The Grand Finale (I Hope)

Last night we survived 3 separate thunderstorms.  The one I talked about yesterday where we had a tornado warning siren, and then two more during the night, but without the tornado scare.  When we woke up this morning, a quick check of the weather app showed that Ft Dodge was in an open space between storms, so we had a cup of coffee and a very quick breakfast and hit the road.

200 miles southeast of Ft Dodge is the little town of Moscow, IA, where HWH, the manufacturer of the leveling system for our motorhome, is located. We've had a couple of small issues with the system that they assure us will be resolved tomorrow. In the meantime, we are parked in the plant complex waiting for our appointment at 7:00 am.

We took a bit of a walk this afternoon about 3, just after we arrived and checked in, and saw that the clouds were building in the west.  There's no cable TV here, in fact just electricity, so we came back to the motorhome and set up the old-fashioned on the roof antenna. We picked up 33 local channels that were filled with storm warnings.  One channel had wall to wall coverage of the approaching storm, which promised to be a "good" one.

The fun started with a band of shelf clouds moving quickly across the sky, followed by a wide band of Mammatus clouds that are sometimes called egg clouds because they resemble a tray of eggs as seen from the bottom as if they were floating in water.  I didn't get a photo because almost immediately the sky turned an awful green color and the wind started to blow.  According to the tv station, we had 70 mph straight-line winds, with heavy rain, lightning and thunder.  Again, according to the tv, we've had just over 2 1/2 inches of rain in 1/2 hour! The photo above shows water pouring off the adjacent building.  The forecast was for baseball sized hail as the storm passed through.  Uh oh.

I made a quick run for the office to see if they had room for our motorhome inside the service building and got soaked through and through.  And they didn't have any room; all the bays were filled, so a quick run back "home", and with crossed fingers, we waited.

Here we are now, about 2 hours after the storm started, and the sky is cloudy, the rain has slowed, and the lightning and thunder are getting less and less.  No hail yet.  Welcome to Iowa.

Update:  The hail arrived.  There was a second band of storms about 2 hours after the first that contained strong winds, rain, and lightening like the first band, with hail added.  This is supposed to be the last of the storms until tomorrow evening.  The second storm began to clear just at sunset:

This is promising, although it's just started raining again…..Will it never end?

Doggone it! We almost made it!

We left the Famil-E-Fun RV park in Mitchell, SD, with some reluctance this morning.  It is a wonderful little park with lots of shade, a lot of room between sites, and, when we left, a whole bunch of sunshine!

On the road at last, I90 took us due east into the cornfields of southeastern South Dakota and western Iowa.

In Sioux Falls, we left our old friend I90 and headed south for a bit to Sioux City.  We turned east again on a small country road, US 20, that led us through the towns of Moville, Correctionville, Cushing, Holstein, and Galva.  From the town of Early, the road was a nice four lane highway.  Not quite a freeway as there were numerous side roads entering and exiting from it, and cross traffic was a bother.  After some 287 miles we've found a nice spot to rest for the evening in the parking lot of…….

Walmart in Fort Dodge, Iowa.  While we were shopping in the store this evening, the tornado sirens went off and the rain and wind started.  Now, we had made it through the entire day without so much as a drop of rain, but could it be that we would have a record-breaking dry day?  Oh, no….not today.  We could hear the rain on the roof of Walmart, and all the customers were herded to the back of the store near an outside wall that was protected by another building outside.  Kinda scary for California kids.  We talked to some of the other patrons and found that this "happens all the time".  OK.  We were still nervous.  By the time we had been given the OK, and the sirens had stopped, the rain had disappeared also, so that when we walked out we were met with a wall of 78 degree temp with 100% humidity.

So into the car we went, with the air conditioner on for a quick tour of Ft Dodge. The currently most interesting things about this town are that the streets are in horrible need of repair and that there are a lot of churches.  This is the spire of Corpus Christo Catholic Church, the highest spire in town.

Other than that….Ehhh, not much.

On the road again tomorrow. Hopefully without rain, although the weather channel doesn't think so.  Tonight we have a tornado watch until 11:00 pm, and 60% chance of high winds and rain tomorrow.
Wish us luck.

Wait for it……The Corn Palace!

273 miles east of Rapid City, SD, finds us in Mitchell, SD, at the Famil-E-Fun Campground, space 72.  This is a very nice, shady, rv park that is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.  The temp is about 78 deg F, and overcast.  I told you yesterday how we spent the day tidying up, including washing Nessie and Gus.  Dumb idea. Rain started about dusk last night and continued through the night.  It was still raining this morning when we left, and the rain chased us for 150 miles to Murdo, SD, and then changed to just overcast skies with occasional showers.  We're hoping that we'll run away from the rain soon, as we've had significant rain on each of the last 14 straight days, and we're getting bored with it.

