Of Time Marching On

This is the time of year when moms across America wax nostalgic about time marching on, kids growing up, and the relief or dread of getting back on a schedule. The start of another school year.

This is our last first-day-of-school. Our "baby" is all 'growed' up and a senior. Yay!  

Meanwhile back at the ranch...

time is marching on toward the big day in October -our son's wedding. As I was working on my dress this week it occurred to me that 26 years ago I made a dress of nearly identical peach fabric for another peach & mint wedding. I was maid-of-honor in my best friend's wedding.

Somehow it makes me feel old to have lived long enough to see the trends of my youth coming back into vogue. It's my mother's generation that is supposed to say things like "I remember when that was fashionable before" and "what goes around comes around" while I roll my eyes.

But thank God a lot of water has gone over the dam since then. Can you believe that naïve 18 yr old pictured above, who was in VS at the time and didn't have time to sew her dress, packed it in her checked luggage to fly home for the wedding, unconcerned about the nightmare that would ensue should her luggage happen to get lost? The blissful "oh, that won't happen to me" of youth. I also forgot my mother's old sewing machine would not sew slippery fabric like that so the bride's mom was sweating bullets, sewing my dress at the last minute. I cannot believe I did that! Thankfully we are only young & immature once. But it all worked out in the end, the happy couple got hitched and are living happily ever after.

And it will work out for the next generation too. (It's not dresses we're sweating over, but a place to live.) Note to self: have faith.  

The Millers Go RVing -the Conclusion

So it's Day 27 and we are sleeping at a truck stop. Because we had the windows open for air movement, the guys who decided to fire up a truck nearby and shout at each other at 3am woke us up. R misunderstood me to say I want to get home by daybreak (in reality it was 'not before daylight'), so he started driving again.

At 7am on Sunday, July 10, we pulled into our driveway. I made everyone pose for this photo, even though we definitely look the worse for wear. A couple days without much sleep or a shower will do that to ya. Chances are the Yoders are thinking "Wow, glad they didn't show up on our doorstep looking like that!"

The guy on the right is [finally] grinning broadly because he is only a shower and 10 minutes away from the love of his life. There may or may not be differences of opinions on whether it was very generous that we didn't make him stay to help unload the RV. Believe it or not, we were young and in love once upon a time, too. 

I'll let you guess which ones of us worshiped at Saint Mattress that morning. We are firm believers in 'not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together', but that morning it would have been totally pointless to attend services when we could barely remain in an upright position, let alone alert enough to hear the preaching of the Word. What is it about traveling that whips one's butt? I haven't been this exhausted since... well, since traveling home from Ghana in January, and traveling home from Canada last summer. 

The first thing we noticed when we arrived home is how much everything had grown. Especially the weeds. No landscaping fairies worked their magic while we were gone. Eventually it dawned on us that the certain kind of insects that were increasing in volume when we left were now gone.    

Throughout the course of the next week, we worked at unloading the RV, cleaning it, uploading the 3000 photos we took, tallying up our miles and expenses, catching up on laundry & sleep. Our church had VBS that week, and for the first time in forever, we had zero involvement. It felt good to have a few extra days of isolation before getting back into the grind. 

The good news is that our dollar-per-mile cost for the trip was better than we feared, with the repairs. When we were in the planning stages of the trip, I wanted to know if the budget we had was realistic aka did we have enough money saved up yet? In our experience, most experienced RVers are pretty tight-lipped about what they spent. Finally someone disclosed they traveled for $1 per mile almost a decade ago. Thank you! That's all I needed to know. Somewhere else I came across a figure of $250 per day -I think that was for a retired couple, not a family. So we were aiming for a figure adjusted slightly for inflation and/or family size. If we cheat and subtract all the repair bills, we traveled for a cool 69 cents a mile. If we do it right, we traveled for $1.40 a mile. So we are satisfied.   

One of our children may or may not have been rolling their eyes when R & I were debating mid-trip how much we might be spending per day and whether that means we fit squarely in the "tight-wad" category or not. Oh, and another tidbit for anyone who might be planning their trip of a lifetime, I was told to take lots of quarters for laundry, that it takes more than you would think, but no specifics on what constitutes "lots". You'll want at least $60-70 worth.

