Red Dale National–Black Hills

Saturday, June 15, 2013

We got up and headed over to Shade Valley Campground – oh man, we’ve never seen sites this big! We got settled in, said ‘Hi’ to some of the Black Hills Hillbillies, then we headed over to Elk View to a pot luck dinner with the Jackalopes. What a great time with lots of yummy food! I made a pot of ham, green beans and potatoes, and it was scrumptious! We said goodbye and headed over to the Rally site about 8:30 – got home, fiddled with the TV a little and went to bed!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

We got up and puttered around, I made a good breakfast of eggs benedict, then we went outside and watched the parade of units coming in for the Red Dale National Wagon Train Rally. We went over to the ‘Registration’ table and got our bars, event schedule, etc. While there we got hugs, and some catchin’ up done!

We went back to the MH and just talked to people, more hugs, more catchin’ up! I went over to the club and played BINGO – won the cover all and prize of $91.00!

Since it was Father’s Day I had marinated Steaks on the grill, which we had with baked sweet potato and asparagus – it was yummy! Then we went back over to the club and had a memorial service and door prizes, where I won $25 cash prize – wow, I was on a roll!

I apologize in advance, since neither David nor I took a single picture all week – our bad! We were just so busy chatting with everyone…I’m hoping Brenda Badgley, the club historian will email me some that I can insert in the blog!!!

Monday, June 17, 2013

Hospitality from 7:30 – 9:00 AM Coffee, Juice, donuts, cookies

Raffle Tables Open same time

8 – 8:45 Line Dancing lessons

9 – 11 – Horseshoes

1:30 – Washers

6:30 Evening program & events

PLUS wonderful Sloppy Joes, Special Beans, chips and sodas provided for dinner.

Tuesday June 18 – Hawaiian Bowling

Bean Bags – I expected to play 1 game and done, and instead my partner Evelyn and I won the Championship. Took us 6 games but we did it…totally amazed!

Dinner was leftover ham, beans, potatoes!

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Golf Scramble – 8:30 until ???

9:00 am – Ladder Jacks

Very high winds all day – we had a grill your own meat and bring a side dish to share with the Drifters – I made Cloud 9 and we grilled a Ham Steak – YUMMO.

2:30 Ice Cream Social

We had ‘happy hour’ that stretched for a couple hours until the mosquitos chased us in!

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Flea Market, Craft Sale, Board of Director’s meeting

Wonderful sitting around chatting with Joe & Sandy Fryberger, Greg & Kay Sluyter, Kathy Bernard, Jim, Joan Myers, Dixie Cox, Mick & Sharon Bushlack – had a couple hours with these good friends!

Evening Banquet – Trash can dinner – sausages, corn, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions – and cornbread!

Dance band, pictures, door prizes (won another $25 cash prize).

Friday June 21, 2013

Hitch up and go breakfast – the Hillbillies provided omelets in a bag and mini cinnamon buns, coffee, juice. It was all very good but sad to say farewell to these good friends, and since there are no guarantees in life chances are we won’t see some of them again. Live every day to the fullest!

We left the campground about 11, gassed up the MH and went 60 miles up the road to Mountain View RV Park in Sundance, WY. We got set up than went in town for lunch, which was very good! The waitress said they were closed on the weekend, but recommended the Buffalo Jump Saloon in the town of Beulah.

We got a call from friends Lynn and Joyce Marlatt saying they were coming up on Saturday to visit with us, so we did a little cleaning and I made a great steak salad for dinner.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

I made us a good breakfast about 11 am of eggs, fried ham, toast and we cleaned up and rearranged some ‘stuff’. There is always that to do in this lifestyle – clean out a drawer, or cupboard, or inventory something – I did start a pretty big grocery list, since we are at least 30 miles from a Wal-mart!!!

Joyce and Lynn arrived about 2:30 and we settled in for quite a chat! Suddenly the wind started to howl, and it got very black – rain started and then the hail came! We got several inches of pea sized hail, but it was exciting while it lasted! We finally got out to dinner about 5:30 and drove to the Buffalo Jump Saloon where we had a marvelous meal! I had Prime Rib and all the fixins, David and Lynn had the Rib Eye Steak Special and Joyce had a filet…we shared turtle cheesecake and they shared carrot cake.

We came back home and chattered until almost 9 pm, when they went over the hill to a hotel.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

We were expecting Lynn and Joyce to come over and yammer some more, and then we thought we’d go have an early lunch somewhere before they headed for home. We were sitting around drinking our coffee when David got a text from Joyce, saying they got up and left at 5 am, driving through the Black Hills…SO

We got cleaned up and headed for Gillette, where we had a wonderful Chinese Buffet for $16 for both of us, and then we made a big Wal-Mart run. I cooked and we ate up most of our groceries while in Sturgis, so I needed to replenish. Well, $175 later we headed back to the MH. Oh by the way, the reason we went the 60 miles to Gillette was that the closer Wal-Mart in Spearfish was closed – they had egg sized hail that did tons of damage, cars windows broken out, all the skylights in the stores, etc. Wow, glad we were not down there!

I made a pot of potato, onion, beef soup using our leftover meats from our dinner last night. I got too much salt in it – probably the bouillon!

Monday, June 24, 2013

We puttered around this morning – made a great breakfast of sausage, potatoes, onions, fried up and put a couple OE eggs on top – it was very tasty! We decided we would go to Devil’s Tower, so we left about 11 and got there about 11:30. We drove up and were amazed at the amount of people there! It’s a good thing we have handicap plates or we would have never gotten a parking space! I went into the visitor center and got my book stamped, and we did get some good pictures.

After visiting there, we decided to take the ‘scenic’ route back to the campground. It covered about 34 miles with great scenery! We stopped in Aladdin, where there is a restaurant recommended by our Campground Host as well as the man at the visitor center! The name is Cindy B’s and the pie lived up to the hype! They only had cherry left at 2 in the afternoon, so that’s what we had and it was excellent and you could tell it was made on site – so we’ll be going back probably Thursday for some coconut cream, and get there by 11!

Once again in the early evening (about 6) we had torrential rains with lots of thunder and lightning. It is so green here it almost hurts your eyes, really not what we’re used to seeing in WY!