Back to South Dakota

 

Worlds Largest Pheasant in Huron SD

We enjoyed it so much we went back to get another night but it was Friday and the whole campground was reserved by the gamblers for the weekend so we rapidly filled the water tank, dumped the other tanks and headed West for South Dakota.

We enjoy running around South Dakota. Much of the western side is taken up with the Black Hills, famous for Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, Spearfish and the Crazy Horse Monument. All of which we have visited.

The Eastern and Central part is for the most part farmland with miles and miles of corn, sunflowers, soy beans, cattle and horses. The Lakota tribal land are there also.

This area was what were called “The Prairies” when the settlers came thru. Thousands of square miles of grassland on which vast herds of Buffalo grazed and on which the Native Americans depended.

Plains Indian Head Dress

Laura Ingals Wilding wrote the famous books upon which the TV series “Little House on the Prairie” was based. Our first stop once back in South Dakota was to a small town, De Smet.

No luxury houses on the Prairies

The barns were pretty fancy though

And the barn dwellers.

This is one of the several places where the Ingals family lived as they apparently moved fairly often, which accounts for the several “Ingalls Homesteads” we have seen around the area.

De Smet is the home of the Laura Ingalls Wilding Pageant so I suppose they lead the field in Homesteads!

You get to tour the area in a covered wagon

And with a little help you can drive the wagon,

Of course none of the buildings at the homestead are original as the farm changed hands over the years. They are “representational” and offer a peek into the life of a prairie farm in the 1850’s. Today it is a quaint place to visit but back then it must have been a tough place in the middle of the harsh winter.

The church was moved here complete

There is even a garage

Some campgrounds belong to the US Government. National Parks, Forestry Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Army Corps of Engineers (COE). They can be found using the Recreation.gov website and reservations are made there too. We like them because we have the Senior Pass for getting into all National Parks free. A bonus is 50% off the cost of camping in their campgrounds.

So near Fort Thompson SD for $9 a night we got 50 amp electricity, a faucet for water (Which we were not allowed to stay attached too except for filling our tank) and a dump station on the way out.

Left Tailrace Campground near Fort Thompson SD

Like most COE parks this was adjacent to a dam, the Big Bend Dam in this case. It was very well kept and extremely peaceful.

St Josephs Indian School

Exploring the local area we stumbled across the Akta Lacota Museum and St Josephs Indian School. We spent a morning wandering around the school museum, tribal cultural center, medicine garden and the nearby town of Chamberlain.

In the Museum

The Medicinal Garden

Heading West we decided to just pound down I90. Yes we actually drove 200 miles on Interstates! Forgive us. We have explored this stretch of the state in the past and to be honest there isn’t too much to see, just rolling farmlands with immense fields of corn. So Interstate it was to Rapid City and the Elks Lodge we like so much.

Sheri had mentioned that she loves reading the blog and seeing how we bump into people we know just here there and everywhere. Right here in Rapid City we saw that Ralph and Crystal who we know from our Motorcycle days in San Diego and who have just celebrated their 2^nd anniversary of full timing where in town. Naturally a meet up was planned.

Then there was a message from Bob and Carol who we know from Sundance in Casa Grande. They were going to be in Rapid City too. How good was that?

And suddenly we were 6 for dinner at the Lodge and it was Prime Rib night. Everyone just got along great and the evening just flew by.

When we first started our full time adventures we had dreamed of sitting talking to fellow full timers and our dreams came true right here at this Lodge. How apt then to be back after 5 years and have a repeat performance! We met a very nice couple Austin and Leigh who are Full Timers, Escapees and Bloggers. www.boundingaround.com and we spent a great evening swapping places to go and campgrounds to stay at.

Our reason for being back in Rapid City of course was to renew our drivers licenses which expired earlier this year. South Dakota kindly extended them a year but we hope to be in UK next year when they will be due for renewal.

Anyway our appointment finally came around and in about 10 minutes we both had shiny new licenses in hand,

Immediately the dreaded “Hitch Itch” kicked in and we both wanted to move on. We squeezed in a visit with Ralph and Crystal, with a dinner out, then sketched in a route back to Casa Grande.