We had planned to have house sitters, but that didn't work out, so we closed up the house while we were gone. I must say I was amazed to discovered young people these days no longer are interested in house sitting. Back in the day, it was a gift. Apparently now days its viewed as an inconvenience. What rock did I crawl out from under? I mean, why would anyone in their right mind want to keep house after a long day at work when you can live at home where mom does your laundry & cooks your meals for free? lol. But I digress. The upside of closing up the house was having our privacy intact and saving on electric. The downside turned out to be that the water in the well went stagnant. It stank so bad we could hardly drink without holding our nose! That was in spite of a filter for drinking water. Doing laundry caused that whole area of the house to stink. Didn't see that one coming. We have a mystery on our hands, too. We turned off & unplugged everything possible -from biggies like a/c & refrigerator to small stuff like CD players, and cut the power to the shop completely, so we were expecting to have the lowest electric bill in history. Instead it was only slightly lower than usual. What gives? We need an energy audit.      

Because everyone knows one of the best parts of a trip is sorting through your loot afterwards... My souvenirs: 

Clockwise, starting at the top right- pine cone from CO, [a baggie containing] some kind of fluff that was falling off the trees in Colorado Springs, [a baggie containing] my contraband stalk of flowers, pecans from KS, jar of huckleberry jam from MT, puzzle from Yosemite/CA, National Parks scrapbooking kit purchased at Mt Rushmore/SD, Adventures in Odyssey CDs from Focus on the Family, Grand Canyon magnet from AZ. Center:Yellowstone sweatshirt from WY, Golden Gate postcard from CA, stone & crab claw from OR.  

Of course, the real treasures of the trip are memories & photos.   

Would I do it over again? Yes, in a heartbeat. My conviction on that needed some space/perspective to grow, but yes, I would travel long distance in an RV with the whole family again. We are not a model family, but we got along reasonably well for 27 days in tight quarters, and the kids did good (for the most part) at appreciating the opportunity. Maybe next time something a little smaller, but Big Bertha was what we needed this time, for a family of 5. I would hope the experience we've gained would spare us some of the stress next time around. Now that we know about things like taking a suitcase just in case and cinching up awning because you just never know when you might hit a windstorm. I would hope next time we wouldn't be blessed with the multiple breakdowns. We should keep Big Bertha now that she is all blinged out and better than when we found her, but she is FOR SALE. Any takers? 

We planned & saved for years for this trip and it's sad not to have it to look forward to anymore. It's over already! There are some places we are happy we got to see, but once is enough. Other places- we can't wait to go back. We are already saving for the next trip, and debating the merits of doing Colorado or the California - Seattle stretch first. We loved the entire west coast- we want to explore it all some more. Not just San Francisco. But we loved Colorado, too. The dilemma there is we need to go in the winter to ski, but also in the summer to catch the whitewater rafting & things we missed the first time.     

 "I haven't been everywhere, but its on my list" -Susan Sontag   

So that concludes the account of our western trip adventure. Thanks for traveling memory lane with us! 

It is good to have an end to journey toward; 

but it is the journey that matters in the end. 

-Ernest Hemingway     

The Millers Go RVing - Day 25 & 26

Bless your heart for sticking with us this far! I promise to wrap this up directly.

Day 25 started in Wall SD. We were in the back corner of the RV park, with a train track adjacent to our site. The kids were still sleeping when a train came through nice & early, blasting its horn long & loud. So much for sleeping! I was trying to book a site for that evening, but the wi-fi was painfully slow and kept kicking me off. We had planned to drive as far as Des Moines Iowa that day but everything was booked up because of a race in Newton, just east of there, so we had to go the whole way to Oxford for an available site.

Since we were only 2 blocks from the famous Wall Drug Store, we popped in there before we left town. The kids weren't interested so they stayed in the RV when R & I went in search of the 5 cent coffee. If you like kitschy, you need to stop there. We didn't last very long in that crowded tourist trap and never did find the coffee or free ice water in the conglomeration. Let's leave it at that.

