Today we hiked the trail around Devils Tower. Definitely a monument worth seeing! Thankfully we got up early and completed the hike before temperatures soared close to 100 degrees. In the evening we were surprised by a severe thunderstorm with winds up to 60 mph and massive lightning. While the lightning bolts illuminating Devils Tower were spectacular, the overall experience was quite scary, as we were sitting in our shaking RV. Somehow, we all survived.

We awoke this morning to strong winds which shook the RV and made us jump out of bed. I grabbed the campground map and tried to find the tornado shelter; one of those underground bunkers I had seen on a campground in the Midwest last year. Well, there were none of those at this campground. I looked outside to see how other campers were handling this emergency. To my surprise I saw families eating breakfast outside, holding their plates, while others were busy packing up their RVs to head back on the road. Some campers were walking their dogs. I soon realized that this was just a normal day on the prairie in South Dakota.
We packed up our RV, tried to outrun the flies as we were getting in the truck, and hit the road again to head further west. We passed the Badlands and Mount Rushmore which we had visited already a few years back.
The drive through the Black Hills was beautiful and we arrived at our campground in Wyoming in the early afternoon. We are camping next to Devils Tower, which is absolutely amazing!
It was very hot here today (95 degrees) with humidity at 20%. I am starting to apply lotion to my hands multiple times a day. We are also 4000 feet up with increased UV intensity, which means long shirts and a hat for me. Just like in South Dakota, we have an abundance of flies here.
Today is also our 29th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated at the campsite restaurant at the foot of Devils Tower.
After dinner, the boys played mini golf at the campsite, while I chatted with other photography enthusiasts. We met a Canadian astronomer from Calgary who showed us amazing pictures of stars, galaxies, and planets he had taken. It must have been hours that we spent at his campsite, completely in awe of his work. We even saw shooting stars as we looked up at the Milky Way. What a perfect end to our wedding anniversary day – shooting stars at Devils Tower.

After driving along the cornfields in Nebraska and Iowa, we reached the plains and prairies of South Dakota. Trees are sparse here and the air is dry. When we reached the campground at 5pm it was 90 degrees with 26% humidity, a relief from the often oppressive humidity in the South. We also entered the Mountain Time Zone and gained an hour, giving us more time to enjoy the evening.
Our campground is surrounded by wide open space and we were able to catch a beautiful sunset. We also met two tent campers from Sweden who are riding their bicycles from New York City to Seattle. Their story is absolutely amazing! 
To my delight, I was also able to show off my fly swatting skills today. Yes, I have a talent swatting flies. There are a lot of flies here and I eliminated 22 out of 23 flies in the RV. I have mastered the hard surface swatting and am now moving on to practice swatting flies in mid-air. 
Our refrigerator is working again. We think that the refrigerator door kept opening during driving. We just had the door replaced, which must have affected the locking mechanism. Being a nurse, I quickly figured out a way to make it work with minimal supplies. 

We are in Nebraska. After leaving Illinois this morning, we drove 538 miles through Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska. We drove by the Arch in St. Louis and after that we saw cornfields, cornfields, and more cornfields - all the way to Nebraska. While we anticipated this stretch to be fairly monotonous, we were surprised by the beauty of the cornfields and the wide open sky. We arrived at the campground late in the day and enjoyed a relaxing evening, sharing travel stories with our Californian camp neighbors. 
Unfortunately, our refrigerator issue is not resolved yet. When we checked the refrigerator at a fuel stop, it seemed to be running; however, the refrigerator door had unlatched and was wide open. We secured the door again but when we arrived at the campground many hours later, the refrigerator still did not seem cool enough. We are not sure what the issue is, but at this point our food has been without appropriate refrigeration twice and we will have to discard most of it. There will be lots of peanut butter sandwiches in the next few days. 

We are on the run again after a long day of packing and loading the RV. When considering what was transported from the house to the RV, our neighbors might have thought we are moving out. I call it "being prepared". Nevertheless, I found a space for everything, although I am sure there is something we forgot. There always is and it is just a matter of time until we find it.
Today we drove 438 miles and made it to Benton, Illinois. We passed through 4 states: Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois. Tennessee was beautiful with its rolling hills, and Kentucky delivered some scary moments as we were caught in a massive thunderstorm. The cloudy skies turned black and it was so dark that our navigation system switched to nighttime display at noon. The heavy rain made it extremely difficult to see the road and we were worried about the strong winds that were picking up debris and hurling it through the air. I hung on to my seat for dear life until we found a place to pull over safely. We left Kentucky with our RV still upright and made it to Benton in the afternoon, where we found out that our refrigerator had stopped working at some point during the trip. We did not know how long it had not been working, but, as an infection preventionist, I immediately recited food safety guidelines and reminded everyone that food poisoning is probably the worst that could happen to us in our RV, which has one bathroom. Surprisingly, the general opinion among the crew was "we will be fine"  and it was decided to keep all the food and pre-cooked meals and move on with the day. The refrigerator was working again once the RV was plugged in, but we will have to check it during the trip tomorrow to make sure it still works while driving.
Our campground here is nice, but it is very humid. We cannot wait to leave this humidity behind and enjoy the drier air out west.

July 17, 2023
​The countdown to the Audinet RV Trip 2023 has begun. Three more days and we will take our RV on the road again. This year we will drive 2500 miles to Glacier National Park in northern Montana, visiting Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks on the way. If you followed our travel blog last year, you already know our travel set-up: Cliff is our driver, who puts up with me, the overly anxious passenger. Our two youngest boys, both in their last year of college now, are tagging along again; for the national park experience only, or so they think. We, on the other hand, are finding it useful to have unlimited access to free labor during our trip and have welcomed them to join us again. 
Like last year we will share our road trip adventures and pictures on this blog and and we invite family, friends, co-workers, and anyone else who is interested, to follow our journey to northern Montana and back to Atlanta. 
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