Unfortunately the Badlands are apparently a popular destination for bikers on their way to Sturgis, so once again we found ourselves surrounded, our behemoth house on wheels being no match for the roaring swarms of motorcycle dudes and their women, who seemed to spend all their time on the backs of their respective bikes taking selfies at eighty miles per hour.
After winding our way through miles and miles of barren badlands we finally made it to our campground. On the website the campground had boasted that it had a pool! and a restaurant! and gorgeous view of The Badlands!
Upon checking in we found out that the pool was kind of gross, the restaurant was non-existent and while yes, you could see the Badlands from the campground, the view was obscured from our campsite by, well, other large RVs. So back on the road we went in search of a place to eat. We didn't get far since the bikers had taken over pretty much every inch of parking space within several miles of where we were staying. Sure there was a restaurant nearby, but it was quite obvious from the parking lot that our biker friends plus about a hundred of their closest pals had beaten us to it. Try parking a 26 foot RV among hundreds of motorcycles. Not happening.
So back to the campground we went. We set up our spot and decided to make do with what we had in the fridge. We built a fire, roasted hot dogs on sticks, I browned some leftover noodles over the stove, heated up some baked beans and sliced up some tomatoes. Voila! An RV feast from basically nothing. We were pretty proud of ourselves.
We realized that our laundry was piling up so I stuffed way too many clothes into one of the washing machines in the cob-webby laundry room and the four of us went off to explore the place. We saw horses, a beautiful sunset over the Badlands and were invited to come watch a dance demonstration by some Lakota Indians who happened to stop by. I quickly stuffed the wet clothes into a small dryer, put some quarters in and hoped for the best. We went to watch the dancing and after a long introduction by the guy who seemed to be leading things, we were treated to some tribal dancing as the sun continued to set in the background.
We finally pressed some money into the hands of the leader guy after he mentioned for about the tenth time that they really needed money to make their elaborate costumes and then made our way back to our campsite. By now the laundry had been in the dryer for two cycles and to my dismay it was just as wet as it had been when I first put it in. After scratching my head and kicking the dryer a few times, I decided to look behind it and realized that the plastic exhaust tube that was attached to the dryer had a gigantic hole in it. I consulted with John and we agreed that it was time to get the duct tape out again. We hadn't used it since the sewer pipe incident. We spent some time patching up the dryer (which quite honestly looked like it had been around since before the Badlands had been formed), put more quarters in and prayed.
After another hour it became clear that the clothes were not going to dry in this dryer. The other dryer was being used and it was getting late. So we did the only other thing we could do - we used our cable connector for the tv and created a clothesline from the back of the RV to a nearby pole and hung all our wet laundry out for the night. I secretly felt that creating this clothesline and laying all our things out for people to see solidified our status as veteran RVers. The entire night felt like one long exercise in improvisation.
Next: Driving through the Badlands on a gallon of gas and hitting up Wall Drug! (with thousands of our new friends, of course)
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