Day 1, July 19: Drive to Spearfish from Sioux City

Ready to head out. Oops, forgot the passport, but my hair looks good...

Campsite at Spearfish Public Park

Taking my own photo at this first campsite. One of the issues with traveling alone - self-photography.

The stream behind the campsite. Maybe Spearfish Creek?

My first injury of the trip. A sliver carefully and successfully removed.

Loaded and ready. Why do I need all this?

Day 1, July 19: Drive to Spearfish from Sioux City

I planned to write something before embarking on this month-long sojourn, something that would encompass what has driven me to take this trip, something that tries to connect the events that led me to this place in my life, something that puts this whole trip –and my life perhaps – in context. Clearly, that didn’t happen. Life happened instead.

So now I’m going to just begin with a travel log, and we’ll see where that goes. Perhaps as I write regularly during this trip, things will emerge and I’ll become comfortable again with writing. Right now, it’s a difficult process and all those regular demons are whispering in my ear all sorts of distracting and paralyzing doubts and thoughts.

The trip had a somewhat ominous beginning. Sitting in Vermillion, SD, getting my hair done, the car loaded and the journey begun, I realized I had forgotten my passport. I drove back to Sioux City, retrieved the passport and rebegan the trip. Of course, if it had really been ominous, I would have remembered it as I was attempting to cross into Canada. Disaster averted with a quick, 90-minute detour.

The drive across South Dakota was hot and I was tired. After a night of little sleep, I found myself struggling to stay alert and awake. And the drive from Sioux Falls to Rapid City is a familiar one, so the scenery didn’t keep me interested. The temperature stayed consistently over 100 degrees, even through a brief but intense thunderstorm.

I didn’t have reservations to camp anywhere in Spearfish, but I knew I wanted to get this far today. I planned on either finding a campground or a forest campsite. When I pulled into Spearfish, I saw that there is no open burning (no campfires) in the forest areas, and it was already early evening, so I checked out a campground that came up on my GPS. I chose one of the few that didn’t say “RV Park” as I prefer fewer people and more open areas. The campground I chose turned out to be Spearfish’s City Park, and the camping here is lovely – I’m set up on a stream I’ll be able to listen to all night, and it’s finally cooled off some since I’m near the water. It seemed a little steep - $20 for the night, but I’m spoiled by those $10 campsites I’ve booked in other places. There are showers so that’s nice – I’m guessing I won’t always have that luxury on this trip.

Tomorrow I head up to Montana. I checked the weather there – most of the state reported highs in the upper 90s and 100s, so there’ll be no escape from the heat.  I will be doing some hiking tomorrow though – heat or no heat. I’m not sure where exactly I’m headed, but I’ll research that in the morning before I take off.

Everyone I’ve encountered today has been lovely. My neighbors here at the campsite – Joe and Jean – came over and visited for about 30 minutes. They’re driving their friend’s RVs to an RV show and camping, traveling, and adventuring till time to drive them back. It turns out they are from Fresno – an hour from Yosemite.  They gave me their number to contact them after my Yosemite hike for a shower or ideas of other hikes. Nice nice people.

So far my experience supports my theory that it truly is a friendly and benevolent universe we live in.