Category: States

7th Ranch RV Park

7th Ranch RV Park

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Hey Y’all! I don’t normally post about the RV parks we stay at, but this one is my favorite so far! The owners were super nice and so helpful with things to see in the area and bonus…we got free ice cream when we arrived!!

Besides being one of the cleanest, best organized parks I’ve seen, it’s also a working ranch!

There were horses! You could take a riding lesson or just hang out with the horses. The horse above was thoroughly convinced my camera was really an apple meant for him. He nosed me a couple of times and followed me until he realized I didn’t have anything for him.

There was a great little playground for the boys to spend their days in. And some hiking trails for the evenings. One hiking trail leads up to a hill behind the park where I snapped the left picture above. If you look really closely, you can spot our home on wheels!

Some of the other details about this place that make it so great are the tipi we got to watch them put up and then explore, the community fire pit (that for some reason reminded me of the Flintstones), and the wonderful landscaping!

 I’m a sucker for pretty flowers.

The view from our door wasn’t bad either.

With all of that in mind along with the cleanest bathrooms I’ve seen so far and you’ve got yourself a fantastic little RV park!!

See y’all down the road!

Montana Flowers

Montana Flowers

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Hey Y’all!!

I just wanted to do a quick post to share with you all of the beautiful flowers I’ve been enjoying while here in Montana. I don’t know their names…sorry. I’ve got quite a few pictures and in the interest of not bogging down everyone’s internet connection…I’ve put the pictures into two collages.

If anyone knows the names of any of them I’d love to know!

I’m aware that there are two weeds in the picture above, but I couldn’t resist them. One was so perfectly round and the other was so stinkin’ big! Some of the flowers are wild flowers and some are not.

Anyway, there are some of the many flowers I’ve been enjoying while we’ve been traipsing around Montana! Hope y’all enjoyed them and let me know if you know any of their names.

See y’all down the road!

Billings, MT

Billings, MT

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We recently spent some time in Billings, MT. Billings isn’t a huge metropolis…it only has about 100k residents…but after the teeny tiny towns we’ve been staying in, Billings felt like it was huge!

We found an excellent burger place to eat. Although the burgers looked amazing, I opted for one of their house salads. It was big enough for two people! I got mine with pepper jack cheese melted on a burger with spicy ranch dressing. I think I could eat there a couple of times a week and not get tired of it. For all of you who know what Five Guys is…Mooyah is a similar set up except they have more options and…they have shakes too. Even if the food wasn’t as stellar as it was, they would’ve had me with their sign.

After we filled our bellies with some top notch food, we went out on a hike above the city in search of some top notch views. Billings isn’t big, but boy does it have some nice views!

We walked along the bluffs appreciating the views, playing on the rock formations.

I took a ton of pictures of the prettiest flowers growing there! I won’t bore you with all of them…I’ll just post up a few of my favorites! The purple flowers were everywhere! I think I spent more time looking at the flowers than looking at the view.

We found a Scheels! It’s like a combination of a Bass Pro Shop and an Academy Sports store. It’s probably one of the biggest I’ve seen. The prices weren’t bad and they had fun things to keep the boys entertained while we shopped. And…they have a Ferris wheel in the store. Along with these fun photo ops set up! We got there an hour before they closed and had a great time looking at everything. We even walked out with some great deals! I think we could have spent several hours walking around.

We enjoyed Billings! It was the first big-ish town we’ve come across for awhile with some of the stores we’ve come to miss.

See y’all down the road!

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

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We we arrived in this area, we had no intention of going to Little Bighorn Battlefield NM. To be completely honest, I didn’t even know it was close to where we were staying. The owners of the RV park we were staying at highly recommended it so we decided to go check it out.

The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument was a lesson in history for the boys. The Rangers do a great job retelling the story of what happened and the museum has some amazing artifacts. We spent close to five hours here walking the trails, listening to a Ranger Talk and learning about Lt Col. George Custer’s Last Stand.

The museum was our first stop. Nicolas and Alex didn’t waste any time getting started on the Junior Ranger Field Guide.

We’ve all heard the story, but walking the paths while reading the descriptions at each tour stop really illustrates what happened here. You can read it in a book, but to stand in the place it happened…it gives you a new understanding of what really happened.

This National Monument memorializes not only Custer’s last battle and the loss of hundreds of soldiers, but it also memorializes the Northern Plains Indian’s fight to preserve their ancestral way of life. The NPS unit does a good job at telling both sides of the story without trying to sway you one way or the other.

