Short Stop in Wyoming

 I bet you all thought I gave up the ghost... not so. The last month has been spent in Wyoming preparing for the annual Escapee RV rally, called Escapade. For those out there not familiar with Escapees, it is an RV club that we are a part of.

The Escapade was held at the Sweetwater Event Complex in: 

If you haven't figured it out... it was held in Rocks Springs Wyoming.

The Sweetwater Event Complex is huge. The facility can entertain BMX, motocross, sprint car races, and horse racing. If you are not into racing, they also entertain the county fair, as well as rodeos... the big rodeo for them is the high school rodeo.

We arrived in Rock Springs 1 July, before we were due to start work, but that didn't last long... we started working on the 2nd.

The campground was setup like mini-corrals the RVs would park in.

Here was the view from our mini-corral:

As you can see, there weren't many RVs there when we first arrived. 

Arriving early provided us an opportunity to settle in, then enjoy the fireworks an the 4th of July.

One of the events we watched was the 4-H livestock show,

Some of the cattle and pigs were on the auction block. The black cow above was named "Hamburger", the brown is "Ben".

As part of the volunteer staff Carol and I were quite busy, Carol working in the office, I was running around outside getting things ready, with a fist full of other volunteers. Carol was responsible for the table center pieces and stage decorations, announcements, and the all important seat reserving. 

The wagon was simply a cardboard box, cloth, and ingenuity.

Enough bottles of beer, you to can create a centerpiece for a table too.

As you can see, the theme was cowboy/western. This theme flowed to the photo booth. The structure of the booth is just plywood that we change to match the theme of the Escapade event. This year we chose to make it look like a covered wagon settlers would have taken across the plains.

The folks at the complex were very friendly, and allowed us to use whatever we needed lying around on the property. The lantern is ours from our trailer, the pail is from the Escapee office, and the wheels and hay were items laying around the grounds.

My responsibilities were to to ensure that the sponsor banners were properly displayed, overseeing that meeting rooms were setup for action, and general coordination. For those that may not know me well, I am uncomfortable with height, but will go up to accomplish a given task. I am not a fan of scissor lifts, I feel like I am on a board atop a toothpick when they are extended... and one of the banners required that I almost take it to the max... I completed my mission.  Putting up the stage lighting was another story. I could not get myself to take the lift to its max height to hang the lighting and run the power cords... almost 30 feet in the air.

The idea of Escapade is to bring fellow RVers together to celebrate, educate, and fellowship. The four days are marked with seminars, entertainment, and social gatherings.

Before attendees arrived.

After attendees arrived.

The main meeting tent was general assembly, as well as most nights evening entertainment. Entertainment ranged from a comedian magician to a talent show comprised of talent from the attendees.

Carol and I with the comedian magician.

This was a contemporary country music band that played songs they wrote as well as some of the older country music. 

On a couple of occasions we had entertainment out on the midway, where food trucks were available, serving anything from kettle corn to seafood to beer.

One of the daily food trucks was a wood fired pizza. Since Carol and I don't eat much bread anymore, she asked them if they could make a pizza without the crust...

She supplied the pan, they supplied the pan pizza without the crust. They recognized us because of our pan which was brought back so many times.

Escapade was fun... then came breakdown... it always seems to breakdown faster than it went up.

While we were at Escapade this year we had our brakes changed out from standard drum style to disc brakes. While the drum brakes stopped the trailer fine, disc brakes provide a higher level of comfort with the weight of our trailer.

Kinda looks like we parked our trailer in the ghetto of Los Angeles, and they took everything, and left us on blocks. Its ok, they put the tires back on.

Escapade came to an end and we headed out for Wisconsin, via Nebraska, and Iowa.

Back in Deadwood... the Sequel

Deadwood THREE-PETE. 

This trip to Deadwood was a walk down historic main street, a visit to Tatanka (Indian name for buffalo), and the Roosevelt Friendship Tower. 

Our first stop was downtown Deadwood, before it got too hot. We parked in our usual place, the Visitor Center parking lot, the only place with free parking. Downtown Deadwood is a lot like any tourist town trying to survive... the old building are filled with commercial businesses. I took pictures of some of the original buildings still standing... that is after they were rebuilt because of the in the late 1870s.

After we walked downtown historic buildings, we popped into Mustang Sally for lunch. From lunch we headed back up the road to "Tatanka".

Tatanka is a cultural museum conceived in the mind of Kevin Costner. Originally Kevin bought the land to build a hotel resort, honoring the region. Progress was slow on construction, but he commissioned a bison sculpture that was to be in the lobby area of the hotel. Even during the increasing delays, he commissioned more sculptures, 17 in all. 

The hotel construction fell through, and the sculptures were kept in storage for several years. Kevin never lost his dream to honor the region... Tatanka emerges. A big portion of the museum grounds are dedicated to the bison sculptures. But let's go back inside.

Beginning a walk through you can read Crazy Horses' sentiment about white man coming to their lands.

Crazy Horse had valid concerns. During Custer's expedition in 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills, treaties were made with the Indians that were broken, the very buffalo they hunted were hunted to near extinction by the white man.

In a three year timeframe, 1872 to 1874 over 10 million POUNDS... 10 million pounds of dried, bleached bison bones were shipped from the prairie lands. Imagine how many buffalo comprised all those bones. That much devastation is what caused a native culture to starve.

Before the Europeans arrived after Columbus' discovery, the native American Indian population was estimated over 5 million, by 1900 their population was estimated at approximately 237,000, the decline mainly due to disease, genocide, slavery, and starvation. After walking through the museum, we took a walk to the sculptures.

After our stroll through the sculptures we headed back to the museum gift shop and spent a couple of dollars before taking a drive up to Roosevelt Friendship Tower. 

The tower was a memorial to a friendship between Bullock and Roosevelt, if you remember. The tower itself is not a massive tower, only 30 feet high, 12 feet in diameter, with steep stairs to the lookout. The view was a 360 degree look over the valleys below.

We hiked back to the truck and headed home for dinner.