August 8: Traveling to Eastern South Dakota

Dad's basement carpet was laid and we moved the heavier pieces back into the room.  When he gets back from his doctor appointment in Minneapolis, he will have to arrange it and put all the small things in place, but he feels good about it being finished.



While we were waiting on the carpet layer to finish, I got two rows of my quilt sewn together.  Amazingly it is squared up.  During the drive across the state, I did finish up the last row, but that photo will wait until next post.

The rest of the photos are from our 5 hours of travel across the state.  I took a photo of the Rapid City skyline as we were leaving. 

Kevin counted motorcycles being ridden toward the Black Hills and the Sturgis Bike Rally.  During the first 165 miles of our journey he counted 701 bikes.  There were countless trailers and other transports with bikes, but he only counted the ones actually being ridden.  At that point he decided he had counted enough.   I took about 15 photos from the car trying to catch a moving bike, so you will have to settle for this shot. 

Wall Drug is a famous place in South Dakota probably for many reasons.  As kids we both remember our parents taking us there to see all the wonders it had in store.  As an adult, I find that I am more fascinated with the fact that this place has such a strong advertising campaign and even has signs up in China telling how many miles to the place.  We did not stop because we got a much later start than planned because the carpet layer was not in on the fact that we wanted to be out of there early. 

Just passed the Wall exit you can see the start of the Badlands.  We did not enter the park but I did take a few photos from the side of the road.  Can't imagine how the pioneers felt when they saw these "rocks".  They may not appear to be much since they are off in the distance, but I can remember our trips through there as kids and as a college student and they are awesome.

As we drove, I thought about how different east river and west river has always appeared to me.  The river in question is the Missouri.  West river is what I consider to be more ranch area with lots of land, reddish colored dirt, a few towns and lots of cattle.  East river is farmland with dark rich looking soil, still not any large metropolises, but lots of corn and wheat.  One difference that was not as apparent this trip was the coloring of the landscape.  Both were green and we saw ponds of water where we never noticed any before.  Lots of rain has fallen in the state this year.

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We also did not stop at the three quilt shops along the way because we needed to be at our destination with a few hours of sunlight left.  However, since we plan to move back to South Dakota in a year, we will visit them later.  The shop in Dell Rapids is one that I have been to a number of times.  If it would have been open when we arrived, I would have been in again, but small town shops seem to close earlier.