Is that snow??!!

It stormed pretty good last night.  After feeding Rufus this morning, I went out to see if our e-bikes still had a cover... yep.  When I came back in, Joan said, "It's your day (something about being born 65 years ago) - after Steph calls this morning, we can do whatever you want."

Just for clarification, "do whatever you want" means different things to men and women.

"How about we take the scoots to Hill City for breakfast?"

I had a lovely visit with our daughter this morning.  She was (gasp) on her way to work this morning... don't let anyone tell you about all the time teachers have off.  Getting her room ready today, then planning meetings and classes before the kids come back in a week.  She is my sweet little girl.

After cleaning up, I got the scoots out while Joan closed up things around the coach.  A beautiful morning: comfortably cool (68º when we were ready to head out) and sunny.  I mentioned to Joan before we pulled away that we need to keep a close eye on the road surface after the storm last night - sand and gravel from driveways gets washed onto these back roads during a heavy rain.

Rolling...

Not much traffic, yet, on these back roads.

The wet and sandy spots I was talking about (above).  Then, "Did you see that??"

That looks like melting snow on either side of the road.  No, it is the remnants of hail that must have piled up during the storm last night.  The local weather weasel said they were reporting hail and some flooding in the Hill City and Keystone areas.  I believe it - all the creeks we passed were full to slightly over-full.

Plenty of bikes in Hill City this morning, but we found a spot near the Hill City Cafe...

The cafe had an over-priced breakfast buffet, but we knew it would be relatively quick.  The food was decent... I was happy we didn't have to wait to get a table.

With the amount of debris from the trees that we came across on that last back road (hail will do that), we decided to take the highway that runs past Mt Rushmore to head for home...

The traffic waiting to get into the parking ramp at Rushmore was thick (above and below)...

Glad we weren't heading there today.  Going down the mountain and into Keystone, you can see the creek is running full...

Almost up to the bottom of the bridge to the right on that image above.

Not as easy to see, but what is normally a gentle little creek was flowing like crazy (above and below).

The last 20 miles, more fun curves...

Clouds are building once again...

Joan got a voice mail that we had packages to pick up at the Hart Ranch mail room, so we stopped on the way in...

Oh, and the great gas mileage continues.  We topped off in Keystone: I got 85mpg with the Vespa, Joan got a nearly unbelievable 128mpg with the PCX!  Pretty inexpensive entertainment!

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Back at the coach this afternoon, when Joan pulled up weather, and... thunderstorm warnings for the area, some "possibly severe."  For fun, the weasels tossed in a tornado watch.

I was inside working up the photos for the above post; Joan said, "Come outside and bring your camera."

Yep, that is some seriously nasty looking clouds!  Within seconds, a gust front hit...

First selfie with the new camera...

On Joan's iPad...

We are the little green dot at the left side of all that nasty red stuff.  It, literally, slid just north of us.  More flooding and hail just northeast of us.  A 70 mph wind gust was recorded at the airport (east of us).

That was close.  Other than that hour and a half where we watched the angry clouds, it has been a beautiful day.