Yellowstone Trip Day 2

 Wednesday Sept 8

I left Missouri at 8:15 and headed west on 70 and then north on 29.   This was pretty much another drive day although I stopped in Sioux City Iowa to see the Sargent Floyd Monument. For those of you not familiar with Sargent Floyd, he was a member of the Lewis and Clark Corp of Discovery expedition of 1804-1806.  President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the journey to explore the Louisiana Purchase and establish a cross country water route to the Pacific Ocean. Sargent Floyd died of appendicitis at the beginning of the journey - the only person to die the entire time. The Captains chose a fitting spot to lay Sargent Floyd to rest on a bluff overlooking the river.

If you want to read more about this fascinating expedition I highly recommend "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose. The book goes into detail about their journey across half the continent and the trials and tribulations this rugged group of men endured to accomplish their mission.

(photo from Amazon)

It was a gorgeous sunny day in the 70's and good for travel.   Leaving Sioux Falls I headed west on 90 towards my 2nd nights campground. I stopped at a very nice rest area in South Dakota and grabbed a geocache.   I noticed that a lot of the rest areas in South Dakota had very cool tepee statues at them.   

I pulled into the Mitchell KOA Journey Campground a little after 3 pm.  It was a nice quiet campground and had some very nice showers.    I set up camp and piped some Neil Diamond songs thru my Bluetooth speakers while I fixed Kung Lao chicken wraps for dinner.  The campground was rather empty and there were no other tent campers that night.  Another camper from a couple of sites down walked over and asked me to turn up the music because he and his wife were huge Neil Diamond fans.  That's my kind of people!!

After dinner I took a shower. - I really liked the fancy sinks at this campground...

Finally I sat down and looked over brochures and my itinerary for the next day. After today I would start seeing and stopping at a lot of fun places and I was extremely excited about all that. The first 2 days were mostly driving days but from here on out I had a pretty loaded schedule.