It's Official

I recently read an article regarding vehicle registrations in South Dakota. The author called the state the Cayman Islands for car registrations. South Dakota is an attractive state for a number of reasons, as is Texas and Florida. Thus, most of your mail forwarding services are located in one of those three states. So, unless you want to saddle friends and family with receiving your mail, you're most likely going to end up legally calling one of those three states your home. 

Where do you call home if you don't own any real estate anywhere or rent an apartment or house? Where do you get your mail? We chose a South Dakota mail service. We now have South Dakota drivers' licenses and vehicle plates. 

The process started in late May. We had hoped to start sooner than that, but Covid19 changed our plans. The department reopened to appointments only.  Harold spent hours on hold to simply get on the callback list to schedule an appointment. It took two days to get the callback, but when they did, we got in that afternoon. 

The vehicle plates, which are handled by a different department, involved another phone call where the amounts due were calculated based on vehicle weight and number of wheels. We then had to use a dropbox to deposit the required forms and cashiers' checks. After sitting in quarantine for two days, they processed the paperwork. You don't just walk in and pick up plates. They are mailed, even without the Covid19 precautions.  The process takes a minimum of two weeks.

We will be in the Rapid City area awhile. Our get-acquainted doctor and dentist appointments ending up being rather spread out in time, and we didn't want to keep going back and forth. It was easier to stay put, get a monthly rate, and spend some time familiarizing ourselves with our new home area. 

Rapid City is in South Dakota's banana belt. Bananas, islands, I'm feeling tropical already.

Woo hoo!

Good-bye Virginia