Day 3, Driving through South Dakota

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I didn't blog yesterday because we drove for 17 hours.  I say "we" when I should say Curtis drove.  He took a picture of me on my perch.  I know.  It's a tough gig, but someone has to do it! 


To recap our trip yesterday:

We had a long day of driving ahead of us.  Curtis and I kind of got into a rhythm of getting up at 4 am and hitting the road by 5 am.  Our goal today was to get to Bozeman, Montana.  That would leave about a 5 hour drive to Coram, Montana and the RV park in the morning. 

Almost immediately after we got onto I-90 west, we hit a bad storm.  Poor Curtis was fighting the steering wheel because the wind was blowing so hard.  To continue our bad luck with windshield wipers, the passenger side wiper got torn by the wind.  So Curtis had to pull over and replace it with the old one.  The good thing about having a wall for a windshield is visibility during severe weather is better.  The bad thing...it's a wall and isn't very aerodynamic.  And bugs like to splatter all over it!



We finally made it to the west side of South Dakota after noon and the landscape changed from grasslands (which looked really soft blowing in the wind) to hilly.  Near the Badlands you could see the brown layers of sediments on the hillsides.  If there weren't so many bugs on the windshield, I would have taken more pictures.  We took a trip here five years ago and the Badlands are very beautiful and windy.  It is definitely a bucket list item if you've never been.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop this time.  We passed the turn off to Sturgis, Deadwood, Devil's Tower and Mount Rushmore.  All of these places are worth visiting if you've never been.  (See my 2014 blogs.)



We crossed into Wyoming and the landscape became more hilly and green.  Wyoming is a beautiful state, at least in the north eastern section that we passed.  We would like to explore Wyoming in the future. 


We got to the Walmart in Bozeman, Montana around 10 pm local time.  Curtis was so tired.  Even after we stopped, he said he felt like he was still moving.  We ran inside and made sure it was ok to park there overnight.  Of course, there was an RV park in the parking lot already.  I counted twelve other rigs around us and that was only on our side of the parking lot. This Walmart was one of the stops in RV Parky that said it was very RV friendly.  And they were. 






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