It has been a crazy summer – even though summer took her sweet time getting here.
Weather-wise it hasn’t been the best year for a garden which is kind of sad when I look into the greenhouse but since there aren’t any veggies to sell at the Farmers Market I have had some free time to do a few ‘fun things’ that I usually don’t have time for.
Like camping with Hubby!
Dani and Dalton (who are teachers and have the summer off) decided to come to the ranch for a couple of weeks. Since they have grown into highly responsible adults Hubby and I decided this was the perfect opportunity for us to take off for a couple of days. I hitched up Rattlin Ruby while Hubby threw in a change of clothes and Steve the Wonder Dog who doesn’t hesitate when he sees an open pickup door.
Hubby didn’t want to drive or even navigate so I just headed off in a generally north-westerly direction and we ended up here – Keyhole State Park near Pine Haven, WY. What a nice place to camp and the weather was perfect – not too hot and we even got rained on which makes for good sleeping weather in an old camper.
We only spent one night at Keyhole but it was such a pretty night.
Steve travels really well. He’s just the right size to fit into a little camper. He especially likes watching out the door – guarding us against the evil squirrels who inhabit campgrounds.
The next day we drove a whooping 26 miles to our next stop. You’ll never guess where we’re headed.
OK – you guessed.
We went to Devil’s Tower – our nation’s first National Monument and camped in the KOA campground where parts of the Steven Spielberg classic movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind was filmed. How cool is that?
It was a beautiful campground with a great view no matter where you were parked.
And to prove it just look at the view outside Ruby’s back window.
And what a photo for her scrap book!
I had to laugh though – this was a huge campground filled with many large & very expensive motor homes and campers. As my sister would say “It was a veritable plethora of gleaming and perfectly painted mansions on wheels”. Steve and I walked up and down every row to check out all these beauties and when we returned to our humble little abode I told Hubby that there was ab-so-lutely no doubt in my mind that Ruby was the oldest girl at the ball (so to speak). But even with this mass of “Trailer Perfection” parked in all their glory Ruby still seemed to get a lot of second looks. What a Hoot!
We thought about hiking around the base of Devil’s Tower but we had done that years ago with the kids and since dogs are not allowed on the trail we would have had to leave Steve behind – which wouldn’t be right. So we stayed at the campground and were basically lazy. We didn’t even stay up for the free viewing of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind which they show every night throughout the summer – of course they do. Just imagine the thrill of watching Richard Dreyfuss sculpt a replica of Devils Tower out of mashed potatoes with the real Tower looming just past the screen. But for us it was early to bed and early to rise so we could go see something that Hubby has driven past many times but has never stopped to see.
Wah-La. I give you the Vore Buffalo Jump!
Sitting right beside the interstate is an amazing thing that you really should stop and see if you get the chance. Starting in the mid 1500’s this natural sink hole was used to kill large amounts of buffalo by the Native Americans. They would slowly start to move the herds of buffalo toward the hole then stampede them at the last minute. The buffalo in the front probably tried to stop when they saw the drop off but the animals behind them would have forced them over the edge. The buffalo that weren’t killed by the fall would have been finished off by the hunters. Then the work of butchering and preserving the meat for winter would begin. It was a very interesting stop.
Originally the interstate was supposed to go right over the top of this area but when an engineer testing the sink hole to see if it was stable enough to support the road came back with core samples filled with bones they decided to do some investigating. There are many Buffalo Jumps throughout the area – even one not far from our ranch but this is one of the better known ones. This particular site was used for about 250 years until the introduction of the horse made this form of hunting obsolete. Every summer they work to uncover more of the site and learn a little more.
When we finished the tour – and I bought a T-shirt – we stepped outside to see this in the parking lot.
Ruby, Ruby, Ruby… You roll with the best of them.
(And no, that was not me spinning cookies in the parking lot. LOL!!!)
Then it was off to Rapid City where we stopped at the Windmill Truck Stop to top off the gas tank before heading home. As we waited in line for the pump a small gray car pulled up beside us and stopped. Inside, an elderly man motioned for Hubby to roll down his window so he could tell us something. I must admit, my first reaction was to look in the rear-view mirror to see if Ruby had scattered parts across the parking lot but to my relief the pavement was clear. There was a glimmer of tears in the man’s eyes as he introduced us to his wife sitting in the seat beside him. Although he didn’t say so, we could tell she wasn’t well and it appeared she wasn’t able to speak but she smiled as her husband explained they had seen us on the road and had followed us into the truck stop because he wanted to tell us that our little camper had made his wife laugh. He must have seen our confusion as he continued to explained it was especially funny to his wife as her name was Ruby. When she saw the name “Rattlin Ruby” plastered across the rear end of an old camper she couldn’t help but laugh.
He said it made her day…
With a shared laugh between strangers and a simple wave of his hand they drove away leaving Hubby and I laughing to ourselves and knowing that this would be the highlight of our whole trip. I eased the pickup and trailer ahead to the pump wishing I could have told them that they had made our day too.
RanchDaze 