SharivilleLife stories from Shari

I can’t believe I just opened my Coast to Coast book and picked out such a very nice RV park.  Orginally we were only staying 3 days, but even before the truck took a dive I knew we would need to be here longer. This resort is a 5 star Coast Delux.  It has more than 300 full hookups, a store, snack bar, great ice cream, and a club house with everything including a heated indoor swimming pool, which we will use with the rest of the fogies here. Very very nice  place to be stranded.

Today we drove around whats called Iowa’s great lakes area.  It encompasses Spirit Lake and East and west Lake Okoboji. We are at the latter and it’s suppose to be one of the bluest lakes in the USA.  Its definately a pretty blue.  We drove around all three lakes today what lovely homes along the lakes.  Theres lots of retirees around the area.  We stopped and had Mexican food, very good.  Lots of  places are closed already for the season, but thats OK because its peaceful here.

These are glacier carved lakes .  West Okoboji is spring fed, a georgous shade of blue and 134 ft. deep,  They fish for Walleye here, have never caught one or eaten one either, but they swear by them here.  They have some antique shops here and yes Angie, I did find you something very pretty.  There are some really nice old Victorian homes In Spirit Lake.  They also grow the most magnificent Blue Spruce trees around here and I love, love, love Blue Spruce trees.  Well home early  to relax with our feline family, Winkum, Blinkum, and Nod.  They are loving their trip and especially this park.  There are lots of birds and squirrls and folks walking dogs right by their huge back window.  More Later,            Hugs, S and J

Today was  a really peaceful and pleasant day.  We drove up into the northwest area of South Dakota.  This area is mixed plains and prairies and piney woods.  Lots of tourism thrives here in this area.  They have spoiled some of it with non essential exhibits, but that’s only my opinion others may disagree and appreciate the commercial aspects.  Certainly the merchants promoting it all.

We drove thru Spearfish canyon and that was beautiful.  We saw 3 different waterfalls. SD waterfalls are far different form our west coast waterfalls. They are very pretty here just smaller.

We went to one of the best museums I’ve seen.  Its in Bell Fourche, a really small town.  It was a small museum , but was stuffed with everything you could think of from the 1800′s and early 1900′s. I took lots of pictures. Bell Fourche is also the geographic center of our nation. Its complicated, but if you were to balance this country, I don’t know why that would become necessary, but it would be done from this town.

We picked today to take the last long ride in our area here because according to the weather channel, and I don’t know what I would do without the weather channel, we had a storm front moving in and it did.  It was raining by the time we returned to the RV.  So we are snuggled down in our home away from home and listening to the rain drops on the roof.  Jerry is drinking coffee and me tea and I think I will make some brownies. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.            Hugs,  Shari and Jerry.

I learned long ago not to underestimate small towns.  We decided to take a rest day and stay 2 nites in one stop.  It just happened to be the small town of Buffalo, Wyo. We were ahead of schedule. What a delightful campground, we fed a flock of wild turkeys this morning  , much to the delight of the trio of cats, right out the door of the trailer, while watching a mother doe and her little fawn munching grass just out side the big window.

We left the cats to entertain themselves at the windows , and went into town, 3900 population.  We went to the local museum, for such a tiny town it had the most interesting museum.  We happen to have an affinity for this type of stuff.  This little town is very interesting, most of the homes are of the matchbox type and all along the streets right in town they all have rural mailboxes.  It’s very peaceful there and they roll up the the streets just after lunch, because we couldn’t find a place to eat, except, you guessed it the local truck stop.  This is big truck     country around here.  Actually the meal was great. There are actually still lots of cowboys and cattle barons around .  Mary, I bet you didn’t know that the first white settlers in Wyo were Portuguese people, then came the Basque People. The Plains Indians had a pretty hard time in this area trying to drive off the settlers.  There’s some really good stories about all that around here.

Oh by the way I’ve been calling these charming animals we have been seeing, Antelope, when in reality they are Pronghorns. Live and learn. We are back at camp now and it’s evening and the animals are out in force.  The Trio are glued to the screen door really enjoying their vacation too.  Well really, tomorrow on the South Dakota to continue the adventure.  More later, love to all ,  Shari and Jerry

Hello again, 2nd day of trip.  We left Winnamucca at noon.  Couldn’t get started earlier as Jerry was chatting with a fellow RV er.  You know , ” Oh yes, we’ve been there or Oh yes, we have to go there.”  Then to see who can lie the best about fuel mileage.  RVers are really nice folks.  We ran into 2 rain squalls crossing thru the Nev desert, beautiful, cooled down the tires, because if it says we can go 75  that means at least 70. We really do make the time tho.  All the way listening to the CD version of The Shack. It was a great book and now Jerry doesn’t even have to read it. The drive was nice , straight road, Mt’s on both sides with big billowy clouds over the Mt’s. This nite will be spent in Wendover Nev, right on the boarder of Utah.  Ate a great buffet at the Casino where the RV park is.  Elsie they had the most huge peel and eat shrimp, thought of you.  Tomorrow on to The Great Salt Lake and beyond on into Wyo. We’ve seen all the Salt Lake City stuff before so we will skip that.  Tomorrow nite who knows?  Catch you all later,      Shari and Jerry

Hello all, well what a first day, got started late 11am, going across the Sierra’s right at Donners Pass we ran into a torrential rain storm, so heavy the windshield wipers could not keep up.  We had lightening strike right in front of us, we were at the 7300 foot elevation.  Then on into Reno for a lunch, the we struck out again across the Nevada desert on hwy 80, and just east of Reno we hit a sand and dust storm.  Well anyway we made it into Winnamucca for the night.  Nice RV park , nice people and great soft serve ice cream, you know me and ice cream.  Tomorrow ” FORWARD HO”, headed for Utah , hopefully we will make it to Salt Lake City, maybe stay a couple of days in that area.  Oh yeah, by the way my wireless card works great, it will be worth the money just to pass on this saga. Everyone take care of each other, and tomorrow is another day.  Love to all  ~   Shari and Jerry