Done with lawyers and landscapers

We are at the Snake Creek State Recreation Area, west of Platte, South Dakota, right on the Missouri River at Lake Francis Case (map).  With our SD State Park annual pass, campsites here are just $18 with electricity ($14 without), and even though we did not need the power or other park amenities, there are not a lot of other stopping options along this stretch of SD-44.

Wednesday we had a very nice drive up US-75 from Nebraska City through Omaha to Sioux City, Iowa, before re-joining I-29 for the last leg into Sioux Falls.  US-75 as an alternative to I-29 for that stretch was one of the reasons we had crossed the Missouri into Nebraska Tuesday night in the first place.  The route took us through the Omaha (U-Mo'n-Ho'n) and Winebago reservations; at the former we stopped at a nice overlook of the Missouri with a small interpretive exhibit in the form of an earthlodge.

In Sioux Falls we headed straight for a familiar Walmart for the night (map), and walked next door to Chevy's for dinner.  This Walmart is the closest option to our attorney's office, and we had a short ten-minute drive yesterday morning to make our 10am appointment.  Going over and then signing all our estate documents took a full two hours, and it was after noon when we finally wrapped up at the office.  We had a quick lunch in the bus before heading south out of town on I-29.  An unexpected bonus of our visit with the attorney was that they had obtained copies of our new deed from the courthouse -- the first we'd seen it.

The estate planning firm we used was Thompson Law in Sioux Falls. The company was recommended on the Escapees forum as being full-timer-friendly, and we worked with attorney Evan Anema after taking advantage of a free consultation. We found him easy to work with and quite competent. The office building has parking along the south side driveway that is easy to get a large rig into.

By 1pm we were at our new property in Lennox.  The landscaper, whom we were scheduled to meet at 1:30, was already there.  We worked out the arrangements for him to keep an eye on things, and keep the grass mowed to within legal limits.  I spent a little time walking around the whole property -- the largest single lot I have ever personally owned, at just about a quarter acre.  We also ended up meeting one of our neighbors before we finally rolled out of town at 2pm.

South Dakota 44, which passes through Lennox, brought us all the way here to the river, almost in a straight line.  The route passed through only two more towns between Lennox and here.  Fortunately, this park is ideally situated, and happens to be a very nice park.  There are perhaps 120 sites but only about a dozen are occupied, so we have the place nearly to ourselves. In the section of the park across the highway to our north, a concessionaire operates a marina with a store and a restaurant, but they are closed this week for renovations, so instead we dined lakeside on a picnic table.

Today we will continue west on SD-44, which will merge with US-18 in Winner, on the Rosebud Reservation.  We will continue west (and a little south) on US-18 until just east of Wounded Knee (yes, that Wounded Knee) on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where we will turn south on SD-391/NE-27 to Gordon, Nebraska, where we will pick up US-20 west.  We will end our day somewhere in the northwest corner of Nebraska.

Land rush

We are at the Riverside Park in Saint Peter, Minnesota (map). Saint Peter is a quaint little town right on US-169, and this is a lovely little park. They have pedestals here with 30-amp power for $20 per night, and in yesterday's muggy weather we decided that was a bargain. We have a nice spot right along the Minnesota River.

As I wrote here Wednesday, we spent Thursday driving around the southeastern corner of South Dakota looking at properties. We had a list of six parcels, all under $10,000, but we eliminated one of those because it already had a house on it (yes, incredibly, a house for less than ten grand), and we just did not want the liability of having a structure. Besides, it was the furthest from Sioux Falls, although ironically the closest to Madison.

By the end of the day, we had actually settled on a parcel that already had a street address assigned, in the city limits of Lennox, a small town just 20 minutes outside of Sioux Falls. There were actually two nearly identical parcels next door to each other, by the same seller. Since we had wrapped up our grand tour by early afternoon, we drove back to the Realtor's office to discuss details and make an offer. We offered about 80% of asking price and agreed we also wanted a "staked survey" at our expense, and also found out from our agent that he had a contractor who could handle the required mowing of the property once or twice a season. Yesterday we got an email back saying our offer had been verbally accepted, and the seller would also make us a smoking deal on the property next door if we wanted it (we don't). Now it is just a matter of waiting for the title report and finishing the paperwork.

