MEDORA, N.D. – Our tour of national parks continued this week with two days of sightseeing and hiking in Theodore Roosevelt N.P. in the badlands of western North Dakota. We saw lovely vistas of the Little Missouri River, lots of buffalo, and a rattlesnake at my feet.
The park is named in honor of the 26th president, who hunted and owned a cattle ranch in the area in the 1880s. It’s divided into two parts, the South Unit near Medora off Interstate 94, and the North Unit 50 miles up US 85. Both were busy but not crowded, with about a third of the license plates by my informal count from neighboring Minnesota.
On Tuesday we drove most of the Scenic Loop Drive in the South Unit, which was an out-and-back because a section of it was closed for road repairs. The highlight was the Wind Canyon Trail, a short hike to an overlook of the Little Missouri River that flows between the two units. Wind Canyon was full of rocks sculpted into smooth curves by the strong winds that blow through it. We saw a herd of bison grazing along the trail to the Old East Entrance Station.
On Wednesday, we drove more than an hour to the North Unit and then meandered along the 14-mile Scenic Drive. After touring both units, we agreed with our National Geographic Guide to National Parks that “Many people regard the North Unit as the more attractive of the two major portions of the park.”
Among the features we especially liked in the North Unit was the Cannonball Concretions Pullout, which featured large round rust-colored rocks bulging out of the buttes. Further up the road my dear wife dropped me off at a trailhead for the Caprock Coulee Trail so I could hike a mile and a half along a ridge to meet up with her at the River Bend Overlook. The Oxbow Overlook at the far end of the drive offered a beautiful vista of a bend in the river and the forest of cottonwood trees that thrive along the riverbank. All the views were framed by the eroded buttes of the badlands.
Both units are home to bison and wild horses. Here are shots of the bison we saw.
We got more excitement than we’d like on the “Little Mo Nature Trail” at the beginning of our time in the North Unit. I was about to turn off the paved main trail onto a side trail when I heard a loud rattle not two feet from my bare legs. I looked down to see a medium-sized rattlesnake with his eyes fixed on me and his forked tongue waving. I said something like, “Whoa!” and quickly backed up. With its rattle having done its work, the snake retreated into the grass. I did stay close enough to capture a video of his back side and the rattler that had spared us both a more unpleasant encounter.
The spirit of US presidents past has been present during our time in the Dakotas. There were the four presidents of Mt. Rushmore, of course, but I also learned that the Black Hills were a favorite retreat of President Calvin Coolidge when he was in office. In fact, he gave a speech in 1927 at a dedication of the beginning of the work on the monument. At Theodore Roosevelt N.P., we learned that its namesake had first visited here in 1883 and then again in 1884 after he had suffered the twin tragedy of his wife and his mother dying in his house on the same day, February 14, 1884. Roosevelt lived for a time in the Maltese Cross Cabin, which is still preserved with some of his relics on the grounds of the South Unit Visitor Center, seven miles north of where it was originally located.
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On Thursday we drove 230 miles east on I-94 to Jamestown, N.D. From here we’ll be traveling through Minnesota and Wisconsin visiting friends and family in my two home states.
RAPID CITY, S.D. – Elizabeth and I savored the symbolism of Mt. Rushmore on a beautiful Saturday in the Black Hills of South Dakota last week. We admired the artistry of sculptors Gutzon Borglum and his son Lincoln and learned more about this famous monument. During our time here, I also managed to see Custer State Park and Wind Cave and the Badlands national parks.
Since we last visited Mt. Rushmore 35 years ago, the facilities seemed to us much improved. You can view the monument from a terrace lined with the state flags and get a closer look along the Presidential Trail. As we were gazing at the four faces, I noted thoughtfully to Elizabeth that Jefferson appears to be looking more upward and into the distance than the others, probably the sculptor’s way of conveying his more idealistic vision. But when we were in the Sculptor’s Studio, listening to an excellent presentation by a park ranger, he said that the tilt in Jefferson’s gaze had nothing to do with symbolism but was necessary to work around weakness in the granite that was causing his nose to crack. So much for my artistic interpretation! The guide said some people think the faces look small, but if they were attached to bodies of the same scale, they would be 450 feet tall. That would be three times as high as the Statue of Liberty.
From inside the Sculptor’s Studio.
Trying out a new look in the gift shop.
