July 17th. Rapid City, SD, to Burgess Jct., WY. Lyle's bag was still in the same place on the bed when I woke up. I looked out the window of the hotel room and saw the clouds moving over the hills. The sky was bright blue behind them. The Black Hills, He Sapa. I was out of the prairie. I went down and got myself some coffee. The coffee shop was a real yuppie joint but it's a different kind of yuppie there. Everybody works in industries that buy or sell something. Sure there're doctors and lawyers but there's not the huge class of the expensively educated who tend to the business of the broader world, like you'd have in a big city. 

There were a lot of big semis on that stretch of highway and even they were shuddering in the wind. I was going about 85 mph and it felt like I was pushing through an invisible membrane. The bike was trying to pierce the wind. I went as fast as I could, trying to stay as far away from the big trucks and the people pulling trailers as I could. You need a license to drive a truck; you don't need a license to pull a trailer and it's just about as difficult. 

I didn't know what to say to Kate and the letter just kind of hung there and looked mushy so I put it away. I didn't want to be a sap, I just wanted to show her I understood why the conversation had gone so bad the night before and why I didn't expect her to really know how she felt for some time.

I passed one campsite and told myself I'd stop at the next or get a room in Burgess Jct. I came over a hill and around a bend on a stretch of road that had been blasted out of the side of the hill and immediately saw a camp entrance. I turned in. It was kind of a fast turn to make into a little driveway and I ended up going the wrong way around the little loop road for the campground. As close to the highway as it was, it was still real pretty. A river ran past the campground on the side opposite from the road and there was still sun on the open space of grass by the riverside.