Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Happy Birthday Ashton!!


Today is Ashton's 6th birthday. He had his birthday party on Saturday before we left Salt Lake City. It was held at the Children's Museum and was pirate themed. He really wanted a Star Wars cake though. The party was really cute. The kids got to dress up like pirates and make their own pirate hats. While they were making their hats a big pirate named Captain No Beard came in and stole Ashton's treasure chest. The kids had to go through the museum looking for clues to where it was hidden. Once they found it a sword fight ensued and they captured Captain No Beard and the chest was returned to the party room where they had their pizza and cake and ice cream. It was a great party and the kids were entertained the whole time.

Pirate Ashton


Even Reilly got involved


Looking for clues


The sword fight


The capture


The chest is back


Mission accomplished


The Star Wars cake


We left Salt Lake City on Monday morning at our usual departure time of 10:00 and headed for Rawlins, Wyoming for the night. Not much to report there, we like uneventful drives. Not much traffic or construction and just a few mountain passes. We only spent one night there and headed out Tuesday morning at 10:00 and headed for Lusk, Wyoming. Only one night there at a Passport America park for $10 and I have to say it wasn't even worth $10. Great place for a one night stop though.



We left this morning at our usual 10:00 and headed for South Dakota. A lot of people have asked us why we were going to South Dakota. Well, as full timers the government says we have to have a physical address. Since Florida was the last place we lived we got a mail service in Pensacola. We use their address as our "home" address and have a box there for our mail. They send our mail to us wherever we tell them to. Because it's our "home" address we pay our insurance on the the truck and 5th wheel based on that. Florida has high insurance rates because of hurricane damages so we pay part of that. We found out we can do the same thing in South Dakota with another mail service. The reason we chose South Dakota is for that reason along with the fact there is no state income tax here either. We'll end up taking a few days to get everything transferred over, get our driver's licenses, license plates and register to vote. We're going to do some sightseeing too while we're here. We're really close to the Badlands, Black Hills, Mt Rushmore and Custer. Should be a fun time.

Our new "home"


After we got all set up we went out to find something to eat. We are actually in Piedmont which is in between Sturgis (the motorcycle place) and Rapid City. The campground here is behind a RV dealership and it's pretty empty. There are about 5 rigs down at the end of our row which are occupied by some freeway workers and one other rig a few sites down from us. The reservations and fees ($15 a night) are taken care of by the Mail Service in Rapid City but the check in is done by the staff inside the dealership.

We drove up to Sturgis and found a Chinese buffet. It was one of the worst Chinese buffets we've had but it filled us up and we can now say we've been to Sturgis. The motorcycles weren't there but in August they'll descend upon Sturgis by the thousands. I know we wouldn't want to be there then.


Tomorrow we'll head out and get started on taking care of our business here. We haven't had cell phone service since we left Rawlins. I'm not sure why. We have T-Mobile but should be able to pick up any service in the area. I did a search on my phone for available networks and all it came up with was "roaming". I guess we'll be without phones till we leave here. Maybe it's time to come up with another plan for our phones. If anybody needs to get ahold of us you can reach us by email only.

3 comments:

JB said...

Are you sure you're not in Heaven. I thought that was the only place that had "No" cell service anymore.

Speedy said...

How about chat...??

Speedy said...

How about chat...??