June 16-17th, 2017 – First Leg of Adventure

June 16-17th, 2017

First Two Days on the Road

Nora Springs, IA – Oacoma, SD

I know, we’re really behind on the blog. Being out in the woods makes typing and photo editing a bit difficult, especially when there is so much exploring to to. Our first day we said tearful goodbyes to Camrin’s parents who have housed us the past month and a half. Camrin cried the hardest when she said goodbye to our cat Andi. Then with a stop at the gas station to check tire pressure and fluids we were off. Our first destination being Nora Springs, Iowa. Camrin was struck by how hilly and forested the Northeast corner of Iowa was but it soon turned out to be fields as far as the eye can see. As we drove we noticed that almost every road that came off of Highway 18, which we took from Wisconsin to Nora Springs, was a dirt road. Eventually, we made it to the town and started looking for our free campsite which we had looked up earlier on freecampsite.net. We drove up and down all of the dirt roads along the river and we could not find our site. There were some little boat launches but no sites and we were starting to get nervous because we had no clue where we were going to sleep that night so we kept driving. We finally found a big park with a rowdy and loud campsite full of RV’s. This wasn’t the camp area we found online. Luckily the park had a large, hand-painted map of the area and we were able to find that our campsite (if this 9-year-old map was accurate) was southeast of us off of Yucca Road. We snapped a cellphone photo of the map and took off on the dirt roads to try and find our site. Eventually, we made it around to Yucca road and turned down what looked like someone’s driveway to a big open field with a few firepits. This was the campgrounds from the site! Laura recognized one of the shelters from the photos. There was only one other set of campers when we pulled in so we picked a nice spot by a big oak tree to settle in for the night. The pit toilets had no doors on them so you had to shout before walking in.

The next day we headed towards Oacoma, South Dakota. On the way, we stopped at the famous tourist trap known as the corn palace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Palace. It is a venue for local sports teams, trade shows, community events, and more. Then we were off to Oacoma. We found our free campsite fairly quickly because it’s right off of the freeway. We camped along the Missouri River, where a fisherman named Dave stopped to ask us about our tent while we were eating dinner. The next morning five deer walked through our camp area while we drank our morning coffee. We packed up and headed off towards the badlands.