I know that’s not a very interesting title for a blog post, but looking at it feels like an accomplishment. Seventeen days. Wow. I can’t believe it has been almost 3 weeks since we left home. It feels like forever, and no time at all. I have been planning to post since day 7. My ideal posting routine was going to be: journal every day and at the end of every 7 days I’ll make a blog post. I never thought traveling in this fashion would make that small contribution to my blog so difficult! There’s no time! And when there finally is time, there’s no energy. We’re currently stopped somewhere in Wyoming (for privacy and safety reasons, I will not disclose where we have been until we have already left). We are taking a rest here for 3 days. A well-deserved rest. And you’ll see why…
As I said, I wanted to post every week. And my idea was to go back through my journal and kind of consolidate the week’s highlights into a post. That is not happening. This blog post would be the longest thing ever if I tried to consolidate the last 17 days! Instead, I will touch briefly on places that left an imprint on me, things I’ve learned, etc. This is all one huge learning experience, after all! So here goes nothin…
I miss home. Not all the time, not every day. But when it hits me, it HITS me. And it’s not just my people that I miss, although that is the only thing that gets my little eyes wet with tears. I miss the convenience of home. The things that every campsite calls “amenities.”
Normal length showers without having to turn the water off to conserve the small amount of hot water our heater produces. (For the record, I say small, but I truly have no idea how much it produces as I’ve never let it go that far.)
Fresh water supply. Without being hooked up to water at a campsite, we need to turn on the water pump to get the water from the fresh water tank into our faucets, or toilet, or shower – and remember to turn it off when we’re done, as it uses the battery. (I am terrible at remembering to shut it off.)
Tanks!! Fresh water tank, Grey tank (that’s water from sinks and showers), Black tank (that’s the poo-poo tank). Learning how to care for the tanks, how to flush them when needed – and to keep an eye on their levels (we have a monitoring system for this) so we don’t have an overflow situation. Or – for propane, battery and fresh water – a deficit issue.
Laundry. While this isn’t a huge issue for us, it is for Pookie. She has had some accidents along the way, so occasionally once things are clean…they need to be cleaned again.
Cooking. What a different experience. We have not yet used the propane stove. I read a lot about how the oven doesn’t cook evenly, sometimes it burns, and recommendations to get a pizza stone to put in there to keep the heat even. We didn’t buy one – I couldn’t find one that was small enough to fit our oven. So we’ve been either using the toaster oven when we are plugged in or the grill – or eating out.
Cleaning. The sink is so small. There’s two portions, but I keep one with a dish drain so we have an ultra small sink that fills up FAST. I’ve been doing dishes maybe 3-4 times a day just to keep up with it all. And the faucet doesn’t help…it doesn’t arch upward to allow for cleaning of larger items, which is challenging.
I feel like that was a lot of complaining. I don’t mean it to be, it’s just a hard adjustment. Which is another reason that “Day #18” feels like a badge of honor. We’ve also run into other issues…engine problems (fixed), a bent leveling leg (not fixed yet – so no slide outs get to go out. This is probably the biggest annoyance as we can’t put everything in its rightful place because its rightful place is blocked by a slide out being in!), little nature critters, a black tank clog, among other small grievances. Ok, let’s breeze past this and get to the good stuff.
We have seen a lot of things! I’m going to just run down a list of where we’ve been (pictures can be found on Instagram: @angelbby437 or @portablepooks):
Ann Arbor, MI – This was our first real sightseeing stop and easily my favorite. It had the essence of both a small town and a city. The people were very friendly, and hunting for the infamous Fairy Doors was really fun. I found two ladies who are borderline obsessed with the Fairy Doors locations – formed an immediate bond. For those of you who don’t know, the Urban Fairy Doors are, obviously, fairy doors that are scattered about the city. Sometimes their locations change, but I think there are a few that don’t move. We found 5, but there are a lot more. We stopped to eat outside at Gratzi (loved it) and got caught in a big thunderstorm. We waited for it to pass and then continued our search for the doors. Great experience here!
Detroit, MI – Detroit was really interesting. We went in pretty late (9PM), but got to see the city still in some light. The square in the downtown area had a free movie night going on, a restaurant, a sand pit with lounge chairs and a huge fountain. Walk towards the water on the island in the middle of the street and you pass under these rectangular archways that have lights running through them. There are also a few porch swings in this area. At the end of the island, you cross the street and you are in a large area with chairs, I assume made for concerts and the like. The statue of The Spirit of Detroit is in this area. And it is beautiful! We took tons of pictures here and then crossed over into the park. There are two monuments and all the trees are wrapped in blue or white Christmas lights. This gave it such an amazing ambiance. We walked through the park and then down to the water front. At the very end of the walk, there is a huge wall with a painting of a racetrack with racecars and an ice cream truck. Perfect for Motown.
Dearborn, MI – We came here for the Henry Ford Museum & Village. This was Paul’s pick. After about a half hour though, I was hooked. It’s not just about Ford and cars. It is SO much more. History of inventions, machinery, a home made of aircraft material (business started in 1946, failed in 1948), locomotives, presidential cars, and then the village. The village had actors working in all the shops and on the Firestone farm. They are there from 9 to 5, working as they would have in the 19th century. There were cows, sheep (so many sheep!!), chickens, geese, and roosters. The Village had a print shop, a sawmill, machine shop, glass making shop, and more. There was the village green, with a church on one end and the court house on the other. A carousel, jewelry shop, candy shop… so much! There was even a covered bridge that had a sign posted for how many cents it would cost depending on what animal you were going through with. Then there was a section of Porches & Parlors. Unfortunately this was the part I was most interested to see and we got there when the park was closing. We walked through a bit, but not into any homes. We did see Robert Frost’s home and Mr. Webster Dictionary’s home. So that was neat. Then we headed out.
