Snake Creek State Rec. Area, Platte, South Dakota

Wednesday Sept. 16, 2015, Day 41      Snake Creek State Recreation Area, site 17E, South Dakota

502 miles towing

 On this part of the trip we are just trying to make it home.  Once we leave the west, the options for campgrounds is private or state parks.  The national forests are non existant in states like South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, etc.   South Dakota has the Black Hills National Forest, but we wanted to at least get halfway across the state before stopping for the night.  There are several S.R.A.s along the Missouri River in the middle of the state and we picked the Snake Creek S.R.A. as our destination.  Marsha always checks the reviews on her campground apps and it was well reviewed.

Left Sitting Bull campground at 07:00 but not before taking a picture of the beautiful sunrise across the meadow.

Early morning sunrise at Sitting Bull N.F.C.G.

After leaving we continued on US-16 through the Bighorn Mountains.  Very scenic drive all the way to Buffalo WY where we picked up I-90.   On the way, we passed over Powder River Pass, the highest point we drove over on the whole trip.



This is the tip of the mountain at Powder River Pass as seen from the turnout.

Then it got boring until we arrived at the Black Hills in southeast South Dakota.  We continued on through the Black Hills on I-90, past the Badlands National Park area, then onto open prairie for the rest of the day.  At exit 251 we took SD-47 south to SD-44 east to our destination.  These back roads were very interesting and much nicer than the interstate.  Rolling prairie.  Up and down hills. 

The state park (or state recreation area as it is called in South Dakota and in some other states) is right on the banks of the Missouri River.  But it is really a lake because it is dammed.  It was a very beautiful place and was completely empty when we got there.  We had our pick of all the premium sites.  There was no one at the booth when we got there.  We had to self register for a $6.00 day pass and call from a courtesy phone to register the site, which was $20.50.  Our famous senior discount card is only for federal campgrounds, not state.  We arrived at 17:30 and weren’t set up until 18:30.  We did not unhitch.

 

 

Snake Creek S.R.A. site 17E,  Platte, SD

This was the night of the 2^nd Republican debates on CNN and we wanted badly to watch it.  We had ½ hour to get dinner and get it up and running.  We have no cable TV available or satellite in the Oliver.  So we used our phone hot spot for internet and watch the 3-hour debate by streaming it on CNN.com on our computer, sitting at the picnic table.  But we were back where there is flies and other bugs and it drove us indoor.  We are also back to high humidity and high temperatures.  It was 90^o when we got here.  So we had to run the A.C.  The fan on our A.C. is so loud we couldn’t hear the debate.  So I moved to the truck, ran the engine and A.C. and we did that for a while, waiting for the Oliver to cool down enough to turn off the A.C. and sit comfortably.  It had been a while since we had to deal with insects, heat, and humidity, and we were out of practice.  It’s a good thing we were in Central Time or we couldn’t have stayed up so late.

 We made nachos for supper that was excellent and fast.  The flies liked it too.