MO to SD

MO to SD, a set on Flickr.

MOUNTAIN TIME AND
BAD LANDS
Our visiting with friends and family are over for now so we finally embarked on our trip to Alaska. We left Hermann, MO on Thursday, 7 June, and drove all of the way to Mitchell, SD. That was our longest day of driving yet. We actually drove 621 miles in one day. Yep, we were tired. The next day was only 290ish miles. So that was over 900 miles in two days pulling the trailer. We are now in Rapid City, SD where we will spend about 4 days doing all of the touristy things in this area. By the way, the new 50 gal aux fuel tank in the truck bed REALLY extends the truck’s range. Now we make stops for other reasons than just fuel.
The beginning of our trip from Hermann was delayed for two days, because our truck started to have a “check engine” light come on intermittently so it had to be checked out at the local Ford dealer. They weren’t sure what was causing it. When our mail finally caught up to us on Friday before we were planning to leave on Tuesday, we found out that there had been a recall on the NOX sensor which was supposedly causing our problem. Of course, the dealer did not stock the part so we had to wait one day for it to be delivered and installed. The problem wasn’t fixed so the dealer wanted to do this labor intensive “fix” for which we weren’t prepared to pay. Instead, we delivered the truck to our friends at Dave’s Auto in Hermann who have done nearly all of our car work ever since we lived there. They fixed it up that day, and we were ready to go. We still waited until the next day to leave, because we had one more chance to go to church with our friends there and one more night’s visit with our Borzillo friends.
We saw lots of different types of terrain on the trip. Coming north from Kansas City, MO, we rode along the Missouri River bottoms. It was a pretty trip with hills on both sides of us and flat, fertile farm land on both sides. Iowa was similar with corn fields all around us. The land began to change in South Dakota. We went from nearly flat row crop land to a more rolling terrain. By Mitchell, the land was beginning to change to a continuously rolling farm land. Leaving Mitchell at noon
on 8 June, we changed to a high prairie grassland. It was a beautifully clear day with only a few clouds in the sky. The visibility was unrestricted and you could see to the horizon. The prairie was awesome. You could just imagine a gigantic herd of buffalo out on the endless fields of grass. Where were the Indians? Just over the next hill we imagined.
The truck and trailer are doing a fine job. We climbed up to our highest altitude of the whole trip (3100’) and had two pretty long, steep climbs. The truck finally realized that the trailer was back there.
Tourist Stuff – Mitchell, SD - CORN PALACE & CABELA’S. Of course we stopped in the Cabela’s store! The Corn Palace in historic downtown Mitchell is an icon and deserves a stop. It’s a big building that is covered in different colors of corn to make pictures of whatever is the theme of that year. It’s really old and I guess you have to do something with all of that corn. We had a good cup of coffee at a shop called “The Jitters”. It was owned and operated by a self taught barista lady who had the courage to start a business.