Red Bay, Alabama

We made it to our farthest destination for this trip, Red Bay, Alabama, where our motor home was born.  We added Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama to our visited states.  We are in the Tiffin Service Center and tomorrow we will get some idea on how long we will be here.  The service center here has sites for about 100 coaches so we were lucky to get anything.

Cape Girardeau, MO

Today we drove from Oak Grove to - and around - Saint Louis.  The drive was OK except for the St Louis part.  Had to manage three freeway interchanges with Saturday traffic, which I presume is not as bad as weekday rush hour - but it was bad enough.  Lots and lots of people who do not know how to merge on to a freeway just for starters.  I will just leave it at that.....

Tonight we are in a campground in the city of Cape Girardeau, MO not far off Interstate 55 and about 100 miles south of St. Louis.  We drove down to the city center to get a few pictures of the Mississippi as it passes by.  The town has quite a history and quite a levy wall to protect it after it was severely flooded back in the 1920's.

Tomorrow we hope to reach our goal of the Tiffin Factory in Red Bay, AL where we will get in line for some work we need to have done on the coach.  More on that in another post(s).

Rainstorm Trivia

Good News, no rain in KC overnight.  Could see lightning far off in distance but never got close to us.  Today we are moving on through Saint Louis.

Apparently the T & L storm we sat out in Sioux Falls was bigger than we thought.  I copied this from a news article on a Seattle TV station web page this morning.
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There was a massive thunderstorm that struck the town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota Thursday night, dumping rain amounts rarely seen and caused massive flash flooding. More than 7 inches of rain fell in part of town, according to KELOland.com, knocking out power to more than 2,000 people.

But it was the rate of rainfall that really caught my eye and you can imagine how so many people got stranded in instant flooding. A weather gauge in Sioux Falls found that at the storm's peak, 0.71" of rain fell -- in 5 minutes! To put that in perspective, that's about all of Seattle's average July monthly rain. Again, in 5 minutes.

Here are some of their other totals:

5 minutes: 0.71"
10 minutes: 1.35"
15 minutes: 1.91"
20 minutes: 2.37"
25 minutes: 2.63"
30 minutes: 2.80"

That 2.80" of rain is just short of Seattle's annual summer rainfall average at 3.15". Don't worry, they eventually hit that 3.15" mark at about 75 minutes. That particular rain gauge ended up at 5.83" for the storm.

Kansas City

Nothing much to report today and no photos.  We drove from Sioux Falls south, through a chunk of the "corn belt" then mostly around Kansas City.  We are currently in a campground in Oak Grove, Mo just east of Kansas City on I-70.  There is a chance of thunderstorms here tonight but after the last two nights we are thinking we have had our share.

Sioux Falls, SD

As I write this it is almost 8 pm local (central) time here in Sioux Falls and we are riding out yet another pretty impressive thunder and lightning storm.  You can see from the below weather radar images that we are right in the middle of it.

I suppose the locals are used to this but it was not quite what we had in mind for this trip.  On the positive side we got here before the storm hit and were able to get all outside activity done before the weather hit.  Now we are hoping it will all be over by morning so we don't have to drive in this.  There are flash flood warnings for the area but hopefully that will all be over by morning too.  The lady in the office here told me they were expecting up to an inch of rain so we will see.

Tomorrow, with a little luck, we head for Oak Grove, MO which is just south and east of Kansas City.  Today the only interesting thing we did was cross the Missouri River.

Wall Drugs and Badlands National Park

Wednesday we drove to the famous Wall Drugs.  

I don't "get it" but Arlyene enjoyed checking it out. 

 After that we toured Badlands National Park.  Overall about a 200 mile day trip.  We had entertained the idea of going back to Mount Rushmore in the evening for the light show but were too tired.  Turned out that was good.  A serious thunder and lightening storm moved in after dark.  Mt Rushmore, if they did not close it, would have been a bad place to be with constant lightening strikes all around.  This was the kind of cell that generates Severe Weather Alerts on our cell phones.  Wind, rain, hail and T & L that was pretty much constant.  The storm was moving at about 30 mph so it passed over us in less than 30 minutes but was interesting while it lasted.  No pictures - too busy watching.....

The Badlands sits on the edge of the prairie.

In one direction it looks like this.....

... turn around and it looks like this.

Custer State Park

Today we took a side trip up into a portion of Custer State Park.  I think I have almost been here too long.  Every time I look at a granite peak I try to figure out who's face will get chiseled on it.  I can think of one or two politicians (or wannabes) who probably already have theirs picked out.

This is called "Little Devil's Tower"

This is called "Eye Of The Needle"

This is called a narrow tunnel... Really Narrow

Like 8 feet wide by 10 feet night.  No RVs Please....One Way Only

From a gravel back road we chose over the paved highway.

Crazy Horse

Today we went to visit Crazy Horse.  This is work started by one man in 1947 and you can see how far it has come.  His family continues to work on the project after his death.  Maybe in another 100 years it will be done.  Although I took no inside pictures there is a very nice, large, native american museum on the grounds which we enjoyed.  Once again we had perfect weather.

Up Yours George

Today the weather was just about perfect for our trip to Mount Rushmore.  Clear, sunny, a very light and comfortable breeze and pleasant temperature.  We could not have asked for more.  We took the "Presidential Trail"  to get a little closer and a different perspective.
All I can say is that it is a good thing George does not have nose hair.

In The Black Hills

In my last post I said we were going to watch the Seahawks game.  Turns out it was BLACKED OUT in Billings.  Don't get me started on that greedy NFL.  They lost so maybe Scrooge did us a favor.

