Limestone mud, car wash and a song

by Kat 

While we were exploring the Mystery Cave below ground it was raining above ground. We put the Press N Seal to the test. Unfortunately it did not work. The water managed to work it's way through the minuscule channel between the aluminum band on top and the weather stripping on the side. Sigh. After putting together A few sandwiches in the parking lot of the park we headed out for our next destination. Saturday's drive was supposed to be a short one so we had high hopes of an easy journey with less car time than the previous day, which had been our longest haul yet. To their credit the girls had done really well with the driving and had even entertained us with their rendition of "I've been Everywhere" 

A short easy drive was not to be though. The roads leading out of the Mystery Cave site were all limestone dirt roads, and as I already said it had been raining. The roads were nice and wet. I didn't think twice about this as I navigated Ry to the nearest highway. As we finally pulled onto a paved road, Ry worried that we had gotten the trailer dirty. I thought he was being overly fussy and couldn't see what he was talking about. (in my defense it's very hard to see the sides of the trailer from the truck) It wasn't until we pulled off at a rest stop that we saw the full extent of what we looked like.

We headed back on the road and tried to figure out what to do. Eventually I found a town that was big enough to boast several Car Washes and a Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart for food and photo printing and the car wash, well for obvious reasons. The  first car wash was a no go, couldn't pull through the bay, but the next one seemed to fit the bill so we pulled in and went to work.

While we scrubbed away Zoë settled in the shade with her newly purchased note book and wrote the following "descriptive moment/"

Descriptive Moment #1: A New Beginning

The grass prickled my legs as I sat down with a new notebook in the shade of Doolittle Carpets. I open my notebook and take a deep whiff of the new pages. The smell is fresh, and clean, almost minty. I smile, ready to start my new beginning. I place the tip of my pencil on the top of the page and watch the lead markings join together to make beautiful words that dance across the first line:  Descritpitve Moment #1: A New Beginning

With our mostly clean rig we finally arrived at our destination, Palisades State Park, just north east of Sioux Falls SD. The campsite was a nice paved pull in right near the Split Rock Creek. We got straight to work on dinner as it was already getting late and we had big plans of steak and potatoes for dinner. 

We had a peaceful night and in the morning went for a very hot hike along the creek, It was fascinating to be hiking next to cliffs and rushing white water when our drive in had been nothing but flat farm land. 

We spent a bit of time that morning looking over the maps and our calendar and decided to change our route after the Badlands. We will head west towards Salt Lake Cit,and visit Colorado on our way back East. We also decided we were in need of a more full service camp stop so we made reservations at the KOA just south of the The Badlands National Park. On our way west towards the Badlands we were thoroughly entertained by all the advertising for crazy tourist stops, one we decided we had to visit was The Corn Palace in Mitchell. Ryan's boss had mentioned to him that it was worth a quick stop. We stopped in bought some popcorn and a few other small corn related trinkets and headed on our way.

Unfortunately the exterior designs were not done yet. 

The interior murals were pretty cool.

 A big draw of the KOA was the WiFi,which turns out to be barely usable when everyone is awake. So here I am typing away in the middle of the night and uploading pictures.While it's still painfully slow at least it works.The drive in was amazing and we are all excited to explore the park tomorrow. We were able to get some laundry done and even have a swim in the pool. Tomorrow night will be quite a different experience. We're hoping to camp at one of the sites in the park that is essentially an open field with some tables. No running water or any other type of modern convenience. It will be fun to see how well we do in more primitive conditions.