On our way to the real estate office we made a nice stop at Falls Park to look at the falls and ascend the small observation tower there, passing the enormous John Morrell meat processing plant on our way. The entire area around the plant, including the falls, smells like smoking pork. We also enjoyed driving through the downtown area, something not really possible in Odyssey, and we noted a pleasant restaurant district as we did so.



After we finished at the Realtor's, we drove back to the Empire Mall, where we had left Odyssey in the morning as there was really no room for it in the parking lot of the giant Ford dealer that contained the car rental agency. We moved the bus across the street to the Walmart (map), the same one where we stayed two nights earlier. This time we parked adjacent to the back of the Barnes & Noble store, to try to get further away from the brutal Walmart parking-lot lights, and discovered we got free WiFi there. We drove back downtown for an excellent meal at Bros Brasserie Americano, for which Louise found a coupon on Restaurant.com. The evening weather was so pleasant that we ate on the patio, which made for great people-watching.

Yesterday we turned the car back in first thing in the morning; our total was $42 for the car and another $20 for gas at Sam's Club adjacent to Walmart -- way more cost-effective than the ~$100 it would have cost us to make the trip in the bus, plus we would not have been able to see the falls or have dinner downtown. It was a short walk from the rental agency back across the street to Walmart to get the bus. I did not blog yesterday because we wanted to get right on the road.

That's because we'd made plans to see our niece this weekend in Minneapolis. She lives in California but is on her way to summer camp in Minnesota, and spending a couple of days in the city first with her grandmother. As of yesterday morning, though, we did not know if we were going to meet today or tomorrow. On the chance we'd need to be in Minneapolis by lunch time today, we wanted to get an early start.

It wasn't long after we'd turned northeast on MN-60 from I-90, though, that Louise got word by text message that tomorrow would work better for them, and so we decided to end the day a bit earlier and not push all the way to the city yesterday. This little park was listed in Don Wright's book, and when we rolled into town we decided it would make a nice stop.

We took the scooters out and rode around town a bit in search of dinner. I had hoped to eat at the Cedars Grille in the historic Konsbruck Hotel, but we discovered that both had closed permanently, probably fairly recently. Instead we rode across the river to the Whisky River restaurant, which was quite popular on a Friday night. We shared the prime rib special, which was more than enough to feed both of us.

In a few minutes we will get rolling to Minneapolis. We were unable to find any inexpensive parking in the city, so we will have to bite the bullet and spring for an RV park while we are there. We'll spend just a night or two before heading east toward Wisconsin, where we plan to look at a boat.

Domicile

We awoke this morning at the Walmart on the west side of Sioux Falls, South Dakota (map). We're in town because we have several housekeeping items to take care of in regards to moving our domicile to South Dakota, and our "home town" of Madison is not big enough to offer all the services we require. That's probably as good a reason as any to focus today's post on what, exactly, is required.

You might think that, having acquired yesterday South Dakota driver licenses and vehicle tags, and submitted our voter registration paperwork, that we're "done" with our official move -- after all, there are really no household possessions to move, as they are already here with us. But establishing a domicile is actually a more complex problem for those of us who live on the road full-time That's because, should the state of domicile ever be called into question, it is important to establish intent, a problem that people who actually settle down in a fixed dwelling in the state do not face.

Legally, one of the most dangerous things a full-timer can do is to bargain-shop each vital element. Nevertheless, we see this all the time, with some folks having their driver license in State A, their motor vehicles registered in State B, and their tax documents and perhaps other mail going to an address in State C. In the Internet age, it might be less of a factor, but maintaining a business relationship, for example with a bank, in State D can further muddy the waters.