Pipestone, MN – We came here for the Pipestone National Monument. This is an active Native American quarry. It was beautiful. Prairie for miles! Well, maybe not miles, but very far. Tall prairie grass. Pookie spotted 3 deer out in the prairie. I saw a snake quickly slither into the grass. There were waterfalls along the trail, along with a ton of interesting foliage. We didn’t see anyone working the quarry, but it was a really cool experience. Unfortunately, this is also the place where I was bit by a tick. Mini heart attack, but just a wood tick – not carrying Lyme (trust me, I flew to the doctor). While we were here, we also got to see a nice lightning storm and needed to check our weather radio as there was a tornado warning. We were safe though!
Montrose, SD – This was an impromptu stop for Porter Sculpture Park. Paul saw this giant longhorn statue on the side of the road and decided to pull off to check it out. So glad we did! Wayne Porter is the sculptor and he’s been in this location since 2000. The sculptures and words accompanying a bunch of them are so profound and beautiful. We found out later that this stop is on Time Magazine’s list of Top 50 Roadside Attractions in America. And with good reason! Please go and support Wayne! He is truly talented. He has a horse sculpture that is completed (it took him 10 years to make), he’s just working on getting the enormous sculpture to the park. We want to go back and see it when it’s there!
Chamberlain, SD – This stop was recommended by Mr. Wayne Porter. He told us to stop here to see the Dignity statue. It is a 50 foot statue of a Native American woman. It is at a rest stop that overlooks the Missouri River. Absolutely amazing views! And rattle snake warnings. We still have yet to see one though – not complaining!
Badlands National Park – This was on my list, but a couple we met at the Dignity statue highly recommended it, so off we went! It did not disappoint. It was like stepping onto a different planet. What Mars might be like? I don’t know, but it was incredible. We spent a couple of hours driving through and stopping at a few overlook points. I could try to describe it, but words wouldn’t do it justice. I honestly don’t even think pictures do. Just go! Also, rattlesnake warnings here too, but still no sightings.
Wall, SD – We stopped here for the tourist attraction of Wall Drug. This is a drugstore that has been around since 1931. Wall Drug was (and still is) famous for offering free ice water to travellers. It’s a cute little town. We didn’t actually go into Wall Drug, or its backyard with all of its kitschy tourist attractions (a T-Rex, large Mount Rushmore cut-out, etc). We were so hungry and it was so hot, we just stopped across the street for a bite to eat with Pookie. Honestly not even sure of the name of the restaurant, but it was delicious. We debated about spending the night here or moving on, and we ultimately decided to move forward.
Keystone, SD – We stopped before here to rest a bit. The heat was really messing with me, and I ended up taking a nap at a Flying J rest stop after chugging a Gatorade (where’s the coconut water?!). Once I was revived, we discussed and decided to still head on to Mount Rushmore for the nighttime lighting ceremony. We got there around 8:40PM. I got some great shots of the mountain driving up. We weren’t able to bring Pookie in for the lighting ceremony, so we had to go in without her. They showed a documentary and played America the Beautiful before illuminating the mountain. We were on the upper viewing area so did not get to see the documentary, and the music was really faint. I thought the lighting would be a slow illumination, but it was just like flipping a switch on. It was beautiful, but I wasn’t so impressed. We spent some time in the gift shop and then moved on to our campsite between Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse.
Custer, SD – We left our campsite at 10AM and headed straight to Crazy Horse Memorial. Paul had never heard of it before and didn’t seem very enthused about going to see a statue that isn’t even finished. But once we were there, we were both blown away. The story behind the statue and the family who has made it their lives’ work to sculpt it….just, WOW. The Ziolkowskis. Please look up the story, the family, and please please please donate, even just a tiny bit! This sculpture has been in production since 1948 and will likely not be finished in our lifetime. It is not state nor federally funded. It is only funded by private donations. And it is AMAZING. Korczak Ziolkowski was approached by Standing Bear, a Native American, to make this sculpture of Chief Crazy Horse who was stabbed in battle. Ziolkowski came to this mountain and pretty much made the entire area livable. He and his wife Ruth had 10 children and they all worked on sculpting the mountain. Ziolkowski made a schoolhouse and they survived by having a dairy farm. Absolutely incredible.
Devil’s Tower – Our next stop was Devil’s Tower, America’s first National Monument. I didn’t expect it to be so large. I expected it to be big, of course, but it was ginormous. And people climb it! Amazing! We got there after the visitor center closed, so I was a bit disappointed to not get some more information on it. Driving up to it, the views are spectacular, and also there is a prairie dog town at the bottom! So many prairie dogs running around and they come right up to the street – not scared of anything. This was so fun to see.
So there is my quick rundown of our sightseeing so far. This post is crazy long, and we have some things we need to do while we are taking a little break here in Wyoming, so I am going to stop now. But I’ll try to post again in the next few days about things that I’ve learned and felt and how I feel that I have changed thus far. Because I really feel I have changed some in just the past 2 and a half weeks. I’m really looking forward to the next sights and the future me. 🙂
Thanks for visiting!! Stay tuned for more!
Raising LeBar 