RunAcrossTheUSA.com

[Matt]

This was a great day on the road. A circle of friendship seemed to surround our activities all day, starting with the Minich family and ending with the McNaughton family.

As Brandon mentioned, we camped with the Minich family last night. They cooked breakfast in their camper, which Brandon and I enjoyed very much. We said our goodbyes and pushed our stroller back down the road by 9:30 a.m. Our "vacation" time with the Miniches was an unexpected but wonderful surprise.

The weather was moderately warm and the roads somewhat hilly. The nice weather and a kickstart of Powerade made us much more hydrated than we were last week. Brandon and I saw the Crazy Horse monument which was really cool. The Crazy Horse head is not finished yet but already is bigger than all of Mt. Rushmore.

As we walked through Custer (South Dakota) today, Al, Suzanne, and Ian McNaughton happened to drive by. They stopped and invited us to lunch at the Dairy Queen. After a very enjoyable lunch with them, we continued to walk until 6:30 p.m. At that time, the McNaughtons picked us up as was pre-arranged. Ian was quite entertaining and wanted to run with us today. We hope that Ian will be able to run with us tomorrow morning. The McNaughtons treated us to an excellent meal and great dessert. After dinner we went back to the McNaughton's hotel in Hot Springs for some serious fun in the pool. Tonight we are staying with the McNaughtons.

As you can tell by reading our posts today, Brandon and I have really enjoyed "vacationing" with the Minich and McNaughton families.

For those of you keeping track of our mileage and location, we logged 28 miles and stopped west of Custer today.

My parents are driving to Wyoming this week, and I am really looking forward to seeing them. They are bringing us new tires and the NO MORE FLATS tubes John Wallace urged us to get. John said he had great luck with them in his travels across the USA. We hope they'll work just as well on our stroller.