Tuesday evening we left the house at 7:30pm and we arrived at mom’s Wednesday around noon or so. So we made the drive in about 16 hours. Misty drove all thru the night and I took over at 5 am and drove all day. One of the stops we made was just east of Kansas City. While we were rearranging some stuff after discovering Chase had a little accident, I noticed a white car come tearing into the gas station parking lot. Misty went inside to ask the clerk for a trash bag and discovered two girls and a boy had pulled off a beer theft. The girls distracted the clerk by going into the bathroom and ripping the sink off the wall and shattering it on the floor. This caused water to come spraying out of course. While she was trying to turn it off, the boy made off with the beer. Unbelievable!

Sunday when we passed Chamberlain South Dakota we started to see left over piles of snow. It was 80F by this time but the snow had been so deep it was still melting and it was causing a lot of flooding. There was standing water everywhere. This year’s spring runoff has to be record breaking. In just two snow storms alone this area received 70 inches of snow! One of the piles was still high enough to be covering a fence.

I was rather shocked and disgusted to see a billboard that said Manage your wildlife, WEAR FUR, hunting and fishing control populations. I wanted to puke. First of all promoting the wearing of fur is completely absurd. Second of all the fur that is used for making coats doesn’t come from deer, elk, moose, antelope, coyotes and prairie dogs. Fur coats are made from commercially raised rabbits, fox and chinchilla. Which are bred and raised solely to be killed for their fur. That is heinous and has no affect on wildlife populations!! Talk about a ridiculous and careless message to be sending and I am going to try to remember to look into it a little more when I get home and maybe write a letter.
In Rapid City, we both wanted some Starbucks. We were crossing our fingers to find one. At a stop light, Misty rolled down her window and asked the lady next to us. While we were getting directions the arrow turned green, then yellow and we missed it. Not one single car behind us honked at us. Amazing. At home they would be going apeshit laying on the horn.

Passing through Rapid City South Dakota there was a sign that said “Be responsible, text Pennington to ###### for sobriety checkpoints”. Sooo are they telling you that if you are drunk driving you can send a text message to find out where the checkpoints are and thereby avoid them?!? Cuz that’s how I took it. Interesting….
I do love to come home and if we could all find good jobs here I would like to move back. I miss the wide open spaces and unusual beauty of the Black Hills.
Not sure when I will get a chance to post this. It’s Thursday morning now and we are running errands today in Newcastle. I’m going to bring Angelina along and pray for free wifi LMAO I feel failure is a certainty.