Travels With Sydney

Sorry we have not posted for so long!  This will be an attempt to condense the last 8 -10 weeks and get you all up to date.

When we left Ehrenberg, we stayed one night in Bakersfield and then went on to the Alameda Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, CA.  We needed to be there for Kennel club  meetings for our upcoming Woofstock dog show in Vallejo.

After a few days there we headed up to the Shingle Springs KOA where we enjoyed having our granddaughters visit and stay overnight with us.  They both love the swimming pool there!

Then we moved up the hill to Placerville where we attended the Hangtown Kennel Club dog show. We have been members of that club since 2001 and really enjoyed seeing lots of old friends as well as getting Pablo back in the ring.  Sydney was there with us too and she showed in Juniors.  Unfortunately, she had a fever on Sunday and went home so she missed showing on Monday.

We spent the next week back at the Shingle Springs KOA while we got all of our doctor and dentist appointments completed in Placerville and Pollock Pines.

The first week of June we were busy at the Woofstock Dog show at the Solano County Fairgrounds in Vallejo.  This is a show that we work to put on and it is a blast.  The whole show is done in the 60's style and more specifically Woodstock.  Everyone wears Tie-dye shirts and bell bottoms and we play music from that era all 4 days.  You can see some pictures of this event on our Facebook page here Woofstock.  

The next week we spent at our old stomping grounds, Cal Expo RV Park in Sacramento.  Visited with our daughter and her family who were in the process of moving to a new house out in Folsom, saw the eye doctor, and got ready to take Sydney on her summer vacation trip.  My brother, Dan and I were also able to go up to Genoa, NV and visit our Dad for a day at this timeshare.

So that get's us up to the starting point for our "Travels with Sydney". We had been wanting to visit Yellowstone National Park for some time and we were able to convince Nikki and Paul to let Sydney go along with us.  We spent a little over 3 weeks and our route took us from Sacramento, through Nevada and Idaho, to our friend's ranch in Wyoming, Yellowstone, Devils Tower, Spearfish SD, Mount Rushmore, Nebraska, and then finally to Denver Colorado where Sydney boarded a plane and flew home to her family.

The Travels with Sydney Route

We started our adventure at our friend, Wendy's place near Afton, Wyoming.  We know Wendy from the dog show world when she lived in California.  She has Bernese Mountain Dogs and retired at one of the most beautiful places on earth!  Here are some pictures from our time at Wendy's.

We took the quads for a ride up in the mountains for a picnic lunch.

Sydney getting ready for a ride on Dot

Our next stop was Yellowstone National Park. We stayed at Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, MT which is right outside the west entrance to Yellowstone and is kind of a neat little town.  We went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center where Sydney got to go into the bear habitat and hide food for the bears.  She also entered a drawing and won a tour for all of us to behind the scenes where they house and care for all of the bears.  Here are some pics of that.

"Sam" digging for the food Sydney hid.

Two brothers playing in the pond.

One of the male wolves.  They released trout in the stream and he and his brother fished them out and had a nice lunch!

We also had a wonderful horseback ride at Diamond P Ranch.  We rode into the national forest for a great 3 hour ride and then went into town for a delicious burger for lunch.

Then we finally got into the park!  We went right to Old Faithful where we found our old friend, Bill Whetsone.  Bill manages the book store there and he set us up with a great book and lots of advice on where to go and what to see.  With that plan in hand, we spent the rest of the week exploring the park and all it's wonders.  Wow!  What a fantastic and magical place it is.  Here are just a few pics of Yellowstone.

Yellowstone Lake

Daisy erupting - viewed from the deck of the Old Faithful Inn.

Old Faithful erupting - viewed from the deck of the Old Faithful Inn.

This guy was waiting right outside the restroom!

Yellowstone traffic jam

Our next stop was Devils Tower.  We found this to be not only beautiful but also a very spiritual place.  It is known as "Bear Lodge" to Native Americans as the legend says a giant bear clawed the ridges on the side of the mountain.  You might also remember that this is where the aliens landed in "Close Encounters if the 3rd Kind".  We stayed at the KOA which is located at the base of the mountain and watched the movie right there with the tower in the background.  That was cool.  The owner of the KOA owned the land when the movie was made and used the money from Spielberg to buy the KOA franchise and build the RV Park.  Here are a few pics of Devils Tower.

Sydney and I hiked the trail all the way around the tower.

Looking down at the KOA RV park from the base of the tower.

There is a huge prairie dog town on the way in to the tower.

From Devils Tower we headed over to South Dakota.  We stayed one night in Spearfish and took a day trip up to Deadwood which is an old west town.  We missed the cowboys shooting it out in the street but we did get a good burger at Mustang Sally's and Sydney did some more shopping for gifts to take home.

The rest of the week was spent in the vicinity of Mount Rushmore.  We stayed at the Mount Rushmore KOA  and I DO NOT recommend it.  It is a very large campground and there is heavy traffic and lots of people everywhere.   The water is totally brown which they claim is just iron but still yucky.  Roads were completely full of potholes and desperately in need of repair.  The web site said they had wi-fi but it turns out it was one hot-spot by the pool and it did not work at all.  In  addition to that there was absolutely no cell service!  Yikes!  I was supposed to be working here.  I had to drive a few miles back towards the monument where I got a signal at the scenic view turnout.  I spent a few hours there in the Jeep working and catching up on email and calling family etc.  Thank goodness Friday was a holiday for Independence Day so I didn't have to take extra vacation.  OK, I'm done complaining about the lousy KOA - Mount Rushmore was awesome!  Here are some pics from there.

This was the view from the turnout where I went to get a cell signal.

Light show. Their equipment was damaged by a thunderstorm the night before so they didn't have the usual movie and the ranger had no loudspeaker.  They had all of us veterans go down on the stage and after retiring the colors we all stepped forward one at a time and announced our branch and years of service.  It was very humbling..

We also visited the Crazy Horse Monument which is not a National site but is privately funded.  I always wondered why it wasn't completed, but now I see that it is so huge that it will take considerably longer to complete than Mount Rushmore.  All 4 heads of Mount Rushmore would fit inside Crazy Horse's head.  And as you can see from the pictures, the monument will be his whole upper body and the head of his horse.  Really, really big!

You can see the heavy equipment working and how small they are in comparison to the sculpture.

Sculpture used as model.

Outline showing where the mountain will be carved out.

On 4th of July we headed south, out of the Black Hills and into Nebraska.  We stayed the night at a nice little city park in Scottsbluff which was OK except for all the fireworks going off and scaring Amelia.  The  next day we drove though my hometown of Torrington Wyoming and then on to Denver.   Here are a couple snaps from my hometown.

Post office.

Main street - It was Sunday so it's pretty deserted...

We are staying for 2 weeks here at the Cherry Creek State Park in Denver.  Nice location right in the center of town but still rural. 

Nice shade but still getting satellite OK!

Sydney putting Colorado, the final state of her trip onto the map.

OK - we are all up to date now.  Sorry for the lapse and this extremely long post.  I promise to try and keep up from now on!  We are heading east now to spend time with Linda's family in North Carolina.  On the way we will spend a week each in Kansas City, Branson MO, Nashville, and then Ashville NC for a reunion with Linda's classmates from Ismir Turkey.