On another day, I drove the Wildlife Loop Road through Custer State Park and it lived up to its name. During my time in the park I saw four herds of bison, big horn sheep, and a herd of not very wild burros entertaining families by the roadside. At the visitor center I watched an excellent film on the park narrated by Kevin Costner. The film featured amazing footage of the bison being rounded up in an annual fall event. As part of our trip to Mt. Rushmore the next day, Elizabeth and I drove past the beautiful Sylvan Lake in the park and along the Needles Highway, which includes beautiful rock spires and a couple of narrow tunnels carved in the rock that were barely more than eight feet wide.
Bison over my shoulder.
Along the Needles Highway.
Later that day I joined a one-hour tour of a section of the Wind Cave National Park. This is one of the less-well known national parks. The cave system is worth seeing, primarily for the intricate “boxwork” formations that are rare in any other cave system. I must admit I was a bit underwhelmed by the experience, in part because I could only book the least extensive of the three main tours offered and also because we had toured Carlsbad Caverns in April, which are far larger and more spectacular. I also didn’t care for the park’s first-come, first booked system that requires you to show up in person to book a tour for that day. If I had arrived at the park earlier in the morning and had been able to book the longer Fairground Tour or the Natural Entrance Tour, I might have been more effusive in my praise.
And on another day, while Elizabeth rested at the RV, I drove 75 miles down I-90 to the main entrance to Badlands National Park. We’d also visited this park 35 years ago, but it was even more impressive than I had remembered. The “Badlands Wall” rises up several hundred feet from the southern plains, creating an eerie landscape. Just a few miles south of Exit 131, you can see the stark formations filling the vista. What I really loved, a bit further down the road, was actually hiking the Door Trail along the ridges and out into the Badlands. (If I’d had more time I would have hiked the nearby Notch Trail, which takes you down a ladder into a dry basin.) From there I drove dozens of miles along the Badlands Loop Road, stopping at several overlooks to see the Yellow Mounds and the Pinnacles. I also saw more wildlife along the way, including big horn sheep, bison, and the excitable inhabitants of “Roberts Prairie Dog Town” (captured on the concluding video).
Dashboard:
Days on the road: 196;
Miles towing the RV: 7,780;
RV parks stayed at: 49;
National parks visited: 20.
The road ahead (Lord willing): Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota.
DOUGLAS, WY – We spent three nights earlier this week in this southeastern Wyoming city, attending the state fair and rodeo, exploring a natural bridge, and taking in some local history about trains and World War II POWs.
Douglas is a city of about 6,000 on the banks of the North Platte River 50 miles east of Casper. It was a convenient first stop after we left Colorado Springs last Monday, and it just happened to be hosting the Wyoming State Fair and a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association event during our stay.
Presenting the flag for the national anthem at the PRCA rodeo in Douglas, WY on August 18.
Our favorite events at the rodeo Wednesday night were the saddle bronc and the bull riding. (Here’s a video clip I posted on FaceBook.) We admired the skill of the down roping and team roping competitors and the pluck of the steer wrestlers. And it was thrilling to see the young women riding their horses at full gallop in the arena for the barrel racing and the flag presentations (see above and below). I felt a bit out of place in the crowd without a cowboy hat or boots, but we felt right at home with the heartfelt opening prayer from the announcer Garrison Panzer and the national anthem from the Rock Bottom Boys. The night was pure Americana.
On our first morning in Douglas, we drove a few miles from town to see Ayres Natural Bridge. This is a beautiful spot, with the La Prele Creek flowing under the bridge and through a small canyon. It’s a county park with shaded picnic tables and benches near the creek. If you’re driving through Wyoming on I-25, it’s a refreshing spot just a few miles south of Exit 151. The bridge is supposed to be one of only three in the United States with water flowing beneath it. My fellow Virginians should know one of the others, but I’m not sure of the third. If you know what bridge that might be, feel free to post it in the comment section below.
That afternoon we toured the officers club at Camp Douglas, the only remaining building from a POW camp that housed thousands of captured Italian and then German soldiers during World War II. A striking feature of the club are the murals of Western scenes painted by three of the Italian prisoners. They are based partly on what they saw from the trains as they were transported to the camp from the docks at New York City beginning in 1943, but mostly from the Western paintings they saw by American artists. In a film and exhibits, we also heard the testimony from the prisoners about how well they were treated. One said, “I never had it so good.” Another wrote, “I never knew what it meant to be a free man until I was a prisoner in your country.”
