From Kanab UT to Rapid City SD

Sat. 6/9/2012     We left Kanab UT and headed sort of NE with our final destination of Rapid City SD.  The first day was a long windy day from Kanab at the Utah/Arizona border to Manila UT at the Utah Wyoming border.  At the end of that day we made it to the Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area which is in both Utah and Wyoming.

Flaming Gorge

Only 3 of dozens of Pronghorn we saw

When we left Manila UT the next morning we didn't know exactly how far we were going.  As soon as we crossed into Wyoming we started to see Pronghorn.  I have always loved how delicate they look.   We met relatives in Rawlins WY for breakfast.  That day was the windiest day I have ever seen/felt/tried to walk in.  We had a great breakfast at Rochelle Ranch Golf Course.  My mom's cousin and her daughter told us info about the course and the general area.  We made it to Casper WY.  We stayed at Fort Caspar RV Park.  It supposedly was an historic area, but we didn't see any of that.  We got a great rate with our Passport America discount - but it was just a huge gravel parking lot with some very old trailers.  We didn't care and didn't even unhook the truck.  We took a short walk on a trail and found a geocache and called it a day.

Black Thunder Coal Mine
Largest surface coal mine in North America

Mon 6/11/2012   This is the last leg of our journey to Rapid City SD.  Soon after leaving Casper we were driving through the Thunder Basin National Grasslands.  It consists of approximately 550,000 acres of rolling grassland that is home to birds and herds of Antelope. No spectacular scenery - but still it's very impressive.  Also in that area is the Black Thunder Coal Mine - the largest surface coal mine in the US.  A lot of the operation is close to the highway so we could see the huge dump trucks.  We wished we would've had time to check on taking a tour - it would've been fascinating. 


We had to have a couple of fittings replaced for the hot water tank.  Luckily we found an RV repair shop that was able to fix it immediately and didn't charge us much.  We made it to America's Mailbox and got everything set up to spend the night there and prepare ourselves to become  South Dakota residents.