South Dakota

I mentioned that the trip to South Dakota with GR's YM group was something I should talk about. Joe & I drove independently from the group, which meant we could do some geocaching on the way there and back. After finding several caches on the way up, we arrived on Dec 29 at the Boy Scout camp on the north shore of Lewis and Clark Lake. (The lake was formed when the US Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River on the South Dakota-Nebraska Border.) We had about an hour of daylight left and Joe was interested in finding a geocache that was about 1.3 miles to the west (as the crow flys). We asked GR's stepdad, Bob, if he was interested in coming along, and we were very happy when he offered to drive, because the Camry had a bit of trouble coming into the camp on the half muddy, half frozen roads, and we had no idea what we were getting into. (Bob has a 4-wheel drive pickup and he is justifiably pleased how it handles on slippery roads.) He didn't really know where we were going--at first he thought it would be inside the scout camp somewhere, but Joe directed him north, away from the lake and out of the camp. We then took a paved road west for a few miles, then turned back south and down a two lane gravel road towards the lake, which transitioned into a single lane fairly deeply rutted affair. As we were going down towards the lake, Bob commented that he had his foot solidly on the brake, yet we were continuing to slide down the road in the icey ruts. This went on for several hundred feet, and Bob was wondering out loud if we were prepared to spend the night there (we were well out of cell phone range). About the point that Bob regained control, Joe's GPS said we are within 50 or so feet of the cache, so he took off to beat the growing dusk, while I helped Bob get the truck turned around. Happy ending: the cache was found, Bob's truck (with us in it) made it back up the slippery slope, and we made it back to camp in time for dinner.