My favorite room!
Another attraction was the Douglas Railroad Museum near downtown. If you’re into trains, this park features cars and engines from the 1880s to the 1950s. Many of them passed through Douglas during their years of service. What I especially loved is that you can walk through the cars and in some even sit on the chairs. It gave a real sense of traveling on those “magic carpets made of steel” back when it was the most economical way to travel across this vast country. (Note the giant “jackalope” outside the museum. The town has adopted the fictitious animal as a tourist attraction).
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – We broke camp on Monday morning in this city at the base of Pikes Peak after a relaxing five-week stay. We enjoyed seeing family and long-time friends and taking a break from our cross-country travels.
Our stay here has reminded us of one of the many advantages of touring the country in an RV. When we stop at a location where we know people, we don’t need to ask anybody for a place to stay. After socializing, we can say goodnight and head off to our own familiar abode. We can also entertain people with a home-cooked meal and a campfire. We’re temporary neighbors rather than houseguests.
Home for us during our time in the Springs was the Golden Eagle Campground, a few miles south of the city. The RV park is home to the May Natural History Museum (more on that below) and lies across CO 115 from the Army’s Fort Carson. Every night at 10 we could hear the strains of “Taps” and every morning at 6:30 the sound of “Reveille.” In between we sometimes heard and felt the distant thunder of artillery practice. The sounds of freedom.
We lived in Colorado Springs from 1983 to 1995, so we can attest first-hand that the city is a great place to live and a great place to visit. The more well-known tourist attractions include the Garden of the Gods, the Air Force Academy Chapel, the Broadmoor Hotel, and the Pikes Peak Highway and Cog Railway. During our recent stay there, we visited three other attractions that are worth checking out:
Glen Eyrie— This is an English-style castle home built in 1904 by the city’s founder, Gen. William Jackson Palmer, in a secluded valley near the Garden of the Gods. The property has been owned since the 1950s by the Navigators, a Christian organization that provides tours. It’s a beautiful spot, with rising cliffs and rock formations. The castle contains 19th century English woodwork and lots of history connected to Gen. Palmer and the founding of the city in 1871. Gen. Palmer is “the man on the iron horse,” the title of a short, readable biography and a reference to a statue of him at the downtown intersection of Nevada and Platte avenues.
Olympic Museum— Colorado Springs is home to the US Olympic Committee, Olympic Training Center, and the new U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum. The museum is located in a futuristic building in the downtown area and opened in July 2020. The entry fee is a bit steep at $25 per adult and $15 for kids 3-12, which would add up quickly for a family. I went on my own and enjoyed many of the high-tech interactive exhibits. As someone who has been watching the Olympics since the 1970s, I did find myself wanting to see more archival footage of classic Olympic moments. The highlight of the tour was the film at the end on the Olympic spirit, with the testimony of athletes accompanied by video clips of their performances. In the darkened theater, I found myself coughing repeatedly to disguise the fact that I was getting choked up with emotion. (Here’s a more extended review from Springs Magazine.)
May Natural History Museum— This fantastic collection of insect specimens is connected to the Golden Eagle campground where we stayed. The collection was started more than a century ago by James May and popularized by his son John May, who relocated the collection to its current venue just south of the city in the 1950s. Today his descendants manage the museum and campground. If you’re into bugs, you’ll be amazed by this collection. (Entry is a reasonable $8.) On display are more than 8,000 specimens of beautiful butterflies, giant beetles and stick bugs, and lots of big, hairy spiders! The collection has been valued at $5-6 million, and Walt Disney even offered to buy it when he was in town in the 1950s, but the family turned him down. The story of the museum was featured in this 2015 segment of the Fox Business channel’s “Strange Inheritance with Jamie Colby.” Further below are some of the more memorable bugs I saw.
Note the baby scorpions on its back.
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On Monday we towed the RV more than 300 miles to Douglas, WY, where we plan to visit the Wyoming State Fair and attend a rodeo Wednesday night. Then it’s on to the Dakotas and Minnesota later this month.
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO – This weekend I teamed up with Michael and Lizzy and their dog Juniper to backpack into the Sangre de Christo Wilderness and conquer one of Colorado’s “fourteeners,” Humboldt Peak. We were worn out at the end, but the scenery rewarded our effort.
