Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in the Travel West gallery.
We both worked in the morning and finished up around lunch, with a goal to be on the road by around 1:00pm. We had mostly packed the trailer earlier in the week (including food the night before), so all we really had to do was grab the last few things out of the living room, run through our usual departure checklist, and hitch up the trailer. We stopped a block away at Lions Park — in the nice flat parking lot — to adjust the towing mirrors.
Our goal for the night was Dakota Sunsets RV Park near Salem, SD, which is about an hour west of Sioux Falls. We drove down Hwy 169 south-west through St. Peter and Mankato and picked up I-90 at Worthington. We stopped in Sioux Falls to get dinner at a diner called the Fryn' Pan, and then detoured up Hwy 38 on our way to Salem to avoid I-90 construction.
Our biggest memory of this drive is the increasing amount of storm damage and increasing numbers of big electric company trucks (from as far away as Ohio) that we started to see as we drove west from Worthington into South Dakota. We had gotten severe storms on Thursday night in Minneapolis, but Sioux Falls and the surrouding area got really pounded. As of when we were there, they were saying it had been a tornado, but the NWS later that classified it as a derecho with 100 MPH straight line winds on the leading edge of the storm.
On I-90, we saw an entire demolished 5th wheel trailer just lying in the median. (It was hardly recognizable as a trailer.) Outside of Sioux Falls, everywhere we looked were downed trees, bits of barn, etc., and this scene even continued for the first hour of our drive west the next day. Salem was still without power, but Dakota Sunsets did have power, even though they had lost a number of trees. Fortunately, only one RV (the park owner's) had been damaged. The RV park owner had called everyone scheduled to be there on Thursday, warning them to not come due to the weather, so we would have known about the nasty storm. We were glad to have arrived on Friday — being there Thursday would have been an adventure, given that there was no storm shelter.
We spent the evening playing the Sorry board game on loan from the park office, and Julie took home a 1946 Upton Sinclair book from their "take or leave a book" library.
Saturday morning, we set our alarm for 7:00am, a pattern we would follow for the rest of the trip. We ate our usual breakfast (home-made gluten free granola, raisins, and whole milk) and were on the road not long after 7:30am. Julie drove the first half of the day to get some more experience with the trailer.
We initially took Hwy 38 west to avoid the rest of the I-90 construction, and got back on the interstate at Mitchell. We stopped for lunch (sandwiches, like most days) at a rest area west of Murdo and switched drivers. A bit later, a very nervous Ken ended up getting gas right on the edge of the truck's range in Belvidere. (We were getting poor mileage due to headwinds and got barely 200 miles on the tank.) We paid $3.99 a gallon, which seemed like highway robbery until later when we got to Wyoming. We also saw our favorite billboard: "Mexican food so good President Trump would build a wall around it!"
Our immediate goal was the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site vistor center. We had hoped to take a tour of the silo, but it was closed for renovation. After that, we headed to Badlands National Park and hiked the beautiful Notch Trail for an hour or so before heading to the visitor center. Then, we got back in the truck and followed the scenic drive through the entire park. At the far end, we parked at the Pinnacles Overlook and cooked dinner, a Turkey Taco Skillet. Right after we parked, another couple from California with a Casita parked right next to us. This was a pattern that would repeat itself, as we saw another Casita at least once a day during the rest of the trip.
After dinner, we drove to Cedar Pass Campground and got the Casita parked. Sites in this campground are mostly just pull-offs — a widening of the road, sort of like a big parking space. After getting settled, we went for a walk and almost missed the spectacular sunset. The sky was threatening rain, so we hadn't expected much, and weren't looking for it. Then we noticed people looking behind us and realized they were looking at reflections off the peaks. Wow! The rain started as we finished our walk, and it rained steadily all night.
Sunday morning, we were again on the road around 7:30am with Julie driving to get some more experience. Our goal for the day was Devils Tower National Monument, followed by a drive to our overnight stop at the Casper KOA in Bar Nunn, Wyoming (just outside of Casper). This turned out to to be a very long day. By the time we got to Casper after dark (around 9:00pm), we had driven 429 miles and also hiked for about 4 hours.
We decided to leave the Badlands through the south entrance and drive through the park's southern unit via SD-44 on the way to Rapid City. It was a pretty trip through the countryside, and because we try to avoid driving faster than 65 mph, it doesn't take that much longer than the interstate. It's hard to believe anyone ever thought they could farm in this area. On the edge of Rapid City we saw our Casita friends from California. Unfortunately they were pulling into an auto repair shop.
