St. Paul is one of the cities we had planned to visit during this leg of the trip besides Denver. Our plan so far has worked out quite well with decent weather all along the way. We have only needed to use the AC a couple of nights and finally here in Minnesota, we are turning on the furnace in the evening.
When we pulled into this Walmart last night we immediately noticed that we needed sweaters. Having been worried about the heat for so long, it was kind of a welcome change to put on some layers for once. I just hope we don’t start making that a habit here or we will have to start heading south soon.
We second straight night of boondocking and our second straight night at Cabela’s was nice and uneventful. Once again we woke up late and was the last one in the parking lot to leave. Since Cheyenne, Wyoming we have not had any Sprint coverage on our phones and data card. We have been limping along with minimal roaming capabilities on them and WiFi connections wherever we can find them.
Today was another day full of sight-seeing and driving. No relaxation for us. And how could we pretend that there was nothing to see today when we were reminded about our first destination… over and over and OVER again. Yup, good ol’ Wall Drug.
Our 3-night stay in Deadwood came to an end and we were ready to move on. The Deadwood KOA wasn’t the greatest place to stay as many of their facilities were dilapidated and unkempt. We did enjoy learning more about the history and significance of the area and we will head towards the south end of the Black Hills to see even more today.
Dear Mila,
Today was your 3rd birthday.
You went to sleep the night before as a 2 year old, living in an blue and white striped Airstream… and you woke up as a 3 year old in a pink princess explosion Airstream. In the morning, the first thing you screamed out (since your volume control is broken) is that there were two balloons everywhere. You say two for anything greater than one. It’s cute to us but now that I am typing it out, maybe we should start correcting your vocabulary. Nah! And we weren’t playing a practical joke on you with that huge gaucho pillow wedged next to you on the floor. It’s actually there every night so you don’t hurt yourself on Ava’s bed in the middle of the night.
As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, we are going to be tourists today and go on a bus ride through town. I know that makes some people furl their brows and roll their eyes but I bet those people don’t have 2 kids under 6 and an infant traveling with them across the country in an RV. We try to sit down whenever we can.
One of our favorite types of places to visit has to be old western towns. There are none more famous than the city of Deadwood in South Dakota. We have been traveling through some of the most well known trails of the old west to get here to Deadwood. Back in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, we missed a visit to Doc Holliday’s grave in their cemetery. While we were in Golden, we had all the intentions of going to see Buffalo Bill Cody’s grave but we missed that, too. We are determined to spend some quality time here in Deadwood, where some of the most famous western folk heroes in history made their names.
Every once in a blue moon we end up having back-to-back transit days. Here in Wyoming, we have pretty poor Sprint reception. As a matter of fact, as we head out of Cheyenne, Sprint’s coverage completely disappears and we will be roaming on Verizon all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We used the last bit of our Sprint 3G connection to do some research on places to see in Cheyenne and decided that we should just keep driving north and east into South Dakota.
Today is going to be a long transit day. We have been in Colorado for over 10 days and we think it is time to move on. There are a lot more places we wish we can explore in Colorado but we are racing against the clock with our trip north. Only another month or so is left before some of these places start to get snow.
I don’t want to assume but I suspect we might be the only people who have ever completed the Denver Aluma-Trifecta. If you have never heard of the Denver Aluma-Trifecta, don’t worry, I just made it up. As many of you know, we just attended the inaugural Alumafandango event at Lakeside, CO. We also ate at the original Chipotle Mexican Grill yesterday. Today, we will be visiting the birthplace of the Silver Bullet: The Coors Brewing Company.
We decided that we would stay 3 nights when we checked into Clear Creek yesterday. That means we need to use the days we have left in Denver wisely. We have a lot of places we want to see and today is our first chance to check some of those items off of the list. First stop, we are off to the REI store in Denver we have heard so much about.
