South Dakota to MN

We wanted to stop at Wall Drug on the way home, since we didn’t have time to do that the day before. We had a tough night, heavy rain and strong winds and thunder kept all of us up much of the night. The kids were too scared to leave the tent and I was glad for that since the chances that they’d get hit by lightening would have been greater.

In the morning, we had to make a plan on how to pack up the wet tent despite the fact that it was still raining hard. I told the kids to hold the fly up above the tent as a sort of umbrella, but that didn’t work too well. Everything was soaked. We just left it all in a pile on the floor of the TAB on top of some towels. If I’d thought ahead, we might have been able to place it all in the laundromat’s dryer and then we could have packed it up dry. Our new tent did keep everything inside dry though. The sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows were all fine.

When we got to Jackson, MN, our next stop, I did use the dryers in the laundromat at a low temperature. The owner’s wife came out at one point because the plastic clips were rattling in the machine. I asked her if it was bothering her and she said no, she just wondered what the noise was. Then her husband came out when I was taking the tent out of the dryer. He said, I can smell something burning. I couldn’t smell anything and said so. God knows I have a sensitive nose. Besides, I had it on delicate and stood there watching over it, worried that I might damage the new tent. He said, I hope the next person who uses that dryer doesn’t end up having their clothes smell. It was late and I let it get to me. I asked him if he wanted me to buy him a new dryer. Then he gave me a look, turned around and left. I was the one to use the dryer next, since I decided to wash all of our dirty clothes while I was there, and there was no problem. Just a creepy place. I ran into the owners every time I turned around. It felt like they were watching every move we made.