174 The Badlands of South Dakota

Monday 27th May 2013 Miles Today 345 Total  5993

Overnight we had a tornado warning flash up on the TV screen. Fantastic system.
I went to sleep only to be woken by a very exited Karen who told me to look out of the window. WOW. It was like looking out the car window whilst in the car wash whilst the paparazzi were testing their flash guns. This is a short video looking out of the window.

We set off early again to cover the last 345 miles to our target of Wall, South Dakota.

We got the boring bit out of the way and then the cattle ranches started and we spotted some real life cowboys. They even had stetsons and cowboy boots on when in McDonalds. We were now in the West.

Proper cowboys. Yahoooo

A patriotic house.

An old original railway lime. Now a national monument.

We passed through an Indian reservation.

Then we spotted another storm cell. About 50 miles away.

As we got closer the storm stayed directly in front of us.

The cloud formations were incredible.

But very menacing.

Then just as it started to rain, a pheasant flew across our path.

So close in fact the it smashed straight through our windscreen and demolished it.

Having driven 50 miles in a straight line we then ran straight into the storm. It started to rain cows and horses (cats and dogs are too small).
(Karen:- Oh and one very stupid pheasant, which I saw just prior to Ray, there was nothing we could have done, and at first I thought it must have missed us as Ray was so calm, however when I looked over his shoulder, I saw that half the windscreen was missing and Kitty had disappeared.  I jumped off and rescued a piece of the top screen and Ray rescued the kitty, and then stupidly).......
Karen then chirped in with "at least we don't have hail". Then the hail started. It was incredible and extremely painful. The stones were the size of king sized peas.
The rattle on our helmets was surreal and the stones hitting our thighs was agony but were both laughing out loud at Karen's last comment.
(Karen:- I normally stop Ray from saying anything that begins with "at least it's not" as I firmly believe in not tempting fate, but stupidly, I did not follow my own advice).

Once we had cleared the rain, we entered the Badlands.

Only an idiot could be happy with this. (The remains of the screen in hand)

Kit and Ted bore the full brunt of the collision with the pheasant so Karen comforted them.

Saw this on top of the badlands.

As we got to Wall, the weather threatened again and we dived for cover and food in a restaurant.

We have booked ourselves into a log cabin to keep up with the theme of cowboys and Indians.  It is totally hammed up, but great.  There were a couple of more thunder storms through the evening, but nothing compared to what we had already been through.