South Dakota - Day 26 - Aberdeen again, to Richmond Lake

Richmond Lake Campground, Aberdeen

Thursday, 26 August 2021

There must have been a herd of cows near the Lake Louise campground.  Though I couldn’t see them, I could hear them and sometimes smell them.  There seemed to be a sort of berm behind the trees across the campground from our site, and I think that berm was hiding – and probably containing – the cows.  Still, Dexter was confused a couple of times because he knew they were around but couldn’t figure out where.

Before leaving, I tried to take a photo of Lake Louise, but I found the weather was sneering at me.  A storm was coming up, the sky was overcast, and visibility was coming down.  Here's all I could get.

Lake Louise is much much prettier than this shows.
I didn't bother to crop Dexter out of the way because I couldn't get much of the lake anyway.

today's route

It was really lucky I decided to clean the front windshield before we left the campground, because we were no sooner on the road than it started pouring rain, coming down very heavy with very strong winds.  Trying to run the windshield wipers in that heavy rain through a windshield full of bugs would have been a mess, and I’d’ve had trouble seeing anything after it all got smeared around.

The rain all but stopped about 20 miles down the road, but then it started up again and was intermittent all day.  But the wind never slowed down and made a nuisance of itself.

We passed through Northville, pop. 143, “125 Years of Community Pride” as of 2007.  And through Mellette, pop. 210, which apparently couldn’t top that.

Somewhere along SD-20 I crossed the Chief Drifting Goose Memorial Bridge.  At that point I hadn’t looked him up and, in fact, had never heard of him, but as of my post a couple of days ago, I now know he deserves to have a lot more than a dinky little bridge named for him.

We came back into Aberdeen from a different direction – actually, Google’s directions weren’t very precise and I got lost.  But we got found again so no problem. 

I’d intended to head north to Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge.  They have a driving tour there that I thought might be like the one I took at the Audubon Refuge in North Dakota.  But the rain’s continued off and on all morning and I thought, what with the bad weather and it being the middle of the day, I might not be able to see many birds.  The trip up and back and around the tour route would have likely taken about 2 hours and I just didn’t think it’d be worth it in these circumstances.  I decided to go on to tonight’s campground and, if the weather were better in the morning, I could go to the refuge then instead.

So I headed into Aberdeen and found a Taco Johns, the chain I mentioned a while back that advertises “West-Mex” food.  It was surprisingly busy, considering it was only a little after 11:00, but I parked the RV and managed to walk into the drive-in line when there wasn’t a line.

For this I ordered a "crispy taco" and a "street taco."
For the street taco they gave me a choice between chicken and beef, and I chose beef.

They were able to serve me this meal almost instantly, and both of these tacos were half-way cold.  Really cold.  I thought it might be because of the lettuce, but no, the “street taco” was actually cold on one side.  I guess they do a lot of pre-making their food.  Both these tasted fine, though I thought they were pretty bland. I can make tacos just as good using McCormick’s Taco Seasoning Mix.  Together they cost me just under $5.  Next time I want tacos, I’ll make them myself.  But now I know what West-Mex is, and I'll take Tex-Mex any day.  (Actually, I prefer the real thing, but Mexico isn't in my current travel plans.)

Even though it wasn’t long after noon, we went on to the campground, only 6 miles down the road.  Once again the gate wasn’t attended, so nobody cared that we were early, and once again there was no map of the campground.  In this particular campground, the layout was even more confusing than usual and I had a hard time finding our spot.  But for a while we were the only people in sight; though there were campers at several other sites, nobody seemed to be in them.  So I could walk my dogs around the campground with some confidence that we weren’t going to be suddenly confronted with some big dog that mine would insist on checking out.

Part way through the afternoon I noticed a half dozen folks in Parks Dept. cars that seemed to be inspecting the various facilities.  My site was by the bathrooms and, while they were checking those out, I went over and offered a suggestion.  I explained to one of them that this was currently my 9th state campground this month, but I had maps for only 3 of them.   I told him that we don’t all have smartphones, so some of us don’t have access to an online map of the campground.  I told him some of the campgrounds are laid out in a confusing way and a map would really help.  He said he’d pass the idea along.  Maybe they’ll listen and other people in my situation will benefit.

This campground is heavily wooded and pretty damp after today’s rain.  There were quite a few branches down, which I had trouble dodging when I drove in.  So when I walked the dogs I performed my community service chore and tossed them out of the roadway.