Day 3 (Wednesday) here at the Cam-Plex for the FCRV Campvention stayed somewhat overcast with a comfortable 72°  Perfect weather for getting out and walking around, so that’s what we did.

There weren’t any seminars or activities scheduled today that peaked our interest, so after walking little “Coach” and finishing up yesterday’s blog post; we jumped into my Dad’s Jeep to go check out the area along with my Dad and his camera (so fair warning – extra pictures today) 🙂  Unfortunately, my stepmom Elaine was scheduled to pass out the final door prizes from 2 – 4 PM so her unswerving sense of duty and unwavering dedication to the cause prevented her from joining us 🙁

We drove around to the northwest corner of the Cam-Plex and stopped at the Energy Exhibit, which is a permanent collection of vehicles and equipment that represent this area, which often calls itself the ‘Energy Capital of the World‘ due to the huge low-sulfur coal mining concerns that still sustain growth and support jobs in the town of Gillette.

There were quite a few representative pieces of equipment from the coal mining operations of the area on display…

Our grandson Kaan even started a little earth moving of his own…

Kaan wants one of these to play with in the backyard Mom…

Kaan climbed up the back of this giant earth-moving truck to check out the massive engine, and…

of course, had to follow up with the front side…

to sit in the drivers seat…

After we had our fill (pun intended) of the earth-moving and mining equipment exhibit, we plugged the Rockpile Museum into the iPhone GPS and maneuvered our way to the north side of Gillette.

We had no trouble finding the Rockpile Museum thanks to the GPS, the sign (below), and the rock pile itself…

Don’t forget to click on this link to the museum to see more.

Not sure what this is, but it sure looks cool… an old stone age wheel maybe?  🙂  Maybe it’s a piece of petrified tree stuck in ancient sand that turned to stone with the middle of the old tree disintegrated and missing?  My dad took this picture under the museum sign.

The Rockpile Museum is… you guessed it… located next to a rock pile!  The rock pile is a local landmark and at one time overlooked the massive stockyards and rodeo shows.  In even earlier days it was a favorite landmark that the cowboys used to find town and they often camped out under the boulders.

Here’s some pictures inside…

Now this is an old RV…

This old RV has all the amenities of home…

More pics from in and around the museum… enjoy…

We watched some really cool short films… I really liked the one on setting off explosives to loosen up the overburden to get to the coal…

Inside an old schoolhouse.  Kaan isn’t too happy about being back in school… he thought it was still his summer break 🙂

We worked up an appetite at the Rockpile Museum, so we drove over to nearby ‘old downtown’ Gillette to find something to eat.  We found the Gillette Brewing Company with a pizzeria (Pizza Carrello) located inside the old Post Office building…

where we shared a pizza and Dad had a BLT wrap… yup, I said BLT wrap… they really make those here…

Since we still had a little time to kill before we had to get back to meet up for Tacos at the local Elks Lodge, we drove several miles north out of town to check out one of the mining operations we heard about; the Eagle Butte Coal Mine.

We were turned away at the entrance gate.  The manned shack had a young girl inside that told us we had to make reservations in town before we could enter the main coal mine area for a tour, so we just went over to an overlook and took pictures from a distance…

My Dad’s camera can really zoom in for some quality pictures…

It was almost time to get back and pick up stepmom Elaine so we could meet up with Biff & Linda Anderson for Tacos at the local Elks Lodge.  We made plans earlier in the week when we first stopped there; they need the business.  This quaint Lodge performs double-duty as the local VFW post as well.

We made it back to the campground just in time to pick up Elaine and convoy over to the lodge… a whopping quarter-mile (or less) away…

After filling up on Tacos we decided we still needed dessert at the local Dairy Queen…

And that’s it for Day 3 here at the Cam-Plex.  If you get a chance, the Rockpile Museum is definitely worth the visit and was the highlight of our day.  Hope you enjoyed the pics 🙂

This morning (Thursday) it’s a little windy and overcast.  Someone told me that part of the reason it’s so gray and overcast is because of forest fires up north and west of us.

Our plan is to go visit Devils Tower today since there isn’t a whole lot of activity here at the Campvention that interests us.  So after my Dad goes to a 9 AM seminar that he promised to take pictures of, we’ll head out on the ~62 mile trip, (104 round-trip).  Hopefully the weather holds up for us.  I want to take the Harley since we have my Dad & Elaine in their Jeep to take our grandson Kaan along with them.  Check back for a full report…