July 22nd - David City, NE, to , Yankton, SD

We had a leisurely morning preparing to depart from Joe and Lynn's house, while waiting for FedEx to deliver a refill of Charlie's allergy medication. We hugged out our good-byes and rolled on to South Dakota. Joe sent us a photo of his very sad dog, Bailey, who was already missing her ball playing buddies.

Our first campground was at a Corps of Engineers dam on the Missouri River. We crossed the state line from Nebraska to South Dakota as we rolled over the dam to enter the campground. We had a site just across the gravel drive from a quiet cove with a man-made shore of boulders. We found a fairly level spot near a stormwater inlet where the dogs could access the water to fetch their toys. There's nothing Charlie likes more than swimming to retrieve her toy!

We inflated the paddleboards with our electric high-pressure tire pump, which took about 50 minutes. Hank kicks himself every time we go through this process, because he chose to leave behind our high volume stand-up paddleboard pump in order to save space. Argh! He should have known that Angie would have found a place for it. Packing is one of her super powers - along with trip planning. She has a knack for finding great sites within great campgrounds with an ideal driving distance between them. What a girl!

The calm water and sun were fun to paddle in, but there was a lot of algae along the shore, which made for a smelly ingress and egress. There were also large patches of watermilfoils, which presented a bit of a navigation hazard. While Hank was crossing one, the long weeds grabbed the fin on the bottom of his board and he fell to his knees. After that, we slalomed between the hazardous patches.

Our hypothesis is that the algae and watermilfoil are present because of fertilizer that farmers use on their corn and soybean crops. Fortunately, we have not seen this on other Corps of Engineers lakes. Angie's brother, Joe, double filters his home drinking water because of the pesticides and fertilizer.

Charlie's longer coat retained the foul, algae smell so we had to bathe her. We used Joe's trick of using a half-gallon jug of soapy water to lather the dog. Hank repaired our outdoor shower while we were in Pennsylvania, so rinsing was a snap, too.