Pierre, South Dakota

 9-2-2021 Thursday

We stayed comfortable with our little 12 volt dc fan last night although Joe did run the generator for a while to watch tv while I played at the casino.  I actually won $200 last night.  So the free camping worked out well.

This morning we walked over to the casino and I remembered I could run my rewards card through the kiosk for a reward.  I got $15 so I told Joe I was going to run it off.  He went over and finished getting the RV ready to go, then drove over to the casino gas pumps.  When he went out the door of the casino, a lightning bolt flashed right in front of him.  Well, the same lightning bolt must have caused a surge of electricity on the newer machines in the casino, including the one I had just transferred my money into, and shut my machine down for about 5 minutes.  It eventually came back on, and I eventually cashed out a little over $10  (you can't just take the money and run, you have to play it in a machine).

It was sprinkling when I walked over to the gas pumps.  Joe said it had rained hard for a couple of minutes.  62 degrees and raining hard again when we pulled out at 8:50.  And it rained off and on most of the day, sometimes pretty hard.

We crossed the state line into South Dakota at 10:20.  Our first interesting site was this beautiful white buffalo statue in Madison, S.D.  It is the advertising symbol of a car dealership there, but it certainly gets your attention.  

A lot of pretty rolling hills in this part of the state, often dotted with cattle.  An Indian Reservation was on one side of our highway through much of this area.

We also saw a lot of crops -- beans and corn mostly, but we drove past 4 huge fields of sunflowers.  We also saw a pumpkin patch.  All of the fields here are gigantic, and the farm equipment we have seen is huge -- covering several rows at a time.  We got behind a few tractors, etc. but they usually don't go very far before they turn off.

Sunflower field at 60 mph.

We took a break for lunch and a half-hour rest, then our highway 34 started zigging and zagging a little as we neared the huge Missouri River.  We had a couple of viewpoints but I couldn't get a very good picture since we didn't stop.  Through here, the Missouri River is bigger than I've ever seen the Mississippi River, I don't know if it gets smaller as it flows south.

Not too far from our turnoff to the campground, we saw these silhouettes of cowboys, horses, Indians.  We may have to drive back down to get a better look at it -- looked like a battle was taking place.

Then we reached our campground.  When I made the reservation yesterday, I was on the phone with the person longer than I have ever been on making a reservation.  I thought we were going to get into children and grandchildren's birthdates before she finished asking questions, but when we got to the gate today, we were all set up, so I guess it was time well spent.

As I said, it had rained most of the day.  When we backed into our campsite, we started sinking into the mud.  We made some pretty big ruts.  So Joe pulled up and got some boards out to put under the jacks, that worked much better.

This is a beautiful campground, we were very lucky to get in here for the holiday weekend.  I think she told us we got the last spot when I called in.  The sites are very roomy, we are right on the bay of the Missouri River.  

There are also cabins to rent.  A couple of them are right by the river.

I found a Pizza Ranch in town, so we drove in for dinner and to look over the town.  It is amazingly small to be the state capitol.  The restaurant was across the river in Ft. Pierre (who knew?), and it is also a very small town.  

A very interesting sight around the town is the "trail of governors" statues.  I took pictures of some we saw and googled it to find out what they represent.  This is what I learned.

"The Trail of Governors is series of life-size bronze statues of former governors of South Dakota in Pierre, the state capital. The project's goal is to place statues of every former governor; as of 2021, twenty-eight statues have been placed."

I guess we will have to chase down the rest of them now.  There is also a statue of horses we need to find.

We drove past the Capitol Building and I took a picture from the back of it.  Joe tried to drive past the front but got on a one-way street the wrong way, so we didn't get that one.  The Capitol was recently restored and looks pretty grand.

Our new Garmin GPS has several features we like, but the "you are going the wrong way" one has come in handy twice now.  

Our drive today was 287 miles, pretty much our max I would say.  Joe was pretty tired by the time we got stopped.  But we had really good roads most of the time, and nice scenery if you like this kind of stuff, which we do.  The only wildlife we saw was geese, both on the ground and in flight.  Not many places for wildlife to hide here since there are few trees and bushes.  We might have passed a prairie dog village but we don't know for sure -- didn't see any animals but it looked like dirt piles like they dig for their homes.  

We are in this campground for 4 nights, leaving on Monday (Labor Day).  No specific plans for our days here -- little down time, little exploring.  That should take care of it.