What this opens a person up to is a claim by any of States A, B, C, or D that such person is actually a state resident of that state, and therefore subject to state income tax, personal property tax, motor vehicle registration, probate tax, or any number of other state encumbrances that, perhaps, said person had not counted upon. Moreover, beyond any such state pursuing that individual for the revenue supposedly lost, criminal charges can be filed. Think it doesn't happen? The state of Colorado convicted a number of state residents on fraud and tax evasion for titling their RVs in Montana LLCs, thus avoiding Colorado's onerous annual tax on such vehicles.

For this reason, most tax and legal experts agree: When you move to a state, do it lock, stock, and barrel -- don't cherry-pick individual items. So not only do we need to move our driver license, vehicle registration, and voter registration, we now also need to move our estate plan, our finances, and our "backup real estate." This last item might be optional for many, but is not for us, as I will describe shortly. It is also recommended that any club memberships and religious affiliation be moved as well, so, for example, we will be transferring our Elks membership from a lodge in Washington to one here in South Dakota.

And so it was that this morning at 10am we had a meeting scheduled with a law firm here in town that specializes in estate planning. We had previously forwarded to them our extensive estate plan documents from Washington, prepared some eight years ago when we first legally domiciled in that state. As it turns out, every document will need to be rewritten, as Washington is a "community property" state, whereas South Dakota is a "separate property" state. We are more or less starting from scratch, and we'll get a bill from the lawyers commensurate with that.

I might note here that the vehicle registration on Odyssey also tripled here in South Dakota, where fees are assessed based on weight. So the move was by no means free, and was not undertaken lightly. We are making this change because it will most likely save us money over the long haul, especially as we transition, at some yet-to-be-determined later point, to a life on the water from our life on the road.

We picked the Walmart on the west of town for last night's stop because it was just five minutes from the attorneys' office. As a bonus, there were several restaurants in walking distance, and we ended up at our old stand-by, Olive Garden. We arrived shortly before dinner, as checkout time at Lake Herman park was 4pm, and we stayed nearly till then to take advantage of the hookups. This morning we rolled over to the law office in time for our meeting, parking on the street just outside the building.

We met with the estate planner for a little over an hour, and they expect to have the documents completed in about six weeks. Unfortunately, that will necessitate another visit here. There's no way we can hang around for six weeks, and we can't sign the documents anyplace else, a legal quirk of estate planning. So sometime in the next few months, we'll have to either return here either in Odyssey, or else find someplace convenient from which to fly in for the day.

After we finished with the estate planner we came back to the bus, ate a little lunch, and ran over the estate plan issues with our financial planner by phone. We did not cut the check to the attorneys until our CFP had blessed everything, at which point I carried the check and signed agreement back into the office. While we were sitting in the cockpit getting ready to leave, engine idling, Louise spotted the Keller Williams real estate sign right in front of us, not 500' away in the adjoining business park. I turned off the engine.

As it turns out, we'd been in touch with a realtor from Sioux Falls yesterday, while we were sitting at Lake Herman for the afternoon. Whereas we got the estate planning referral from the Escapees bulletin board, the realtor referral came in a more serendipitous way -- while we were having dinner at the Dakotah Steak House in Rapid City, our server Kellie struck up a conversation with us about where we were headed and somehow it came out that we needed a realtor in Sioux Falls. Coincidentally, her father owned a real estate firm here that just merged with Keller Williams. She gave us his number, and that's whom we spoke with yesterday.

Knowing we were about to drive five miles to our next stop, the Walmart on the east side of town (map), we decided to call again and see if this was, in fact, his office. It was, indeed, and so we locked the bus and walked the 500' or so to the office. He'd already started working on our request, and was able to show us specs on several properties in the area meeting our needs. It was very kind of him to interrupt his day on short notice to meet with us.

Now, about that property: In Washington, we bought a small, undeveloped parcel of land back when we first domiciled there. We really had no choice, as Washington law prohibits voter registration at a mail receiving service, such as the one we use for our address. We wanted to register to vote, of course, and we really needed to solidify our intent to no longer be Californians at the time. That was, back then, the only reason we needed it, but since then it has come in handy twice more.

