Signposts

The most informative signpost that we saw during the trip:

The most confusing signpost that we saw during the trip:

Staat Stats 2011

To summarize our 2011 adventure, here are a few Staat Stats:

Miles travelled:  17,026

Miles travelled on gravel roads (including 4-wheel drive roads):  2,740 (mas or menos)

Days on the road:  85

Days in Canada:  47

Days in States:  38

States visited:   13

Canadian Provinces visited:   2

Canadian Territories visited:   2

Consecutive days with rain:  12

Lowest recorded temperature while camping:  24 degrees

Nights in motels:  9

Nights with friends and family:  7

Nights in camper:  70

US license plates seen:  All but Rhode Island (yes, even Hawaii!!!)

Flat Tires:  0 

New Chips in Windshield:  5 (we replaced the original windshield this spring with a cheap one made in China... lesson learned!)

Cheapest gasoline per gallon:  $3.159 per gallon (Tulsa)

Most expensive gasoline:  $7.299 per gallon (Muncho Lake, BC, Canada)

Average price per gallon:  $4.85 per gallon  (NOTE:  Last year's HIGHEST gasoline price paid was $4.66 per gallon!)

Photos taken:  3,772 (not including those deleted!)

Home Again, Home Again, Diddly-Dum

We are happy to be home!  After arriving around 5:30 yesterday evening, we are now in the midst of unpacking, laundry, and settling back into life in a real house!

For those who have been trying to comment on the blog, I think that we have fixed the problem.  You should now be able to comment without registering first.

In the next several days, we'll post the Staat Stats, as well as other information about the end of our trip.  We thank each of you for joining us on our continued adventures!

Warp Speed

We have travelled from South Dakota to Wisconsin... Wisconsin to Rolla... and now Rolla to Tulsa, in a matter of a few days.  Tonight, we sit in a hotel room and are happy to report that both David's mother and brother are doing well.

The transition back into the cities and their traffic has been difficult after nearly two months in the "bush."  The air conditioner in our hotel room tonight feels stuffy.  We have grown accustomed to sleeping in the chill of the night air with nothing but stars and coyotes.  It feels odd to be surrounded by all the normal accoutrements of modern living.

We leave early Tuesday morning for our final push home.  Several friends have already warned us that the very landscape in South Texas has changed because of the drought.  What will we find awaiting us?

Suenos dulce... sweet dreams, dear friends.  Our next post signals the end to this year's adventure.

Our Last Stand at Custer

South Dakota’s Custer State Park and its wild donkeys were a favorite stop for us last year.  We thought that it would be a great end to this year’s trip before traveling on to visit David’s mother and brother, then on to home.

Custer is essentially a wildlife park.  It has a bison farm with an annual round-up.  Pronghorn antelope, turkeys, and sheep are plentiful within its boundaries.  And its donkeys are anything but wild, practically demanding handouts from visitors.

Unfortunately, the park’s campsite reservation process is so convoluted that you can only stay in a site one night without reserving online or making a phone call between 9 am to 2 pm. 

On this trip, we arrived after five at the campground and were too late to reserve the next night’s stay by phone.  After the camp hosts told us the available sites, we set up camp, then drove to the neighboring lodge to abscond internet service in order to reserve our site for the second night.  During the process, however, we discovered that in the last year Custer had not only raised their rates 25 percent for campsites and day passes but, in addition, were charging nearly an $8 penalty fee for nonresidents.   As a result, if we booked online, our camping site fee rose from an already high $24 to $32 a night.   

We have traveled across western Canada and all but one of the 50 states.  In all of our travels, we have always been treated as guests… never have we been charged a fee because we are nonresidents.  While we love Custer State Park and South Dakota, we now feel like commodities rather than welcomed friends.  And with Roosevelt and its wild horses only five hours north (and with campsites costing only $10 a night!), in the future, I know where we will stay!

As a result of the additional costs, we opted to stay only one night before heading towards home.


