Day 21 august 19, 2010 memories

Up and out early on a beautiful day. As Nick headed around the bend down the hill, we saw a couple of tractors coming up the opposite side of the road. We hit the next bend, and there were more tractors! We went up the hill and came down the hill....and there were twenty more tractors. Some had a single person, others had whole families. There had to be at least 100. Nick's job was to find out what that was all about when he stopped for gas, but the gas station was so far away, that they didn't know. We are figuring they were headed to a county fair or a tractor pull. Oh, the fun.
As we wended our way out of Hill City, we entered the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. There were grassy plains for as far as the naked eyes could see. Rolls of straw were strategically placed in preparation for the harsh winters. Cattle and ranches were spread out. We drove 120 miles of nothingness.....we are so used to living on top of our neighbors, that I can't imagine being acres and acres away from my neighbors. It made Nick and I think about what do these people do when they need to go to the dentist, or there is an emergency? Where do they go for food? How a out gasoline? By the time you get to the gas station 120 miles away and turn around, you need gas again!
We finally got into a small town called Lusk. Lusk had a population of 774. It had a couple of bars and restaurants, a school and two gas stations. Blink....and you missed the town. There were remnants of a drive-in movie theatre.....the screen was gone, but the speakers remained. What memories that sight provoked!
We arrived to our next destination around noon. Talk about a one-horse town! We couldn't find our final destination, so we pulled over to what was supposedly and grocery store. Shelves were sparse and so was merchandise. We asked for directions to our campground. He gave us directions and gave us a Bates Motel kind of smile. We drove to the campground and we got a bit nervous. The trailers that were there looked like they'd been there for years. Windows were broken and the sites were right on top of one another. Garbage was thrown around. Nick looked at me and said, "if this is the campground, we're moving on till our next stop or the nearest Wal-Mart!". I checked our itinerary and it turns out we had reservations for Lakeside RV Park. We were at Lakeview RV Park. We drove down a deserted road toward Glendo State Park and found our stop. It was pretty obvious that this was a relatively new campground because the trees were small. The campground was pretty big, and it was also pretty empty. The owners were very nice, but it was still pretty creepy being in the middle of nowhere in an empty campground. We did some laundry, ate dinner and went to bed for a good night's rest for tomorrow.