Back to South Dakota

Monday found us on the road back to South Dakota. Yes...going back 154 miles to the Hart Ranch in Rapid City. We're staying here for a week as a benefit of our Thousand Trails membership for $12.00 a night for full hook up. A great price for the area which is in full vacation mode. Along the way we stopped at the last rest area in Wyoming and found that we had a flat tire on the house. Can you say that...our house has a flat!!!
It must have happened as we came into the rest area because it wasn't fully flat when I saw it. But it quickly became that way. Boy...THANK YOU for that potty break. We called Good Sam's Road-Side Assistance and after a 3 hour wait the tire guy came from Spearfish South Dakota. He quickly changed out the tire for our spare.
And back on the road we went getting into the Hart Ranch about 5:30pm..a little later than planned but still not too bad. Gary has been on the phone with Carriage and the tire company and they are sending a new tire here. We hope it'll arrive on Friday so we can get it installed before we leave on Monday.

Bright and early on Tuesday morning we met up with Judy and Greg again. They are staying about 8 miles from us at Rushmore Shadows. We went to one of the newest national parks to see one of the Minuteman Missiles.
http://www.nps.gov/mimi/
A retired Air Force "missilleer" who was stationed in a launch control center described what life was like and what his responsibilities had been. We then traveled about 6 miles to a Minuteman II missile silo. This site tour was conducted by.....Egor, a young Russian working there for the summer. An interesting twist considering the purpose of those missiles back in the 60s. Was this missile aimed at his house?? Probably not as we learned..the missiles were aimed at Russia's missiles not at a particular town. Still a bit disconcerting to see history that could have been very different. I'm sure glad folks kept cool heads about themselves back then.