Enjoying Our Dash

Well, we have returned home from our journey out west. We have so many amazing memories of the places that we have been and the things that we have seen. The other day I was looking for some quotes about travel for another project that I was working on. I found this one and thought, how true it is. ‘Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer’ I can not even begin to tell you how much we learned about our country, our motorhome, and ourselves. It seemed that everyday a learning lesson of some sort was waiting for us. Being someone who has a goal of learning something new every day, you can imagine how excited I was to wake up every morning to see what the day had in store for us. Like most things in life, the goals of our journey evolved as the days went by. One of my bucket list items is to visit every state in the nation. We decided that it wasn’t enough to just drive through a state, but we needed to sleep there to check it off the list. With our ...

Custer State Park held lots of cool sights for us to see. We took a rides on the Wildlife Loop road and on Needles Highway. This guy welcomed us as we pulled into the visitor’s center. This is exactly what you would expect to see on Wildlife Drive! Here is a picture of the 1500 head of Bison that roam freely in Custer State Park. Yes, those cars on the left side of the picture are in the middle of the bison. Sometimes the bison take their sweet time crossing the road! This was the first tunnel that we encountered on the Needles Highway. The Iron Creek Tunnel is 8′ 9” wide and 10′ 10″ high. Good thing we were in the truck, because Dash would not have fit!! As we continued to drive on Needles Highway towards Sylvan Lake, we began to see some beautiful rock formations. Check out the slideshow below. The next tunnel we had to negotiate was the Needles Eye Tunnel. The Needles Eye Tunnel is even smaller than the Iron Creek Tunnel. This tunnel is 8′ ...

As we mentioned in an earlier post, (if you missed that post you can see it here, https://enjoyingourdash.com/?p=1250 ), there are several areas to explore while in Wall, SD. After the beauty of The Badlands NP, our next adventure took us to Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore is one of those places that if you are in the area, you should go see it. There isn’t much there besides the granite carvings. However, once you start to explore what was accomplished and the time frame that the carvings were done, you see it in a completely different light. I sure did. The project began in 1923, with a suggestion to create the structure. The building of the monument began in October of 1927 and was completed 14 years later in October of 1941. The builders used dynamite to create the majority of the structure, but the detail work was done by hand. Check out this picture from the National Parks Service. The drillers would sit in boson’s chairs with drills in hand to complete the det...

First, just a thank you to everyone that is following our journey. We have received many comments from you telling us that you are enjoying our posts. That makes us very happy! Hopefully we are inspiring many of you to ‘enjoy your dash’ too. As we have been traveling, we have learned many things. Some are Motorhome/RV specific, but many are transferrable to any kind of travel. We have compiled a list to share with everyone. The dishwasher has a lock.  It is best that you read the directions and learn how to lock it, so that it won’t fly open when you make a turn. Make sure the lock for the refrigerator doors works and make sure you lock them on travel days.  If a drawer, refrigerator doors, or the dishwasher is going to fly open, it will happen at the most inconvenient time, like when you are in the middle of city traffic. It also means that you failed to follow your pre-travel checklist! Always make sure that the gray and black tank valves are closed when you leave t...

One of the first days that we were in Wall we took a drive down the main road through the Badlands. The views were just incredible during the day. Check out the slideshow below. We have seen a lot of wildlife on our trip so far. However, we had been wanting to see some Bighorn sheep. They say that the wildlife is most active at daybreak and just before night fall. Since it doesn’t get dark until around 10:00 in this part of the country, I knew we had no shot at being up that late. On our last day there, I had the bright idea that we should go watch the sunrise in the Badlands. Daylight begins around 4:00AM, so at 3:30 we left our campsite and took the short ride to Hay Butte Overlook on Sage Rim Road. We had the place to ourselves, so we set up our chairs, Cole’s blanket and drank our coffee while we waited for the sun to come up. To be clear, it was very dark, but the camera on my phone is so good, that it takes amazing pictures even when it is dark. We were getting r...