Touch of Class

On our travels, I saw many of these dinosaurs

Anyone remember them from when we were kids? All the Sinclair gas stations had them. I guess they migrated out west.

It was a little foggy on the way home

But a nice drive none the less. I think the vacation might have been too much for Smokey though

My sis-in-law was impressed that I got this shot from a moving vehicle

We made it to our final campsite, Bob’s Campground, early in the afternoon. There were a lot more RV’s here and you could tell they were set up for permanent camping

But the place did have a great view

There was even a steak house within walking distance. My meal was cold and the chicken was too salty for me. I guess that is what I get for ordering chicken in a steak joint.

At least we got a few trees to give us some shade at this place

Another great trip with my bro and his wife and their 4 children. Next stop….Boston.

The next day we went to this trail around this lake. It was slated at Custer Park’s easiest trail and only one mile. Shoot, we can handle that. It was a beautiful place

We could see the trail on the other side.

And the trial is nice and level and fairly smooth. I don’t think I’ll need my walking sticks for this one. We could see that the trail went up to that rock mountain. They must have a trail that goes along the lake in front of that mountain.

So we start off on the trail until we come to the where the trail ends by the mountain

So we follow everyone else as they pass thru a tall narrow crack in the mountain. There is a kid hanging between the two sides dangling as he presses his hands to each side of the mountain. Of course everyone wanted to take a picture of him. I could see his arms start to shake, you’re good kid, I don’t want you falling on me when your arms go out.

So we head thru the crack, suck it in baby! There is a family in front of us telling their daughter, it’s ok, you can do it, just keep going. She was scared poopless. I hope she doesn’t stop half way through and trap us all.

When we get thru the crack, there are steps down that they carved out of the rock. They were definitely not up to code and this girl is standing at the top whimpering. My sis-in-law offers to help her down, no thanks says the girl so we just blow by her. I hope her family keeps an eye on her and help her more than some encouraging words.

When we got past the steps, we were behind the dam.

So we followed the trail a little further and found a spot where they were teaching people how to rock climb.

They even had little kids up there

And then that was where the easy trail ended. We ended up following people cause we prayed they knew where they were going. As we are continuing up the trail I heard a small child screaming, “No, No, I can’t do it, don’t make me” and an adult encouraging the kid, “you made it up, you can make it down. See, watch me” “No! No! I can’t do it!” I hope they didn’t just push the kid off the cliff “See, that was easy!” That screaming went on for quite a while but I knew there was no way I was going to be of any assistance to that tortured child. That will teach the kid to do what ever it’s parents tell it to do. “It will be fun, come on, you can do it”

As we continued on the trail, we had to take a few rests along the way

After climbing up that, we came to some more giant steps that went up and thru a couple of rocks. The trail wasn’t marked worth a crap and we figured we didn’t want to walk all the way up those giant steps to find out it was the wrong way. There was a guy behind us with a couple of dogs. We asked him if he could go up and see if that was the way the trail continued or if we should be going another way. He went up, looked over the edge and told us to come on, it didn’t look too bad, the thought we could make it. Such a nice young man

Once we made it over that, it was all down hill from there and back to the nice smooth path that we saw on the other side of the lake. The moral of this story, don’t let you sister-in-law pick the trails

Dang, it sucks to have old bones. We went back to the campsite and had some Honey to take care of the aches and pains. We’d be heading back home tomorrow with our last stop at Bob’s Campground in Gettysburg, SD.

The next day we thought we check out the town of Custer. The town has a bunch of buffalo statues similar to the Snoopy ones the used to have in downtown St. Paul (maybe they are still there, I haven’t worked downtown in over 10 years). Anyway, I thought they were really cool

Then we went into this store

My brother and his wife met up with Big Foot

They had a taxidermy store there with any kind of animal skin you could think of. They even had a card game going in the back

On the way back to the campsite, there was a “farm” that had buffalo and long horn steers. I’d never seen a long horn in real life before

Wowzer, look at the size of those suckers. I be they are heavy too. Can you image his neck muscles to keep his head up every day? I bet you don’t want to make him angry, he could gorge you from 2 feet away.

We did a little more sight seeing on some of the supper windy roads. At one point Gary said he had to go see a man about a horse so I pulled over at a scenic overlook. He stood at the front of the car and my brother and I got out and walked a little further back to look at the scenery. In the mean time a car pulled in right behind our car and there was a family in it. Gary just stood with his back to the cars. I started giggling and told my brother those people were watching Gary relieve himself and he didn’t even know it! Well the joke was on me. Gary was just reading the historic information sign the whole time. Oh well, I got a good chuckle for the day.

