Travel to Sioux Falls South Dakota – Got SD Drivers Licenses

July 11 - 17, 2017:

We traveled about 710 miles from Crawfordsville Indiana to our next major stop in Sioux Falls South Dakota.  We made 2 stops on the way; 2 nights in Galesburg Illinois and 1 night in Charles City Iowa.  

Our site in Galesburg Illinois.

On my morning walk I went around the lake where the RV park is.

The RV Park is owned by the city as is the water park.  We could get 4 free passes to the park per day of our stay.  We didn't use them but that is a great deal.

RV Park trail that I could do my interval walk on.

Now on to Iowa.

This a very odd RV Park.  It is right in town and was just $15 a night for 50 amp full hook up with our 50% discount!  The park was behind a liquor store.

You can see our rig in the back.

Believe it or not, the farther north we went the hotter it got.

Our site in Iowa.  Not bad for $15. Make note of our flower pots...

We went out to eat this place called Pub on the Cedar.  Cedar is the name of the river that runs through the town and the pub is on it.

The Cedar River from the deck at the pub in Charles City Iowa.

That was a quick trip for us but we lost a day flying to New Jersey for a really fun Birthday Party.  We really didn’t need to make the trip to SD that quick but we decided to get SD driver's licenses so we wanted to get to Sioux Falls on Thursday so we could have all day Friday get that done.

Our new official residence.

Tower Campground is where DakotaPost suggested that we stay.  It was a nice place and very close to everything in Sioux Falls.

Our site in Sioux Falls.  I think this may be the last picture of all our plants still in their Mexican pots.  Within a week we lost 2 pots. We lost Scarlet's pot here when a strong storm came in about 3am.  We had the awning out and tied down but that wasn't good enough!  We heard the wind start and we both jumped out of bed and were outside pulling in the awning.  However, Scarlet had already fallen from the picnic table.

We really had not made up our minds about re-making South Dakota our domicile state when we left Indiana.  We basically talked it over and made our decision to domicile in SD on our first travel day to Galesburg IL.   We have a few issues with a Texas domicile but our biggest issue is the Texas driver’s license requirements.  Texas requires anyone towing a trailer with a Gross Combined Vehicle Weight Rating (GCVWR) over 26,000 pounds needs to have a non-commercial CDL. We have a GCVWR of 29,500 pounds so we need the CDL license.  Also, the Texas Non-Commercial CDL will not allow an insulin dependent diabetic to get the CDL.  So Patty would not be allowed to drive the truck while towing in Texas.

South Dakota vehicle insurance is lower for us and they don’t have a vehicle and trailer inspection as does Texas now.   Vehicle registration costs and our mail forwarding costs are about the same in each state.  These all helped in making our decision.  Some negatives were that we just registered our vehicles in May in Texas and we didn’t really want to pay Texas and then SD for the same thing.  We had also just renewed our annual mail forwarding agreement with Escapees and now we would be paying to have 2 addresses.

We decided to just switch our driver’s licenses and wait on registering our vehicles.  We checked with our vehicle insurance company and they didn’t care where our driver’s licenses are from they just cared where the vehicles are registered.

So, for now we will have SD driver’s licenses, TX plates, and an address in both states.  Since neither SD nor TX has state income taxes we don’t really need to declare a domicile state right this minute.  Our plan is to wait until early 2018 and register the vehicles and get insurance in SD.  At that time we will start our termination with Escapees mail forwarding so that ends by the end of our contract with them.  By May of next year we will again be residents of South Dakota.  For now we are residents of whichever of the two states we want to be.

We also checked out all of the mail forwarding services in South Dakota before we settled on DakotaPost.  Originally we contracted with Americas Mailbox out of Box Elder.  We were with them for 4 years and were mostly satisfied. However, we didn’t find them to be very friendly and at times to be condescending.   The good thing though is that we never needed to talk to them very often so it was OK for then. But now we didn’t want to experience the same so we ruled Americas Mailbox out.

