Badlands and Beyond....

We had a great time at Badlands National Park yesterday. We last went through the park five years ago when we came through South Dakota for our drivers license. It was a beautiful day, with big fluffy clouds in a bright blue sky, which made for a great viewing day from many of the overlooks. With Sturgis ending, it was also busy with bikers stopping on their way home. I know many of you are wondering, with us being so close to Sturgis why we didn't go there while we were in Rapid City. I've been curious about the whole Sturgis thing, in years past, but after listening to loud pipes from bikers for three hours on the way to Rapid City, the curiosity passed. While we were out on Saturday and Sunday, at the various attractions, repeatedly the bikers were parked in dedicated RV spots. Apparently they think that if they are there in "numbers", that makes them large enough to park where the RVers should park. When Linda and I were at Mount Rushmore, we had several bikers walk by us that should have spent their money on a bar of soap instead of whatever they spent it on. Not my idea of a good time. We heard on the local news today that nine bikers were killed and 50 injured during this year's event. Lots of drug arrests and two bikers were life flighted to an area hospital. Sad to hear news like that. Attending Sturgis isn't on my bucket list !

Our view during lunch in the rig....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed our time in the park. Linda found the NASCAR race on the radio so we listened to that while driving through the park and while we were eating lunch at one of the pull offs. Linda was chatting with a young lady, who stopped next to the rig to ask us about the garage area. She was driving from California to Fort Bragg, in North Carolina.

We left the Badlands and moseyed down the road till we got to a rest area at mile marker 218. The wind was blowing so hard that it was really tough to steer the rig so I was happy that we had a short day of driving. Stayed there for the night and left around eight this morning for the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Talk about crazy busy....they were expecting six buses today and three of them were there while we were there. This is a neat place that we also visited five years ago. Big changes this time around though ! They now have a movie that talks about the history of the corn palace, which is neat. They have opened a large gift shop area on the floor of the hall (on the basketball court) and the proceeds of that go towards the changing of the scenes each year, which costs about $160,000 annually.  It takes 12 different types of corn to make the different color variations and all of it is grown on approx. 100 acres by one farmer. It's hand planted and hand picked to get the best ears that will work on the different pictures. The scenes are laid out on black roofing paper and then the ears are cut in half and nailed to the walls. They were finishing up the last two scenes while we were there so we got to see them  bundle and cut the straw-type of material that went around the edges. You can see where they are filling in around the brown decoration. What a time consuming process but oh so neat when it's done. This year's theme is "Youth Activities".

After we left Mitchell, we drove to Madison and went to our mail forwarding service....My Dakota Address. Just a simple store on the main street in Madison. We've never met Terri, who runs the business, so it was great to put a face to the voice on the phone. She has been a huge help to us since 2007, answering all sorts of questions about registrations, health insurance, etc. Anything to do with South Dakota.....Terri has lots of good info. As I mentioned, we picked up our mail. Guess what we got in the mail.....Our passports !!! yippee....The supervisor who got involved, at the Aurora, CO processing center was a big help to us and called us personally to let us know everything we had sent in was fine and our passports would be in the mail. As far as drivers licenses, auto, bike & RV registrations and passports, we are good to go !

When we originally thought that we'd get our drivers licenses renewed in Madison, we needed to have a receipt from a campground in South Dakota so had made a reservation at Walkers Point Recreation Area. They have a small campground there, on a lake so that is where we are spending tonight. It's an electric only site but there is a water and dump station as you enter the campground. Beautiful site along the lake.....Boomer has been in swimming twice already. Tomorrow we head out for Gretna, NE and our next assignment. It's been a wonderful couple of days on the road, exploring this great country of ours. Time to get back to work....