My thoughts on Covid-19...

We don't normally comment on world events, or our health, or politics or religion because opinions are almost always too divisive. And sure, of course we have an opinion on all of those things. But this blog is about our life and travels, so those things mentioned above are usually just noise and so we consider them unrelated.

But of course Covid and the reactions to it has affected almost everybody's life, including our own.

Our little buddy

Not much in the way of scenery to show you today. We drove from Pierre to Tulare, South Dakota and it was pretty much flat and farmland. We ended up in the town of Tulare because I had read of a town park that offered three RV sites with electric hookups, and I thought maybe we could waste today there because it's supposed to be too windy to drive.

And I thought maybe with only three sites we might not get a spot, but when we arrived there was nobody there... except for our little buddy who was quick to greet us.

Fresh air and exercise

Saturday was a beautiful day here in Pierre, South Dakota. High of about 86F (30C) with blue sky and sunshine. Only downside was a bit of wind.

We took the bikes out in the morning and went across the causeway to the trails on the island. We planned on doing the other trails in town as well, but found it too windy. Maybe things would calm down later.

Detour!

It was a bit of a late start from the town of Faith as we didn't head out until almost 10:30am. And as we were leaving town, we saw that there was some kind of horse event going on at the arena. So we stopped in to see what was happening.

But we had to walk across a field to get to the side of the fence to get a better view. We really didn't want to walk around to the actual entrance, and we're not big horse people so it's not like we were going to pay to go in. We just wanted to see what was going on.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

Why?

No particular reason. It occurred to me last night that I always look forward to tomorrow! What's the point of living if you don't have anything to look forward to?!

But, tomorrow hasn't happened yet, so let's talk about yesterday. We left our spot by the lake and made our way into the town of Newell where we used their free library WiFi to get caught up on things.

Nice quiet spot by the lake

The sun comes up at about 5:20am in this part of the world right now, so we like to get up early and do some driving. There is hardly anybody on the road, and there's very little wind, if any at all.

So Wednesday morning, we were on the road by about 6:15am and headed further east. The only problem with getting up at that hour and heading east is that the sun is shining right in your eyes!

Nice visit to Devil's Tower, Wyoming

Woke up Tuesday to a windy morning in Moorcroft, Wyoming. It looked like we were going to have a heavy crosswind for our drive up to Devil's Tower, but once we got on the road we were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a nice tailwind helping us along.

Devil's Tower is located kind of in the middle of nowhere. Arriving at the entrance, we found ourselves in tourist land. A big KOA campground on one side, and a tourist trinket shop on the other side.

We found a local park with a big tree...

The eastern part of Wyoming (and Montana for that matter) is not very exciting. The mountain scenery that we so enjoyed for the month of June is gone.

And so it wasn't a very photogenic day yesterday as we made our way further east towards South Dakota.

More beautiful Wyoming scenery, and some nice bike paths...

We were on the road at 6:30am Sunday morning in order to do the steep climb into Bighorn National Forest. At that hour, temperatures are much lower and Sherman would have less risk of overheating.

In fact, now that we've done it I have little doubt that we would NOT have made it had we tried to do it on Saturday afternoon. Sherman had to work hard for a solid 8 miles (13 kms) while he climbed another 3,000'and there was very little opportunity to pull over and let him rest.

Well, that was a pretty good day!

We set off at about 10:00am Saturday morning. Used the nice clean dump station at the free Lovell municipal campground before we left and filled our fresh water tank with the available potable water.

Thanks Lovell!

And then we headed up to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. I had never heard of this place before, which is kind of surprising. When you see the photos, you'll understand why we are surprised that it's not more popular.

Happy 4th of July!

We wandered over to the local grocery store here in Lovell, Wyoming to pick up a few things. Things are typically a bit more expensive at these independent stores, but they have sales too, so you never know what you're going to find.

First stop in the produce aisle, we saw iceberg lettuce at $1.69 USD ($2.29 CAD). A bit pricey, but you have to eat! We hummed and hawed between that and the romaine, but eventually grabbed an iceberg.

The strange people you meet in a laundromat

So I was looking at the map the other day, planning our route east. I saw that Lovell, Wyoming has a free campground in town with a 3 day stay limit and I figured that might be a good spot to ride out the American 4th of July long weekend.

With that in mind, I started to look for things to do in the area. We had been through these parts back in April of 2016 but we were on a mission at the time and so we didn't stop to see anything along the way. This time, we are in no real rush.

Red Lodge, Montana is a nice little town

We woke up on the ridge above the town and the forecast was for mostly sunny skies with a high around 70F (21C). So we decided to stay one more day in the area around Red Lodge, Montana.

We were doing some internet work first thing, and I got a text message from Telcel (we still have a Mexico SIM card in our phone) saying that our data had run out, and so had our balance. I'm usually pretty good at keeping an eye on it and recharging it the day before it runs out... but I missed it this time. And normally a screen comes up asking how you want to recharge, but this time I couldn't get it to do that.

June Expenses

Well, it was a pretty good month other than the fact that Sherman needed a water pump and a battery at the beginning of the month. That's 3 expensive months in a row, averaging $2,845 CAD per month. Good thing the first 3 months of the year were fairly reasonable while we were in Mexico. (They averaged $1,715 per month.)

We spent a total of $2,785 CAD ($2,047 USD) for the month of June.

Blizzard at the end of June

Well, yesterday was officially the day we begin the trek east to Ontario. And did we ever start it off with a bang! We knew the scenery heading east through the northern part of Yellowstone park would be spectacular, but the weather forecast was far from great.

It turned out that overall it was a little better than expected... until we got to the top of the Beartooth Pass where we encountered near blizzard conditions!