Had my 1st view of Lake Michigan today. Bob, of course, has been here before. It's beautiful. We're at the northern tip, Little Bay de Noc Campground. We're camped about 75 yds from the shoreline, the sun is just setting, and it's beautiful. Clear skies, warm... spent a couple hours sitting by the shore under an oak tree, in the sun, reading a book. While sitting there a couple acorns fell not far from me! Those could hurt if they hit you on the head! I'm used to falling pine cones :)  We'll be here a couple of days, then move on. Here are a few pix...

I took these pictures as we crossed the Mississippi!

The oak tree I sat under.

The man and his dog :)

These views are this evening from our
camper window. :)

Finally back to blog. It's been a while, but we've taken so many pictures, been so many places, and most of those places did not have internet/electricity! But here I am.

As we continued on our journey, we visited Castle Town, MT. This is a ghost town, and VERY interesting!

 This is the owner of the property, who gave us permission to walk around, take pix, and spend the night. His mother bought the land in the 1940's and said the houses still had some furniture and draperies in them! Really excellent condition considering they were built in the late 1800's.

If you enlarge this pix you'll see all these nails sticking up
from the roof. We couldn't figure out why... does anyone know?

               

    

Good foundation!

 Our little chipmunk friend posed for us :)

                                                                         So beautiful!

 This was supposedly the General Store. With thick, rock walls, this really great architecture has stayed this intact after all these years!

 
 The owner told us there were 6 bars and 6 brothels!  This would appear to be one of the brothels.
There was so much healthy sage brush around here that before we were even half way through walking around my sinuses were just burning :(

Next on our journey was a visit to Devil's Tower, WY.

 We spent the night beside the road at Camps Pass, and then dropped down the mountain to Devil's Tower in the morning.

A view of the top edge. There's a big
bird perched there!

 Prayer Cloths hug by natives. We were asked not to disturb them.

        

Beautiful sunsets from our camping spot. Just an awesome place to be! My bad knees kept us from doing much walking, but it was a very enjoyable visit!  And as you can tell, I loved the prairie dogs!  As we were leaving I saw these strange concrete structures by the river. How interesting!

And on to Mount Rushmore, South Dakota!  I grew up in Rapid City, so this area is very familiar to me, and I immensely enjoyed seeing it all again!  Bob and I also met in Rapid and were married there as well :)

           

   

These roads through the Black Hills and Needles are the stuff Gran Turismo copies!

 

           

       

                

We really wanted to stay at Pactola
Lake campground, but they'd already
closed it for the winter :(

So instead we stayed down the highway a bit
 at Sheridan Lake. Beautiful!!

On our way to Rapid City, we took a trip through Custer State Park.

 

The Memorial Stone for all who died there.

We were married a week after the flood of 1972, and our honeymoon
location had been destroyed. So we went to Custer State Park and
drove around, to the Restaurant and had Buffalo Burgers for supper.
We revisited the restaurant (there were glass etchings of animals in
it) and had another Buffalo Burger. Delicious!

 And ohhhh the animals we saw. I just love to take photos of animals, and here are but a few...

Wild burros.

 

We saw these birds while looking for buffalo. I've never seen
any like them before. Have you??

 

When we got into Rapid City, we parked in the driveway of a dear friend, Irene Fankhauser. Irene knew and loved us, and us her, way back in the 60's when Dad came to pastor at Rapid City Church of God. She's been a family friend since she knew Dad and Mom back in Nebraska... before they were married!

One of our favorite fun places was always Dinosaur Park!

I wanted Bob to pose like he was being attacked by the Dino.
He said he didn't know how, so I showed him. Something
seems a little fishy here!  LOL

The biggest one, located high on a hill in Rapid City.

 

Here's his feeble try with a Dino!

The folks at the church there in Rapid made us feel soooo welcome. The town has changed a lot, but then that's to be expected in 40 years. But we did find the McDonalds that Bob was the Asst. Mgr. of while he was going to college.  And then Sunday evening Irene wanted to go to McDonalds to eat. This was a different one from the one Bob used to work at, and as we were sitting there I realized that was the McDonalds where we had our first 'sort of' date! :)

The restaurant where Bob worked.

Where I went to High School.

And then we were off to the Badlands. And more pix of beautiful country and creatures :)

Bob thought Jill might be thirsty....

Nope!

Where we camped...

And our view from there!

 

 

     

 

And a trip to the Badlands just isn't complete without a stop at Wall Drug!

Getting even for not getting in the Dinosaur's mouth!

Question for grandchildren...
What is this animal?

UGLY cow

We've spent 4 days R & R in Wisconsin at Bagley Rapids Campground. Leave in the morning for Michigan.

 Until next time... ((HUGS))