Rapid City to Murdo, South Dakota

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

There was a herd of horses that lived next to our RV camp in Rapid City. It was fun to watch them romp around playing with each other. We enjoyed seeing them walking back and forth from the front window of our motor home. Bill walked over to the fence and they came right up to him and let him pet them.

It was really hot on the drive to Murdo (where we are now). During the drive we saw three ponds where the cattle were submerged in the water much like water buffalo. Other time we saw cattle huddled tightly together in the middle of the field. We inquired about these strange sightings and were told the cattle do this to keep cool and to ward off the flies. It is interesting to know that they are smart enough to huddle together to ward off flies.

We stopped at Ellsberg Air Force Base Museum and saw, among other airplanes, a B52 and a B1B Bomber. We had an opportunity to take a tour to see the Minute Man Missile Silos but opted instead to stay cool in the motor home and continue down the road and visit Badlands National Park and Wall Drug Store.

Wall Drug store is very interesting. We expected to find an old drug store and, low and behold, what we found was a two block long string of old fashion stores. We walked through a couple of them but it was so hot today it was very uncomfortable being outside. We did buy our first souvenir of the trip, a South Dakota tea shirt for Bill.

We are parked for the evening now with both air conditioning units running. I think every day how happy I am that Bill had the foresight to work on our air conditioning before this trip.