The first was when Washington clamped down on drivers in the smog-surcharged counties surrounding Seattle who were evading the smog surcharge by registering their vehicles in non-surcharged counties by getting mailboxes in those counties. The way they clamped down was to make it illegal to use a mail service for vehicle registrations. They made an exception for anyone whose residence address, for whatever reason, had no mail delivery, in which case you still had to list the residence address on the paperwork. Our property can't receive mail (the post office won't deliver if there is no structure on it, mailbox or not, but then again they won't deliver to your house if your dog ever bit a mail carrier, either), but it's a legal address.

South Dakota does not have this issue: they are more than happy to let us full-timers register our vehicles and get our driver licenses at a mail service. But there is no escaping the more recent incursion: The PATRIOT act. This piece of invasive legislation requires banks and financial institutions to know unequivocally where you live, and a mailbox at a mail receiving service or the US Post Office does not qualify. We were horrified to discover one of our bank accounts frozen last year, and when we called in they told us they could not unfreeze it until we gave them a residential address -- their database software knew that our "unit number" address was a mail receiving service and not, for example, an apartment or condo.

Now, we could have given them any residential address in the country to satisfy this requirement, such as one of our parents' homes, or the home of a friend. They don't need to send us anything there -- they have a different mailing address for us. But see above: our parents live in California and New Jersey, and while we have friends all over the country, few are in Washington and none is in South Dakota. We did not want to link ourselves, even through this one detail, to any other state (and especially not California, or New Jersey). Fortunately, we were able to give them the address of our little plot of land in Washington and that took care of it.

And so we find ourselves in need of the same token property here in South Dakota, and it was this which had us in the real estate office for another hour this afternoon. Our requirements are pretty specific, which is to say it must have a valid street address, no structures, and be inexpensive to buy and to hold. We left the office with spec sheets on five properties, all within an hour of Sioux Falls.  In addition to helping us comply with banking requirements, this will also give us a chip in the South Dakota real estate market; when the time comes to stop roaming and settle down, we can develop the property, or leverage it to a different property more suitable to our needs.

When we wrapped up there, we came the five miles to this Walmart to regroup. In addition to being pretty much the only other free overnight spot in town, it was also on our way out of town in the direction of our next stop, Minneapolis. That said, we'll be heading right back the way we came tomorrow, ending up at the Enterprise Car Rental right across the street from the same Walmart where we spent last night. We've decided to spend tomorrow on the grand tour of the Sioux Falls environs, looking first-hand at the five properties on our list. It would be a shame to have been within easy driving distance of all of them, yet offer on one sight unseen. Driving to all of them in the bus would cost two or three times as much as renting a car.

The other detail that has been occupying our attention for the last two days is insurance. Yesterday I called both our coach insurer and our scooter insurer. Moving the scooters was a slam-dunk, but we're going to have to get Odyssey re-appraised for the coverage rewrite, something we are not looking forward to. And our health insurance is another matter altogether.

Our current health insurance plan is specific to Washington, and that company does not write in South Dakota. So we are back to square one on that front as well, sifting through the morass of insurance company legalese and weasel-words and trying to suss out what will and will not be covered in the very small number of plans available to us. This is another area where Washington wins over South Dakota, inasmuch as Washington went through a round of health care reform some time ago that eliminated some of the prejudicial practices of the underwriters. If any of our readers has a high-deductible, HSA-qualified plan in South Dakota with which they are happy, drop us a note and let us know whom you're with.

So on day two of our residency, we are very happy South Dakotans, but keenly aware that the clock is ticking on these important legal matters. Insurance companies generally give you 30 days' grace, and we need to nail down the health insurance and motor coach coverage within that time.

When we are done gallivanting around the southeastern part of the state by rental car tomorrow, we'll maybe drive downtown to see the falls and find a nice restaurant for our final night here, which we'll likely spend back at the Walmart across the street from Enterprise. We'll turn the car back in first thing Friday morning and head northeast to Minneapolis, where we are scheduled to meet our niece for an afternoon before she hustles off to Spanish-language camp elsewhere in the state. We also have some friends who are in the process of moving to Minneapolis, but we're not sure if they've arrived in town yet. If so, we'll try to see them.

