After we finally escaped from Colorado we got about 175 miles down the road, stopping at Chimney Rock Pioneer Crossing for a two days.  The place offered full service hook ups with a very attractive view of the name sake formation out our main front window.  Chimney rock is illuminated all night, and looks like some sort of octopus alien landing in the desert.

Chimney Rock

It is a small RV Park, about 20 spaces total, with rates dependent on what level of amperage you hook up to.  We ended up paying $25 plus tax each night, which seemed quite fair given the extraordinary view.  The park is situated on 160 acres of mostly clear fields and farmland.  Two pairs of the pull through sites were specifically designed and built to facilitate pairs of RVs travelling together such that they could have their main entrances face each other, creating a sort of joint yard between them.

Perhaps the best feature of the park is the owner, Joe.  He was incredibly helpful, spending part of his morning helping me find an oil leak that I assumed was transmission fluid but turned out to be regular motor oil.  The only down side to our stay was that we did not get the chance to explore since the weather turned cold and rainy the second day.

Alien Octopus

We left Chimney Rock and pushed half way across Nebraska to the small town of Elm Creek, leaving us roughly 200 miles more before we reach the Iowa border and turn south.  About half an hour before I was ready to call it quits for the day, we pulled into a rest stop and consulted the Passport-America book to check for nearby RV Parks with the heavily discounted PA rate.  We didn’t need anything fancy, just electrical power and a safe place for the night.  Perfectly positioned we found Sunny Meadows Campground only 30 more minutes down the road, exactly where I wanted to stop, offering a $15 PA rate with no restrictions for full hook up sites.

Reading the restrictions for each park on the Passport-America site is important: many of the participating places have length of stay minimums or maximums for the 50% off rate, and even more of a pain there are often the date restrictions blocking out entire months during their high season.  For instance the handful of PA parks in the Florida Keys block out January through March, some even block December and part of the summer.  We managed to lock in our favorite RV resort in Venice the week before the PA restrictions go into effect, but it looks like we are out of luck for The Keys.

Our site at Chimney Rock

Next, onward to Iowa, maybe.