Rolling Along With The Reynolds

Jim and Cindy's Adventure Blog traveling all over the USA

Tag: Winds

Link to the full picture album of Vantage

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Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park and Wapanum Recreation/Camping Area

Campground right on the water!
Windy at times (gusts of 32 MPH); no wonder tent camping is not recommended here.   
 

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Wild Horses Wind Facility – Tour of a Turbine!

Toured the facility and got to enter one of the Turbines.
Mt. Rainier was seen clearly at the entrance.

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Wapanum Dam

Pretty amazing place. Non federally funded.

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The Gorge Amphitheater and surrounding area

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Nomad’s View

What a trippy place. This was extreme boondocking; camping on BLM lands in the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands (bordering the Badlands National Park) in what is known as “Nomad’s View”.  The plan was to stay at this surreal spot for 5-6 days. We lasted one. One. But what a ride!!
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First up, I wanted to see the sunrise over the Badlands. I was up at 4:30 AM (yes, it’s true, I really did get my butt up at that time!) and was surprised to already see blue sky. The actual sun rose at 5:19 AM, with the moon still out. Look for the dot above “Lois”. It was beautiful, and the birds couldn’t agree more; such pretty songbirds chirping excitedly.
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I guess the birds knew something we didn’t, foreshadowing this days’ big surprise. We were packed with snacks and hiking boots and almost ready to make a day trip out into the deep Badlands. Within minutes however, the winds came. And I mean 50+ mph winds. Being parked on the edge of the cliff was a bit unsettling, and in fact became quite concerning when a fast friend made last night texted saying the Ranger suggested it was safer to stay put than move. Terror didn’t quite take hold of us, but we were both shaken (literally too). We rode it out for four hours until the wind had reduced sustained speeds of 25. Thank goodness the direction we parked had our nose almost directly head-on into the winds. Not so for other campers along the wall; I was so afraid of seeing someone get blown over (and possibly roll down over the cliff of which there’s been several accounts). Lots of them left much earlier than we did, but they could afford to since not being in as high-profile a box as our coach. We made the decision to leave as well, but needed to wait till we felt safe enough to turn broad side and high tail it outta there!
And that’s exactly what we did; managed to get back to the town of Wall and camp in civilization and safety.
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So our evening was spent at the not-to-be-missed WALL DRUG. A nice escape/distraction from earlier hours. What a blessing to experience this day and be in the wonders of God’s nature/wrath and come out safe, sound, and in wondrous awe.

 Camping on THE WALL pics

 

You’d think it’s all about the Corn…

The Corn Palace is certainly the top Must-See attraction in Mitchell. But, we ended up staying here at this locale for a week, and discovered so much more.  A HUGE Cabela’s store, several historical museums, we set foot into a Menard’s for the first time (and visited there daily ever-after). We stayed over to receive mail, and a few Amazon orders, one of which was a package of LED lights to upgrade Clark’s lighting and energy consumption. Experienced the fringes of a severe weather front, and slowly getting Darcy acclimated to a harness/leash for outside time. Oh, and a lunar eclipse to boot.

Pics beyond just CORN

Seriously, a Severe Thunderstorm

While at yet another visit to Menards, everybody’s phone started sounding off with severe weather alerts. Being only 2 miles away thank goodness, we scrambled back home to batten down. Loud and large, we sat through 5 minutes of hail, watching the orchard of Aspen trees we were nestled amongst in the Campground get blown. That was the worst of it for us fortunately – just rain and wind gusts thereafter (with a peaceful and stunning sunset to top it off). Not so fortunate were folks 30 miles in Sioux Falls and beyond to the East; many semi-trucks toppled over on the interstate, and we heard of a scary commute one guy had to get home (two windows on his car actually shattered due to the winds!).

Album of Mitchell – the Storm and more

Fun and Games, but house-chores too

The Dakota Discovery Museum was visited as well as the Prehistoric Indian Village, learning about the history of this area. We visited Lake Mitchell too, and did three hiking trails around the lake, plus stopped to play on the old-school carousel that we couldn’t resist.  Along with Fun and Games, we knocked out some TLC for Clark. The hot water pressure valve gave out (and my SuperMan hero Jim figured out what the issue was and researched how to fix it which he did!). Also replaced incandescent lighting with  LED lights throughout Clark – this will help in two ways; avoid generating unnecessary radiant heat into the coach, and more importantly reduce battery consumption by a tremendous amount.

Fun and Honey-do’s – Album link