So we leave out of Cody, WY this morning, stopping in some little eatery for breakfast with 25 cent coffee and a halfway decent breakfast. Drove across Wyoming into South Dakota to go see Mt Rushmore. Our first long, long day of driving.
We get to Mt Rushmore and we find that our Nation Park pass does not work for parking. It seems that our government owns the park but parking is a private concession. We had some of the coldest water out of a water fountain ever in the park. The monument is impressive. This couldn't be done in this day and age, the unions would make it to expensive to build. Also, in some change from coffee, i was handed a few of the new $1 coins. Never saw them before so i figured that the government was stuck with millions of dollar coins so they send them to their parks system.
We left the park and headed east to drive thru Badlands National park. We got here near dusk and for a little while saw some wildlife when we first entered but after that we saw some amazing scenery until it got to dark to see really anything. The drive at night is pretty hairy, lots of sharp turns, no guard rails and big hills too drive off of if you were going too fast or not paying attention.
We were watching an amazing lightning storm in the distance.
We left the park around 9pm and headed to a campground in Belvedere, SD because that is all we could find, got caught in that amazing lightning storm with a ton of rain for about 15 minutes. I must have been driving fast because the storm stopped but it was following us the whole way. Got to the campground around 10pm, got our late reservation pass and set up camp. We put the tent up and threw our gear in the tent to only have the skies open up on us, damm storm caught me. We sat in the car for like 25 minutes to watch our tent get blown over, only two stakes were holding it in at this point, 60 mph winds, rain and lighting. When the storm passed, we found that our tent was torn, our tent poles were shredded and our gear was wet. We tossed the tent and packed the wet stuff up in black bags. The owner of the park drove up on his golf cart to see if we were alright. Told him our story and that we were going to hop back on 90 and keep driving east until i can find a hotel. It is South Dakota if you know what i mean, i could be driving forever. We asked him if he had any cabins left, we were willing to pay but he gave us one for free for the night, which was way cool.
My little guy fell out right away and we stayed up drying pillows, blankets, sleeping bags, while sipping warm IPA's until 1AM
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