June 10 Black Hills storms

Because we arrived in Bismarck early this morning, we did not have our orientation until 10 a.m. That being said, our main objective was to start our drive south to Denver, because we needed to have the guests back to the base hotel by 1 p.m. tomorrow.  We were hoping to intercept a storm or two off the Black Hills along the way.  Bill booked rooms for us in Belle Fourche, SD, so it was no secret where we would be spending the night.  Models were hinting that there would be a couple of beefy storms near the Belle Fourche area, so we packed everything up and started our drive.

Lodgepole, SD Lutheran church

Lodgepole, SD

Lenticular cloud

We drove down the Enchanted Highway in ND, which is a 32 mile stretch of two-lane road.  Along the way, we saw the world's largest collection of scrap metal sculptures, and it was interesting to see them up close.  After stopping at a couple of them, we continued south into Hettinger, ND, where we ate lunch at C & N Cafe.  The waitstaff remembered our group from last year, and they were very pleasant.  Lunch was relatively fast, and we continued our journey south and west towards Buffalo, SD, where we had a pit stop.  We found a few old churches to photograph to kill some time.  Storms were still not firing, so we went a bit further west to Camp Crook, SD, where we found a gravel road to wait on for a while.  There was a decent storm to our south near Belle Fourche that we decided to go after, but it ended up being a dud.  We arrived to our hotel relatively early, which was good, because we needed to be on the road no later than 6:30 a.m.  Our total mileage for the day was 300+.

On June 11, we finished our drive to Denver.  It was bittersweet seeing this group leave, because we all had many laughs and a lot of fun. We drove 406 miles today from Belle Fourche, SD, and total mileage for the tour was 2,998 miles.  If you include the two days of driving from OKC to DEN before the tour, I drove a total of about 3,700 miles.