South Dakota | Chapter 3

If you’re just joining us, you may want to start at the beginning of our adventures with Maiden Voyage and Whirlwind Visits. When we last checked in, we’d spent a rainy day driving through Custer State Park to Mount Rushmore. Sesame Street’s It’s A Rainy Day played in my head. If you don’t know it, look it up. You’re welcome, in advance, for the earworm.

After Mount Rushmore, we headed for Rapid City, South Dakota, to dine at Firehouse Brewing Company. The food was very good but the beer was nothing to write home about. We bought a much needed warm blanket at Walmart and settled in for the cold, rainy night at a KOA campground in Rapid City.

The next morning, we got on the road early and headed east on Interstate 90. The flat land and endless views offered another song for my internal play list: I Can See For Miles and Miles by The Who. We crossed the imaginary line into Central Time and crossed the Missouri River. There wasn’t much else to see until an Ingalls Homestead sign popped up near De Smet. I was so excited! Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books were some of my favorites growing up. We had to stop.

The buildings on the homestead were all replicas, but the land itself is the land Charles Ingalls homesteaded. The Surveyor’s House and the First School are actual buildings from Laura Ingalls’ childhood. So cool!

We treated ourselves to a hotel room in Sioux Falls, SD, that night with dinner at the local Red Robin. And the next morning we were off again, headed toward Forager Brewery in Rochester, Minnesota. The sun came out! So, of course, the Sesame Street theme song seemed appropriate. Yes, I sang a couple of lines. Sunny day, sweepin’ the clouds away…

At Forager, Mark enjoyed a couple of beers: Antiquated Methodology and Kaleidoscope Kookaburra. He bought two crowlers of the latter on the way out, which he subsequently shared with friends along our route. Sorry, none left to sample when we get home.

We left Forager, aiming for Decorah, Iowa, and another brewery called Toppling Goliath. But guess what popped up before Decorah — another Laura Ingalls Wilder sign! We had to stop. Again. We pulled into Burr Oak, IA, and found the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.

Decorah and Toppling Goliath were not far Burr Oak. There we touched base with Eric, one of the brewers, whom Mark had met in 2018 on a previous brewery road trip. We ate dinner and Mark ordered a beer flight: DDH Pseudo Sue, King Sue, Scorpious Morchella, and Term Oil S’mores. No favorites among them ’cause they’re all good! He followed that with an Assassin 2022. After dinner, we sat outdoors for well over an hour listening to seventeen-year-old Carter Guse play his guitar and foot tambourine while singing songs from the fifties to the present. He even took requests. Very entertaining!

We tore ourselves away from the music and checked in at Pulpit Rock Campground in Decorah for the night. More adventures in Iowa and beyond coming soon…

Since picking up our new van in Colorado, we’ve been on the road back to New England. To read about the beginning of our journey, check out Maiden Voyage and Whirlwind Visits and Mountain Views.

After leaving Rocky Mountain National Park, we stayed overnight in the parking lot of a small pottery shop in Loveland, CO. The next day we drove from Colorado, through Wyoming and Nebraska, all the way to Hot Springs, South Dakota. The mountains gave way to flat land stretching all around us for miles. The crosswinds tried to shove us off the road a few times, but we prevailed. Dixie Chicks’ Wide Open Spaces played in my head. I may have sung a line or two. 😉 Grazing cows and baby calves dotted acres and acres along the highway. Life Is A Highway by Rascal Flats joined my internal playlist, followed closely by Woody Guthrie’s This Land, when we saw what could only be described as a “ribbon of highway” in front of us.

We set up camp in Hot Springs, at the first of many KOAs. By “set up camp” I mean we replenished our water supply, did laundry, and figured out how to open our awning. Right before it started raining.

The rain would stick around all the next day. We started at The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD, in the morning. It’s the site of an actual archaeological dig uncovering piles of Woolly and Columbian Mammoth bones. Fascinating!

It continued to rain as we drove north to Custer State Park through the Black Hills of South Dakota. From Custer State Park, we took highway 16A up around steep curves, hairpin turns, switchbacks, pigtails, and tunnels to Mount Rushmore. Not a drive I’m eager to repeat. Eeek!