I obviously am not terribly motivated to keep up the blog when we aren’t traveling, so it has (again) been weeks since I updated. I will try to catch up. Warning: there is a bunch!
I finally got caught up on my donation sewing, and I am taking a serious break. I made 20 isolation gowns of a horrid fabric that turns out to be designed for outdoor signs! It was a very heavy double knit fabric, and a bear to sew. Each gown took 2+ hours, so it was a considerable amount of work. I didn’t take any pictures because I don’t want any nightmares of them! I also finished a box of “Button Buddies” which are small absorbent pads to fit around a pediatric g-tube. Those were for The Preemie Project, and I completed 600 of them.
I was also very lucky that my son in law dug out a garden for me, and a daughter in law helped me choose plants and planted most of them! It is a shady spot facing north, so shade lovers only. Obviously lots of different types of hostas, coral bells, azaleas, variegated redbud shrub, Sweet William, and some others I can’t remember.
Still did some more piecing. I got a new die for my Accuquilt cutter, a 7” (finished) Drunkard’s Path. I ordered a fat quarter collection from Connecting Threads, and here is the first sample I made. I am thrilled! Everything went together perfectly. It certainly helps to have perfect cuts.
I started saying we were traveling, but gave no information. We took a trip to Badlands National Park for Kevin to take night sky photos of the Milky Way around a new moon. We left on a week ago on Wednesday morning, and spent the night in Fairmont, MN at the Flying Goose campground. Nice little place with lots of long term residents, but well kept and good sized sites. Thursday we stayed in Al’s Oasis campground in Chamberlain, SD. Not bad, but more open and close to the highway. We then made it to Badlands on Friday morning. The NPS concessionaire campground is Cedar Pass. It is a series of loops with bump outs along the road for sites; the vast majority would never have held a rig as big as ours. Site 76 fit us fine, though we had to wiggle around some to get in. It is an odd site where we had to drive to the site the wrong way down the road so the door didn’t open into the street. I liked the view from the campground.
We saw lots of wildlife, as expected. In addition to the ones pictured, we saw bats, an owl, and we heard coyotes. There was a large nursery herd of bison I didn’t get a good picture of. There were also a number of bachelors showing off. This guy was getting a belly scratch on a post.
We saw a surprising number of mountain sheep in at least two separate nursery herds and one herd of males.
Kevin found the guys, and this is from his (much better) camera.
It rained much of the time we were there, so we had to time our sightseeing carefully. The pictures show at least some of the beauty.
The whole purpose of coming was to get some Milky Way pictures, and the rain and clouds were bad until the very last night. Kevin got some spectacular pictures, though they need some post processing to get their full glory (he shoots in RAW format). Here is a taste.
Since we lucked out with the weather on Monday night, we left this morning happy. We are staying in the KOA in Sioux Falls, SD. Pretty place with lots of trees and a huge pull through. We paid with points because $66 was expensive! Full hook up, and we will prep the rig for its next trip to Alabama next month. Oh, and while we were gone, I cut 80 blocks of Drunkard’s Path for Kevin’s lap rug. Two thirds of them are sewn, and I am very happy with my progress. I probably could have finished them tonight, but I thought I would write instead. Taking the Accuquilt and some dies seems like a very reasonable thing on long trips.