Colorado, South Dakota and Family

 We drove from the Moab area to Lafayette, CO in one relatively short day over I-70 and through the Eisenhower Tunnel (which is celebrating its 40th anniversary).  We arrived Friday night and spent Saturday morning getting ready to go to Lyons (about 45 minutes away) to work on Goldie and Gail's house.  We packed the most amazing quantity of food, a stove, and multiple bottles of water.  Their house is at about 6,500' feet, up a dirt road and has this amazing view over the valley below.  Our job was to install a floating cork floor in the basement and paint the walls.


 It was full moon and the moon was visible while the sun was setting over the valley.  Though it was pretty warm, and got warmer, it was at least 7 degrees cooler in Lyons and we were working in the basement, which was cooler yet.








 The first thing that had to be done was to install a 220V receptical so that we could plug in the stove we had brought from Lyons.  Goldie and Gail had brought up a refrigerator the prior weekend.  Without their stove, we would have been cooking on the two-burner stove in Snoopy and wouldn't have eaten nearly as well.  Gail was not comfortable working with 220V.  Bob watched a video on U-Tube and set to work.  It worked!  So, we had a stove and Goldie and Gail now have a workable kitchen.  There is no well or water supply in Lyons except for a cistern, and they didn't know how much water was in it and didn't want to drink it.  That was the reason for bringing all the bottles of water.

Gail had started laying the cork floor in the back betdroom (to the right through the door).  When we arrived she and I finished painting the bedroom.  It took Bob to remember that we could pound the pieces of 1x3' cork into place by using bits that were cut off so that the tongue and groove matched and we weren't destroying them when we pounded.  We worked from the bedroom, into two closets there, out into the hall (having laid a chalk line to make sure everything was straight) and into the family room.  On the left you can see the edge of the stone hearth we had to work around.  The front of the room came to a point, so there was lots of cutting and fitting to be done.  At times the work went quickly; at times very slowly as we cut and fit and swore.

Goldie, Gail and the two dogs slept in the basement bedroom while Bob and I slept in Snoopy.  Luckily it cooled off sufficiently at night.  We returned to Lafayette mid-week for a shower and some tools and for good on Friday morning.  We had some adventures with the plumbing, as it became apparent that some roots had blocked the drainage pipes into the septic system.  


We left Sunday morning early for the Black Hills and Jewel Cave in particular.  We had visited Wind Cave several years ago and wanted to visit Jewel Cave this time.  After parking Snoopy at Camanche Park USFS Campground (named after a horse that a soldier received from the Indians and who was the only survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn), we headed to Jewel Cave National Monument to find that all the cave tours for Sunday were full.  Bob took a nap while I went to the National Wood Carver's Museum in Custer, which houses wooden carvings, mainly caracatures, made by a chiropractor who made his fortune with two inventions (one of which put electric pulses through the body and one of which was to lose weight) and could retire early and carve.  In addition to carving, he made by hand all of the workings to make parts move (a man milking a cow whose tail is swinging while a pig, whose tail is twirling, is knocking over the pail of milk).  He was hired by Walt Disney to design many parts of the original Disneyland.  It was kitchy, but very Americana.

We woke up early Monday morning to get to the cave when it opened.  Jewel Cave is renowned for all the calcite crystals in it.  Almost every surface is covered with them, though most of them don't shine like the first example.  They are laid down in thick layers (visible in the second photo) which often fall down.  Jewel Cave is probably the largest cave in the world.  It is estimated to have 5,000 miles of caverns (though only 166.86 miles have been mapped so far) and may connect with Wind Cave.  There was a big push to discover more of the cave this past weekend.  These other photos show the calcite crystals, some with stalagtites and flow stone associated with them.



















This cave bacon (24' long) is the largest example of cave bacon in the cave.

















We continued across SD 44, a beautiful road in southern SD that went through the Badlands and the Pine Ridge Reservation and had very little traffic.  We stopped for the night at a state park on the Missouri River and continued on SD 44 until it connected with US 18 in Iowa.  We stopped for lunch in Sanborn, Iowa where Bob played a wonderful 18-hole disc golf course and I read Spanish and knitted.  As we continued east we destroyed the trailer tire (the second time I have been driving and heard/felt something funny and looked back to see pieces of rubber flying off).  This time at least we knew how to lower the spare and it wasn't quite so difficult to change the tire as last summer in the middle of Nevada.  We continued on to Emmetsburg, Iowa where we got a replacement tire from a very friendly tire store.  We are now in Clear Lake, Iowa, near Mason City, and will be heading for Spring Green, WI and Julia Burton's wedding tomorrow.