Arrived in Hermosa, SD - Day 801 (Yr 3, Day 68)

Hermosa, SD

We completed the drive today, arriving in Hermosa, which is about 20 miles from Mt. Rushmore.  It continued to be an exhausting and boring drive through nothing but open land, with a few buttes and occasional cows thrown in.  Driving with nothing to look at is really much more tiring, probably because it's so much easier to get hypnotized by the road and you have to put in a lot more effort into staying alert and focused.

I don't know who said it was all flat land, but our drive was nothing but rolling hills.  I also don't like driving on inclines, as I'm not used to a diesel engine pulling 20,000 pounds, and although it's probably normal, I don't like it when I can't get the speed up where it should be. I confess that I really don't like the driving aspect of this lifestyle.

Some photos of the wide open landscape:





A beautiful butte (which is pronounced byoot, not butt!)



There was, however, one interesting sculpture we passed.  Not quite sure what it was, but it looked interesting:



We did have a little delay, and a few anxious moments when, after passing through a small town (Buffalo, SD, population 360) where there was a bit of construction traffic, the truck died.  Of course, this was in the middle of town, with only 1 lane on either side of the road, so we were blocking traffic.  Turned out we were out of gas (side note: we have 3 tanks, totaling 105 gallons. I was driving and told Mitch we were almost on empty and needed to switch tanks.  Fool that I am, I listened to him when he said I should wait until the low fuel light went on.  Turns out I didn't see the light go on; either I wasn't looking for it, or there was too much glare on the dashboard to see it).  In any event, a diesel engine is a different animal from regular.  You can't just put gas in and expect it to start immediately.  It finally did, after about 15 minutes, but the anxiety was whether it would start at all and whether the fuel was the problem. Thankfully it was.  We couldn't get it to turn over, but we were fortunate to be in an area with a cell signal, so Mitch went to the internet to see if he could resolve the problem, which he did.

Where we were stopped for the construction, we sat there for about 1/2 hr. before the sign changed from "stop" to "slow".  They were waiting for traffic in the other direction to pass first: all 3 cars.  They were probably about 20 miles away when they made the decision to close this side of the road.



My next bit of driving anxiety was later when I saw that black smoke was coming out of the exhaust whenever we accelerated.  When we arrived and settled in, I immediately called the mechanic who worked on the truck to get it road ready.  He assured me there was probably some extra fuel that got into the line and we should worry unless it was continuous, and that it will probably go away soon.  Let's hope.  By the way, did I mention how much I hate the driving part of this journey?

There was a small breakup of scenery when we passed through Sturgis, SD, home of a major motorcycle rally.  Here are a few photos.  I wasn't able to get enough photos, but there were so many saloons (for bikers, of course) with names such as Full Throttle, The Knuckle Saloon, One Eyed Jacks, the Beaver Bar, Broken Spokes, and the Drag Pipe.  One of them had a giant biker sculpture but I wasn't able to catch a pic of that as the camera on the phone wasn't ready and by the time I opened it, we were passed it.  Oh well.  Next time I keep my camera at the ready as it's much faster to turn on.

Here are a few pictures passing thru town.  We did see a much larger downtown area which reminded me a lot of Mandan.












After 5 hours, we finally arrived at our destination - Heartland RV Park.  It's like a giant parking lot -- not much space between neighbors, no trees, but they do have laundry, bath houses and a pool.  There's a pizza place and drive in theater down the road.  Nothing we really wanted to watch at the theater; besides we were much too tired to do anything but eat, take a shower, watch a little tv and go to bed early (8:30ish).

As an aside, I love little local places (as do almost all my fellow travelers).  This place, Linze's Pizza, offered many kinds of specialty pies and the folks there were extremely friendly.  There was a sign in the front explaining the humble beginnings of the place (you may need to click to read):




Hopefully, other than Shabbat, we'll be out & about so it won't really matter.  We chose this place, even though it's about 20 miles from Mt. Rushmore, because it's a Passport America park so we get a 50% discount.  It's decent, but not a place I'd enjoy staying long term.

So... here's the (hopeful) itinerary for the rest of this weekend:  we decided to cut the vacation short and head back north on Monday.  I think the drive will be too difficult to do in one day.  It will take 8 hours, but that's 8 hours of difficult driving.

Tomorrow (Friday), we will start the day going up to Rapid City (about 45 mins away), where we will visit the Air & Space museum and take a tour of Ellsworth AFB and the missile silo.  Afterwards, there's a big box shopping area where we need to pick up a few items; maybe have lunch depending on the time.  Then either we'll drive about 50 miles to Wall, SD and visit the famous Wall Drugs or just check out the downtown area of Rapid City.  Then head home and prepare for Shabbat, and spend Saturday doing our normal stuff.  Sunday we're booked for a tour to visit Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Sylvan Lake, Custer State Park wildlife loop and drive through some very scenic bypasses (including Needles Highway, with over 360 turns and some very narrow tunnels).  It's a 10 hour tour.  Monday morning we'll pack up and head back up to Bowman and arrive in Bismarck on Tuesday.

Not sure if I'll be able to post every day this weekend, or if you'll need to wait until next week, after I've sorted through all the photos.  I'll do my best.  Stay tuned.