We drove by the Badlands but we had filled our quota of that kind of scenery and didn't bother to drive through the national park. A & I were bemoaning that our trip was basically over. We were not ready to go home; we had not arrived at the "east or west, home is best" sensation yet. We are the odd family who loves to travel. Well, ok, except for that one member of the family who is our extreme home body. (For the last year R & I have been complaining "boy, he sure outgrew being a homebody! We hardly see him anymore" but on this trip we found out the homebody still lurks within.) R says he would travel full time if he could get paid to do it. (Does that explain why he's a truck driver?) A says she's not a huge fan of the process [getting there], but she loves being there, seeing new places. I love both the getting & the being.

We were rolling pretty good until we decided to drop down off of interstate so we could drive through Nebraska. We didn't have a good reason for going to Nebraska- other than being able to say we hit 20 states on our trip, all of the western half of the USA except for ND and TX. The road was teeth-jarring rough for about 30 miles. Not good! We had serious doubts about whether we should scrap the idea of seeing NE, but fortunately when we crossed the states line the road smoothed out. JS took the wheel and with flat roads, we could "put it in the wind" and were gaining a little on our 11pm ETA.

At one point we went over a hard bump. JS said "I lost the power steering". What he didn't mention till afterwards was that the brakes were also gone. Everything cut out! He got it stopped, turned the key off and started it back up, and everything came back on. Thank God! It all happened so fast this mamma didn't have time to be a nervous wreck.

Shortly after this picture was taken, our nightmare began. My eyes were getting heavy when all at once the dash lit up like a Christmas tree for a second. It scared me wide awake. But Big Bertha was still running. The men sensed something was wrong and knew we were pushing Big Bertha hard, but we were just praying we'd make it to the RV park. I went back on the bed and prayed for guardian angels to travel with us the last half hour.

We were cruising down I-80 in Iowa, only 15 minutes from the exit, when all at once we were rolling to a stop. I got up to see what was going on. Big Bertha died in the middle of the interstate. R scrambled to grab a flashlight so JS could see to coast off the road. We had no lights, no power, no nothing. Not even hazard lights. We were barely off the road and no way to warn other motorists we were there. R set the lantern back a ways behind Big Bertha but it didn't help much. I prayed & prayed for wisdom for the men while they tried everything they could think of, and for guardian angels to protect us from harm. Every time a semi would roar by inches away from us, it was "whoomphf" and Big Bertha would rock in a crazy, scary manner. Oh, we tried to get her moved farther off the road but 5 people pushing are no match for a dead RV! A young fella in a little car did pull over at one point and sat there for an hour with his hazard lights flashing, but when it was obvious we weren't going anywhere soon he wished us luck and continued on his way. So much for wishful thinking he might be an angel in disguise who could touch a spark plug or something and Big Bertha would magically fire up.
We were so tired- the kids & I sacked out in the RV and left poor R to stand outside waving the lantern to encourage passing traffic to get over in the passing lane and give us a little more safety margin. I felt a little guilty but also thankful I am not the head of the household and the protector of the family. No one actually slept; about the time you might get close to drifting off another semi would come "whoomphfing" past. Did I mention it was rather warm so we opened the windows, which increased the vacuum from passing vehicles? I became increasingly alarmed that at any moment an inattentive vehicle might slam into the back of us and send us all flying forward OR Big Bertha would grow weary of being jostled and roll over onto her side.
R was on the phone with Roadside Assistance, who claimed they were dispatching a tow truck. We have 1 minor problem- only 1 person is allowed to ride in the tow truck. State law. The rest of us will have to walk 5 miles to the exit. You're kidding, right? Any chance we can hide in the back of the RV and pretend we didn't? No rest for the weary and the wicked don't need none. But said tow truck failed to appear as the hours ticked by. (When we called Roadside Assistance back in Nevada their first & foremost concern had been whether we were in a safe location, but the graveyard shift dispatcher couldn't have cared less if we were safe.) A followup phone call resulted in Roadside Assistance admitting they can't find a tow truck large enough to handle an RV in our vicinity. They lied- there was no help on the way. So R called 911 and told them we are broke down and are not in a safe location. 45 minutes later, 4 incredibly long hours after we rolled to a stop, a police cruiser showed up.
God answered my desperate prayers for a guardian angel in the form of this nice policeman. He knew how far we were from the closest exit, what motels were there, and most importantly, that there was a tow truck at that exit -a commercial rig large enough to handle Big Bertha. He called and got the truck dispatched post-haste. With his flashers going behind us, traffic was finally moving over into the passing lane and we quit rocking so crazily. He said he would transport us to a motel, so we wearily started packing overnight bags. I cannot believe I am packing again without a suitcase to my name!
Excuse the poor quality- this is what a dead RV and a police cruiser look like at 4am.

