Custer Vacation Day 1 - September 19, 2015

Saturday morning came quite early for me! At 2:30 am my eyes popped open after a full Friday evening of frenzied packing, rearranging, and organizing. It takes plenty of effort and stuff to move the five women of the Crazy Owl Tribe consisting of myself, my sister Sandy, my sister Gin, my niece and Sandy’s daughter Dawn, and my niece and Gin’s daughter Tiffany, across country for nine days! Because we are camping, we also have to take food and cooking utensils. Sandy, aka Black Kettle, was in charge of this portion of the vacation. She did all the meal planning and shopping. Black Kettle did a great job and even put together what is called the chuck wagon. It is a large, shelved locker box of the items needed for a small kitchen and cooking over a campfire.

Oddly enough, as I was waking up at 2:30 and IM’ing the rest of the tribe, Dawn, aka Li’l Pot, messaged back she was headed to bed for a few hours! But I still had to make a bank deposit, leave a detailed message on the phone at the flower shop, and write out instructions for Dan and Eric about the dog and cat, plus a myriad of other miscellaneous small tasks before I drove to the meeting point of departure. We were scheduled to depart at 6:15 am. Alas, we got started a little later than planned but Gin put the pedal to the metal and we made up a bit of time.

Ginny, aka Bean Gatherer was in charge of transportation and is driving us around in a white Chrysler rocket. As the HildeVan headed west, laughter and storytelling ensued. Several words and phrases seemed to keep popping up to make us giggle.  ChaChaCha, Gnash, Side-Eye, and Abandoned come to mind, all referring and connected to family jokes.  Let me tell you traveling with the younger generation of the family certainly is educational! I definitely learned things that I am unable to share with you here on this family-friendly blog! Thanks Tiff, aka Seeks Pie! Oh, and traveling with the younger generation also reminds me how often one needs to stop for any one of a million reasons! But we are on vacation time and whipping over for a pit stop for any reason is welcomed – even to simply take a photo of a storm cellar!

 A couple of extra unplanned stops brought us into Thurman, Iowa only about 15 minutes later than our anticipated time of noon. My carefully planned itinerary was once again, on track and I was relieved! You see, probably not surprising to those of you who know me, I was the planner of this trip west. I’m also known as Thunder Talker because I am not afraid to tell everyone what to do and where and when to do it, sometimes in a loud voice, and I organized the travel details for our weeklong vacation. I made the reservations, planned the itinerary, and arranged the stops for entertainment along the way. I had meetings with the girls, assigned homework for enlightenment about some of the sights we would see, and made them all watch Dances With Wolves to get in the right frame of mind for our vacation west. Happily, everyone agreed that the movie portion was not a great sacrifice with the extra bonus of seeing Kevin Costner’s naked bum!

Finally at the Sugar Clay Winery we experienced the highlight of the day which was meeting with some of our Thru The Stones/Outlander friends under bright blue skies and warm temperatures. Nineteen of us gathered from Kansas City, Omaha, Lincoln, Decatur, and the Quad Cities for wine, a grilled hamburger and picnic lunch with good conversation. Flat Jamie joined us and we laughed and reminisced till it was time to visit the Moonstone Lavender gardens across the road from the winery. This lovely lavender farm is run by Sheryl Hess.  Sheryl is the lady at the TTS convention who taught the lavender class and had the lavender store.  Sheryl taught us about growing lavender and shared some yummy treats featuring, of course, lavender. Black Jack Randall would have loved them! This was a perfect place to take photos and talk some more with the lavender field blooming in the background. It was so nice to see old friends from my extended Outlander family plus meet some new ones! Thank you to each of you special ladies and one gent, who met with us to spend the afternoon. Our time together was short but sweet and I look forward to our next gathering. Hugs to you all!

Three more hours in the HildeVan rocketing down the highway brought us to Yankton, SD. A very nice KOA cabin was waiting for us and we moved in. Li’l Pot and Seeks Pie prepared a delicious supper of Reuben sandwiches while Black Kettle made hot German Potato Salad. Yum-Yum! Bean Gatherer started our campfire where we spent the evening laughing and anticipating the next day before retiring to bed at a decent hour. Rest was definitely going to be needed for the adventures we have planned for tomorrow! Can't wait!