Home sweet home

We are at Lake Herman State Park, immediately west of our new "home town" of Madison, South Dakota (map). It's a lovely park, and virtually empty right now. Our 30-amp site was $18 per night, and we also bought a $28 annual South Dakota parks pass to cover our two days of park admission, which is not included in camping fees. The front office struggled to get both of our names on the receipt, which we'll need for the DMV.

While we were checking in, reader Glenn came by the office to say hello; he and his wife are just a few camp sites down from us, and are here for their quinquennial driver license renewal. Lots of full-timers use this same mail service here in town, "My Dakota Address," including many of our readers and friends. We will be stopping by the office this afternoon to pick up our mail and meet proprietor Teri Lund, with whom we've already had occasion to speak on the phone this morning, regarding some vehicle registration issues.

When we started to gather our documents we discovered we had neither proof of prior sales tax paid for any of our vehicles, nor documentation of Odyssey's weight. Ironically, the scooter titles list their weights, which are not important. South Dakota assesses RV registration fees by weight, so we will need to come up with something to make them happy. Teri assured us that we would not need proof of tax payment since we've had all three vehicles for more than a year, but we might need to get an official weigh ticket on the coach.

In the meantime I combed through my back documents and found an old brochure for the American version of the Spaceliner, which does not list the unladen weight, but gives a GVWR of 48,500 pounds. That's pretty close to what we weigh fully loaded, and perhaps the DMV will just accept it. The manufacturer's rating plate was long gone by the time we got the bus. Getting a weigh ticket unladen now would be difficult, especially since we just took on 1,200 pounds of diesel fuel a few miles west of here when we spotted it for $3.579 per gallon, the lowest in the state.

We learned that the DMV here is not open on Monday, so we'll be heading in first thing tomorrow to start the process. If we need to submit further documentation later to finish the coach registration, Teri can handle it for us remotely. Our Washington bus registration is already paid up through next April, so we have some breathing room on Odyssey; the scooters should not be a problem, which is fortuitous, since Louise's registration just expired a few days ago.

We paid for two nights here, but we may add a third night if it looks like we'll be at the DMV longer than a couple of hours. We have an appointment Wednesday morning in Sioux Falls with an attorney, to start moving our estate plan documents over to South Dakota. We spent the morning updating our wills, and now we're scrambling to find health insurance.

Bus lagged

We are at the Army Corps of Engineers "North Shore Recreation Area" on Lake Sharpe, just upstream of the Big Bend dam near Fort Thompson, South Dakota (map). There are 24 sites here, most with fire rings and a handful with picnic tables; a few even overlook the lake. The campground is free, and even so, it was not full last night, even on Saturday. We guess most of the other campers to be fishermen, and quite a few have boats on trailers in their sites.

It was hot when we arrived yesterday, in the 90s, and our first stop was the Left Tailrace campground on the other side of the dam, where our guide said there was electric power for a fee of $14. When we drove through, however, we found the campground closed, and only the boat ramp open. We learned later that the campground was closed after damage from the 2011 floods, and will not reopen until repairs are effected sometime this year. Instead we ran the generator a couple hours to keep the air conditioning on for the hottest part of the afternoon.

We ended up staying along the I-90 corridor most of yesterday, rather than continuing north to US-14 into Pierre. The US-14 route was 50 miles longer and we did not figure the scenery to be much different, plus the road I had originally hoped would take us to 14 turned out to be dirt. Instead we turned east on SD-16, which is really the I-90 service road, and by the time we got to the next paved road north, we decided to just continue east all the way to SD-47, which brought us here.

There are really only three ways across the Missouri that made any sense for us: the I-90 bridge south of here, the US-14 bridge between Fort Pierre and Pierre north of here, and SD-47 which crosses atop the Big Bend dam. This crossing is more or less at the same latitude as our destination of Madison, and it will be a straight shot from here today on SD-34.