God bless the tow truck driver who crawled out of bed in the wee hours of morning to come to our rescue. You can clomp around with untied shoe laces dangling, I don't care, just get me out of here! 

Big Bertha's super low bumper made it tricky to get her hooked up, but at last it was accomplished. 

Riding in a police cruiser was sooooo NOT on our bucket list, but at 5am that is what the kids & I did. The tow truck driver tipped us off that we want to go to Hotel A, not Hotel B, for reasons he wouldn't really elaborate on in front of the policeman, and also that if we tell Hotel A that BJ sent us they will give us a discount. Sounded good to us. The policeman dropped us off at the front door, went down the street and picked up R at the garage where the RV was towed and brought him to the hotel, too. Bless him! 

Meanwhile, I had to ring the bell to summon the night desk clerk. I mean who checks into a hotel at 5:30am?! I explained what happened and the clerk clucked her tongue sympathetically. "You mean no one found you for 4 hours?!" True to the tow truck driver's word, she gave us a 'BJ discount'. (In fact, the additional persons charge magically never showed up on our bill, but she said not to tell anyone so you didn't hear that from me.) She took pity on me since I could hardly keep my eyes open to sign the credit card receipt and sneaked us around the back behind the check-in desk so we wouldn't have to go the long way around to our room, and told us to put the Do Not Disturb sign out so housekeeping would leave us alone till 11am. It was a spacious room with 2 queen beds, which we literally fell into with exhaustion. R volunteered to take the floor and was the first one snoring in spite of it. 

R woke at 9:30 and walked 1.5 miles to the garage to check on Big Bertha. The rest of us slept a little longer. At 11 the front desk clerk knocked on the door; I don't think she got the memo about our plight and seemed a bit taken aback by the bleary-eyed, disheveled, pj clad person who answered the door. She graciously allowed us to occupy the room until 12, at which time we would either have to pay for an additional night or vacate. R was keeping us informed of the progress on Big Bertha and we were optimistic we could move on soon and not be stuck in Iowa all weekend after all. At first the mechanics thought it was the alternator, but closer inspection turned up a burned out solenoid. I don't know what I'm talking about here, but as I understand the situation someone had replaced said solenoid at some point in the past and not tightened it properly. As we drove it jiggled looser and looser until it burned up. Seriously? A simple turn of a screwdriver would have saved us 650 smackaroos? How's that for a nickel holding up a dollar? The mechanics in the household assure me there is no way of knowing this was the problem until it burns out and you come to a screeching halt, unless possibly you have lived through the nightmare before and recognize the signs from experience. Surely Big Bertha was shaking her head "I tried to tell you the last couple of days but you wouldn't listen..." The rough roads and driving so long in one day were the final nail in the coffin. 

We are so very grateful the mechanics in Iowa were willing to rig a temporary fix to get us home. They could have refused and made us wait while they order a new solenoid in. (They warned that solenoids for that age of RVs are difficult to come by, but there isn't much that Amazon doesn't sell these days. Big Bertha is sporting her new bling since a few days after we arrived at home.) R would've like to help -to speed up the process- but they wouldn't allow him for liability reasons so he had to sit & wait.     

At 11:45, we moved out of the room and into the hotel lobby. I stayed with our bags while the kids hoofed it down the street to McDonalds for food; the hotel had long ago put the breakfast away. It was quite warm to walk that far- we were back in the heatwave. The hotel staff were so kind, and the RV park did not charge our credit card when we explained why we never showed up, and even wished us speedy repairs & safe travels. Yay for the good folks of Iowa!  

At 1:45pm, R picked us up at the hotel and we were back in business. Somehow that nightmarish 15 hours felt a lot longer than that! 