We stopped for gas in Sturgis at a gas station with its own tiny casino (?!?), and then switched drivers and continued heading north toward Devils Tower. We got off I-90 and took Hwy 11 toward Aladdin, which was a rolling road, but a very pretty drive. When we got to Devils Tower, we waited in line 10-15 minutes to enter the park, and then the park rangers informed us that there was no more large vehicle parking at the top. Instead, they directed us toward overflow parking on the bottom, where we could unhitch. Instead of doing that, we just parked there and hiked up the side of the mountain. (We had been planning to do that trail anyway.) There are two concentric loops around the tower, a rugged outer one and paved(-ish) inner one. We hiked both before returning to the car, about 4 hours of hiking. Several people were climbing the granite rock face, although not the northeast face which was closed due to peregrine falcon nesting sites, and they didn't want the falcons to attack any climbers. Julie enjoyed the prairie dog town between the parking lot and the base of the tower; the prairie dogs were none too pleased that we were there.
At this point, we realized that our original plan to do more touristing on the way to Casper was... ill-advised. We had a lot of driving left to do, and it was already 3:30pm. So, we stopped for gas in Gillette (because there's literally nothing for 50 miles along I-90), made dinner at a rest area about half-way to Buffao (hashbrowns, eggs, and sausage), and then turned south at Buffalo and took I-25 toward Casper. Gillette is where we learned that "regular" unleaded gas in Wyoming is 85 octane (instead of 87 octane like the truck needs), which means that you can't trust the highway-visible signs to tell you what the real price is.
As we got closer to Casper, there was a huge harvest moon off to our left (to the east), which looked somehow odd in the glances we got of it. At the campground in Casper, our neighbors told us it was the lunar eclipse. To our annoyance, there was no attendant at the KOA (only an envelope for us) and no shower either. So, we hooked up the city water at our campsite, grabbed a quick shower in the trailer, and crashed for the night.
In the morning, we again got gone fairly early, and headed for the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center, a museum about the various trails that ran through Casper (like the Oregon Trail and the Mormon migration to the Great Salt Lake). It was excellent. After that, we headed across Casper to the Tate Geological Museum, which includes a lot of displays of large and small fossils, many of them sourced locally. Then, we headed out of Casper on a scenic drive to look at other Oregon Trail sights on our way to the Sleeping Bear RV Park in Lander, Wyoming.
Our first stop was Bessemer Bend National Historic Site, which is one of the places where settlers risked their lives to ford the North Platte River. Getting here was a mild disaster because we turned into a ranch driveway instead of following the right road, but once we corrected that mistake, it was a pleasant place to eat lunch. After that, we drove toward Independence Rock, which is big hunk of granite that was a stopover point for settlers — if they reached here by July 4 (Independence Day), then they had a reasonably good chance of finishing their trip before winter. Nearby was an interpretive site for Split Rock, a notch in the mountains that settlers aimed for, and below that is a ranch that is now a Mormon church property where people can reenact a handcart journey as a sort of pilgrimage. Many of the Mormons used handcarts to travel on foot to Utah, because it was cheaper and faster than an oxen train. The Trails Interpretive Center had had a film about the Martin Company who had started too late in the year and encountered snowstorms that killed about 25% of the group. We also stopped at some other little interpretive sites and saw lots of wildlife, including antelope, cattle, sheep, llamas (or as we started to call them "long-necked sheep"), and wild horses.
The second half of this route was quite hilly with some extended steep descents, and Ken invested some effort into figuring out the best way to engine-brake with the truck on a highway. This generally worked ok. It was nice to have the manumatic and be able to select any of the 9 gears.
As we got closer to Lander, we stopped at Sinks Canyon, where the Popo Agie river disappears into a limestone cavern and reappears a quarter mile down the road. Oddly, it takes several hours for the water to take the journey, and more comes out than went in. This whole place was kind of awkward, with no signage telling us where things were and no real parking for the trailer. After a short walk, we decided that it was too windy and we were hungry and tired, so headed straight for the RV park.
By the time we got to the RV park, the wind had died down to a breeze, and it was pleasant and sunny. We were able to open up all of the windows and enjoy the weather and the view off the bluff. But, we were really tired, and making dinner (Thai green curry) was a chore. After dinner, we filled up the water tank, dumped the waste tanks, and then took advantage of the real showers. While we were dumping, the resident cat took advantage of our inattention and snuck into the open trailer door, and Julie had to chase him away. We also met a cyclist who had ridden there from Steamboat in Colorado — he was at the park repairing his trailer, and hoped to ride to Glacier over the summer. Wow.