We leave you one last time with photos of those crazy “wild” donkeys of Custer:

Roosevelt Revisited

Roosevelt has fast become one of our most favorite national parks.  With its rugged terrain, a beautiful climate during autumn, and a wide variety of animals (including wild horses!), the park is a true gem.  We were excited to arrive and set up camp.  This was our second visit to Roosevelt, and we wondered if we would see more of the wild horses that we photographed last year.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

I became immediately worried, however, when we discovered that the park had hired a helicopter to dust herbicides for a non-native weeds infestation.  It quickly became obvious that the horses were spooked and would be very difficult to locate.  

To my delight, however, we found the Coal Vein herd on our first morning in the park.  The Coal Vein herd is led by the white stallion:  the first wild horse that I ever photographed.  Although he was as beautiful as ever, he was limping badly.  (Later, when I blew photos of him, it appeared that he had a terrible gash on his inner left/front leg.  I don't know if he received it in a fight or fell.  I pray that he will heal completely.)

When we found the Coal Vein herd, I was excited.  I was in a fairly good position to take photos, and the light was perfect.  Slowly, I inched closer to the herd, using the sage for partial cover.  The horses were obviously aware of me but continued grazing peacefully. 

Suddenly, the sound of the chopper came tremendously close, startling us all.  The horses went on high alert. 

The chopper rose out of a gully not more than a hundred yards from us.  The herd spooked and ran, trying to get away from this noisy red beast.  

I was heartbroken on many levels.  It was so difficult to watch the stallion limping to keep up with the herd.  I had lost the perfect photo op.  I also knew that the herd was so spooked that they would probably head to the backcountry.  If they did, I knew that we wouldn’t see them again.

The chopper continued working from sun up to sundown over the next several days.  As a result, on Thursday we did not see a single animal other than bison and prairie dogs.  I was terribly disappointed, knowing that as long as the chopper was around that horses would be scarce.

The bison remained on the move during our entire visit, seemingly completely unconcerned about the noisy chopper.  A herd of over 60 bison crossed the road in front of us one morning.  We watched a herd of about 30 cows and calves walk across prairie dog town to graze on the other side.  We also had several herds walk right through the campground.  (Please read our “What’s More Crazy:  Running with the Bulls or Showering with the Bison?” post for the exciting details of one of those forays!)

We spoke about leaving the park earlier than scheduled because of the chopper.  Thankfully, however, one of the park rangers told us that the spraying finished Friday afternoon.  By Saturday, we were seeing horses again, as well as other animals.

Saturday evening, we discovered a herd that we hadn’t seen last year.  The herd had two young colts.  It was great fun to watch them play together.  The dark colt seemed to be an imp, instigating all sorts of mischief in the herd.  The second colt was precious and had one brown eye and one blue.

 Sunday morning, we found my roan stallion and his herd with the skirted mare again.  It was so wonderful to see them.  

We also discovered a huge red stallion that is primed to take his place as leader of a pack of his own.  This stallion may well be the brother of the colt we had seen earlier.  They both are the same color, have similar markings, and each have one blue and one brown eye.

 On our last morning at Roosevelt, we had an amazing interaction with another stallion.  We got up early to make the wildlife loop before breaking camp.  Early while driving the loop, we spied a herd that had two white horses in it and pulled over to see if it was the Coal Vein herd.  The horses were so far away that we needed binoculars. 

We jumped back into the truck and drove about a quarter mile up the road to see if we could get a closer view.  We couldn’t, so we returned to our original position to watch from a distance.

As soon as we set up with the binoculars again, one of the white horses stepped away from the herd and disappeared around a hill.  We quickly dismissed this horse because he had a salt and pepper mane.  Over the next several minutes, David and I stayed in position, trying to determine if the remaining white horse was the white stallion. 

I heard the distinct clopping of hooves.  When I looked up, to my utter amazement, the horse with the salt and pepper mane was walking right up the road towards us!  It quickly became obvious that he was the stallion of the herd, coming to check us out.  

The stallion walked slowly in front of us, looking us up and down, stopping no more than fifteen feet from the truck.  Then he walked past us, sniffed some flattened horse poop in the middle of the road, and dumped on top of it, as if to say, “this is my territory.”  He made another purposeful circle around and trotted back to the herd.  Wow!

