Racing the smoke

We are now in South Dakota. We are heading East to try to outrun the smoke. We aren't winning. Everytime we see blue sky we stop to enjoy the view. By the time we get back into our car it's getting smoky again. If you look to your western horizon you should be seeing it coming. It's nasty. Today we saw missle silos, underground launch control rooms, smoke, more herds of prairie dogs, the badlands, this town's practice field for rodeo stuff (the equivalent of a local softball field, but with the dads on horses doing the lassoing and the kids herding the cattle through the launch shoots). Tonight in the local "steak house" we watched a three year old girl that was sitting on the bar learn how to feed dollars and quarters into the video betting machine (some parents use video games to keep their kid busy while they are busy, and if no video game is around...).

South Dakota is the polar opposite of Montana. There is terrific history here, but you begin to see why the indians had a slightly uneasy feeling when the South Dakota settlers started to move in. They weren't friendly then and they aren't friendly now.

I have written a lot and will be typing the stuff in each evening, and I will upload it when I have a signal. I have cabillions of pictures to be weeded out. How many pictures of a prairie dog can you look at when they all look exactly the same. It's like the calendar with 12 months of Schipperke dogs.

We have started to seek out televisions and we watch the weather. We are plotting our path to avoid TOO much excitement.