Date: 19 May 2001 (Saturday)

Start:

End: Municipal Park, Pierre SD (0 miles)

Today was a quiet day in Pierre. It was cool in the morning (56f) and warmer in the afternoon (78f) with mostly clear skies.

While Dolores did the laundry in a local laundromat, I went out and bought (and installed) a new battery for the pickup. It does what it has to and (best of all) I have confidence in it. I also found a wire being frayed at the trailer connector, so I cleaned that up.

Then we took a hike on LaFramboise Island while it was still cool. It’s in the middle of the Missouri between Pierre and Fort Pierre. It housed fur-trading posts in the early days. Now the Corp of Engineers has it and has a few hiking trails on it.

We took the 1.5 mile forest loop and saw a deer and two red squirrels, plus many tree swallows (someone put up houses for them) and a black-headed grosbeak.

We didn’t find out till we got back to the trailer that we had also run through a nest of ticks. A great deal of self-examination followed. We thought we had destroyed all of them (at least 10) but two more popped up at dinner. So we’re still keeping our eyes open for more of them (and feeling squirmy).

After lunch in the trailer, the local mall (very small) beckoned, so we walked through it to refresh our memories of malls. A quick run through a local grocery satisfied our needs for dinner today and tomorrow.

We sat & talked for a while, read for a bit, went to church, came back, and had dinner in the trailer.

We’ve decided to break out of here early and try to make a lot of tracks tomorrow, when it is alleged that the weather will be cool. The problem here is that the winds are forecast out of the northwest at 20-30mph and we’re headed north, then west.

Pierre is a nice small town with wide streets, not many trees, some blowing dust, and a lot of nice people. It would be easy to come back to.