Wylie Park- Aberdeen, South Dakota

Our journey on the red roads (color in the atlas) brought us to Aberdeen, South Dakota! The photo above is our site at Wylie Park Campground. With the spelling the same, I was sure the place was built just for us and we just didn't know it! But, they charged us just the same. $27 dollars a night basically gets you a theme park! They have paddleboats & canoes, Wizard's balloon ride, miniature train ride, Storybook Land, The Land of Oz, Lake and Beach, Carousel Rides, Miniature Golf, Bumper Boats, Zoo, Go Karts, and Bike Rentals. The facilities are excellent in the campground. This park is run by the city of Aberdeen... impressive.
Grammy- this picture is for you! Caleb is stalking the turkey and chicken that are wandering the cornfield behind him. They have lots of climbable structures at Storybook Land. There are paved bike paths that take you all around- even around the zoo. There are buffalo, elk, reindeer, prairie dogs, oh my! They also have a petting zoo. There are structures from lots of nursery rhymes all around the park.
This climbing wall was also there. The majority of the park is free entrance, but there are some activities that have an extra fee. Caleb was able to climb the wall twice for 2 bucks.
Monday was deemed water day! The Aberdeen Aquatic Center has an awesome pool equipped with water slides (raft slide, body flume slide, and enclosed body flume slide), leisure pool with kids play structure and splash zone, lazy river and large lap pool with 1 and 3 meter diving boards... $16.50 bought us a great day on the water!
The weather was ideal at 80 degrees. The water was refreshing. Caleb ventured to the high diving board. The first time, he got to the edge, looked down and backed down the ladder. But by the end of the afternoon, he was pleading to go "just one more time." I preferred the raft slide onto the lazy river myself.

5er news: Our WFCO converter is ready to give up the ghost. I'm pleased to pass along what a great company Best Converter RV Electrical Supplies is to work with! Randy was able to answer our questions and steer us the right direction. They will ship general delivery for us to pick up along our route. After checking with the local RV service companies, it was worth it to order.

Tomorrow we will head towards East Grand Forks, Minnesota. They were flooded earlier in the year, but are "open for business". So we will see how Red River State Park compares to the last time we were there. Then, on to Baudette to pick up our converter before crossing the border into Canada. We're sending good thoughts for warmer weather up on Lake of the Woods before we arrive! Caleb is in gear for swimming!

Driving the Red Roads

What is that? No pictures!? What was I thinking?
We've been driving the "Red Roads" for the past two days. We headed out of Buena Vista, Colorado on Friday morning to beat the bikes. No... not motorcycles, a bicycle tour was going to be coming through town. We decided playing pinball with the fiver and the bikes might not be a good plan for summer vacation, so we beat them out of town! We drove North on the "Red Road" up to Leadville and over Freemont Pass to a "Blue Road". You see, Red Roads are U.S. and State highways... usually two laners. Those Blue Roads are Interstate Highways. We prefer Red Roads. We have always found easy places to fuel up and are able to enjoy the scenery of small town America. The Blue Road on Friday was I-70 west of Denver... a road that makes me nervous. The truck and professional driver did just fine! But none the less, I was relieved to be off that stretch. Onto another Blue Road I-76, to Sterling, Colorado for the night. As we pulled up to the Gate Station, out of the mountains and into the flatlands, the heat was evident.

"We'd like a vehicle pass and a site with electricity please," said Chris.

The attendant replied, "Do you have reservations?"

To which we said, "No!"

"Well..., " she said, "we have 1 site available."

"We'll take it!" .... it was 2:30 in the afternoon!

Apparently North Sterling State Park is a popular weekend destination for boaters of all kinds! We hooked up to our electrical site and before we could sit down, Caleb was suited up to hit the beach! We walked up a trail around the reservoir to the swimming beach. The mosquitoes were looking for a feast, but I disguised myself as a beach towel. The dark afternoon thunderstorms were moving in, so we tried to find a short-cut back to the 5er. With a bit of a jog, we beat the storm.
Saturday morning we left early for our 13 mile drive back to the Blue Road in town to fuel up and hit the road. We stayed on the Blue Road until we reached North Platte, Nebraska and then we hit the Red Roads for the remainder of our day. Well, almost. We had tentatively planned to stop for the night in Nebraska, but the day was young and we kept driving. Ahhhhh ... South Dakota. Laundry was on the agenda for the evening so we stopped at a KOA.
Tomorrow we will spend a bit of time on the Blue Road just to get to our next Red Road. Our plan? We are aiming for Aberdeen, South Dakota for none other than Wylie Park. How cool is that?

