





Nana found this pie/ice cream place for dessert!





Mammoth Bones!





Another repair to the trailer!
The air conditioner would not
turn off so a new control box was
needed!





This ranger spent some time with us
teaching us about the buffalo and
the park!





The storm clouds turned into a beautiful thunderstorm
with marble sized hail!



So, after the the day from hell we packed the camper and headed for South Dakota.The drive was a welcome change with roads straight as an arrow and rather flat.  The corn fields have been replaced with grassy plains and to my surprise sunflowers.  We passed several fields of sunflowers that were thousands of acres long!  The whole family is excited this next stop because we will be meeting up with Karen's parents AKA Nana & Papa to the kids! The trip wasn't too bad, about 250 miles all together.  We took a few pit stops along the way to stretch our legs and let Norman out.  One such stop was at Wall drugs, a longstanding resting point for travelers traveling to the west.  Their hook, or the way to get you in, is they give out free water to anyone passing by.  This was a great way to lure in customers back in the day as its very dry in this part of the west. After stopping at Wall we headed to Custer, South Dakota, to a campground called "The Flintstones".  Karen thought the kids would enjoy it because it has the whole Bedrock theme going on and even a small amusement park built into it.  After setting up camp we had Nana & Papa over for the rest of Kaylee's birthday party and to just spend sometime together.  I have to say that its nice to have family come visit you on a trip like this, because your never in a place long enough to make close friends, so it can be a little lonely at times.  The we all had fun reminiscing about parts of our trip and planning the next few days out with our parents.  The next few days were spent, with our parents, taking in the sights of Custer State Park, Crazy Horse, Mount Rushmoreand a nice Woolly Mammoth museum in nearby Hot Springs.  The time spent together with our family was a breath of fresh air especially after the last couple of days trying to get this school thing perfected! After Nana & Papa left we continued exploring what this area had to offer. We visited the Badlands, Needles Highway, Downtown Custer & Rapid City.  The favorite by far for the kids was Custer Sate Park and the wildlife. We got to pet the burrows, feed the prairie dogs, and most of all, watch the buffalo roam! When looking at South Dakota on a map, Karen and I thought we would spend about 5 days at the most here, but boy were we wrong!  South Dakota has so much to offer that we extended our stay to 10 days and could have easily stayed for 2-3 weeks. While we would love to stay longer, the weather won't wait for us, so its time to move!  In closing, I have to say that this place is absolutely beautiful with its never ending view of blue sky's filled with crisp white clouds and the way the landscape changes from grasslands to rugged granite mountains in and the Badlands!  South Dakota is a must see for anyone thinking about visiting the west!



These buffalos are on each corner of downtown Custer!



Crazy Horse





The Badlands!



A tour bus traveling Needles Highway!

A trip like this is not always a bed of roses!

On this installment of The Cobb Family Journey, I'm going to share a few of our day to day challenges!  Well almost 4 months into our trip we are still going strong, but not without hiccups or life's tiny snags!  First and foremost it is not likely that you can spend every waking minute with your family and not have a fight or two!  The kids have adapted well to the lifestyle on the road, but they can sometimes get on each others nerves.  They sit next to each other for hundreds of miles at a time and when we arrive at a campground they are right next to each other and when they go to bed.....  You get the idea!  This causes Mom and Dad's nerves to be a little sensitive with, "he's touching me or she's putting her feet on me or those are my headphones", and then I go off on a tangent of "You guys need to be nice to each other" or "No talking for the next 15 minutes" and the list goes on!  Karen and I have been getting along pretty well considering the stress the kid's fighting puts on us! School has officially begun and that had put an added stress on us with a pretty full regiment of school work assigned to us via the Internet and the 200lbs of books and supplies sent to us from the school!  Yes, 200lbs of school work!  The lowest point of our trip came when we started the 1st day of school on Kaylee's birthday.  This was a recipe for disaster!

First off we couldn't get our Internet connection to work, as we were in Bumble fudge, South Dakota and Karen is trying to get the lesson plan for the day, so we could teach on the road.  You see we are supposed to be out of the campground at 11:00am and it was 10:15am.  So, I have a wife who is close to tears because the Internet won't come up and the printer won't work, then I have a 9 year old daughter who's crying, because she doesn't want to do school work on her birthday and then I have a 6 year old boy who is upset, because he has nobody to play with and he doesn't want to do school work either!  I finally go in to Karen and say we are leaving for South Dakota and my response from her with tear filled eyes is "I'm going to lose it if we don't get this stupid printer to work and we need to be out of here in 30 minutes. I can't do this! I try to calm her to no avail and go back outside to my crying 9 year old and try to console her, while my 6 year old asks me to take him to the play ground!  I am now at my breaking point and go back into the trailer to find my poor wife in tears still cursing the printer!  I said "we are leaving!"  A fight ensues about how the school work is going to get done and we don't have time and so on!  I grabbed the printer and ripped the plugs out of the wall and said "We are leaving and I proceeded to go outside and start unhooking the camper with tears in my eyes!  I was so upset that our family seemed to be falling apart and I couldn't do anything about it. 

