Six days on the road and I'm gonna make it home tonight...

On Friday, we left South Dakota around 6:00 AM mountain time. After an hour and a half of driving, we hit Wall Drug for breakfast and another souvenir hunt. From their, we drove to De Smet, SD which is where Laura Ingalls settled and met Almanzo Wilder. We picked up the rest of the series of books in Wall and began reading again. The visit in De Smet was a bust because the sights are just not as built up as they could be and we didn't have enough time to stay for their tour schedule. But we saw the surveyor's house where they stayed in "On the Shores of Silver Lake" and saw Loftus' store where Pa went for news and wheat during "The Long Winter". We drove and drove and drove and arrived just east of Kansas City around 2:00 AM at a KOA.

Our intent for Saturday was to get up and moving by 7:00 central time but we were just too tired and did not make it out until 8:30 that morning. That meant we would not stop in St. Louis at the arch because we knew we had a 15+ hour drive ahead of us. We had breakfast in the camper and stopped for a late lunch at a Cracker Barrel (yea for sweet tea!!!). I read all day. I finished one book and we moved on to the next. My throat is still scratchy as I write this. We drove on through the night and finally made it home around 2:30 this morning. We slept until 9:30 and have spent the day cleaning up the camper for it's return to the storage lot and trying to get through the mountain of laundry.

We covered 6430 miles, 4 state capitols, 15 national parks and 1 Canadian national park. We are happy to be home purely from the spacious atmosphere and relaxed feeling but I am already planning our next trip. Both the short ones within the next few months and the long trip we will hopefully take next summer. We lost a hubcap, worked our air conditioner loose and learned that we never have quite enough time but we had a great adventure and have made some awesome memories.