We finished our drive and got back to the campground. Smokey was waiting for us when we got back

We decided we’d go for a little hike tomorrow. My sister-in-law looked up where we could go and found one not far from where we were that was supposed to be a nice one mile walk around a lake. Sounds like something we can all do no sweat. So with plans made, we hunkered down and enjoyed the evening.

We traveled this trip with my brother and his wife, they drove their vintage GMC and we followed with ours. We had Smokey

And they had their brood, 2 dogs and 2 cats. One of the cats was a very small kitten.

The bigger cat knew how to open the cupboards and the little kitten walked into them to explore. Next thing you know….where’s the kitten?

So we pull over to the side of the road to look for the kitten. Personally I think the bigger cat was trying to get rid of his new little sister. After searching all the spaces they thought the kitty could be, they went back in the motorhome and the kitten was sitting in my sister-in-laws seat. “Where were you mom? I’z just sittin here keeping your seat warm for ya”. Cute kitty….and then we were off again.

This year we installed a back-up camera on our camper

That way you can see if a cop is trying to pull you over and you can floor it to ditch them.

Our first destination was Riverview RV Park in Fort Pierce SD.

It happened to be super hot that day but good thing it was windy to help at least make is feel somewhat better. There wasn’t much in the way of tree shade but it had quite the view being on a bluff. We had the whole section to ourselves.

It was farmland and grassland thru most of South Dakota. I did see 3 different groups of horses with blankets on them, from their head to their butt. It wasn’t that cold to be putting blankets on horses. Who knows why?

When we finally got to the Black Hills, the scenery was crazy cool and I know the pictures don’t do it justice.

We had good weather and nice roads to get to our next campsite, Fort Welikeit Family Campground (Don’t you just love the name We-Like-It!) near Custer State Park. The place not only had RV and tent camping, they had Teepees you could stay in and a very large barrel with a spout on the outside you could also stay in. Teepee…..too close to the ground and creepy crawlers. Barrel….to cramped and no toilet. I think I’m spoiled.

They even had a place where you could tie up your horse

The next day we all piled into our car and I drove seeing as the boys drove all the way there. We went down a few roads that my brother and his wife had taken years ago on their motorcycles. We went down Needles Eye Highway

Yup, drove thru that. Keep your arms and legs in the vehicle at all times and for gosh sakes…..don’t open your door! But what a view on the other side.

You’ve heard mention of switch back roads, well this was one of them

This one let people park their cars by it. Here we go into the turn

I know you’re saying to yourself, “well, that doesn’t look too narrow” but this is a two way street. Try to pass someone else on this road and hope they are paying attention to the traffic and not trying to take a picture with their phone. It was very nerve wracking. Both my brother and his wife commented that the roads didn’t seem so narrow on their motorcycles. Well I should hope not! You’re only about 1/4 the width of my car on your motorcycle! But I bet the ride was a lot more fun on the motorcycle.

We ran into a few more tunnels

Look out buddy, I was here first, coming thru.

See the scrapes on the roof where someone’s car was too tall. And speaking of tall, we saw a tour bus on the road! And there really aren’t any places for something like that to turn around. I wonder if it’s stuck in one of the tunnels

While we were driving around, we took this Nature road. There was supposed to be a bunch of wild life like bear, elk, buffalo, big white butt goats. We saw the donkeys

And we drove and drove and didn’t see anything until we were almost off the Nature road then we ran into a heard of buffalo

Aaaaah, baby buffalo….aren’t they cute?

And they were real close to the road

I don’t know who was in charge of my camera but they definitely didn’t take enough pictures because there were a crap load of buffalo here and there was a road jam with everyone wanting to get pictures of the buffalo. At least no one was stupid enough to get out of their car for that selfie picture.

We had to take some pictures of these old guys. What would a trip to SD be without seeing Mount Rushmore.

There was one road we drove down where you could see George Washington’s profile, that was pretty cool but again, no camera control.

We saw some other cool rock formations (at least cool in my eyes)

We finally went back to the campground and I was able to have a few shots to steady my nerves after that drive.

And get ready for a new day tomorrow.

We made it up to Minnesota in Mid June with no troubles.

Gary’s first job after we arrived was to get the RV in tip top shape

Lookin pretty good there Captain.

