Mitchell SD

I am sitting at a picnic table at the KOA this morning with the wind mercifully blowing and keeping the mosquitoes away. Well, we have seen a lot of beautiful places but Mitchell South Dakota definitely makes me thankful for where I live. We wandered downtown a bit last night and it is one of those towns that has literally died. It is a depressing place, and the Corn Palace, which I remembered as spectacularly kitchy and cool 18 years ago or so looked tired and sad.
In any case, we had fun at the KOA last night swimming and chasing mosquitoes away. We finally turned on some air con in the car after going 1900 or so miles without it. We are trying to get best gas mileage! But the Badlands was the limit for us on heat tolerance. The kids are having fun taking their turns being the boss, which basically seems to mean they ride shotgun, control the audio book or ipod, and choose the big tent with the blow up mattress for sleeping.
Tim recovered in exactly 24 hours from his violent bout of food poisoning and is absolutely no worse for the wear and happy as a clam. Jon as spent a couple of nights in the tent with Tim and he is as chatty as anything til Jon begs him to let him sleep.
Everyone's favorite sighting seems to be the little prairie dogs we have seen a lot of along the fields on the side of the road. There are lots of great pictures but this connection is too slow and the battery too low to load pics this morning. We will do it in Chicago.
Jon wants you all to know we are averaging a little over 37 miles to the gallon of which he is proud! He is gradually covering our little topper box with very tacky stickers from everywhere we go.... Ah, Jon....
All in all this has been a great trip so far. We are sort of leaving the mostly camping phase here in the Central Time Zone and doing a bit more visiting. Tonight will be St. Paul with my old Seattle pal Jane Yetter. We will spend a few days with the Knowles/Webbs in Chicago before being treated by Uncle Jon to a couple of nights at a giant amusement park in Ohio! Yikes, says Laura...
That's all for now, more coffee please
Laura