I Can’t Believe We Made It

The road to the Toadstool campground was 15 miles down a dusty, white-gravel road. The RV, motorcycle, and Jeep were completely covered in white dust by the time we got to the campground.

Yuck. Luckily, it rained last night and seems to have, more or less, rinsed off the RV and Jeep. We are counting on the road not being so dusty.

John had scouted a route out of the area that will cut fifty miles or more off our journey and it is only 21 miles down a gravel road. Eh, what’s six more miles of dust. An old local warned John, the way we are planning to isn’t always passable. Not to worry John says, I checked it out yesterday and it looks good.

And it started out good too. The road was barely dusty following the rain. What is that up ahead? Not a road grader? Oh, yes, yes it is and he is making a tall pile of dirt in the center of this one-lane road. At first it was okay, we could stay off to the left and miss the big dirt pile.

But of course, the road is getting narrower and narrower. We have no way to go around the big dirt pile, we have to go over it.

I’m in a total panic telling John he is not driving a Jeep, there is no going off-road with the RV. We can’t make this. We can’t go through the grass.

Relax he tells me. We just have to get around the grader and we’ll be fine. I got this.

I got this? I got this!? What do you mean “I got this?” I feel like I’m in one of those “Watch this! Hold my beer!” situations. This is our house not a dump truck!

I tighten my seat belt, hold my breath and hold on tight. We hit this dirt pile like nobody’s business. I can hear the undercarriage of the coach scraping the dirt. I’m thinking what if we get high-balanced on this? I don’t think Roadside Assistance will come out here and pull us out. AAAAHHHH!

It’s over. I look at John, John looks at me and with a wonderful grin on his face he says, “See?” I’ll “see” him, as soon as I can breath again.

After that the road is basically okay. A bit bumpy in spots but heck, we have driven on paved highways worse than this.

The first town we come into as we cross the South Dakota boarder is Ardmore. It has a population of about 16, and approximately 20 abandoned properties like this one. Some useless trivia, during the Great Depression no one in the town went on welfare and President Calvin Coolidge visited the town in 1927.

We finally get off the dirt road and onto pavement. We are interested in doing some rockhounding in Fairburn and find a campground a few miles away in Hermosa. Fairburn is such a small town, their main street through town is a dirt road.

The statues of President Theodore Roosevelt, President Ronald Reagan, and President George W. Bush were moved here after the three President’s Parks failed in 2010. There are several more RV parks that have a bust or two. The rest are on Howard Hankins farm or behind closed gates. Click here to read more about it.

Time to hunt for rocks. We head for Fairburn and the agate beds. Oh poo, the gate is shut and locked. Something about not driving the road when it is wet. We don’t want to walk to the beds, it’s like a two mile hike to get to the edge of the beds. Fine, we’ll hike. I mean we’re here. We head down the road and we come to a stream crossing. Oooohhhh, that’s why the gate is closed. The Jeep could have easily made this. Oh well, we take off our socks and shoes and wade across.

We spend hours hiking, bending over to pick up a rock that we just throw back on the ground. I ran out of suntan lotion, lost my jacket somewhere on our hike in. I’m a crispy critter and looking forward to the cool stream crossing on our way back.

We didn’t find any Fairburn rocks, but we found a few bobbles of prairie agate. We have a place we like to go farther east where we find lots of really nice agate and have a better chance of finding a Fairburn.