There is just too much fun to have and too little time to have it all. Our morning began with lots of photo ops with Yogi & Friends and the Yogi Bear Campground, including a video of the girls and I jumping on the MASSIVE jump pillow. Daisy was whimpering and whining because she too wanted to join in the fun.
We left Yogi and pals behind and drove in search of Devil's Gulch, the location where Jesse James and his stead are reputed to have leaped a 20 foot span over a 50 foot gulch while a posse was in hot pursuit following his gang's bank robbery. As legend has it, the posse was left on the south side of the gulch with their mouths agape as Jesse and stead flew the span. I believe that a horse could make that leap, but given the rock landing pad and the wall 10 feet beyond it seems a tad suspect. The girls and I hiked around the area for about an hour...lots of fun. So much fun that we decided that we did not have enough time to include the Ingall's Family Homestead on our South Dakota tour.
We departed Devil's Gulch in Garretson, SD for Mitchell, SD, home of The Corn Palace. Frommer's Exploring America by RV describes the Palace as "unique in the world, a Taj Mahal of chicken feed with its walls, domes and turrets newly covered every year with elaborate murals made of corn, bushel after bushel of red, calico, and white corn, augmented with oats and prairie grass." I've never been to THE Taj Mahal, but Mitchell's chicken feed version is truly remarkable...a little goofy, but remarkable. They had photos of each of the designs from the Palace's inception in the late 1890's. These designs are great today, but they were SPECTACULAR until the 1960's when they stopped decorating the turrets and domes. The designs have become a bit less elaborate, but they're still cool none-the-less.
We had a bit of a battery snaffoo with our Cozy Den which had to be fixed in Mitchell. We must say that Cruise America was terrific and the good people at Dean's RV World were truly a pleasure to work with. While they replaced our battery, we had a lovely lunch on board. With that problem fixed, we were on our way again and headed for the Badlands, a five hour drive away. The area between Mitchell and Interior South Dakota is beautiful, with never-ending views of verdant rolling hills...a lovely drive for me...Bob didn't like it: no trees. The only news of note regarding our drive occurred while I was driving. Note to self: when you are driving a massive rectangular cube down the highway big winds can cause you to change lanes even when you haven't turned the steering wheel...this can be PARTICULARLY scary when you have the cruise control set at 65 miles per hour. YEESH that scared the peewadin out of me...took my brain a few seconds to figure out what had happened since my brain new that my hands had not steered left. To stay in the right lane (without the unintended left lane change) required me to steer right. Thank goodness that wind ended a short time later. When Bob awoke an hour later and said that he "could drive any time" I was SOOO happy to see an exit right then. How do I spell stress? S-h-o-u-l-d-e-r C-r-a-m-p-s.
We arrived at the East entrance to the Badlands at around 8 PM CST...however, we had recently crossed into the Mountain time zone. So we picked up an hour. Yippee! The scenery is amazing, more about this today as we're going to spend this morning driving through part of it. Our KOA campground is very nice. The girls took advantage of these cool three-wheel, low to the ground, pedal cycle things. Daisy had a doggie-mind-blowing sniffing extravaganza in the enclosed doggie park. The girls and I used the very nice shower facilities. Bob took more photos for his "Theirs is So Much Bigger than Mine" photo log.
By for now.
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