The Black Hills

We got our house back!!! And it's mostly fixed... Left Elkhart last Friday, drove to Kansas City to visit with Billy and Susie for the weekend, and as usual, drank too much beer. And had a gas. Then spent the better part of last week outrunning t-storms and tornados! Drove across Iowa and South Dakota through cell after cell and finally got out of the nasty midwest summer weather.

We stopped at Wall Drug, SD, then drove through Bear Country USA in Rapid City, SD. Very cool...lots of grizzly & black bears roaming freely, elk, reindeer, mountain lions, wolves, foxes, coyotes...it's a big park that you drive through (windows rolled up) and the animals are just walking about. Waylon was a little intimidated! We're now camped in Sturgis, SD in one of the coolest campgrounds we've been at! They had a steak bar-b-q last night, and one of the men, Bill Reed, was singing old country music; turns out he was a songwriter and toured for many years with the Nashville crowd, and had lots of stories. And the people here are very young old people! Wish we could stay longer, but we need to get to Idaho. (Rush-No-More Campground).

Went to Sturgis, Spearfish Canyon and Deadwood today. Spearfish was gorgeous, and we don't know why they call these the Black Hills...they're mountains. It's Wild Bill days in Deadwood this weekend, so they played out some shoot-em-ups and had live music on the street. And I was even able to drop some $ at a blackjack table. We're camped next to Dale Gribble (for any King of the Hill fans)...he sounds just like him! None of our pictures from today turned out for some reason. Tomorrow it's on to Yellowstone.