June 21

Hampton Inns provide free breakfast. We ate and re-packed the car. Jake said that when he was in the lobby he saw something about storms in western South Dakota. We figured we'd drive and re-route or stop if we had to.

Jake is a champion driver. He missed his calling to be a truck driver. Seriously, before all those pesky safety regulations and drivers got paid for making time, Jake could have been rich. I'm a good road trip driver too, but since Jake is an antsy passenger he usually drives and I sleep.  It works for us.

Jake woke me up somewhere in South Dakota and told me to look at the sky. "It looks mighty dark, Jake."

"The wind is really strong. I don't like this."

I check my super-handy weather app on my phone. "Yeah, this is bad. Turn around and head south."

There was a quick discussion about trying to go through, into the storm. As we watched hay bales fly across the road, that idea was abandoned. Jake turned around and we headed toward the light.  We truly were in the middle of nowhere. No houses. No other roads. Very few cars. We saw a pickup pull over and Jake drove to it. The driver was whiter than white and told us that he was going home to check on his house but that we needed to keep going south. He told us to drive and not to stop until we hit a town 17 miles away. It was a very long 17 miles.  We pulled into a Subway (the second time in my life that I've run to a Subway during a tornado) and ran inside.

We were fine. The tornado didn't come our way. But there were multiple tornadoes that day and the one we ran from was just 3 miles away from where we turned around. A new respect for weather and being in the middle of nowhere is now ingrained in the Fray family.

Playing Uno inside Subway to pass the time



We stopped in Rapid City for the night. The Hampton there had a waterslide! It was a lot of fun and we were able to calm our nerves so we could enjoy Mount Rushmore the next day.

WATERSLIDE!!!!