Badlands NP

September 2-4, 2009 Getting the Heck out of Dodge….
Wednesday – We are both starting to go a bit crazy. Rapid City is a nice enough place, but enough is enough!! We did a few errands, found a self wash for the “Boys” and got them spruced up a bit, and then WAITED for the completion of the work on the MoHo to be done. We had really hoped it would be completed before noon, but Bill our “Body man” was about an hour away from getting it all back together when he stood up under one of the bay doors and cracked his head open. After a trip to the hospital and 5 staples in his head, he was back to finish the job. We finally pulled away from J & J’s about 3:15pm, more than ready to head east. The 4 of us were glad to been back on the road. We took a nice drive through part of the Bad Lands. The views were amazing; we had some nice shadows as the sun was setting on us. There are actually pictures to prove our visit – our 1st trip we shot a lot of great views with an empty camera (The kids have never let their dad forget that). The MoHo headed on this easterly route until about 10:00pm when we pulled over in Murdo, S.D. for a “boon-dock” alongside a big rig.
Thursday morning we headed east again, trying to get out of South Dakota. Along Hwy 90 we stopped at Mitchell to fuel up and ran into town to see the Corn Palace. It was a repeat of our trip 17 years ago ---- still amazing how they decorate this unique building with corn, seeds, and other vegetation. Quickly we burned up some more miles; we drove through Sioux Falls and crossed the state line into Minnesota. Do the “happy dance”; we are finally out of South Dakota after 9 days. We stopped for the night in Pipestone, MN. This is the home of the Pipestone National Monument. We took the ¾ mile guided walk, visiting various points of interest along the way. It was very informative seeing the quarries where the Native Americans quarry the red pipestone that they use in their pipes. This is only place where the red pipestone is found and it is a very sacred area to them. We had a nice evening of drinks and dinner at Eddies Pub, a local place where we visited with the bartender; we were his only customers for the evening.
Friday morning we spent a couple of hours doing some much needed housekeeping on the MoHo, we vacuumed and dusted and got it looking and feeling a lot better. We headed out on the Hwy 23 going in a north-east direction across the state of Minnesota. A pretty drive with many, many miles of corn and soy beans, we also saw several big wind farms along the way. Mike really kept his foot to the pedal; we were trying to catch up a bit on our time lost. We stopped for the evening in Hickney, MN at the Grand Casino. The RV sites were full because of the Labor Day weekend, but we were able to get an overflow site, and still had the benefit of their Wi-Fi, which is what we are doing at 10PM Central Standard Time.