July 23rd, 2010

Right after we left the KOA at Hardin we made the 2,000 miles mark of our trip. I love this country. We entered South Dakota hoping to camp now at a KOA near Mt. Rushmore. It is very close to Sturgis, and the motorcycles were everywhere due to the Sturgis Annual Rally coming up on the weekend. There was NO camping anywhere.
We took a few side trips today and did some good sightseeing, we saw the badlands where Wild Bill Hickcock, and Annie Oakley used to run. The Battle of Big Horn happened there too. A lot of history in these hills, we saw where they had the long hard cattle drive to Texas. We went into a Danish community with a huge historic windmill. The barns were beautiful; the Danish barns have an extra little fancy thing at the peak.
We were enjoying this drive so much when the lightening started up everywhere and the wind, rain and thunder was very strong. All of a sudden, Kate and I noticed that we were the only ones on the road…very eerie feeling, we were scared. We went off all the exits and every place had signs out No Vacancy. Finally, at 9:30 and a lot further away from Sturgis and all the motorcycles we stopped in Mitchell, SD and we got a last room, she said it was a conference room…and she charged me a fortune. They call the conference room "Murphy's Room" because it has a Murphy bed. When we got in the room it just took Katelynn's breath away and certainly surprised me, the Murphy bed was down and was King size, it had the biggest flat screen TV I've seen, it had a kitchen and a refrigerator, and a bar, in the bathroom it had a two person Jacuzzi, it had a dining table and a couch and a coffee table and wing chairs, it was SUPER nice. We are gonna sleep real well here, I can tell. Check out is at noon and we have to be in Kentucky on the 25^th, and we have 953 miles to go. Goodnight,