Badlands National Park!

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July 15
We were up and at it early this morning. We’d needed to hookup and before leaving the campground dump the sewer. It was already really warm. David was sweat out by the time we were on the road. Thankfully, It was only 153 miles to the Badlands KOA, just outside the national park.

As we drove we could feel the shimmy in the truck. We think we are going to have to have it aligned. We’ve got a front truck tire wearing on the outside as well. We know there is nothing in the badlands area where we can get work done so it will have to wait until our next stop near Rapid City SD.

We turned off I-90 south and found we were actually driving through the east portion of the park. It was amazing as the storm clouds were brewing overhead. David got some amazing shots of the desolate formations and storm clouds. It was a slow process of twists and turns on the narrow park road before going out of the park on the south side. 9 miles later we found our park just outside of Interior SD. The KOA park was bounded on three sides by rivers. It was a lush green island with big tall Cottonwood trees covering most of it. We were lead to our spot, pull through without too much trouble, it was a long way twisting and turning through the park before getting to our spot. We got right in. The dog park was fairly large here and I thought I’d take the dogs over while David readied the trailer to be unhooked, and electric etc hooked up. It was really hot and pretty humid as well and the storm clouds still had not dumped the rain. As I started to take the dog’s over the 100 feet to the dog park I noticed a lady there with her dog already going in. Strange part is she had a sweatshirt on, hood up, tied closely around her face, long pants and boots on. As we waited outside, for her dog to finish up her dog got quite aggressive, thankfully a fence was between us. Red got pretty protective at that point and I was having a hard time holding him back. In the last month he’s started filling out, not looking like such a puppy anymore. Needless to say now at 90+ lbs he’s hard to hold when upset so David came to my rescue. It was about then that I understood why the woman was dressed so strangely as she said, “They have mosquito spray at the office!” All of us were covered in mosquitos and the cloud around us was so thick you could hardly avoid breathing them in! OMG, I thought this is horrible! The lady left with her dog and I got Red and Dottie turned loose in the pen as David and I were swatting frantically. The dog’s were panicky too. Red ran and Dottie dropped and rolled. Dottie then ran to pee and quickly came back ready to leave. She was covered by mosquitos! We got the dog’s back in the truck until we were unhooked and then got them into the trailer.

I got laundry started as I had a big pile accumulated since Amana Colonies. I had lots of steak leftovers and some pie that was now completely thawed out. We didn’t venture out, except for brief trips to the dog park. David bundled up in his safari shirt and cap, or I in my sweatshirt for the brief trip. None of us wanted to be outside. By bedtime I was taking stock of the number of bites on my arms, neck and face and applying Bactine spray with lidocaine on them. David had bites all over too and both of the dog’s had bumps on them in various places. My upper arm had at least five large red bumps. We were just hoping the lidocaine in the spray kicked in so we could sleep. After our last trip out for the night we turned off all the lights going in and out just to reduce the hordes of mosquitos getting in the trailer. In all of our trips, to Alaska, all over Canada, US, and Nova Scotia never have we encountered mosquitos like this. I simply couldn’t understand how some people were wearing shorts out there!! We did find the following day, in the bright hot sun the population of mosquitos was manageable.

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