The upper South Colony Lake and Crestone Needle from the trail up Humboldt Peak
The trailhead is 93 miles southwest of Colorado Springs. When we arrived Saturday morning, we were planning to drive my Ford F-150 another two miles up a forest service road to an upper parking lot. About a half mile up, we encountered what four-wheel drivers call a “crux” in the road—a challenging spot that’s difficult to pass. After assessing the degree of difficulty, we decided to turn back and begin our hike at the lower, “low-clearance” lot.
From there, we hiked 5.5 miles with our backpacks to a camping spot near the lower of the two main South Colony Lakes. The lake is 11,666 feet above sea level, a 2,600-foot elevation gain from where we parked the truck. The area was popular with weekend backpackers and we could see why. The views were spectacular of the surrounding fourteeners—Crestone Needle (14,197 feet), Crestone Peak (14,294 feet), and Humboldt Peak (14,064 feet)—and water was plentiful.
The crux of the matter. This is where we turned back to the lower parking lot. At the upper parking area.A bridge over South Colony Creek.Where we filled our water bottles at camp. That’s Crestone Needle above and my shadow and water pounch on the lower left.
On Sunday, we set off at 9 a.m. to hike Humboldt Peak. The trail took us 1.9 miles and 2,400 feet in elevation gain past the upper South Colony Lake, then up a series of switchbacks to the ridge of the mountain, then up the increasingly rocky ridge to a false summit. (At times we could only find our way through the boulder fields by the cairns, or stacks of rocks, left by previous hikers.) From there it was just a short distance along a ridge to the real summit. At the top, we enjoyed a half-hour rest, some lunch, conversation with a few fellow climbers, and wonderful views of the nearby peaks and the adjoining valley.
Here’s the view from the trail up Humboldt Peak looking back on the South Colony Lakes. Our campground was over the creek at the bottom of the lower lake. That’s Crestone Needle towering over the valley.
Photos below clockwise from upper left: 1) on the ridge of Humboldt Peak; 2) along the upper ridge near the false summit; 3) Juniper, “the best dog,” at the summit. (This was Junie’s first fourteener!); 4) Michael and me at the summit of Humboldt Peak.
Our camping area was home to a flock of (not so) big horn sheep. Lizzy said they were mostly females with one or two younger males. They would surprise us by bolting past the trail near our tents. They were shedding their fur. One left a big clump near my tent and another a calling card of a different sort, which complicated my packing up when we were ready to leave. (If you look closely at the second photo, you can see one of the sheep taking care of business on a nearby rock.)
During our stay near Red Lodge MT earlier this summer, we witnessed the misfortune of a motorhome driver who cut a corner too sharply and ended up with his powertrain wheels suspended over a ditch. It took several hours and an extra-large tow truck from Billings (not the one pictured) to free the beached whale later that afternoon.
As someone who’s been towing an RV around the country for the past six months, I could only think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Many of you following our journey have remarked at what a wonderful trip Elizabeth and I are having, and it’s certainly been a great adventure so far, in many ways exceeding expectations. But we’ve also encountered our share of trying moments, self-inflicted setbacks, and close calls that could have turned out much worse.
Some of these situations I’ve shared, but most of them I haven’t—either out of pride or the idea that they weren’t that big a deal. But in the spirt of full disclosure, not only of the good, but the bad and the messy, here are what Elizabeth and I consider the worst moments of our time on the road (in chronological order):
Lost hitching tool
In mid-February, after we’d been on the road for about a week, we were hitching up the RV in Sneads Ferry NC for our next destination. I went looking for a specialized tool that came with the RV that we use to lift the stabilizer bars onto the trailer hitch, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Without the tool, I couldn’t hitch the bars or tow the RV. We were stuck. It soon occurred to me that I had probably left it on the bumper of the truck as were unhitching six days earlier, and that it had fallen off somewhere as we were driving the unhitched truck around town. After scanning the nearby roadside and asking around for advice, somebody suggested we go to the local hardware store and see if they had a usable substitute. We came back with a $13 standard-issue crowbar and, with a few modifications in our routine, we’ve been using it successfully ever since.
