Are we having fun yet??? You betcha! It didn't rain when we left Valentine, something must be wrong. It was sunny and very windy. We were headed west right into the stupid stuff, so guess what, we got about 2 miles to the gallon. There were hardly any cars on the road, we chalked that up to being 8:00am on a Sunday until we started reading the populations of the towns...53, 119, 24, 12. There just weren't enough people to be out driving. Finally reached the road to go north to South Dakota...what a difference, still lots of land but all agriculture.
Everything was planted with corn or wheat. Realized we were on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation a huge place. Headed west on the chosen road, driving along minding our own business and all of a sudden there's this big ole sign that says "Road Closed, find alternate route". Now we're out in the middle of know where on an Indian Reservation and the only alternate route will take us back to Nebraska....we just came form Nebraska and we didn't like the roads the first time we drove on them, why would we want to go back to stinkin' Nebraska! Along comes a car from the direction we need to go, so Dan decides to ask about the travel. Nice old Indian guy with a sedan covered in mud said we really didn't want to be goin' where he came from especially towing a trailer. The road had washed out and was under construction with tire ruts that were like "gumbo", his words not mine. So back to Nebraska we went.
Now we had talked about taking the route just south of the Nebraska border, but wanted to see more of SD. Look where that got us, back to stickin' Nebraska. So we plug along to Chadron which is the next available road to SD...it's lunch time and we need gas so we pull into a Big Bats. Don't ask, 'cause I don't have a clue, but there was a Subway and gas so we stopped. Did I mention that there's a Subway on every corner in every city in Iowa, Nebraska and SD. They have as many Subways and the south has McDonalds. We knew it was a little windy but we weren't expecting hurricane force gusts...almost sent us both flying! Despite all the "hoopla and drivin' around" we made it to Hot Springs, SD. Not sure of plans for tomorrow so stay tuned!
