Sam And Saundra's Year Long Adventure - Part 98

Sam and Saundra’s Year Long Adventure – Part 98

Mid-West 

5/5/09 - Custer, South Dakota

We take all of our new rocks and our memories with us as we leave Alliance. We are driving up through the panhandle when Sam is struck by a ‘something he should have remembered before now thought’. It hurt. Sam left all his fancy Mexico dress shirts in an Alliance dry cleaner.  Luckily, a phone call and Marty said he would help out. Thanks again! We take a short detour through Hemingford, Marsland and Crawford to get to Chaldron (area recommended by Marty for rocks).  We enjoy this area and would like to come back without the trailer attached.  It circles the Nebraska National Forest, which Sam was just barely able to pass by.  Then we enter South Dakota.

Flags Up

Sam has made declarations that the Yucatan Peninsula was the most beautiful area, then Sedona, then the area between Durango and Cripple Creek.  I have always thought that South Dakota is one of those special places.  Sam now declares that this area is indeed the most beautiful – for a lot of ‘beautiful’ reasons.

Roamin' The Rim

We go through Oelrichs, Hot Springs and into Custer.  Turn right into the main town area, then left at the sign to Mount Rushmore.  At the top of the hill, we turn into the Custer Crazy Horse Campground. This is the same campground that we stayed at several years ago, when our kids were wee ones. It is much older and more shabby – no comments please.  We were able to locate the tree-filled, steep, hillside space where we had once parked our tent trailer and memories gushed back. There is a rock formation at the base of the hill, nestled within the trees and our kids, along with all the others of the campground-played well into the dusk- all those years ago – just yesterday. The pool was open then, but not in use now.  We did look for the rocks we had to leave behind due to weight issues.  Not sure if we found the same ones, but we found some beauties. We spend seven full days here in South Dakota, and still did not do everything we had planned. The nostalgia that hits us almost everywhere we go was not expectd, but it was an integral part of our whole experience here.  Love you! Wish you were here with us!!!