We had previously agreed to sacrifice 3 days off of our trip for JS's sake, but we were planning to spend the final weekend with friends, the Yoders, in a neighboring midwestern location. However, after this breakdown, I just wanted to go home! I was tired of this ill-fated trip. We were fearful of what the bottom line [of the budget] was looking like, with the repairs. I was extremely jealous of all the families who attempt an RV road trip and don't experience a single breakdown. Why us?! Not once, not twice, but 3 times! I know, I know, why not the mechanic -over the clueless- but that's hardly comforting. My sadness over the trip drawing to a close was gone. Just get me home before anything else can go wrong! Scrap the plan to visit the Yoders; JS heartily seconded the motion. 

We had one last stop on the itinerary though- Iowa 80 Truck Stop. The largest truck stop in the world. Only a truck driver would have this on his bucket list! R has been there many a time, but never took time to go in the museum. 

 After the men browsed through the museum -and A& I trailed along behind- (A says it's like the Mid-America Truck Show without all the people  lol), we went in the truck stop so R could shop for truck parts. Can't begrudge the man his souvenirs.

After that we drove & drove. Somewhere around about midnight, we stopped at a truck stop and slept a couple hours.

Keep watching for the final trip post  
  

The Millers Go RVing - Day 24

We had about an hour's drive to get to Mt. Rushmore. It stands to reason if the carving is on the side of a mountain one would have to drive uphill to get to it but we were not expecting the steep climb we encountered- no one ever so much as hinted to us it was a challenge to get to Mt Rushmore in a big rig. There were no pull-offs anywhere and no parking signs at regular intervals, but Big Bertha was so hot we could smell her -with the windows rolled up. We came to a service entrance of some sort with No Parking signs plastered all around, but we parked anyway. We were not about to burn up our new transmission, and would have shared that with anyone who challenged us about parking there, but no one did.
At the top we had an escort in a golf cart who took us to an available RV parking spot. They were really quite organized, in spite of how busy they were.

 We had beautiful weather for visiting a national monument. 

We went inside the museum and saw equipment used by the workers. (OSHA approved, for sure.) And watched a film about the carving of the monument.

 Ok, so call me weird if you want, but do you know what my thought was when I saw Mt Rushmore? It's not near as big as I pictured. I know, I know, the visitor's center is still a long ways off... I know all the statistics about a grown man being able to stand inside the eyes and all that, but probably because so many of the photos you see of Rushmore are zoomed it, it looked much smaller in person than I expected.

After an hour, the I'm-here-because-you're-making-me-do-this member of our party was doing the usual refrain of "Can we go now?" so we left. Big Bertha wouldn't start, but the battery switch flipping trick worked again, and we rolled on to Crazy Horse. That was a stop on the itinerary that R requested and it turned out to be more interesting than I expected. 

It's not that far from Mt Rushmore and is being carved because the Sioux wanted the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too. It is so large that all 4 heads of Rushmore would fit in the chief's head. We watched the film about the monument and walked through the buildings looking at the displays (lots & lots of Indian things). Even though the carving is progressing very, very slowly it is funded completely by private donations.  

 In the foreground is the model, in the background is the actual carving.

 If you ever get in the area, it is worth your time to go to Crazy Horse Monument just to hear about this piece of machinery and the kaput-kaput-kaput story!

The carving is still being carried on by the family of  the man who was originally commissioned to do it. They grew up on that mountain and have some colorful stories to tell! Another one we enjoyed was one of the sons rolled a bulldozer down the backside of the mountain. Once Mr. Ziolkowski realized his son was still alive he said "You got it in there, now you get it out". They did and are still using it today. 

  

See that rock JS is carrying? At the entrance to the various buildings, I kept seeing a sign that said to leave your rocks at the door. What is that all about? Well, we came to a bin full of rocks taken from the mountain as part of the carving process. Anyone could take one in exchange for a donation. Ironically, JS had been looking for a rock for his future father-in-law who collects them for landscaping use. He picked one out, and I also chose one -who can resist having a piece of Crazy Horse?! And the joke is this was legal to remove from the premises, unlike the stalk of flowers yours truly picked/stole from an undisclosed park, for my scrapbook. JS likes to remind me I am a wanted criminal now.    

When we got back to the parking lot... guess what wouldn't start. Yup, Big Bertha decided to pull that stunt again. Except this time flipping the battery switches didn't work. The men had to fiddle around awhile and finally got her going. R started to worry the alternator was going bad. Sigh! I just want to get home. I'm not in the mood for any more costly repairs.

