Friendly staff welcome us to a near-empty park on a stormy labor day evening. We’re here, strangely, to establish an address in Madison, South Dakota. This is not because we’re going to stay here, but because we’re joining a service (MyDakotaAddress.com) that will help us in several ways while we’re touring. It handles mail forwarding and provides a physical address that is needed for many of the bureaucratic details of life: drivers license, vehicle registration, voter registration, etc. All of this will be based in Madison while we continue our tour.

The next day I run pretty much the entire trail system in the state park. The trails are all mowed grass – the first time I’ve run barefoot on this surface. It’s almost laughably painless! It was the first time I didn’t feel like my feet were the speed limiter while running barefoot.

After we’re all set up as Madison residents, we’ll head east for Michigan through unfamiliar territory. The two biggest difficulties with this kind of travel seem to be finding exercise and affordable campsites. Both are crucial. If we don’t exercise this life becomes stressful pretty quickly, so we intend to do it even if it means walking on roads.