Jeff & Ruth Touring with a Trailer

 In The Wisconsin Dells we enjoyed the largest water park in the USA, Noah's Ark Water Park. Summer is in this photo.  Then we toured the dells in an amphibious vehicle with The Original Wisconsin Duck Tours. We finally learned what a dell is. It's from old French for "deep valley. "

 We made a special trip to the Spencer public library to see where Dewey Readmore Books, the library cat lived. He was a world-famous cat rescued and adopted by the library and given the title of Staff Supervisor. He was featured in many articles and books. Here's the book drop in which Dewey was found.  Here's where his ashes are buried. 

 Today being Sunday, we just changed campgrounds and had a scripture study service on the way. We left our beautiful, free campsite at the Badlands and drove to Adrian, MN to a paid campground. For the first time ever we have full hookups! We enjoyed spacious, warm showers, air conditioning, plentiful electricity, air conditioning, and Wi-Fi. 

 We slept in and had scrambled eggs for breakfast. Then we left the trailer and headed down the road to the Badlands visitor center passing some Bighorn sheep on the way.  I showed the photo to a ranger at the visitors center and he explained that only old males have the big horns. Summer and Ruth earned Junior Ranger badges. Carrie and Summer climbed some badlands buttes. Then we hiked the notch trail.  On to Prarie Dog Town where the prarie dogs are obese and have little interest in more food.  We stopped next at the Minute Man Missle National Historic Site where we learned about our ICBM system and Summer earned a patch. 12 miles down the freeway we viewed an actual, decommissioned ICBM in a silo through a window from above.  Of course we made the obligatory stop at Wall Drug, which is much larger than at my last visit 25 years ago. I think it fills a whole city block now and the town of Wall has sprouted many other prosperous businesses around it. They claim up to 20k visitors/day.

 After an early morning departure and lunch at McDonalds we got to the Crazy Horse Memorial. There is a big visitors' center so we learned all about it. Work continues but I don't think it will be done while any of us are alive. Then we continued to Mount Rushmore. Summer got another Junior Ranger badge there. Ruth did, too. For the night we parked the trailer at a free site on the rim of the Badlands.

After Theodore Roosevelt's wife and mother both died on the same day, he built a cabin on the western frontier and lived there for a couple of years while mourning and healing. The hard work of ranching and hunting helped mold him. Later he remarried, fought in Cuba with the Roughriders and became president. He loved nature. We visited Teddy's cabin, and saw lots of scenic vistas. Summer didn't actually get bitten on the backside by the friendly prairie dog. There were thousands of them on this hill. Then we headed off to find a free campsite but found that we were led astray by Google and/or our GPS coordinates. The drive was beautiful and we saw 2 bighorn sheep. Google Maps took us down a series of dirt roads for 15 miles ending at a plot surrounding an oil pipeline valve. A sign warned of hydrogen sulfide but we didn't smell any. Having no other good options, we stayed the night and headed out about 6 am the next morning after catching a whiff of sulfur. 

 We left our free campsite west of Yellowstone, drove across Montana and visited Little Bighorn Battlefield and visitors center. Summer earned her 3rd Junior Ranger badge. Then we camped in another free site nearby. Summer relaxed while the rest of us bathed in the river. The cicadas were very loud.

We left our trailer in the free camping site and toured Yellowstone in the SUV, returning to the camp for a second night there.  Driving the lower loop of Yellowstone our first stop was Firehole Falls. Most of the attractions had a sulfur smell. Then some bubbling pools.                            Old Faithful                              Colorful pools  Dragon's Mouth  Some local residents  Upper Falls  Summer showing her rock climbing skills  The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone 

 Dispersed (free) camping. We had to drive up a muddy dirt road but found a nice site. There were a few other campers but spread far apart. There are many areas on public land that are free to camp, especially in the western US. Carrie cooking chocolate chip banana pancakes for supper. The temperature was perfect outside so she preferred to cook there. A herd of cows came wandering through our campsite in the morning. 

 Camping with the Pralls for 3 days at Anderson Cove Campground.  Summer showing off our mascot, Tia. We had fun swimming and paddleboarding in the lake. Thank you Breton and Annette for cooking and serving such delicious meals!

 2nd night visiting family 

Carrie and Ken bought a 30 foot travel trailer that sleeps 9, and a Ford Expedition. On August 16, 2023 Jeff, Ruth, Carrie and Summer began a trip across the USA. Ken stayed behind to work. The plan included visiting as many states as possible (especially national parks), Emily and Doug in Connecticut, 10 nights at free campgrounds and 25 nights at paid campgrounds.  The first day of our trailer odyssey we spent a night at Crater Lake National Park. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the USA at 1943 feet. We did some hiking and exploring, saw flowers and lots of golden mantled ground squirrels. There were lots of PCT (Pacific Crest Trail) hikers camped there, being a major waypoint on their 2000 mile hike. It got me thinking again about doing that myself. Getting used to towing a huge, 5 ton trailer took some time. After a very hilly section we pulled over and found the Ford Expedition brakes smoking on all 4 wheels. We let them cool and started using the trailer brakes more. The next