Damaged cable
Our most serious misstep occurred later that month when the signal cable connecting the truck to the RV was almost severed on our way from Memphis TN to Hot Springs AK. The cable controls the rear lights on the RV as well as its brakes. As we were hitching up to leave the RV park near Graceland, I loosened the signal cable to get it out of my way as I was attaching the chains. My mistake was to loosen it so much that once we hit the road, it was dragging on the pavement. As we approached Hot Springs a few hours later, in the rain and descending through the hills, warning lights began flashing on the dashboard that told me the trailer signals weren’t working. One even flashed, “Trailer Disconnected.” Since I could see the trailer fully attached in my rear-view mirror, I told myself the problem must be with the signal light. When we were unhitching at the RV park, Elizabeth noticed the cable covering had been worn away and three of the six wires inside it were severed.
In a blog post at the time (“Hanging by a Wire,” March 2), I did recount much of this story and how a local RV repairman reconnected the wires and secured the cable for us. What I didn’t share then was how serious it could have been. One of the wires connects the truck brakes to the trailer brakes, so that when I step on the truck brakes, the RV brakes at the same time. This prevents the trailer from pushing up against the back of the truck and potentially even jack-knifing if you brake suddenly at high speeds or going down a steep incline. As I was admiring the repairman’s skill, I said to him that I was sure glad that the brake wire—which I assumed was the white one that was the thickest of the bunch—hadn’t been severed. The repairman pointed to a thin blue wire, which as you can see in the photo was completely severed, and said, “That’s your brake wire.”
A dead battery and beeping alarm at 1 a.m.
Our first campground in Big Bend National Park in Texas was inside the park at Rio Grande Village on its eastern end. The campground is well located near a scenic stretch of the Rio Grande River, but the downside is that our site had no hookups—no water, electricity, or sewer. We would be “boondocking,” or dry camping, for four nights. Elizabeth and I saw it as a new adventure and an acceptable tradeoff for a great location. Even without hookups, the RV can draw on a 30-gallon freshwater tank and its 12-volt battery can power the LED lights, water pump, and refrigerator. Clean public toilets were nearby. For reasons we still don’t fully understand, our battery soon began running out of power. It may have been the water pump working too hard. (I did blog about the first hint of trouble in “‘Boondocking’ in Big Bend,” March 23.)
Whatever the cause, by the middle of our second night, the battery had died. At 1 a.m., the small carbon monoxide and propane gas alarm began to beep to warn us that it was disconnected from the main power source and could no longer perform its vital duty. The alarm was loud enough and regular enough to make sleep impossible. I told Elizabeth I was getting out of bed to disconnect “it” from the wall. She thought I was talking about the refrigerator, which had also stopped working, and to save me the trouble of pulling it out from the wall and disconnecting it, she began reading through our owner’s manuals to find an alternative. In my grumpy, sleep-deprived state, it took me several minutes to figure out that we were not on the same page. Once I clarified that I was talking about the alarm, I went ahead and removed it from the wall and disconnected its internal battery to stop the infernal beeping. When morning arrived, we agreed that for the sake of the food in the fridge–and our collective sanity–we would depart that morning, two days ahead of schedule, for a private RV park we had booked just outside the west end of the park. We also expressed a mutual hope that this would prove to be the low point of our trip.
At our “no hook-up” site in Big Bend.
Our first night, when the battery still had power.
The scenic Rio Grande a short walk from our campsite.
Lost skirting board
On April 23, somewhere on the highway between Twentynine Palms and Simi Valley CA, a 12-foot-long piece of skirting fell off the lower left front of the RV. It was blustery that day across south central California, but nothing that caused us alarm. When we arrived at our campground in Simi Valley north of Los Angeles, Elizabeth was the first to notice the missing skirting board. It didn’t compromise the function of the RV, but it looks bad and exposes the press board and pipes behind it. That week I called an authorized Keystone dealer in Redding CA, where we planned to be in a couple of weeks, but the service guy there said replacing it would take 3-4 weeks and cost $7,000! That was a non-starter, so after a trip to Lowes, I covered the exposed area using a roll of aluminum flashing, tin snips, and a few wood screws–at a cost of $37. An authorized dealer in Colorado Springs was equally unenthusiastic about fixing our under-warranty RV, so we’re planning to get it fixed at the end of September when we visit the dealer in West Virginia that sold us the RV.
Earlier in our journey with the skirting still intact.
What we found when we arrived in Simi Valley.