After a lot of thunder and lightening and rain in Billings last night we got a 9 am start this morning heading for our campground 11 miles north of Custer, SD.  The entire 6+ hour drive was in a lot of wind.  That might be normal for this part of the country but this Left Coast driver is not used to so much wind.  It was a long, but uneventful day and we are now in our campsite.  The wind is supposed to start abating soon and we are hoping for a quiet evening.  Still too windy right now to spend any time outside but I am pooped anyway so staying in is fine with me.

Not much in the way of pictures to post yet.  Just a couple I snapped when taking a break in a rest area.  We did pass the Crazy Horse turn out and could see it in the distance.  We will be visiting that, Mount Rushmore of course, and possibly Devil's Tower.  Arlyene also wants to visit the famous Wall Drugs.  We will also be visiting a cousin who lives nearby in Custer so we have plenty to keep us busy for a few days.

One last comment regarding the fires.  We drove in smoke and haze from roughly Ellensburg to Billings.  One morning in Missoula we actually had ash on the horizontal surfaces inside the coach from leaving the windows open.  Pretty impressive and pretty sad.  We seem to be out of the smoke now and we hope it stay that way.  My cousin says the it was even smokey in Custer before the wind and rain.

Big Sky Country

Good News and Good News

This morning the Cummins supervisor called me about 8:45am and said they had found the part we needed and his mobile tech was on the way over to install it.  That only took about 10 minutes and we were fixed.  Of course I was still a bit nervous about it but we headed out (only about an hour later then we had planed before our little crisis) and everything worked perfectly.  We made the 350 mile trip in just about 6 hours with one fuel stop and one other driver change so we were in our campsite here in Billings a little after 4 pm,   Plenty of time to watch the Seahawks game tonight.

Tomorrow is another 350 mile day to Hill City, SD in the Black Hills where we will stay and explore for about five days.  We will be visiting with two of my cousins in Custer, SD as well as seeing Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and Devil's Tower.  Maybe I will have some actual pictures to post in a day or two....

That's all for now.

Good News - Bad News

Good News
After getting the coach serviced in Spokane we had a couple of nice days near Lake Coeur d' Alene and then headed for Missoula, Mt this morning arriving at our campground about 2:15 local time.

Bad News
As we pulled into our assigned camping site an alarm indicating "Low Air Pressure" began to sound.  This is bad because without air pressure the brakes do not work correctly.  I confirmed that we only have 50 psi in both air tanks where it should have been closer to 120 psi in each.  Now we had a problem.

Good News
Suspecting this had something to do with the service done in Spokane I call the service manager there.  He in turn contacted the service manager of the Cummins facility here in Missoula and within an hour he had called me to say that he had a mobile technician on his way and in addition, since we are not too far from his facility, he was coming over too.  They arrived at the same time and fairly quickly determined that a high pressure relief valve had stuck open which was causing our loss of air.

Bad News
They did not have one of these valves so in the morning they are going to try and locate one here in Missoula and come and install it for us which we hope they can do before our 11 am check-out time.

Good News
The lady in the campground office said that if we need to stay an extra day that will be OK, they have plenty of space.

Bad News 
Don't want to have to redo reservations and cut our stay short in the Black Hills.

Great Luck
I normally like to take a break after driving a couple of hours but today I decided to toughen myself up a little for the longer driving days ahead so I did not stop at any of the rest stops we passed along our 185 mile route today.  It appears that if I had we would have been stuck there, possibly all night, waiting for someone who could come and diagnose the coach.  Having this failure right at our campsite where we have full hookups and are not on the side of the road makes me feel very lucky and like we are being watched over.

Here's hoping we are able to move on down the road tomorrow.  It is very smokey here, even worse than some of the other places we have been.  The official air quality this evening is "Very Bad" and our eyes confirm that.

Our next stop is Billings, Montana -  but the question right now is when?

Routine Maintenance

So we are sitting here in the customer "lounge" while our baby is hanging up in the air getting the oil changed and various other maintenance matters taken care of.  We are coming up on 20K miles now and with another 4K left ahead of us on this trip we are taking the time today at the Cummins facility in Spokane, WA to get this done.  We have a couple more hours to go but hope to be on our way by 3 or 4 which should get us into Spokane just in time for the rush hour.  Our destination is only normally about 45 minutes from here so we will just tough it out.

Sign Language for "Boring !"

High and Dry

Moses Lake

We left Bothell about 9 a.m. as planned and had a fairly easy exit from the Puget Sound area on I-90.  Once over the Cascades and past Ellensburg we started seeing the haze associated with so many bad fires to the north.  It was not long before we were also smelling the smoke.

Looks Like Mars

I did not expect to find much to photograph here near Moses Lake but the evening sky was interesting so I found something after all.  The smokey haze does a good job of filtering the sunlight.  We are mindful however of all the people who have had to flee the fires and especially those who have lost their homes.  At least there is no wind this evening and perhaps that will help those who are fighting to save what they can.

Posting Our Way to Alabama

Time to wake up the blog.  We are roughly 1/3 of the way on our round trip from Las Vegas to Seattle, to Alabama and back to Las Vegas.  We leave Bothell Sunday morning headed east.  We have some extended family health issues that are a concern to us but after weighing all the options and the odds we have concluded that the best thing for now is just to stick with Plan A and head for Alabama.  We have contingency plans figured out if we need to divert along the way.

So, off we go.  We will be "posting our way" to Alabama.  Hope to be there around August 30th.