5 Apr 2022
I had plans for this year’s birthday/anniversary trip- plans to head somewhere warm, with no snow… but I also didn’t feel like actually planning anything. So I didn’t. Then ticket prices went up and all my warm-weather destinations were suddenly quite spendy. I found some super-cheap flights to Denver, and discovered I could dive at their aquarium, but, in true procrastinator fashion, I didn’t book the tickets when I found them, and they too jumped up in price. We talked about road-tripping it out to Denver (it’s only 15 hours), but when I called to set up my dive at the aquarium, they were booked up. Lame.
Then Matt came up with South Dakota, specifically the Rapid City area. We had visited in high school and thought it might be fun to explore the area again. Plus, it’s only like a 10 hour drive from our house! So yesterday, we booked a hotel and this morning we packed up the car and hit the road:
So happy and optimistic at the beginning of the trip! The skies were overcast, but so far no rain…
Our luck ran out partway through Minnesota, but at least the clouds looked cool:
Welcome to South Dakota!
Don’t be deceived- the weather may look better, but we hit some crazy strong winds! Our poor little Prius, which normally gets 40-50 mpg, struggled to hit 30 mpg between the headwinds we had been driving through and the crosswinds we found in most of South Dakota:
It’s seriously windy out here!
We wondered if this was an every-day kind of thing, but a quick look at the weather forecast revealed a High Wind Warning was in effect (and would be through at least Wed night). There’s also a Winter Storm Warning just to the south of us (Mt. Rushmore), so we’ll pretty much be playing this trip be ear- going where ever the weather seems decent and hoping for the best!
Good luck, us!