Ben's Blog

 

I got up at 5am, hoping for a 7am departure.  Sunrise over the badlands:

 

 

This is the last trip where this arrangement will work.  They are getting to be too big.  Wake up!

 

 

Mechel and Baila do their Little House on the Prairie imitation:

 

 

Surveying his domain:

 

 

We finally pulled out at 7:45ish.  We headed over to Delta-09, the Minuteman Missile launch site:

 

 

It’s a long way down:

 

 

Sitting on the radar blister:

 

We made it to the Rapid City Kia by 9:30am, where we were informed that the transmission cooler had worn a hole in the A/C condenser line.  They didn’t have the replacement part, and it would take a couple days to get, so we kept going.  We will get it fixed when we get home.

Traveling south, we came to Deadwood, SD and the Big Thunder Mine:

 

 

We took the mine tour:

 

The brothers who ran the mine worked it for almost 30 years.  In the end, they found 7 ounces.  Bummer.

On to Mount Rushmore:

 

The kids are working on their Junior Ranger packets.  I found myself saying “can we please finish it in the car?” more than once:

 

 

Continuing west, we reached Jewel Cave National Monument.  While we waited for team Bubbie to arrive, we followed one of the nature trails.  Here, ranger Tattie shows Mechel a Ponderosa Pine.  “Behold its flaking bark, a protection against fire.  Smell its lovely butterscotch scent!”  I think I’ll keep my day job.

 

 

Down we went into the cave.  I regret not bringing a flash.  Jewel Cave is currently listed as the second longest cave in the world, with over 150 miles of mapped passages.  Scientists estimate that only 5% of the cave has been explored.

Here’s a map:

 

To get down into the cave, we ride down the longest elevator shaft in South Dakota.  Not saying much, methinks.

 

 

The tour took about 90 minutes.  It was great!

The schedule had us seeing Devil’s Tower, then driving on to BLM land, but we were still a bit behind.  We found a campground listing for Moorcroft, but  when we got there, we realized that the “campground” was little more than electrical hookup in the side yard of a hotel, so we went on to Sundance for the night.  We drove about 252 miles today.

 

The schedule called for us to start out from the Fort Pierre National Grasslands, so we were about 200 miles behind schedule.  But no matter, because today was the day we would start seeing the good stuff!

I took the SUV to the Kia of Sioux Falls.  They did a vacuum check, refilled the A/C refrigerant , and send us on our way.

Here’s the KOA in the morning.  Not much in the way of ambiance, I’m afraid:

 

The kids found many toads, and buried a dead one that they found:

 

David et al left the KOA at 11am, a few minutes before us.  We headed west.

After three hours or so, the A/C stopped working again.  We made an appointment at 9AM tomorrow at the Kia of Rapid City.  Grr!

 

At one point, we saw a pair of the largest domestic land animals I have ever seen.  It really was incredible.

Mid-afternoon, we exited I-90 and headed for the Badlands.  We made our first stop at the contact station for the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site:

 

 

It’s basically a single-wide trailer.  Most people were there to schedule a tour.  The Site has a Silo (Delta-09), and an underground control center (Delta-01).  Delta-01 is open to tours only, and they only allow 12 people in per day.  Seems pretty absurd considering how many tourists come to the area.  I had tried to schedule a tour weeks earlier, but they were already full.  Good thing, since we would have been late anyway.  We hope to visit the missle silo tomorrow morning.  The contact station had a few interesting displays, but we weren’t there long.

We’ve been seeing these giant grasshoppers all through South Dakota:

 

 

As we continued south into Badlands National Park, we could see the Badland formations from the car.  Mechel said “Wow, that’s so beautiful!” with such wonder and incredulity.  That was definitely the highlight of the trip so far.

We did the “Window” hike upon entering the Badlands.  On the boardwalk, we saw the largest Argiope I have ever seen.  It’s body was the size of an olive:

 

 

At the end of the boardwalk, there’s a great vista of the badlands.  We hiked around on the formations for a while:

 

Team Bubbie did some shopping in Sioux Falls, so they were about an hour behind us, and caught up with us at the visitor center.  Here are our two vehicles:

 

The visitor center had a couple teepees set up:

 

 

After the visitor center, we did the “Fossil” hike:

 

More great vistas:

 

We left Badlands National Park on the road to Wall, South Dakota.  Badlands National Park is surrounded by the Buffalo Gap National Grassland, which allows dispersed camping.  We pulled off onto a dirt “road” detailed here:

 

All set up:

 

Aaaaargh!  Cornhole has followed us from Toldeo!

 

 

I took Mechel and Baila on a short ride south from the RV.  Moonrise over the badlands was the view from our RV.  Compare this with the view at the KOA this morning above:

 

 

About 300 miles today.  The white circles indicate the Minuteman contact center and the Badlands visitor center:

Sunday morning was muggy.  The schedule had us leaving Walmart in Beloit, Wisconsin, and driving to a dispersed camping location in the Fort Pierre National Grasslands.  The planned distance was 670 miles, a long day of driving.  Unfortunately, we were 364 miles from Beloit, so our total drive would be 1,034 miles, definitely too much for the kids (or us) for one day, especially since we decided not exceed 60mph to try to avoid another blowout.

Knowing that we had a long day ahead of us, I got up at 5am.  We were on the road at 7am.  As the day wore on, our air-conditioning-less SUV became more and more unpleasant.  As we passed through Elkhart, I tried calling RV repair facilities, but none were open.

We had the “pleasure” of going through Chicago.  After 15 minutes of traffic, we were on our way.

All day long, it was “hey, Indiana!”, “hey, Illinois!”, etc.

