I wrote my last post Tuesday morning. Then I walked to Hardee’s – about a block and a half away – for an order of biscuits and gravy. Before I knew it, the morning was getting away from me. Check-out time at Tower Campground is 11am and it was time for us to leave Sioux Falls. I had packed most of the things in the trailer the day before, but I still had a few things out. I also needed to dump and flush our holding tanks before I brought the slides in and the jacks up.
When we dropped the trailer in our site, I was able to back it in from the left and work it past a tree. Getting it out was going to be problematic. I had the trailer far enough back into the site that the wheels were well past the tree. Before I could turn the trailer left, I would have to have to get the wheels past the tree or else the trailer would clip the tree. There wasn’t much room – the road wasn’t wide enough to bring the coach straight back to the trailer.
Tree next to the trailer
Someone had left a car illegally parked beside the road on the right, making an approach from that direction difficult, but it was the only way out. I angled the coach back to the trailer tongue as best I could – it was nearly in a jack-knife position. It worked out though and we loaded the Spyder and left the park right at 11am.
I opted to head west on 12th Street which became highway 42. Instead of droning across I-90, I thought a drive through farm country would be nicer and we only had about a three-hour drive ahead of us. I had to make a jog south to Parker and pick up SD44 west. This took us through farm after farm until we hit SD45 north and found Kimball. We left the storm clouds behind us. Ditty’s Diner is off of I-90 at exit 284. It’s a small truck stop, diner and bar with a large, fairly level dirt lot. Our destination was Rapid City, but I didn’t want to do the 360-mile run in one shot. Ditty’s was a convenient overnight stop.
The only problem at Ditty’s was the dry and dusty lot. Trucks pulling in kicked up a lot of dust. We closed all of our windows and ran the air conditioner off of the generator. Our stay was uneventful and it was surprisingly quiet all night.
Wednesday morning Donna and I had breakfast in the diner then got back on the road around 9am. It was foggy out, but visibility wasn’t too bad. About 20 miles west on I-90, Nally – our RV specific Rand-McNally GPS – announced “Steep downgrade ahead.” At first I was puzzled, then I remembered, we were about to drop down and cross the Missouri River. Once we crossed the wide Missouri, I felt like we were officially in the west. I wrote about our first crossing here in our motorhome in this post.
Once we climbed out of the Missiouri River Valley, the terrain immediately changed. It was hilly and there were mountains in the distance. The corn and soy bean fields gave way to large cattle ranches with a few feed corn fields and canola. It began to rain. We stopped at the Pilot/ Flying J Travel Center in Murdo and filled up with 80 gallons of diesel. I’m happy to get away from the biodiesel B20 that we had to use in Indiana, Iowa and eastern South Dakota. In the western half of the state they pump 100% petroleum-based diesel fuel. B20 is 20% bio-mass-based fuel made from vegetable oils blended with petroleum diesel.
I’m not a fan of biodiesel fuel. Low percentages have their pluses – it adds lubricity to the otherwise dry diesel fuel since sulfur content was reduced to 15ppm. Diesel fuel had good lubricating properties when higher sulfur content was allowed. B2 or B5 adds lubricity without all of the drawbacks of B20. The B20 fuel has lower energy density than petroleum-based diesel fuel, so fuel mileage suffers. The vegetable oil isn’t as stable as petroleum-based fuel – diesel fuel can be stored for long periods of time without deteriorating as long as it isn’t exposed to moisture but the vegetable component will break down relatively quickly – maybe after a few months.
At mile marker 175, we entered the Mountain Time Zone and gained an hour. Shortly after that, we broke free of the cloud cover and rain. We hit another milestone as well – our odometer turned over 90,000 miles on our Alpine Coach. We paid for three nights at the Elks Lodge in Rapid City. I dropped the trailer in their parking lot and we set up in site 8. They have 10 sites with 50-amp electrical service and water – no sewer. We have appointments on Friday to update our driver’s licenses with our new address. Other than that, we plan to relax and do a little shopping.
We’re at an elevation of 3,200 feet above sea level here. I think it’s the first time we’ve stayed overnight higher than around 1,500 feet above sea level since leaving New Mexico last April. The forecast calls for daily highs in the mid-80s and we may see rain Friday night before we leave on Saturday. I think we’ve had more rainy days this summer than any of the previous five summers we’ve spent on the road.