Wyoming or Bust: Day 3.5 or So

The brothers at happy hour 30 minutes after our Eatons' arrival. From the left: Scott Spayd, Rick Fowler, Bruce Kirkpatrick, finally a handsome guy, Hal Mclean, Randy Porter and Pat Hillard.

 

I'm not the kind of guy who splits hairs over an hour or two, but, in reality, Day 3.5 of our journey from Knoxville to Eatons' Ranch in Wolf, Wyoming was more like Day 3.8 or 3.85. How's that for splitting hairs? When I mapped this trip out, the final driving day was to be four to five hours long. I expected to roll into the ranch around 1 p.m. A variety of factors foiled the successful completion of that schedule.

As with every morning, we got a later start than I had anticipated. Even with eating breakfast in the RV, rather than stopping at a restaurant, we didn't get on the road until about 9:30. We decided the day before that we would take a side trip to Mt. Rushmore, involving roughly 60 additional miles of driving. Moreover, we lost another 45 min or so getting as close to the spectacle as possible once parked.

Here's the secret to fast-and-easy parking at Mt. Rushmore: Pull up in a 38-foot, Class-A RV. Upon entering, after our old-timers' 50-percent discounted entry fee, we were directed to the bus parking right at the walking entrance to the monument. Once out of the RV, we had a 20-step slog to the entrance. Sweet! We spent a little time milling around, snapping photos of the quartet of stoned presidents. And, then it was time to boogie. In other words, we didn't channel our Clark Griswald visiting the Grand Canyon, but we didn't hang around for an undo amount of time, either.

Achieving RV maneuvers, like positioning at a gas pump and backing up, requires one person outside eyeballing the situation and reporting the RV's exact relationship to unmoving objects via a walkie talkie, as one person in the passenger seat conveys that information to Hal. We had to kick this operation into gear backing out of our Mt Rushmore parking space. There was plenty of room, but there was also mucho traffic of the vehicle and pedestrian varieties. I was outside and after successfully completing the backup, I noticed the 30-something guy from the rig next to ours standing behind his RV with a cup of coffee studying the process. “Wow,” he exclaimed, “Walkie talkies. I never thought of that. I'll have to add it to my list.” Apparently, we weren't the only RV pilgrims loose in South Dakota.

 

Never get tired of seeing this.

We lost our bearings getting out of the park and back on to I-90. This involved an extra half hour to reorient ourselves and get back on the road. Tick Tock.

I forget whether it was Day 3 or Day 3.5, but at some point, we had to pull over and perform a bit of battlefield surgery on the Magnificient Bastard. A metallic flapping sound suddenly arose. As we rolled down the highway, the two nondrivers wandered all around the RV's interior searching for the culprit. We saw a bit of vibration in the galley ceiling fan cover and attributed the racket to that. We were in the process of Paper-Rock-Scissors to see who would climb on top of the rig with duct tape to seal the cover when I suddenly realized the issue was somewhere outside the rig. Glancing in the passenger-side outboard mirror, I could see an outside cover flapping away. Looking at it through the convex, wide-angle mirror, I believed it to be a storage-bay cover.

After finding a safe place to pull off the road, we dismounted to check the covers. They all seemed secure. Shrugging our shoulders, the other two guys were climbing back into the coach when I noticed a screw missing on the panel covering access to the refrigerator. Sure enough, that was the issue. Applying a strip of duct tape solved the problem and we were back on the road.

Because my Sometimerz does kick in sporadically, I mistakenly related the Mt Rushmore adventure as part of Day 3. In reality, it was part of Day 3.5. If you missed it, you can catch yourself up by reading the previous Clanging Bell.

No longer fighting the 15-20-mile crosswind we dealt with during our trek across South Dakota, our drive through Wyoming was quite pleasant and uneventful. The hours and slightly rolling landscape passed quickly enough. 

 

This is only half of the bourbons, single-malt scotches and whiskys on hand. Yes, a bit of high-end siping is on tap.

We rolled into Eatons' Ranch around 4:45 p.m. Hal found an out-of-the-way spot to park the RV. Sadly, it was a quarter of a mile from our cabin. Using one of the other guy's vehicles, we transported our luggage and my video gear to the cabin. The next morning we had to move the RV even farther away, which was okay because it was a larger, flatter area where we could extend the levelers and deploy the slideouts.On the other hand, it was a real pain to access as we discovered must-have items left behind.

Here endeth the summary report for Day 3.5.