A South Dakota State of Mind

Five years on the road at the end of this month.

Lots of miles. Lots of smiles.

We've detailed the reasons for setting up our full-time residency in South Dakota in previous blog posts, and if you're members late in our journey you can find them in our early archives on this site. Needless to say, South Dakota is a wonderful state to begin with, and it's one of the best states in which to set up residency if you're going to go full-time on the road.

And with five years under our belts, it's time to renew, well – everything - to do with “living” in South Dakota as an RV-er. You have to show proof that you stayed in South Dakota for one night to renew your residency, and you've got to renew your driver's licenses after 5 years. As full-time RV-ers, we are NOT allowed to renew our licenses online as permanent residents can do, so since we had to stay our requisite one night in SD, we also had to head down to the nearest RMV from our county tax office to get new driver's licenses.

And instead of having our mailbox provider handle our annual vehicle registrations as they do every year (for the paltry sum of a $10 fee), we could also renew them at the tax office as well.

Finally, after seeing what my brother, Doug, went through earlier this year as executor of my Dad's estate (and having to establish power of attorney due to Dad's worsening condition before his passing), a lawyer friend of ours suggested that we have end-of-life documents such as wills, living wills, and powers of attorney originating in South Dakota so as to avoid any probate conflicts. Our earlier wills were rather dated (mine was more than 7 years old – Barbara's was significantly older than that) and had been established in our previous residency in Georgia, so we engaged a local Rapid City attorney to draw up new documents.

South Dakota – and Pennington County in particular – is nothing if not efficient. At the tax office, we were given a number and told we had a 35-minute wait. We were called in 20 minutes. Took the clerk at the counter 5 minutes to process our residency renewal and get our new tags. After a 15-minute drive to the RMV, we were alternated in between people who had appointments (we didn't - hey, we're retired!) and we were out of the building with a warm laminated driver's license in 25 minutes. Almost had a problem, as the guy at the counter asked for two pieces of mail to prove residency. Well, we don't have any mail because we don't get any bills (or most anything else), but when I pointed out that we are full-time RV-ers, he brings out another form for me to sign and we're good to go.

From the time we finished our late breakfast to the time we have everything done, including travel time, it was less than 2 hours.

So now that the important stuff was done, what to we do?

Frankly, after two 12-hour driving days from Georgia to South Dakota, it's nap time for me. After all, we have an evening date with the end of day ceremony at Mt. Rushmore to attend. More on that in another post.

Our second day was the obligatory trek to Wall Drug. Wall Drug is appropriately named for the town approximately 50 miles east of Rapid City, Wall, SD. It's the epitome of a tourist trap. In fact, if you look up the term “tourist trap” in the dictionary, there's a picture of Wall Drug. Cheap t-shirts, relatively inexpensive Black Hills gold jewelry, bison burgers; you name it, it's somewhere in the twenty or so buildings which comprise downtown Wall, SD. We had two goals; trinkets and trash for the grandkids and finding more brass state ornaments for our Christmas tree. We are about eleven states shy of having ornaments from every state we've visited, and Wall Drug has a display of all of them. After our visit, we just need six more to catch up with our travels!

We also made the obligatory drive thru Custer State Park. Some bison were spotted in the distance, but they tend to cross roads earlier in the day. We did however, get to feed carrots to the wild burros who hang around in the same spot waiting for generous tourists like us to drive along. Found out the Jeep could navigate all the tunnels in Needles Pass, but it sure had a LOT more room when we took the Mini through them 4 years ago!

Barbara talked to the burros a lot. Mainly because one in particular kept following her no matter where she went. That burro was a pig!

It's hard not to smile when feeding these burros. Some are shy, some are very forward, but they're all cute.

One semi-sour note to the trip. Don't schedule your visit to the Rapid City area during the first two weeks of August. Three words:

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

First off, IF you can find a hotel room, they will be double the usual price. Local businesses love Sturgis; local residents – not so much. Second, while there are many fine people riding motorcycles across the country, not all of them come to Sturgis. Sixty-something men and women showing way too much heavily tattooed skin, excessively loud bikes revving all hours of the day and night, and - let's face it - were beard braids ever really in style?

This picture below sums up the 7-day trip in numbers pretty well.

 

Overall, the roads to and from were in good condition, except for Illinois. Despite five years of construction, the same stretch of road between the Kentucky border and Missouri is still a mess.

Next up in Parental Parolees – Our Mt. Rushmore adventure(s).