We are here!

We’re 3000 miles in and settled

into quite a routine.

The luggage is more rationalised but is nonetheless fairly hefty.

We carry a mini kitchen - a chiller basket with our Bloody Mary makings and our morning milk and another basket with knife and cutting board, pickles and limes, chilli sauce, wine glasses etc.

Then we have a snacks bag, of course. Americans are expert with

snack food. Oh, Chex Mix, I love you. We also have our suitcases. One stays in the car and holds things we don’t need.

We have purchased cloth overnight bags, one each, to make the luggage more contained. I also have two pillows and a patchwork quilt. Bruce has two favourite cotton blankets.

They are fallbacks when hotels don’t suit our patterns. Bruce sleeps with

light covers and I sleep with lots. We have a bag which contains shoes we are not wearing. It stays in the car.

And we have coats and shirts we leave hanging in the car. Oh, and of course, we have my computer bag with all the cords and books.

There is a rhythm to our travel.

We do a couple of days driving and a couple of days resting.

On travel days, we try not to drive for more than 4 hours. And we take regular breaks to explore and find places to explore and to stop for lunch.

This week we happened upon Gillette which is a pretty gritty little town in among coal mining and

coal-seam gas operations. Little oil rigs plug away in the landscape outside the town. There’s a massive open cut coal mine exposing a great black band. Endless trains heave slowly across the landscape, some of which reminds one of Broken Hill. Signs such as "Good Food. Cold Beer. Live Bait” tell a lot about the lifestyle.

The elevation is 4700ft.

But in the main street as one comes into Gillette, outside the newspaper office, is one of the most striking pieces of urban art I’ve seen. It is a rock, paper, scissors sculpture.

Our quest in Gillette is a cup of coffee and a pee.

We spot a cafe next to an art framer’s shop.

What a lovely find.

They have never made a macchiato before but they easily follow the simple recipe and, with the lovely coffee they are using, make a glorious specimen. Utterly refreshing.

The other occupants of the cafe are a four well-groomed women intently involved in knitting. The local knitting circle.

What a contrast to that rather harsh old mining town spirit outside.

On the door of the coffee shop also is a message.

A few hours and many miles later, we stop for lunch in a town called Sturgis.

This South Dakota town is famous for an annual motorbike festival which attracts hundreds of thousands of bikers. The reason they flock to Sturgis is because helmets are not compulsory in South Dakota - just as in New Hampshire which brags the immense Laconia bikers' festival for the same reason.

Sturgis is much smaller than Laconia and when the bikers are not there, it is very small. But it is entirely biker ready at all times. It has come to live the biker life.

It has biker promos and biker

shops and biker saloons and even biker lawyers. True story. The most prominent advertising in the town is for Jack Daniels and for a motorcycling lawyer. He has banners right across the streets and dangling from light posts. Shades of Better Call Saul.

The people generally are tattooed and pierced. They are of the biker ilk. They look a bit scary really. Some wear cowboy hats. Lots are wearing black.

Well, when I say lots, there are not too many people around at all.

We potter around looking for somewhere acceptable to eat. Not a lot of options. So we brave Bob’s Family Restaurant which looks pretty dodgy. Inside it is very blue with low ceiling and fans.

All sorts of rough dudes are sitting around at tables. An immense man in an Uncle Sam suspenders belt sits alone at a table in the middle. An old chap in cowboy hat is at a table in a wheelchair. Everyone is really, really, really quiet. They don’t look like soto voce types but they are murmuring so softly, it is eerie.

The only lively voice is that of the

waitress who is very spirited and down-home and is tending to all the tables alone. The kitchen is somewhere behind a black curtain.

We order iced tea and salads. Very quietly.

Everyone else is ordering burgers which come with mountains of fries.

The food is lovely. Phew.

Hotels have changed. We tend to stick to a few favoured chains - ones with really good wifi, pools and parking. Generally they are most satisfactory and we grab luggage trolleys and rumble in with our gear.

The interesting change is that almost all hotels now cater for animals. There are dogs everywhere, dog exercise areas and special rates for dog accommodation. I just saw two dogs with balls in their mouths trotting through the breakfast room. America is very, very laid back about doggy travellers.

Then there are children. American hotels are gearing themselves for child occupancy. They are here in swarms. One sees them checking in with their parents, each pulling their own little suitcase. The last hotel had a magnificent under-cover waterpark for children, separate to a large pool for adults. This hotel, Clubhouse Inn and Suites, to my chagrin, has a pool just for children with water slides and umbrella waterfalls. It is very popular. The pool is only 2 - 3ft deep. Nothing in the world will get me in there with all those ankle-biters.

Better luck next stop.