Chris Brown is the Lanky Git

Day 5

Belfield, North Dakota

Finally a good night’s sleep, helped by an adrenaline charged day yesterday and a late night. We did arrive at our motel until about 10pm, tired and hungry a healthy tip to the lady in the kitchen of the bar secured us Pizza and fries, which went down nicely with a couple of beers.

Having now been with Todd for five days you actually start to remember what he is telling you – he is an excellent teacher. One of the first things you look for in the morning when you wake up is cloud cover. Cloud cover is bad for storms and you have to get out from under it to stand any chance of seeing some action. Based on this we headed south.

After a few hours it was becoming clear that chances of seeing any storms today were low, however we persevered. Our route south had us sat in a side road just outside of Rapid City for just about an hour before it was decided today may just be a wash out. We drove east for another 10 minutes and came across an oasis, which was disguised as a gas station, sold beer as well as fuel and had a few high tables inside with a few bar games and even a crib board. After a beer and few jokes with the local cowboys, Todd informed us that our home for the night would be Wall, just an hour’s drive east.

We arrived in wall drug very early evening, the skies were blue and the air still warm. We all unloaded our bags from the SUV and Todd asked us to be back down in 15 minutes as we were going to head to the Badlands – only 8 miles away – and watch the sunset. The Badlands National park is actually somewhere I never thought I would visit but you really should try and put it on your ‘to-do list’. Sadly the sunset was spoilt by and storm cloud drifting in over the sun – typical. It was then back to Wall Drug for food and a couple of drinks before hitting the hay.

Just a point worthy of note, the motel we stayed in tonight… Sunshine Inn !

Storm Chasing