Here we are at a gas station in the afternoon.  There are lots of windmills in South Dakota:

Random exit at sunset:

In the end, Mom, David, and his kids left Minneapolis a bit late, so we ended up meeting at the Sioux Falls KOA.  We drove about 850 miles today.

Shabbos was nice.  It was a hot day, but the RV was plugged in (as it would have been had me made it to South Bend) so the A/C was working.  We went for a couple walks to check out the campground’s marina and playground.  The campground is 99% seasonal, meaning that the residents bring their RV there and stay for the whole summer.  They then move to somewhere like Florida for the winter.  I don’t understand why anyone would want to stay here for half the year.  Then again, the steam rising out of the cooling tower a mile or so down the road is pretty in the sunset.

The campground is right off of lake Erie, so lots of folks had ocean-themed accessories in their “front yard”, like waist-high lighthouses and rope-lashed driftwood faux pilings.  A lot of folks were playing Cornhole, which we have never heard of, much less played.

Motzei Shabbos, we were supposed to be traveling from South Bend to the Walmart in Beloit, Wisconsin.  We realized that, even if we were in South Bend, it was hardly worth packing up (and later setting up again) only to drive a couple of hours, so we decided to stay put for the night.

On Friday, I had realized that the brakes on the RV were acting funny.  The RV didn’t brake well, and when it braked, the trailer was pulling to one side.  I decided that the RV brakes needed adjustment, so I crawled under the RV in the pouring rain and got to work.  Basically, the RV is jacked up, and the brake tension is adjusted until the wheel doesn’t turn, then backed off so the wheel spins freely.  During this procedure, I realized that the passenger-side wheel didn’t spin all that well regardless of brake tension.  I decided to buy new bearings for that hub, but that would presumably have to come on Monday.

Last night I learned that there’s a certain science in selecting an overnight parking spot at Walmart.  For example, don’t park next to the dumpster, because it gets emptied at 4AM.  Grr.

We got on the road at a reasonable hour.  The plan had us driving 386 miles from Clarion, PA to South Bend, Indiana.  We would be spending Shabbos there.

Since we stopped in Stroudsburg, we would have to drive 626 miles.  It was doable, but we would have to skip our planned stop at the RV Hall of Fame.  I wasn’t that disappointed, as it was expensive, but I thought it would be fun to see the museum with its antique RVs.  Oh well, next time.

Everything was going well until exit 91 on I-80, a bit Southwest of Toledo, Ohio.  I felt the trailer lurch, and Trish could see chunks of tire flying off the passenger side of the RV.  We pulled over to see what was up.  I didn’t take a picture of our blown out tire, but it looked something like this one I found online:

We called AAA, but they only cover our SUV.  We would need to have AAA-with-RV (or whatever) to cover the trailer as well.  I guess we need to re-evaluate our choice roadside insurance provider.

Using the SUV’s bottle jack, I was able to install the spare.  I’m glad I checked and inflated the spare before we left.

We assumed that the blowout was due to overloading, so we drove to the next rest area and moved as much heavy stuff as we could from the RV to the SUV.

It was about at this time that we noticed that the SUV’s air conditioning wasn’t working.  The RV’s thermostat showed an ambient temperature of 100 degrees, and we were definitely uncomfortable to say the least.

 

The next priority was buying a new spare, in case we would have another blowout.  A couple of calls later, we found a Tractor Supply in nearby Freemont, OH.  They didn’t have any 215/75 R14s, but they did sell mounted 205/75 R14s, so we bought one and installed it in the RV’s spare carrier.  We left the mangled rim in the dumpster.

At this point, we knew we weren’t going to make it to South Bend.  We looked at spending Shabbos in Toledo, but even that was a stretch.  We found a nearby campground, Paradise Acres, and made our way there.  We got set up just in time for a huge thunderstorm.

In the end, we drove about 500 miles.  Here’s our route:

 

“B” is the blowout location, and “C” is tractor supply:

I started planning the trip in June.  Here’s what I came up with:

 

 

As planned, the trip was 18 days and would cover 5,291 miles, with 76 stops along the way.  I was intrigued by the idea of doing a 3 week trip mostly without staying in a formal campground.  Our camping would either be in Walmart parking lots that allow overnight parking, or dispersed camping (primarily in the Western US, camping on federal Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands, in which camping pretty much anywhere is allowed).  This would be dry camping, that is, camping without hookups.  We would carry our own water and electricity (on-board water tanks and batteries with solar panels), as well as propane for refrigeration, heating, and cooking.  Basically, 3 weeks of truly off-grid living.  The trip was not only a family sight-seeing trip, it was also a sanity-check for the idea of spending a good amount of time RVing when we retire.

 

 

We were supposed to leave today at 7pm.  This turned out to be wishful thinking, as we weren’t packed yet.  We left around 11:30pm.  We hadn’t even started and we were already 4 1/2 hours behind schedule!

As we entered New Jersey, I noticed that the truck steering was quite jittery.  We pulled over, and visually I confirmed what I was feeling at the wheel – the additional load in the RV and SUV was causing the front axle of the SUV to have less weight on it.  I adjusted the weight distribution hitch so that the SUV had equal weight on both axles, and the problem went away.

We were supposed to sleep at the Walmart of Clarion, PA, but instead stopped at the Walmart of Stroudsburg, PA at about 1am.  We had only travelled 81 miles.  Our first Walmart camping experience!  By 1:45am, we were asleep.

 

We just got back from an 18 day RV vacation.  We left on 7/22, and returned on 8/9.  There’s much to be posted, so this is just a placeholder.

Here we are on day 11, camping on public land across from the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.  We were at least a mile from the nearest people:

 

I can’t wait to share the rest of the trip!