2025 August 15 - 22 South Dakota
Every year we try to go on a vacation with some good friends from Arizona. Most of the time it is to go ride motorcycles in beautiful locations with lots of twists and turns. Last year was to Tennessee and North Caroline. This year it is to the Black Hills of South Dakota.
Nannette and I have already had a super busy summer. We started by visiting our Daughter Kadi, her husband Dave, and their 3 boys Emmitt, Calvin, and Warner in Hawaii. David is in the Navy and was deployed to Hawaii in March, just a month before Kadi gave birth to Warner. Ask them about that story sometime.
Anyway, back to the here and now (or the there and then since most of you are reading this in my future).
We've been planning this trip for about 6 months. We changed it from a long rambling trip through Utah and Idaho where we change hotels every time to our favorite trip. We rent a big luxurious VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner) house with 4 bedrooms. Do those still exist? Anyway, this one cost us about $260 a night and when you split it 4 ways, it is very cheap compared to a hotel.
We decided to have Nannette fly up to Rapid City rather than sit in the car for 20 hours. I left the house at about 4:00 am so I could miss the Denver rush hour traffic. It still took me nearly 40 minutes to get through Denver traffic and a couple of construction zones. I didn't even need to go into any of the HOV lanes.
About the time the sun came up I was getting to close to the Buc-ees gas station so I pulled off to get a some breakfast. I've only been to Buc'ees once before so it was still a bit overwhelming to look around the place. I decided to get a breakfast burrito and a breakfast taco. Neither one was that great. The eggs were super whipped and spilled all over whenever I took a bite. The bacon and sausage was over cooked and chipped into tiny pieces that also spilled out with each bite. Finally the tortilla was huge and wet. I'd eat another if I need to but I won't be going out of my way for them.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon so I took a selfie with the Buc-ees sign and rising sun over my shoulder.
The drive after Buc'ees was just a boring drive up the freeway for 4 more hours. I turned off the freeway at Orin and turned due East toward the town of Lusk. At Lusk I turned North toward Newcastle.
I gassed up in Newcastle and decided it was time for lunch. The gas station had a Taco Johns restaurant but I didn't really feel like eating fast food so I checked google maps for nearby restaraunts and decided to go to Grazer's burgers. It was a nice little cafe. I got a cheese steak and fries, but more than that, I got a wake up call.
I was browsing messages on my phone, looking for the address of the house we were renting when my phone suddenly went black. I was puzzled and pushed the power button, but the screen didn't light up. I wondered if it had a fatal error, so I held the power button for a few seconds and it started booting up. but almost as soon as it booted, it shut down again. That really got me worried that maybe some hardware had failed and was preventing the phone booting.
I know my way to Lead so I wasn't worried about getting near the house, but without the actual address I wouldn't be able to unload the car before going to to get the wives to the airport.
I ran out to my car and got my laptop. The waitress told me the wifi password but when I tried to access email, it wanted a 2 factor authentication which is on my phone.. I tried to open my work version of teams so I could use the phone built into teams, but hit the same snag, no access without 2 factor authentication. So I can't call, I can't email, and I can't get at message history.
It was about this time that I plugged my phone into my laptop to see if I could access any of the data on the phone. But as soon as I plugged it in, the display popped up showing 1% battery level. It turns out my phone had not been charging all while I was driving and that's why it was shutting down.
So now I was able to power up the phone and find the address of the house. I could access maps, but I sure do think I need to figure out another way of generating 2 factor authentications as a backup. Maybe run an android emulator on my laptop since Authy did away with their PC app.
I was feeling so relieved after that not really a problem scare, I headed North toward Lead. (pronounced LEED as in a vein of ore). I arrived right about 2;00 which was the original goal and one of the reasons I decided to take a leisurely lunch. The address was 325 Mountain View Drive an was up a fairly steep hillside with beautiful views out over the town. We couldn't get into the house until 4:00 but had permission to leave the trailer, bike, and a bunch of boxes outside.
I needed to unload the car because I needed to head into Rapid City to pick up Nannette and the other 3 wives from the airport. Angela, Brenda, and Karen few up from Gateway airport in Chandler and Nan flew up from Denver. The drive was a bit over an hour and I chose to go South West down highway 385 rather than heading North to the freeway. It took a bit longer but was much prettier.
I gassed up, then bought a 3 cases of water from Dollar General. Even with all the delay and meandering, I still got to the airport 40 minutes early, but I'd rather be early than late.
Once all the ladies were in the car we headed up the freeway for the rental. In the mean time, the other 3 guys arrived at the rental and put all the gear into the house. We called them and decided to meet up at The Lodge in Deadwood for dinner rather than drive to the rental then have to come right back out.
Last time here we really liked The Lodge's food, but this time it wasn't as good but we loved the company. The Lodge also happens to be a casino, so Nan slipped away and threw some money away at a slot machine.
Just as we finished dinner, a massive storm blew in. There had been no warning on the weather app, but the map now showed deep yellows and reds all around and right over the top of us.. The guys were on motorcycles so we decided just to wait the storm out. Karen who is normally cold anyway, felt really chilled and decided to drape herself with a few cloth napkins for warmth. She said it really helped. The storm got so bad it blew some breakers in the casino. All the lights went out, but of course, many of the slot machines continued to run and provide ambient light. The casinos can't let the gambling stop despite a big storm.
We got to the house and settled in for the night. There was allot of joking and catching up. It's always good to be with friends.
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