We left my house about 8:30 this morning. The first casualty was my Esperanza water bottle, which I dropped in the kitchen as were headed out the door and the lid broke. We were faster and better at packing and we got out early. Our first stop was at Sapp Bros. which was a full service restaurant/chapel/gas station. The bathroom was weird with sinks in every toilet stall. We were hoping for a better lunch spot so kept driving.
We stopped and took our picture in front of the Iowa sign. We stopped for lunch at a rest stop in Iowa. We spent much of the day looking for license plates. We have found 25. There was an unconfirmed Hawaii sighting, but we didn't count it. Hopefully we will see another one.
We drove right along the Nebraska border but never actually crossed into it. We stopped at the South Dakota sign and got out in some itchy grass to take the picture. I got hives on my feet from the grass and that's we when discovered I hadn't packed the benadryl. We looked for and found a Hyvee and a Dairy Queen. Lisa parked in the expectant parent parking spot.
Once we were on I-90, we kept seeing signs for the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, and we figured we had to stop. It was about 10 minutes off the highway but fun to see. We just walked around the outside and took pictures. We went in only to use the bathroom. They have to replace the outside every year!
We targeted Chamberlain, SD as our destination. We are staying at American Creek Campground, which we picked from the book because it was half the price of the other two. It turned out to be really nice right on the Missouri River (go figure we drive all this way to sit by the Mighty Mo!). We were assigned to the tent area, which turned out to be a not-very-flat, not-very-big area already occupied by a few tents and a big group of mostly shirtless people. We cooked our spaghetti at a nearly table and waited until the group finished cooking in their electric skillet, with the longest extension cord ever. They cleared out and we moved in and set up our tent.
While Lisa was outside rolling down the window, Matty and Riley (11 and 5) came by to talk to her. They were quite chatty but luckily returned to their tent shortly.
It is super windy so we are hoping the tent does not blow away with us in it. Now we are sitting by the river watching the sunset. The tent area is filling up. One couple arrived and set up the biggest tent ever. I think they are fighting and she seems to be not very excited about camping. She has a giant roller suitcase that she rolled across the grass and into the tent. A bunch of people came down to the dock and we were afraid it might get a little noisy but they have all left.
It is a little later now and the wind has died down almost completely so hopefully our tent is safe. There are big rocks all along the edge of the river. It reminds us of the rocks Port Macquarie where we stopped and watched the dolphins.
As we were sitting by the river, this guy came up and started talking to us. He asked how old we were and said he was 18. His name was Michael. We said we were a lot older than him, and he guessed 34. Then he asked us how old we thought he was. We cleverly guessed 18, and he said that he was 18, but people usually thought he looked 24. We thought he'd leave but he stuck around a long time, sitting on the ground beside our chairs.
He said he made $100/hour working construction and had already saved $800 to buy a $19,000 bike with flames. He said he was single, looking for a nice girl, did we want to go for a walk? Then he asked us if we had any beer. We told him we had none. He said he had four kinds back at his camp site. Eventually he did leave, but only after filling every silence with, "So....." We went to bed about 1030 and it was pretty quite by then. A little bright from the fishing dock lights.
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