A driving day today. We got up after sort of a crummy sleep session due to a truly spectacular lightning and thunder demonstration that sizzled through Chamberlain from about 3:00 to 5:00 AM. We could turn out the lights in the Barbarian Invader and still see pretty well with blue/white lighting being provided free of charge by the thunderstorm. The storm also provided some pretty extraordinary rumbles and outright explosions that seemed to start way north of us and end up way south of our camp spot. A couple spots away some folks were camping in a tent when we went to bed but we noticed they were gone in the morning.
About 8:30 we chugged some coffee, gobbled up some cereal and prepared for travel. The weather was still overcast when we left but there was no rain, yet. We cruised out through Chamberlain, over the Missouri River and took the ramp for I-90 westbound. The trip west through south central South Dakota runs through some really gorgeous farmland and prairie that seems to run right out to the horizon.
After a couple hours we pulled off in a little non-town called Kadoka where we drove into a diesel stop that offered the most inexpensive price on fuel – $2.159 per gallon. That is even cheaper than Texas. The Bakken oilfield in the Dakotas certainly seems to be offering some benefits to the mere 800,000 souls living in South Dakota. I wish my tank would have been empty so I could have bought even more cheap diesel.
We got back onto I-90 before the rain came but even when it did start raining it was light and lasted only about 40 miles. There is about 20 miles of construction in progress on I-90 which has detoured the two eastbound lanes into one of the westbound lanes so the driving through these sections has a closing speed with the opposing traffic of 130 miles per hour and the contractor has provided a series of confidence-generating plastic bollards to keep oncoming lanes from colliding. It is a bit hair-raising driving through these projects.
The last bit of the drive is through the Badlands and they look pretty spectacular. We will be going back to cruise through them. We finally pulled into Rapid City after passing a phenomenal selection and number of billboards advertising tourist activities including caves, dinosaur museums, restaurants, fireworks vendors, breweries, wineries and a museum dedicated to a guy named Borglum who carved the faces at Mount Rushmore along with ubiquitous ads for Wall Drug. We missed them all. Perhaps we will go back east to check out a couple of these spots, without our home in tow.
Once we pulled into our campsite for the next four days, Hart Ranch RV Resort, we set up and went hunting for a spare tire and wheel to replace the tire and wheel which naughtily fell off the back of the trailer in Michigan, only to be picked up by some obviously responsible motorist before we could return the three miles and recover them. We fortunately found a great tire guy who rounded up a wheel to fit and a used spare tire and we took off to purchase a new spare tire carrier to replace the crummy one that broke in Michigan and started the whole problem. We continued to a store and were extremely fortunate to find Deschutes Black Butte porter for less than it costs in OR or CA. With booty in hand, we returned to Hart Ranch to try some of the porter for quality. It was hunky-dory.
Hart Ranch really is an RV resort. They have a very nifty main office with a business center, pools, hot tubs, multiple big luxurious shower and restroom facilities, mostly paved RV spots but, strangely, some of the spots don’t have sewer connections, including ours. They do have spiffy dump stations that we will be utilizing. We are not really in a position to bitch since our RPI membership lets us stay here for $15 a night.