We picked DakotaPost because their site was the most professional and their rates were more understandable to us. DakotaPost also has a mail portal on the internet. Scheduling your mail delivery, changing your address, and managing your account can all be done on-line.  That was one of the downsides of the Escapees service, you either sent an e-mail or you called them, there weren’t any internet service options available. To give Americas Mailbox credit, they have an excellent internet site to manage your account.  If they didn’t have that we would have never made it 4 years with them.

On Friday morning, the 14th, we arrived at DakotaPost with all of our paper work ready to go.  We arrived around 11am and were met with Angel who I had been e-mailing for the past few days.  By 11:30 we had our new address and were out the door and ready to head to the DMV (ugh!).

On our way in to DakotaPost for the first time.

DakotaPost employees sorting mail.

Before we could go to the DMV we had to return to our RV Park and have them print us a receipt for our stay there with our new SD address on it.  This receipt is a requirement by the SD DMV to get a driver’s license.  Even the DMV in SD wasn’t too bad.  From walking in the door getting our licenses and back to the truck took about an hour.  Unlike the last time we got driver’s licenses in SD where we had to go to the courthouse to register to vote, we were now registered to vote at the DMV.  That saved us a bunch of time!

They have a pretty good way to make things work smoothly at the SD DMV.  You first get in a line to be triaged and given a number.  Once you are called you know you have the right paper work so it is very unstressful.

Now we have the entire weekend and Monday to explore our new city of residence.  We decided to celebrate the first night and eat out at a Hibachi grille which we love.  We tried a chain called Fuji.  It was a  4 out of 5 stars for us.  The only negative was that our server/cook was not as entertaining as what we have become accustomed to.  It was still a great night out at a hibachi grille.

The cook took forever to get this onion volcano lit.  I thought he may burn down the place with the amount of saki he was pouring on.

On Saturday the 15th we did a couple of things, had lunch at a farmers market, went to see the actual falls in Sioux Falls, and then we went to a free Jazz festival.  

We were under whelmed with the size of the vegetables here, very small and expensive!

Entrance to Sioux Falls Park.

The falls are very nice.  Not high or fast, just nice. 

These statues are all over town too.

The festival was less than 5 miles from us and parking there was very easy and free as well.  You could park a tad closer for $10 but we can walk still!  The only problem was that the temperature was just over 100F.  It was one of those dry heats so it wasn’t terrible, but it was still HOT! The festival offered live music from noon until the 10PM headliner who was Johnny Lang. We didn't stay that long.

We had to try monkey balls.

They were just OK.  They consist of a meatball wrapped in cheese and then in dough and deep fried. They maybe on to something but the meatball was too small and not enough spice.  It was sort of like deep fried cheese that happened to have a small piece of burger in it.  Ah, yeah, and they were $2 a piece!

Sunday the 16th we went for a bike ride on the city trail.  The city trail is just over 19 miles long and is paved the entire length and circles the entire city.  This is the second best bike trail I have seen anywhere!  The best is still the Pinellas trail in the Tampa area but this is South Dakota and it is cold over half of the year!  We went about 5 miles, 10 round trip before we had enough.  It was approaching 100F by the time we finished.

There was a zoo along the bike path and the buffalo were out!

Monday the 17th we played 18 holes of golf.  We played a city course and it was most probably the best public course we have played.  It was a little expensive for being in South Dakota at $54 each with a cart.  However, we just paid $35 because we teed off before 7am!  We would play here again.

This house was for sale on the course.  We just had to look it up online to see how much it was.  The asking price is just $2.6 million!  This house could hold 10 families!

Loads of very nice homes along the course.

Our tee time was 6:30am so we went out for breakfast at this very cool outdoor place close by.

We were in Sioux Falls for 4 nights, from Thursday the 13th to Monday the 17th of July.  That was long enough to get a basic feel for the city and to know our way around.  What we found here we liked very much.  If it wasn’t for the damn cold 6 months out of the year and no close by big body of water, we could live here.  So far we really do like South Dakota.

Next up we travel to the Badlands!

Stay Tuned!