We crossed into Central Time yesterday, and we had just gotten used to Mountain Time. This morning we both had trouble getting up. We've already set at least one morning appointment for later in the week, so I'm hoping we'll be more caught up with the clock by then. Today will be something of a late start, but we should be within striking distance of Madison this evening.

Trouble in the heartland ...

We are at the Cedar Pass campground in Badlands National Park (map). We were here four years ago, on a much more rushed schedule. This time, we arrived by 2pm, took the scooters out, and explored the park. We had a nice drive from Rapid City on SD-44, through the Buffalo Gap National Grassland, all the way to Interior, where we turned north into the park. Four years ago we had taken 44 south and east from here, on our way to Austin.

The campground is operated by a concessionaire, Forever Resorts, who also operate the lodge. Sites with and without electric service are intermixed, currently $16 without and $28 with electricity; we opted for without in this mostly pleasant weather. It was a bit warm at the end of the day, though, so we had our dinner sitting outside, with the cats. Excitement ensued when a snake slithered through our campsite -- I think Angel wanted snake for dinner. We intervened before any altercation began, which is as much "trouble in the heartland" as we've had here, Bruce Springsteen notwithstanding.

Now that we've had a relaxing stay here, and eaten at the Cedar Pass lodge (we had breakfast there -- it's little more than a diner, and was unappealing for dinner), we can say we're done with the Badlands. Today we will continue north out of the park, doing the last section of the park road that we missed last time. We will most likely continue due north past I-90 to intersect with US-14, which will take us across the state and over the Missouri River in Pierre.

Badlands bound

We are at the Cabela's store in Rapid City, South Dakota (map). We had actually planned to be, instead, at the Walmart just a couple miles west of here, but when we arrived there the lot was posted No Overnight RV Parking, even though it was not listed that way in our directory. It thus joins Spearfish, halfway to Sturgis, as the only NOP Walmarts in the state. Presumably for the same reason -- too close to Sturgis and thus a complete zoo during the Black Hills Classic (even the BLM closes down its campgrounds during the rally).

Speaking of which, we did drive through Sturgis on our way here. We didn't even stop; no point, really, when the rally is not in progress, unless you are a T-shirt collector. It's basically a one-exit detour off I-90, and we dropped south one block to trundle down Main Street, something not possible during the rally. I'm glad we at least put eyes on the place, and, who knows, we may yet return there some year during the rally itself.

Before we managed to get on the road yesterday, the heavens opened and we drove most of the day in the rain. I'm certain the hills in the distance would have been lovely if we could have seen them, but instead we settled for the rustic scenery closer-in, highlighted by spectacular lightning strikes in the distance. US-212 brought us all the way to Belle Fourche, which still reminds me of the John Wayne/Bruce Dern classic The Cowboys. From there we bypassed some of I-90, saving a few miles in the process, by taking SD-34 through St. Onge. We joined I-90 north of Sturgis, and, other than the Sturgis detour, remained on it all the way to Rapid City and the aforementioned Walmart.

We're in Rapid City because we ultimately decided yesterday to head to the Badlands, rather than taking the shorter route to Madison which would have been to remain on SD-34. We'd still like to be in Madison by Monday, which means we'll again only get a single night in the Badlands, but unlike four years ago (and, yes, I know I wrote that I hoped it would not be a full four years before returning), we won't have to race through it to beat the clock. We'll also come in the alternative route, taking SD-44 from here to the little town of Scenic, South Dakota and then entering the park from the south via Interior, South Dakota.

We had a pleasant and quiet night here at Cabela's, and we even pulled a scooter out and road across the freeway to the Dakotah Steak House for a nice dinner. In a few minutes we will avail ourselves of the deli inside Cabela's for lunch, then use their dump station and head south to connect to SD-44 en route to Scenic.

One last National Park before deployment

We are at the Cedar Pass campground in Badlands National Park, South Dakota (map).

