Hail

Yesterday we went for a scenic ride to Deadwood to re-visit Kevin Costner's restaurant and casino; we last visited in 1991. The food was still great and the prices reasonable. While there I looked out the window to see the rain we were ducking in the restaurant had turned into a hail storm. What we saw was half dollar sized or less and it bounced up to 10 feet when it hit the rubber roof on the building next door. What we didn't know was the storm would move on to our campground, the Buffalo Chip in Sturgis and wreck havoc there, making national news. The hale came so fast, it accumulated up to several inches and our ride back to Sturgis was through an instant fog created by the icy piles on the roadside. It looked strange and beautiful.

We stopped in town to buy ice and proceeded to the Chip where we discovered why the wailing of ambulance sirens seemed so frequent.

Baseball sized hail ripped through the tents, shredding most, ours included. The car parked next to us, like many at the campground, was most likely totaled. Both front and rear glass was broken and the car was filling with water from hail and rain. A girl in the laundry facility was nursing a broken arm sustained when a giant hail stone hit her while driving her Harley. We heard stories of riders abandoning their bikes in the middle of the street to jump into cars with strangers in time to watch their windows get smashed out and the sheet metal pounded as if by some celestial ball peen hammer.

I had to fashion a tarp from our awning to cover the multiple holes in our roof. It was a miserable night of half sleep as howling winds. The rain tested my makeshift repair several times throughout the night. A young girl in the tent nearest us became so scared she woke up her boyfriend to pray. I could clearly hear her saying, "Oh God, oh yeah. Oh God, that's it. Right there. Oh God. She repeated this chant for about ten to twenty minutes when her boy friend chimed in with some encouraging sounds, mostly oohs and ahhhs, of his own. I didn't hear them say amen, but it seemed to help them to sleep as they were silent thereafter. The power of prayer...

It rained a couple more times and the winds blew so furiously I considered putting on our crash helmets, but morning came and we had survived. I've since heard that slightly larger hail has been known to kill cattle in the field and storms that produce large hail often make tornadoes too.

I have many more pictures but owing to a poor sleep last night I have to go to bed now. I'll pick this up at our next hotel.

We are in Wall, SD tonight and will explore the badlands tomorrow.