The terrain changed as we left the Badlands of southwest South Dakota, changing to rolling grasslands and fields of corn.

In it's own way, this countryside is every bit as beautiful as the Badlands or Black Hills National Forest.  Knowing that this is part of the breadbasket of America is important, because even though it doesn't look like much, corn and cattle account for a huge part of our national foodstuffs. Particularly corn.

In the 19th century, a race by farming communities to promote their products produced "Palaces" all over the upper midwest.  34 palaces in 24 communities included the Grain Palace in Aberdeen and the Alfalfa Palace in Rapid City.  All are gone now, except the Corn Palace in Mitchell.

Each of the murals and the coverings around them are made of corn.  12 different colors of corn are planted in the spring and then sliced in half and nailed to the sides of the building.  Some of the decoration is made of bundles of ryegrass and sour dock, a hearty prairie plant.  The design changes every year in the fall and is designed by a local artist Cherie Ramsdell.

The Corn Palace is currently undergoing a multimillion dollar renovation, which will be completed in time for the fall 2014 theme change.

The interior of the Corn Palace is a performing arts location with a state of the art stage, and a basketball court complete with seating for 500 spectators.

The basketball floor is turned over to tourists during the summer, with thousands of trinkets designed to produce income to support the facility. Trivia: the Corn Palace is home to the local high school basketball team……the kernels.  The school mascot is an oversized ear of corn with google eyes. The local radio station call letters are KORN. A lawsuit prohibited the old television program Hee Haw from using those call letters in their skits.

On that note….

What can I say…..Rain

We're leaving Rapid City tomorrow, so today was spent cleaning and prepping for the next leg of our journey.  We're going to make a run for Indiana, hoping to be there on July 2, or the 3rd at the latest.  A stop in Moscow, IA, to have the leveling system on the motor home checked will happen on the way. Then a quick jaunt through South Chicago to the rv capital of the country near Elkhart, IN.

One of the things we needed to do today was a lot of laundry, cleaning, and vacuuming.  While Donna was busy on the inside, I took over the outside, regenerating the water softener, dumping the holding tanks, and …..wait for it…..washing both the motorhome and the tow car.  The weather today was spectacular, clear with a few clouds and 78 degrees.  So with a lot of work, we got it all done and everything was sparkling.

Then…..about 6:00pm…..it started to rain.  Thunderstorm again!  Lightning and thunder, rain by the bucket full, and wind.  Ok, so I wasn't so smart about the car washing thing.  These storms seem to be chasing us east.  I'm hoping that tomorrow will bring a change to our luck.

For people from drought-striken Cali, this is certainly a refreshing change, though. It's wonderful to step outside after the storm passes and take a deep breath of the "clean".  Wish we could bottle some of this and send it home.

Later!

Downtown Rapid City, South Dakota

After 10 straight days of driving either Nessie or Gus we decided to take the trolley into downtown "Rapid" as the locals call it, and see what we could see.

The trolley loop goes to a number of the museums, parks, and points of interest around the city.  We didn't know it, but by one account Rapid City is known as "Dinosaur City", in fact, here comes one now….

We hopped off in downtown and cruised the shops for awhile, paying our tourist dues as we went!  Lunch was at the Rapid City Firehouse.

The "outdoor" tables were in the remodeled fire wagon building next door to the firehouse building.  The fire wagon space is the dark garage-looking thing in the photo above. The owners have kept a lot of the early memorabilia from the early days of firefighting.

Re: the lunch.  Donna had a "Bison and Blue",  a buffalo burger sprinkled with blue cheese.  I ordered a "Cricket" burger with cream cheese and jalapeños.  Great!  Downtown is a nice, clean area, filled with a variety of great shops (read shoes), restaurants and galleries, and includes some 10 blocks of refurbished old buildings.

Thursday night is downtown music night (tonight the theme is Hawaiian music), and the streets were slowly being closed in the late afternoon.  Our trolley only ran until 4, so we hadda make a quick return trip and we're ready for a quiet evening at "home".

P.S. So much for the quiet evening at home. As I write this, 9:24 pm MDT, we've just survived one of the most intense thunderstorms we've ever seen.  Constant lightning, heavy rain, and thunder that shook the motorhome. Golf ball size hail at one time, nickel size hail for about 1/2 hour.  The local news says that we had 70 mph wind gusts just a few miles from the rv park. Rainfall has been about a two inches in the last hour.  The cell is moving off to the northeast toward the plains, so we should be ok until tomorrow evening, when, if patterns hold, we'll get to enjoy this type of activity again.  Oh Boy!

