South Dakota

Thursday morning brought new light to our trip we departed The Windmill RV Park around 6:00 and it was a beautiful sunrise on the highway. The colors were unbelievable, driving through eastern South Dakota that early seeing the bales of hay, the antelope, and deer along the highway was so peaceful. We stopped at Mitchell and visited the Corn Palace, looking at the photos on the walls of the different years was really neat, but how long can one stay at the Corn Palace. Our next destination was Chamberlain, SD were we stopped at the rest area overlook on the Missouri River. It is unbelievable how that river made a difference in the topography of the area, east side open plains, west side rolling hills. From Chamberlain we took the South Dakota Scenic Byway up the Missouri to Fort Pierre, I truly believe that is a trip everyone should make if in the area. Driving through the reservation was so peaceful; thoughts continued to flow through my mind. I was trying to imagine what it was actually like in 1804 - 1806 when Lewis & Clark first traveled through the area. Jokingly outside a few domesticated cows and a few ranches it’s not much different.
From Fort Pierre we went on to the Badlands where we ran into James Lehman and his wife in their 85FC35 which they bought a little over a year ago off eBay in South Carolina. We visited for a short period they were on their way to Joliet, Wyoming and we wanted to tour the Badlands at sunset. The sun cast a thousand different colors over the reds, grays, and pink formations of the eroding terrain through the Badlands. We saw pheasant, mule deer and Fran found a clutch of decaying snake eggs, we were in hopes it would be dinosaurs but I think it was just gopher snake eggs. Thursday night we stayed at the Budget Inn & RV resort at Interior, SD population 67. What a hoot that place was, I came to the conclusion that if they use the words resort in their name it is suppose to give them a better chance of folks wanting to stay there. We’ll mark that one off our future return list.
Friday morning was another early start, we were off to Custer State Park, oops all fudge I forgot to make reservations, so there was no openings at Custer until Sunday so we found a really nice place belonging to the National Forrest Service named Oreville Campground it’s about 8 miles from the town of Custer on SR385 and it’s clean, quiet and the rates are not bad considering the commercial rates in the area, we paid $19 per night to dry camp. We were able to get into Stockade North in Custer State Park for Sunday so we will be moving tomorrow.
Well we gave up on an extended stay at Custer State Park, so we moved on to North Dakota to see the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND.