Rapid City, SD

We made it, actually yesterday was a beautiful day for driving. It is always windy up here and yesterday the wind was behind us giving us a bit of a tail wind. The 8.9 mpg wasn’t bad considering some of the hills we went had to climb.

It has been a while since my last post so here goes the catch up post.

We left Griff’s RV Park on April 29th and headed for West Omaha KOA, we arrived at 12:30, setup the camper, had lunch and headed into town to see the kids. As you may or may not know the reason for our visit, other than seeing the kids, was to attend the Berkshire-Hathway, BRK, stockholders meeting, I have a few shares, no not the A shares those are really out of my league. Anyway, if a person has at least one share of stock they are entitled to 4 tickets to the meeting. I enjoy going to see the vendors who come in for the event, these companies are all owned by BRK. Some of them sell products at the event with all the proceeds going to a local charity. Benjamin Moore paints sold teddy bears for $5 and the money went to Ronald McDonald’s House, DQ sold dilly bars and small blizzards for a dollar and all money went to a local charity. Of course I donate my share, I love dilly bars.

I wasn’t able to get the meeting shirt, they were all out of them. I did buy two shirts at the BNSF booth with Buffet and Munger’s picture on them.

River Forest RVs is one of the companies owned by BRK and each year they have a couple RVs at the meeting. This year they had three motorhomes, small, med and large. The class A was customized for the BRK meeting with the name Berkshire on the front and sides of the vehicle. I didn’t go inside, the line was to long.

I did buy the obligatory Warren Buffet peanut brittle at the See’s Candies area, I do enjoy it. Of course I bought some of their chocolate and some lollipops for the little ones. I don’t need the chocolate but it is really excellent candy.

BRK also owns NetJets a fractional air plane company, meaning you buy a fraction of the coast of the plane and it gives you X number of hours flying time on the plane. The cost is $8000 to $125,000 buy in, then there is a monthly cost and an hourly cost. I looked at the least expensive plane, flying time about 4 hours, it was $8000+ to buy in, then $1890 per month and an hourly fee on time of that for 25 hours a year flying time. Sounds expensive but I guess if you can afford a plane this is probably the best option unless you have billions like Bill Gates, who was there and we did see his plane parked on the tarmac.

It was a fun time and since I don’t know if we will get to the meeting next year I wanted to go to this one.

We left Omaha Monday morning about 8:30 and had a pleasant drive to Mitchell, SD. The campground I had wanted to stay at wasn’t open yet so we stayed at the KOA which hadn’t been open long. Not a bad place to stay if visiting the area but as with all KOA’s it wasn’t cheap.

We stopped in Mitchell to see niece Amy and family. Amy, Clancy, Maverick and Lilly moved from Huntsville, AL last year when Clancy took a job in Mitchell. We had a great visit but neglected to take any pictures. We will rectify that when we stop on our way back to Sioux Falls next week.

We left Mitchell about 8:30, I guess I am stuck on the same departure times but that is the way it goes. As I stated before we had a tail wind and had good fuel mileage. Our friends Mark and Sharon Brueck were in Sioux Falls Monday night on their way back to Rapid City, they called us when they got on the road and to make a long story short we met up with them at a truck stop at exit 152 on I-90. We had a great visit, ate a bit of lunch and they headed out, we will see them today. They have left Audrie’s B&B where they had worked for several years and have taken positions at Sheridan Lake campground, it is a federal park. It will be a nice change for them.

Here are a couple pictures of our drive over yesterday.

This was a rest stop with a great view of the river and valley.

No way was I going for a walk on this path, even though it was probably to cold for a snake to be out, my luck I would have come across one who didn’t own a thermometer.

We found Lake Park Campground and Cottages without incident and got set up in good time. Our site is next to the office and Laundromat. I was fortunate to be able to get satellite even with a big tree next to us.

Someone is good with a chainsaw, this is a one piece sculpture of the eagle and branch.

So we are here for a week, this campground is very pricey and the only reason we are here is because Daniel and family are coming in on Friday for a long weekend. In addition, Marie’s mom and dad and her brother and sister and their families will be here also. We were asked to join them and here we are.

The temps aren’t to bad, mid fifties today mid thirties tonight but it is always windy.

We are going over to see Mark & Sharon’s new digs today and the rest of the time we will see what gives.

Dreams Do Come True.