After my trip to Lowes. It may not look brand new, but hey, it saved us $6,963.
Low-hanging hitch and stairs
Another problem we haven’t quite fixed yet are certain low-hanging parts that can scrape on the ground as we’re towing the RV. If we tow the trailer across uneven ground, the stabilizer bars on the hitch can brush the ground, resulting in mangled hitch pins and bent parts. The bedroom stairs hang low enough that at one campground, as we were pulling out, another driver shouted to me that they were still extended, even though they were fully retracted. At one point earlier in the trip, the steps had caught on a rise in the road, resulting in a slight backward bend to the stairs. We’ve managed the problem by acquiring an extra inventory of hitch pins (they cost about 50 cents at a hardware store) and driving extra carefully on uneven surfaces.
Competing with the beeping alarm in Big Bend for the low point is a backed-up toilet in Lemon Cove CA in early May. As background, in our Hideout the bathroom sink and shower drain into the “gray water” tank and the toilet and kitchen sink drain into the “black water” tank. Both tanks need to be emptied after about two days of normal use at a campground. With full hookups, we drain them into a sewer pipe at our campsite. But with partial hookups (i.e. no sewer)–as we had at Lemon Cove–we need to empty the tanks at a central “dump station.” We can empty them by either stopping by with the trailer as we leave the park or—if we stay longer than two days—by emptying the tanks into a plastic, 28-gallon “tote tank” we store in the truck bed and hauling it to the dump station. This allows us to empty the tanks without the disruption of hitching up and moving the RV itself.
A day-time trip to the dump station in Simi Valley.
Elizabeth overseeing a more routine discharge of the tote tank in Simi Valley.
Things seemed to be going well at the Lemon Cove campground until 10 o’clock one night, when the toilet backed up, spilling several ounces of black water contents on the bathroom floor. The tank was full to overflowing, a day ahead of schedule! Along with the expected smells, an air of panic filled the RV. The regular dump station was locked, the campground office was closed, and the voice-mail message we left went unanswered. Faced with enduring a night with a backed-up sewer system, I heard myself exclaiming, “I didn’t sign up for this!” But as I calmed down, we hit on the idea of using the tote tank to empty the black and gray water into the drain of an empty, full-hookup campsite nearby. After a couple of trips lugging the tank over to the other site, our sewer system and RV were back in order. In the clear light and fresh air of the next morning, I concluded our tanks had filled up prematurely because our uneven campsite had caused the RV to tilt a bit away from the side where the tanks discharge, causing them to reach full capacity earlier than usual. It was another lesson that life can be messy.
Inches from a tree branch
In Northern California, a family we knew from their time out East graciously hosted us at their home in the countryside. We just needed to pull the RV through a driveway and around a tree in their front yard to a spot in their back yard with full hookups. As I was pulling the RV around the tree, I sense I may be getting a bit close. I got out and looked and saw that a sawed-off branch of the tree was about three inches from the aluminum siding of the RV. If they had made contact, I’m sure the three-inch-or-so diameter branch would have prevailed, perhaps even piercing the outer wall! I backed up the RV a few feet to allow a wider turn, and successfully delivered it to the back yard. The close encounter reminded me of a piece of advice from our friend Lyle Brunson—when in doubt, GOAL, as in “get out and look.” An older RVer next door to us in Coeur d’Alene ID, when he pointed out how close they had come to backing into a tree, noted cheerfully, “Missing by an inch is as good as missing by a mile!”
Me and my stuff all over Red Lodge
During our stay outside Yellowstone National Park, Michael and I jumped into the truck to go into Red Lodge for a few items at the store. I had been doing some chores around the RV that morning and didn’t realize that I’d left the truck-bed gate of the F-150 open as we left the campsite. When we arrived at the grocery store five miles down the road, I saw the open gate and noticed that three items were missing—the battery charger, the detachable bike basket, and the truck’s hitch ball receiver. Like the lost hitching tool at the beginning of our journey, this appeared to be another self-inflicted loss from inattention. I closed the gate and resigned myself to replacing the lost items, which I assumed were now scattered somewhere along our route. As we approached the turnoff for the campground on the way back, what should we see but all three items neatly gathered at the side of the road! Some kind and honest citizen had seen them scattered about and collected them for the rightful (if absent-minded) owner to reclaim later.
What a kind stranger left for me outside our campground near Red Lodge, MT.
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