Camp America

Today has had a few nice highlights that Chip already talked about below, but one more that I'd like to add has to do with where we're laying our heads for the evening. We're staying the night at Camp America Campground in Salem, South Dakota due west of Sioux Falls and east of Mitchell (home to the Corn Palace!). The place is just exactly what I needed to wind down from being in the car for such a long time and seeing so many corn and soybean crops.

I think I already like South Dakota, it has nice rolling hills (a big difference compared to the last couple states we were in), the temperature is very moderate, and there's a great breeze rolling through the campgrounds here. It doesn’t strike you as luxurious, but as you look around it has quite a few nice amenities I wouldn’t come to expect from a campground. Coin operated showers, laundry, shop with used books, antiques, and simple groceries, wireless internet, mini golf, and a pool. At our site we have a fire pit, picnic table, and a hose bib for running water. All of that for $18 bucks, I’ll take that deal.

We’re pretty far away from any major city tonight so I’m looking forward to the meteor shower tonight. I was reading an article describing that the best time to look for the meteors is between midnight and 5am b/c that’s when our part of the earth has it’s back completely turned to the sun and is facing forward into the debris path of the meteor and made a connection to how the front of a car has a whole lot more bug splats on it then the rear and that’s how the meteor shower works. I made an immediate connection with that analogy.

Tonight we did however make our own dinner; vegetable soup from scratch! Well I made the broth and then threw in a couple cans of mix vegetables and broke out my massive seasoning box and doctored it up. We also made some barley and corn tea that Eun Young showed me how to make back in Kansas, but I prefer to drink that cool so it’s still sitting in the pot chillin’.