Day 150 – August 7 – Platte City, MO

We stopped in Platte City, Missouri at the Basswood Country Resort for the night.  It is a very nice campground and is part of the Passport America system so the rate was reasonable.  It just so happened that the guy camped next to us went to high school in Joplin and had stopped by the area to do some trout fishing on his way back home from Florida.

Day 151, 152, 153 – August 8, 9, & 10 – Home

The last few days have been spent visiting with Phyllis and Joe at their home in Lacygne, Kansas.  Saturday was Phyllis’ birthday and it was good to be able to spend a little time with them.  Sunday we drove home to Fenton – according to the GPS it is 300 miles from their driveway to our driveway.

We traveled over 14,000 miles through 19 states, 3 Canadian provinces, 15 American national parks, and 2 or 3 Canadian national parks.  We averaged a little over 7.8 miles per gallon on the trip, which was a little higher than we expected.  It was a great trip but we are glad to be back home.
 

Day 149 – August 6 – Nebraska City, Nebraska

We drove to Council Bluffs, Iowa – getting there about noon.  We first tried our luck at the Harrah’s Casino – I broke even and Dorrie didn’t do as good.  We moved one exit down the highway to AmeriStar Casino.  We both lost there, so I guess we will have to pay for this trip some other way than gambling winnings.

We ate a late lunch at AmeriStar and then turned south on I-29.  It was pretty much a boring blog day.  We have stopped for the night.  Tomorrow we will move closer to Kansas City with a planned stop over for a day or two to see my sister Phyllis.  We plan to arrive home on August 11, five months after our departure date.

Day 148 – August 5 – Somewhere in Nebraska

Well, I found out what the sheep in yesterdays post are – female Rocky Mountain Big Horn Sheep.  They had a display in Cabela’s store of mounted animals, including one like we saw.  Most of the animals had tags identifying what they were, but that mount didn’t have a tag, so I asked the girl at the Customer Service desk.  She looked and said she was not sure, so she called someone, they didn’t know.  She then went to find another employee and he didn’t know for sure but said to ask two other employees.  She tried to call one but didn’t get an answer, so she said she would be right back and after a minute or two she said they are female sheep.  So that mystery is solved.

We spent most of the morning taking it easy and then shopping in the Cabela’s store.  We pulled out of the campground about 11:30 and stopped for lunch before hitting the road again.

Our goal was Kearney, Nebraska and we arrived, after a time change to Central Daylight Time, about 5 o’clock.  We could not find a place to stay – it was really hot and we needed electric hookups for the A/C.  So we drove on east and finally found a place about 20 miles west of Grand Island.  It is not much to write home about – a run down motel (the name was simply “MOTEL”) with an attached campground that just might be in worse shape than the motel.  The price was right and we have full hookups, so it is home for the night.

We are getting close to home now and we both have mixed emotions.  The trip will come to an end, which is sad.  But we will get to see the grandkids soon (oh, and our kids).  We are still a few days away. 

Day 147 – August 4 – Estes Park, Colorado

We were right on the state line of Wyoming and Colorado at the Terry Bison Ranch, so we decided to drive to Estes Park, Colorado to see how the town was doing after the so called 500 year flood of last September (9/11/13 was the date).  We drove highway 34 through Big Thompson Canyon, as we have done many times before. It was amazing to see how the flood wiped out some buildings and others seemed to be untouched.

This was a bridge to a house on the other side of the river - both are gone

The Big Thompson River runs through a deep canyon with shear walls at some points.  There have always been scattered homes, cabins, and businesses located along the river.  The road was completely washed away in several places during the flood, but they have what they call a temporary road in place.

The picture above is a close up of the bathroom, this was a park.  The river is running just outside the bathroom door

One very cool thing we saw was some kind of mountain goat or sheep, I really don’t know what they are but they were right on the side of the road.

Some of the homes/cabins have been rebuilt while others remain empty and are starting to look shabby.

We noticed the backside of the dam in Estes Park looked like it had new stones, like Lake Estes overflowed the dam during the flood. 

We drove out to see the little rock Catholic Church built on a rock (or group of rocks) near Meeker Park.  I have included a photo from a couple of years ago that we took before the floodwaters flowed through the area.

This photo was taken on a trip to Estes Park in 2012

The trees are gone along with soil - there is just a small stream that runs in front of the church that did all the damage

We ate lunch in a Forest Service picnic area and returned to Cheyenne by the same route.  About 5 miles from the state line the wind started blowing from the left side.  I had to turn the steering wheel into the wind to keep the camper on the road and straight.  We started to get heavy rain just before Cheyenne, but it stopped as we approached interstate 80.  We turned east on I-80 and decided to try to get a couple more hours of driving in before stopping.

We are currently at the world headquarters for Cabela's in a very nice campground by their store.  We could stay free in the truck and RV parking lot, but decided to stay in the campground, at an electric only site for the night.