Devils Tower

Devils Tower National Monument has been on our "bucket list" since the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" opened years ago.  Today we finally had a chance to visit the Tower.

As we got closer, the magnitude of the Tower became very apparent. At 5112 feet above sea level, it's the highest point for miles around.

American Indians have revered the tower for generations, naming it Bear Lodge. Their name was misinterpreted as Bad God Tower, which became Devils Tower.  It was originally thought to be the core of an extinct volcano, but is currently considered to be a Magma Intrusion, which is just a fancy phrase for an upward intrusion of hot magma into fractured sedimentary rock above it.  It never appeared above ground, but has been exposed by erosion of the rock by the nearby Belle Fourche river along with rain and wind.

We walked the base trail around the tower, marveling at the different faces the tower presented.

One of the interesting things we noticed while on the trail was the damage done to many trees in the forest of Ponderosa Pines.

At first we thought of vandalism, then perhaps fire or beavers or deer rubbing their antlers on the trees, but nothing seemed to fit until a ranger pointed out that the local Porcupine population loves to eat the tender layer just under the outer bark of the tree.  Since Porcupines don't hibernate, they are on the hunt for food all year long, particularly in winter.  Surprise!

One last look at Devils Tower as the clouds gathered and we drove away.

On the way out of the park, we stopped to visit one of the local Prairie Dog towns.  These guys are Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs, one of more than a hundred different kinds of prairie dogs.  Dogs are very social, and live together in "towns".  The town at Devils Tower covers some 40 acres, but in years past, they were measured by the square mile!

Dogs only live about 4 years in the wild, due to the fact that they are lunch for badgers. ferrets. bobcats, coyotes, hawks, falcons, and bald eagles.  Their population is declining, so consequently the population of other species is also declining.  One interesting note is that each burrow contains two entrances, an observation room just inside each entrance where the dogs can keep watch without going outside, a nursery, food storage and eating room, as well as a bathroom.  Social, indeed!  They are smarter than some other mammalian species……

A great day trip, some 247 miles round trip, but worth every effort.  Day Five of afternoon thunderstorms.  This is getting a bit monotonous.

Crazy Horse +

On the way to the Crazy Horse Memorial site this morning, we passed Mt. Rushmore.  We have already visited it, so we passed on the visit (and the crowds).  We did stop on the south side to take a photo of George Washington in profile.

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a completely private effort, surviving on donations and entry fees for operating capital.  The site contains an Orientation Center with theaters and museums, an outdoor viewing veranda, an American Indian Cultural Center, and a variety of craftsmen and women creating and displaying their wares, some of which are very nice.  The entire facility is well done and with very interesting displays.

Of course, the entire site overlooks the Worlds Largest Mountain Carving, The statistics are mind-boggling, but consider: the work has been in progress 64 years and is estimated to be well under 50% complete.

Millions of tons of rock have been removed already, and work presently focuses on roughing in the hand as well as finish work on the face. Fragile areas in the rock have dictated a slight deviation from the sculptors original work, and electronic instruments have been installed in the hand area to monitor movement.  Teams of engineers, seismologists, and geologists continue to assess the strength of the rock.

We chose not to take the bus tour of the base of the monument due to heavy rain, but a 1/34th scale model of the monument underscores the detail of the huge sculpture.

The Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear commissioned Korczak Ziolkowski to carve Crazy Horse, saying "the red man has great heroes, also" after seeing Mt. Rushmore.  Korczak refused millions in public funding, believing that Crazy Horse should be built by an interested public.  Since his death in 1982, his wife and seven of their 10 children continue his work, using detailed notes he left before he died. The work now is mechanized, using lasers and gps devices to locate explosives that remove thousands of tons of rock at a time.

We left Crazy Horse and drove into Custer State Park.  The southern "wildlife loop" promised to provide extensive views of native wildlife. The wildlife was a bit sparse today, but the scenery was awesome.

We did run across a herd of Bison (Buffalo), where this stout fellow wandered close to the road.

A bit further along, we turned onto the Needles Highway.

The formations in this area are phenomenal.  Unfortunately, they are located on a ridge directly under a very active thunderstorm.  We took what photos we could and ran (at the sedate speed limit of 25 mph) for the lowlands.

A quick trip through Hill City led us to Highway 44 and a return to Rapid City.  A nice, quiet, 145 mile loop with memorial scenery.  Thats about it for the immediate Black Hills area, so we will venture a bit farther afield tomorrow.  Stay tuned.