Day 8 -- Gettysburg to Watertown, South Dakota -- 185 Miles

It has come to our attention that there are NO strangers in South Dakota. No matter what part of the state you're in, no matter what activity you're pursuing, every single South Dakotan you encounter is going to greet you with a cheery hello, a wave, or a handshake. There have been absolutely NO exceptions. So far we've motored across nearly 400 miles of this neighborly state, talked to at least two dozen residents, and every single one has made us welcome. We were in one tiny, tiny town today where everyone is probably related in some way to everyone else, and every single car we passed sported a driver or passenger with their hand extended out the window in a wave. No there's no chance they thought we were one of their partners on the bowling team in this giant silver box on wheels of ours. They just had to know we were from out of town, and still they sought to welcome us warmly.

Yes, I know what you're thinking. The wavers probably heard of the Nevada branch of the Happy Wanderers and were just eager to make our acquaintance; perhaps appear on the TV show. And you may be right. But personally I think that South Dakota is just the friendliest place on the planet. In fact, a couple of days ago in Belle Fourche, we talked to a docent at the town museum who came to South Dakota to do a friend a favor. The super friendly docent had been asked to house-sit while the owner was away. Low and behold, when the woman's friend returned, she immediately returned to her home town, packed her belongs, and headed back to Belle Fourche. THAT'S how captivating South Dakota can be.

This morning, while touring the serene and beautiful town of Gettysburg where the town welcome sign informs the tourist that it's "Not where the battle was," we stopped to buy some gasoline. The first thing that happened was a local farmer rolled up in his pickup truck, threw open the door, and came right over to talk to me.

"How do you like traveling in that rig," he asked.

After I told him I loved it, he asked, "has it been green all the way from Nevada?" I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but I told him it had been pretty green all the way. After all, we took the northern route above Yellowstone park and once out of Nevada, most of the land looks green.

Once those formal questions were out of the way we fell into a general question and answer session about farming. Though I'd never be able to live on a farm with all my allergies, farming has become intensely fascinating to me since we took up RVing and rolled by so many thousands of acres of farmland. My main question for the day involved sunflowers. "How come," I said, "we've seen fields of sunflowers on the way here that look like no one ever watered them." Concetta and I had seen some pretty sorry-looking sunflowers just a few miles west of Gettysbury. I was expecting him to say words like "drought" or "disease."

"Too much water," he said. "We've had so much rain this summer that some of the fields are simply drowned. Sunflowers like lots of water, but they don't like to be flooded."

"What becomes of your sunflowers," I asked, thinking perhaps they went into making sunflower oil.

"People eat them," he said. "Mostly people in North Dakota and the Middle East."

That surprised me. I wondered how come North Dakotans didn't grow their own. But what I said was, "but how do they separate all those millions of seeds from the seed heads?"

"Combine does it just fine," he said. But if there's too much chaff in with the seeds then the price goes down. I get .25 cents per hundred weight," he said. "Goes down to .22 cents if there's too much litter in with the seeds."

I desperately wanted to continue to pump him for farming information, like how long Middle Easterners have been getting their sunflower seeds from South Dakota, but I guess he had to get back out there in the fields and earn his living. "Gotta go," he said, "but it's been a pleasure talking with you."

I returned the compliment and in a flash he was gone. But my point is, the whole darn population here in South Dakota acts like they've just been waiting for you personally to come by and chat with them. While we were in Belle Fourche, touring the museum, we stumbled upon a docent at an outdoor log cabin exhibit. In the ten minutes we stood and talked to him we got the entire history and efficacy of South Dakota beef ranching. I swear I had never heard so much about cows in my entire life. For instance, who knew that you can't give beef cattle too much "sweet clover" as it's too rich. Makes them sick. We also learned that beef ranchers are supplied with a kind of raw molasses that the rancher combines with other things and reduces it down to a solid. The docent said the cows lick it, which sounded kinda funny. But from the web I learned: "Molasses is very sticky, which when mixed with feed makes the feed easier to eat by the livestock. It also has a natural tendency of increasing your animal’s energy. Molasses can act as a catalyst for dairy cows to increase their milk production, and it can help strengthen the overall bone structure of livestock and weight gain for cattle, among other benefits." So I guess the cows are able to both eat and lick it and they like it a lot.

We learned so much about cows in that conversation that we could probably become cattle ranchers if we were so inclined. We'll pass, of course, but it's always wonderful when a local person is willing to talk about their lives and lifestyle.

Today's drive was rather tame in that we basically drove, listened to a book on tape, and continued to marvel at mile after mile of corn and sunflowers (and other unidentified green things). There weren't many opportunities to leave the highway as the shoulders were scant, the roadside ditches were muddy from all the rain, and I really didn't see much that warranted a photograph. I have been looking for an opportunity to slide the rig in between a couple of widely-spaced rows of sunflowers to get a cool picture, but no such widely-spaced sunflower row presented itself.

We did pass through a town, it might have been Clark, where the town sculpture artist had obviously been given total control over any and all public art. Some we liked and some we didn't, but the caravan of identical, red and white Chevrolets certainly took my eye. I also stopped once just to shoot an astoundingly singular cloud formation. I'd never seen anything like it for its symmetry. The town of Faulkton where we had lunch contained a totally fascinating century-old building that just had to be a Catholic or Lutheran school in its heyday. Judging from the rundown condition of the building its heyday must have been when Roosevelt was Commander in Chief. I'm taking my clue for the religious affiliation of the school from the nearby ancient clapboard church which was Catholic. But the Lutheran guess is because forty percent of South Dakotans are of German ethnicity. Might have been either in its history I suppose.

Our main goal this afternoon was to finally rendezvous with a Walmart. Believe it or not, we have encountered not a single Super Store between central Montana and eastern South Dakota. We could have shopped anywhere, of course, but there was a couple of things I needed from Walmart's RV center to make my life complete. Once our shopping was done, we had to scramble to find a camp for the night. The afternoon was waning and most camps fill up in late afternoon.

Using the combination of the GPS, Concetta's IPhone, and the Good Sam guide we picked a nice-sounding camp just five or six miles from town. And indeed, once we had arrived, the camp looked fantastic. The spaces were few, only about half were occupied, all spaces lay just a few yards from a lake. But once we called the number to feed some unseen being our credit card info, we discovered that despite the fact that the camp was gorgeous and there were so many trees that we had plenty of shade in all directions, we learned that there were no services but electricity. Sign! Thankfully, the restrooms and showers are brand new and glowing in their cleanliness. We decided to stay, especially since the price was half what we've been paying elsewhere.

Since we're making do without baths and such for now, we'll just pretend that we're traveling with Lewis and Clark. Tomorrow we have to do the dreaded laundry. But once that's done it's on the road again with our sights on Minnesota. Doing the laundry will make it impossible to reach Minnesota tomorrow, but we're getting close now at only 200 miles away. Soon we'll be picking up my Model A seats and then we can turn our full attention to picking destinations based solely on whims and whatevers.

So if you see the Happy Wanderers somewhere up here on the northern plains, be sure and wave, come over for a chat, or just give us a honk or two. And while you're out here on the two-lanes enjoying what a lot of people miss by traveling the "Blue Highways," we wish you happy travels and exciting destinations.

P.S. The photo at the top left is last night's camp as the sun was setting over Lake Oahe, which is fashioned from a damn on the Missouri River. You could stand on the high bluff where our rig was parked and look down at the shimmering water and envision Lewis and Clark's Corp of Discovery poling their way upriver in their expedition boat, which Lewis called both a "keel boat" and a "barge." It felt right and it felt historic and I could just see it.