We’ve been to Gull Lake before and enjoyed it, plus with the the Golden Pass for the Federal Parks, we only had to pay $14.00 a night and that included electric. How’s this for a nice site

Gary even got to get some fishing in

Look at that form! Unfortunately the fish weren’t cooperating. So we had to go elsewhere to get our food. We decided to stop at a local place

The Bloodies were good but you really need to dip into your 401K to eat at this place. You can tell by the price and the young dock boys at their docks that they cater to the rich and successful. I am surprised they even let us sit down

They did have really cool picnic tables.

Now that’s what I want to see at the camping places. A picnic table for old people. Although straddling that seat might be difficult for some of the people I know (I won’t mention any names here ;)). But there is no butt shuffling on this table. You don’t have to try to get your legs under the low table. The seat is small enough to put a little cushion on it because your butt is getting bonier. I like it, I think I’ll write a letter to my congressman or senator or whoever.

So we did see something sad at the campground. There was this turtle

Big mother! My brother told me that this was more than likely a snapping turtle, not one of our friendly painted turtle

Even though there was blood on his shell the thing moved it’s head so I figured it was still alive. The shell looked pretty messed up and his head wasn’t looking so good either. There was a big rock by it’s head, I am thinking someone tried to bash it’s head in to kill it but didn’t do a very good job.

I figured I could find one of the rangers and they could take it in and get it fixed up, like they do on the TV shows. I found a person working the grounds and told him about the inured turtle. He told me the boys in the area like to shoot arrows at the carp and sometimes get the turtles. I told him it was still alive, he said he’d take care of it. A little while later I watched him drive his work cart over by the turtle. He picked up the big rock and threw it into the water, then he picked up the turtle and just dropped him into the back of the work cart. Well! My rose covered glasses were ripped off my face! So much for taking the injured turtle to a turtle sanctuary to get it all healed up and released back into the wild. The least the guy could have done was put it out of it’s misery.

The showers hasn’t changed any. Good thing I bring a bunch of quarters with me or things could get pretty stinky in our RV.

No dilly dallying in this shower.

We really did have a nice time though, but it’s always an adventure.

When we left in the morning, we stopped at the dump site. That is kind of like a pump out for boats but instead of a pump, you use gravity. We pulled up behind a guy that was using the dump

I didn’t see anyone standing outside but he did have his dump hose attached to his RV. I figured he was sitting in his truck while it dumped. Gary knew…..that is why he is standing outside of the car. See the guy with the dog in the right side of the picture? He is talking to a guy with a garbage bag. I figured they were just shooting the breeze. Turns out the guy with the garbage bag owned the RV. Not only did they talk on the side of the road for a while, but then they both went up to his truck and looked under the hood. Where is the dump site etiquette buddy? After he is finally done chit chatting with Mr. Dog Owner, he decides it’s time to get rid of his trash that he’d been holding onto all this time. “Sorry” he says. Yah, like that helps buddy, I didn’t know this was your own personal dump site. Then he proceeded to un-attach his hose, and then he stuck the water hose down his sewage hose to clean it out. Euw! Other people have to touch that hose. So when Mr. Important finally got done, we could do our dumping. One of the joys of camping.

But we’ll be back at it again real soon. Next stop South Dakota and Custer Park.

Although a lot of things have been repaired and replaced, there are still many things still messed up. We are still waiting for repairs to our building.

Here are some pictures of boats, still waiting for someone to take care of them

That house looks like it could use some help too.

There is a restaurant to the right of that boat. The patrons have kind of adopted the boat and want it to stay. They say it gives the place ambiance LOL.

Just the nose sticking out of that sail boat. And that other boat is almost flipped over.

Piggy backing sail boats.

These are just a couple of the fishing boats that were all blown up on shore and piled up like timber. See how the bow is bent in, I bet that took quite a bit of force.

We were able to get in a boat ride and when we passed this the first time, there was a boat trying to tow it out of the mangroves. I guess he couldn’t get it any further. That hull will take a little elbow grease to clean that off.

Funny place to take a nap. Actually he is trying to fix the horn. I guess we had one casualty on the boat from the hurricane or it could be it is just 20 years old and is too tired to HONK, HONK anymore.

Here are some before and after pictures.

Before Sanibel light house

After

Before

After

Before – Ft Myers Beach

After

Summers coming, we’re heading north soon to see friends and family. Do a little camping, go to the Black Hills, seeing Mystic Sea Village…..should be a good summer. We’ll keep our fingers crossed there won’t be another Ian in our future.

