The Missouri River

It was an easy drive from the Lake Okoboji area to Chamberlain, SD. Almost all of it was interstate across southern Minnesota and South Dakota. It was nearly all farm land, and very pretty in it’s own right. When we were fairly close to Chamberlain, it was like we crossed a line. It seemed that I just blinked and the whole landscape was completely different: rolling hills and bluffs and then the river below. It was something.

We’re lucky enough to be parked in a great little campground in Chamberlain, backing up to the Missouri River. We have a beautiful canopy of trees and lots of shade. Here’s a picture we took Wednesday morning.

Unfortunately you can’t see the river behind us. But we got more pics of that. This is from the back of our camp site.
We have some cement steps behind us which go down to the river itself. We walked down there and got this shot.
Then we went off on a drive. I mapped out a little circle we could do to see more of the river and this general area. We first stopped at a park just south of the town. This is looking back towards Chamberlain.
We continued on to the next town, Fort Thompson. What I didn’t know (I swear!) was that there was a casino there. I wasn’t surprised, though. There’s a “casino” in the gas station across the road from our campground. We figure there are 3 or 4 machines inside. But I digress. This was an Indian-run casino and was actually very nice. It was small, but had a nice variety of machines. We enjoyed a nice lunch and we left the casino with the same amount of money we went in with. A victory! And we had fun, too.

We drove back home over a couple of dams right outside Fort Thompson. Then we headed south, back to I-90. This terrain was largely hay fields and pastures for cows and quite a few horses, too. There were hardly any trees at all.

When we were driving in on I-90, there was a rest area just before we got off with a sign that promised an “overlook”. I wondered what kind of view it could have, probably just the river. But after seeing the terrain change once here, I realized there could be a great view. So we went to that overlook on our way back home. This is what we saw.

We really didn’t expect anything marvelous when we planned the two-night stay here. We just wanted a place midway between Okoboji and Mt. Rushmore. We got WAY more than we planned on. What a country!

Fun Fact (there may be a test at the end): The capital of South Dakota is not pronounced “Pee-air”, it’s “Peer”, only one syllable. See how much we are learning on this trip!