Rapid City, South Dakota

It took us six hours to drive from Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Rapid City, South Dakota. We usually don't like to travel that many hours in one day, but this trip was a pleasure. There were hardly any other vehicles on the road, except for some trucks, and we seemed to have the road to ourselves.

The weather has been near freezing at night and cold during the day. Most of the time, it looked like it was going to rain, but it didn't.

This is our fifth time in Rapid City. Since we visited most of the tourist sites in our last visits here, we decided to check out the Bear Country U.S.A. notwithstanding that it might rain.

 

We drove through the park and were told to keep our windows up. 

The animals roam free within the park.

There were brown, black and grizzly bears in the park.

These baby cubs were so cute.

 Sometimes we had to wait for the bears to get out of the road.

The park also had red foxes, white wolves, buffalo, and other animals.

Because we still have a bit of a drive before we get to Mandan, North Dakota, we are cutting short our stay here and heading out tomorrow. It will take us two days to get there. We will be attending a family wedding, so we will post the next update to this blog later.

Continue to live the life you love!

Gypsum, CO and Cheyenne,WY

Spent three nights in Gypsum, Colorado, and three nights in Cheyenne, Wyoming, as we make our way to North Dakota. Gypsum was uneventful. Rained most of the time.

The ride from Gypsum to Cheyenne took us past Vail, Colorado. We never expected to encounter snow, slush, fog and ice. Kind of a white-knuckle drive for Jerry, but we made it to Cheyenne without any incidents. Thank God.

Cheyenne was also cold and very windy. Took some time to visit the Wyoming State Museum and also get Starbucks Frappaccinos every day since they were half price after 3 p.m.


Here are just a few pictures we took along the way:

Parked in Gypsum, Colorado. Took this picture during the time the rain stopped for a couple of hours.

 Driving through Vail, Colorado.

Entrance to the Wyoming State Museum.

Jerry standing next to a dinosaur femur (thigh bone). See the small human femur to the right.

The bead work on this Indian head dress is phenomenal.

A caricature painting of all the Presidents, including Obama.

We drove 300 miles from Cheyenne to Rapid City, South Dakota, yesterday. It was a beautiful trip. We are staying at the Rushmore Shadows RV Park until next Thursday when we head out for North Dakota.

Moab, Utah

This week is National Parks Week. We showed our appreciation by visiting two Parks, Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, both near Moab, Utah. The entrance fee to each Park is $25 per vehicle. For those of you are age of 62 or over, you definitely need to get the Park Service's Senior Pass. We got ours in 2007. You pay a one-time fee of $10 and it allows you to get into any National Park for free. The Senior Pass expires when you do.

On our way over to Moab from Zion, we stopped at Devil's Canyon.

The first pictures were taken in the Arches National Park this week.

To get a perspective on how large the above arches are, look for the tiny man at the bottom of the arch to the far left.

 

 

Again, see the man in the middle of the arch on the above picture.

The following pictures were taken on another day in Canyonlands National Park.

See the car on the road in the above photo. It came up from the bottom of  the canyon below -- just to give you some perspective of the size of these canyons.

See people walking on the hiking trail. This Park has hundreds of different hiking trails from easy to very difficult and dangerous ones that take over 4 hours.

There also are many bike trails throughout this area. Today, we took a short bike ride up Hwy 128, a Scenic Highway, which runs along the Colorado River.

 We are leaving this area tomorrow and heading towards Vail, Colorado. Continue to live the life you love.