June 2019

We embarked on our RV Van trip on May 31 and returned home by July 1, having covered over 5600 miles and 16 states and visited many friends and relatives. These are a few photos of stops along the way.

The first stop was an RV park near Albuquerque, NM. It just so happened that they had a few vintage RV’s and cars.

Next stop was Colorado Springs, CO and the Garden of the Gods, which is a red rock location. The parking situation was not conducive to taking photos, so I stopped in the middle of the road several times.

We are now headed to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

On the way, we found a few good scenics in the Big Sky country of Wyoming.

We stayed over night in Hot Springs, South Dakota so that we would be able to travel through Custer State Park in the morning.  We saw many buffalo on the roads leading to the park, but not so many in the park itself as other people had told us to look for.  So it was a little disappointing.  The baby calves were very cute however!

Of course, a visit to this part of the country would not be complete without visiting Mount Rushmore.  It was pretty commercial with a five level parking garage, but the visitor center was closed for renovations.  If you look closely at the closeups, what appear top be “catch lights” in the eyes are still large columns of  rock.

After a night near Deadwood, we explored Lead and Deadwood and found a place called Tatanka developed by Kevin Costner, the movie star in “Dancing with Wolves”.  There is a visitor center which specializes in telling the story of the buffalo in the lives of the Native Americans.  On the outside are life size bronze sculptures of an Indian buffalo hunt where they drove the buffalo over a cliff to kill them.

The last major attraction, other than Wall Drugs (no photo), is the Badlands which is an area with eroded rocks in various shapes rising from the plain.

Near Belvidere, SD, we stayed at an RV Camp that was only a half mile from a recreated 1880s town.  The buildings are all authentic and have been moved from various locations.  It featured a round barn that had many artifacts including all of the props from the “Dancing with Wolves” movie.

After several days rolling across the plains and farmlands, many of which were under water with few crops planted, we reached the western approaches of Chicago land. First stop was with friends in Earlville, IL to see the late start to the planting season because of the continuous rains in May.  John Deere tractor pulling a 36 foot field cultivator and a 24 row corn planter in folded position for travel down the road.

We visited the Moreton Arboretum in Lisle, IL.  Besides the great variety of tree, they had two exhibits: Legos and Trolls made from reclaimed lumber.

From Chicago we continued east to visit relatives near Buffalo and my brother in Brockport, NY.  The photos are of a sunset at the Erie Canal Bridge.

Stay with me as we go to Ohio to visit friends near Columbus, where they took us to the Columbus Botanical Garden.  Chully Glass was on prominent display.

On the way back home we made one more stop in Springfield, OH to see a college friend and he took us on a tour of a Frank Lloyd Wright house, the Westcott house which had been renovated.  On the way back home we followed parts of old Route 66 and made a few stops, but I’m not including any of these photos.

The dining room table features lights at each corner.  Sorry I could not lighten this up a bit more.