Before leaving town, I took Marissa to a doctor to check on her eye because she says it still hurts. Chris and the girls packed up, checked out, filled up with gas and propane, and waited for us. We are out of our HMO network so I went to the hospital urgent care in town. The doctor couldn't see anything, even with the magic yellow glow-in-the-dark dye, but it was clear there was something still irritating her eye so he prescribed creme and the pharmacist's advice for me was "good luck". Marissa did not let me apply it--too scary. We put a nicer looking patch on and prayed it just needed one more day to heal.
We stopped at the state capitol in Bismark. It's not much to look at on the outside, but there's a great view from the top floor. It is 16 floors and the tallest building around.
There's not many cities out here. A few small towns here and there. We should have filled up the gas tank before getting to the middle of nowhere. Why do the cattle like to huddle together in the south-east corner of their land?
We found a nice state campground in Whitlock, SD for the night. We are a tad off the highway but the campground looks better and we are going to see the Salmon in the morning. Google took us on a dirt road to get us here--at least it's not rutted like the road to Superstition, but everything is dusty now. Thankfully I can see the paved road we can take on the way out so we don't have to go on it again. The girls set up an insect hospice when we arrived to rescue the butterflies and dragonflies on the motorhome grill. Piper selected the site online with me in advance so we were near the playground, the playground the kids learned to pole dance at. (!!)
**WED 7/24 Dust the motorhome and DRIVE more of South Dakota
We timed everything around the Salmon ladder and hatchery's hours this morning, so we were there at 9am, but the salmon weren't there--the ladder and the tanks were empty. I called and the lady at Fish & Game kindly told me they only operate in October (apparently Google doesn't know that when it lists the hours as 9-11am M-F). Oh well! We move on.
Since we are driving through Pierre anyway, we stopped to see the capitol of South Dakota. We were more impressed with the beauty of SD's capitol; it felt more majestic and ND felt more businesslike and stuffy. The ND chandelier lights designed to mimic wheat were appropriate but bland. When the Dakotas were just a territory, Bismark was the capital city, but when they became states in 1889, Bismark remained capital for ND, and several cities were contending for the rights to be capital of South Dakota. It came down to Pierre as most central geographically or Huron as the center of the state's population.
This afternoon we and Marcy are watching each other on Find my Friends on the iPhones as get closer and closer together on our way to meeting at our Mt. Rushmore campground. We are so excited to see them! Of all the people we thought we'd meet up with, we weren't expecting it to be them when we were planning. While in Virginia, Marcy and I picked out the campground and dates together.
We went back another time zone so we got to camp with plenty of time for cousins to swim with Annabelle while her parents set up camp.
Tonight there was a crazy storm! Thunder and lightening! Wind! Sideways rain! oh my! Glad we were inside. The kids didn't want to be alone in bed and stayed up until it calmed down.
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