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Day #2 – July 8th.

I’m awake at 4:30 am.  The bed was comfy, fell right to sleep but woke up stiff as aboard! I tried going back to sleep but the pain and stiffness said “No Way Lady”!  I could see an orange glow from outside, so I got up to see what it was. The sky was cloudy from an earlier thunderstorm, but on the horizon was an opening of clear sky where the morning sunrise was glowing through a fiery red-orange color – Hello Monday.

We were all up early so we changed plans and headed out early. Back to Denny’s we went for breakfast and then another look at the models and it looks like a little sight seeing is in order  before chasing begins. We are not going north as planned, instead we are staying around South Dakota as it looks to have a better set up for photographic storms. We make a quick stop outside Devils Tower for some shots and then we go in to get a closer look. Mike & Neely take a little hike, Randy chills on a bench in the shade, and I do a little photo exploring and a quick visit to the gift shop just to poke around.  When I come out I go over to where Randy is relaxing on the bench and Mike & Neely join us….photo op!

We get back on the road to our new favorite location, the Wyoming welcome center – just love that bronze “kitty”.  Today I can get a better look at him and not get pelted with hail like yesterday.   lol.  Finally the storms starts coming together and the chase is on!  It is almost a repeat performance of yesterday.  Two cells merge into one large super cell.  We follow it all the way up to Mt. Rushmore.

We get our rooms situated at the Rushmore Resorts in Keystone, SD and go get some dinner.  It’s a family restaurant but it wasn’t really that great.  We won’t be going back again!  lol.  After dinner we head back to Mt. Rushmore to see the lighting of the presidents.  Then we head back to pick up some fudge before retiring for the night.  As we walk back to the van from the fudge shop, there are some young men taking pictures of the van.  Mike chats with them and we find out that they are from Belgium and they were asking all kinds of questions about storm chasers and wanted to know what kind of storms were following.  They had been camping the night before and got caught in the thunderstorm that created that great sunrise I awoke to this morning.

Well day 2 is now in the history books.  Here are some shots of the day – tomorrow we head to “The Bad Lands”.