Start Location: Kadoka, SD
Ending Location: Laurel, MT
Miles Today: 425
Trip Miles: 3000
States Visited: 7
National Parks Visited: 2
Low Temp: 59.5° F
High Temp: 80.2° F
Min Elevation: 2331'
Max Elevation: 4344'
Route Map:
Voyageurs 2025 Day11
Before I get to today, I want to point out a few things I totally forgot to write about yesterday. The first is Wall Drug.
I'll bet there are no less than 100 signs and billboards advertising
Wall Drug along I-90 and I think every one is different. They advertise
everything form 5 cent coffee to Black Hills Gold. I'll bet we saw 50
billboards before we saw one that advertised where the exit was. We
have been there before and it is definitely an experience but we are
not in a hurry to go back - we skipped it today. There are several
pictures in today's write up.
The second thing is Firehouse Brewing Co.
in Rapid City, SD. We didn't visit them but the interesting thing is
their advertising. They also have several dozen billboards along I-90
and every one is accompanied by an old fire fighting truck or other
piece of firefighting equipment. One even has a smoke jumper aircraft.
There are a couple of pictures in yesterday's write up and you can see
a lot more here.
So
it's now Day 12 and I have trouble remembering what happens at the end
of a day so remembering what happened yesterday will be tough. I had
second thoughts and, after consulting Google to make sure there would
be gas on the 425 mile route, we opted to take the US-212. The longer
route just seemed too intimidating after the long ride yesterday.
The
ride started out with 125 miles on I-90 and then about 200 miles on
US-212 and ended with another 80 miles on I-90. It was sprinkling when
we left so we put on our rain gear and ended up wearing it all
day. It would mostly sprinkle on and off interrupted by heavier rain.
The worst of it actually hit about 3 miles from our destination. With
our rain gear on, nothing really got very wet except our shoes.
I
left my phone mounted on it's Ram mount during all the rain since it's
semi-waterproof and it worked well for the most part. We run Waze and a
music player and have a USB cable plugged into the USB port to keep the
phone charged. Even though the port is pointing down, apparently it
rained hard enough that rain worked it's way into the port. When it did
we got a message that water had gotten into the port and it was
automatically disabled. I didn't know that would happen. After a while
out of the rain I got another message that the port had been enabled
and could be used again. I was definitely impressed.
We
finally passed Wall Drug today after seeing their signs for a hundred
miles at least. We also passed Rapid City so no more fire engines.
We're on a mission to get home by Sunday afternoon so we didn't make any other stops. Tomorrow it's on to Kellogg, ID.