In the afternoon we drove to Custer State Park. We have heard from other people about all the wildlife you can see there so we went with high expectations. We hadn't seen any bighorn sheep or mountain goats yet, so I was especially hankering to see some of those. We paid $20 to drive Wildlife Loop, which is a narrow, berm-less, hairpin curved road not made for 32' RVs... for this...

A total waste of time & money! After the huge herd of bison at Yellowstone, this was like big whoop-dee-doo. We drove by a small prairie dog colony, and did see a mama antelope with twins but a motorcycle came roaring past and scared them off before we could get any pictures. So our advice is- unless you can get there in the cool of the day, don't bother with Custer. 

On to Wall, SD. We got an RV site for a mere $38, which helped make up for the wasted $20. When we checked in, the owner told us there is a rodeo right across the street at 7pm, so we walked over. It was only $10 per person and it turned out to be much better than the one in Cody (the self-proclaimed rodeo capital)!

 Goat wrangling was a new one for me. It's the lady's counterpart to men's calf wrangling. 

(The goat is released just before the wrangler gets close to it.) 

 Mutton busting!

 The husband-wife and father-daughter teams did better at team roping than the all male teams. Love it! 

3 hours of wholesome, small town entertainment. We were glad we went. 

   
to be continued...
 

The Millers Go RVing - Day 22 & 23

Originally we had planned to spend this day in Grand Teton National Park or Jackson WY area, but with all the mountains in that area and Big Bertha's aversion to crossing them, we decided to just move on. We did some research on the RV-friendly way to get from Yellowstone over to Cody WY. Going up to I-90 so we wouldn't have to cross any mountains was a good choice. We saw more mountains and beautiful ranches along the way. It seems to us like a lovely place to live if you don't mind being miles & miles away from the closest neighbor.

By the time we got the RV back and tried to book a site in Cody, the only thing left was a KOA deluxe site with a premium price tag. "Beggars can't be choosers". 

We had our own grill, patio set and the whole 9 yards. A shame we didn't have any use for any of it.

We wanted to do a chuckwagon dinner somewhere out west, and it didn't seem like it was going to work out elsewhere so we went to Cody Cattle Company (even though friends had told us the dinner show isn't that good). All-you-can-eat beef brisket, fried chicken, baked potato, baked beans, applesauce, cornbread, tossed salad, brownies & lemonade. And they know how to feed a crowd in short order.  

The food was good, although a couple of us didn't feel well on it later. The emcee joked that the baked beans were carefully cooked upside down so as not to produce gastronomical distress, for the benefit of those of us traveling together in RVs. lol 

I would have to agree with our friends' assessment- the show wasn't that good. It was all singing. When we arrived there was a cowboy practicing with a lasso in the back so I expected some western roping tricks or something more. They sang mostly songs we were not familiar with- western songs but not necessarily country. It was ok, but I can think of better ways to use an hour. JR enjoyed the guitar picking though.   

When it was over, we walked to the rodeo next door. We knew it wasn't going to be PBR, and it definitely was not professionals. But they had a lot more than just bull riding.

 Kids from the audience chasing calves -whoever got the ribbon off the tail won a prize. 

 Team calf roping -quite a challenge!

 Favorite rodeo sport for A & I- barrel racing!

Only 1 bull rider stayed on for 8 seconds. I was struggling with the camera settings -to freeze the action in low light (I miss that setting on my old camera!), so I didn't get any pictures of bull riding that aren't blurry. Actually, the longer the trip went, the more I struggled with the camera; it got dropped accidentally on concrete in D.C. and it randomly decides to switch back & forth between different settings of its own choosing at inconvenient times. 

The rodeo was over at 10pm. We walked back to where our RV was parked and drove back to the KOA. While we were gone an RV had arrived in the neighboring site and extended their slide-out into our space, crowding us. I have never seen the likes of how campgrounds in the west stack 'em in! But this was the only time we encountered a neighbor taking liberties with our personal space. If we wouldn't have had the a/c running I am sure we could have carried on a conversations with them with how close our slide-outs were. 

We were planning to go whitewater rafting the next morning in Cody. We had even made a reservation. But a cold front blew in overnight. It was windy and much too chilly to get wet! Foiled again. I guess we just weren't supposed to go whitewater rafting. When we called to cancel our reservation, the rafting folks didn't argue with us at all, so I don't think they really wanted to go either. We let the kids sleep in longer, then we ate free pancakes the campground was serving. 

