Trip out west 2022

 Instead of posting individual blog entries for EVERYONE of our stops...of which we've done 40 so far, it might be better to just post one photo per site with a caption. Let's see how this works for you.

Looking west towards Green Bay from northern Wisconsin

Dam and Locks on the Mississippi River. These open and close to let water flow down river.

Great Lewis and Clarke and Seaman (their Newfoundland Dog) outside of  Sioux City, Iowa. Terrific musem.

Typical road in...North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota...take your pick.

Custer's Last Stand gravesite in Montana. I put this off for years every time we passed near it but this year, I decided to visit. A tragic site but interesting historically.

Wonderful sunset in northwest Montana

Harvesting wheat in Washington. These fields cover central/eastern Washington...very dusty when they harvest!

We took a hike here amongst the lava rocks in central Washington. We were the only people within miles!

One of our luxurious resort RV sites in Utah!

Goblins State Park in Utah. Miles of these formations. If you look really closely, you can see Kim down there.

...and here she is !

Some fabulous Mexican food in Colorado.

Mole tamales....yummmm

Stonehenge in Texas? Yes.

And we even drove to Great Britain ! Not.

Beautiful gardens in Fort Worth, Texas

Of course, BBQ is the best in Texas. Look at all that scrumptious food!

...and some Louisiana food. Gumbo, Po-Boys and meat pies

Typical Acadian/Cajun home in Louisiana. No gators this time.

Crawfish Etoufee and fried chicken. Louisiana

Red beans, sausage and rice. Louisiana

One of the local Louisiana restaurants.

We had longhorn steers in the field next to our RV park in Louisiana.

Katie wanted to have her own kayak.

Our backyard in Montana for two weeks.

This map, by geologist O.C. Harper in 1924, is one of the most significant pieces of geological evaluations ever done in the United States showing the vast area of West Texas that shows oil fields. They are still pumping oil out of these today.

Sometimes we would put Katie in a doggy day care place. You can see here way at the top in the corner where she'll stay for hours. She's kind of shy that way.

These wild horses like to block the road in Montana when they see cars coming. "Look, here comes a car...quick...back in the road!"

Momma and baby that showed up almost daily in our campground in Montana

They had a stream that I could not resist sitting in and looking at the colorful rocks.

Hope you liked all these photos. Of course, there are hundreds but these are just a small sampling of our trip these past 4 months. Great trip.

steve/kim/katie

SouthWest Wisconsin

This RV park is one of our very, very favorites so we have to spend a few photos showing how wonderful it is in this part of SW Wisconsin. The RV Park is called Rustic Barn, but we like to call it the "Firefly RV Park" because of the many, many fireflies that come out at dusk to glisten the grass by our coach.  (Oh, you can click the photos and they'll enlarge for you.)

We've been here four times and each time, there's a different owner! But it still retains the same charm.

Our view every evening sunset

We saw some very interesting clouds coming over...

...fortunately, they did not hammer us.

These cows would come out every morning to eat and take a morning siesta.

We visited Freddy's Popcorn Company in Dubuque, Iowa and bought some to eat.

They had shelves of this decadent popcorn!

I also bought some to pop myself and it was tasty.

We had a fire most nights before the fireflies came out.

We had time to do one of our numerous puzzles too.

...and made a nice chicken roast in our convection oven.

Enjoying the fire and the scenic view

Can you tell we liked the view?

Artsy-Fartsy photo with the cows in the background

We even saw this hummingbird poking around the pine tree

The Fireflies were absolutely magical

Here's a close up look

Usually we poke around the surrounding area to see sights and such but this time we just hung out at the campground and ran some errands. We were there two weeks and never saw anything....except for a run to an exceptional donut shop in Dubuque. We could've easily stayed another couple of weeks. Nice nice place.

We hope you enjoy this one as much as we did.

steve/kim/katie

3D Painted Silo mural in Iowa

We saw this 3D painted silo mural on roadsideamerica.com and, as it was on our way across Iowa, decided to stop and see. First off, it is well worth a visit...amazing...as you'll see from the photos below. But, we drove 200 miles, got off the highway and headed through town and, two blocks from the silos, the street was all torn up ! We had to detour on some pretty nasty paved streets to get to it. Plus, the parking lot was way too small for our coach and truck so we had to unhook the truck, turn the coach around, and then hook it up again. Geeeez.

But...check it out.

Now...just so you can see the scale and perspective....

That is our 40-ft motorhome in the parking lot...and it's 13-ft tall!

Some additional photos from around the silos....

In order to do this mural, he did some extensive research on the subject matter. If you're interested, here's the link....plus...there's a great drone fly-around towards the end.

https://www.guidovanhelten.com/projects/fortdodge-ia

Of course to me, its very interesting to see him at work.....

He has some other, even more amazing murals that are worth a peek.

https://www.guidovanhelten.com/projects

We both walked all the way around and took photos. Really worth a stop, even with the detour. 

We go to this site all the time to find some of these sites along our path...

Roadsideamerica.com

steve/kim/katie