2019 Summer Trip

Sept 11-13 Badlands National Park area of SD -- our last state to camp in! Wednesday  - On our drive from ND to SD, we had to detour in Dickinson.    The GPS routed us toward a 13' bridge and we are 13'4".      Detour around the block, get McDonalds for breakfast, then back on interstate 94.    So we are making a second trip down Enchanted highway (ND 21) - at least we know that 30 miles was good.    Then 21 to 22 to 8 to 12, all to avoid ND 85 where we knew there was    a lot of construction.    When Noel and Karen went that way the other day they said between the construction and oil coating the road for about 59 miles they would not go that way if they had a choice.    Today with sunshine it was fun to see the scrap art sculptures again and the sunflower fields their heads heavy with seeds.    The route took us near many National Grasslands:    Buffalo Gap, Wall, Cedar River, and Grand River.    Highway 8 was very jouncy (jiggly and bouncy) with the back tire

Saturday-Tuesday September 7-10 Medora ND and Theodore Roosevelt National Park Saturday  -   Rain the whole drive today to Medora.   Good thing we had stopped at the Painted Canyon visitor Center on the way to the Medora Musical on Thursday because today between the fog and the rain you can't see anything.  Took a detour down the 21 mile Enchanted highway (Gladstone to Regent) to see the huge metal sculptures.   A local guy started this years ago to try to detour some summer traffic through the towns off the highway.   We saw geese in flight, deer crossing the road, prairie chickens (aka ring necked pheasants), a stage coach stop, grass hoppers in the wheat, and a fishing scene.   They were pretty cool from what we could tell through the driving rain.   It was hard to get pictures of the ones on Tony's side of the road since that is the direction the rain was coming from.   When he rolled down his window I got wet sitting in the passenger seat!   The town of Regent, a