We left Cody, thinking we could drive to Mt Rushmore in time for the evening lighting ceremony. Boy, were we wrong! Before we had gone very far we came to Bighorn Mountain.

 There for awhile it was like an optical illusion- it looked like the road was going downhill, but Big Bertha was huffing & puffing so we knew we were actually pulling uphill. We pulled off by this bit of loveliness around 5000 ft. to let her catch her breath.

The map we had with us had all the steeper mountain ranges marked with the elevation. Since this one wasn't marked we mistakenly assumed it was a little one. Surprise! We kept climbing & climbing. And thinking surely it will summit around the next bend. I think we pulled off every mile, or maybe it was every 1000 feet in elevation, to let Big Bertha cool down. Drive a little bit, pull over and wait 30 minutes, drive a little bit, pull over and wait 30 minutes. That is slow going!  Somewhere around 8000 ft. R decided to change the oil while we waited. Right here. 

 I bet no one has ever changed oil on a mountain turn-out before!

Not a drop of oil was spilled and there was no evidence left behind- without these pictures as proof no one would even know. Making memories we can laugh about for years to come! 

We were still climbing when we came around a switchback on this gorgeous scene...

 And still climbing when we happened upon this moose cow grazing beside the road...

 A. missed out on seeing moose in Canada last summer so she was really hoping to see one/some in the northwest on this trip. All of a sudden, there one was. I was yelling "moose, moose" and frantically motioning to A. who had earbuds in and would've missed it. I bet it looked hysterical. Too bad it wasn't a bull, but a moose is a moose. Another check on the bucket list. We never did see any more after that.

We finally reached the top of Bighorn Mountain around 2:30pm. 9666 ft! (The GPS shows the elevation in the lower left corner; this was shortly after we started heading down.)  Wow, no wonder it was such a hard climb! 

  

In spite of the name, we didn't see a single bighorn sheep on the mountain. We even looked with binoculars. Disappointing. 

It is a good thing we didn't try to whitewater raft in the morning and still make it over the mountain on the same day. It took us basically all day just to cross the mountain.  

Coming down the other side was just as stressful. It was a 7-8% grade. There was a mandatory brake check for all large vehicles. And a couple runaway truck ramps with a unique safety system that we had never seen before. At the bottom there was a town and we needed to turn at the traffic light. Our brakes were hot & pretty much non-existent -we almost didn't make the turn. Use your imagination what Big Bertha was muttering this time. We promptly found a parking lot that was large enough for Big Bertha and poured in more brake fluid. Is this crazy or what?!

The red roads of Wyoming..

 We drove by Devil's Tower off in the distance...

 Definitely driving through ranching country...

 South Dakota at last!

 We were still hungry for the cheese curds we couldn't get back in Oregon, so we found a Culver's listed on the GPS near our RV park for the night. But we were running low on fuel so we hopped off interstate an exit early to feed the hungry Big Bertha first. While R pumped the gas, I walked 2 doors down, to the KOA, to check in awhile. I thought it was a little odd that he wasn't there to pick me up when I was finished; I walked back to the gas station and discovered the RV doesn't start. Turn the key, nothing there. Now what?! He was fiddling with the batteries but it wasn't helping. I was praying for wisdom when JR suddenly got up, flipped the 2 battery switches above the door off & on, and viola! The RV started right up. We almost melted with relief. By the time we get back home we'll know all of Big Bertha's quirks, eh?
On to Culver's and cheese curds. So here we are in the parking lot of Culver's in SD where we don't know a soul, when an older couple asked if we're from [undisclosed midwestern town known for the Mennonites]. We said no, we're from 1.5 hours south of there. Turns out their son-in-law is a truck driver from north of us. Someone R knows of, doesn't know personally, but knows of him. You can even play the Mennonite game in SD! lol  
Then back to Spearfish SD KOA. R did some maintenance on Big Bertha, including replacing a battery terminal that was going bad. Even though that didn't seem to be the problem earlier, better $5 now than be stranded somewhere later. Last time doing laundry at an RV park. Notice how we have as much wide open space at this RV park as we were crowded the night before!  

to be continued...