Today has been interesting.
We left Keystone this morning. We picked up 16 just outside the campground and headed North or East or both. We picked up 16B and followed that until we found 44. 44 on through the badlands. It was HOT. We had been spoiled by good weather while in the Mt. Rushmore area. Ugh. We passed up the cmapground that we thought we would spend a couple nights in just outside BadLands National Park and kept right on trucking through SD on 44. We finally gave up on 44 and picked up US 18. We passed a very interesting hog operation along the way (grassy knoll productions), we saw really interesting rock formations in the Bad Lands. We saw bicyclists off to the side of the road just past a bison farm they seemed to be providing first aid of some sort to one of the four cyclists. The two that were standing there did not flag us down so we kept on going. I drove around a car that was wrecked into a guard rail somewhere along 44 but didn't stop as it was all closed up and several other people had just driven around it as well and we had just met the sheriff's vehicle on a mission a little before we came upon the wreck. This road was rated as a truck road but after the BadLands we could have counted the number of vechicles we saw on our fingers and toes and that went on for miles and miles. The winds today were a factor in the driving. It was hitting us from the side for a good number of miles this afternoon. I felt like one of those bobbing head animals fighting the wind.
We stopped in Winner, SD for a late afternoon meal. We have lost another hour along the way today. We are now in Central Time Zone...according to Jerry and our phones. 44 didn't have any signs letting us know we had crossed that line.
18 was a nice road. But finding this beautiful campground was an interesting trip. Jerry had to get out and guide me in a U-turn after the road to campground we wanted to be in was on a closed road. It only said "no thru traffic" not that the campground was not accessible. Ugh. Almost had to unhook but he could tell we would make it. So off we went to the other campground that Streets and Trips tells us is a Corp. of Engineers...but it really isn't. We are in a beautiful campground. Much like corp camgrounds but not one of them. We are on North Point Recreation Area backed into the lake. The lake is Lake Francise Case/Missouri River.
We filled up with water just across from our campsite at the drinking fountain. Even had threaded pipe! The camper across from the water fountain came over to ask what we dumping when he saw the fresh water start coming out the overflow.
We ended up spending a night around their campfire discussing Mt. Rushmore and the ills and great things about our country and anything else that needed fixing. A young fellow that was sleeping in the site next to us...not even a tent..stopped and chatted for awhile too. He is headed for Chicago from Colorado.
You'll see the beautiful sunset that happen just behind us. What a nice end to a beautiful day of sunflowers, maybe saffron plants, straw and hay fields, corn, after we passed the rocks of the Bad Lands.
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