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.