July 27, 2017

We arrived in South Dakota on Thursday, July 20th (we think, the days and dates are starting to blur). There wasn’t even a state line sign at the the border between Minnesota and South Dakota where we crossed, nor did our gps or phones give us an alert…whatever…
Stopped at Pipestone National Monument- a redstone quarry that several American Indian tribes used to carve peace pipes.

South Dakota is our “legal domicile residence” to keep the US gov’t happy. Our address here is in Box Elder- in a hay field with lots of other “escapees” – folks using Escapees RV Club for legal addresses and mailing addresses (ours is in Texas).

AND, it is even hotter here, even though we moved north and west away from the “heat dome”- check out this pic of our dashboard at about 2pm on Friday. YIKES!
West Bend Campground on the Missouri River, shady campsites. The 4 young adults next to us invited us to dinner- fresh Walleye they caught in the river- They answered question after question about South Dakota for us- about farming, liing in SD, windfarms, the winters…
Drove the loop through the Badlands National Park, again in the 90s, so we plan to come back in the spring.

We’re spending the week at a campground in the Black Hills and doing all our paperwork – new SD licenses and registering the truck- in Rapid City, SD.