FROM SOUTH DAKOTA TO WYOMING

This morning broke bright and sunny in our Wal Mart camp ground. We started the day with a breakfast of cereal and frozen blueberries from our garden. Last years blueberries of course.

We continued west on US 14 heading for Rapid City, South Dakota. Highway 14 has been a wonderful east to west route to take. We have been following it from Rochester, Mn., for the last 3 days. Traffic has been light. There have been very few trucks, mostly local trucks hauling corn or animals. Small city parks and less formal campgrounds have been frequent. We've been listening to a book on CD and watching the miles role by.

For lunch we stopped at a Forest Service information pull out in the Black Hills. From Rapid City, we swung south and picked up highway 16 through the Black Hills.

West of the Black Hills from Newcastle, Wyoming, we used State 450 and 387 to pick up Interstate 25 heading south to Casper.

By mid afternoon, storm clouds started building in the west and we saw several lightning strikes ahead of us.

The clouds got darker and higher so we stopped for a break in Wright, Wyoming.

It rained on us there, but not much. It looked like the storm was going to miss us to the north west.

When the storm passed, we started up again. A few miles down the road we ran into 2 inches of hail on the road. Two cars, one pulling a horse trailer had spun out on the hail and were off the road in the ditch. People had already stopped to help them and there was no place for us to pull off, so we continued on.

Tonight we are parked in the lot of this Historic Trails interpretive center. There is one other rig here so we have neighbors which always makes us feel more secure.

The clouds have passed and we have a beautiful view of the city of Casper, Wyoming below us. Another good day of travel. After a nice 30 minute aerobic walk along the ridge over the city, we are settled down for the night.