Twas a sad and emotional day today turning in our treasured Louisiana drivers licenses and getting our shiny new South Dakota licenses. Kind of felt like we are turning our backs on the state of our birth. Still more shedding of our Louisiana connections tomorrow when we register our vehicles, register to vote and change our auto insurances to South Dakota. We would have gotten all that finished today if I hadn’t slept until 11:30……………. Don’t remember when that happened last! Roy was up and working on things at 7 am and checked a few times to make sure I wasn’t dead and finally at 11:30 he shook my leg until I woke up. Don’t know how much longer I would have slept if he hadn’t woken me.
If you are reading this to learn about RV life for your own use please note that you’ll need two forms of identification other than your driver’s license to get your SD drivers license. In our case we used our passports and our social security cards. Unfortunately we were in Madison, SD (about 45 miles from Sioux Falls where Dora is parked) when we found this out. This meant we had to drive back to Sioux Falls to get our passports and social security cards out of the safe. At least the driver’s license place was in Sioux Falls so we took care of that today. We’ll drive back to Madison tomorrow to take care of the rest. Terry at My Dakota Address had all the forms and filled them out so we’d be ready at the Drivers License office and she’ll take care of registering our vehicles in SD. We’ve found a State Farm agent in Madison where we’ll stop after we’re finished at My Dakota Address.
We are using our Minnesota address, 10176 Bay Club Drive, Kabetogama, MN 56669, until around September 1st and then we’ll switch to our permanent mail forwarding address which will be 110 E. Center Street, #2301, Madison, SD 57042. These people don’t know how to spell Madisyn properly but we’ll give them a pass on that!
We’ve done a lot of driving today and we both agree we really like what we’ve seen of South Dakota. It is very clean and everyone has been very nice to us. The long stretches of highway we drove had open fields as far as you could see on both sides. I wondered as we drove along who it would feel to live in one of the very few homes we saw along the way. We’re use to having neighbors semi close by and most of these folks would have to travel miles to see their neighbor. The road between Sioux Falls and Madison was pink in color (see the picture) Just another part of our USA to learn about! The little town of Madison reminded me somewhat of downtown Hammond and the surrounding areas looked like Old Metairie where Roy grew up off Metairie Road.
We stopped at a Wal-Mart and Roy took a picture of some “mini sodas” which he thinks is like Minnesota so I’m including one of his pictures here!
It’s now Wednesday and we’re getting ready to head back to Madison to complete our transition to South Dakota residency. I plan to take some pictures of the town and will post them in the next blog.
Have a great Wednesday and Ya’ll come back now ya’ hear!
BECAUSE HE LIVES 
I appreciate your information on switching residency. I’ll keep it in mind when we (hopefully) go full-time next year.
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If you do use SD as your state of residency I’d highly recommend My Dakota Address. Terry is very efficient and completed all the paperwork just like it needed to be for when we went to the DL place and to the Courthouse to register our vehicle. It’s all close to her office Her office looks a little dumpy from the outside but don’t let that throw you off! She knows her stuff.
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Rosalyln – I wanted to let you know that I’ve been reading your blogs and greatly enjoy hearing about your new life. I pray that God will watch over you and that you will have many rewarding and happy adventures.
Becky Johnson
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