After we got back Friday morning, we went inside our condo to check out how things fared. Needless to say, any rugs or carpets we had on the the floor were soaked. So the first thing to do was rolling them up and setting them at the curb. It is surprising how heavy they got LOL.

What is that black stuff on the floor? Is it dirt……is it….POOP?

Let’s get that out of there…..fast!

There is some water still there, luckily, the carpets sucked up most of the water. That wetvac we bought will come in handy. We didn’t have power for anything but Gary bought a generator a few years ago. That will be our only source of power for the next week or so. And us, being the good neighbor that we were, shared our power with whoever needed to charge their phones etc.

Just a little side note to show you how some people came together. Our lawn guy, who lives 1/2 hour from us, came over and gave us a case of water and a 5 gallon tank of gas. Sure, we his paying customer, but what a nice gesture huh? Gives you some faith in the human race after something like that.

So anyway, back to the story. After we got the floors vacuumed, you can see what the water did to the flooring. The funny part was we were looking to replace the flooring last spring but decided to wait. I’m glad we did.

Then it was BearTrax to the rescue. My brother and his wife came down to help and brought supplies: bleach, antiseptic wipes, batteries, flash lights, bottled water, gas, canned food and most importantly, moral support and helping hands

In no time at all we had all the flooring ripped up

After the floors were gone, then we started bleaching and spraying Lysol on everything we owned

We shuffled furniture so often we felt like pros.

Everyday there were these helos flying over several times a day. They were evacuating people that were trapped on the outer islands. I almost felt like I was in a war zone.

At the end of the day, there was always time for some rest, relaxation and a Honey!

My brother and his wife were life savers, but they couldn’t stay forever

There was still plenty of work to be done. Gary washed our storage area from top to bottom

He wore his crocs and ended up getting an infection in his foot. Off to the urgent care for some antibiotics.

Do you see that blue panel? That is from a gas station that is several blocks west of us! Isn’t that something!

I don’t know how well you can see this but just below that blue arrow is brush from all the trees around there. It was well over 6 feet high. The city eventually came with a double truck that had a big claw and picked up all the brush all over the city. It was pretty cool to watch them maneuver thru all the power lines without getting electrocuted.

Then we hired a mold company to come and spray and disinfect everything, the air vents and such. We ended up moving the furniture again and getting it ready while they fumigated the place.

We had to get everything out of the closets and up off the floor for both the fumigating and when the new floor would be laid. The shower and tub held a surprising amount of stuff.

Our friends upstairs were kind enough to let us live in their condo while our place was fumigated

We covered everything with sheets to try to minimize the fur from you know who.

He still managed to find someplace to take a bath.

After all was said and done, we got some really nice flooring

One of many things we need to fix, but baby steps.

As we drove back on Friday morning we saw lines like these waiting to get into the few gas stations that were open

Luckily we are brining back gas. I hope someone doesn’t jump us and steal the 6 cans of gas we have on the back of our car.

As we got closer to Cape Coral, we could see the traffic lights were all messed up

Never thought I’d have to dodge traffic lights.

That one didn’t make it. It was surprising how courteous people were. At every street where there should have been a traffic signal, people treated it like 4 way stop. But there was always the person who think they are special and don’t need to stop.

As we rounded the corner to home, we caught a glimse of our neighboring condo’s car ports

Hooo Doggy! I hope ours aren’t that bad and I am glad we left with the car.

Here are some other pictures either I took, or I got off the internet

This is the bridge to Pine Island. Right in the middle of that mess was a restaurant called Bert’s, they had the best fish fry around. As most of their place was built on pilings, I don’t think they’ll be back

This was another favorite restaurant, the Boat House, best pancakes in Cape Coral.

Bridge to Sanibel, after, everyone was trapped on the island.

These boats were at the Fort Myers marina. The boats were just blown ashore.

You wouldn’t think something this big could end up like that.

This is where the neighbor’s boat across the canal ended up.

Another neighbor’s boat. At least his didn’t float away. Unfortunately for our friends boat

He wasn’t so lucky.

We were thankful that we didn’t lose everything, like some people did. Now we start the clean up.

The storm started during the morning of September 28th. We got all our pictures from a friend that decided to stay at the condo. Just as a side note, he said it was the scariest thing he had ever done and he wouldn’t do it again.

This was looking out his lani, 8:46 AM. Pretty windy but the water is not too high yet

11:33 AM, water still down but the pool box cover has blown off. Looks like the guy across the canal is going to loose his boat slip cover.

