Wild West Adventurer ....part three

     Day four saw us up early to hopefully get a good shot of the Tower as the sun rose, but the clouds were being difficult again that day.  Our drive was not all that long today but we did have an unexpected stopover to get a slowly leaking tire repaired and a watch battery for JP's multifunction watch.  Long story, but after the watch just stopped working somewhere in Wyoming, we stopped in Casper to pick up a few things and a battery for the watch.  Needless to say they did not carry this battery at Wally World.  We found one in Rapid City, South Dakota at the Batteries Plus.  Thanks to the folks at Tires Plus for repairing the slow leak and to the folks at Best Buy for sending us to the battery store to get the battery we needed. 

     Along the way to Badlands National Park, we stopped at the Minute Man Missile site D9 at exit 116 and the Visitors Center at exit 131 off highway 90.  Next stop was Badlands which was just a short trip down the road. 

Important information.... get fuel (especially diesel) in Rapid City as the prices in Wall are about twenty five cents per gallon higher. 


     As we drove through the entrance to Cedar Pass campground the gal at the gate warned us of an impending storm.  We could see the storm clouds approaching.  It rained quite heavily for twenty to thirty minutes and the temperatures dropped about twenty degrees in that time.  But the sun came back out and things started to dry.  Met a wonderful retired school teacher from New Jersey who travels around the country in her Chevy Avalanche.  Had a great conversation and invited her to join us for the nightly Ranger talk.  After a bit, we decided to take a walk to the Visitors Center to get our National Parks Passport stamped and to look over some of the many things they had to offer in this park.  On our way back to the campsite we also stopped at the Cedar Pass store and restaurant to see if there was any item we just could not live without. 

     Since this was a no fire campground, we decided that this would be a great opportunity for some night shots and to also see what the Ranger talk had to offer.  Ranger Lydia gave us a presentation on the creatures of Badlands and it was great.  The night shots did not come out very well.  No amount of playing in photoshop was gonna help these shots!