The right picture above is Last Stand Hill. It’s the final resting place of not only Custer, but nearly 40 other soldiers who fell during the battle. There’s a memorial at the top of the hill dedicated to the hundreds of soldiers who lost their life in the battle.

There’s a headstone like this for every soldier and Native American who lost their life during the battle here. They’re placed where the soldier or Native American was found. They look like ghosts dotting the landscape.

Several different signs reminded us that we’re in rattlesnake country. The boys kept asking if each sound they heard was a rattlesnake. We’re all jumpy at the thought of running into one of these nope ropes.

There is a wonderful Indian Memorial there as well. You can see the Soldier Memorial through a slit in the wall. in the bottom right photo above is a picture of nine remaining Warriors that gathered together back in 1948.

The battlefield looks so peaceful now. It’s a beautiful area.

Alex and Nicholas finished up their Junior Ranger Field Guides after speaking with a Ranger. They’re up to four badges now and they’re learning so much!

We all walked away with a better understanding of what really happened during the Battle of Little Bighorn. And…we’ve decided the battlefields should definitely be added to our list of places to go! We all enjoyed it a lot more than we thought we would!

See y’all down the road!

Historic Graffiti

Historic Graffiti

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Pompey’s Pillar National Monument is the only place you can be assured to stand in the footsteps of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Clark carved his name in the rock…I guess you could call it historical graffiti. This carving is the only remaining physical evidence of Lewis and Clark’s Expedition still around today. They’ve taken measures to protect it because there are tons of other names carved into the rocks around it, but you can clearly see his name under the glass.

Clark named the pillar “Pomp’s Pillar” using his nickname for Sacagawea’s son.

You can walk all the way up to the top using the 200 or so stairs. It’s worth it…the view is great and there are benches up there you can use to rest up for the trip down if you need to. Nicholas and Alex utilized the benches to work on their Junior Ranger Field Guides. You can also see our tour guide to the left of the left picture.

Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and volunteered to take a picture of all of us.

He also pointed out a family of marmots and showed us a rock that looks like a mountain lion!

There was a short, paved walk way that went down by the Yellowstone River. It was a nice leisurely stroll with some educational signs along the way.

We spent some time in the museum learning about the Lewis and Clark trail and some of the hardships they endured. There were replicas of boats they made and some rawhide clothing the boys could try on.

The visit didn’t take long and it was very educational for all of us. It was well worth the small entry fee.

See y’all down the road!

Makoshika State Park

Makoshika State Park

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We thoroughly enjoyed our time at Makoshika (muh-KOH’-shih-kuh) State Park! What we thought would be an hour activity ended up being an entire day of hiking, gumbo, and other worldly rock formations!

It had rained in the area the entire day before we went to Makoshika. We knew we were in for some mud…but we didn’t expect the gumbo. What is gumbo? It’s not what you think. There’s no shrimp or sausage or okra in it…you don’t eat this gumbo. This particular type of gumbo is a fine silty soil that forms an extremely sticky mud when it gets wet. It sticks to everything and makes perfectly good hiking boots completely useless. See that dark blackish brown stuff they’re all standing on in the above photo? Yup, that’s gumbo. We slipped and slid up and down the Cap Rock Trail on this stuff for a good hour that morning and ended up having to turn back because we felt it was too dangerous to go on. The rock formations were really other worldly. It felt like we’d been transported to the moon!

The fact that we were the only ones on the trail added to the other worldly feeling. I think we would have spent another hour or so just on this trail if the gumbo hadn’t slipped us up so much. And honestly, if we’d known it was a loop trail we would have probably pushed on through, but the thought of having to climb back up some parts of the trail we had slipped down made us turn back. We want to go back when it’s dryer so we can finish the trail without worrying about slipping down the slopes and never getting back out.

Once we slowly made our way back to the trail head we had to spend some time cleaning all of that gumbo out of our hiking boots. It was quite the task.

We took the scenic drive to check out more of the park…and hopefully avoid any more gumbo. It was full of wonderful views, some wildlife and more mud than we want to remember. We’re still cleaning it off our 4Runner! We were so glad to have a 4 wheel drive on this scenic drive…there were many parts we would have missed otherwise. Plus, Jerl had fun getting to actually use the 4 wheel drive function in all the mud and on all the hills!

