June 16, 2013

No such luck on the sleep in the morning. I woke up at 5am, 7 my time. I did doze on and off as rain; yup, more rain, beat on our roof. Our phones alerted to a hail storm just to our West, actually in the town where our second campground option was located, if where we are hadn’t worked out. We waited out the rain and then headed out.

We stopped just a short distance up the road to get some gas before hitting the main road. We saw a Jeep that was painted with the sign “Jeep Rides”. It’s windshield was smashed and it had a flat tire so I thought I was an interesting picture. I thought of a friend back home who would appreciate this.

Inside the owner told us this area had taken that hail storm we had missed this morning. Whew! Golf ball hail does some serious damage to windshields!

The South Dakota Badlands stretched as far as the eye could see with their red bluffs and disappearing canyons.

The road was flat and windy and civilization seemed to disappear. It felt as if we moved back in time, especially when we passed dinosaurs on the side of the road.

I got these pics of the Badlands from a postcard (full disclosure) but I thought they were pretty and I would share.

We knew the hills were coming as we were planning to head into Keystone today and see Mount Rushmore so the open road was a good break for Flyer. Let her save her energy for the big climb ahead.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I called the auto parts store up ahead in Rapid City to let them know we would arrive on Sunday instead of Saturday as originally thought but we’d get our wiper motor then. I talked to a different clerk than the first time, whose hearing must have been better. He informed me that they did NOT have a wiper motor for a P30 but for a C30. He told me he could order it for Monday. Nope, we hope to be in Wyoming on Monday. Guess I’ll have to wait until Monday and order it up ahead… What’s a few more days without wipers.

We stopped at an old fashioned strip mall in the middle of nowhere called Wall Drugs. It’s one block of stores on one side of the street and a sprawling building on the other filled with dozens of shops, cafes and miscellaneous stuff. Surrounding this block is lot after lot of parking, mostly filled with motorhome RV’s and trucks pulling RVs. Guess this is “the place to stop”. We walked the shops and in what they call the backyard

the kids rode in a covered wagon 

Waited for the train

Saw a buffalo

And a dinosaur head

Got scared by a bear

And mounded a gigantic jack-a-lope

And we had a few more photo opportunities

Back on the road to continue our trek across South Dakota. Oscar found a new spot on the engine to take a snooze

but if he wanted to look out the window and anyone was in his way he’ll just use them as a stepstool.

We soon came to Keystone at the bottom of Mt. Rushmore.

The road was steep and windy. More than 2 miles straight up. Flyer chugged along and slowed to a crawl as we neared the top. Luckily we crested the top before the engine temp went any higher than 315 degrees. Yikes, 350 is the max and I’m sure over 300 can’t be good for any parts.

Mt Rushmore was spectacular! Legoboy exclaimed, “this is the best day of my life!” When we parked we found a shady spot and opened a few windows to catch the nice breeze for Oscar. We knew we had burned through a lot of gas on the way up and with our very accurate gas gauges we couldn’t be sure exactly how much gas was left. With NO idea of where a gas station would be in this area we opted for no generator for AC for Oscar. We walked up to the scenic view area and then went underneath to tour the Lincoln Museum.

We watched a short video about the making of the monument. The drillers were daring workers, dangling off the side of the mountain with just chains and ropes on wooden seats sometimes in a basket, with their drills. Had to get Flyer a Mt. Rushmore bumper sticker in the gift shop. She can wear that with pride as a badge of honor. One of the original drillers was in the gift shop, signing his book. His name was Donald “Nick” Clifford. He was 17 when he started work on the mountain and worked for three years from 1939 -1942, mostly carving Lincoln’s face.

A quick stop for some very expensive and LARGE ice creams before beginning the long decent.

The ride down the back side towards Crazy Horse was steep with lots of switchbacks. The brakes were warm and the gas ran low. We cruised past Crazy Horse, too concerned about gas to stop and coasted into a service station in Custer. We had the same issue again with the low gas. Because the motor had gotten warm the starter could also have been locked up… A very nice gentleman, Bob, who was taking a break from his job at Crazy Horse tried to help get Flyer going, no luck. But we just waited out the 30 minutes time and then she started.

We backtracked the 3 miles back to Crazy Horse but then thought the $27 was too expensive to get into to see a partially completed monument and a museum that was going to close in 45 minutes. We could have stayed for a laser show but with our gas delay we wanted to get moving. We did get a picture from a distance.

I think the gas we got was bad or maybe our fuel filter got some gunk up into it because Flyer has been sputtering as we travel. We’ll need to find an additive tomorrow and hopefully smooth things out.

The boys played games while we headed into Wyoming and found a campground not too far up the road where we could bunk for the night.