Travel Days & Independence, MO

We left Custer State Park on Wednesday, June 14th, and spent the entire day traversing South Dakota from west to east. A far cry from our New England states where you can go through four states in as many hours. Traffic was non existent with wide open fields of crops and cattle grazing.

We saw one last heard of bison as we were leaving Custer State Park… probably 20 or so. We didn’t take any pics this time though.

Funny story… we stopped at a rest stop mid morning. I head into the ladies room and before I even entered I could hear a woman yelling “Help!” I walk in and said “hello.” She says “Oh good, can you help me? I’m stuck in the stall. The door won’t open.” I tug on it… nothing. She said “It isn’t locked. Can you kick it?” Sure I can kick it. I always wanted to have a Chuck Norris moment. “Stand back” I say. I let fly a kick to the door and bam, it opens. She said “Oh thank you. You’ve done your good deed for the day.” No problem. The usual question comes up. She says “Where are you from?” Turns out they’re from Indiana.

A few hours later we stop at the Visitor’s Center Rest Stop in South Dakota… and the same woman spots me and thanks me once again. Plus we have at least a half dozen other people comment on Kya. The most common question is “what breed is she?” Nobody can figure it out. One of the women asking turns out to be from Wiscasset, ME. I said “we know the area well!” At this particular Visitor’s Center there was a scenic overlook and a huge statue of Sacagawea since this is the land of the Louis & Clark expedition. I took a picture and Kya and Gary who are dwarfed at the base.

We have an uneventful drive in the afternoon, except for a wrong turn late in the day getting to our Corp of Engineers Campground in Yankton SD called Cottonwood. With the help of Google Maps, I’m able to get us back on track without much difficulty. We arrive to find a park attendant apologetically telling us that someone is in our site. He can call the Park Ranger to come sort it out. Do we really want to get some poor shmuck to move from our site? I don’t think so. “We’re here for one night, do you have other sites available?” “Oh yes, plenty.” Ok, why don’t we just take one of those. He hands us a map and off we go. We pick another site… save a whopping $2 because our new site is no longer “Premiere” so it only costs $16 rather than $18. Although from our vantage point, the site is certainly Premiere enough. We overlook a lake. Sweet! We back into our site with no help from anyone else. Thank you very much. And don’t do a half bad job! Since the remainder of our trip is staying at all State Parks or Corp of Engineer Parks and they mostly have back-in sites, we’ll be getting lots of practice. Now if we can just get a little consistent with our results, we’ll be doing good.

Cottonwood Campground is gorgeous! On a dam. It’s a shame we’re only here for one night!

Thursday, June 15th, we’re on to Perry, KS, on our way to the St. Louis area for about four days. The most challenging part of getting out of Cottonwood Campground is the looooong construction project at the beginning of it and trying to figure out which lane is the travel lane. There are cones everywhere. We sit still for a moment and along comes a trail of cars so we can now see where traffic is supposed to be going.

We were skirting the borders of four states so kept going in and out of South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, touched Missouri, and finally Kansas. This night we’re staying at another corp of engineers park on Slough Creek, near another dam. They build these somewhat out in the middle of nowhere. It’s fun getting to them because you’re on country roads. We’re traveling through farmland and cattle grazing. I see one sign that says “1 Kansas Farm Feeds 184 People.” I believe it. This is called the heartland for a reason. The other funny site we see is big farm equipment on the the roads… we assume going from one end of their property to the other. Looks like either something out of Star Wars or a giant spider from another planet with big long legs and wide bodies.

We can tell we’re no longer in the higher elevations. It is hot! 92 degrees. We get to Slough Creek Campground. The woman at the check-in station says your at site 22. I say “do you have a map?” She says “you haven’t been here before?” Nope. Same thing happened the day before. I think it’s typically locals who are using these corp of engineer parks. Turns out our site is a pull thru so no opportunity to practice backing in… considering it’s 92 degrees maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

We have a peek-a-boo view of the water. We walk down to the water through a path in the trees and there is a rocky coastline with the dam in the distance and there’s a nice breeze down there. Unfortunately, no real spot to go swimming though. We relax for the reminder of the day and do a simple dinner. Storms are expected and they don’t disappoint. It’s getting darker so we walk Kya before it hits. The air is heavy and soupy. Then it actually looks like it’s brightening. We come back from our walk and settle into some Seinfeld reruns that Gary has put on my laptop. (We don’t have cable or tv at these corp of engineer parks.) Then the storm comes…. loud loud thunder. Feels like the trailer got punched by an angry God. Kya is oblivious. Loud noises don’t bother her… a certain smell (which we can’t decipher) can send her into a tizzy, but loud noises? Nothing. Thunder and lightening and heavy rain keeps up for a while…. eventually we just go to bed with it still raining and lightening.

Friday, June 16th, is going to be another hot day. 95 degrees. We decide to head to Independence MO and see the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum. We travel through Kansas City, MO… our days of no traffic may be a thing of the past. But we also see lots and lots of cornfields and then more cornfields.

The Truman Library & Museum is really well done. We discovered lots of fascinating tidbits. During Truman’s tenure, the White House was basically considered an unsafe structure. A lot of the past modifications to add electricity, elevators, and an additional floor etc. were all done in a rather haphazard manner. Some folks wanted to tear down the White House. Truman said no and instead kept the exterior, but the interior was gutted and re-done to make it structurally sound. It took three years and during that time, the Trumans lived in Blair House. Truman would walk from Blair House to the Oval Office. Their was an assassination attempt on his life one morning as he was walking to the Oval Office. After that, the Secret Service didn’t let him walk anymore and they insisted on driving him. His approval rating at the end of his term was only 30%… he had trouble getting his domestic agenda passed with all the foreign policy issues going on at the time… NATO was signed, air drops to Germany, and the start of the Cold War. They had a replica of the Oval Office and his restored vintage cars that he drove. Plus the graphics were very well done! We pay attention to these things 🙂

After the Truman Library, we ran some errands in Independence then came back to our campsite. It was 95 but we had a lovely breeze outside in the shade. I sat outside and read and Gary putzed around doing some chore things on the rig. Then we both sat down by the water and enjoyed the cool breezes until they died down around 7:30.

Tomorrow we head off to the St. Louis area.