After the drive and some lunch we headed out for another hike. This hike was supposed to be easy peasy and it was…until we lost the trail. It was after we had scrambled up a hill to get the view above that we realized the trail was gone. We could have just turned around and gone back the way we came, but where’s the fun in that?

Thankfully, by that time of the day, the gumbo and dried and hardened and what would have been thick, slippery, sticky mud was now hard with what seemed like loose gravel on top…so it was still kind of slippery, but at least it wasn’t sticking to everything. After we slid down the picture above we spent some time trying to find the trail again.

We never found the trail and we couldn’t be talked into climbing back up the hill we’d just uncontrollably slid down… so we blazed our own trail! We eventually found a way across a wet, sandy stream and through the field above to the park road…after we ran from a big ol’ danger noodle (snake). I’m not sure who was more surprised. Us or the snake… It was us. We were more surprised and I’ll be honest…I think I ran on top of the grass to get away from it. It’s a good thing Jerl led the boys out of the tall grass back to the road because I don’t do nope ropes. No thank you.

We never found out what kind of danger noodle we saw. We all have different ideas of what it looked like.

We left Makoshika State park very muddy, very tired, with some very cool memories of working together to find our way! We also learned that some of us can run on top of the grass like the elves in Lord of the Rings.

See y’all down the road!

Pizza Roundup- Pizza Ranch

Pizza Roundup- Pizza Ranch

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For my fellow pizza lovers, I give Pizza Ranch a 5- star review.

The Pizza Ranch has good food, the restaurant is very clean, the desserts are amazing, and it has a nice, clean and tasty buffet.

My favorite pizza there is the Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza!

And my favorite dessert pizza is the cherry dessert pizza.

The buffet also had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade chips, mac-n-cheese, BBQ chicken, and all the usual salad fixings.

The decorations were western themed and very cool.

See you on pizza street!!

The Dakotas

The Dakotas

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I’m going to be honest…the Dakotas are a bit of a blur for me. It was raining on and off the whole time so we had to cram the few activities we had planned into a couple of jam-packed days. Now, keep in mind, we’re really just making our way up to Alaska and checking off a few things on our list as we go so we will eventually be back in the Dakotas to see more!

Since there really wasn’t a whole lot we could do during our time in the Dakotas this go around, I’m grouping them together into one post.

South Dakota! We didn’t get to see Mount Rushmore this time around. We will definitely be doing that before it’s all said and done though. In South Dakota we stayed in Fort Pierre which is right across the river from the State Capital, Pierre.

Every time we crossed the river we switched time zones. It got to be a joke for us. In the movie The Mummy with Brandon Fraser, there’s a part where a boat they’re on goes down and half of them are on one side of the river and the other half end up on the opposite side of the river. The good guy calls out to th bad guy, “You’re on the wrong side of the river!”…Anyway, that phrase was said quite a bit and we all laughed every time. Yes, we’re those people.

Fun fact…Pierre is the second smallest State Capital.

Not so fun fact…there’s not much to do there and there’s almost no cell service.

Fort Pierre and Pierre (seen in the picture above) are really quite picturesque! We went up on some of the surrounding hills and found some great views of the cities of Fort Pierre and Pierre. There are pheasant everywhere! They’re like the armadillo of The Dakotas! For some reason they like to stay right by the road…and yet I didn’t get a single photo of them.

We stayed near the ruins of the original Fort Pierre. There wasn’t really much to see. A rock with a plaque in the middle of a grassy field. There was a sign that told where they thought everything was based on a wall they found.

The State Capitol Building in Pierre was very ornate! The inside was richly decorated in golds and marble with murals and plenty of mosaic tile flooring. It really was very pretty. I’m a sucker for a good dome and this State Capitol Building didn’t let me down!

We did make it to the South Dakota Culture Heritage Center! We spent an hour looking at all of the history of the state. If you ever get a chance to go into one of the Culture Centers you really should. The ones we’ve found so far have been free (donation appreciated) and have been really spectacular museums! I won’t post up all the pictures I took (I took more than I probably needed to), but I’ll share the tee-pee with y’all. All three boys enjoyed walking through the tee-pee!

