The Black Hills Experience

A quick 8 hour drive on Monday followed by another 4 on Tuesday and we arrived at Heritage Village RV Park in Custer South Dakota. We spent Monday night at the Walmart in Casper Wyoming arriving at about 7pm. We had not had dinner yet and were craving a “home cooked” meal so Barb went into Walmart in search of a rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes and another yummy salad Barb was going to find. She returned about 20 minutes later with nothing but a terrified look on her face. She said this was by far the scariest Walmart she had ever been in! She said not only were the salads were crusty and disgusting, the employees behind the counter were equally as scary! She was not going buy anything prepared behind that counter. After a quick pep talk and some encouragement, she went in for another round, we ended up with a couple of Zatarrin frozen dinners “home cooked” in our microwave. They were actually quite good.

We arrived at Heritage Village RV Park about noon on Tuesday. It is located very close to Crazy Horse monument, in fact if you look very closely at the picture of our rig below you can see the monument above the satellite dish. We had chosen this RV Park as some fellow full-timers and bloggers Steve and Joan who are going to be working at the Crazy Horse Monument this summer  were staying here as well. I had read on their blog they were going to be in the area and I emailed Joan to see where they were going to be staying. When we pulled in next to them I don’t know if they were happy to have visitors or thought we were stalking them!  Barb and I have been following their blog for a few months and found that they could not have been nicer. We had a lot in common with them and really enjoyed the couple of hours we spent visiting and sharing experiences. I was happy to see that they were still there the next morning had not pulled up stakes and run for the hills during the night! They have been on the road for about 3 years and it was fun to compare notes and laugh about our lifestyle and some of the mistakes we make along the way. One that we laughed about is the amount of clothing we have (or lack of) and how in many of the pictures you see much of the same clothes over and over again. Many full-timers only have 7-10 sets of clothes to save room so there is not a lot of options from day to day. Yes, they are washed regularly (well, somewhat regularly) but you do tend to wear the same thing week after week.



 

 

Joan and Steve

Having a full hookup RV site was nice as we have not had one for a while. We could use electricity and water without having to worry about how much water we had or if the sun was shining to recharge the solar. They also have separate shower facilities so we got to take showers every day!

It has been one week since Daisy’s surgery and she is recovering well. What? You say I never mentioned her surgery before? Well, since we lost Bailey, Daisy has been a little more needy and barky. She was content being left alone with Bailey in the trailer or truck but now, not so much. She is slowing adjusting to being alone and is getting better but we decided to get her de-barked. The last thing fellow campers want to hear is a dog barking in the trailer next door. She went in for the procedure last Tuesday and she is not supposed to be left alone and kept quiet for two weeks. So once fully healed, if she does bark, it will be a soft whisper bark instead of the loud annoying bark.

We spent a cold and rainy Wednesday driving around exploring various trout streams and potential campsites. Most of the trout streams in the area are very small and you could jump across them in most spots. We walked a few of the stream/creeks and did see some trout but most of them were no more than 7-8”, hopefully the bigger ones are hiding in some deeper holes. We bought licenses…now that we are residents they are much cheaper and we got the combo hunting/fishing in anticipation of next fall. We are going to move campsites and hit the streams. We found an awesome US Forest Service Campground that had about 15 sites with nobody there at all! Granted, we had to drive snow covered gravel roads to find it but we will have it all to ourselves. We visited about 5 US Forest Service Campgrounds today, none of them had anyone in them due to it being so early. We found 3 we could get the rig into, two that we would stay but one of them was closed “due to lack of funding”. In the end the one we are staying at is the one we would have picked out of them all anyway.

Thursday and Friday were spent in solitude at the Ditch Creek Campground 14 miles outside Hill City and very close to Mountain Meadows campground where we have stayed both horse camping and turkey hunting in the past. We spent two days relaxing and fishing. The fishing was fantastic, we caught countless brook trout and rainbows. They were hitting a red worm imitation flies. I got a chance to try out me new GoPro video camera and took some videos catching and releasing some fish. The camera is waterproof so I got some nice shots of a couple trout as they were swimming away after we released them. 

Ditch Creek

A Rainbow being released into the stream

This picture is for you Steve!

 We cook several of the larger ones (15”+) over the open fire both nights for dinner. After dinner it was time to pack up so we could hit the road bright and early and head east to Wood South Dakota where we are to meet some friends from Wisconsin!