Day 20 - A Snowy Day in South Dakota

We woke up this morning to a light snow falling.  It was pretty, leaving a light dusting on the pine trees and the chairs we left outside.  By the time we left for Mt. Rushmore, it had stopped.  Weather Channel is predicting a low of 19 and snow showers for tomorrow morning.  This will motivate us to pack up more quickly and not drag things out just because we want to stay here!

Not only did we wake up to snow, we woke up to a tire going flat on the truck.  It looked like we had picked up something which was causing a slow leak.  Thankfully, we have an Internet connection so I found a tire repair shop in Rapid City and we were heading that way so after a look at Mount Rushmore, we mapquested "Dale's Tires and Retreads" and got it repaired for only $17.

We made it to Mount Rushmore to see the monument.  It was cold with intermittent snow so we didn't hang around outside very long.  The visitor center had lots of interesting displays and video showings so total we probably spent two hours there.  We ate lunch at Keystone and headed to Rapid City for the repair.  The man was very nice and worked us in but it still took a couple hours away from what we had planned for the day.  We had planned to drive to Wall Drug because it was less than an hour away, but we decided to go back to the camp and rest because we will be driving hard these next two days.

We filled up with gas to be ready to get on the road tomorrow and then drove into Hot Springs for a picture or two.  Hot Springs is an interesting town with neat red sandstone buildings.  The area around has lots of red sandstone, and the buildings are over 100 years so when they were built, they used the natural materials around them.  One crazy thing about the town is that the US highway that goes through it is not straight.  There are several turns you must make as you are driving down the main street.    We had to go through the town several times and Carol hated it because of the turns.  They were doing road construction and didn't have a flagman so you had to stop and when the coast was clear, move into the other lane.  I guess things operate on its own time in a small town.  Although the population is only 4000, they have a VA hospital and national veterans cemetery.  On the town sign, they say the town is the "Veteran City of the USA. "

Their are signs in yards and public buildings saying "We love our VA" and "We love our veterans'" and "Save our VA".  I am assuming that the federal government has slated this VA hospital for closure and the community is rallying around to try to keep it open.  It seems like such a small town for both a VA hospital and cemetery.

When we got back to camp we discovered that we had run out of propane.  We have been using our furnace a lot.  We had to fill both tanks so we will be nice and warm tonight. .  I had to take one more animal picture.  Then when we went into Hot Springs, we saw mule deer in a yard so I snapped another picture.  That should be it for animal pictures.