It was difficult to head back and break camp.  Although it was time to go, I wanted so badly to continue interacting with the horses. 

Again, Roosevelt did not disappoint.  And again, we are planning our next return.  The herds are familiar to us now and have become part of our lives.  Also, the story of the white stallion needs an ending… hopefully a happy one.  Will the red stallion take over a herd or steal several mares to build his own?  Hopefully, we will discover the answers on our next adventure to Roosevelt… and, hopefully, that adventure will come again very, very soon!

What’s More Crazy: Running with the Bulls or Showering with the Bison?

We had... shall I say... a very exciting afternoon here in Roosevelt National Park!  


After we made the wildlife loop looking for animals, David and I decided to get our little shower unit out and clean up.  The park was fairly empty, so we figured that it was the perfect opportunity.  We joked that there was a bison herd across the road and about 100 yards from the camp.  Were they too close?  Little did we know…

I took my shower without a hitch.  During David's shower, however, we had a little "incident."  

Just after David got into the privy tent, I noticed that the bison herd was moving closer.  Unbeknownst to us, our campsite was located right on their grazing path.  Mid-shower, I warned David that the herd was now grazing about 20 yards from our camp.  

About that time, a fellow from Minnesota that we had chatted with earlier in the day came into our site to take photos of the bison gathering around us.  I tried to discreetly tell him that David was showering.  He was kind enough to move off, however, in the process, he startled the herd.  The bison began trotting into the meadow next to us.

By now, the bison were only ten feet from me, most of them looking very nervous.  I told David, “Now would be a very good time to be finished.”

He thought I was kidding.  I unzipped the tent a little so he could see for himself.  Looking out between my legs, all David saw was bison.  Needless to say, he finished his shower in record time!

Thankfully, Roxanne was in the back of the truck, but the hatch was open.  Not sure where I was needed most, I figured that David was basically in a blind inside the little tent, but Rox was exposed.  As most of you know, Rox has a special affinity for bison.  Should she decide to jump out of the truck to join them, I figured that things could get nasty in a hurry.  I quickly handed a towel to David and snuck over to drop the hatch on Rox.  

About that time, the entire herd moved into our site, probably 40-50 of these enormous beasts.  I’m now tossing clothing over the privy tent.  David is dressing as quickly as he can inside, while I'm standing in front of his little "blind," totally exposed.  Let me tell you, when a massive, 2,500 pound beast stares you down, it can really get the adrenaline going!

David now had his pants on, and I handed him his T-shirt.  He said, "Forget the shirt," grabbed it, and we both edged behind the shower and under the awning of the camper.  

Bison were flowing on both sides of the camper now, as we were trying to edge ourselves closer to the protection of the truck.  

Then a wacky Californian lady drove up in her Volkswagen van to take a picture, cutting the herd off from one of their routes. David yelled at her that she was pushing the herd into the camp.  She just laughed and started taking pictures.  

It was really getting dicey now, because the herd's only other escape route was less that fifteen feet wide... right between the truck and the trees where we had the little privy tent and straight through Oz's awning... with us in the midst of it all!

Our campsite... the privy tent, with Oz behind it and the Xterra to the left.

We started yelling at the woman to move on... she was very perturbed, but did roll forward.  About that time, the gentleman from the trailer across the road from us stepped out to take photos.  Unfortunately, he was wearing red.  The herd spooked totally at this point and started running through our camp.  Thank heavens, they chose to go around the picnic table rather than through Oz's awning!  

The remaining herd continued to flow on either side of our camper.  Bulls stopped to grunt warnings at us.  Several mothers stared us down.  After about fifteen minutes, however, it was all over. 

To get a little idea of how close the bison came, here is a short video that David took of the stragglers in the herd:

My family seems to be aficionados of bovine this year.  Our nephew ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, this summer.  Now we’ve showered with the bison in Roosevelt.  Talk about an adrenaline rush!  Wow! 

A member of our bison herd... up close and personal... with a face full of cockleburs.

Tonight we’re feeling glad to be alive and happy.  I just LOVE a good adventure!  :)