Mt. Rushmore

Marsha at Mt. Rushmore



Crazy Horse Monument



Marsha at the "Eye of the Needle." Note the body language, "Larry you are getting all dirty. The picture is not that important. Get up, you are embarssing me."



Larry at the Iron Mountain Summit



Larry at the summit trying to figure how the heck to get down.

Date: Wednesday, July 28th
Day: 75
RV Miles: 6,514
Location: Rapid City, South Dakota
Elevation: 3,217

As planned we drove from Garryowen to Rapid City on Monday. It was a fairly uneventful trip that I mostly napped through. I woke up every so often and each time I did the scenery had changed. In Montana is was rolling hills. One time I woke up and it was desert, another time mountains, then pine forest then rocky hills then wooded hills. Seemed like lots of changes for a 300 mile drive.

In general, Tuesday was another non-event, a vacation-from-the-vacation day, with the humans doing chores like laundry, shopping and stuff like that. Sasha and I put the day to good use catching up on our nap time. I say non-event even though Sasha stepped in “it” twice, just like I was in the doghouse Sunday for my roadrunner race, Sasha drew unfavorable attention to herself on two counts.

First, I think Sasha finally pushed Larry over the edge when she woke him up at 5AM sharp. I say this because after Larry and Marsha returned from shopping they had some special curtains that block 100% of the sunlight and hung them in the bedroom. I think they are hoping that if Sasha can’t see the sunrise maybe she will let Larry sleep. Let me tell you that bedroom is darker than the bottom of a coalmine at midnight now. Marsha seems pretty happy with this, so Marsha may have been the brains behind this not Larry. Marsha does seem to hate sunlight in the morning. Perhaps that is a reason she liked Forks, Washington so much.

Well they didn’t get a chance to test the new curtains this morning thanks to AT&T. Larry and Marsha have taken to telling time by looking at the time on their cell phones and everything was alright until they went to bed. Larry knew that today was going to be a busy day and wanted to leave camp by 8AM, so he used his I-phone as an alarm clock setting the alarm for 5:30. (That would give him 2 hours to fix breakfast, feed Shasha and me, go on patrol, wash the dishes, pack a cooler and wake Marsha up.

It seems that the time signal from AT&T got messed up in the night and slipped an hour. When Larry got up he was surprised to find that the sun had not come up, but he persevered with his morning routine even when Sasha and I protested about being woke up so early while it was still dark. The plans for the day included dropping Sasha and I off at doggie day care and when we got their Larry thought it should have been about 8:30 AM, but instead it was 7:30.

So let me summarize this. In order to prevent Sasha from waking Larry up at 5:00 (so he could sleep in) they bought and hung curtains. Then for the first time on the vacation Larry sets an alarm (because he thinks he has thwarted Sasha) he gets up at 4:30AM. Isn’t he brilliant? Now, tell me who is the dumb animal?

Doggie day care was great. We met a lot of nice dogs and we played and talked all day and boy am I pooped. Sasha has already crashed on the couch and as soon as I get this posted I’m gonna join her.

The second Sasha incident occurred after dinner. Larry and Marsha had a nice dinner of grilled steaks and a bottle of wine. I think the wine got the humans because they didn’t clear the table right away. But, the smell of the steak got Sasha. She finally figured out that if she jumps up on the dinette seat after the humans get up she can lick the plates. She only got a half a plate licked before she got caught. Nonetheless she was so full of herself for figuring that out she was insufferable the rest of the night. I told her that she wouldn’t be able to fool Larry or Marsha more than once or twice and she didn’t believe me.

Well this morning right after breakfast, Larry headed back to the kitchen counter to get another cup of coffee and lickety-split Sasha was on the dinette seat headed for Larry’s plate. As I suspected, Larry saw her move and quickly spirited the plate away. I wish I knew how to use a camera because the look on her face was worth a million doggie treats. She was not a happy camper.

As for the humans’ day they, in order: went to Mt. Rushmore, drove up Iron Mountain Road, drove the Needle’s Highway and finished up by seeing the Crazy Horse Monument. Over dinner I did hear them discussing one incident at the summit of Iron Mountain.

At the summit, they have a scenic overlook, but the overlook really isn’t at the summit. The overlook is about 40 feet short of the summit with the last 40 feet requiring a moderately complex climb up a pile of rocks. Larry, immediately climbed the pile of rocks. Larry said he “scrambled up,” Marsha said he “teetered his way up.” Larry said Marsha gave him her best ninety-eight-dollar-your gonna-hurt-yourself-look. Marsha said she was just watching. Larry said the felt it was best if he crabbed his way down. Marsha said he crawled down. (See Picture). I will let you be the judge as to what happened.

Tomorrow Sasha and I get to go to doggie day care again while the humans head off to the badland.