South Dakota (12th state visited)

Our next travel day brought us to Gruner Brothers Brewery in Casper, WY. It was the first use of our Harvest Hosts membership. Harvest Hosts is a network of places you dry camp/boondock for one night at a time. All they ask is you spend $30 or so at their establishment as a "thank you". They had a pretty extensive menu and a great beer menu, so that was an easy task. We have a generator on board, so once we got settled we were able to run the A/C until sundown and were greeted with a cold front that let us open the windows! It was a decent experience, but our travel style thus far does not have us staying somewhere for "just one night" very often. I think if we were retired and weren't strictly driving on the weekends, we would use it more. We connected with another Super C Newmar owner in the bar/restaurant area and traded stories. She snapped this picture.

Gruner Brothers Brewing - Casper, WY

The next day brought us to Hot Springs, SD. This neck of the woods has been under extensive road construction for about 3 years! There were length and width restrictions in place to get to our RV site, so we had to unhook our Jeep a few miles outside of town. Chad was a champion driver of the rig through some TIGHT spaces. We spent the week at Sunrise Ridge Campground. It was a quiet spot just outside of town with some nice country views.

Hot Springs is known for their Mammoth exhibit (https://mammothsite.org/history/). One afternoon we went to the local site which is home to over 61 Mammoth!

Mammoth Site - Hot Springs, SD

We weren't too far from Custer State Park, so we decided to take a day trip and experience Needles Highway. It's funny how much of the landscape you either forgot from when you were a kid or never appreciated at the time. We saw quite a few bison from afar, but actually came around a corner and were right next to one!

Custer State Park

Custer State Park

Mule deer in Custer State Park

Needles Highway: less than 9 ft wide here!

A week later we uprooted and drove to Mitchell, SD for a night. No, we did not stop at the infamous Corn Palace this time through! We had plans to stay at a local golf course through another Harvest Host, but the region had a very rainy June and the entrance to the course was flooded! Unfortunately, we had to scramble to find accommodations for the night. Thankfully, there was a nearby KOA that happened to have a spot. They had some standing water in the park, as well, but we were able to land in a large pull through site and just stay to the one end of it. Water would be a common thread as we continued into Minnesota.