As I wrote earlier today, we had intended to spend the night at the Bear Lodge campground in the Black Hills National Forest. It was an idyllic spot, just a half dozen sites nestled in the pines, with only one other camper in the whole place. We had paid for one night, and I had already scoped out a dispersed site a bit further up the road to perhaps settle in for the remainder of the weekend.

We arrived early in the day, no later than perhaps 1:00. The phone rang with the deployment news while I was out hiking -- scoping out that dispersed spot and walking an old alignment of highway 24, now long abandoned. I walked back up to the bus while Louise was still on the phone with the Disaster Operations Center. So there we were, scrambling around at 3 in the afternoon, looking at possible routes to Austin, and trying to get guidance from Disaster Staffing about actual deployment orders and travel reimbursement.

I looked very seriously at turning south at Rapid City, which would shave another dozen miles off the total -- in the neighborhood of 1,300 miles or so, of which perhaps 900 would be reimbursable at the rate of 58 cents per mile (it costs us about a dollar per mile to operate Odyssey). But all the routing software was adamant that it was quicker by an hour to drive east on I-90 to US83.

Now, before the deployment call, our plan had been to continue east to Sturgis, and maybe scope out the town and the ongoing preparations for the motorcycle extravaganza that will descend upon it in four weeks' time. We planned to stay at the nearby Fort Meade National Recreation Area, then continue east to the Badlands, staying at the primitive campground on the west end of the park, down a five mile gravel road.

All of this had also been on the agenda four years ago. When we first embarked on this grand tour, departing Sumner, Washington in September of 2004, we had an October commitment in Billings, Montana, after which we intended to continue across the northern states all the way to Chicago, and then onwards to New Jersey, where I have family. I'm sorry to say that none of this is recorded here in the blog, because we did not start blogging the adventure until we were already in New Jersey, in November of that year.

We indeed met our commitment in Billings, and had a wonderful drive across Montana and a small corner of Wyoming on US212, which brought us into Belle Fourche, SD (and who can go there without thinking of that classic John Wayne/Bruce Dern film, The Cowboys). From there we drove south and did the canonical tourist loop of Mount Rushmore and the black hills. We were just about to continue east to Sturgis when we got a phone call.

That was before we were Red Cross volunteers, though. In that case, it was a call from my attorney (in a lawsuit against a former employer), saying I was needed in San Francisco for a settlement hearing. Few of the other ten plaintiffs could attend, and my presence was deemed critical to a successful negotiation, and so, somewhat reluctantly, we turned south, to Denver, which was the nearest airport from which I could get a flight at anything less than a king's ransom.

That was an interesting diversion, in part because it meant Louise was on her own with Odyssey for a couple of nights, after dropping me off at DIA. She had a great experience, as I understand, at Cherry Lake state park. In any case, when I returned from SF, we continued our eastward journey from Denver, missing the rest of South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and not rejoining our originally planned route until Chicago. (We have since learned how to solve this: we don't plan our routes now more than a day or two in advance.)

It was against this backdrop that we decided that, as long as we were blasting east along I-90 today, that, by golly, we had enough daylight left to loop through Badlands, and between choosing the faster route and electing to bail out of our paid-up camp site to get an early start, we'd be okay taking the roughly one hour detour through the park. Besides, we needed a place to stay tonight, and this campground was as good an option as any.

We did take a few minutes en route to actually admire the breathtaking scenery here in the park. We arrived at the campground around 8:30, just at sunset, and immediately headed up to the concessionaire-operated Cedar Pass Lodge for dinner. Unfortunately, our late arrival meant the only dinner option was the buffet, which was completely unappealing, and so we returned to the bus and I grilled a steak, despite the late hour.

We're glad we made the detour, but, just as I said four years ago, we need to come back and do it right. I am hoping it is not another full four years before we return here.

Tomorrow we will get an early start, heading south to Interior on SD-377, turning east onto SD-44 which will take us all the way to US83, somewhat south of I-90. 83 will take us all the way to Texas.