Wagons, East! (the final post)

Well, hello again. I'll bet that by now, you probably thought we'd forgotten about you. No, that's not the case. We've just had several campgrounds in a row with no/terrible WiFi. We spent three nights at the beautiful Rafter J Bar Ranch in the spectacularly lovely Black Hills of South Dakota. It seems that every single time we come west, we always, somehow, end up at the Rafter J. This time was a bit different, however. First of all, it's Bike Week, better known by the name of the hosting town, Sturgis. 500,000 bikers (mostly Harleys) have descended on the Black Hills, nearly doubling the entire population of South Dakota. But the funny thing is, despite your (or Alex's) preconceived notions about how scary bikers are, people really couldn't be nicer. Just really polite, kind, and nice. And you could have heard a pin drop at night. The funniest thing for me is that all of these people who Live to Ride and Ride to Live... all drive cars and trucks and RVs and bring their Hogs in trailers. But we did see two massive, super-scary, Hell's Angels-looking bikers at Mt. Rushmore who were wearing t-shirts that said "I rode my bike all the way to Trailer Week." Now that's funny. Also funny is that we've spent most of this summer hiking, so we're always wearing quick-dry clothing, carrying raincoats, etc. Except when we went to Mt. Rushmore. And got absolutely soaked. ...Which brings me to the 2nd thing about this trip to the Black Hills: It rained 15 minutes out of every half hour, almost like clockwork. So we bailed out early, and found this fantastic resort-type place on the Missouri River in eastern SD. Suddenly, it was like we were in the Caribbean, in the Florida Keys or someplace. Just relaxing, sitting at a Tiki bar along the water. And speaking of water... they had plenty of it. We were so pleased to get waterfront campsites. But they weren't supposed to be on the water. I thought the river was wide (about the width of one of the Finger Lakes), but was extra surprised to discover just how bad the flooding was... by spotting a streetlight, halfway across the river. Continuing east, we have now stopped for two nights in eastern Minnesota. We came to Minnesota hoping to discover what makes Michele Bachmann tick but, unfortunately, all we have found is reality. We have made reservations to make one final change to the itinerary that never stops changing, and tomorrow morning we head northeast into Wisconsin and Green Bay. (Go Packers.) The following day we are going to go through da U.P., eh? and plan to spend two nights at Mackinac. After that, finally, maybe, we're coming home. So, as we wrap up, because this is the last post, let's review the planned itinerary: Kentucky, Arkansas, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado. And the actual adventure was: Kentucky, Arkansas, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan. So they were pretty close. We kept it within 2,000 miles or so of the original.

I hope that you (whoever you are) have enjoyed our little tale. Thanks for following along. We'll see you in the real world.