Buena Vista, Colorado

We left Durango and headed through Pagosa Springs, up and over Wolf Creek Pass, to Buena Vista, Colorado.
Our annual mini-golf competition was hot. Caleb won the round by 4 strokes!
We dined at Quincy's steakhouse in Buena Vista for some filet mignon... three steak dinners for $30.... and Caleb claims that it's better than dad's. Then the dogs needed some R & R at Turquoise Lake in Leadville. They don't understand why they can't swim in the Arkansas River! Leadville is the highest town in elevation in the United States. There are plenty of high elevation thirsty skeeters there as well, so Caleb and I high-tailed to the truck!
This morning we layered up for the 1/2 day river trip on the Arkansas River with Wilderness Aware. The Arkansas Headwaters are the #2 rated river for rafting in Colorado, and we are at peak flow of 2350 cubic feet per second! Wilderness Aware is a top-notch company that I highly recommend. With an overcast morning sky, we paddled our way through some raging class 3 and 4 rapids! Caleb sat in the back with the guide to help navigate our way 10 miles down river. He wore a wetsuit and was soaked with the 45 degree water! But he's a pro and paddled better than some of the adults on the trip.
Friday morning we travel again, to Northeastern Colorado...

Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

Our day started early with the 8:15 AM departure on the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad! We were in an open gondola car, equipped with sunglasses luckily! The sun was shining brightly through the steam and smoke put out by the locomotive and we were quickly removing layers of clothing. We couldn't have picked a more beautiful day... Silverton, home of only 14 frost-free nights, showed us 70 degree sunshine! Departing from Durango, we took the train up to Silverton and took the bus back for the return trip. Not only did the bus give us a tour of the Million Dollar Highway, but it shaved two hours off the time for our return trip.
The train stops a few times along the way to take on water from the Animas River, each time taking on about 400 gallons!

Approaching Silverton the mountains beckon you to venture further into the wilderness... as the steam engine stops just short of downtown.
A step back in time on the steam powered locomotive ... a day well spent.
(Note to readers... technical difficulties! The new EnV3 phone is not cooperating to tether for internet, campground wi-fi is weak, and Picasa is giving me fits!....)

Tomorrow is a travel day ... towards Buena Vista,Colorado.

Repost (pictures fixed)- OurJourney has begun

Our summer journey has begun! We started out on Saturday and pulled out of the driveway at about 8:30 AM and were into the above campsight at the San Juan National Forest's Target Tree campground by 3:30 PM. We enjoyed the crisp mountain air, tall green grass and forest seclusion for our first night. Horses in the valley pastures were up to their bellies in grass, but don't tell our horses back in the desert about that!

After a good night's rest, the dogs were anxioux to explore! For Father's Day morning, they conveniently woke Chris up e-a-r-l-y! So after we convinced them that a few more zzz's, some French press java and breakfast were in order, we obliged and hiked up a trail behind the campground. We hiked about a mile and the dogs probably ran about twice that! We packed up to move into Durango to our next stop at the Alpen Rose RV Park. Within 20 minutes, Caleb had his swimsuit on and hit the pool! The dogs were bummed to not be in the forest, but they told us that they do have a good sized dog walk area here.
About 3:30 after getting set-up and trying unsuccessfully to fix my non-functioning Oxygenics showerhead, we drove back from the way we came to visit Mesa Verde National Park. It was a free entrance weekend! We drove, and drove, 15 miles to the Farview Visitor Center to purchase tickets for a cave dwelling tour. There were two tours left for the evening so we snatched up a 5:30 PM tour of Cliff Palace for a total of $9. The picture above shows Caleb in the "staging area" for the tour.

Our one hour tour led us up several ladders such as this one. You can tell by the smile on Caleb's face that tours with ladders get a thumbs up from him! It was a grand adventure and there is so much more to see at Mesa Verde... on a different journey. Chris has the day off for driving duty tomorrow... we will be riding the Durango-Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad!

(Sorry for the errors in prior link... technical difficulties on the road!!)

Summer 2009 Journey

Our Summer 2009 journey is now 10 days away! We are fortunate to be able to take 5 weeks in our 5er this year to enjoy nature's wonders. The first leg of our journey is depicted in the map on the right.

We will take advantage of the first weekend of free entrance for the National Parks to visit the ancient Pueblo dwelling at Mesa Verde. This summer we are going to stay at many national forest campgrounds and are using information provided by Fred and Suzanne Dow as our U.S. National Forest Campground guide. We will spend some time in private campgrounds when electric service is necessary. One of those stops is for.... All Aboard!... our ride on the Durango-Silverton railway! And as you follow our squiggle on the map above you will see that we will meander towards the Buena Vista/Salida area for some splashing good white-water rafting adventure!

By then, this blog will be full of pictures so that you can travel along with us. I plan to connect via my Verizon EnV3 cell phone, tethered to my lap-top for internet connection! The journey is about to begin... we hope you can join us!