South Dakota really knows how to predict the weather. Yesterday they said it would be sunny and dry all day with showers in the evening and thunderstorms the next morning. So we took the 4-hour ride to Deadwood, Lead, etc and the weather was wonderful. Later we took “Da Bus” downtown for a great steak dinner and then walked from shop to vendor in a gentle rain that wasn’t even enough to soak through our lightweight jackets.
Early this AM the thunderstorms rolled it. Thunder, lightning, horizontal rain, it was great! And we were snug as can be in Ali-the Gator. We had planned to drive to Wall Drugstore and the Badlands this morning but heeding the forecast we decided instead to call it a down day and do laundry. Unfortunately everyone in the camp decided to do the same thing and the camp Laundromat was wall to wall with folks hauling sacks of clothes. So I declared we would go to Plan B.
I remembered that back in 1976 I dropped off my laundry at a “we do it” laundry in Sturgis and last week in my wanderings I saw the same Laundromat offering the same service. So we drove down, dropped off the laundry, and went to breakfast. I went back at 2 PM and picked up the washed, dried, folded clothes. Now that’s the way to do laundry!
One other thing! After breakfast we wandered about a bit and I stumbled into a vendor store that makes CUSTOM patches! As in, a patch that says whatever you want. So I ordered a “Used to be bad” patch for the back of my jacket. I’ll pick it up this evening when we once again board “Da Bus” for one last fling on Main Street.
Oh, one more other thing. Leaving Sturgis we got caught up in heavy traffic and I tried to get out of town by sneaking through some residential areas. This put us on a strange road which SEEMED to be heading the right direction, so we took it. It wasn’t. But it did take us past the “Buffalo Chip” (www.BuffaloChip.com) campground and that was well worth the wasted time. “The Chip” is HUGE! We could see it stretch forever. It looks like it is a complete city unto itself. It turned out that the heavy traffic was a three-mile backup of people leaving “The Chip” and heading into Sturgis for the day. And we had though that there must have been an accident on the interstate and they were detouring the traffic off I-90 and through town. Anyway, after about 20 miles on the wrong road we finally decided to U-Turn it back to Sturgis and slog along with the traffic.
The current two-day plan is to do Wall Drug (http://www.walldrug.com/default.aspx) and the Badlands (http://www.nps.gov/badl/) tomorrow and then pull up stakes and head west Saturday Morning.
Love,
Frank, Cheryl, and Rin-Tin-Tin
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