We are on the road again, as the old song goes.

West again

 David and Sheri had a full calendar for us with trips to a local horse event, dinners and lunches out, a visit to a historic bar/hotel in East Troy (Which was haunted by at least 2 spirits). The planned 2 weeks got extended to 3!

To make sure we weren’t bored David and Sheri also took us to a few “Gigs” that David’s band were playing. David is a very good Country singer with a deep bass voice and very popular in the area.

Atmospheric lighting at one of the gigs

One of the Gigs was at a bar called Ducks Crossing where “Duck” has a great facility with darts, pool, a softball diamond, volleyball courts, horse shoe pits and cornhole. If that’s not enough he had the annual Duck Fest organized for the Labor Day weekend.

David (Left) singing

The town had canceled it’s July 4^th event due to Covid and that meant no fireworks show. They rescheduled it for the Labor Day weekend so Duck got both a band and fireworks, We had a lot of fun.

Next to Ducks place is this beautiful Catholic Church with attached asylum.
Many spooky stories were told about his place.

As all good things must come to an end and we have an appointment in Rapid City so we decided to leave on Labor Day, our thinking was that the campgrounds would be empty.

Then plans changed again as a cold front and severe thunderstorms came rolling in on the Sunday. The forecast even showing snow in Montana and South Dakota! This after it being so hot a week ago that we were running the AC! Now it might get down into the 40’s overnight and we will be running the heater instead.

Sitting looking at the forecast we decided it would be smarter to stay until Wednesday if that was OK with David and Sheri. We would still have 15 days to cover about 900 miles.

We sat tight as wind and rain swept thru the area, and then headed West on a drizzly, miserable day.

Naturally this was the day that the windshield wiper decided that it would pack up! For some reason the driver side wiper arm suddenly shot off to the left and hung itself over the side mirror, a little inconvenient but luckily we were on a smaller road and being high up, the windshield wasn’t collecting a lot of road spray.

Investigation revealed that the arm was held in place by a Nyloc locknut which had somehow loosened up. Tightening it up again let us continue for another hour or so until it happened again.

Fortunately the rain stopped and our planned overnight at the Walmart in Winona MN had us parked right next to not only Walmart but also Minard’s which is a HUGE store that sells literally everything. More fortunately that they have a full aisle of hardware, nuts, bolts, screws in every thread form imaginable because this American built coach had metric threads on the wipers! 90 cents later we were good to go.

Our “Kinda” plan (Because we don’t really plan just Kinda) had us on backroads (Naturally!) thru Minnesota and we had kinda decided to boondock for most of the trip.

Boondocking is where you stay out of campgrounds, staying at opportune free camping spots. Truck stops, Walmarts, Cabella Stores, Cracker Barrel restaurants. They all allow you to stay overnight with permission from the store manager.

To do this you need water, battery power and a generator. All of which we had when we left Sheri and David’s place.

BUT when we arrived at the first Walmart the water pump had stopped working! I investigated but frustratingly the pump was working fine. It took me a second to realize that the tank was empty! There is a drain valve on the tank that is cunningly placed so that if the hoses in the same bay move around they can push the valve slightly open. Hence empty tank.

Hence a change of plan in the middle of nowhere.

Looking into our favorite app “RV Parky” we found a casino with a campground 30 miles north of our next planned stop in New Ulm MN, To our delight we discovered a gem. Beautifully groomed, concrete parking spaces, 50 amp, free cable TV and $30 a night during the week with their Players Club membership that was free to join!

The casino was almost empty on Thursday

We soon discovered that it was a quiet casino and everyone was wearing masks and staying socially distant. Happy hour was 4pm to 7pm and their cocktail special was only $3. A happy hour soon followed!

The $3 happy hour cocktail was pretty but POTENT!

We enjoyed it so much we went back to get another night but it was friday and the whole campground was reserved by the gamblers for the weekend so we rapidly filled the water tank, dumped the other tanks and headed West for South Dakota.