August 16th thru the 19th

Thursday 16th Yea!!! We are in good old South Dakota! We decided to stay in Deadwood this time instead of Hermosa where we stayed so long last year. This way we won't have to drive over here a couple of times to see our favorite places. After we checked in, we decided to go downtown to Deadwood and check out the casinos. It was pouring down rain and the thunder and lightening was scary for Sharon. About an hour later the word traveled through the casino that the freeway from Sturgis, SD to Rapid City, SD had been shut down because of the rain and baseball size hail. (picture of truck in RV park that was caught in the hail storm)A tornado was also spotted in Piedmont and they also got hail and heavy rain. The town of Hermosa, SD where we were going to stay really got hit bad. The campground was so bad that we only stayed there one night this trip. All the roads were washed out and it was a mess. The town of Hermosa had some homes washed off their foundations by the rain that caused a flash flood of 1 1/2 feet wall of water. The rain came down so fast. (5 inches in 2 hours). The storage units there were completely flooded and they had a pile of boxes, mattresses, refrigerators, furniture and more. They had the prisoners from the jails helping clean things up. We were so thankful we had decided to stay in Deadwood or our new rigs would have been pounded by the baseball size hail too. We stayed in Deadwood for 4 days and then we went into Rapid City and tried a new camp ground which we liked a lot. Kent was always looking for a shelter he could pull his truck into if a storm happened to come along.