On July 6 we set off on our grand migration West for a month of camping with occasional whining. The kids were ready, wedged into the minivan with little tv monitors and a box of dvd's to keep them docile for the long voyage ahead.
The pop-up and the minivan were loaded with coolers of food and supplies as we head into the wilderness. Take a good look at them. They aren't going to look this good for very long.
We drove all the way into the middle of Oklahoma the first day. If you look closely you can see the suspcious look Sam is giving to the giant prairie dog.
When setting up or tearing down camp, everyone has a job to do. Mine is management.
It was a pleasant little place next to a lake. Who knew Oklahoma was so pretty?
And there really were prairie dogs. The really cool thing to me was that there were burrowing owls all over the the prairie dog town, but we didn't get any pictures of them.
We spent the next day driving all the way across Kansas. On the third day, while in western Nebraska, we had our first bit of drama. Allie looked in the rearview mirror and started making those noises that a chimp makes when he sees a lion. The laminate on the roof of the camper (which had been repaired from earlier trips) had come loose and was blowing like a sail. We stopped and began to make emergency repairs.
You have to keep a sense of humor, which is one of Allie's many talents.
It isn't pretty but it kept the roof on. I'm pretty sure that 90% of the world's problems can be fixed with duct tape.
Later that afternoon we rolled into Custer, South Dakota and the sky looked like this......
Pioneer Allie decided that we needed more emergency repairs to keep the roof from leaking and prematurely wrecking our vacation. So we pulled into a parking lot and bought a tarp. The camper now looks like any other Houston dwelling after going through Hurricane Ike.
To the kids it was all part of the fun. The good news is that Allie's repair job held up. We got both rain and hail but the tarp and duct tape kept us dry.
And the Black Hills were definitely worth seeing. Wow.
We took lots of hikes through the hills.
It looks a little like one of the scenes from the "Lord of the Rings" movies, doesn't it?
The weather was cool and the kids enjoyed the hikes in the Black Hills. Like my hat?
These things were all over the place.
They even stopped traffic a couple of times.
....which allowed us to get a very close look at them.
We'd seen pronghorns before but never so many or from so near.
We made the almost obligatory pilgrimage to Mount Rushmore. Jake wasn't impressed. After the Black Hills we made ready to travel across Wyoming and head to Yellowstone. I'll post those pictures soon.
On July 6 we set off on our grand migration West for a month of camping with occasional whining. The kids were ready, wedged into the minivan with little tv monitors and a box of dvd's to keep them docile for the long voyage ahead.
The pop-up and the minivan were loaded with coolers of food and supplies as we head into the wilderness. Take a good look at them. They aren't going to look this good for very long.
We drove all the way into the middle of Oklahoma the first day. If you look closely you can see the suspcious look Sam is giving to the giant prairie dog.
When setting up or tearing down camp, everyone has a job to do. Mine is management.
It was a pleasant little place next to a lake. Who knew Oklahoma was so pretty?
And there really were prairie dogs. The really cool thing to me was that there were burrowing owls all over the the prairie dog town, but we didn't get any pictures of them.
We spent the next day driving all the way across Kansas. On the third day, while in western Nebraska, we had our first bit of drama. Allie looked in the rearview mirror and started making those noises that a chimp makes when he sees a lion. The laminate on the roof of the camper (which had been repaired from earlier trips) had come loose and was blowing like a sail. We stopped and began to make emergency repairs.
You have to keep a sense of humor, which is one of Allie's many talents.
It isn't pretty but it kept the roof on. I'm pretty sure that 90% of the world's problems can be fixed with duct tape.
Later that afternoon we rolled into Custer, South Dakota and the sky looked like this......
Pioneer Allie decided that we needed more emergency repairs to keep the roof from leaking and prematurely wrecking our vacation. So we pulled into a parking lot and bought a tarp. The camper now looks like any other Houston dwelling after going through Hurricane Ike.
To the kids it was all part of the fun. The good news is that Allie's repair job held up. We got both rain and hail but the tarp and duct tape kept us dry.
And the Black Hills were definitely worth seeing. Wow.
We took lots of hikes through the hills.
It looks a little like one of the scenes from the "Lord of the Rings" movies, doesn't it?
The weather was cool and the kids enjoyed the hikes in the Black Hills. Like my hat?
These things were all over the place.
They even stopped traffic a couple of times.
....which allowed us to get a very close look at them.
We'd seen pronghorns before but never so many or from so near.
We made the almost obligatory pilgrimage to Mount Rushmore. Jake wasn't impressed. After the Black Hills we made ready to travel across Wyoming and head to Yellowstone. I'll post those pictures soon.
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