To long between posts!

Hi, due to terrible wi-fi at the last campground in South Dakota, and non existent service in North Dakota I have not been doing any updates to this blog. We are now in Kentucky working at Amazon.com again for the Christmas rush season and have better access to the internet, so I hope to be able to get a few posts done while we are here. To start off I am going to publish maps with that will show where we have traveled with our 5th wheel, with some pictures of a few of the places we have stayed in the past 5 years of being on the road.

The First Year - 2008
On February 29th of 2008 we officially became Full-Timers when we pulled out of Fruita, CO and headed down the road. Our first destination was to get somewhere warm to spend the rest of the winter in. We chose Arizona and headed that way. We ended up in Lake Havasu for about 3 weeks, then moved on to Wickenburg for a few weeks before heading towards Colorado Springs in April to visit with friends. From there, we headed to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for the summer for our first workamper job at the Log Cabin Resort and Campground in Curtis, MI. We had a great time there working for Pam and Rick Clark, they were great bosses to learn what was expected from us as workampers. After a nice and laid back summer we headed to our hometown of Youngstown, OH to spend time with family. While there we worked for Rich's sister in-law Teri helping her at her business that manufactures quality miniatures for doll houses and model buildings. We got to spend almost 2 months in Youngstown before heading to the south east corner of Kansas to work for Amazon.com for their Christmas rush season. This was a very interesting job, seeing how Amazon.com operates from the inside was very facinating. When we had helped Santa get all the toys out to everybody, we then headed south to help Yogi Bear entertain all the kids in the San Antonio, TX area. This would be our last stop for 2008 and into a large part of 2009, but that is another map coming soon!

2008 Travels

EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Fruita, Colorado

Badlands - Take 2

6/19/2012  Sheridan Lake to Badlands National Park
Since we already had a pass to the Badlands NP that was still good for 1 more day, we decided to take another trip out there. This time we were on our own and tried to incorporate as many dirt, gravel and back roads as we had time for. Another good ride to the Badlands, we did some Geocaching, got to see lots of wildlife, visited a Minuteman Missile site and were able to ride a lot of dirt roads. 204 miles 30% dirt/gravel.

Badlands National Park

6/13/2012     Sheridan Lake to The Badlands National Park
We went for a ride on the KLR, along with Mark and Debbie Pinson (workampers we met at Amazon in Kentucky). Mark and Debbie have a Triumph Rocket III, so we avoided dirt roads on this ride.
We went to Badlands National Park, Minuteman Missile National Historic Site, and Wall Drug. A quick return trip by Interstate and we were back in Rapid City. A fun ride with friends but no dirt :(

Spearfish Canyon

6/12/2012          Hill City to Spearfish

Started out in Hill City, up Deerfield Lake Road till the pavement ends (Yeah!).

Went up Flag Mtn. to do a Geocache, a great 360* view. A few miles later we ran into a National Guard group doing maneuvers in the forest. From there it was all dirt until we got to Spearfish.

Had lunch at Culvers, did a Geocache and headed up Spearfish Canyon. Stopped at Roughlock Falls for a Geocache and to check out the falls, make sure to hike to the bottom, the view is awesome. Just after we got back to the car, a storm blew in and we had dime sized soft hail hitting the car. Had to turn on the defroster to keep the windows from fogging up due to the hail splatting on the windows. From Roughlock Falls we ran a mixture of pavement and dirt roads to get to Roubaix Lake on Hwy 385. A short drive on 385 took us back to Horse Creek Inn.
163 miles 50 - 60% dirt : )

We have another blog!

Friday, June 08, 2012


This is a map of an afternoon drive we took today.
Of course we were out Geocaching and took the road least traveled. These were some nice National Forest Service roads. Geocaching took us to this neat abandoned gold mine. Looks like someone is working to preserve this, a big thanks to whomever you are!