Rapid City, SD

We left Thayne, WY Thursday, after having our final meeting with the park owner. Our car was in a nearby town having the radiator flushed. We were hoping to have the timing belt changed but the wrong parts came in so I told them we only had time to do the radiator. We got the rig ready for the road and drove down to the garage. I dropped Linda at the garage and took the road next to the garage to find a place to sit till she could come with the car to hook up. About a half mile down that road was a large parking lot which was a perfect place to sit and wait for her. She came a few minutes later, we hooked up and hit the road.

We drove till around six that evening and pulled off at a parking area, off of 80 and spent the night. Hit the road the next morning and made it to Rapid City, SD a little after two. Our friends, Dennis and Colette work at Hart Ranch, a beautiful membership park on the outskirts of Rapid City. They were able to get us a site here, which was lucky for us because it's bike week in Sturgis and that affects all lodging anywhere even close to Sturgis. We started seeing bikes on the road 2.5 hours out from Rapid City ! Sadly we also saw a truck and motorcycle trailer that had wrecked along the side of the road. I hope they enjoyed their ride, while at Sturgis, cause those bikes were going to see any more riding any time soon. They were toast as was the trailer !

Colette had mentioned that we could get our drivers licenses renewed, just a short ways from the park. Wow, we got set up, showered and headed out, with an armload of the necessary paperwork, to get there and get it taken care of. My clerk had my stuff all done in about three minutes but Linda came over and said her clerk wouldn't process hers because the receipt, from the park, had their address on it and not our mailing address. Oh brother....my clerk said to get her stuff and come to her window but he wouldn't give Linda her paperwork back. He told her to call the park and have them fax a new statement over to him and he'd finish it up. You know...there's one of these "by the numbers" kind of people at every work place but Linda seems to always be the one to get them and that is not a good thing for the clerk. After her calling the park, explaining what address needed to be on the statement and waiting for the fax, we finally got out of there. Yippee !!! Done for another five years. And our licenses say no vision restrictions, thanks to the paperwork our eye surgeon faxed to them saying that we no longer require glasses. That evening, we went out to dinner with Dennis and Colette to catch up since it's been four years since we've seen them last. We had a great time !

Originally we were going to leave Saturday but getting our licenses done here freed up some time in our schedule so we stayed another night. Saturday we went to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial and through Custer State Park to do the wildlife loop. Awesome day of neat things to experience. We hadn't done any of these attractions when we were here five years ago. I'll write more about all of those things in my next post...gotta get on the road. We're Badland bound today....