We packed the camper up and as I started to hook up to the camper Karen asks if we are going to see the Corn Palace?  I reply with are you F*%*ing kidding me still with tears in my eyes!  She said "We are here and we have to see the Corn Palace" or I won't hear the end of it from my Dad!  So off to the Corn Palace we go as I go into my cave mode!  This is the mode in which I totally shut down from anger and don't say much of anything!  Karen knows when I get to this place just leave me alone.  Karen and the kids went into the Corn Palace and I chose to sit in the truck with Norman to cool off!   After hooking up to the trailer and heading west on highway 90 Karen asked me when I was going to talk again and I said not yet, but I would let her know. We were heading for South Dakota and had 600 miles or so to cool off.  It took almost 2 days for me to calm down from that state of pissed off! 

We have since figured out the school work and how to best get everything covered with the kids!  I wrote this to show the real world events that happen when you travel the country with your family.  I have learned its OK to get mad at each other and we can't do everything perfect!  If you are one of the followers of this blog thinking about do such a trip beware that there is a learning curve and it comes with lots of curse words and sometimes tears, but all in all I wouldn't change a thing! 

We have since landed in Custer, South Dakota and things are going great! We spent the last few days with Karen's parents, seeing Mt Rushmore, Crazyhorse, Custer State Park and the buffalo!  Its a breath of fresh air to have some of our family close if for only a few days.  It really reminds us of how important a good close knit family is!  The kids really enjoy spending time with Nana and Papa and so do we.  As the weekend, is coming to a close and next weeks school work will be here, I look forward to a better week of school with our kids!  And that, my friends, is the whole story with the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God!

Minnesota here we come!

Bryson playing with his airplanes!

One of the many wind farms we have seen along the way!

Karen actually sitting down and relaxing!

OK, the fifth wheel has new axles,springs,brakes and mounting hardware so its time  to head to Minnesota!  From Elkhart we headed west on Rt 80/90 around Chicago and then north west to Wisconsin for the night at a local Walmart.  The next morning we finished our trek to Minnesota.  We stayed south of the city at a campground called Lebanon Hills.  When we arrived at the campground we were surprised to find out our spot was 40 feet long and on a sharp turn!  This meant we would have room for the camper only and the truck would have to be parked a short walk away at a visitors parking spot.  We got backed in to the spot in on the 1st try with help from Karen and the camp host!  The length of the drive from Indiana was just under 600 miles and I was beat even though we only drove 200 or so miles the second day.  Karen was ready to go into town to see the Mall of America! Karen took the kids to the mall and I  took a nap and lounged around the camper while watching some golf!  The next morning we got and traveled in to the city for a show with Norman. After the show we dropped Norm off at the camper and headed to the mall to take the kids to the amusement park inside the mall!  That's right, I said inside the mall!  The Mall of America is the largest indoor mall in the USA.  We had fun riding all the rides and walking around the mall!  The kids found this to be especially fun do to the Sponge Bob theme of it all! The next day we got up and went into town to look around at a local RV place for a part for the air conditioner!  Ive come to the conclusion that the RV world is very similar to the boat world in the fact that there always seems to be something that needs repair!  After we left the RV place, without a part for the air conditioner, we stopped at a local eatery called "Chris &Robs".  We had hot dogs and Brats!  Karen and I both agreed that we would avoid chain restaurants as much as possible on the trip.  Well the some of the items we ordered were delicious such as my Bratwurst and Karena Chicago style hot dog but one of the other dogs we ordered didn't not taste right, almost rotten!  Such is life with small restaurants and we just let the trash can have that hot dog.  Heading back to the camper Karen decided she wanted to take the kids to the local zoo and I was in need of another nap!  I dropped Karen and the kids at the zoo and headed for the camper for some couch/Golf/nap time!  The kids had a great time at the zoo and I with my nap and golf! Unfortunately it is time again to move the camper so we can see the west before the weather begins to change!  South Dakota here we come!