Day 14-17 (Rapid City, SD)

We arrived in Rapid City, SD on Friday (May 22nd). This was of course Memorial Day weekend. Our engine indicator light came on again and would not go out at all. So we decided to check this problem out with the local Dodge dealership in Rapid City. We found Dodge Town and needed to see a diesel mechanic. Just our luck, their only one, was on vacation until Tuesday (May 26th). We decided to stay and get our oil changed at the sametime. Not knowing where to stay for four days, we decided to join KOA which had a campground about 1/2 mile from the dealership. As it turned out, we had a great time.

First of all, they had a breakfast at the campground every morning where you could eat all of the pancakes you wanted for $1.00. We got to meet John Horton, who had been cooking pancakes at this campground for over 20 years. He had flipped over 1 million pancakes since he started cooking breakfast each morning at the Rapid City KOA. John is also a retired professional cowboy rodeo rider, and currently writes poetry and sings cowboy songs. He is very humble, but exceptionally talented and loves to entertain people. We got to know John and became very fond of him.

We also weathered 3 inches of rain in less than 3 hours with lots of high winds, thunder, and a spectcular lighting show. We took in the Memorial Day bike race in Rapid City, visited Art Alley, and did the President's Cache Walk through town. Rapid City is known as "The City of Presidents". There is a bronze statue of 35 American presidents located on different corners in the historic downtown area.

We visited a very amazing Native American gallery of arts and artifacts, then went to the local micro-brewery and had drumettes and a couple of home brews. We eventually got TREK back in running order and headed up the road to Medora, ND and the Teddy Roosevelt Grasslands.

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