Off toward Gillette at last

Thursday we departed the Chicago Northwest KOA in the rain and decided to take route US 20 across Illinois to Iowa instead of I-90 as in Illinois I-90 is a toll road and has a lot of construction going on.  We ran in and out of rainstorms all morning as we traveled the pretty Illinois countryside with its rolling hills and farmland.  In Galena, IL we again located a Culver’s restaurant and ice cream place and stopped intending to have banana splits for lunch.  Fortunately good sense caught up with us before we ordered and we had burgers, then we had ice cream!  Pat had a hot fudge and Carmen “Turtle” and Dick had a Raspberry, Pecan, Hot caramel and Butterfinger concoction like a Blizzard!  Again YUMMY!

The rain finally stopped and the heat picked up quickly to into the 90’s before we found our stopping point in the Minnesota Myre-Big Island State Park near Albert Lea, Minnesota.

Friday the 22nd we again got a leisurely start and immediately got onto I-90 west the entrance to it was only about one mile from the park entrance road.  The day started out about 75 degrees and got warmer as the sun soaked in.  We finally put the RV generator on and turned on the cabin air conditioning units and they kept us at a comfortable level for the rest of the day.  To use the generator that runs on diesel fuel is easy and it only consumes less than a gallon of diesel an hour.  We stopped for lunch at a roadside rest area right on I-90 and just ate a light lunch of crackers and cheese and salami. We thought that we would stop and spend the night in a campground near the Golden Buffalo Casino that was located a few miles off I-90 in Lower Brule, SD based on a brochure Dick had picked up at the roadside rest area as we entered South Dakota from Minnesota. WELL that turned out to be a bad idea!  We drove about 15 miles on back roads to get to the casino that by visual appearances did not live up to the brochure.  We tried to locate the alleged RV Park they had told us was available but we ended up following the road until it turned to unpaved road.  We finally turned around in a mowed field and retreated all the way back to I-90 and backtracked 10 miles to Oacoma, SD where we located a KOA Campground.  Of course the spot they gave us was out of Wi-Fi range and Dick was way less than happy!  Oh well there is always tomorrow!!!