In North Dakota we stayed in Menoken. It’s a small town east of Bismarck (the State Capital). It was a teeny tiny town with zero cell service. I will say this about the RV park we stayed in…it had the cleanest and best bathrooms we’ve come across so far. The bathrooms had wall heaters! Guys, that’s huge when you’re trying to shower and it’s cold outside! Oh! And the showers were free! It really is the little things in life…

In North Dakota we went to see Sitting Bulls grave site and we found Fort Manuel. This fort…sheesh it was hard to find and then when we finally found it, it ended up being closed. Plus, the guy’s drive way we had to go down to get to it…he was less than amused. We still walked around it and enjoyed the views. Here are a few photos from the Fort.

They think Sacagawea (Sakakawea in the Dakotas or “Jane” by Lewis and Clark) is buried nearby. There wasn’t a headstone or a grave site so I’m kind of doubtful that she really is.

We did find Sitting Bulls grave site on a Reservation, but we felt weird being there or taking pictures…so we looked and left. The vibe of the Reservation wasn’t what I would call welcoming and the whole area around the little monument we found was kind of in disrepair.

On our way to Montana, we made one more stop in South Dakota! Theodore Roosevelt National Park is the very first official NP site we’ve been to on OurRVTrip!

We did the scenic drive and stopped for a couple of quick hikes! The wildlife at TRNP was so amazing! The Badlands were full of bison, prairie dogs and wild horses! We drove right by the big bison in the bottom left photo above. And Guys, there were some people getting out of their cars to try and get selfies…with the bison…the wild bison.

The views and vistas we found were all postcard worthy!

Alex and Nicholas became official Junior Rangers! Ranger Amy was the absolute best! You can really tell she loves her job. Because of her, Nicholas has now decided he wants to be a National Park Ranger. For our first NP visit and the first JR Badges for the boys to earn…I think this NP unit was perfect. We’ve definitely all gotten the National Park bug now.

So there you have it. Our time in The Dakotas!

We’re currently in Montana and will be taking this week at a more leisurely pace since we only have one thing on our list to see for the whole week!

See ya on the road!

Nebraska!!

Nebraska!!

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Hey Y’all!!! I’m so behind on updating the blog with our adventures. I’ve been without cellular data for a week now and it’s totally throwing a wrench in my plans!! I’m writing this post on my phone again, so excuse any weird typos or spacing.

This post will be about our time in Nebraska.

We had a great time in Nebraska visiting the zoo! For me, the best part was this gorilla (you can see his picture above) and the way he loved to scare unsuspecting victims! He would watch a group of people as they walked into his area and then he would rush up and slap the glass right next to them! Screaming would follow and he would walk away with (in my opinion) a very satisfied look on his face. I thought it was really funny until I realized there was a pain of glass boarded up from his earlier antics. Yikes!! So, we promptly left the enclosure.

We also went to visit the State Capitol Building which means we got to add another sticker to our state map! We are keeping a list of the State Capitols we visit and rank them in order of our most favorite to our least favorite. For Charles, Nebraska is on the top of the list as of right now!


My favorite thing was the hike though! It was amazingly muddy and I walked away with a few ticks and a new appreciation for aerobic exercising! Steep muddy hills are an amazing workout!! See that little path in the top right photo? Yeah, that little muddy path is on a ridge…so don’t fall off because it’s a long way down!! The views were so worth it all though!!

My good friend, Kristi, who is from Nebraska suggested we eat at Runza. Y’all know we’re foodies and always up for new food experiences so we found the closest one and gave it a try!! It was really good!!! The staff were all very nice and we ended up getting a discount on our food (all five of us ate for under $40) and we got free dessert!! Score!! We’re looking forward to eating at a Runza during our next visit to Nebraska!! They have the Runza Magic Dipping Sauce!! It is good on everything!!!

We really enjoyed our short time in Nebraska! From there we headed to South Dakota!!

See y’all down the road!!

It’s a Start

It’s a Start

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Hey Guys! We’ve been on the road for a week now and have already been wowed by some of the views we’ve found!

Our first stop was in Junction City, KS where we hiked in the Konza Prairie Biological Station near a Tall Grass Prairie It’s too early in the season for the tall grass to be…well…tall, but we did get quite a view when we crested the first hill to see this. So much for Kansas only being flat! We had a very nice hike here.

  It was super windy! But the views were great!! And we enjoyed stretching our legs outside…there’s not a lot of room in our home-on-wheels! Ha!

We took a quick trip over to Topeka, Ks to check out the State Capitol Building. It reminded me of a castle dungeon on the ground floor, but was very ornate and lovely starting on the first floor.

We got our first State stamp! We’re hoping to collect them all!

And then, we hit the road to Nebraska!!

See y’all down the road!