Travel days are not our favorite days. As noted last, we decided to leave Wisconsin a day early because the weather forecast was calling for rain. We went west to Sioux Falls, SD adding a day to our stay there – was originally supposed to only be an overnight to break up the long journey to Custer, SD. The trip across took us across the bottom of Minnesota and it was SO boring. Plains and more plains (there is a reason they are called plains). Nothing to see. We did notice lots of unplanted farmland – due to rains this year (uh, climate crisis) there just isn’t as much getting planted. We will certainly feel those effects soon enough.
But then we had to eat, so we found a place to pull off in Blue Earth, MN to our surprise, the home to the Jolly Green Giant.
Jolly Green Giant 
Hello from Blue Earth.
Sioux Falls was a very sweet surprise. We did a great bike ride on a trail around the river – the city has done such a nice job creating green space and using the natural terrain to center the city. We were very impressed.
You never know what you are going to get with campsites, and Sioux Falls we had a very loud bird nest above our camper, so we were awakened early to head off the next day.
Our next long journey across the state of South Dakota (we literally went from one side to the other) seemed like it was going to be more of the snoozefest but we then we came upon a great change in the landscape and stopped for an amazing visit to the Badlands. We also kept seeing billboards for Wall Drug Store. Wall coffee 5 cents; Wall homemade donuts, Wall this, Wall that – the billboards reminded me of that movie, 3 Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri (great movie); so we had to stop and see what all the fuss was about. It’s not a drug store, it’s more like a town – very interesting (?) and weird.
Coffee was good though. And the donut (chocolate covered).
We didn’t really plan to see the Badlands during the drive to Custer, we were going to make it a day trip — but we realized it was quite a hike from camp, so why not go ahead and see it now. And so we went a bit backwards from Wall into the Badlands, then over the same route through Wall to get to Custer. But really glad we did it that way – late afternoon is a great time for wildlife to be out and about. I have to figure out the video link to add a couple of interesting ones to this thing; but for now, still photos will have to do. We had to wait for the Bison to cross the road as we drove in, it was gigantic. We saw big horn sheep – up hillside where the baby chased after her mom and then a couple of rams roadside. MY GOD, this was so vast, amazing and the loop drive around the park was just breathtaking. Really wished we had booked a night to camp there, I bet the stars at night were incomparable.
The terrain changed again as we went further west into the Black Hills. We made it into Custer pretty late that night – we had a few scares with deer crossing our path but luckily, no collisions. We set up camp and promptly fell asleep.
And we had really bad WiFi in Custer, thus the delay.
Wanderlust In Silver 