Saturday, August 22 On Our Way!

I got up very early to do last minute preparation, loading, etc.  Marc was already in California, having left the day before for his trip to the Sierras.  The first issue we had was missing tow straps.  We had a lot of "stuff" and the only way to fit it all in (even with a Suburban) was to put the two coolers (one with cold things and one with other food) on a grate attached to the trailer hitch.  We attached that just fine, but couldn't find the tow straps to keep them  on there.  I called Marc at Brian's house in California and woke them up...they had had a very late night out in LA the night before.  Ooops..

Then we were trying to find all the cords for the portable DVD player and couldn't find the one that would play it off the car battery. When you're camping and unable to recharge the battery, it's nice to be able to recharge it in the car.  We were facing a few long days in the car and I wanted Jack to be able to watch movies (in the car, absolutely NOT while camping).

Due to the delays we got a very late start.  We had 626 miles to drive...not a good day to get on the road at 11!  We stopped in Bue Earth for a quick lunch and a visit to the Green Giant statue. 

Cross that off the list!  Our friends the Diekema-Nottleson family were headed home from their trip to Yellowstone/Tetons/Black Hills today so I called to see where they were.  It turned out we would be crossing paths on I90!  We talked again and arranged to meet at exit 296 on I90 in South Dakota.  A half hour later we exited...and looked across the bridge to see their blue van exiting at exactly the same moment!  Weird!  We stopped at a small town grocery store that had a sign saying you must spend $.50 to use the bathroom!  Another sign across the street read "Free bathrooms this way" or something like that.  We took pictures and then went into the store and bought junk food, so we could use the bathroom. 

The shelves were pretty bare...they must not get much business.  It was fun to see them and meet Betsy's new stuffed bear who is made out of recycled pop bottles...that sounds bizarre, but he is amazingly soft. 

We talked a little about their trip and then said goodbye...my crew still had something like 300 more miles to go before we slept.

We stopped at Al's Oasis outside of our usual return stopping place in Chamberlin, SD - this was supposed to be (according to the AAA Tour Book) a great family style restaurant.  It really is just a touristy place and the food was pretty awful.  We will not be going there again, that's for sure.

Haystack near Al's Oasis

Then it was just a push to make it to the black hills.  We were gonig to stay in Deadwood but decided not to go that far south of the freeway, so Rosie called some other campgrounds for me and found one in Sturgis that was only $7 a night.  That is unheard of.  So we set our sights on getting to Sturgis. 

It was dark by the time we reached Rapid City.  Just before we got there Rosie screamed and yelled "spider!".  One had crawled across her.  It must have come out of the camping gear that was in the far back, that had been in the garage.  A few minutes later, driving in traffic at 70 mph, it went across MY arm.  I was NOT HAPPY and flung it away. It landed on Rosie's book in the back seat and she squished it. I still couldn't stop being creeped out though.

We finally reached our campground at around 10 p.m. in the dark and got camp set up, watched by a white cat who almost came in the tent.  She seemed like she might live there but she was VERY thin.  Our campsite had fallen apples all over the ground and I wondered if we would be woken by raccoons in the middle of the night.

I slept all right and was very happy to know that I was capable of driving over 620 miles in one day entirely on my own...think of the possibilities that opens up!