1st Retirement RV Ramble 2024

3 weeks / >5000 miles - Part Five

May 18, 2024

After a solid night’s sleep in Green River Wyoming we headed Northeast through Wyoming to Rapid City South Dakota. Rick’s sister Naomi and her late husband Hatter have made their home in Rapid City for years and I was looking forward to some familiar territory after all the adventures of the past couple days. We planned to camp in Rapid City at a small campground about a quarter mile from Naomi’s house. We would catch up with her, do some laundry, and give us all (us and dogs) a day’s rest from the road. After yesterday’s off-course debacle, it was rather needed!

Our day’s drive presented no unexpected challenges and by evening we had set up camp in Rapid City. The next day was Sunday and we rested and prepared for the next leg of the journey that would take us North to Great Falls Montana, for which Naomi would join us to visit their uncle and cousin! A family road trip, like the old days. Naomi is one of my favorite people and I love every moment I get to be with her. She has a kindness and independence that inspires me to be a better person and I’d choose her for a friend if we weren’t already family by marriage. She has always made me feel seen and accepted just as I am. And she makes me laugh. We were instant friends when we met, while Rick and I were just dating, so we have history of summers of youth when fun was still number one on the agenda. While we were there, Rick helped her install a new ceiling fan light in her bedroom. It did my heart good to hear them in the next room being siblings who obviously love each other. My siblings were older and out on their own by the time I was old enough to interact with them. I know I missed out on that particular sort of family relationship.

Great Falls is going to be a blog of its own, so I’ll finish this episode up by touching on a couple RV repairs that happened on our trip. The first night we went to dump our black tank at the Amarillo campground, Rick discovered that the tank washer was leaking. He called a local RV repair service and got all the information he could get on what may be the issue. He was pretty sure the shut off valve for the tank washer was leaking, it either was broken or maybe had not gotten completely drained and cracked over the winter when temps got below freezing. The repairman texted Rick a photo and parts number of the suspected faulty valve and thought we might even find it in a Lowe’s or Home Depot. We did look at Home Depot in Santa Fe and Rapid City, but it was an RV dealership/service department in Great Falls that we found what we needed. Rick installed it easily by access under the bathroom sink and it only cost us the price of the new valve. Did I mention Rick had about half of all the tools he owns in the back of the pickup for this trip? He was not about to get stalled in the middle of nowhere needing a simple tool to get back up and running. RVs are great projects for do-it-yourselfers, and not a great choice for nonmechanical sorts. Being raised on a farm and outside learning to work on cars and machinery since childhood is a definite advantage. We also ended up needing to replace a certain type of screw on our stove cover but we would be home in Nashville before he found the right one at Camping World. We also had a couple issues with the pickup we rented to pull the RV for the trip. The check engine light came on twice, both times when we were not pulling the RV. The first time was in Great Falls and the Ford dealership hooked it up to the computer and said it was likely running too rich or too lean. We conferred with the rental company and they said to keep driving and to just watch that the light didn’t start blinking. If it did we were to stop driving. We were not near another truck rental location of theirs or they would have put us in a new vehicle. As it turned out, the truck drove fine and it was not an issue. However, on the drive to Minnesota from Rapid City, we noticed the starter sounded strange a couple times and Rick feared a battery issue. We had a bit of a drive to go before reaching a town of enough size to have an auto parts store. We fueled at one point without shutting off the truck, fearing we may be stuck if we did. We made it to a parts store and sure enough, had to replace the battery. We were reimbursed without question for that expense by the rental company. Other than these minor issues, our 3 weeks went smoothly on the operations side!

I’ll leave you with some more photos of Wyoming and the hills of western South Dakota. Next up is our fun in Great Falls!

Green River north to Rapid City