1:11 PM, the water is just coming over our docks. Quite the white caps in the canal.

1:57 PM, man, look at those waves and the water is creeping up.

2:03 PM, the guy’s boat across the canal broke lose. Hope it doesn’t come over and bash into ours. The water is up to the bottom of our cradle that holds the boat. And the other guy across the canal has not only lost the canvas on his boat cover but the bracing looks like it is shot too.

2:49, whoops, the guy across the canal just lost a large section of his roof. Hope he has insurance.

3:36 P.M. Looks like we are losing our soffits…..again! The water looks like it is very close to coming on the pool deck. Our lift looks like it is totally under water. 3:42 P.M. – We lost power

3:51 P.M. We lost our car ports.

4:33 P.M. The boat across the way has floated back into position. The blue hulled boat across the way has floated off it’s cradle and the water is just starting to enter our pool area. Our boats are floating now.

4:51 P.M. A little lull in the wind, let’s check out between the buildings. Pool is still ok, looks like we’ve lost a gutter and someone’s screen. Gary says when the short pilings go under, it will be close to our lani.

6:16, dang, the pools under the water. Look how high the water is on the bushes now. The boat must be floating now. Shoot, we are going to have a lot of water in our place :(.

6:16 That’s one of the other owner’s boat. He didn’t tie his up too good. Maybe he should of asked Gary for some help ;).

6:32 P.M. Our lines are still holding and the water is going down.

7:11 P.M. – storm is starting to slow down, our friend thinks it over. Now we’ll just have to wait to assess the damage.

As I have some really cool pictures of the hurricane. I thought I’d give a blow by blow.

Some of you probably know, we live in a 8 unit, span create condo building that was built in 1977. We are 6 feet off the water and we are in Zone A evacuation area for hurricanes. This place has NEVER had any flooding in all the 45 years that this building has been standing.

Hurricane Ian hit our place on September 28th, 2022. It has been 7 1/2 months and we still don’t have anything fixed on the outside of the condo building.

So here is what happened: Monday, the 26th, they called for the evacuation of all people in Zone A , which is where we live. Well, we figured for Hurricane Ian they said it was going to have 8 foot water surge but it just sucked the water out of our canal and the winds weren’t that bad either. Hell, we can handle that, let’s stay this time.

Tuesday morning they called for the mandatory evacuation of Zone B. No big deal, Irma wasn’t so bad, we live in a concreate building and it hasn’t flooded in 45 years. We should be good.

Tuesday afternoon they called for the evacuation of Zone C. Holy crap! That is a big area. This is going to be a bad one. Gary figures we’d loose the boat and the condo and he didn’t want to lose the car too, so we put a bunch of our stuff up high on counter tops, dressers etc., grabbed a few important items we couldn’t live without, hopped in our car and got the hell out of Dodge. Yes, Yes, we grabbed the Smokeman too

One of our neighbors, who lived on the first floor also, only had a motorcycle as a get away car, so we offered to drop them somewhere. They decided to stay and weather the storm. They were our eyes and ears during the hurricane.

We left Tuesday afternoon around 4 and decided to drive across Florida to Stewart, about a 2 hour drive. We figured it was probably a less crowded hideout than Miami and cheaper too. As we drove thru the dark, the rain started coming down pretty hard. I made a bunch of phone calls to try and find a place to stay. I found a spot for the first night only but no room in the inn for Smokey. We grabbed it.

Poor Smokey had to sleep out in the car. Luckily the weather was pretty cool so we didn’t have to worry about him. We stopped down and kept him company thru out the day. I did happen to notice quite a few dogs that were walking with their parents. I finally flagged one down and asked them if they were staying at the hotel. They said they were and the reason they picked the hotel was because they allow pets. Huh? So I went to the front desk and asked them if they allowed pets. The guy said no! I asked him about all the dogs that were staying at the hotel. He said “We can’t turn away a service animal”. Guess it’s time to get Smokie one of those orange vests LOL.

While we were in Stewart, we figured we get some items that might be in short supply when we got home. Things like rubber boots, saw horses, blue line chalk, fans, exacto knives, sheet rock nails, a big wet vac with attachments and the all important….gas!

We had to buy a carrier for the gas tanks and Smokie was the supervisor.

This is the tool you want Dad.

So we were all set, just needed to hope that all would turn out okay, that we’d find a place to lay our heads for a few more days, and pray that there wouldn’t be too much damage when we returned home.